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56 Responses to “The Roller Coaster Ride that is Block Value”

1. Kadomi Says:
   July 8th, 2009 at 8:45 am

   I am disappointed, but hoping. I was contemplating posting about the Shield Slam change today (hate it) but then decided against it, because this cannot be all they have in store for us. I refuse to believe that. Like you, I don’t want to whine about my class, because I love it. Fight the good fight, and let’s wait for the surprises in the next PTR builds.

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2. Warwench Says:
   July 8th, 2009 at 8:50 am

   I agree with you, and with cider on this stuff. The changes say 2 things to me. They either say “We at Blizzard don’t understand Warriors real well, we think this might help.. maybe?” .. or it says “We at Blizzard have a plan, this doesnt look like much right now, but with the other things we have coming, and some things we’ve setup in the past, this will be good. trust us”.

   unfortunately, with a view to changes seemingly randomly made to Arms and Fury since WOLK dropped, I lean towards #1. I just don’t think Blizzard has a good grip on Warriors, on how they should gel, how their gearing works, how they tank.

   lack of Tank DPS is a real problem, lowering the DPS and putting the threat back to it’s previous level does nothing. it’s a nerf, DPS lower, threat the same when BOTH of those need to rise.

   Warriors biggest problem with DPS, and threat is we have a couple of big hitters, but everything else is paltry in comparison to other Tanks. Nerfing the big hitters is great, but everything else needs to be raised to not only compensate, but to take us up to where the other tanks are.

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   Cleaved reply on July 8, 2009 3:05 pm:

   I think Blizzard is trying too hard to make OTHER classes better at Tanking, and forgetting about the guys that have been doing it best since the beginning. I believe they understand Warriors, but that they feel we need less love than the other classes they try to force into a tanking roll since Vanilla. Other classes can tank, and they should be allowed to tank. I don’t think they should just get rid of tanking for Droods, DKs and Pallies… no. Instead, they should stop focusing on the Pallies and DKs so much, and focus some love on the Warriors and Druids. Both classes have had issues with tanking and gearing principles for a while now. It would just be nice if they took more time to look at Warriors and Druids. I truly believe they think we are “okay” as we are, and want to tweak DKs and Pallies more. Look at this Block change… it sounds more like they are trying to make a stat useful for Paladins so they don’t gear like Warriors.
   I hate “Bring the player, not the class” because it has stripped various classes of their identity. You can’t homogenize tanking between 3 plate wearing classes when all three look for different stats on gear.

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3. Spinks Says:
   July 8th, 2009 at 8:56 am

   I’m just a bit tired of these changes, wake me up when it goes live But as soon as I saw the original block value change, I was thinking that it might be fun to PvP with a shield block set — which is a sure sign that it was possibly overpowered. So not surprised they didn’t go live like that, I just thought they’d back the first change out.

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4. Tyriall Says:
   July 8th, 2009 at 8:57 am

   What many people misunderstand is that this is not intended to be a “fix” for block. Blizzard wants SBV to be a useful stat until the block overhaul goes into effect. In order to force warriors to lap up the SBV stats on the gear, they’re trying out the shield block change basically forcing us to use things like the T8 helm over the Freya 10 helm to have a decent shield slam.

   I don’t really like the change: I preferred having all that extra SBV as a pseudo-cooldown to use as an opener on a boss to generate some serious frontloaded damage and maybe give my healers a little breathing room to get into position. Going back to baked-in threat seems like a step in the wrong direction.

   I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t eventually just remove SBV from gear and make SBV go strictly off strength at 3 to 1 or something.

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5. Gralth Says:
   July 8th, 2009 at 8:58 am

   Hey, long time fan, first time poster here.

   I have been PvPing as a prot warrior and it is actually a lot of fun. You get a ton of cool abilities, stuns, interrupts, etc, and it takes forever to kill (especially with the 2-minute shield wall from your previous post). The only downside is that you don’t do as much damage as most other classes.

   To be fair this is expected, speccing prot means sacrificing DPS for durability, but SB+SS was our best PvP damage move, taking it out is a huge hit to anyone spec’d prot for PvP.

