Cataclysm Thoughts: Hold the Line
While I’m not a fan of Cataclysm’s potential new talent, Hold the Line, I can’t deny that it’s interesting as the community seems split right down the middle on whether or not it’s viable.
Here’s the version as of this post:
Hold the Line
Improves your critical strike and critical block chance by 10% for 10 sec following a successful parry.
So rather than stick with my gut, I decided to create a Hold the Line “Critical Block” simulator and see just how good or bad my gut is at reading this talent.
Simulator + Results
The simulator can be found here: Hold the Line “Critical Block” Simulator. It’s nothing sexy yet as you’re forced to stick with the variables I’ve provided, (and to run it again, you need to refresh the page) but eventually I’m sure I’ll get around to allowing user input to manipulate variables.
The simulation uses a 10% Parry chance, 20% Block chance and 2 second Boss swing timer for a 10 minute fight.
Sim 1
Uptime: 32.67%
Critical Blocks created by Hold the Line: 1
Sim 2
Uptime: 45.67%
Critical Blocks created by Hold the Line: 3
Sim 3
Uptime: 42.67%
Critical Blocks created by Hold the Line: 1
Sim 4
Uptime: 32.33%
Critical Blocks created by Hold the Line: 1
Sim 5
Uptime: 35.33%
Critical Blocks created by Hold the Line: 2
Sim 6
Uptime: 42%
Critical Blocks created by Hold the Line: 0
Sim 7
Uptime: 53.67%
Critical Blocks created by Hold the Line: 2
Sim 8
Uptime: 43%
Critical Blocks created by Hold the Line: 3
Sim 9
Uptime: 44.33%
Critical Blocks created by Hold the Line: 1
Sim 10
Uptime: 45.33%
Critical Blocks created by Hold the Line: 0
Demoralizing
…is the only way that I can describe the results. Why I feel that way is that the uptime is actually pretty good for the buff. (now granted, I’m assuming we’re fighting a boss that just auto-attacks the whole time) The problem is we aren’t dealing with a straight buff. Hold the Line’s Critical Block buff is basically a chance for a chance for a chance to happen. You have to parry then you have to hope you block within the next 10 seconds then you have to hope that that 10% extra Critical Block chance you gained was enough to turn what would have been a Block into a Critical Block. (Then you also have to hope that you actually needed a Critical Block at that time)
A Hail Mary pass doesn’t even begin to describe this talent.
Why it’s NOT likely to Change
As underwhelming as this talent looks, this simulation is only against a single target. Hold the Line gets a whole lot more interesting when you start thinking about how it’d fair against multiple targets. I’ve also glazed completely over the whole 10% extra crit chance for your attacks portion of the buff. 2 points for a ~40% uptime 10% crit chance buff would actually give Cruelty a run for it’s money point for point.
So, while I feel my gut was right that this talent isn’t impressive from a survival standpoint when tanking a boss. I’ve got to conclude that I’m wrong that this talent is just dead weight. It should offer a decent threat/dps boost as well as a considerable advantage survival-wise when tanking multiple targets.
Hard to ask for much more than that when it’s only a 1st tier talent.
August 2nd, 2010 at 3:08 pm
Last I heard, parries were changing significantly in Cataclysm - specifically, they were going to be a 50% mitigation of one hit, and a 100% increased chance to mitigate 50% on the next blow. Unless parry has been changed back into a dodge-alike, this would reduce the critical block chance of Hold the Line even further - as I assume that parry will push block off the table (but not dodge).
I expect a significant buff to this talent before it goes live. Perhaps a 10% increased chance not only to critically block, but also to block in general? Or maybe that’s what it means already? (Are you in the beta, Vene?)
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Veneretio reply on August 2, 2010 4:16 pm:
Last word from the Blues, Parry is going to remain 100% avoidance for 1 attack. With Parry being that way, this talent is probably fine.
