When will the prot dps buff come?

We'll buff sustained damage in the same patch where we nerf Warbringer and the block conversion to Shield Slam. It probably won't end up being a 2000 dps increase for anyone, but it should help close the gap.

Q u o t e:
Currently, the SBV you gain from Shield Block (skill) is unaffected by the diminishing returns. I'm asking if this will still be the case.

It makes a huge difference. If it remains unaffected, Prot damage is getting nerfed by less than triple digits. If it is affected, it's as much as 400 DPS +.

The diminishing returns are applied pre Shield Block. It's the lesser of the two nerfs you mentioned. We picked a number that would only greatly affect tanks going out of their way to get really big Shield Slam crits, which is typically not the guy tanking Icecrown bosses.

Q u o t e:
Nice, we are getting a pony, now we get to wonder what color it will be.

Honestly like to see a stacking bleed with the sunder armor effect, separate from deep wounds. Tie it in with Puncture, and let it stack, dealing damage off of attack power. This would buff single target damage and aoe damage, cause most warriors tab target, applying a moderate dot at the same time would not hurt.

That has the added effect of buffing all of the warriors leveling as prot, since devastate is so deep in the tree.

As for the downside as far as class balance goes, staggering it with rend so that it ticks every 1.5 seconds would make rogues cry about vanish being broken more than they already do.

I kinda hope it isn't a simple thunderclap buff, the duration is right for me to feel good when I use it right to hit everything, but changing its attack power modifier might give us a third heavy hitting attack for PvP to get taken away from us. Gotta think about the future here.

I don't want to shoot your pony or anything, but this isn't the appropriate time for a major mechanics overhaul. It's going to be a very simple change, like a buff to a core ability.

A few things:

1) We're much more concerned about tank single target dps than we are tank AE dps. Especially in Icecrown, there are virtually no fights where the tank's dps contribution on an AE fight is really going to amount to much. You can make an argument that the single target dps can be relevant on e.g. Festergut (though again, I still don't think there are that many cases where the difference between success and fail are the tank's dps).

2) You may find Devastate boring, but Devastate is a very easy ability to buff because even small tweaks have large effects given how often it is used. Buffing say Shield Slam (or even Def Stance) would make the PvP balance we're trying to solve even worse. You'd have to buff Revenge enormously to see a difference. Any buff to Heroic Strike affects dps warriors in PvE as well who aren't hurting at all. Some of the ideas about e.g. Rend are interesting, but we're pretty sure the last thing the warrior needs is yet another ability to manage while tanking. Long term that might be the kind of thing we consider, but given that we're looking for a safe and easy buff, that's not the kind of thing we want to mess with now. (Consider that even if we did a PTR, who is going to be on there when the competition is new bosses in Icecrown?)

3) There are differences in how tanks generate AE threat, and therefore damage. Warriors are jealous of the DK and especially paladin persistent area-based damage, and the others are jealous of the warrior's burst AE threat on incoming adds. Druids are jealous of anyone with more than one button. :(

So, yes, one way of handling this is to give every tank a burst AE attack like Thunderclap, a sustained AE attack like Consecrate, and a mass taunt like Challenging Shout just for good measure. That's the kind of thing we are really reluctant to do though because it just works against the justification for having 4 tanking classes when they all perform the same way including using the same kind of tools. Now, on the other hand no tank should be horribly gimped in any of those situations, and except for rare exceptions they really aren't. We're mostly talking quality of life issues here. (One such exception: DK offtanks on Yogg had trouble picking up adds and the dps couldn't afford to wait. As long as there aren't a ton of fights like this though, we don't think it's a systemic flaw.)

4) Long-term, the paladin manner of generating AE damage and threat is probably too good, especially given how simple it is. To be honest, we have very mixed feelings on the whole AE tanking game. We brought the druid and warrior more in line with the paladin for fear of recreating the Shattered Halls / Mount Hyjal experience, where other tanks just weren't competitive. What that has led to of course is the AE tank + AE style of damage for almost every pull. You need the tools to be able to tank legitimate adds fights (imagine lots of incoming mobs), but does that mean every pull needs to devolve into that? We'd like to see less AE overall, so buffing everyone's AE tools isn't going to be tops on our agenda. That does however mean that we really can't afford to have a "best AE tank", and while things are more fair there than they were in BC, they aren't fair enough.

Sorry for going off topic here, but these kinds of questions have come up a lot lately, so I figured I'd just share some of our discussions publicly.

Re: Shield Slam, Revenge and Devastate

The damage you're going to do depends a lot on your gear, raid buffs and personal style. But I think these are in the ballpark for an Icecrown 25 guild.

Shield Slam -- hits for maybe 3500.
Revenge -- hits for maybe 3000.
Devastate -- hits for maybe 2000.