   So I absolutely agree that this is a (unnecessary) PvP nerf that is impacting tanks, but you’re right, not the end of the world. BTW I say unnecessary because it’s not like the top arena teams ever include a Prot warrior (check arena junkies if you don’t believe me).

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6. Linedan Says:
   July 8th, 2009 at 9:13 am

   I was with Spinks…I’ll admit that my first thought upon seeing the block value changes wasn’t “hey, I can absorb about 400 more damage on a block,” it was “hey, man, I can really smash some face with a crit Shield Blocked Shield Slam come 3.2. Booyah.” Alas, prot warriors are, I guess, not meant to fishslap people in the face for 9k+ with a shield.

   I’ll see what the PTR holds, I’m not freaking out about this. I do think Blizzard is flailing a bit about Block in general because they don’t seem to know what they want to do with it yet. Block and the Heroic Strike spam mechanic are the two big areas, IMO, that still need to be “cleaned up” with warrior tanks. They’ve done so much good stuff for us in other areas, though, I’m certainly going to cut them some slack for now.

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7. tPaste Says:
   July 8th, 2009 at 11:37 am

   As to the second nerf…

   I guess I’m most upset about how we don’t actually know where Block is going…as a result I’ve spent DKP on some Block pieces in Ulduar…enough that it put me behind a pally in DKP and I lost Sorthalis last night. Something I’d use now.

   …but it isn’t missing out on the loot that burns me, he’s a very good tank and deserved it, it’s the possibility that I missed out on a great piece loot for a couple pieces of loot I may never use.

   If we KNEW what to expect (even kinda sorta) I either wouldn’t feel so bad about spending that dkp OR I simply wouldn’t spend it (just like I didn’t in naxx)…it’s just hella frustrating to me this way I guess.

   Blizzard is becoming just like that girl that leads you on and never tells you how much she likes you and constantly sends you mixed signals.

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   tPaste reply on July 10, 2009 11:30 pm:

   DR on BV…looks like I’ll be really happy spending that dkp in the long run

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8. ch1d3th Says:
   July 8th, 2009 at 12:05 pm

   As far as patch notes/ptr modifications go, I find the what they are doing with dodge/parry to be more interesting. tankspot.com/forums/f14/52401-parry-dodge-change-question.html

   Putting an SB set together is fun, but the block/parry changes may cause us to rethink the way we gear in top end content. Looking forward to your thoughts, Vene.

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9. Yakra Says:
   July 8th, 2009 at 12:06 pm

   I feel like I’ve run the gamut of high-innate threat + non-existant damage (starting in Vanilla) to the current minimal-innate threat + moderate damage. This is just an amazing step backwards.

   The fact that its a PvP-based nerf on a spec that doesn’t even have arena gear suited to it, is really crazy. Protection warriors aren’t even on the radar in arenas. And if we take the time/resources to bid/buy/win shield block gear, which is good for nothing more then a content-soloing/lawlpvp in the first place - is it really so terrible that we can slam a face or two in the joke which is battlegrounds?

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   Veneretio reply on July 8, 2009 12:18 pm:

   Ya, that’s what is most surprising about this is that I’m not sure the PvP nerf was even necessary especially with the change to resilience reducing incoming damage.

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10. Tulakk Says:
    July 8th, 2009 at 1:07 pm

    The SBV change is rather uninteresting to me, I’m still going to favor gear with say expertise or hit over SBV. All this change will do for me is make items with SBV seem a little more useful than they were, but it sure as hell isn’t taking my Ironbark faceguard off of my head for the T8 helm.

    The shield block change makes me /facepalm. Sometimes I wonder what Blizz is thinking, but I refuse to pass judgement yet. It’s still PTR and things change weekly, even daily, at this point, so I’ll remain cautiously optimistic that this is just the beginning.

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11. Kavtor Says:
    July 8th, 2009 at 1:30 pm

    The PVP change does seem a little weird. The shield slam crit potential was pretty ludicrous, but the crit rates on a PVP target with proper resilience in block gear are pretty minimal. Prot warriors aren’t exactly tearing up the arena ranks (although there are a few who do well)

    I think part of the confusion stems from so many different things that ’shield block’ points too. I’m assuming shield slam still benefits from shield block value, but not the shield block ability. Which when combined with the T9 4pc would be some pretty solid consistent damage boosts.

