WoW: The Meatshield Inn

Enix wrote:

Hence my frustration. A point of defense should equal a point of defense. Same with expertise. I'm sure Blizzard has its reasons for assigning two different numbers to one stat, but I don't see 'em.

There are a few reasons for the difference, mainly that getting a point of Defense will gain you 0.04% chance to block, and parry, and dodge, and chance to be missed by attacks. Considering you need several points of Defense Rating for 1 point of Defense, it's like having a handful of change, but only counting the full dollars.

Definitely siding with Cube here. Getting to the defense 'cap' is more important than Hit and Expertise, but I'm sure it was just because you figured "531 + 20 - 8 - 8 = 535, now I can focus on getting other stats where they need to be".

Another suggestion if it hasn't been said yet, once you do hit 535 Defense, run heroics until your eyes bleed, preferrably with an experienced healer (to offset you until you get more used to the instances and get a bit more gear), and get yourself everything you can buy with Emblems of Triumph or lower. You probably will need somewhere around 400 to really deck yourself out.

You can also ask a guildie if they wouldn't mind using some of their 'useless' EoTs to help you get a pair of the BoE tanking bracers. They are ilvl 213, and maybe slip them a couple hundred gold for their troubles. That'll help until you get the mats for the ilvl 245 Saronite Swordbreakers Cube mentioned.

Zablocki19 wrote:

You can also ask a guildie if they wouldn't mind using some of their 'useless' EoTs to help you get a pair of the BoE tanking bracers. They are ilvl 213, and maybe slip them a couple hundred gold for their troubles. That'll help until you get the mats for the ilvl 245 Saronite Swordbreakers Cube mentioned. ;)

If you're trying to get someone to spend that many emblems, I'd get someone to buy you 4 Crusader Orbs. It's 60 emblems for 4 orbs, which is the same as the 213 BoE bracers, and you'll probably end up spending the same in Frozen Orbs(you need 24) to get the Crusader orbs.

cube wrote:

If you're trying to get someone to spend that many emblems, I'd get someone to buy you 4 Crusader Orbs. It's 60 emblems for 4 orbs, which is the same as the 213 BoE bracers, and you'll probably end up spending the same in Frozen Orbs(you need 24) to get the Crusader orbs.

True, but I'd imagine there's a few people out there that still have the lower grade emblems left over and just need a reason to get rid of them.

Gems, man. Gems.

Enix wrote:
cube wrote:

You gained a grand total of 4 defense rating. That's equivalent to about .8 defense.

Hence my frustration. A point of defense should equal a point of defense. Same with expertise. I'm sure Blizzard has its reasons for assigning two different numbers to one stat, but I don't see 'em.

Thanks for the gear suggestions, Cube -- I haven't done any research on anything above i200 gear, and both look like excellent choices for me.

Defense Rating != Defense. And Gems, Enchants, and even your gear are all carrying Defense Rating. The reason Blizzard did this is for scaling, otherwise you'd have older gear(HoJ from Vanilla WoW was a very, very large part of this) being worth it even at level 70 or 80. Blizzard set up ratings so folks wouldn't feel they had to run really old content to get BiS gear.

A gear question, especially aimed at Paladin tanks:

Is there something (especially an off-hand/trinket/libram) that you bought with Frost badges that you can't live without?

I'm asking because my Frost Badges are stacking up (sloooowly), and I'm not all that concerned about carrying over a bunch of tokens and whatnot into Cata.

Also, I'm a slow leveler with a bad case of Alt-itis, which means anything I get now (or soon) with Frost Badges might still be in use well into 2011. I'm also guessing that items outside of basic armor (outside of helm, chest piece, leggings, etc.) will continue to be harder to find in Cata.

Right now I'm rocking the Libram of Defiance (+dodge proc'd by HoR) in my relic slot and am thrilled with it.

Thoughts?

