Feed RSS RSS feed
Upcoming Protection changes
NOTE: These changes were in the works before the recent round of dps discussions. I hope to have some Arms and Fury changes to report soon.

Armored to the Teeth -- Changed to AP, but amount reduced to 1 per 360 armor (to compensate for the loss of Blessings of Kings etc.). We implemented this talent for dps warriors and didn't want it to feel like the ultimate Shield Block Value talent. It's still good for Protection, just not as good. Death Knights will get the same treatment.

EDIT: I meant 2 AP : 360 per talent point. My point was that we understand 1 Str > 2 AP for warriors.

Thunder Clap -- Increase in threat generation. No target limit. Swipe gets the same treatment. With these changes, all 4 tank classes should be able to generate very respectable AE threat. Consecration is still a little higher in threat to account for Thunder Clap's debuff.

Revenge -- Added to Sword and Board as a chance to proc Shield Slam. Increased its damage significantly. We want Revenge to be the button you push first.

Shield Slam -- Increased its flat damage to compensate for the Devastate nerf a few weeks ago. The Revenge change will help dps too, though only when you're tanking. We didn't want to increase the scaling portion of Shield Slam for fear that warrior threat becomes too high at ultimate gear levels, but we might still change it if they fall behind. We're not saying (for now) that Prot must do dps with a shield instead of dual-wielding Devastates, but this should make it more viable.

We're doing some more mitigation and survivability tests now. Our suspicion is that warriors are fine in this department and paladins might fall behind in the area of Shield Block Value at very high gear levels. But we'll see.

[ Post edited by Ghostcrawler ]

Avatar of Ghostcrawler
Ghostcrawler
Re: Upcoming Protection changes

Q u o t e:
You mean 2 AP per 360 armor? Because I'm pretty sure that nerfing the talent to half of its prior effectiveness wasn't intended, even excluding the loss of SBV. (1 STR = 2 AP)


Yes, sorry. I meant we buffed it above and beyond the direct conversion realizing that 1 Strength is more valuable than 2 AP.
Avatar of Ghostcrawler
Ghostcrawler
Re: Upcoming Protection changes

Q u o t e:
Sure would be nice to get posts like these for every class, though... :(
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bingo.


Our highest priority is just to get changes into the game, but we are going to make a better effort to update all classes about upcoming changes.


Q u o t e:
Quick question: Won't Swipe be superior to Consecration, since it doesn't have a CD?


They are pretty different abilities. Consecration ticks after being cast so you can effectively keep it up 100% of the time. While it is expensive, a paladin will most likely have mana at the start of a fight, while a druid will probably not have rage. Also, we did leave the positional part of Swipe in place so druids will have to pay attention to that. Thunder Clap has a cooldown and Death and Decay requires targeting. We don't want every ability to be identical in this case. We just want to make sure the community doesn't say "Hey, we want to do the achievement in heroic Halls o' Stone to keep Brann from taking any damage. LF1M Protadin."

Nothing against Protadins, and we'll make it up for you by letting you actually MT Naxx.
Avatar of Ghostcrawler
Ghostcrawler