Post-3.0.2 Prot Warrior PvP

I’ve been kicking this idea around for a while now and decided to try making a spec for it.  With the increased damage and scaling of abilities based on attack power, along with the increase in block value based on Strength (and corresponding increase in Shield Slam damage that brings), and in addition to the hybrid damage-increasing abilities in Prot (lots of increases to Shield Slam damage in there), and finally, looking at the mobility and…er, protection…the spec can offer, I think I might try this out in the arena.

Also, I know this has come up in at least two other places (for instance, Megs has an old one up), but I could not find the other place I’d read about this idea. Basically, my idea is not exactly original or anything :P

This spec here, 0/5/56. Allow me to discuss this with myself for a moment. Or, rather, a good long moment.

First, just nabbing the +5% crit chance from Fury. I’m spending lots in prot, here. Still need to do some damage, after all. I’m thinking of spending 3 in Armed to the Teeth for more AP and only putting 2 in Malice (/EDIT: what class am I playing again?) Cruelty, but the differences would be minor.

My big concern with not picking up talents deeper in Fury or Prot is rage starvation. Step 1, then, is get Improved Bloodrage. Can’t hurt. Improved Thunderclap will be a nice damper on melee damage taken by me or my shaman partner, and is one of the abilities now scaling with attack power. Probably not by much, but it will.

Fill up Incite, though I predict the abilities listed will not really get used that often, especially considering the possibility of rage starvation. For a more defensive approach, you could fill up Anticipation instead. I put three points in this talent and two in Shield Specialization.

Last Stand will come in handy as a PvP ability for when you are being focused. I will explain the importance of Shield Mastery and its tie-ins to the new Shield Block as well as how this is all going to make Shield Slam uber later in the post. Toughness for less physical damage as well as increased mobility…as well as increasing the effectiveness of Armed to the Teeth, if I go that route.

Finally on this tier is Improved Revenge. Since I predict the shaman is still going to be eating most of the damage, Revenge will not activate all that often…or so one might think. I can think of two ways to get this to work quite handily, and these are reliant on Intervene and Vigilance. Through Intervene, attacks directed at me should have a decent chance to be blocked/dodged/parried (I will be keeping Shield Block up, again explaining that later). But Vigilance? This has to do with pets, and I’ll get to that later ;)

Tier 4! Improved Spell Reflect is a must I think, again to help reduce the incoming damage our team will receive. Puncture is a near-necessity, as I plan on using Devastate quite a bit (see the notes on Sword and Board, below). Improved Disarm, surprisingly, received a buff in that does it let you disarm more often, but increases the damage your target takes for the duration! Though with more classes (I think hunters and paladins got added to this list) receiving talents that reduce disarm duration, it’s not as awesome as it sounds. Not to say it’s not awesome at all, though :D

On Tier 5, I ignored Improved Disciplines, but with the cooldowns (and effectiveness) of the three listed abilities being reduced, it might be worthwhile to take. Concussion Blow has been buffed, with the cooldown reduced to 30 seconds and a hefty amount of damage (.75 x AP) added on. Gag Order (formerly Improved Shield Bash) now applies to some new ability called “Heroic Throw” as well (presumably a post-70, WotLK-only ability), and increases Shield Slam damage by 10% (woot). Of note is that Shield Bash is no longer on the GCD, allowing greater freedom in interrupting casters’ spells.

Tier 6 is just One-Handed Weapon Specialization. A flat +10% physical damage output. Weee.

And now for Tier 7, wherein I unravel the mystery of Vigilance. First, it’s a buff on a friendly target that reduces all incoming damage by 3% (and transfers 10% of their threat to you blah blah). The awesome thing about it though? Every time that target takes damage, your Taunt ability is refreshed. Huh? Awesome, I say? Yep. I believe that with this talent, I can pretty much freely taunt pets off of my partner. Especially with the increased range it was given. Ideally, this will let me use Revenge (and consequently, stun people) more often.

Right, so, in addition to that we have Improved Defensive Stance which will decrease all spell damage taken by 6% while in Defensive Stance. I’d prefer to be in that stance if I’m facing magic-damage heavy teams anyway. In addition, when I dodge, block, or parry an attack I become Enraged, dealing 10% more damage for 12 seconds. See Vigilance and Intervene, mentioned earlier. Lastly, Focused Rage will help combat rage starvation by making almost everything cheaper.