As to beta, nope, I’m not in it. I’ve turned down keys for past expansions and it would seem that now that I’m curious my luck has run out
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August 2nd, 2010 at 3:33 pm
Nice work, Vene, and you’re looking at the talent in its entirety, which is how it’s meant to be looked at. In recent guild discussions, I’ve likened it to the Mongoose enchant; a kind of middle of the road choice, with suitability in many situations.
What I think makes it compelling (and what you can’t test yet) is how it will work when your character has decent levels of Mastery. Because Mastery is going to be giving us a pretty tasty amount of both additional block and critical block chance, it can go either way - we may see more critical blocks from the higher percentages of block rating or, alternatively, we may end up seeing less bona fide Hold the Line procs due to a higher percentage of incidental critical blocks provided by high Mastery.
Naturally, we also have to consider the more general issue of whether block itself is going to be worth looking at come Cataclysm.
Ultimately, though, I think this talent is EXACTLY what the developers wanted; something that can’t be easily quantified as good or bad and something that (love it or hate it) is really quite compelling.
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August 3rd, 2010 at 5:03 am
I personally like the design, but I haven’t seen anything about how DR is going to work come Cataclysm. If Dodge and Parry provide the same avoidance point for point, and the DR on them is the same, then great, if Dodge is still better than Parry, then Hold the Line is kind of lackluster.
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August 3rd, 2010 at 6:27 am
To me, whether or not this talent is worth it from a threat standpoint depends a lot on exactly how Rage will work in Cata (as does the worthiness of several other talents). If it turns out that rage is a harder commodity to come by, then this talent could be invaluable in building and maintaining threat, especially at lower levels (it being a tier 1 talent). But if rage is in decent supply in the typical boss encounter, I don’t see much value in it as an MT. There are better threat talents w/ a more reliable uptime, and there are certainly better survival talents. I am REALLY curious to hear from any beta users how the changes to rage, Heroic Strike, etc. have affected things.
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August 3rd, 2010 at 7:40 am
To me, this has never felt like a single target survivability talent. Everything about it screams ‘dual prot spec - trash tanking talent’.
When you are under attack from 5-7 mobs, you will be parrying very frequently, meaning that this buff will reach near 100% uptime. The additional crit will assist you in holding threat on the large pack, while the additional chance to critically block will allow you to negate a few more of their attacks.
Even the name ‘Hold the Line’ seems to indicate to me that the talent is intended to help you hold back the masses from overwhelming your raid.
I’m glad that you’ve laid the survivability portion of this talent to rest, it is definitely not a top pick for boss encounters.
I’d be curious to see your sim rerun with a 0.2-0.5s attack time (to simulate multiple mobs) and a shorter fight interval, say 2m.
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August 3rd, 2010 at 2:11 pm
I’m terrible at the math. What would happen if we consider things like shield block? I can’t check right now (work computer blocks/breaks everything.. ) but I’m assuming shield block is much the same as it is now. During those shield block moments perhaps hold the line is a nice bonus?
Looking at your above results, it does look like hold the line is a threat/dps talent first, and a “situation oh crap” type bonus toward survival (albeit an unreliable one).
All in all, at tier one, it’s worth a look.
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August 3rd, 2010 at 4:54 pm
When I look at this talent, the first thing I want to compare it to is Glyph of Blocking. It’s basically a threat thing, but with a little bit of tag-along mitigation. yeah, it looks like it’s pretty bad for mitigation. However, with the recent tweaks to Incite which makes it look almost useless for prot, it seems like a reasonable first-tier one…
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August 4th, 2010 at 12:06 pm
ICC already had most boss swing timers in the 1.5-1.8 (debuffed) range, and with Blizzard wanting to move further away from bursty damage, I wouldn’t expect them to be any slower in Clysm.
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August 4th, 2010 at 8:20 pm
while spam refreshing (probably 200 times), the results of 2 in a row that really stood out:
28% 1 extra
57% also 1 extra
uptime on the crit looks like high 30ish % average while the average block is probably 2-3, but a LOT of 0s, consistently happening even on uptimes in the 40+ range.