    I understand that fixing block (and hopefully rage and heroic strike) are huge issues, and especially problematic to do in the middle of an expansion (when all the numbers might be nudged just enough to feel ‘wrong’ again with a new expansion as was the case with WotlK) but hopefully they’ll do something to address the DPS differences.

    I don’t mind shield slam not hitting harder, as it and revenge preform really well. But many our other abilities seem so trivial in comparison.

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12. Roffe Says:
    July 8th, 2009 at 4:46 pm

    you made an article bout it anyways ;D

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13. Myzery Says:
    July 8th, 2009 at 8:03 pm

    Quote me on this one:

    The doubling of Block Value on items is a short-term solution to a long term problem. Blizzard will have to figure out how to rebalanced blocking all over again in subsequent tiers when bosses hit harder and harder. The static value damage reduction of Block Value in a world of percent-based mechanics simply doesn’t allow for balanced, tank agnostic encounters.

    The second issue is that block requires two stats (Block Rating and Block Value) to provide effective mitigation, whereas other tanking stats provide more return on their own. And don’t be fooled; the threat returns on block gear are pathetic compared to what you could get from hit and expertise (You don’t see often gear with SBV and threat stats).

    Combine the lack of consistent scalability with having to double dip in SBV and SBR, and you’ll see block stats still give you returns 3x-6x worse then other itemization in T8 and T9.

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    Veneretio reply on July 8, 2009 10:35 pm:

    See I don’t think the doubling of Block Value is even suppose to be a short term solution. (because after all, they out right said it wasn’t) They simply realized the stat was under-budget relative to other stats and wanted to make it more enticing. We’ll be seeing another change to Block to improve it at some point in time or another.

    You’re absolutely right that Block being 2 stats is a problem. I don’t think many would be surprised if they just made it into 1.

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14. Mookey Says:
    July 8th, 2009 at 11:36 pm

    Full tooltip:

    “Increases your chance to block and block value by 100% and increases the threat generated by Shield Slam by 100%. Does not increase Shield Slam damage. Lasts 10 sec.”

    Most people read only last two parts, increased SBV/BR is still there, and damage shield will go trough the roof on shield block (if SBV set equiped), and shield block will now really act like mini shield wall.

    They want shield block to be mitigation that helps with shield slam aggro, not dps boost. So we might start to use it more outside of shield slam macro.

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    tPaste reply on July 9, 2009 7:55 am:

    “and shield block will now really act like mini shield wall”

    Unless the damage is magic and you don’t have 4piece T8.

    But there is another thing you’re not considering: Right now Warriors are the lowest dps tank by a large margin, and that’s WITH Shield Slam in our dps rotation using shield block. Taking this out and making it threat only sets us further behind…but also makes us want to be more choosey with when we use shield block. Meaning, that if we do end up using it as a “mini shield wall” which you suggest and the devs promised in beta (and which I actually do on Hodir and Mimi hard with a 4-piece T8) it hurts our threat gen as well.

    The problem here is I think they’ve clearly baselined our DPS/Threat around constantly using shield block whenever possible…the fact that it’s also compelling on occasion (even more so with the changes) for survivability makes this worse.

    TL, DR: An ability on a significantly sized cooldown that doubles as both a threat move and a mitigation move is bad design, period.

    Possible Solution: take the damage/threat increase off shield block all together and add it as a proc on Shield Slam with a hidden 40 second cooldown (you could even make that proc talented, perhaps included with Shield Mastery)…that way you don’t have something you can’t “pop” reliably in pvp, maintains current threat/damage over the course of an encounter but still have an option for a “Mini Shield Wall” that isn’t tied to our threat/damage.

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15. Shadamehr Says:
    July 9th, 2009 at 4:43 am

    Hmm. Maybe I’ll actually start using Shield Block as the “Oh Crap” button it was intended as, rather than macroing it to SS. Functional > Fun it seems. 15k hits were a rare but beautful thing, and will be missed.

