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Ciderhelm posted this on Aug 19, 2008 - 1:02 AM
I'm going to pose three specific but distinct questions for the community. Fair warning: This discussion crosses into a territory we normally avoid; as such, responses to this thread are going to be subject to heavy moderation. Expect this to be our focus through the weekend.
Question 1 -- Abilities
What abilities do all tanks need and what abilities do you feel make your specific class unique?
Question 2 -- Value When Not Tanking
When you're in a raid and you are not able to tank due to encounter limitations such as a boss that only requires one tank, what role could you perform that would make raid groups less likely to swap you out? (Note: This is not asking for an explanation of current mechanics, but roles that would make sense for your class in the future)
Question 3 -- Memorable/Enjoyable
What are the most enjoyable and memorable encounters you've been in as a tank, and why? (Any size, from 5-mans on up)
Rules
Responses should be entirely devoted to answering the questions.
Responses should be class specific to the character you've invested in the most.
Responses must not involve class comparisons and must be related to tanking.
This is not a debate thread.
As with the previous discussion, I'll go ahead and start. I'll keep my answers focused on Protection Warriors.
Question 1 -- Abilities
I believe as many general abilities as possible should be given to each class. For instance, the ability to handle incoming magic damage through class design or through specific abilities should be equal across all tanking classes. I also believe that any anti-CC abilities (such as Berserker Rage for Warriors) that are going to come into play in raid encounters should be available to anyone who can tank.
The only ability I've felt has defined the Protection Warrior has been Shield Slam. I suspect many would agree. The functionality and the scaling of it was so unique after the Shield Block Value change that it allowed for a lot of fun feats, gave Protection a burst-damage utility attack similar to other trees, and gave us some fun tricks to show off.
Question 2 -- Value When Not Tanking
For Warriors and tanks in general, there are three possible routes that I would be happy with.
First, DPS. For Warriors in particular, this has been the core of our class for when we're not tanking and it makes the most sense, since DPS increases for Protection in raids also translates to DPS increases for Protection outside of raids.
Second, debuffs. While applying a slowing debuff or an attack power debuff is by no means necessary, it does add value while we're in the raid. If there were specific debuffs available to tanks that was best used by players not tanking, this would make sense.
Third, damage soaking. While there are abilities that reduce the target's chance to Hit and their Attack Power, there aren't many that actually transfer the damage to another player. While Intervene is nice for Warriors, something a little more stable for all of the tanking classes that would allow, say, a maximum of ~10% damage transfer or damage removal from the primary tank to the other tanks would help. For instance, if the goal was that raids would need 4 tanks for raid content, then a buff or aura that stacked 3 times for 3% damage each would be valuable to a raid. It would also fit squarely with a design that all tanks would appreciate. However, this kind of change would need to be tertiary to the other roles as it would not in itself make raiding enjoyable.
Question 3 -- Memorable/Enjoyable
I tend to enjoy encounters which are designed for multiple active tanks, particularly when they involve coordination among the tanks. This also produces virtually the only kind of environment where a tank can really pull of amazing feats to save the raid -- picking up more mobs than you're supposed to tank or grabbing an unexpectedly loose mob is what makes things exciting. Having all tanks adjust on the fly because one has died and being able to recover from it is an amazing feeling. I'll go ahead and list the ones I thought were handled best in relation to this (though I liked plenty of single-tank encounters as well!):
Vaelastrasz/Huhuran/Kel'thuzad/Bloodboil -- Tank switching occurred because of incoming damage, and occurred as a result of tanks working closely with each other. Broodlord and Void Reaver fit here as well, though they require significantly less coordination.
Firemaw/Ebonroc -- Tank switching occurred in a very specific manner related to the encounter mechanics (knockback/healing debuff). This made the use of Taunt important.
Nefarian/Gluth -- Two-tanking Nefarian w/o Fear Ward, was something that Horde tanks took pride in. Gluth took this a step further by adding a debuff you wanted to have wear off, forcing Alliance to ease off Fear Ward as well.
Molten Core/Razorgore/Noth/Karathress/Al'ar/Vashj/Kael/Azgalor/Thaddius/Illidan -- The idea of having multiple decently-difficult adds in an encounter seemed to taper off after Molten Core, but they really made the encounters more fun.