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August 5th, 2010 at 6:17 am
Heavy Repercussions *New* - While your Shield Block is active, your Shield Slams hit for an additional 50/100% damage.
Yes please!
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Kavtor reply on August 5, 2010 1:30 pm:
Except, we already have it on live. (more or less) Spending two talent points to get what I have now for free? No thanks. It’s too good not to take. It’ll get changed at some point for those reasons alone, not to mention the PVP implications.
A big swing and a miss from the developer.
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mister_six reply on August 5, 2010 3:25 pm:
It also breaks the clarity shield block was moving toward — i.e. as a mini shield wall cooldown. This crams it right back into the “it’s a floor wax and a dessert topping” use it for threat boost OR cooldown area they didn’t want it to be.
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Kobeathris reply on August 5, 2010 8:10 pm:
Except Shield Block is not close to a 100% boost to shield slam’s damage now, and the pvp problem is largely going to be taken care of by the fact that Arms warriors can’t get shield slam any more.
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jericho reply on August 7, 2010 12:59 am:
The problem with Shield Block as it is now in Beta is that it IS a cooldown that has to be considered as an “I think Ill need it now” type CD. Where past iterations of SB were either maintenance heavy (my personal favorite version) and “mini shield wall”.
The TBC version of SB was there to help us counter Crushing Blows, something that DK mechanics more than anything else they will tell you, forced them out in Wrath. However, the maintenance heavy SB gave you a choice when to let it drop off and use your resources for threat or rebuffing commanding shout, etc. It wasn’t “as required” at times and it was an option to drop it here and there.
The Wrath version of SB became a joke. With the exception of the T8 era, it was more often used for burst threat or dmg purposes than it was for actual mitigation.
This new version is nothing that is actually interesting. Its a 20 second buff of 15% block on a 60 second cd. While the block % is a good chunk, Blizzard has said flat out, that it should NEVER be make or break for a warrior (or a paladin) to have that 15% at all times. So once again, SB becomes an afterthought.
As for the 100% extra SS damage, well Blizzard is going in the wrong direction here. We like flavor threat talents, but trying to convert a mitigation ability into a threat ability cause the mitigation it gives is seen as unreliable and the ability itself is looked down upon because of that fact… Well, it would seem to me they should be taking another look at the ability.
Either make it maintenance again, turn it into a 100% minor mitigation CD or just get rid of the ability all together.
Kavtor reply on August 9, 2010 9:08 am:
“The Wrath version of SB became a joke. With the exception of the T8 era, it was more often used for burst threat or dmg purposes than it was for actual mitigation.”
Shield block with crit block on top is a pretty substantial amount of physical damage reduction. It’s a really effective minor cooldown.
August 5th, 2010 at 1:40 pm
I like the concept of hold the line. A little bit of survivability and threat from the same talent in an interesting proc form. I wish it was more effective and the crit block portion not ridiculously random, but it does keep it as a talent choice, rather than a mandatory talent. And so long as our overall threat and survivability are balanced correctly (this time… ) it could be fun to consider parry as a more effective stat.
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August 5th, 2010 at 8:53 pm
I gotta say, I hate the Thunderstruck changes. Formerly, it’d leave a ground-dot after Tclap, now it’ll buff cleave and tclap damage (that is, provide the missing damage from the changed incite), plus give you a 3-time stacking buff for your next Shockwave by 10% (so stacks to 30%). Frankly I don’t care how much much it buffs it. I still don’t like the talent. Why? Because it doesn’t address what I think is the PROBLEM with warrior AE threat. It isn’t about volume, but delivery method, specifically timing.
