3.3.3, now with 100% more Revenge
Originally, I had wanted to post a rant about protection warriors this week, and how tanking in ICC-10 has been so far, but yesterday’s patch changed my tune. Instead of ranting I am going back to being bubbly and excited about prot warriors.
I didn’t have time to play yesterday and had a lot of issues with the loading screen boss, but I managed to run VoA with my shaman and then test the warrior changes.
As quick summary, here are the changes that affect protection warriors:
- Revenge: Damage done by this ability (base and scaling) increased by 50%.
- Thunderclap: This ability now counts as a ranged attack, granting it double damage on critical strikes instead of 150% and ranged miss chance, and still cannot be dodged or parried.
- Improved Revenge: This talent can no longer trigger a stun, and instead increases damage done by Revenge by 30/60% and causes Revenge to strike an additional target.
- Vitality: Now boosts Stamina by 3/6/9%, up from 2/4/6%. Strength and expertise benefits have not changed.
Now, I don’t love every change. I am still torn about Improved Revenge. It kicked ass in the one heroic I ran yesterday, but this will do absolutely nothing for prot warrior DPS on bosses. Admittedly, the old Imp Revenge didn’t either as 99% of all bosses were immune to the stun. But it would have been nice to get something like that.
So how does this play in action? I queued up for a random with some guildies last night and we got H Halls of Lightning. First thumbs up: I was finally able to break 40k health unbuffed, sitting at 40.8k now. This is a big deal for me as I had been hovering at 39k for weeks now, well behind the other tanks in our guild. Yay!
I lost aggro to the pug warlock on maybe two pulls, the rest was smooth sailing. Damage was definitely up for me, hitting 3-4k most pulls. Revenge hits like a truck, like a huge truck. I think I giggled a little when my crit tracker displayed the delicious line: New Crit Record! Revenge hits Loken for 10383! Yes, you read that correctly, it broke 10k multiple times on that run. Now imagine this with full raid buffs. Muahahaha. The cleave effect of Revenge was also pretty nice, and will definitely help in heroics and AoE tanking. But it’s not enough to make us stop spamming Cleave and Thunderclap.
Last night I felt pretty awesome tanking. Zipping from group to group happily. I love Charge and Warbringer, it’s the ability I miss most on my paladin. Nothing will ever beat Charge.
I am not sure if I’ll tank or heal in ICC-10 this week, but I think the changes will not really affect my raid tanking DPS much at all. I will still be FAIL on Festergut, a fight that I really hate. When it’s not my turn to tank, I am in Battle Stance, lolrending, applying sunders and waiting for my turn. The buff to Revenge won’t do anything for me in that fight because the mechanics won’t allow Revenge procs. We will still be the weakest class to bring in that fight.
We are still struggling on fights in the Plagueworks, often held back by our DPS output, and so every little point of DPS I can add matters.
TL;DR summary: Revenge hits like a truck, Imp Revenge is a lot of AoE goodness, heroics DPS definitely up, so bring back Revenge to your action bars. How this affects raid DPS remains to be seen, but it’s a good change. Let’s go kick some ass now. 
Warriors are the best tank to bring on festergut!
You are forgetting sunders is the best we have and improved demoralizing shout doesn’t hurt either, I know alot of melee in my 25m would be sad if I didn’t show up.
As far as warrior tank DPS goes on that fight how about you start tanking to get the 80/90% damage buff first?
might help you on dps.
As far as tank spec goes I am toggling 2 prot specs atm (once the EU server gets online)
http://ptr.wowhead.com/?talent#LVZGV00hZVItrx0didczsGo:TrcmMo
Switching Devastate out with Taunt on specific fights on the glyph.
http://ptr.wowhead.com/?talent#LAM00fZhbZVItrx0zidczsGo:fcdmMo
This if for instances and easy bosses!
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Go go Kadomi!
.-= Ratshag´s last blog ..Dead Chicks Have Nice Butts =-.
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Hey Kadomi…fellow Bronzebeard Horde player here
Hopefully you end up tanking in ICC. Revenge is pretty sweet in a raid environment. I was seeing consistent 10k crits last night.