Patchwerk -- Four tanks perilously close to death spamming Shield Block for dear life, developing potentially debilitating carpal tunnel on wipe nights? Count me in. This differs from secondary attacks on Supremus/Mother/Halazzi in that the tanks were planning health bars and fighting their keyboards like mad to make it work.
Four Horsemen -- By far the most enjoyable and satisfying tanking encounter that I have seen in an MMO.
Ciderhelm posted this on Aug 15, 2008 - 12:19 AM
There's been discussion on the Beta forums that tanking classes are going to be made more fun. It sounds like that process is ongoing and the ideas aren't set in stone, so let's help. I'll keep this news at the top over the weekend and perhaps into early next week.
Concept
State one or more thoughts on what you've enjoyed about tanking as well as ideas to make tanking more fun for your class. Be creative.
Rules
The assumption is that Blizzard is trying to attract new players to tanking who might otherwise not be interested. Responses should be conducive to bringing new players into the tanking scene for each class.
Responses should be class specific to the character you've invested in the most. This is flexible, but avoid the "I want X because another class has X."
No rebuttals. You can bounce off other people's ideas, but this is not a debate thread.
I'll go ahead and start with thoughts I've had and expressed in the past. Each of mine is more focused on Protection Warriors.
Health Regeneration (Leveling/Grinding/Dailies)
Health regeneration opens up several options, tactics, and "I can't believe I lived through that" experiences that aren't available when health is just being chipped away; it also reduces downtime the 10+ second downtimes that are common and dreadfully boring when leveling/grinding on mobs that use elemental damage.
Lifegiving Gem was a class defining trinket. Leveling again as Protection, Spyglass of the Hidden Fleet is constantly on cooldown for me. These have only been available to raiding Warriors.
Ranged Attacks
Decapitator and Rocket Launcher are fun. Decapitator was responsible for many of the original Heroic Shattered Halls timed runs, due to the precision and range. These have been only available to raiding or engineering Warriors.
I find myself using a gun nearly every time I'm snared/rooted or otherwise can't catch up to the mob. I also do this when I can't or shouldn't engage a mob due to other responsibilities or strategy.
Ciderhelm posted this on Aug 14, 2008 - 2:00 AM
One of our members made a suggestion about creating a TankSpot-branded baseball cap on the gear shop. Regardless of whether you choose the branded or unbranded baseball cap, you'll quickly be able to recognize other TS'ers at BlizzCon. I'll leave a final tally on TankSpot when Blizzcon begins -- this way you can see if you can find them all while you're there!
Ciderhelm posted this on Aug 13, 2008 - 1:56 PM
Ghostcrawler, one of the Blizzard voices on the Wrath of the Lich King Beta forums, has given details on the new philosophy for tanks. I have some concerns which I'll address after the quotes.
The information contained in these comments is good. Ghostcrawler is in the unenviable position of giving feedback to the testers and, by extension, to the general WoW community. There is plenty to look forward to and the approach they're taking seems generally positive.
Source: Ghostcrawler Threads have popped up in several class forums that seem to be converging on a few of the same issues. So rather than cross-posting a lot, I thought I would start a new thread.
Tanking design:
1) Our goal in Lich King is for all 4 tanking classes to be viable.
2) We would like for tanking to be a little more fun. I'm going to leave this vague on purpose, but it is definitely a concern.
3) In 5-player instances, most warriors, druids, paladins and death knights should be effective tanks. The healing specs may have a harder time than the dps specs. Arms wariors, Fury warriors, Ret paladins, Ferals and most DKs should do fine.
4) In 5-player heroics, the expectation is that the tank has a heavy investment in tanking talents and appropriate gear. Arms warriors might have trouble tanking a heroic unless they overgear the instance.
5) For raids, we want all 4 tank classes to be viable. If your group has e.g. a Prot paladin and Feral druid as main tanks with appropriate gear and reasonable skill, you should be good to go.
6) This is a shift in philosophy for us. Previously, we sometimes tried to steer Ferals as being better off tanks than main tanks. We also expected specific classes to appear in the raid. Our new assumption is that you might have any of the 4 tanking classes as a tank. We are trying to achieve as much parity as we can among the 4 tanks without making them too similar. If nearly all guilds want the same class as their MT, we've failed.