    I don’t like the threat modifier. That’s definitely a backward step, I remember the days when we had to spec Defiance and I thought we’d moved on from then. Base our threat on damage, not artificial modifiers. WLK started out so promisingly in this direction >.>

    And I never thought I’d see the day they’d nerf Prot based on PvP. I thought at least tanks were safe from that. It’s idiotic.

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    Veneretio reply on July 9, 2009 7:53 am:

    Ya, the threat modifier is my biggest issue with this change. If it’s too good for PvP and it needs nerfing… fine. But, they shouldn’t have added the threat onto it and instead just improved the damage of one of our other abilities to compensate for the threat/damage loss from the change. (Devastate for instance)

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16. urkagan Says:
    July 9th, 2009 at 9:06 am

    correct me if im wrong here: we r getting double BV, but now SS does not increase that BV by 100%? If it did, that would mean damage increase on SS 4 times against our current condition. So by nerfing SS Blizzard simply puts its damage where it( Blizzard) wants it: double value from our prepatch condition.
    I see it this way, what is your thoughts?

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    Veneretio reply on July 9, 2009 9:38 am:

    This is a very good question and something I really should have addressed in the original post. Simply put, your assumptions are incorrect.

    They are doubling Block Value for items with Block Value. That does not mean they’re doubling Block Value.

    1) Our shields don’t have 2x BV
    2) Strength still only provides 1 BV for every 2 Strength

    The perfect example of how to look at it is your boss survival set. Mine features 77 Block Value from the BV stat, but probably 1000 or more from Strength and my Shield. So this change is giving me only 77 extra Block Value. (which is very far away from the thousands I’d need for your assumption to be true)

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17. Machus Says:
    July 9th, 2009 at 12:52 pm

    I’m guessing that Blizzard is reforming block/parry/dodge and what we see is just the first few steps. We don’t yet know (unless I missed it) what direction their design may be going.

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18. Drae Says:
    July 9th, 2009 at 1:09 pm

    Hmm.. seems to me that Pally’s will benefit from this change more then warriors will.

    SBV is a pally stat imho, not so much a warrior one. SBV hasn’t been worthwhile to stack for warriors since TBC (outside of lol BG’s)as expertise is just so much more threat.

    I’d rather see some sort of adjustment to warrior strength scaling, mebe make it worth more SBV and AP when spec’d into prot (3:1 rather then 2:1 or something, like a 5th tier point in protection or some such)). Putting our constant DPS and threat up by white damage (since we have so much expertise and hit; thus rarely not hitting). That could fix our long term threat and DPS problems (we really don’t have too much issue with initial burst, tho this SBV change may hurt the opening combo of SB and SS) without pushing us over the top in PVP. It would also be a bit of gravy for AoE tanking, buffing TC and Shockwave a bit, as we lag behind a few of the other tank classes in this department as well.

    Of course they could also just adjust our armored to the teeth or whatever, but that may help DPS warriors a bit too much, thus why I recommend it in the prot tree decently deep.

    Really the HS issue could be fixed pretty simply.

    1. Make the HS bonus threat normalized against swing speed similiar to the AP normalization in vanilla (think Arcanite Reaper/barman shanker nerf…) Making slower weapons more attractive. Thus the same TPS no matter the swing speed.

    2. Allow us to queue up HS, a hybrid between existing conditions and the toggle idea. Allow us to queue up 5 heroic strikes in a row; kinda like making peons in a townhall in WC3.

    The combination of the two would lower the sheer amount of heroic strike spamming, and reduce the effort to maintain the spam, without making it as mindless as “turn it on” “turn it off”. IMHO the only way a toggle would work is if there was some other penalty for having the toggle on, otherwise the ability to never miss a HS seems way OP. An “aura” or “stance” that would put say a 2 rage per sec cost on the toggle, + the normal cost of HS.

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    Veneretio reply on July 9, 2009 2:35 pm:

    While the queue system is a clever solution, it’s not actually creating Heroic Strike in the image they want it to be. They’d like it back to how it was in TBC where it was a choice.

    Basically, until they solve the problem of high rage, they’ll never be able to fix HS the way they want to.