Next tier down is 8, which includes Vitality for increased Strength (more attack power and block value), Stamina (more health), and 6 expertise for increased damage output. Also on this tier is Safeguard, which will reduce the damage taken by my intervene target (ie, my shaman partner) by 30% for 6 seconds. Very handy.

Moving right along, we get to the ninth tier. The two one-point talents on this tier are pretty important to the concept here, so allow me to devulge some details. Devastate is the easier one to explain, so it goes first…at a cost of 9 rage (after Puncture and Focused Rage), it’s a decent bit of spammable damage that also acts as a damage enabler by applying the Sunder Armor effect. However, it will also act as a catalyst for the Sword and Board talent on the next tree (getting there).

Warbringer. All kinds of awesome. I could just leave it at that, really. But I’ll talk about it anyway. First, it immediately frees you from snares just by using any of your Charge-y abilities. That’s pretty much win. Second, it lets you use Charge in any stance. That seals the deal. Charge gives you a bunch of rage and moves you to your target. Weee. A free spell interrupt, distance-closer, mobility enabler, and rage generation ability all in one. Don’t leave home without it.

And finally, almost lackluster compared to the previous two talents, is Critical Block. This one basically lets you block double the amount you normally would, which is nice for tanking but not so important to this build’s purpose. The important part is the +15% crit chance added to Shield Slam, basically ruining the reduction offered by resilience.

Almost done, we come to the tenth tier, which has yet another awesome talent (though they really could have done better with the name): Sword and Board. This one gives you a +15% chance to crit with Devastate, which is pretty much win in and of itself. However, it also gives Devastate and Revenge a 30% chance to refresh the cooldown on Shield Slam and make cost no rage. Wow. Talk about burst damage.

We interrupt this discussion to…well, talk about burst damage. So. In pvp gear, you won’t exactly be getting any additional Shield Block beyond what your existing shield already offers, except from Strength, which offers 1 BV per 2 Str. I believe that Shield Slam takes its base damage (something like 900 or so at level 70) and adds your Block Value onto that to give you its final damage output. At 550 Str (225 BV), that turns a 143 BV shield (my Shield of Impenetrable Darkness) into a 367 BV shield. After adding on 30% from Improved Shield Block, and then 100% if Shield Block is active (yes, it adds to Shield Slam damage), as well as 20% extra from Gag Order and One-Handed Weapon Specialization, taking on perhaps a 10% extra from the Enrage effect in Improved Defensive Stance, that’s 1800 (/EDIT: did the math wrong) 2200 and change base damage with a 50%+ chance to crit (with 15% extra from critical block). And it can have no rage cost and have its (6-second) cooldown reset just by using Devastate or Revenge. Oh my goodness?

Finally, Shockwave for (.75 x AP) damage and another stun, and then I threw one point in Damage Shield because I didn’t know what else to do with it.

I think it’s just crazy enough to work.

Warrior PvP – My Arms Spec

I wish I could link to it, but I can’t. So here goes:

Arms
5/5 Deflection
5/5 Iron Will
1/1 Anger Management
2/2 Improved Overpower
3/3 Deep Wounds
5/5 Two-Handed Weapon Specialization
2/2 Impale
1/1 Death Wish
5/5 Sword Specialization
3/3 Improved Hamstring
2/2 Improved Intercept
1/1 Mortal Strike
2/2 Blood Frenzy
2/2 Second Wind
2/5 Improved Mortal Strike
1/1 Endless Rage

Fury
5/5 Malice
5/5 Unbridled Wrath
1/1 Piercing Howl
3/3 Blood Craze

Protection
3/3 Tactical Mastery
2/2 Improved Bloodrage

All right. This is a build I have been using for 2v2 Resto Shaman/Warrior.

The focus here is combatting rage starvation, and generally relying on your opponents to find that your shaman partner is a tastier target than you are. This usually happens, especially against mage/rogue…I spend much of those fights sheeped. The idea, anyway, is that you’re not getting hit and being fed rage so much. Also this makes Enrage less useful…if you’re not getting hit, you’re not getting crit.