7) This is a big one: the game isn't finished. We aren't spending too much effort yet to make sure mitigation, threat and tools are similar across the 4 classes at level 80 in blue or purple gear. Likewise, your talent trees and core abilities aren't finished. Tanking (and PvP) need to have a lot of other pieces of the game in place before we can really get the numbers right. It's fine (useful even) to point out when you feel a particular ability, talent, class or build is too good or not good enough. But please don't infer the work in progress as a reflection of our intent. If we end up changing our minds or if things don't work out, it will be posted here.
8) There are a lot of changes in Lich King that change tanking and raiding in general. I won't list them all out here, but keep in mind things like itemization changes, widespread raid buffs, consumables, UI changes, etc. Just keep them in mind. We're not in Tempest Keep anymore.
Concerns or feedback? This is a great place for it.
Source: Ghostcrawler We would still like to have tanking "flavors" as you put it, but I want to be a little careful when I say that because some people have taken that to mean that their class won't be good enough to tank the content they want.
If druids had gigantic health pools but lower mitigation and avoidance than a warrior, that would be tanking flavor. It would mean you heal the bears a little different -- they might drain more mana, but the damage would be more predictable. In really long fights, the warrior might have an advantage. In a fight where a boss hit quickly for less damage per hit, the warrior might have an advantage. In fights with periods of really big damage, the druid might have an advantage. In magic fights where armor was less of a factor, the druid might have an advantage. This is just an example. Our overriding concern is making sure the tanks have the tools, threat and mitigation they need to tank. A secondary concern is making sure they don't feel too similar.
I've had the ability to jump in and get to work on my Warrior on Beta, though I haven't had a chance to jump in any of the instances and test the tanking mechanics. I'll do this soon, and until then, will rely on the intuition of others on these forums and the official forums.
That said, my own concerns -- feel free to disagree -- with the quotes above stem from just a few lines:
Source: Ghostcrawler
7) This is a big one: the game isn't finished. We aren't spending too much effort yet to make sure mitigation, threat and tools are similar across the 4 classes at level 80 in blue or purple gear. Likewise, your talent trees and core abilities aren't finished.
My issue with this is that it's 7th on a long list of philosophy changes. I'm not sure I'd call them changes, since they've put in so much effort from the beginning of Burning Crusade to make all tanks useful on as many encounters as possible. Granted, we know they've made a good number of balance mistakes, but it's clear that their intention was to get 3 viable classes, and in the end it's worked out that way.
What Blizzard is doing is normalizing -- or, as the lactophiles on this forum call it, homogenizing -- the tank classes. They are dulling down many of the bigger distinctions between classes to create a broad set of tools for all four classes. In my opinion, this is good.
But the problem comes in what I quoted. 7th in their list, and stated as something they haven't really worked on, is the actual work of balancing it. The actual work of balancing it is precisely where Blizzard has had problems over the last two years. Getting abilities balanced, getting gear balanced, getting talent trees to be sensible, and making this fun for classes should not be secondary. That is by far Blizzard's biggest weakness in regards to tanking, and it has taken months (and, in some cases, years) to fix imbalance issues between tank classes. That said, it can clearly be done and they have the team to do it; if they pull it off, it should be great.
My hope is that people don't stop raising concerns until we get a real sense of balance between the classes.
Source: ghostcrawler If nearly all guilds want the same class as their MT, we've failed.
Brace for it, Warriors.
Let's be clear on a few things:
The majority of main tanks in this game are Warriors;
This is partly due to guilds that have been using them since they were the only viable tanks;
This is partly due to the culture generated by Warriors to encourage Warrior tanks;
This is partly due to the culture generated by healing Paladins and Druids to discourage Paladin and Druid tanks;
This is partly due to the itemization hurdle and raid encounter mechanics hurdle that Protection Paladins faced at TBC launch.
Let's also be clear that tanks are, by and large, all useful at the moment. Normalizing them in WotLK is a good thing, but it's also no stretch to say that Sunwell guilds are benefited by all three classes.
What Ghostcrawler's comments mean to me is that Blizzard wants to change the culture using in-game mechanics. In other words, they want guilds that have had Warrior MTs for years to reconsider. If they've thought this out in an honest way, this means Warriors are going to take a sub-par set of mechanics as a matter of policy.
Promoting equal opportunity among the classes is good -- it's one of the things we do at TankSpot. But a decision to change a cultural perspective on a corporate level is not something I look forward to.
