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3.1 through the eyes of a prot warrior
It’s going live today, how exciting. All raiders are probably chomping at their bits to set foot into Ulduar. Casuals will flood the Argent Tournament. Dual-specs will turn out exciting for most everyone, I assume. 3.1 is the biggest patch to date, Blizzard says.
But what’s in it for protection warriors? Let’s have a closer look. I will be listing all the stuff that seems relevant to me as a prot warrior.
- Defensive Stance: Now reduces damage caused by the warrior by 5% (previously 10%). That’s a flat increase in DPS and threat for us, so that’s a pretty awesome change.
- Soloing fury warriors get a buff, as berserker stance makes you take 5% more damage instead of 10%. Everyone in battle stance gets 10% armor penetration now. As there are more changes to armor penetration, it really seems that Blizzard is trying to make this actually useful.
- Last Stand: Cooldown reduced to 3 minutes. This is pretty awesome again, because it means we can fully macro Last Stand+Enraged Regeneration now and really save our butts every 3 minutes. With the Glyph of Last Stand you can push that cooldown to 2 minutes, which will probably a huge lifesaver in progression fights in Ulduar.
- Warbringer: Now also allows Intervene and Intercept to be used in any stance. Can you see us zipping around non-stop? I can. That’s some insane mobility.
- Mobility is the name of the game for Arms warriors as well now: New Talent: Juggernaut: Grants the warrior the ability to Charge while in combat. Critical strike chance of next Slam or Mortal Strike increased by 100% following Charge.
- All flasks now last 1 hour. To compensate, all flask recipes will provide 2 flasks for the same material cost. This is actually great for me as casual raider. We raid for 3 hours per raid day, which means I am no longer wasting away an hour of flask time while fishing.
- Increased the health granted by the Flask of Stoneblood. I still think it’s a terrible flask compared to the TBC tank flask. An avoidance or threat stat along with the health wouldn’t have hurt.
- Added new recipes for epic gear, found rarely on Ulduar bosses. These recipes are unbound and can be traded. Those blacksmithing plans are pretty amazing, item level 226, and as they only drop in Ulduar 25, prices on the AH will be astronomical, once raiding guilds have handed them out to all guild blacksmiths.
- A new recipe has been added to cooking trainers for making Black Jelly, using several Borean Man ‘O War as ingredients. While it looks disgusting, it restores more health and mana than the highest level food. Less time spent eating means more time to do stuff, so I approve. It does prove that fishing and cooking always go together. *flexes her new fishing 450*
- New glyphs for tanks:
- Glyph of Barbaric Insults: Increases threat on Mocking Blow by 100%.
- Glyph of Enraged Regeneration: Your Enraged Regeneration ability heals for an additional 10% of your health over its duration.
- Glyph of Last Stand: Now reduces the cooldown of Last Stand by 60 seconds. The penalty on maximum health gained has been removed.
- Glyph of Shield Wall: Reduces the cooldown on Shield Wall by 3 min, but Shield Wall now only reduces damage taken by 40%.
- Glyph of Shockwave: Reduces the cooldown on Shockwave by 3 seconds.
- Glyph of Spell Reflection: Reduces the cooldown on Spell Reflection by 1 second.
- Glyph of Vigilance: Your Vigilance ability transfers an additional 5% of your target’s threat to you.
The best of the new glyphs all enhance our survival abilities and will certainly be worth a consideration for progression tanks.
- Damage Shield: Fixed a bug which caused this ability to benefit from Recklessness. Aw, dang.
- Improved Revenge: This talent will now increase the damage done by Revenge by the proper amount. I am hoping this means it will do more damage now, not that it did too much in the past. Anyone know?
- Last but not least, the two most amazing and useful changes ever: Loot from clams now stacks correctly! Changed the icon for Succulent Clam Meat so it doesn’t look quite as disgusting. Now 100% more succulent! Thank you Blizzard, clam lovers across the world bow to you. >.>
And now a quick look at my dual specs. I am a dedicated tank, and while DPS possibilities are huge for warriors now, I will be going with two different tank specs. My first spec is going to be my current Deep Wounds build. I love the TPS I can do with this build. As possible second spec I am contemplating this build. It goes down to Commanding Presence in the fury tree, for more health with CS. Also picks up Piercing Howl which should be a boost for add tanks. I’d also pick up Imp Demo Shout and Imp Spell Reflect, and go with the survival glyph, to be optimal for boss fights.
How about you? Now’s the perfect time to share warrior builds!
Just say no to Parry Gems
I am a dedicated fan of jewelcrafting. I wouldn’t want to do the profession, but gem sockets make me happy. Gear with sockets makes me squee. Blacksmith sockets for bracers and gloves are scrumptious. Eternal Belt Buckles are a must.