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    Drae reply on July 10, 2009 4:45 am:

    That is a very valid point; and part of the reason I feel some sort of penalty would have to be applied to a toggle (if it was the sol’n). Perhaps the additional queues over the first (like HS #2,3,4,5) would have an increasing rage requirement or some such to force a choice; tho not as drastic a one as “to HS, or not to HS” more like.. “how much do I spend for the convenience”.

    It is true; as long as we generate (un-modified) rage from incoming damage and the damage were taking continues to go up we will continue to find ourselves in unlimited rage situations; making the choice to HS a default “yes”.

    If Blizzard leans towards generating rage only on damage done, I sincerely hope they include yellow damage.

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    Mandragoran reply on July 10, 2009 11:45 am:

    “IMHO the only way a toggle would work is if there was some other penalty for having the toggle on, otherwise the ability to never miss a HS seems way OP. An “aura” or “stance” that would put say a 2 rage per sec cost on the toggle, + the normal cost of HS.”

    Bind HS to mouse wheel up, get a Logitec G7 mouse with a frictionless mouse wheel, and all you have to do is give that puppy a hard flick every 30 seconds or so. Just saying, because if you think it’s that OP you can have it already for the price of a G7. Add a mod like power aura to give you a clear indicator for high rage moments, and you might even decide you love HS as it is (like me). Not a solution for everyone of course, being hardware dependent.

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    Drae reply on July 13, 2009 5:01 am:

    I use an old mx550 cause I can’t find an acceptable alternative (wireless of course) yet. I’ve got HS bound to my back button and cleave to my front. I also use a N52te speed pad, which is amazing hawt. I’ve considered the G7, and it is most likely what I’ll buy if I don’t buy a Razer.

    Truly, I don’t think a toggle is a good idea. I would like to see the bonus threat on HS normalized tho (rather then a static amount), so at least slower weapons wont be useless HS-wise. Sure the slower weapon benefits devastate, but who uses devastate as much as HS?

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19. Pinkpants Says:
    July 9th, 2009 at 3:24 pm

    Hmmm from what i’m reading on the forums and on this page it is a bit of a slam damage nerf however it will still be doing the same if not more threat.

    Also this will lead to much larger blocks, if you note it says “ALSO increases threat”, which means it will most likely still double block value just not give us huge SS’s. you will see an overall increase in SS damage without having to burst by popping Shield Block as you will be running around with a higher SBV all the time rather than just with Shield block on.

    I don’t see this as a nerf, it will allow us to keep Sheild block for taking damage and not have to pop it to get big crits.

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    Veneretio reply on July 9, 2009 3:51 pm:

    The changes are a minor increase in our mitigation with Shield Block, a large nerf to our damage with Shield Slam and a small buff to our threat with Shield Slam. There are portions of the change that are a buff, but it doesn’t change that we don’t want to be trading Damage for Threat. That’s a step in the wrong direction.

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    Erabie reply on July 9, 2009 4:28 pm:

    The problem with this point of view is that you’re assuming Warriors are going to be stacking shield block value, which I can almost guarantee you will not be the case. Being that they are only doubling SBV on items, not including shields, I have no SBV on my boss survival gear and I know a lot of tanks are in my position.

    So, that being the case, I’m getting [b]no increase from this SBV buff[/b] and still receiving a this shield block nerf. Therefore, and here’s the kicker, I’ll be doing less damage then I am currently - which is bad since we’re already behind other tanking classes in dps from 500-1000 dps.

    It’s already been mentioned a hundred times but they need to stop deep frying our skills in threat and give us some more oomph. We’re warriors, we’re the predominate masculine alpha dogs, when we hit with a weapon it’s meant to hurt. At the moment we’re more like rodeo clowns “Hey Arthas, look this way, look this way, I’m wearing a red cape!”

    Anyway, I’m of the opinion that modifying strength and making that stat more useful (Satrina mentioned that str should be our crit stat, which would be very interesting).

    Vene, I’d like to hear about how you would go about changing warriors, if only for speculation.

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    Drae reply on July 10, 2009 4:57 am:

    Threat is not the issue, damage done during tanking is.

