Congnomedrum respec?

faust

faust

New Member
My original intention behind going for a hybrid build was to allow me to do solid dps while having the ability to tank. Well now that I have been 60 for a while, I am seeing that my damage is far from being significant. I looked over the talents in the fury tree that I could delve into if I wanted to respec for dps, but to be honest talents won't come close to bridging the gap between my current dps and that required to be a useful "dps warrior". Perhaps it's equipment, because I have seen videos of warriors doing insane damage, but at this time I think I am doing myself a disservice by staying with the hybrid spec (thought I don't regret having done that for levelling).

So I think I will respec to more protection based, to increase my ability to tank more effectively. I looked over the warrior talents and I think this is the build I am shooting for:

Congnomedrum's new tank build?

I haven't paid to respec yet, because I was hoping to get some feedback from others first. :)

So here's the rationality:

Arms Tree:

5/5 Deflection -- 5% more parry are talents very well spent for a tank.
5/5 Tactical Mastery -- Allows me to stance dance as well as possible, while a warrior could get by with 4/5 or perhaps even 3/5, right now Anger Management is good to get because of the fact that it's bugged and gives a warrior 1rage/tick (2sec).
1/1 Anger Management -- Primarily because it helps me generate more rage for 1 talent point (because of the afore mentioned bug).

2/2 Improved Charge -- These talents were the last I put into my build, getting an extra 6 rage to start off with helps, so I think it's about that best filler talent for my last two talent points that I could find


Fury Tree:

5/5 Cruelty -- 5% crit is very important for a tank, you need it to generate more rage.

Protection Tree:

5/5 Shield Specialization -- 5% more blocks, all blocks give me +1 rage! This is awesome for tanks (I have it now and absolutely love it). I could spend the points in anticipation, but 5 talents for 10 defense just isn't worth it imo.
5/5 Toughness -- 10% more armor, I have it now, and love it!
2/2 Blood Rage -- 50% less damage when I use blood rage. This ought to save around 100-150 or so health when I pop this abiity. This is primarily an investment to get me to last stand, but it's not bad.
1/1 Last Stand -- 30% more health for 20 secs, this seems like a real winner, and after reading the warrior forums it appears to be a real winner, look forward to trying it out.
5/5 Defiance -- +15% more aggro in defensive stance (currently have 4/5 in this, and it makes a big difference). A must for any serious warrior, allows the party to do 15% more damage before I have to worry about loosing aggro.
3/3 Sunder Armor -- -3 rage cost to sunder armor (12 rage vs 15 untalented). This is a 20% reduction in cost for this talent which I end up spamming a lot. This is one of the main talents I see as helping me tank better.
2/2 Improved Taunt -- -2 sec from taunt cooldown (8s vs 10s) Not sure about this one, but I hear on the forums that it's very helpful. We shall see. Any opinions here?
2/2 Improved Shield Bash -- 3s of silence for casters on my shield bash ability. Looks good, but not sure if bosses can be silenced anyway. This might be a waste of talents. Any comments?
1/1 Concussion Blow -- 5 sec stun ability for 15 rage on a 45 sec cooldown. Could be useful, and it's required to get shield slam.
5/5 One Hand Weapon Specialization -- +10% dmg for one handed weapons. This is key imo. It should make up for my lack of having sword specialization, and in some ways is nice because I am no longer married to any specific weapon type. More damage is exactly what I need to help me hold aggro. Since I find myself wielding my sword and board far more often than anything else, this should be an upgrade. Though I will miss my extra sword swings form sword specialization *sniff* *sniff*.
1/1 Shield Slam -- Some decent damage (too bad it doesn't scale w/ equipment), but for me now it's not horrible. It generates a ton of aggro apparently, and has a 50% chance to remove a buff from the target (can't hurt). Doesn't seem really great, imo, since it seems like most bosses don't have buffs anyway). Perhaps I am wrong here?

Anyway there it is, any thoughts/comments?

Thanks!
 
I should also mention that I am thinking of moving the two talents out of improved shield bash and into improved overpower. I actually do stance dance to use overpower when I can (thanks to combat scrolling text which let's me know when I can use it). The only exceptions are when:

1. I am almost dead and worry about taking extra damage outside of defensive stance.
2. I have too much rage, and don't want to loose it (thought this is very rare really, I tend to spend rage as I get it).

I think there is a chance that the 2/2 talents in improved shield bash may actually be a waste. Any thoughts?
 