Back in TBC, gem sockets were boring. Socket bonuses sucked for the most part, so you gemmed stamina gems into every socket you had, at least at my level of raiding.
Nowadays, in WotLK, I usually gem for the socket bonus. There are lovely gems out there, for all three socket colors. You definitely want to use red and blue gems for the meta gem of your hat. Surely you will want to wear one with a meta slot. A while back Durnic posted a great article on tank gems. I totally stand behind it, that’s the gems I am going for, it’s very solid stuff. Haha, solid, gems, get it? 
As I ramble on, I come to my point. What is up with parry gems and why does anyone use them? I have no explanation for it. A gem I keep seeing on tank gear is Glimmering Monarch Topaz. Parry and Defense. Let me tell you the reasons I don’t understand such a gem choice.
- The number one reason is that parry is the weakest of all avoidance stats to gem for. 49.1 parry rating provide 1% parry at level 80. This gem provides you with 8 parry rating. You would need 5 more of those gems for 1% parry. A drop in the bucket, water on a hot stone, it will not make a difference.
- If you think this is a good gem for the defense, it provides exactly the same defense rating that you would get if you used an Enduring Forest Emerald instead. You get the same defense benefit, but your effective health goes up as well.<
- But Kadomi, I want to gem for avoidance, you might say. Then do so. Thick Autumn’s Glow gives you 16 defense rating, almost 4 points of defense skill. Defense rating is by far a superior avoidance stat to parry. 4.9 rating grants 1 defense skill, and 25 defense skill give you 1% dodge/parry/block/miss. I don’t do math (much) but Veneretio excels at it, so if you want avoidance, check out how good defense is.
- Of course the other reason for using this gem might be that you need a red gem, for the socket bonus or for a meta gem. If that’s the case, the parry/def gem is still a poor choice, as Guardian’s Twilight Opal is a much better choice for red sockets. It provides delicious threat and stamina. For those of you who want to see numbers, 32.8 rating grants 1% less dodge/parry for mobs whacking on you. You want to hit the dodge cap at least, as tank (213 expertise rating).
- The last possible argumentation could be that you are gemming because parry offers avoidance plus threat. You don’t get hit and the remaining time on your current swing is reduced by 40% of your weapon speed. Sure, parry has a threat component, but please re-read the part about expertise. Both hit rating and expertise are stronger threat stats than parry by far. This means parry is the weakest avoidance stat to gear for, and also the weakest threat stat.
I think that’s some very good reasons to not use a parry gem. Like ever. You might wonder why Blizzard actually has them in the game, but parry is a lot stronger for other classes. I think. I still don’t understand Death Knight tanking at all, that’s something I’ll have to try sometime, but I think they’re parry-based. Educate me, death knights of the world.
Super Bonus Feature for Engineers
I live with a most charming lady (who has stolen my tank spot and made me her healbot slave) who is incredibly nuts about some aspects of WoW. I have never seen anyone play the AH like she does, and when she decides to level a profession, she does it very efficiently. As in ‘1-375 engineering in one day’. Or now ‘375-448 engineering in one day’.
She’s got it maxed now, and here’s her ultimate guide for engineering 1-450.
Crafting for fun and profit
One of my readers recently said that it’ll be interesting to see how the blacksmithing plans compare to faction rewards. Or to tanking gear in general, I say! This is part 2 of my WotLK pre-raid and pre-heroics gear guides. Part 3 will look at gear from normal level 80 instances and the last part will be me looking, comparing and posting a gear guide similar to my old pre-Kara guide. Please note that Tankspot already has extensive gear guides out there. Me, I just love planning ahead. I always loved the gear planning, so I am having a lot of fun with this.
But today, crafted gear! I am looking at three professions in particular to see what they can do for us: blacksmithing, engineering and jewelcrafting. I am especially curious about blacksmithing, to see if it’s less disappointing than in TBC. I am currently at blacksmithing 400 myself, just got the ability to socket my gloves and bracers, and the state of blacksmithing finds me pretty happy so far!
Head:
What can I say, engineers win the head-piece game again. The goggles are very nice and offer a meta socket plus expertise. Are they good enough to be an engineer just for the goggles? I don’t think so. In the long term blacksmithing just offers more at the moment. But they are fine goggles. The Tempered Saronite gear is insteresting as you get most of this while still in your mid-70s. This provides a great headstart in the defense game.
Neck:
That’s a pretty lovely necklace that jewelcrafters can make if they have purchased the design from Tiffany Cartier. I don’t know about the mats yet, I have no idea if Frozen Orbs will be excessively expensive on servers, but the mats don’t seem that bad at all.
Shoulders:
As with all the Tempered Saronite pieces, I really only have one complaint: that there had been room in the item budget for anything else than defense.