Source: ghostcrawler A secondary concern is making sure they don't feel too similar.
This is the other line that bothers me. The way it's fit into the paragraph is off-putting, since it appears to be dangling there as something separate of the rest of the post.
If this is taken to mean that you want a different playstyle, I'm not sure what the purpose is in ensuring that. If tanks are meant to be normalized and tanks are meant to be fun, the way they feel shouldn't be a priority.
That's not to say that classes shouldn't be distinct or have their own flavor. However, I'm specifically keeping in mind my Protection Warrior and my (still-leveling) Feral Druid when I bring this up. The fact that they play similarly and use similar cooldowns has never bothered me. For the many tanks who don't roll a tank alt, I can't imagine they'd be bothered if another class plays like them.
What it comes down to is balance. If, in fact, the goal is to make sure that Feral Druids play in a much more distinct way from Protection Warriors than they currently do, or to make sure that all tanks play differently from each other, that is not a bad goal in itself. However, disparate abilities do make it harder to balance the game. As we saw with Druid strengths at TBC launch, and now with Druid weaknesses at TBC endgame (flame retardant: I'm not referring to Druids being poor tanks, but rather to the inability to scale gear past the armor cap, etc.), balancing between similar classes hasn't even gone that well.
Pardon the length of this. My concern is that the focus is more on the philosophy rather than the implementation.
Ciderhelm posted this on Aug 10, 2008 - 11:38 PM
I've made a series of small changes to the website over the weekend and one big one: the removal of advertising.
Regarding the advertising: I took a multi-pronged approach to getting our site finances stable, bringing in a donor system, a gear shop, and advertising at about the same time. What I did not expect was the volume of support we would get from donors and the number of t-shirt sales we would make. Advertising, while it is technically more stable than donations, simply doesn't appear to be necessary.
The server itself is getting an overhaul we've been waiting on for months. This will be in the form of a managed Core2Quad dedicated server with 1500gb of bandwidth and a 100Mbps port, costing us a down payment of $300 and approximately $280 each month afterwards. This is on top of several other licenses we pay monthly and annually (constituting a much smaller sum). This will come soon, and will allow heavy expansion of our services, even at peak hours, and will accomodate the increased visitorship we expect with Wrath of the Lich King.
With that said, I'll reiterate our need for continued donations. This site only exists as long as visitors like you are making donations to the site. As a registered member, you can do this directly through the Paid Subscriptions menu in your control panel or by clicking Donate at any time.
None of this is to suggest we'll never use advertising again. If we get an incredible offer for a product that's valuable to our visitors, or if we're ever within two months of being unable to pay our server costs, I'll place advertising back. Separate of this, we may promote other products such as our shirt shop. And, of course, I'm still planning on promoting Evensfell shamelessly once we're ready to have players jump in and test (this is our browser game project).
Other Changes
I've been fixing up a lot of loose ends that have been hurting over the several template upgrades we've done in the last year. The notifications menu is going back up. The log-in screens will -- once I figure out the issue -- get a background to them so they don't look so strange.
I've also been playing around with a greyer template which is easier on the eyes. Nevermind the link colors, check out our Off Topic forums in the next few days to see the template in progress (it will be active any time I'm working on it). This is for another project, but the initial test showed enough promise that I am considering implementing it on the site with a WotLK background.
Finally, the sessions are much shorter than they have been in the past. More specifically, you'll be automatically logged out of our website sooner than you have been in the past. I'll up the session length again by the end of the week.
Hypatia posted this on Aug 09, 2008 - 4:03 PMThis post by Hypatia was part of the Tank Design Philosophy thread that has been floating around General Discussion. It was copied to the news forum because it was an excellent read. Enjoy!
I think the main thing that Blizzard is doing here is re-defining the baseline abilities of a tank. That adds homogeneity, it's true, but that's kind of the point. We all (Blizzard included) have a much much better understanding of what a tank needs to bring to the table now than we did in the past. We've come a long long way from the MC-style tank-and-spanks to today, and that holds for everyone tanking--from fives mans up to endgame raiding in the Sunwell.
In vanilla WoW, the big lesson learned was that all tanking classes need to have similar basic levels of HP, damage mitigation, and threat generation. Almost all tanks were warriors, because warriors (whether they were protection or not) were almost always superior to bear-form druids and protection paladins. As a result, those classes/specs were changed in BC to bring things more into line.