Even with the changes proposed, the Rend-spreading and the SW buffing, no matter how much threat they wind up adding in the end, won’t change the fact that if SW is on CD and you pop your tclap a little too soon, you’re out of AE moves. Consider what’s probably the hardest AE tanking task in the game right now - heroic Halion adds. They come slightly staggered, and need to be grabbed pretty quick, or else they’ll start gibbing healers. The speed requires means you can’t really wait until they’re all in tclap radius, you gotta drop it as quick as possible, same thing with shockwave. gotta get that stuff down fast. however, there are stragglers, due to the nature of how they spawn, so some can easily not get covered by the initial 2 gcds, and that’s it. out of AE abilities. pallys and dk can use ground-dots to start the initial herding of adds, druids can spam swipe. warriors still remain alone as tanks most heavily dependent on proper timing of AE, and that’s still going to put them at a disadvantage, no matter how high they crank threat.
The other strange thing about the talent is that it further incentivizes heavy AE use in single-target situations. From the look of things, SW will still be one of our biggest hitters, and still used on cooldown on bosses when it doesn’t need to be saved for mechanics reasons. With tclapping-to-maintain rends, that’d be tclap about every 12 seconds, adding 10% of the damage of your SW to each tclap, as well as the damage increase from keeping rend on the target.
*note*
ok, so it looks like druids are SERIOUSLY getting the AE threat shaft, with an incoming 6-second cooldown on swipe… i mean. ouch. poor bears.
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Veneretio reply on August 6, 2010 12:03 am:
I don’t think it’ll be worth Thunder Clapping to maintain Rends because even if you think about Rend as Rend + TC damage, it’ll still probably be lower than Shield Slam, Revenge or Devastate.
Personally, I’m a fan of the Thunderstruck change more so because I didn’t like having a ground effect. I feel like the Rend + TC combo is enough. It’s got a distinct Warrior feel to it.
Overall, I’m confident that AOE threat for all classes is going to feel similar to how AOE tanking as a Warrior right now in WotLK does. (aka everyone else is getting nerfed) Furthermore, I don’t think we’re going to see a lot of incentive to AOEing trash or 5 mans either.
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Kobeathris reply on August 6, 2010 6:31 am:
Another thing too, if you are specced for it, heroic throw will have a 30 second cooldown, which is great for stragglers that are out of direct melee range, and you can also always do a quick charge if that is on cooldown.
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thebitterfig reply on August 6, 2010 1:24 pm:
I’m honestly not the least worried about threat. It’ll be where it needs to be, roughly. The rend/tc combo is really cool, and it seems like a nice way to get the numbers where they’ll need to be. I’d just like a less-fiddly tool for barely-staggered adds. Heroic Throw, targeting out individuals for charge or other abilities, it all works, it’s just… fiddly. Well, not every tank needs to be as good as every other kind of tank at everything; we clearly rule the roost on stuns and mobility, with strong anti-caster mechanics and I’ll have to satisfy myself with that.
As to not AEing down trash in raids: I hope they design trash packs to allow us to single-target stuff. ICC generally is pretty bad for it, with the way the packs work out in terms of numbers, in terms of adding in extra packs, and so forth. Thinking back to my slim experience in ulduar, that on the other hand is a very non-AE sort of stuff. Ignis trash comes in pairs, Thorim trash is incredibly fun (taunt switch on trash? win!), XT trash takes fast killing of two mobs or else the trash will basically enrage. Ruby Sanctum is also like that, where the trash is probably harder on tanks than the main boss in regular mode.
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August 5th, 2010 at 9:27 pm
Oh. Yeah. How do the hold the line numbers look when you add in shield block uptime? You’ll get more blocks after parries!
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Veneretio reply on August 5, 2010 11:58 pm:
Hmm, I’ll have to think about how to simulate that. I’ve got a few other variables I’d like to muck with too. As cool as the long list thing is, I’ll probably just remove it and show 10-20 simulations at once so that you don’t have to reload the page a million times to get an idea of where the averages are.
One thing I’d like to compare is what kind of difference you see in Critical Block uptime if you wait to use your Shield Block until you see a Hold the Line proc and if you just hit it whenever it’s up.