So we have Endless Rage and Improved Bloodrage instead of Flurry for increased rage gen. This is 25% more rage all the time (and 6 more rage when activating Bloodrage) rather than 25% more rage for 3 hits after a critical hit, the effects of which you will see less with added resilience on your opponents.

We also have the added utility of Improved Hamstring. It’s not the greatest thing ever but I will say that it definitely has come in handy when it has happened.

One thing I do know I need to fix is getting a mace instead of a sword, but I’m not sure I care that much to go through getting 27k honor and 40 AV marks again. If this pair can maybe hit 1700 that’s more than enough for me. Anyway, the point of the mace spec is some RNG CC to help keep your opponents from being completely free to act as well as offering yet more rage generation.

/shifty eyes

Hello! Hope everyone’s doing well.

It has been a couple weeks since I’ve posted anything, and mostly I’d like to apologize for that. I mean, it’s my blog, my time, and I’m not getting paid for this or anything, but I do feel guilty whenever I don’t post anything for a while. I’m still playing WoW for the most part, though I have been spending a bit more time out of game than I have in the past couple months.

Also, however, I’d noted that, as of last month this blog has been around for a year. Or maybe it was the month before. As Ratshag would say, I can’t be bothered with the details. Or keeping track of them. Whatever it is he isn’t doing with them, that’s the same thing that I’m not doing with them. Or something. (He’s better at it.)

Anyway…here’s what I’ve been up to. And I wish I could access my screenshots folder from work so that I could put together some sort of montage thinger. But you’ll have to live with my writing for now!

Firstly, my brother and I are still working at 2v2. We managed to power our warrior/shaman pair up to 1625 two weeks ago, only to get stomped back to 1539 earlier this week. Played a couple more games to get back up to 1594 or so. We were 4-9 before, got back up to 8-10 later.

One note on that: zoning into the arena should automatically equip your pvp trinket. No specific reason I would think this whatsoever, just seems like a good idea. Yep. It most certainly didn’t happen to me. Please quit glaring at me. Ok fine, I had to eat a Blind against a rogue/priest team and Ferrus (the shaman) effectively bit it during that time. I felt pretty noobish. Was the one game we lost.

We did, however, beat a warlock/paladin, separate rogue/priest, hunter/paladin (this one took forever…), and hunter/priest. And I mean, the week before we were beating down mage/rogue and druid/warrior teams pretty easily…and then this last week…I’m not sure if we lost focus or what but we just had the hardest time pulling out wins. Currently we’re trying to push for 1650 rating to pick up some rings. (My current rings are the Vindicator’s ring and the revered-level Violet Signet.) After that and S4 pants I’ll have much less deviation in gear levels and I can just pick whatever upgrades I want as they’ll all be about the same…though I think the best next choice would be going from Merciless legs up to Brutal, since 1550 is not going to be an issue to maintain and is a sizeable upgrade.

Secondly, I’ve been saving up for my second epic flyer finally. This one is for Niemandra, and is so she has a fast mount ready for when she hits 77…or whatever level it is you get to use your flyer again in Northrend. Also going to be leveling in tandem with a warlock who has one, and it just wouldn’t do to be putting along really far behind.

Third, I’ve also being playing some Alliance alts on different servers…have started up another warrior that has been being leveled alongside a paladin on Windrunner. The player of said paladin is the same as the warlock mentioned above. Is just something to kill time…better than doing laps around Shat on Skywall anyway.

So that’s that…nothing exciting, but that’s just the way it’s been going lately.

Arena Team/Personal Rating – Interesting Bug? Exploit?

On the 2v2 I’m playing on with my brother, my mage has a personal rating of 1579 or some such. However, the team rating is down at 1530 because we’re not so good at the shaman/warrior half (his shaman is still lacking a bit in the resilience department, has difficulty keeping up with damage and cc).

Anyway! The bracers (both those and the S4 bracers for all classes) require “a team and personal rating of 1575.” You’d think this would mean that I would not be able to purchase them, right?

Well, the mage still happens to be on a 3v3 team that has a rating of 1575+. When I went to look at the honor and marks required to buy the necklace I noticed that, unlike the boots which require 1700, they were an eligible purchase. (When they’re not an eligible purchase, the item icon is colored over in red, which the bracers in this case were not.)