Chest:
Wrist:
Gloves:
Waist:
Legs:
Boots:
Rings:
More Jewelcrafting goodness. The blue ring is probably a lot better for druid tanks, but might serve in a pinch. The steep def cap might necessitate the need for def on both rings though. The epic ring is most certainly very nice.
Trinkets:
A bunny is the stamina trinket this go-around, which makes me giggle like a girl. Oh wait, I am one. It’s a lot of stamina, but the on-use effect makes me blink a bit. I guess you could use it for extra mobility. The sockets are nice of course. All in all not that strong for a profession BoP.
Edit: Aha! Thanks to Veneretio I found that there’s a second trinket that’s more tanking oriented. It definitely makes more sense than the bunny. Love the crab.
Second edit: The biggest stamina trinket out there is BoE and made by engineers. 81 stamina is a lot, and the proc sounds very interesting. That would be a solid bunch of threat, on fights where health > avoidance. Very nice! Thanks for the tip, Krushchev!
Shield:
My favorite blacksmithing addition so far has been the ability to make shields. And not only shields per se, but shields that kick ass stat-wise. Nummy!
Ranged Weapon:
This nice gun will make engineers rich, despite us getting Heroic Throw. The stats are too good on this baby.
Summary:
The ideal tank in my world is an engineer who has close friends that do blacksmithing and jewelcrafting. You can supply all mats for all the great BoE gear that the other two professions can make, and still enjoy your OP goggles until you start raiding. However, blacksmiths got really boosted, and the ability to socket gear is really sweet. The crafted gear will be quickly replaced once you get into heroics and raids, but they will see you ready to tackle those without endless instance runs waiting for specific drops.
I am confused though that there are no specific BoP pieces for weapon- and armorsmiths, did they ditch this? Also, why can we not make at least one tanking weapon? Puzzling.
See also:
An overview of tanking glyphs
Thanks to Aylii I stumbled over my first tanking glyph today: Glyph of Revenge Holy crap, is that awesome, or what? While Revenge might proc less reliably with the Shield Block changes, it still lights up a whole lot. With that Glyph you could use a Revenge macro that would queue up Heroic Strike, for awesome TPS. I am in love. Which means I actually have to look at Inscription and what it can do for us tanks.
You will be able to use three major glyphs and three lesser glyphs. I actually don’t know if you can replace any of your glyphs, we’ll have to wait and see. Now, let’s see which of the glyphs could prove useful for tanks:
Major Glyphs:
- Glyph of Barbaric Insults: Clearly wins for the name. What it does is that it adds a Taunt to Mocking Blow. The current mechanics of MB are that it forces the mob to attack you for six second, without any threat change. Unlike Taunt, which will actually put you on top of the threat list. With the Glyph, Mocking Blow will be able to do both.
- Glyph of Blocking: increases block value by 10% for 10 seconds, after using Shield Slam. Mmmm, block value.
- Glyph of Devastate: applies two stacks of sunder per Devastate. My immediate reaction is to call it weak. To proc S&B you will use a lot of Devastate anyway, so keeping a full stack of Sunders up is no big deal.
Update: My immediate reaction lies in this case, as my commenters have made me see the light. Fast threat on multiple targets possible, plus a fast full stack, for more grinding power when soloing. Hot! - Glyph of Heroic Strike: you gain 10 rage for crits with HS. Not so great for tanking, when you’re limited to 3 glyphs, IMHO.
Update: That’s what happens when I post early in the morning, I don’t think things through. This can be a wonderful source of rage. With the Glyph of Revenge we’ll be using Heroic Strike reliably, and will get rewarded for crits. - Glyph of Intervene: if you Intervene a lot, and I don’t really do, you might get some mileage out of this glyph. You get an extra attack on you instead of the party member you Intervened too. With Warbringer sure to be in my build, I am fine just using that instead of Intervene.
- Glyph of Last Stand: while a reduced cooldown would be nice, the health loss makes it unattractive to me. This is something I use on bosses in a pinch, and only sometimes while soloing, so I shall give that one a pass.
- Glyph of Revenge: as mentioned above, this glyph is just awesome.
- Glyph of Sunder Armor: if this affects the Sunder Armor effect of Devastate, this would be fantastic for building threat on multiple targets. Has anyone tested this?
- Glyph of Taunt: again, depends on how much you really have to taunt in 5-mans, and how often you get resists. I won’t want to use this.
That’s it for the major glyphs. There are a couple more minor glyphs, including Glyph of Thunder Clap, which given the TC changes seems pretty nice to have.
If I had to pick glyphs right now, at least major glyphs, I would go with Revenge, Blocking, and Sunder Armor if the effect applies to Devastate. If it doesn’t, then I would go with Heroic Strike instead.
How about the rest of you, what do you think? As a note, the glyphs are of course still subject to change until Inscription goes live. I will definitely pick that up with one character, using Siha’s wonderful Inscription Guide.