Over the course of a raid, Shield Slam and Devastate might do about the same total damage, with Revenge doing 50% of that. (In other words, if we ignore all other abilities, you'd have a pie chart with a 40%, 40%, and 20% slice, though Revenge can be pretty variable.) So at first glance, you might imagine a world in which Devastate eclipses all other abilities. But let's consider them in more detail. You're probably using Shield Slam half as often as you're hitting Devastate because of the cooldown. Are you going to give up that much damage packaged into one GCD? Now Revenge on the other hand might be a contender for another Devastate GCD, but consider the enormous rage bargain that is Revenge, even that doesn't seem like a big concern.

Q u o t e:
Indeed. So many people either don't know (or have forgotten) that the real reason raids didn't AoE trash back in TBC was because the stuff you weren't supposed to AoE would either 3-shot your tank or charge your healers and 1-shot them. AoE threat is irrelevant when over pulling makes your tank drop dead.

Yeah, in some ways this is less frustrating for tanks. It's, perhaps surprisingly, often more acceptable to drop dead than it is to struggle to maintain theat. The risk is that if the components of these multi pulls can hurt a tank then they will absolutely destroy a non tank, so if the tank ever fails to hold one of the adds that someone is going to get insta-gibbed. That scenario can put even more pressure on the tank to hold aggro than in a situation where a rogue can Evasion tank or whatever a loose mob for a few seconds.

Q u o t e:
For as much you have tweaked the threat game over the course of the expansion, that whole First Five Seconds panic portion has not really changed at all. If I did not have to worry about tagging every mob with a high threat move just to keep stray elites from one-shotting the healer, I would not mind if Consecrate was more like Thunderclap or whatever design you like.

This is something we talk a lot about. On the one hand, good healers know not to overdo it in the first few seconds because the tank is unlikely to die anyway. On the other, it's a bit awkward that threat issues are exponentially more dangerous in the first few seconds than in those that follow.

Q u o t e:
It IS our AOE tanking that needs more buttons. We have plenty to do single target.

Agreed. I was actually referring to AE tanking on druids. Though given that the same players generally understand the complexity of the cat rotation, even the single-target druid tanking style might benefit from another button.

Q u o t e:
2.) I disagree that removing the defensive stance penalty would hurt PvP.

Good Prot warriors stay in Defensive much of the time in PvP, because it's just not much of a dps loss for them given how many tools and how much survivability they have. This was our concern when we first chilled out the damage penalty for being in Defensive. There have to be trade-offs for survivability, and some of our PvP balance problems especially with the plate-wearers, have been because there weren't.

Q u o t e:
1. Are you saying that you want to move back to a pre TBC style of instance tanking where there is far more CC used? (I cannot imagine how ugly that will be training DPS to CC again)

It would be nice if there were more of those pulls. BC might have been too extreme the other way where many of the trash pulls felt like boss encounters in terms of risk and planning. But maybe every third pull or something you'd need to say "Okay, we have to pay attention on this one."

Q u o t e:
2. Are you going to add some complexity to our rotation (priority/procs?)

Yes, that would be nice.

Q u o t e:
3. Are you planning to remove 360 style AOE abilities or just weaken them (damage/threat)?

I don't think making the tanking abilities harder to use is the answer. I'm not even sure making them do less threat is the answer. If AE dps wasn't so effective and if tanks were at greater risk of dying to 5 pulls, then we'd end up at the right place anyway.

My point earlier was we aren't looking to make generating AE threat trivial because hopefully it will be less essential and differences in how tanks AE tank won't turn into big problems. Some tank abilities are probably essential, such as a taunt, survivability cooldowns and a way to generate snap aggro on a single target (yes, DKs, we hear you). We hope not every tank ability needs to be shared across all 4 classes, or else the druid just becomes a warrior with different art.

Q u o t e:
I certainly agree. We're asking him to clarify his intentions, because of the high variability of gear. No one's jumping all over him, we're just confused, because those numbers are very similar to what a "typical" progression warrior is doing right now.

The numbers I posted above were intended to be typical of what you might see today (pre any buffs). Your mileage may vary, and it's a good thing they do -- if WoW was that deterministic and predictable, I think a lot of players would lose interest.

Ah. It took me awhile to figure this out. I think what happened is some player got in a tizzy when they saw datamined patch notes that did not contain a Devastate buff. We buffed Devastate from 100% weapon damage to 120% weapon damage in 3.3.2, which is out today.

I suggested that this was a change we were considering. I said it probably wouldn't amount to a 2000 dps increase. (Though I find the 50 dps increase that is getting thrown around this morning to be an intentional lowball.) I was trying to keep player expectations in perspective, but apparently failed in that regard. This is the reason we have to be so very careful about the words we use so that no one imagines ponies that have not been promised.

Q u o t e:
After downloading the patch, the notes i read in the blizzard updater did not contain the buff, even though the ones on the forums did.

Ah. Perhaps I was too quick to blame datamining then. If the error was ours, I apologize.