Interesting you switch to battle stance for Festergut. I always go Beserker for the crit chance and spam Devastate and pray for S&B procs. Shockwave crits are always nice too. I always seem to hit around 3.5k dps.
Sorry to see the decline in blogging, I’ve always enjoyed reading up on your adventures.
Cheers,
Squeegiemama
Vexed – Bronzebeard(US)
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Kadomi Reply:
March 24th, 2010 at 2:49 pm
Hey, always happy to see fellow horde BBler. Good to see Vexed still around. I actually didn’t consider Berserker because I erroneously didn’t think you could use Shield Slam in that stance. I will definitely try that.
3.5k sounds pretty nice, the last time I did Festergut I only managed 2.3k. As we’re often in that stage where we’re at 4-6% when he hits the Enrage timer, that’s frustrating.
I have every intention of blogging more, no worries.
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Kranmar Reply:
March 25th, 2010 at 11:50 am
Hey,
The downside of berserker stance is that you can’t use thunderclap, which is a huge downside if you are the only warrior who can provide it. Keeping that up will not only lower incoming damage on the tanks, but the slowing effect also increases damage done by mages with Torment of the Weak in their talents.
So, instead of berserker with its increased chance to crit, I’d suggest you stay in battle stance (10% ArP isn’t too bad either), and equip a slow weapon while you’re devastate/shield slam spamming (for example, the axe from FoS, or, if you’ve been lucky, the one from the gunship battle works really nice).
If you are the first tank, you should be breaking 3.5k dps fairly easily, and even as second tank 3k dps is not too hard. During the first and second inhale periods you still take quite some damage from the environment and I generally have enough rage as off-tank to use heroic strikes besides the devastate/Shield slam “rotation”.
The buff to revenge is very nice, in ICC there’s a couple of encounters where it shines. On Marrowgar, as offtank you will still get it light up from the cleaves. On the gunship as portal tank it’s pretty sweet. My personal dps on Rotface has gone up nicely as well, last night in 10-man I was at 3.25k. The only downside from revenge is that it doesn’t get any bonus crit from anything, so in the entire rotface encounter it crit only once out of 18 hits (5%). All in all I really like the change, though I expect it will get nerfed very quickly. I can imagine that in PvP this is going to be quite overpowered.
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Squeegiemama Reply:
March 25th, 2010 at 12:47 pm
Icy Touch, Judgements of the Just, and Infected Wounds all produce the same effect as TC so you shouldn’t need to worry about applying it when you aren’t tanking.
I guess it comes down to ArP vs Crit.
I never thought about weapon swapping before, I’ll have to try that out this week.
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I am so happy to see you are back to posting, sometimes the best thing you can do is take a short break to recharge.
All in all, the 3.3.3 changes are great for us prot warrriors. Last night I saw my Revenge hit up to 14k while MT in ICC-25 and it averaged out to be just over 11.5k through out the duration of the raid. The Thunderclap and Vitality changes are nice as well for the increased chance of TC landing the the extra survivability gained by Vitality.
For Rotface and Festergut, you can increase your dps and the raid’s dps by casting Shattering Throw once you switch to OT or while Slime Spray is being cast. I try to save it for execute range on Festergut so I can pop Recklessness and get some Execute crits in.
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Glad to see you back Kadomi! While I am primarily a pally tank reading your blogs often make me want to take the mothballs from my warrior tank.
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What issues are you having on Festergut… are you tank healing or raid… are you standing right under the boss or further back?
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Just recently i have started playing WOW again, and i have no idea of what are the new cap level for a Protection Warrior specifically this new Patch 3.3, if you guys can kindly help me out i would gladly appreciate it.
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Kadomi Reply:
April 6th, 2010 at 5:21 pm
If you mean defense cap, nothing has changed. It’s still 535 for heroics and 540 for raid bosses.
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Thanx, do you have an idea of cap for the dodge, parry and block? Is there any chance that all these stats be capped with all the pre raid gear available. By the way, your pre raid shopping list and enchants list is very helpful. I actually think im tanking better because of it.
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Warrior Dodge 88.129021%
Parry 47.003525%
I think this is possible to reach with gemming but could be wrong tbh, then again gemming parry or dodge is by no means viable
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