Over the course of BC, though, now that those most-definitely-core features were made common, it hilighted other differences--and changes in encounter design (and raid size, for raiding) also factored in here. The first really obvious issue was the difference in difficulty of holding threat on large numbers of targets. Paladins had a serious advantage in terms of their abilities here, because consecrate was so much better than the tools warriors and druids had available. Druids were also a bit better off than warriors, because their threat-from-damage was higher, whereas warriors depended more on threat-from-special-bonuses, making a druid's swipe work out better than a warrior's thunderclap and cleave.
This also had an impact on raid design--in vanilla WoW, large endgame raids generally had a lot of warriors, which meant there were a lot of off-tanks available. Smaller raids in BC increased the importance of CC abilities over off-tanking, decreased the number of powerful adds in some sorts of trash packs, and led to the introduction of "swarm packs", where there are sometimes a whole bunch of little guys who need to be tanked. All of these changes had... interesting interactions with AoE tanking abilities.
Blizzard did work to apply some band-aids to this issue, by making warrior Thunderclap and Improved Thunderclap work better. They also made some changes to druid abilities, trying to re-tune how some of the threat scaling from damage worked. These tweaks have worked out well to decrease the difference in power, but it's still there.
The other big thing that became obvious over the course of BC was just how big a deal it is to have the oh-shit buttons and debuffs that a warrior brings to the table. Blizzard was smart and did not include any new boss encounters where Shield Wall is almost mandatory in BC (contrast with Maexxna), but they did include some where Last Stand and Shield Wall give serious serious benefits (25-man Kael, for example.) While every tank class can successfully main tank (nearly) every fight in BC, this was another set of abilities that had a clear impact on the desirability of certain tanks for certain fights.
Related to that: People have mentioned that feral druids can either do DPS or tank as the occasion demands. This is true, but of course, it also means that druids are often sidelined to DPS when other tanks are available. My own guild has only a few fights where we really prefer our druid to MT--places where druids really shine. In other fights, the druid will often be one MT during multi-tank fights, but on single tank fights we almost always use somebody else. Druids also showed, through their limited access to potions, another class of "having oh shit buttons is nice."
The final thing I'll note is that over the course of BC, we've all learned how these abilities scale (or begin to break down) near the top end. Everything is still within the range of workable limits, but there are places where it's obvious that further scaling would be tricky. Threat scaling has become an issue for most tanks. Druids have had to deal with exceeding the armor cap. Blizzard has had to deal with tanks reaching supernatural levels of avoidance. So, those are things that can be addressed as well to keep things running smoothly.
Anyway, that's where we stand, I think.
In LK, it looks like Blizzard has decided to address these issues in a more significant way. A new expansion makes it easier to make major changes to class abilities, rather than simply trying to make old abilities work better. It also provides a good place for major mechanics changes. The most significant major mechanics change for tanks is in crushing blows--and that change hilights one of the biggest differences between tanks pre-LK: druids work differently. Without crushing blows but with BC style itemization for druids, bears would be very desirable for many fights. This leads me to believe that the lack of gear with bonus armor in LK isn't an oversight on Blizzard's part: They're going to make bears end up with a less large armor lead on the other tanks. Why do I think that? Well, it decreases the additional power of a bear's armor mitigation, and it also reduces the speed with which bears will approach the armor cap. A win all around.
But that, of course, means that bears have lost their "niche"--because they really are frequently relegated to that niche now. And that hilights the most glaring weakness I noted above: oh-shit buttons.
This, of course, leads to making it more important to make oh-shit buttons a baseline tanking feature. Without that change to crushing blows (and the changes to bear itemization that I'm projecting), Blizzard could probably get away without making this sort of thing standard-issue. But with those changes, it becomes very important to give them to druids. And if you give them to both warriors and druids, then it also makes sense to give them to paladins as well--because then it's something you can depend on for encounter design everywhere, from five-mans up to end-game raids.
AoE tanking is a similar sort of thing. Warriors' powerful advantage over other classes has been shared around a bit, which means their biggest weakness is also now a clear choice for something to even out. So, make AoE tanking a baseline--it already almost was, so Blizzard is just making the divide between the best and the worst AoE tanks smaller. In my opinion, this will have the most impact on five-man encounter design--in five mans, you get one tank. If there's a large division between the good and the bad for AoE tanking, that means that either the good will trivialize encounters or the bad will be hopelessly bad at them. (Or, the current situation: The good make things really easy, and the bad have to struggle.)