    Imagine the following scenario (and this is a common one, just different values):

    5 min enrage timer. Your doing 2000 dps while tanking. Your raid falls short by 10s, say 25000 damage, short of killing the boss. Everyone blew every cool down, started DPS early, ate their food and pots, etc basically squeezed every drop of damage out of the raid; and your raid still didn’t get the Raid DPS high enough. Threat was not capping DPS.

    Swap in a 3000 DPS DK tank instead of the 2k dps warrior tank and you have a dead boss.

    Thats the downside to “baked in” threat.

    We need more baseline damage, Blizz should either modify skills like devastate to do reasonable damage (50% of weapon dmg lol, a relic from the old days… no wonder we don’t use it) or modify our white damage to be competitive. Personally I think they should adjust our STR:SBV and STR:AP ratio’s to better reflect our requirements, rather bake in more threat and force straight SBV on us.

    This is not in my eyes anyway a buff to the warrior community, it seems to benefit pally’s more then us… they get more SBV and aren’t kicked in the groin for having SB…

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    Cornfedhick reply on July 10, 2009 9:07 am:

    Problem with Pally’s is they get the kickback from dmg in small heals and mana. You look at the healing meters after a fight and its surprising how much that is. Regardless, imo Blizz made the mistake of trying to fix our threat problem but in doing so they didn’t foresee the fallout and made a different problem even worse.

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    Pinkpants reply on July 10, 2009 10:31 am:

    Well i’m still having a hard time seeing the logic i guess, i mean if you’re getting 500 bV from items (not counting shield or str) and you pop SB now those items are giving you 1000 bv… now those items will be giving you 1000bv all the time not just for the duration of SB. so overall shield slams will be doing more dps. I’m going to crunch the numbers to see exaclty how much.

    P.S. i see a lot of DK hate these days, well not so much hate but jelousy. i would not worry about fellas, DK have been getting nerfed and will continue to get nerfed. That DK that’s doing so much dps now will be in for a world of hurt later on trust me.

    Veneretio reply on July 10, 2009 10:44 am:

    If you’re getting 500 bv from items right now, you’re gearing your Warrior wrong and the change to Block Value is not significant enough to warrant a shift in the Warrior tanking gearing paradigm.

    Drae reply on July 10, 2009 11:04 am:

    as I understand it the base SBV from your shield & strength as well as the SBV from items wont be doubled with Shield Block active when considering DAMAGE for Shield Slam anymore; but the threat will be about the same.

    Napkin Math!
    Hypothetically:

    200 SBV from Items.

    My shield slam currently does 1000 hypothetical damage from shield and str (without the above mentioned 200 SBV. yet)

    With SBV from Items. ~2400 threat before passive modifiers (stance etc).

    Currently: 2 x (1000 dmg, + 200 SBV) = 2400 dmg Shield slam with shield block active.

    After Nerf: (1000 dmg + 400 SBV) = 1400 dmg Shield Slam; but ~2800 Threat with shield block active (+passive threat modifiers)

    amirite? Sure the 200 SBV is doubled statically, and for mitigation and threat its a buff, but DAMAGE is the issue at hand.

20. Sybrant Says:
    July 10th, 2009 at 8:50 am

    What about Lavanthor’s Talisman for a trinket??

    148 BV

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    Veneretio reply on July 10, 2009 10:51 am:

    You’re right, this may be a superior choice for the set even if the Block Value gain is not always active.

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    Drae reply on July 10, 2009 11:07 am:

    I still use that trinket in my SBV set, macro’d into SB and SS and a trinket swap so I really crank people in the face in bg’s… every 2 minutes.

    It’s a fun trick to add some shield slam damage.

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21. Dayon Says:
    July 10th, 2009 at 12:10 pm

    They’re reverting Shield Block back, apparently. It’s on the latest 3.2 Patch Notes on MMO Champion.

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    Veneretio reply on July 10, 2009 12:12 pm:

    Haha, yup, I was just in the process of updating the post. (It’s updated now!) Great to see such a quick realization that the change would not have been good for the Warrior class.