Can't remember the exact name of the Libram, and can't search wowhead.com for it at work (/cry) but the EoF Pally tanking Libram is the best you really can get. It gives you dodge rating every time you use HoR, stacking up to 3 times, and ends up giving a grand total of around 220 Dodge rating. On boss fights, it'll be up constantly, and much better than the "chance on hit" EoT Libram which averages out to 85% uptime. Overall, more dodge rating, and 100% uptime not based on proc. You can buy it from the Emblem of Frost vendor in the Allaince area of Dalaran.

Keep in mind those that Emblems aren't getting carried over as much as converted. MMO-Champion has the calculator that tells you exactly how many Justice Points you'll end up getting from Emblems. Justice Points will be the new way to buy gear in Cata. So you can either use it to get something nice right now, or let the Emblems build up so you have some to start with later (4000 JPs is the cap though, and anything over that will be converted to gold!).

The frost badge belt is pretty awesome, too.

Zablocki19 wrote:

Can't remember the exact name of the Libram, and can't search wowhead.com for it at work (/cry) but the EoF Pally tanking Libram is the best you really can get. It gives you dodge rating every time you use HoR, stacking up to 3 times, and ends up giving a grand total of around 220 Dodge rating. On boss fights, it'll be up constantly, and much better than the "chance on hit" EoT Libram which averages out to 85% uptime. Overall, more dodge rating, and 100% uptime not based on proc. You can buy it from the Emblem of Frost vendor in the Allaince area of Dalaran.

Keep in mind those that Emblems aren't getting carried over as much as converted. MMO-Champion has the calculator that tells you exactly how many Justice Points you'll end up getting from Emblems. Justice Points will be the new way to buy gear in Cata. So you can either use it to get something nice right now, or let the Emblems build up so you have some to start with later (4000 JPs is the cap though, and anything over that will be converted to gold!).

How much is that after DR though? 200 rating is 5% before it, so I dunno if an extra % or 2 is all that great. That said, it'll be the best by far after 4.0.1 and before Cata drops, so if you're tanking a bunch inbetween it'll be worth getting for that period of time. Personally, I haven't used a single frost badge for gear on my tankadin(he's in all triumph or lower gear).

As for being in use into 2011, it really doesn't matter how slow you level; no frost badge gear will last more than 1 or 2 zones of Cataclysm. I've said it before and it really can't be said enough: The gear reset in Cataclysm is unlike any we've seen before. Faster you get used to that idea, the better off you'll be.

On the JP conversion, the initial conversion will take you over the cap in 4.0.1. However, when Cataclysm drops, any excess will convert to gold. Check here for that.

All told, if your alt-itis is as severe as you say it is, I'd downconvert everything to heroism badges and buy all the heirloom gear.

AnimeJ wrote:

As for being in use into 2011, it really doesn't matter how slow you level; no frost badge gear will last more than 1 or 2 zones of Cataclysm. I've said it before and it really can't be said enough: The gear reset in Cataclysm is unlike any we've seen before. Faster you get used to that idea, the better off you'll be.

That's assuming that they have a the full spread of gear types, which they haven't always in the past. I don't think I found any tanking trinkets between that one from Hellfire Peninsula and Loken, and I don't remember many librams either.

They may have fixed that in cata, of course.

There might be a piece or two here and there, but even planning around that isn't worth the effort IMO. Stuff in that class doesn't contribute a very large % overall to whatever role you're filling and can be left sit for a while; the stuff that matters(major armor/weapons/offhands) will be replaced exceptionally rapidly unless you're wearing ICC25 gear or better.

Also, with the relic slot becoming a stat-stick, those will be far easier for Blizzard to churn out and toss out there instead of trying to come up with something neat and original and different. I'd expect to see a lot more of those available now, similar to wands and other ranged weapons.

AnimeJ wrote:

There might be a piece or two here and there, but even planning around that isn't worth the effort IMO. Stuff in that class doesn't contribute a very large % overall to whatever role you're filling and can be left sit for a while; the stuff that matters(major armor/weapons/offhands) will be replaced exceptionally rapidly unless you're wearing ICC25 gear or better.

Fair point.