So, that's how I see the issues and changes that we're seeing now for LK. Every tank now has baseline levels of survivability, threat generation, oh-shit abilities, and AoE tanking abilities. There'll be variation between the classes in terms of "good" vs "best", but not "bad" vs "great". And, because it's clearly a design goal, now, it should be easier for Blizzard to say "Clearly, this class's AoE threat isn't good enough and we need to fix it." That's a good thing.
I don't think this is going to make all of the classes indistinguishable, by the way. There are enough serious mechanical differences between the classes that will never be the case. And I don't think that we're going to end up with any one class being clearly superior to the others (or at least not for very long!), because Blizzard is clearly saying with these changes "Any tank will be able to tank any encounter."
On the subject of flexibility--I think I'm going to have to wait and see what Blizzard has in mind for respecs. My current expectation is that we're going to each have two specs we can switch between freely when out of combat, but that inscriptions will not swap (and will be expensive and destroyed when replaced, like top-level enchantments.)
Stop and think about the implications of that for a moment.
My expectation in terms of flexibility is that everybody is going to have one role which they prefer (and in which they shine), and they'll specialize their inscriptions to support that role. If inscriptions are done well, they'll lead to some pretty interesting choices between maximizing your strengths and minimizing your weaknesses. A warrior tank might choose between an inscription that powers up her thunderclap, narrowing the gap for AoE tanking. Or, she might choose one that powers up her oh-shit buttons, increasing the lead in that area. Finally, she might pick something that boosts bloodbath and increases AoE tanking and AoE DPS both by a bit. In my opinion, the right level of power for inscriptions is one where we each feel like we don't have enough of them, but no one of them is a must-have.
On the subject of specs: This is actually really interesting. Right now, feral druids are the most flexible tank spec, because with a gear change they can do very very well at both DPS and tanking. If we each get two specs, however, I think that changes in an interesting way. Warriors are the new feral druids: they can with a simple gear-and-spec switch go from excellent tanking to excellent melee DPS. Paladins can choose to be tank/healer switches or tank/melee dps switches. Druids... are interesting. With the new "ferals have to choose more between cat or bear", druids who want to be tank/melee dps won't actually be changing many spec points at all--so I wouldn't be at all surprised for druids to prefer to be tank/heal or tank/magic DPS, and never tank/melee DPS. Why? Because a bear spec is not an awful cat spec--so it's more effective to go for something really different than something that's relly close.
Anyway, I hope those thoughts have at least shown that we really need to know where Blizzard is going with their respec thing before we can say much about the relative merits of tanking classes in terms of their flexibility.
Ciderhelm posted this on Aug 03, 2008 - 12:27 AM
Thanks to our authors, our donors, and our visitors, TankSpot has become one of the very best resources for information in World of Warcraft. We house a comprehensive library of tank information, as well as information on other relevant specs. We've had a direct impact on the testing process for World of Warcraft itself, bringing about a series of fixes to Devastate that would likely have been overlooked. TankSpot and the communities we host reach tens of thousands of visitors daily.
We've accomplished our fundamental goal: to create a place where brand new players and bleeding-edge raiders both benefit. We have a culture of ideas. We have a culture of free thought that just happens to be free of charge.
As we go into this next year, I'd ask that you, the visitor, consider what you've learned here and take a moment to make a contribution. Improve our community by registering and bringing up a discussion or engaging in a debate. Help others by authoring a guide. If possible, make a monetary donation, and join the others who've made this free resource available to the greater community.
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Bloodwraith posted this on Aug 02, 2008 - 9:39 AMThis is one of our final articles regarding upcoming Wrath of the Lich King changes. Bloodwraith covers how PVP is forming with the new expansion, with emphasis on new Arenas and specific Warrior changes. MMO-Champion is the source for many of the included images.
WotLK PvP
With WotLK PvP there are a lot of interesting new features for PvP.
Before I go into new warrior talents and changes I'd like to talk about some of those new features.