The mage has not played any games on this team all season, and I want to say she didn’t at all even in the season before. This would seem to be an interesting bug. I currently don’t have the honor around to test whether or not I can buy them, but I’m really not sure I’m ok with it in principle XD

Image from worldofraids.com.

Shaman PvP Healing: 0/20/41

Still thinking about our 2v2 team, I’ve pondered some possible tweaks to Ferrus’ build to make him a bit more survivable while we work on his gear.

Perusing Arena Junkies yesterday, I discovered that the Shaman/Warrior 2v2 matchup was on there. Looking it up, I noticed that the most common build for shamans on this matchup was 0/20/41. Now, most shaman I know of that go Resto do something like 0/5/56. But then again, this was always for PvE.

I pulled up the enhancement tree in my head (sad? maybe) and started putting points in there. Unfortunately I don’t know what sacrifices to the Resto tree you’d have to make, but here’s what I came up with for the enhancement 20:

5/5 Ancestral Knowledge: 5% more mana. It’s either that or Shield Specialization…

2/2 Guardian Totems: Reduces the cooldown on Grounding Totem by 2 secs and increases the amount of damage reduced by Stoneskin Totem by some %. This is obviously mostly for Grounding Totem, a very important totem for shaman in pvp.

Improved Ghost Wolf 3/3?: I don’t remember if this talent is 2 or 3 points. At any rate, filling it makes the ability instant-cast, important for mobility, which is paramount in pvp. If it’s only 2 points, then I suppose we would need one more point in the tree somewhere…I’d say in Improved Lightning Shield. 1% extra melee crit isn’t going to help, and I seem to remember hearing that the talent would be getting buffed to include water shield, which could be handy.

Anticipation 5/5: 5% increased dodge chance. Surivability.

Toughness 5/5: 10% increased armor contribution from items and some % (50?) reduced time on snare debuffs (such as crippling poison or hamstring). More survivability and more mobility.

The above is what I would do, at any rate…

Let’s try some arena again? Maybe?

So it’s been a while, but back in I go.

My brother and I started up another 2v2 team on Sunday, called “i have no idea” (ie, my response when he asked what we should name the team). It’s going to be a tradeoff between two setups:

Haezyl / Revius (Frost Mage/Sub Rogue)

and

Niemandra / Ferrus (MS Warrior/Resto Shaman)

We did 5 games with each to try them out.

Mage/Rogue: Rogues are overpowered in 2v2. It was pretty much Rev soloing the other team while I ran around trying to stay alive and maybe sheep someone from time to time. I need to run more BGs on this character… =\ However, we went 5-1 I think, so that’s all right.

Warrior/Shaman: Our team ran into more popular setups as this pairing (druid+other, mostly). This setup requires a lot of concentration and timing to perform well (read: practice) but I’m excited to work on it even if Rev isn’t XD We went 2-3 as this pair. The last team we faced was a warrior/rogue team…despite how poor the setup really is, I expected it to be more difficult with a double melee team working on a shaman. However, their warrior (despite being in what appeared to be all season 3 gear) was a keyboard turner and the rogue seemed pretty squishy.

Season 4

Aside from what I’ve read here and some dramaz here, I’ve not heard too much uproar about the incoming season 4 changes.

For those who haven’t heard, many of the items (not just the shoulders and weapons) will have rating requirements. I believe that the only excempt items were the gloves and off-hand items, and probably the relics. In addition, I think the belts and boots will have arena rating requirements. Still obtainable through honor, just not without some play in the arena. (I hope they leave the season 3 stuff as available for those players who are unable to get to those ratings.)

Blizzard is for the first time putting a significant barrier on the Arena items. And really, skill is now the biggest barrier in the game preventing players from obtaining the best gear, in my opinion.

However, like many nerfs in the game, any uproar over them is almost always a series of overreactions. I think that this one will be no exception.

Compare the differences between seasons for gear. Upgrading incrementally from one season to another in your arena gear will net you some very minor increases in stats in most cases. The one problem I forsee is that since most people are unable to get Season 3 shoulders or weapons (even after lowering the rating requirements on each), there will be a larger gap between the current average 1500s players and the 1850+ players which will be more difficult to surmount.

