wotlk talent spec-ulationFollow

ive been futzing around with the alleged talents from the xpac, trying to come up with what id use as a pvp build at 80.

this: clinky

is what ive come up with thus far.

most should be rather self-explanatory, but for the rest, here's my reasoning:

imp tclap vs iron will - i like the speed reduction more than the stun reduction, but these two are malleable; i could reverse the point distribution and be happy either way.

no sudden death - executing a non-execute range target just seems useless in pvp. the downside of execute is it takes ALL of your rage. id much rather slam a >20% target with an MS than I would an execute. hell, i dont normally execute a target until theyre under 10% in pvp thanks to resilience and how much damage you lose thanks to the higher armor of pvp sets. sudden death seems much more like a pve talent than anything else, something to give an arms war extra damage while DPSing a high-hp target (i.e. boss).

no trauma - our bleed effects are, at best, lackluster. the new bloodbath ability remains unknown as of yet. if its good enough, i may consider taking this, but id prefer the cooldown reduction in MS more atm.

unrelenting assault vs bull rush - with a 15s intercept youre already on the edge of putting your intercept stun on DR in pvp. a 3s stun leaves 12s for intercept to cool down, which means if its used right as its ready it gets DR'ed. ultimately, i think having overpower up every 2s instead of every 5 is a much better gain than a full extra second of intercept stun.

bladestorm vs death wish - this was probably the toughest choice. its 4.5s of complete immunity to everything every 1:30 or 30s of fear immunity every 3:00. bladestorm lasts less than 1/6 the time of death wish with half the cooldown, so in terms of "up time" death wish trumps bladestorm by almost three times. however, death wish still leaves a warrior vulnerable to snares, stuns, roots, polys, and all those other lovely ways classes have of controlling us. i dunno how many times ive hit death wish only to be novaed, cycloned, polyed...you name it. having what amounts to four free whirlwinds while being completely immune to everything seems like its a stronger clutch move than a fear break, even if said fear break adds to your damage.

this is my deep arms pvp build. of course, this is all just speculation as its only alpha, and lots may change (bladestorm may be severely nerfed, death wish might be moved back into arms, who knows else). however, if i was to do more of a hybrid build....

clickness

this comes in two variations, the imp WW build, or the ER build. both are rooted in your standard 33/28 MS/flurry combo, with the extra points from being level 80 going to a max flurry, blood frenzy and at least 4/5 imp MS. the last two points are either 5/5 imp MS + ER or 2/2 imp WW. im partial to the ER variant as i think having a lower WW cooldown is less important than being able to get a 5 stack of sunder on a pvp target. with the rage gain of ER plus the hitting power of 5/5 flurry coupled with death wish and imp slam for on-demand burst you could put out a LOT of pain. you lack the "lolz im a BM hunter" power that is bladestorm, but that just means your more group reliant on removing snares/roots, which, by now, every damn class should be used too. youre still vulnerable to stuns and cyclone, but hey, nothing new there.

me, im partial to the bladestorm build. i think, overall, it would prove more useful. but i could see the 41/30 doing quite well in its own right. thoughts?

Edited, Jun 18th 2008 2:05pm by Quor

That link goes to a shaman build.

On a side note I'd try this out as my fury build.

I'd be attacking 28% slower but two handed weapons of the same item level do on average 23% higher dps. So I'm really only taking a 5% dps loss. Throw in 3/5 two handed spec and it's only a 2% dmg loss. Add in the much better stats of two handed weapons and that will probably work out to an additional 1%. So a 1% dmg loss to be able to swing around two handed weapons in one hand. Not to mention the incredible WW dmg with high max end two handed dmg.

There are probably some other factors I'm forgetting but this seems like it would be really cool to try out.

Edited, Jun 18th 2008 1:40pm by Jimpadan

Edited, Jul 3rd 2008 3:26pm by Jimpadan

Edited, Jul 3rd 2008 3:29pm by Jimpadan

It just seems to me that Blizz is trying to make a dps fury slam warrior more viable.
With Titan's Grip, Blood Surge, and Imp. Slam seems like it will work well together.

i've been looking at a prot hybrid for fury in 3.0.

8/33/30 doesn't even require wotlk talents to function well in most situations. It is a great OT build.

Take a good look at Death Wish actually Quor. Supposedly Bliz is taking the fear immunity out of it and the talents you linked show that sadly.

Edited, Jun 23rd 2008 12:36am by Ikaridono

well wowhead now has the some calculators up, so i can finally get in on this... i was dreaming about some funky flurry/************** builds with a 2.5 2H, but now see that's reaaaallly not gonna happen.

with crushes removed and shield block on a 60 sec cooldown, it's kinda hard for me to see where blocking is going to fit into the scheme of things for prot warrs. kinda like parry now, it's great if you can get it but don't chase it necessarily... so naturally, in my first stab at a 3.0 tank build, i skipped any talents related to blocks ^^

behold, the 24-5-42 threat machiniac!

bascially, a threat-oriented prot tree (which should look familiar) then sticking those extra ten points into the arms tree to pick up impale, sweeping strikes, and having 8 points to split between cruelty and weapon specs.

it's missing shockwave, obviously, but tbh the four-second stun could be hit or miss... 4secs is a long time to go without any rage from incoming damage, as anyone who's experience an early imp revenge in a heroic will attest. but sweeping strikes kinda makes up for it, a little, maybe...

so at this point i'm kind of considering shockwave to be more of an opening move to gain aoe aggro than any part of a standard rotation. challenging shout > shockwave will be a real nice recovery trick that should make pug panties wet.

30sec conc. blow and 20sec shockwave might be interesting in pvp... but i'm so far out of the loop there i can't say. i got all excited about the imp bleeds that do quadruple damage on enraged targets, then saw that rogues get an enrage that removes bleeds... LOL WTF??!?!

vigilance looks to be a pretty amazing raid talent, maybe half-decent in arenas too... pretty funny if prot warrs with safeguard and vigilance become a vaunted parter in 2's lol

I'm looking at bloodsurge... The one that gives you a 0 cast slam.

Now this is interesting to me.

I'm gonna think about it. I hope slam isn't messed with too much. But then again, something new and fresh for warriors might be a retool of many skills.

i cant live without piercing howl in pvp zip. every pvp build id have would have to include it. its just too damn useful.

id be most inclined to the 51/20 bladestorm/enrage build, but ive been tempted to try out a bit more in prot for TM, more rage from bloodrage and higher crit chance with cleave, clap and HS.

If Titan's grip turns out to be crap I'd go with this build. Basically your normal 17/44 fury build save for being able to go ten points deeper into arms for more goodies.