BA Shared Topic: Improved professions
This week’s BA Shared Topic comes up with the question asked by Pixelated Executioner: What do you wish your profession could do?
Work work! Me no orc like dat!
The Armorsmithing specialization is equally problematic. In my DPS gear, I am sporting the Bulwark of Ancient Kings. Out of sheer desperation I wore it as and the lower version as tanking chest for a long time, for the use effect and the nutso amount of stamina on it. But it’s clearly a DPS chest. None of the few armorsmith BoPs does anything for tanks. How can this possibly be?
I actually have no idea what plans Blizzard has for the blacksmithing specializations in WotLK, but I would hope that it’s a better implementation than in TBC. In comparison, look at tailors with their specializations. You can pick your specialization on what kind of caster you are (frost/shadow, fire/arcane, healing). I would not have picked armorsmithing and would have gone swordsmithing if I had known about the lack of tanking gear this would provide me with.
Now that I have done my share of griping, the good stuff. Blacksmithing did provide me with decent gear while leveling. The Fel Armor set was amazingly good, same for the Adamantite set, and as I got all Felsteel plans fairly quickly, that set was also great. Sharpening stones are awesome. I want to continue to see great pieces of gear you can make for making leveling easier. I am totally excited about the addition of shields. But I think the biggest step is that we get to add sockets to gear. That is great. This will be something of use even at max-level in the profession. Everyone will eventually upgrade gear and will want extra sockets. Especially one that’s colorless. It provides so much needed utility.
From the other Shared Topic bloggers I have seen the same request, and I am endorsing it as well: let us repair our own gear. That would be a killer feature for tanking blacksmiths. Blacksmiths should be able to repair mail or plate armor, leatherworkers should be able to repair mail and leather, tailors should be able to repair cloth armor. That’s the ideal for me. Come on, I can make fancy armor, but I can’t hammer the bumps out of my plate pieces? You could even do it as a bonus, like half-price repairs. Everyone knows that us folks have huge repair bills, and every little perk would count.
As last request, something with a fun factor would be great. Tailors will get a flying carpet in WotLK, engineers get tons of stuff that just screams fun, it’d be nice to have something like that too. I am fresh out of ideas what could be fun smithing gadget, but surely there could be something.
So as summary: do something to keep blacksmiths busy once they’re at 450, something with utility; make blacksmithing the killer profession for tanks by adding the ability to repair armor; and some fun stuff wouldn’t hurt.
Blacksmithing news
I am honestly still trying to avoid joining the train of people blogging about warrior changes for WotLK, too many changes abound. Also, it’s hard not to feel discouraged when you read bloggers like Tobold posting about DKs being so totally solo-viable and powerful, speaking of doom and gloom for the warrior class.
But one of the many beta postings at WoW Insider got my attention: the first look at blacksmithing plans for WotLK. Now, my warrior is a blacksmith. As it is, I feel it’s one of the weakest professions. Unless you’re lucky with drops of epic plans, it’s weak. Hitting 375 requires very heavy farming, and lucky drops of the Felsteel plate set. I was lucky, I got all three plans very quickly. But there’s a reason I am my guild’s only maxed blacksmithing. Instance drops will almost always be superior to what you can make. The Ragesteel Shoulders are about the only BS piece I can make that is somewhat in demand, aside from enchanting rods. As for the specialisation, I went for armorsmithing, because I thought powerful armor would rock my world. Now don’t get me wrong, I have the maxed out BoP chestpiece, Bulwark of Ancient Kings, it’s a fantastic piece of gear, and the two versions I had before were great too, but they don’t particularly cater to the prot warrior crowd. I did use them to tank, simply because of the superior armor, stamina and for the Last Stand-like use effect. But it would have been nice to see something for the non-DPS crowd as well.
Ah, where was I? Right, blacksmithing. In the beta. This gallery introduces our kind and gentle readers to a level 75 blacksmithing set, including 8 pieces. You will be able to make a shield. How freaking awesome is that? About damn time! I can’t say anything about farming costs yet, but there’s nothing crazy like frost motes (or whatever the WotLK version of Primals is going to be), just bars of new metals. Itemization immediately strikes me as odd, but I guess it’s a taste of WotLK warrior gear: tons of strength for AP, lots of stamina, and good ol’ defense. No sockets. No hint of agility or any avoidance stat anywhere. No block value. Is it possible that warrior itemization will be really boring? Looks like. Not a fan yet.
It also looks like it that current prot warriors with their gear stacked with stamina and avoidance will have trouble tanking in the new age, where threat scales with attack power. Pimp your offensive gear, it’s going to be an interesting ride.
I am excited about seeing blue crafted gear that I’ll be able to make eventually, I love the ability of making a shield, and it certainly was an interesting sneak peek at the new itemization.
Don't Look Up
Volunteer Work
50 Fish
Looking For Multitudes