"Well now that I have been 60 for a while, I am seeing that my damage is far from being significant."
I dont know about this man, according to the boards with 31 in arms like you have, a slow weapon and good gear you should be able to keep up with the best of them. -and not sacrifice much if anything in tanking. (I have 15 in protect, I dono about zero)
my 2 cents
 
Remember, the warrior class is VERY gear dependent. You could have the "perfect build" and still not output the damage because your gear is not on par with the content. It means running many, many instances.

My warrior Grimgear is 100% fury (something about a 100% fury gnome makes me smile =] ), yet I have on occasion tanked with him and have done fine. Granted, the content is lower, but having run the high-level content MANY, MANY times, I can safely say that Grimgear would do fine in 5-man runs as a main tank with all fury. Now if you are planning on being a raid tank, then by all means spec in protection. Otherwise if you are looking for damage, arms/fury is your best bet.
 
Some of it may very well be gear dependent, but it's kind of painful to be grossely out damanged by lvl 52 mages, even when I have my 2H axe out.

With my 2H my normal hits do around 260-340 dmg, my crits around 500-600. The out of the box fireball (rank 11) does 561-715 (that is w/o any +dmg gear). I don't know, either my gear totally totally stinks or warriors just can't dish out the dmg w/o uber gear. My current talent spec is: Current 31/5/15 build. I crit around 15-7% of the time.

My profile is on the bottom, so you can take a look at my gear. I will agree that it's not the best, but perhaps it is the problem.... I don't know.

I will say this though, if my only problem is gear, then warriors take a ton more work that other classes to make even mildly competitive in the dps department; because right now I am a far cry worse off dps wise than a naked mage ;P

I should also mention that I have the best gear I can hope to afford off the AH. So I guess the better stuff is in instances.

Edit: I guess the fundamental problem I see is that I have about 1/2 the damage capability of a naked mage, and I don't think my gear is horrible (perhaps I am mistaken though). Which leads me to believe that at lvl 60 a warrior isn't really much of a dps force until he has gone out and got a lot of the later instance upgrades (and by that I mean MC/AQ/etc....). Please tell me I'm wrong. I don't think that speccing into 31/20 arms/fury or 33 fury/18 arms is going to give me another 2x damage either. :) Have I missed out on a lot of armor/weapons that a fresh level 60 should have?
 
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Some greens there that should get some blue upgrades, certainly getting Blackhand's Breadth (a trinket, +2% to crit) would be a very good upgrade.

A slower, near level 60 2h weapon would be good. Many good ones out there that drop in the 5-10 man instances, or craftable ones like the arcanite reaper.

About mages (and rogues, and some abnormal warlocks). They are natural damage dealers, and their damage will always be very high. Congnomedrum is level 60, but if you look at the gear, you are closer to low 50's gear-wise.

So in the end, you decide what kind of warrior you want to be, and go for gear that suits that talent build.
 
Looking back over my equipment you're right that a lot of it is from lvl 52-56 stuff.

One thing I will say though is that I currently view warriors as being horrible damage dealers (w/o top notch equipment achieved after months of questing) . My rationalle is this:

A level 50 druid (entirely resto specced) just casting vanilla starfire (rank 5 al level 50 spell w/ no special talents or equipment) will do 362-428 dmg/3.5 secs.

A level 50 priest (entirely discipline specced) just casting vanilla smite (rank 7 a level 46 spell w/ no special talents or equipment) will do 287-323 holy dmg/2.5 secs.

Both of these characters would either out damage me or do about the same amount of damage, when factoring in that mortal strike adds another 15-20% additional damage when I am trying to dps, w/ absolutely no equipment on.

I guess my theory is that my equipment should at least make me a better damage dealer than those two theoretical level 50 healers (w/ no offensive oriented talents). But it appears that's not the case. :(

I don't really want to be an uber damage dealer, to be honest though I just didn't expect to be absolutely the worst damage dealer in the game. Perhaps I am wrong here? Please tell me I am looking at this wrong. :)
 
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Mike, you need to decide if you want to do damage, tank, or do a little of both.

If you want to do damage, then you respec to all arms/fury, and get equip with sta/agi/str and +crit/hit/AP. When you start to get end game equip/weapons, you can run with the pack on the dmg meter. And even before, depending on what group you are with:)

If you want to tank, then don't worry at all about your damage, cause that is not what you are there for. A tank soaks up the hits, keeps the aggro, saves the healers mana, and lets the damage dealers burn the mob down. Aim your gear choices for sta/def/+dodge/parry. The report you are looking at on the damage meter is damage taken. This is where you will shine.