Also, with the relic slot becoming a stat-stick, those will be far easier for Blizzard to churn out and toss out there instead of trying to come up with something neat and original and different. I'd expect to see a lot more of those available now, similar to wands and other ranged weapons.

Hadn't heard about that - would you be able to either throw me a link or elaborate?

Here's the ilvl 264 relics

Probably one of the better changes coming with Cataclysm; people have been clamoring for this since they went in the game.

Moar Edit:

IMAGE(http://i42.photobucket.com/albums/e301/AnimeJ2/WoWScrnShot_092410_051837.jpg)

That's a screencap taken from the 4.0.1 of my DK(who is a few levels past that on live now). I swear, I'm horrible about alt abandonment; I rolled that character when I came back for Wrath over a year ago.

I have a querry, more general. What is the fun factor of the tank in raids or in PVP? I have started a warrior on 3 occasions, never made it past level 20. In arenas and in dungeons I am amazed as Warriors soak up hits and unleasy flurries of white damage almost as fast as rogues.

I have tried the Death Knight for about 20 minutes, got a Druid to level 8. But leveling just feels so methodical, and I find that I cannot master the timing of popping my talents. My Troll and Dwarf Warriors seemed to need potions and food after every encounter, the Death knight seems constantly on the brink of death.

Am I missing some secret? Is my charge in and hit every spell habit from my spell casters interfering? I want to get a chance to be a heavily armored badass with a big sword or two, but it never pans out.

Thanks AnimeJ! Interesting change.

KingGorilla wrote:

I have a querry, more general. What is the fun factor of the tank in raids or in PVP? I have started a warrior on 3 occasions, never made it past level 20. In arenas and in dungeons I am amazed as Warriors soak up hits and unleasy flurries of white damage almost as fast as rogues.

I have tried the Death Knight for about 20 minutes, got a Druid to level 8. But leveling just feels so methodical, and I find that I cannot master the timing of popping my talents. My Troll and Dwarf Warriors seemed to need potions and food after every encounter, the Death knight seems constantly on the brink of death.

Am I missing some secret? Is my charge in and hit every spell habit from my spell casters interfering? I want to get a chance to be a heavily armored badass with a big sword or two, but it never pans out.

From memory, warriors can be a bit slow at the bottom levels. I gave up on mine a couple of times, it wasn't until I started leveling as protection that it got better. Individual mobs go down slower, but you can take more at a time and wind up with more health at the end. Alternatively, once you get to 15 just level using the LFD tool which makes health loss a non-issue.

Pallies are also easier to level than warriors or druids (IMO), but those first 20 levels will still be a bit dull.

Warriors are a lot more fun now, I've got one that I've leveled to 18 or so. However, if you're wanting dual wield and all that cool stuff, it does take a while to get going.

Sonicator wrote:

Pallies are also easier to level than warriors or druids (IMO), but those first 20 levels will still be a bit dull.

There was a rather epic forum thread about ret paladin leveling where the OP basically said that paladin's were Blizzard's way of supporting the porn industry.

I have a level 34 ret, and I agree. I judge, turn on autoattack, the alt tab until the mob is dead.

@KingGorilla: I play my paladin as a tank in PvP and love it. I'm not going to do a ton of damage, but another melee class (DKs, warriors, ret paladins, rogues, cat druids, melee shaman and hunters if I can catch them) don't have much of a chance. I just wear 'em down and loot their corpses.

And when Ally has 10+ tenacity during the WG battles, I love looking at my character and weep for joy when I see me at 80K+ HP.

I'm still pretty useless against ranged caster classes. Oh what I wouldn't give for a spell reflect.

As for warriors, they do take some time to get going. You don't get Whirlwind until lvl 36 and Bloodthirst until Lvl 40. Titans Grip (the 51-point Fury talent) makes it all worthwhile, and things really take off until later on.

I leveled two warriors as Arms early on because it seemed to work better for me as a leveling spec. I switched one to full-time Fury at 60 or so and never looked back. My second stalled at 65, but I've reworked him as a tank. There's no real rotation (it's best available), but it looks good. I've got one more toon to level, then I'm going to ride him hard through Outland dungeons for a while.