However, gear is not the major impediment blocking success in the arena. It is skill; knowing your opponents’ classes, knowing what you need to do, having enough situational awareness to do it…in the end, these things will get you much farther than gear ever will. This has probably been mentioned elsewhere, but if you pit a 1350 team in all Season 4 against a 2100 team in all season 1 (or even the blue sets from the rep vendors), the 2000 team will still win through better tactics, teamwork, etc. That is where the game is.

Largely, the PvE game is the same way. The attunements were not blocking progress so much as the skill level of the players.

Neither system (PvP vs. PvE) should reward failure. Things should not work that way. Gear is an issue, but many items in the game still require no success to obtain, only time, so gearing up to the point that you can compete and get better is do-able.

One thing I have a problem with is correlating a lower arena rating as failure, however. Once the pvp gear became so widely attainable (through honor, then rep vendors, and even badge reward vendors, and now tier tokens can be handed in for them) it stopped being an issue with gear (ie, resilience levels), obviously. But there is no guaranteed formula for success in the arena, and there is a learning curve. (A learning wall, some might say…pretty steep slope on that thing, just like going from the solo leveling game to the endgame groups and raiding from 69-70.) Provided that teams do not enter the arena just to lose on purpose (which happens? I guess? with team buying?) and actually try, the arena reward system is adequate, in my opinion.

To those of us unable to get all of the Season 4 items, just get Season 3 and settle for what Season 4 items you can attain. The difference will not be that great.

Back to 3s

Started up the old 3v3 again, this time healing a pair of rogues.  1500 to 1740 in one day, after 28 games.  The teams that gave us the most trouble were physical dps teams, stuff like warrior/rogue/druid.  Hunters hurt quite a bit too.

But man, watching these two just tear priests apart…that’s something else.

The trouble with opposing physical dps is that I can’t keep up with it in conjunction with LoS and MS/Wound Poison as well as any interrupts I have to deal with (Feral Charge ftl).  If healing the rogues weren’t so difficult (anyone else think rogues seem immune to the effects of resilience sometimes?) I’d join in on beating the druid down, but with the ever-persistent theat of warrior burst damage it’s difficult.

Holy Shock, though…is awesome.  It’s great for healing on the move or when there’s a looming threat of spell interrupt (counterspell especially).  It’s pretty much an instant FoL, esp. with 4-piece Ornamented.

The sudden and awesome success there has made wanting to play 5s difficult.

Four Xs and a Y

This last week in the arena was interesting.  Three of the games I participated in for 5v5 featured the team I was on against a team that had 4 of one class and 1 of another.

The first was 4 hunters and a resto shaman.  I don’t remember exactly, but I don’t think all the hunters were the same spec.  It was kind of hard to employ our 5v5 Strategy as we’re used to saying “cc the <class name>” instead of uisng the character names.  Thankfully it was mop-up work from the get-go.

The next one however was 4 warriors and a holy paladin.  That was rough.  However, they stood no chance against BoP.  Basically we ganged up on a fury warrior until the paladin bubbled out of rogue harrassment and then we just zerged the paladin once the bubble wore off.  However, 4 warriors on our rogue was a bit too much to heal through.  Fortunately, despite the rogue’s death, the team didn’t have enough in the way of control for the shaman and I while doing that, so the paladin was off’d and it was cake from there.

On the other 5v5 I play on with my warrior and mage and some other guildies, we ended up facing a 4 mage/1 resto druid team.  We weren’t able to combat that well enough, as they didn’t let our paladin healer cast spells at all, and the crazy sheeping was too much to keep up with.  We couldn’t get any of them down because they were all able to ice block despite significant headway against their one healer’s HPS.

Just a weird week for team makeup.

On the subject of arenas, Power Word: Cheese (my paladin’s 5v5) broke 1600 this week, landing at 1606.  Our shaman now sports 200+ resilience, and is catching up quickly with the rest of us.  Who knows, maybe we’ll have access to season 3 weapons before the season’s out.

Finally, no offense to my warlock readers out there, but facing your Curse of Tongues all the time makes me bitter.  Watching you guys wander around blinded, and then hit with a repentance, and then with a hammer of justice, unable to do anything for 15+ seconds, fills me with a sense of glee.  <_<

Fye Veev Ives Trad Edgy

Team Makeup:

• Arms Warrior
• Ret Paladin
• Resto Shaman
• Holy Paladin
• Asn Rogue or BM Hunter

Given our mixed success with ZOMGZERGing one target during BL with Windfury, we’ve discovered (with some nudging from the hunter) that we may get better results mixing it up a bit.