If you want to do a little of both, then balance it out and realize that you will do a little damage and take a little damage.

You just have to make a choice which direction you want to go, and then build your character around it.


Tinie/Angie
 
Yeah I want to do both, guess I am just dissappointed that a hybrid spec + lvl 54 (let's say on average) equipped warrior at level 60, can barely (if at all) out damage a pure healer class at level 50. :(

So that's why I am thinking just give up on any dreams of dps for now, and just focus purely on tanking.
 
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I don't want to paint the wrong picture here though. I do really enjoy tanking, so I am perfectly willing to respec... just a bit dissapointing when you expect one thing and get another.

I expected that at lvl 60 a warrior with this spec would be at least passable at dealing damage when he really tries to. Unfortunately that's not the case, and atm it appears that the best this character can do is be a good little tank (trying to improve to be a great little tank both equipment and skill wise).

So that's what leads me back to my original post...
 
One thing you need to remember. Your dps will almost never be that of a mage. Reason being is balance. You can last longer doing less damage than a cloth wearer. That is one of the main reasons locks and mages have such dps. We have to kill fast to live, a warrior doesn't.
 
If ya want to test out your new build in a duel, let me know. I know I'm a cloth wearer, however it still might help.
 
Angus_Og said:
One thing you need to remember. Your dps will almost never be that of a mage. Reason being is balance. You can last longer doing less damage than a cloth wearer. That is one of the main reasons locks and mages have such dps. We have to kill fast to live, a warrior doesn't.
Click to expand...

Yeah I'm fine with that really. Just I figured that my warrior at 60, even with my current gear, should be able to do significantly more damage than a lvl 54 healer with no offensive talents at all.... that's what bums me out.

I guess I look at it this way, just about every class has a means of speccing for dps or for some other role. I figure that speccing to at least get mortal strike should at least put me in the realm somwhere between pure defense and pure offense. But the basic fact is that a naked lvl 54 pure defensive specced healer class could out dps me. That's the disparity that kind of bums me out.

For the sake of argument, let's say someone else is main tank. This hypothetical holy priest lvl 54 (who has nothing but green +int/+spirit gear from the AH) could do similar damage (if not better) casting nothing but smite (rank 8 which does 371-415 holy dmg/2.5 sec), when I am in bezerker stance tyring my best to mortal strike and the like. I guess I don't see a holy priest (w/ no dmg talents) as being a dps machine, especially w/o dmg gear too. :( Recall that my dmg w/ my 2H axe is around 260-340 dmg / 2.8 sec + I get around 15-20% more damage from mortal strike. The little damage meter confirms too that I do around 100-125 dps when in zerker stance trying to do dmg.
 
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Mike I think your off here. this is what Osk said:
"A slower, near level 60 2h weapon would be good. Many good ones out there that drop in the 5-10 man instances, or craftable ones like the arcanite reaper."

The reaper has the exact same stats at the IBS -Iced Barbed Spear. Get the quest outside AV (guy with glowing sword, he does not say his rewards but he gives the IBS) get the quest, enter AV, win one match as Alliance - complete the quest and grab the spear. Then get 20 or so to crit and spam level 60 MS and put up a damage meter. I would be surprised if you were not pleased, most level 60 warriors are very satisfied with their damage output according to their posts...

again my 2 cents. Oh respec polearm. I have never been in a dungeon (besides 2 brd runs) and I have 20 to crit, so its brainless to get that from gear laying around.)

oh dont compare yourself to a caster, how comfortable would you be healing them as an off tank?
 
I'm afraid my little warrior needs a ton more than just a better weapon. The arcanite reaper does about 10dps better than my weapon, and offers another +14 or so dps via attack power. And while the extra +24 dps or so would certainly be a huge upgrade, I would still be far from an acceptable damage dealer at around 125-150 dps. That's still horrible as a damage dealer. Yep need a ton more equipment, though none is forthcoming from the AH.