One thing to keep in mind when you level a warrior: They're pretty fragile, especially against magic classes. Fury takes a ton of damage because of Zerker stance, but at least it has a spell interrupt that comes in really handy. Arms has no spell interrupt and is really pretty poor at handling multiple mobs. Arms does do some big crits, though. *Love* that sound.

Arms is finally getting a spell interrupt in 4.0, with Pummel getting added to Battle Stance. In theory, you could stance dance now, but that's fairly difficult to pull off, unless it's a longer cast.

As a prot warrior, you can actually do fairly well against magic classes. Not as nice as you used to be able to, when Warbringer had Charge and Intercept breaking roots, but with two different ways to get to the caster fast plus two stuns plus spell reflect plus two silences (Heroic Throw and Shield Bash when talented), you have a ton of tools for dealing with casters. If you have friends nearby, Intervene will still get you out of roots as well.

For leveling, two of my kids are leveling a warrior while I play with them. I steered them both towards Arms, mainly because I know the spec much better than Fury, but they seem to be doing pretty well with it. It may help that they're playing with a Druid and a Pally (so we pretty much never have downtime), but my older son especially is playing the spec pretty well right now, can usually keep right with my pally in terms of dps.

cube wrote:
Sonicator wrote:

Pallies are also easier to level than warriors or druids (IMO), but those first 20 levels will still be a bit dull.

There was a rather epic forum thread about ret paladin leveling where the OP basically said that paladin's were Blizzard's way of supporting the porn industry.

I have a level 34 ret, and I agree. I judge, turn on autoattack, the alt tab until the mob is dead.

From memory, once you get Seal of Cleave Command you can start pulling a couple at a time to make things more interesting. I've been mucking around with leveling a prot pally (currently level 31) and I've been entertaining myself by pushing the limits of how many mobs I can pull at once with proper CD management.

The first 20 levels I played while watching old simpsons episodes, though.

Edit: robkid, choose your tag!

Looks like Reforging to hit the block soft-cap is relatively easily done at 80. See here.

Relatedly: Everything you need to know about Prot and 4.0.1 at 80. It's from the same source ELewis linked to above. It appears at first blush to be a pretty thorough guide.

I'm glad someone's paying close attention, because I haven't.

When some of you more experienced protadins have a chance to try out your new specs and rotations, please share.

Enix wrote:

Relatedly: Everything you need to know about Prot and 4.0.1 at 80. It's from the same source ELewis linked to above. It appears at first blush to be a pretty thorough guide.

I'm glad someone's paying close attention, because I haven't.

When some of you more experienced protadins have a chance to try out your new specs and rotations, please share.

That guide has some REALLY good advice. Probably one of the most clearly laid out explanations of our new system I've come across.

I'll likely be doing some dummy tests tonight focusing on the single target build. Anything you get used to right now, just keep in mind is going to be significantly reduced when you start leveling again, such as Block Capping and learning to play without Inquisition. Your mastery and mitigation rating right now will drop off pretty quickly, so you can only rely on it for the next couple of months until you get back into raid gear at 85, and alot of Beta tests right now have shown that Inquisition is the best (and sometimes the only) way to hold multi-target aggro, so look forward to getting it at level 81.

Zablocki19 wrote:

.. a lot of Beta tests right now have shown that Inquisition is the best (and sometimes the only) way to hold multi-target aggro, so look forward to getting it at level 81. ;)

That suggests that DPSers are going to have to pay attention to targeting once again. That, along with hunter trapping, mage polymorphing and ret paladin repentance, are lost arts.

Should be an interesting six weeks.

Enix wrote:
Zablocki19 wrote:

.. a lot of Beta tests right now have shown that Inquisition is the best (and sometimes the only) way to hold multi-target aggro, so look forward to getting it at level 81. ;)

That suggests that DPSers are going to have to pay attention to targeting once again. That, along with hunter trapping, mage polymorphing and ret paladin repentance, are lost arts.

