New WotLK tanking style

[Worldie]

Alright, i'm making a similar post to the one on tankspot, to discuss our new "tanking style" and possibly specs.

First of all, everyone guess read the changes regarding our skills and stats, we'll likely not use a caster weapon anymore to gain benefit from our 61 pointer.


- Avenger Shield with now 0.5 cast time looks like fitting into a rotation where we're not manastarved for additional threat.
- Holy Wrath became instant cast, making it extremely powerful for undead/demon aoetanking, and an additional threat tool for any undead/demon boss, giving us more advantage threat-wise.
- Shield Slam v2, aka Shield of the Righteous, new threat tool, making our rotation a little less boring.
- Shield Slam v3, aka Hammer of the Righteous.

The above basically gives us 2 istant threat skills with 6 sec cd, 1 semi-istant with 30 sec cd, adding to holy shield (10 sec cd), consecration (8 sec cd) and Judge/reseal (10-8 sec CD, 9 sec in most builds, 10 likely in wotlk).
First of all, this is giving us a impressive threat burst ability: Just thing about AW -> Avenger Shield -> Shield of righteous -> Hand of righteous -> Judgement of righteousness (-> Exorcism -> Avenging Wrath).... /bloodlust on pull?
Secondary, looks like WotLK for both paladins and warriors will be about priorizing skills, since we got now tons of skills with CD overlapping each other. The (likely) removal of crushing blows will allow us to "drop" holy shield instead of priorizing it however.
The new itemization will also allow us to finally not have less mitigation from warriors and druids due to have to use itemization points on spelldamage and use a spelldamage weapon (rip revolving dildo).


Now about something else.... our talent tree is now even more bloated. I don't really see a way to grab both improved SoR and Deflection without dropping at least one 5 pointer from protection :\

[ulushnar]

The other thing I like is the massive amount of burst threat will let us spool up Seal of Vengeance/Corruption behind it all for greater sustained threat. And SoV/SoCorr will be even more effective with the unified spell/melee hit.

[Worldie]

I quite like they listened and gave horde sov and alliance sob (why different names, i don't know )

The issue is still that if you want to get every useful talent protection, you have max 12 points to spend outside of it.

So, you choose between imp SoR, and Deflection/Imp Judgement...... alto i'm not sure that imp judgement is worth taking with all those overlapping CD

[ulushnar]

I quite like they listened and gave horde sov and alliance sob (why different names, i don't know )

It's cos you're evil and we're (self-)righteous!

[Worldie]

Also there's that new skill, Sacred Shield... more chaos, omg, WotLK will seriously hurt my bran.


Well looks like that generating threat will actually be "skill-dependant" after all, instead of just binding everything to consecration and rolling your face over the keyboard.

[Shallira]

Actually... I think WotLK is going to provide pallies with a very set threat rotation assuming you have 2/2 improved judgement. With holy shield going down to 8 second cooldown, there will be "free" time consistently.

[Hiroko]

With holy shield dropping to a 8s cooldown won't imp judgement become more useful by allowing HS, consecration and judgements to all be on the same refesh time?

With a new ability based off BV I'd hope we can improve BV values over our current levels and so keeping HS up for the 'uncrushable' would provide a fair amount of mitigation - plus Shield of the Templar is going to give HS an extra 15% damage/threat.

[Ferrosis]

...
The new itemization will also allow us to finally not have less mitigation from warriors and druids due to have to use itemization points on spelldamage and use a spelldamage weapon (rip revolving dildo). ...

I just started looking at the Beta stuff, but for large multi-mob tanking it looks as though we will still want a spell damage weapon.

[2ndNin]

Oh yeah, block set ftw

900 block x2 = 1800 *1.9 = 3420 threat every 6s... 560tps on a single target from our shield alone in block gear, oh and its innate threat...

Spell damage is still going to be our bread and butter, and I think the spell damage weapon is actually going to be more important as we are likely to share warrior gear so say:

2000 stamina * 30% + spell damage weapon (+350?)
= 950 spell damage

normal block value of around 450 (+50% from 70?) would give shield slam around 1810 threat per 6s or 300tps.

Looks pretty good really, but the spell damage weapon still plays a big part.

[Flipthebird]

Also there's that new skill, Sacred Shield... more chaos, omg, WotLK will seriously hurt my bran.

looks like it's already hurting...

I like these new talents and stuff...really looking forward to WotLK.

[lesurk]

alto i'm not sure that imp judgement is worth taking with all those overlapping CD

How long is the duration on 'thunderjudge' or w/e it's called. Can you keep it up easily without Imp Judgement?

[Exalt]

I quite like they listened and gave horde sov and alliance sob (why different names, i don't know )

I think I saw somewhere that SoV and SoB have the same spellID. Which means they're the exact same spell, but the code they run, and the icon they use, is different based on your race.

So they likely made an exact copy of that function, changed a couple parameters (ie. the "if character.race ==" bits) and otherwise kept it the same. It's likely just renamed to make it easier for them to maintain... unless the name of the spell is more than just a simple label, and can be used to manipulate/access the function, in which case the name of the spell needs to be unique.

Ie. it's likely due to poor code design when they made the initial SoV/SoB spells and decided to put them into the same code block. Blizz fails at OO.

[Lore]

Just for the sake of looking at GCD overlap, here's some possible threat rotations. Assuming 8 sec judgement, and the boss is undead/demon:

00.0: Holy Shield
01.5: Judge+Reseal
03.0: Consecration
04.5: Shield of the Righteous
06.0: Hammer of the Righteous
07.5: Exorcism (if applicable)
-
09.0: Holy Shield
10.5: Judge+Reseal
12.0: Consecration
13.5: Shield of the Righteous
15.0: Hammer of the Righteous
-
17.0: Holy Shield
18.5: Judge+Reseal
20.0: Consecration
21.5: Shield of the Righteous
23.0: Hammer of the Righteous
24.5: Exorcism (if applicable)
-
26.0: Holy Shield

So if Exorcism is being used, every other rotation all of your 8-second abilities will be pushed back by 1 second. 6-second cooldowns are basically never useable after 6 seconds assuming that Consecration is still a key part of the rotation.

Probably most importantly this means that GCD management is going to become a huge thing for us. Keep in mind we've still got things like Hand of Salvation and Sacred Shield, and using those is going to mean we're not using a threat ability. Doesn't look like cleansing the raid while tanking is going to be very doable.

I'm sure I'm forgetting something else as well.

[Lore]

I quite like they listened and gave horde sov and alliance sob (why different names, i don't know )

I think I saw somewhere that SoV and SoB have the same spellID. Which means they're the exact same spell, but the code they run, and the icon they use, is different based on your race.

So they likely made an exact copy of that function, changed a couple parameters (ie. the "if character.race ==" bits) and otherwise kept it the same. It's likely just renamed to make it easier for them to maintain... unless the name of the spell is more than just a simple label, and can be used to manipulate/access the function, in which case the name of the spell needs to be unique.

Ie. it's likely due to poor code design when they made the initial SoV/SoB spells and decided to put them into the same code block. Blizz fails at OO.

This is incorrect.

http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?spell=53736
http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?spell=31801

SoCorr is 53736, SoV is 31801.

[Lore]

Some other questions that come up:

- Is consecration still part of our main threat rotation? Or is it purely an AOE tanking ability (where we're not likely to be using Shield of Righteousness)? What about Holy Shield?
- Will Hammer of the Righteous be worth using when it's not hitting multiple targets?

I think we're being given a lot more options and control over our threat, and it's pretty awesome.