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    Drae reply on July 10, 2009 12:24 pm:

    /dance

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    Myzery reply on July 10, 2009 4:55 pm:

    Latest news:

    Shield Slam: The benefit from additional block value this ability gains is now subject to diminishing returns. Diminishing returns occur once block value exceeds 30 times the player’s level and caps the maximum damage benefit from shield block value at 34.5 times the player’s level.

    This is too confusing. Why is balancing Block Value so difficult? I know it serves as a damage AND mitigation stat, but this seems like quite a kludge.

    I *almost* like the additional threat solution better (because it’s easier to understand).

    So, we start to get DR on Block after (30×80) 2400 SBV? And it caps at 2,760?

    I can *easily* hit the 2,760 cap with Shield Block up in 3.1. In 3.2 I’ll likely be able to hit it without Shield Block.

    What is going on here?

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    Roffe reply on July 10, 2009 6:20 pm:

    I suppose that they still want to change the “Omg shieldslam critt!” ’s in pvp still, but realized that changing shieldblock would be just fail, they have nerfed the paladins “block attacks” aswell, and they have diminishing returns aswell on their BV damage.

    But i dunno where this is going rly

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    Veneretio reply on July 10, 2009 8:31 pm:

    It would appear that the Roller Coast Ride must continue.

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    Drae reply on July 13, 2009 5:05 am:

    ya rly, if this is the only change I’m left scratching my head. Give us more SBV on items, but cap it.. so we can’t take advantage of it when we need it most… when SB is active..

22. Angrygnome Says:
    July 14th, 2009 at 11:24 am

    Posted by GC:
    It’s okay if Shield Slam can make big (yet not absurd) numbers, since you don’t Shield Slam all that much.

    … the hell? He also mentions something about a 19k Shield Slam crit in there, I’d love to see how the hell he pulled that off.

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    Sephirawth reply on July 14, 2009 12:30 pm:

    I can get 17k’s on Thaddius without Block set but we have a buff. I am assuming he has some kind of buff to get these. If not… SS or it didn’t happen!

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    Angrygnome reply on July 15, 2009 6:16 pm:

    From some poking I did on the forums, one way to “supposedly” generate a 19k crit requires the kind of set up that you’ll never see in actual PvP.

    2 warriors: one with a full block set, one with no gear. Stack full sunders on the naked warrior (to eliminate armor from their agility), and then have him got into berzerker stance, pop recklessness, and then sit down. Pop any block buffs you have and let loose the “mother of all shield slams”. All and all, though, this requires that the person you’re attacking is going out of their way to take more damage from you, which is generally the opposite of how people behave in PvP.

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23. Furiat/Vege Says:
    July 17th, 2009 at 1:41 am

    Yet another idea for prot from Blizz:

    Devastate: Weapon damage and bonus per Sunder Armor on the target increased by 100%.

    Anyone remember why it was lowered? Yea, cause it was doing too much dmg (dps warriors speccing devastate…).

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    Chet reply on July 17, 2009 3:36 am:

    it was doing too much dmg for fury/arms, but now it requires a shield, so if you ask me this is a great change, giving us some much needed DPS.

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    Furiat/Vege reply on July 17, 2009 5:08 am:

    Shield will be required? Seems fine then, tho TBC farming way (prot spec + DW dps gear spammin devastate and whirlwind) will be missed a bit (not that it was useful in Wrath).

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    Chet reply on July 17, 2009 7:52 am:

    yeah, GC made a follow-up post, cited at http://www.tankspot.com/ announcing that change

    Chet reply on July 17, 2009 9:50 am:

    So I’ve heard a lot of talk about how the next thing that needs to be brought in line is warrior aoe. Well one of the main things I learned in the little bit of time I tanked pre-3.0 was that devastate was one of our best moves for multi-mob tanking. My question is, do you think the devs might consider buffing devastate up to being worthwhile again as a way to indirectly buff our “aoe”? I know multi-mob is not the same as aoe, but last time I checked, it still works, and due to our lack of constant aoe, it’s something I never really completely stopped using.

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24. Number6 Says:
    July 23rd, 2009 at 12:06 am

    All I can say is a big *YAY* for the rethink … and tbh on the discussion regarding the buff up for devastate, wishful thinking.

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