Posts with tag Defensive-Stance

Every week, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week, we have cause to reflect on something written by our esteemed colleague Archmage Pants: "Tanking is an interesting thing. It makes you hate everyone else in the party."

It comes as no shock to a longtime player that WoW's social culture is riddled with a number of real-life counterparts, and one of the more troublesome is something called the barrier to entry. In real life, this refers to the difficulty of becoming a qualified professional in a given field, and there are some jobs where the barrier to entry is very high indeed.

Take neurosurgery, for example. Ideally, you want to be completely sure of someone's aptitude for the job before you let them take a buzzsaw to your skull. Society relies on the grueling education and residency required to be a neurosurgeon to weed out anyone prone to use of the word, "Oops."

While there's nothing in WoW that comes close to the seriousness of getting a competent surgeon, most players would acknowledge that there are similarities between the RL and in-game version of the "barrier to entry." I'd argue that the comparison is strongest when you're discussing tanks. Tanks, and more importantly, beginner tanks who could potentially ease the tank shortage that causes lengthy queue times for DPS in the Dungeon Finder, have to hurdle a series of problems in the effort to become geared and experienced. Some of these problems are the result of deliberate design choices on Blizzard's part, but the larger share is the consequence of a playerbase that needs tanks but is (ironically) hostile to beginners.

Everyone wants an experienced professional. Nobody wants to be there for the learning process.

And if you're a beginner tank, there's a lot of crap in your way that Blizzard didn't put there.

Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.

Preambles are for suckers. Let's get this party started.

Anarax asked...

"Okay well, I have a bunch of friends and apparently they think City of Heroes is 10x better than WoW. How can I get them to change their minds over to WoW? The main reason I want them to play is because I plan to make a reroll Hardcore Raiding Guild, in June, and it's always good to have a small group of players to start with. The problem is though that one of them tried out WoW and is actually influencing the others, telling them that WoW is "too repetitive, too serious, and full of rage." He is the one telling the others to play CoH."

Do you ever get the feeling that WoW is like some sort of purgatory? That you're trapped in an endless loop of hellish deviations intent on consuming the very soul from which all things good and pure spring forth from? That this game is indeed nothing but the true game which ends all games, and like Sisyphus or John Locke you'll be stuck pushing the boulder up the hill towards a higher level for the rest of your life?

And with, let's throw a little social philosophy in your faces.

Adoisin commented...

"I hate people telling me how to change my spec and how to play. I'm a mage who puts out between 2-3k dps, depending on how bad my lag may be at the time. Sure, I may not have the cookie cutter spec. But it's my game, I am paying for it, and I will play how I want. Want me to change? Fine. Start paying my fee and you can tell me how to play."

Matthew's caught up in the tangle of this thing called RL, so don't be surprised to have a different voice going over the Warrior changes this build. Don't worry, though, it looks as though most of the changes this round are aimed squarely at PvP, so I'm covering for him in the meantime. I'd like to call this build the Brown Pants Edition for PvP Warriors. Are you ready? Get a pair of brown pants, because you'll need them.

Battle Stance - Increases the armor penetration of all your attacks by 10%.
This is a straight up buff, and because Armor Penetration is a better PvP stat now than it is for PvE, this is clearly going to help. Considering armor reduction effects are now percentage-based, this buff is going to help quite a bit. Nothing exciting yet, right? Right. I hope you've got those brown pants on, because the next one is downright insane.

Shattering Throw *New Skill* - Throws your weapon at the enemy causing [ 50% of AP + 12 ] damage (based on attack power), reducing the armor on the target by 20% for 10 sec, and removing any invulnerabilities. 25 Rage, 30 yd range, 1.5 sec cast, 5 min cooldown
I just had to put that in bold letters and underline it. Aren't you glad I told you to wear brown? Warriors are now one of only two classes that can break a Paladin's Divine Shield or a Mage's Ice Block. It's a baseline ability, which means that all Warriors will have access to it. This improves Warrior viability in a Paladin-dominated Arena environment substantially. It's on the same cooldown as the aforementioned invulnerabilities, as well. This means that every time Paladins or Mages put them up, a Warrior can demolish it. Just in case you missed it -- Shattering Throw also deals damage and reduces armor (and it's likely used when in the armor penetrating Battle Stance!). Not only do you remove their precious invulnerabilities, you spank and strip them, too. That's just naughty.

My own Death Knight is not quite up to raid tanking yet; I've got a few more levels to go on that one. However, some players have noticed that DK threat, especially on single targets, seems a bit low - significantly lower than the other three tank classes, to the extent that the tanks were having trouble keeping threat against high DPS.

It turns out that there was a slightly complicated bug involving Frost Presence, the foundation of DK tanking. It went like this:

• Some aspects of Frost Presence don't go away when you die, and some do (this is the bug).
• Part of the threat boost, however, does go away when you die.
• When you res and come back without changing presences, the game doesn't reapply Frost Presence, because it sees that you already have some of the effects of it.
• However, you still don't have all of the threat boost.

So potentially, DKs who die and come back without switching to another presence (Blood or Unholy) and then back to Frost were missing out on 15% of the 45% threat that Frost Presence brings. This has been hotfixed now, so there is no further need to worry about it. If you saw your DK threat go up a lot yesterday, that's probably why.

Ghostcrawler adds that "it is likely" that Defensive Stance was also being affected by this bug, although I haven't seen any prot warriors complaining about their threat since 3.0 hit.