Siege Weapons
Siege weapons will be player-controlled vehicles for use in PvP combat. Each are used for a specific task. Some can carry passengers, including a driver and sometimes gunners who control individual turrets on the vehicle. These are planned for the use in Sands of Ulderan and Lake Wintergrasp. Destructible buildings will play a key part in combat.
Sands of Ulderan
New battleground. One faction will be on ships coming in from the sea to attack a keep that is defended by the opposite faction. Siege weapons will be used throughout the battleground by both sides. Each team progresses via controlling capture points on each tier. Some capture points allow access to different types of siege weaponry.
Seems like a lot more fun than what we have now.
Lake Wintergrasp
WoW's first open-world (non-instanced) zone solely devoted to PvP. According to a fixed schedule, one Faction will always be defending the main Keep from the opposing Faction. The zone's other buildings are neutral and up for grabs to either Faction, giving varying bonuses when captured. Siege weaponry will play a large part in this zone, as all of its buildings and landmarks are destructible. A variety of new daily quests will involve action in and around Wintergrasp, including new styles of aerial combat and mounted NPC escort quests that make use of the new multi-passenger mounts.
Arena
Expansion PvP gear will be different in appearance from PvE gear.
Finally, this was long overdue.
2 New Arenas
New Features:
"Movable" objects. Structures and obstacles that provide changing line of sight (LOS) across the battlefield every few seconds. (For example: pillars might go up and down randomly, on a timer, etc.) These dynamic elements will make each arena feel different.
Dalaran Sewers
The arena is fairly small and mounts won't be allowed here.
The arena will make use of new variable environmental elements, mainly water:
Each team will start in a pipe on one side of the map, as the match begins a column of water will "push" the teams out of their pipes to prevent camping.
Water levels will rise and fall around the edges of the arena throughout the match.
There is a pipe coming from the ceiling. Every once in a while a column of water will start dropping from this pipe, causing variable LOS issues.
Orgrimmar Arena
The arena will make use of new variable environmental elements, including:
Elevating pillars that move on set timers, creating variable LOS issues around which groups can plan new strategies. There will be wheels and gears on the side of the arena that will spin to alert groups that the pillars are about to move.
Triggered objects that damage players. Example: as the pillars go down, a wall of spikes may come up. You can move across them, but you'll take some damage.
The arena will make use of a new style of elevating starting area.
Starting areas are extremely close together. Players start on elevators that rise out of the ground ten yards apart from each other.
The elevators will be surrounded by spikes that will drop a couple of seconds after the elevator reaches the top, so you'll have only a couple of seconds to plan.
The arena is a larger map. Mounts will be allowed inside.
Developers have mentioned the possibility of cheering NPC spectators.
Changes
Deathwish and Sweeping Strikes got switched back, but most warriors will still be going that deep in both trees so it doesn't really make a difference.
If you havn't noticed, deathwish lost it's "Immune to Fear" ability. Kazeyonoma basically summed up the effects of this.
Currently in the game, there is only 1 cc that doesn't break on damage, lasts more than 5 seconds, and allows damage to go through, and that's fear. Currently anyone who isn't a warrior knows the power of fears. A couple of fears back to back and trinkets being down is death to any healer. In PvP it is easily the most powerful cc due to the above mentioned things. All other forms of cc have a major drawback to them, mainly that damage breaks them, but nothing stops fear from taking a player from 80% to 25% in 1 untrinketed fear. Warriors have been able to deal with this better than others due to deathwish, but now that it doesn't break fear, anytime we're caught out of zerker stance, or 20 seconds out of every 30 second rotation, we'll be fearable. I see this as a huge nerf to warriors. We're one of the few classes who are able to stick to warlocks in pvp due to our numerous fear breaks. This will put them back at the level they were in pre-bc and early tbc.
Hamstring now only has one rank and no longer causes damage. A lot of warriors are complaining about this, now they don't have a low rage/instant attack to drop totems. They did the same to Pummel, although I don't think many warriors would use pummel on a totem. Kazeyonoma also pointed out that without damage, these abilities can no longer proc your mace/sword spec proc. It also means you can't proc flurry or your executioner. I think we've seen the death of "spamsting".
Iron Will (Arms) now has only 3 ranks, reducing the duration of Stun and Charm effects by 10/20/30%. I think this is a good change, this means instead of resisting the stun, you will eat it (second wind will proc) but it will be shorter. Kazeyonoma pointed out the only problem with this change to me: since it's points are reduced, the 2 extra points are going to be forced to be put in a less than desireable talent to reach the next tier in your talents. But 2 free talents are still nice, we won't be complaining.
