3.0.2 – Prot Warriors: Shockwave and Thunderclap
Shockwave. Deals 75% of the warrior’s attack power to all targets in a cone in front of him/her, and then stuns all of those targets for 4 seconds. The number of targets is unlimited; it functions much like Cone of Cold.
With 2k+ unbuffed attack power in pvp gear using a shield, I was getting this thing to crit for 4.3k! And it’s an AoE! Well sort of. So far as cone effects are concerned, anyway.
I ran through RFD yesterday, helping a friend get some gear out of it (first instanced plate drops here! er, there!), and just watched the ability level groups of mobs. I can’t help but think this is a little overpowered, that it might scale a little too well. Especially if I had access to Impale (+20% crit damage)! Those 4.3k crits would be boosted to 5.1k!
In addition, Thunderclap does indeed hit an infinite number of targets, and also scales a little with AP. With Improved Thunderclap and Incite, I was seeing plenty of crits for 1k with Battle Shout and my Bloodlust Brooch trinket active.
That said, even if they scale Shockwave back a bit, I’m sure prot warriors can handle AoE tanking situations quite well. Perhaps even better, unfortunately, due to how Consecrate is a stationary AoE that does not follow a prot paladin.
We’ll see how this turns out.
October 16, 2008 at 11:42 pm
What about a Charge/Shockwave/thunderClap/Shield Slam combo for an opener?
October 17, 2008 at 2:42 am
I am really impressed by Prot Warrior tanking now. I am running a Ret Paladin, and my buddy is running a Prot Warrior. I cannot pull aggro off of him on AOE pulls, which we do a lot of. We just did Heroic SH today. He was 2nd on the damage meter behind me. It was crazy. I like it! Also we dueled a few times outside of the instance while we were waiting for our Hunter to show up. He soundly trounced me. Three times. Of course I didn’t bubble or anything, as relying on that is a bad idea IMHO. Also my PvP skills are not that great, but neither are his since he rarely PvPs. It was fun, both running SH and dueling. It should be challenging to learn how to stop Prot Warriors in PvP, or just learn to run away :P
October 19, 2008 at 1:31 am
Bloodrage > Charge > Thunderclap > Shockwave > Revenge/Shield Slam > Thunderclap > Shield Block
PvP
Battlestance > Charge > Hamstring > Blood Rage/Berserker Rage > Shockwave > Shield slam > Devastate > Concussion Blow > Devastate/Shield slam > Intimidating shout.
Prot War can be very competitive against the current Pally, but has the potential to lose from Repentance/bubble > Holy Light. I fought a pally for a good two minutes and swore I killed him three times, but he bubble > heal and later on Stun > heal.
Shockwave is a really good ability and works side to side with Concussion blow in pumping damage while CCing at the same time.