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Kobeathris reply on August 6, 2010 7:09 am:
Shield block is such a short cooldown though that I suspect holding it would either be a small loss, or such a small gain that the extra trouble of doing that wouldn’t be worth it.
Just did a little bit of math, just using shield block on cooldown, on average, you will get about 4.3 seconds of overlap with Hold the Line for each use of shield block (2 second swing time, 15% parry chance). I would guess that between reaction time and lag, you would probably get no more than 9 seconds of over lap for every use if you waited for hold the line to proc. Assuming a 5 minute fight, and the rest of the above, you would have about 42.7 seconds of overlap using it on cooldown, and about 77.1 holding it BUT, you would lose 15 seconds of total shield block time by doing this. That, by the way, is also assuming you are only holding back on shield block an average of 5 seconds longer than just using it on cooldown. I actually think that may be a low estimate and 10 seconds or so is more likely, but regardless, I think a 15% loss in total shield block time is going to be a bigger deal than a 34% gain in time it is stacked, but I am not sure how to calculate that part.
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thebitterfig reply on August 6, 2010 1:37 pm:
15 seconds of shield block time is 7.5 attacks blocked given a 2-second swing timer. in exchange, you get an extra 35 seconds of stacked time, which is an extra 10% chance of critical blocks. that’s about 17.5 covered swings, and about 1.75 of those would get plus-sized from regular blocks to critical blocks.
myself, i’d rather block 7 attacks for 30% than critify 2 blocks up to 60%.
August 6th, 2010 at 10:08 pm
so i just had a 1 AM crazy thought…
what if they removed the cooldown from Thunderclap…
… and added a stacking debuff whenever you use it that lowers it’s damage by, well, something large. balance the debuff so that TC spam would do like half the damage and threat of TC once every 10 seconds. it’d give a button to push when you just want someone to be tagged onto you before you can target and build conventional threat, but you’d still have to use other attacks to get more than trivial “hello tank! i’m not going to gib the healers anymore, but i might if you’re ignore me!” threat.
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Veneretio reply on August 7, 2010 12:28 pm:
They’d have to change Thunderstruck, but that’s a pretty sweet concept.
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Jyth reply on August 7, 2010 1:59 pm:
Interesting concept, but I think if Blizz was to consider this as an idea, they’d be more likely to design it as a stacking block % buff rather than a damage debuff– that way it wouldn’t feel mandatory to spam TC to build the stack on single targets, but it’d be nice bonus when you could afford the low tps.
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August 9th, 2010 at 10:47 pm
Quote:
“2 points for a ~40% uptime 10% crit chance buff would actually give Cruelty a run for it’s money point for point.”
I am not a mathematician, but doesn’t “40% uptime 10%” roughtly equal “100% uptime 4%”?
If 40% of the time, one out of ten hits will be special, that should roughly equal that one out of 25 will be special if you include the 60% without the buff.
That, at least is how I like to look at it.
Regarding those stats, It doesn’t give Cruelty a run for it’s money as it is equal. (Surely, the increased survivability is added in Hold the Line, but I got the feeling you were not considering that it the statment quoted above.)
Looks like it’ll get my theoratical priority when going for threat. Let’s hope the survivability will be worth it too! ^_^
~Baruti.
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Veneretio reply on August 10, 2010 9:56 am:
Cruelty only gives you 2% crit for 2 points. Hold the Line gives you sorta 4% crit for 2 points. (or better if you’ve got more Parry) That was what I was trying to illustrate. Of course, we also have to take into account that 41 point talent trees are suppose to give us more per point than our existing trees so it’s probably about equal in terms of value threat/dps wise. The reason I bring up the comparison is that a lot of Warriors already really like Cruelty and Hold the Line is basically Cruelty + some solid AOE survival.
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November 17th, 2010 at 1:03 am
Can’t you just use Shield block for those 10 seconds for hold the line?
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