Mace Specialization (Arms) can no longer trigger more than once per 6 seconds. Sword Specialization (Arms) can no longer trigger more than once per 6 seconds. No more gibbing someone with 2-3 stuns in a row. As usual any change to weapon spec gets everyone saying "ANOTHER NERF OMG" but really, rarely ever will a weapon spec proc back to back.
Overpower now only has one rank and no longer causes any bonus damage (i.e. weapon damage only). Overpower right now is weapon damage+35 so this isn't really much of a damage change.
Poleaxe Specialization (Arms) now also increases critical strike damage done by Axes and Polearms by 1/2/3/4/5%. A very interesting change, this might make it a weapon spec that can actually be considered at 80.
Spell Reflection- Now costs 15 rage. Very nice. When you're getting attacked 5 rage won't be hard to come by, so skipping out on tactical mastery, and still being able to almost instant spell reflect will help a lot.
Improved Rend has been changed to Bloodletting. 25/50/75% according to how many points you invest in it. Rend is basically never used now, we'll have to see if this becomes very popular.
Pummel and Shield Bash have been removed from the GCD. This is a very nice change, I don't think any warriors will be complaining about this.
New Abilities
Bloodbath- To me this just sounds like an AoE Rend, I havn't seen any testing though so until then I can't exactly say it's worthless.
Shield Break- This seems like it will be nice to use against pally's / Shamans in arena, between this and sunder armor you would have a ton of armor pen.
Talents
Sudden Death- 10/20/30% according to how many points you invest into it. At first this sounds awesome. After you think about it you'll come to realize, if you are rage starved now, think about when you are allowed to drain what little rage you have on one attack. In my opinion you won't be able to keep MS/Hamstring/Sunders up in arenas if you blow all of you rage away. A lot of warriors are calling for a fix so that this only uses the minimum amount of rage for your executes.
Trauma- 15/30% according to how many points you invest in it. This is linked to blood frenzy. Not really sure about this one, I guess blizzard just wants us to become bleed machines. Could prove useful but I havn't seen any testing on it yet.
Unrelenting Assault- 1/2/3 seconds according to how many points you invest in it. Lolwut Revenge? This probably won't be worth 3 points just for a slightly smaller overpower CD.
Bull Rush- 0.4/0.7/1 seconds according to how many points tou invest in it.. This is a nice talent, although it's deeper than most arms warriors will go due the bladestorm as a 51 point talent. (I will cover this shortly)
Strength of Arms- 1/2/3/4/5% according to how many points you invest in it.. This is so deep in the tree and so worthless than most warrior's probably won't be taking it. Healthwise warriors aren't lacking in most cases. 5% more strength: Let's say you have 800 strength in the exapansion, you would gain only 40 strength(80 AP) from this for 5 points. Paladins are getting Divine strength (15% increased strength) and it's in the first tier of protection.
Bladestorm- As a 51 point talent this is not going to be worth it. Basically it's the new expansion version of what endless rage is now. (Reachable but not really worth it) Some are going as far as saying this should proc second wind because it's like CC-ing yourself.
1. It does not break CC ( IE poly cyclone)
2. You gain No rage during the whirling period.
3. You can't Reapply MS.
4. You can't reapply Hamstring.
5. You can be disarmed while whirling around
6. You give up all essential pvp tools for it. (IE you lose Deathwish, and weapon mastery(which also means you lose weapon Enchant on your 2h because you all want to be disarmed for 10 seconds while whirling around for 4.5?)
MS/BT Build- You can now get both MS and BT in the same build, there is just one catch. They are on the same CD. For PvP, going that deep in fury is not going to be worth it.
Speculative Talent Builds
The most popular builds right now are 35/23/3 (Tactical Mastery) and 33/28/0 (Flurry)
Next expansion brings a lot of variation to spec options.
Must-have talents no matter what variation:
Arms
3/3 Iron Will
2/2 Improved Overpower
1/1 Anger Management
3/3 Deep Wounds
2/2 Impale
1/1 Sweeping Strikes
5/5 Weapon Specialization
2/2 Improved Intercept
2/2 Second Wind
1/1 Mortal Strike