Biggest Pitfalls of the team:

• No real good CC. Saps and Traps don’t really cut it in the arena like they do in 5-man instances.
• All physical dps. BoP hurts (though we do have purge), as does any sort of reasonable armor value. In addition, the two BoPs our team has available to use are often at least somewhat detrimental to us, as you cannot use physical abilities while the effect is on you (though, it’s most used on our shaman anyway, so not normally a problem…).
• Our shaman is squishy. He’s still building up his stam/res (and in fact may want to stack them instead of +healing/int, as he’s so often the initial dps target it’s gross).

So, we’ve got to find a way to work around all of those things!

First, the CC issue. The idea of having 2-4 big-hitting dps working on a friendly target is a setback to be a avoided. Working around that: CC. CC puts people out of combat for 8 seconds tops, provided the effect is not dispelled or trinketted out of.

The other issues we don’t really have answers to, just have to push dps harder than they can reasonably work around it.

Our team doesn’t really have any of these types of spells available, the primary ones being Mage Polymorph and Warlock Fear. We have cooldown-based CC effects, however:

• Warrior: Intimidating Shout, Intercept Stun
• Paladins: 2x Hammer of Justice, 1x Repentance
• Rogue: Blind
• Hunter: Traps

And so, our initial plan when we formed the team, was to do the following:

• Get a general idea of team makeup
• Choose a dps target to start on, warrior charges that target and tries to fear if others are nearby to put players out of position and try to force trinket usage
• Commence dps on that target, but blow no other cooldowns until the entire opposing team has become visible
• Choose primary dps target, use Bloodlust/Winfury Totem, dps trinkets, etc to put serious hurt on that target; ideal targets: Shadow/Holy Priests, Marksman Hunters, Elem/Enh Shaman, Rogues, and Druids
• Choose primary CC target, spamming our HoJ/Repentance/Blind/Warstomp/Arcane Torrent on that target; ideal targets: Warlocks, Mages, Holy Paladins, Resto Shaman
• We push dps until we are 5 on 4, and work from there

This seemed to work fairly well. Getting to that point seemed to be reliant on the dps target’s ability to stay alive or how quickly the opposing team’s healer mana was bled. The shaman’s squishiness played heavily on our ability to win however, and keeping him alive was very difficult under heavy pressure. BoP on him was often unable to save the game. It came down to our team killing off one of them before they did the same to us.

We introduced the hunter to the team after some deliberation as to the effectiveness of hunters in the arena, and scheduling woes.

In the first games we did with him, we tried to employ the same strategy: zerg one guy, spam cc on one of theirs. After I think the second game, the hunter let us know he had Aimed Shot, and something we all knew but didn’t really pay attention to cropped up: does not stack with Mortal Strike. How about we put him on another target, spread the damage and healing debuffs a bit?

Right away, it worked remarkably well. Our new strategy was the same as before, only the hunter would choose a third target, a secondary dps target if you will, to attack. This target would be anything, usually a mage, warlock or disc priest, that could work serious harm if left alone and was not a primary cc target.

The objective was not to kill that target, but make it difficult for the other team to deal with. Especially on a dps caster of some kind, keeping them from casting those pesky polymorphs, fears, or mana burns, and keeping the enemy healers a tad more worried than normal.

Meanwhile, the idea remains the same, but now instead of simulating 5v4 (with spammed CCs on the one target) we go for 5v3.5 or so. It’s worked great when it’s worked. (With cleanses, trinkets and bubbles, we’re normally able to avoid a lot of CC on our team…keeping CC up on two paladins at once can’t be an easy task, and we don’t make it one.)

We then tried to extrapolate that onto when we party with the rogue. He takes the hunter’s job, only instead of just dps, he’s stunning and generally being a royal nuisance. He might get kited, but he’s keeping that one person from doing his job to his full potential, which is all we need.

Unfortunately, his computer load times are abhorrent, and we’ve started some games 4v5 because he’s still looking at the loading screen :( We’ve shifted the hunter into more games to remain competitive, but are keeping our rogue around in the hopes his situation improves.