Should be an interesting six weeks.

Oh yea, absolutely. AoE tanking died with this patch, head blown off by a bolt pistol. For those who don't use it, SkullMe is a big help with this I find. Well, when folks pay attention to the giant skull on the mobs anyway.

AnimeJ wrote:

Oh yea, absolutely. AoE tanking died with this patch, head blown off by a bolt pistol. For those who don't use it, SkullMe is a big help with this I find. Well, when folks pay attention to the giant skull on the mobs anyway.

Personally, I dislike SkullMe (assuming it's what I believe it is), as I have a tendency to do a bit (okay a lot) of tabbing around. Maybe it has a way to make it persistent until the skull is dead, but I prefer to just keybind the lucky charms to F1-F8 and quickly hit F1 as necessary. Makes sure I get what I want, and it doesn't slow me down at all.

robkid wrote:
AnimeJ wrote:

Oh yea, absolutely. AoE tanking died with this patch, head blown off by a bolt pistol. For those who don't use it, SkullMe is a big help with this I find. Well, when folks pay attention to the giant skull on the mobs anyway.

Personally, I dislike SkullMe (assuming it's what I believe it is), as I have a tendency to do a bit (okay a lot) of tabbing around. Maybe it has a way to make it persistent until the skull is dead, but I prefer to just keybind the lucky charms to F1-F8 and quickly hit F1 as necessary. Makes sure I get what I want, and it doesn't slow me down at all.

I tab around fairly often as well, it's not an instant switch unless you make it. The default amount of time gets you two GCDs on a target before it switches away from the initial mark.

edit - Another consideration for that is with the new patch, threat generation isn't the same as it was before the patch. Not sure if you tanked on the PTRs, but the multipliers on RF, Defensive Stance and Blood Pres went up because they had to in order to allow tanks to generate sufficient threat. I didn't get a chance to test threat generation after that change, but by all accounts it's still a little close for most tanks.

One nice thing for pallys is that we get that additional 75% threat generation from all damage now, not just holy damage.

AnimeJ wrote:

edit - Another consideration for that is with the new patch, threat generation isn't the same as it was before the patch. Not sure if you tanked on the PTRs, but the multipliers on RF, Defensive Stance and Blood Pres went up because they had to in order to allow tanks to generate sufficient threat. I didn't get a chance to test threat generation after that change, but by all accounts it's still a little close for most tanks.

Yep, I spent a ton of time on the PTR this time around. At the end, things were still tighter than on live for me, but single target seemed practically back to being irrelevant unless I had a really good dps pouring it on, and even then they didn't catch me. AoE was still tight, but as long as the dps pace themselves a little, it wasn't too bad. Unfortunately, people were ignoring my marks. It felt to me that if we burned down one or two directly, then the rest would have been easily AoE'd with the threat lead I would have from TC and SW. Personally, I hope AoE gets a little tighter on the road to 85, otherwise I worry we'll be back to an AoE fest quicker than I would like (I figure gear will get us there eventually in the end to some extent).

ELewis17 wrote:

One nice thing for pallys is that we get that additional 75% threat generation from all damage now, not just holy damage.

It's actually buffed all the way back to 200% increased threat. They had dropped it down to 75% (removing the pally holy damage limitation on the way), but had to keep bumping it on the PTRs. At first, it was pretty easy for a healer to pull aggro in a multi-mob situation, unless the tank was really on the ball.

On my paladin, I've been using Avenger's Shield, Hammer of the Righteous and (when I have the mana) Consecration to tank multiple targets. My reading is that they'll stay more or less the same in Cata -- that is, they'll still hit multiple targets.

Have they been nerfed to the point that they don't generate as much aggro/damage as they used to? Or is there some other move I need to work into the rotation?

I have to admit to being a little concerned. I'm still in regular gear and will be trying to tank heroics here over the next little bit, and some of the folks in heroics are, well, you've seen 'em.