I think that's part of the problem. While levelling up I could always find equipment upgrades on the AH and keep myself up to date. But around lvls 50-55 the great equipment gets ultra expensive all of a sudden, and you just have to run a ton of instance runs to get the equipment to even hope to keep up with the dps of a holy (non-dmg specced) lvl 54 priest. :(

I knew that warriors were equipment dependent, but it just seems like they have to work a lot harder to keep up with the Jones' post lvl 50/55 or so.
 
its not the dps, is the instant dps given by the fact that MS is an instant attack. So its not comparable that way. The slower the weapon the more it utilizes the fact that MS is instant... I dont have the numbers in front of me the the speed is almost more important than the dps on the weapon. Thats why im saying try it out and put up damage meter...
 
Having read all that, I'd like to point out that the Warrior Gotrekvii (AR) routinely does damage similar or exceeding that of the average mage. ---But remember that he can do it while being beaten on by enemies, meaning his dps is directly related to the healing skill of his backup. If his priest friend goes down, his DPS, and usually hp, follows very swiftly.
 
I think the bottom line is I need a ton of equipment improvements for my little warrior before he can do anything dps wise. While I am a little dissapointed that a warrior basically has to farm instances at 60 to even get close to the base line damage other classes get... that's life. :)

So in the meanwhile, I respecced to protection afterall. My rationale is that since I can't really dps at the moment, but I can tank (I already have around 7k armor, so for things like strat/lbrs/ubrs/scholo I should be in the ball park of ok) I might as well improve my ability to tank by going protection specced. Sure my damage suffers a bit more, but my ability to stack sunder's and the addition of last stand in last nights run was really a boon. :)

BTW: Last night was a ton of fun! Thanks again. I was laughing out loud so much last night... really was a hoot.

Edit: I should also mention I intend to return to a hybrid type build once I have a number of improvements to my gear. :D
 
faust said:
While I am a little dissapointed that a warrior basically has to farm instances at 60 to even get close to the base line damage other classes get... that's life. :)
Click to expand...

Don't look at it from this point of view. I farm instances for better gear every chance I get, eat special foods, drinking potions, etc, on my mage... just to be 14 of 40 in damage thru a run in MC.

Looking over last night's damage meter would also be a bad idea. I've got +232 damage, +2% spell hit, +5% spell crit. Drew was closer to 270 or 280 total spell damage, Ironwolfe has nice gear as well.

Every class has their ups and downs. Often you'll see that ability to *do* damage is offset by lack of ability to *take* damage. There are several mobs in uBRS that can 1-shot me if they crit. That translates into even more trouble in MC, ZG, AQ, etc. While you may do 20 less total dps, when I'm dead & you're still alive, you're doing 120 dps more than I am.

While it's a little harder to do with melee classes, watch what other people do for damage. Drew was killing me in damage for quite a while last night until I watched what he was casting and modified what I was doing. So either I was casting smarter, he backed off his casting, or he completely went afk and took a few coffee breaks and didn't tell anyone :)
 
True that every class has to farm... just kind of stinks that I am going to have to farm for another month, or perhaps two, to get to the base line for other classes, and then continue to farm more to get to the point where most other classes are with standard abilities + green dmg gear off the AH. Then I can continue to farm from there.

Where it bothers me most is in pvp to be honest, not pve. I do ok in a group pvp setting when I can get a couple of cheap executes off, but basically I stink in 1v1 pvp. Every class destroys me right now because I only get a few shots off on the guy (due to kiting and the like), and those few shots only do around a total of 600-800 dmg. Not going to kill many people with that kind of damage output. Try no one.

vs Hunter: Kite city, especially if they are survival specced their snare is better than hamstring

vs mage: Kite city, true they have fewer hit points, but if they play things right I won't get many chances to hit them at all

vs rogue: stun lock city, true I get more chances to hit them here, and overpower is nice, but they typically stun lock the heck out of me.

vs warlocks: seduce/fear kite me to death (thought they pretty much do that to everyone)

vs priests: fear, bubble (oh and I rarely do enough damage to crack the bubble before they can rebubble, assuming I live that long).

vs shamans: kite city, frost shock/earthbind totem, ranged attacks or whirlwind attack me to death.

vs druids: in kitty form they not only out dps me, but can heal as well. In bear form I sometimes out damage them (rarely though), and again they can heal. Moonkins can root and dps me to death.

Since my dps quickly approaches zero outside of melee range, I get killed a lot of times barely having done much damage at all. Even when I had mortal strike, I would only get one additional shot in, so I would get an extra 450-800 dmg, but still no where near enough to kill anything.

Again it's the disparity that's kind of a pain. To be honest, while uber equipped warriors certainly require a nerf, I think the fresh lvl 60 warrior needs an appreciable buff.
 
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