First of all, I'd like to welcome both Xintic and Kaikuri to Piercing Howl, the latest additions to the authorship of the blog. Xintic has already introduced himself so no more need be said really; Kaikuri, however, has done more for the warrior community on the official forums than most. He's the author of the excellent "Taunt Survival" Protection guide (mysteriously still lacking a sticky) and is the instigator of the @ Series that many of us enjoy so much. He seems to have dived headling into Fury recently, but I suspect his heart still lies (quite rightly) with protecting his allies with sword and board.
Welcome to both, it's great to have you on board!
The main crux of today's post, however, is another short one - namely that the tier 13 set bonuses for Protection have seen something of an update. Here's the exact text:
"Protection, 2P -- Your Revenge ability now also grants a physical absorption shield equal to 20% of the damage done by Revenge to its primary target."
This, of course, is less a change and more of a clarification. It's ironic actually, as Tekstep from SOD (also on Darksorrow) was asking me last night if I thought the cleave part of Revenge would add to the absorb shield. I posited at the time that I didn't think it would, due to the paladin version being activated by their Judgements, and that assessment seems to have been meted out.
I'll leave a more focussed assessment of the set bonuses to a slightly later date, purely because I don't think they're finalised yet. It remains my firm belief that Revenge has to be in for some kind of buff, probably through its critical strike chance being increased by Sword and Board. At the moment, it's not a part of our main rotation save when we're rage-starved, and that can't be the design intent for such an iconic attack. The potential double-dip on the set bonus would have made Improved Revenge a whole lot more interesting from a mitigation point of view (a TankSpot discussion revolved around this), but that duck is now dead in the water.
Hopefully more warrior changes on the way throughout the week.
Running wild through Azeroth from the perspective of a Protection warrior.
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If these set-bonuses will remain like this to live I bet the incoming Looking for Raid -tool becomes mandatory to many progressing guilds. Raid-wide damage mitigation bonuses are too strong to skip although the LFR-loot itself isn't strong stat-wise.
ReplyDeletePersonally I was going to skip the whole LFR-tool except trying it out at first. I'm not sure if people are glad that they are "forced" to do these sight-seeing runs to help their main-progress.
It's hard to say. I can't shake the feeling that the set bonuses are deliberately weak to ensure normal guild raiders DON'T feel obligated to use the LFR, but I'm purely speculating.
ReplyDeleteAfter all, some of the bonuses are really strong.
All told, it'll probably shake out as "mandatory". The removal of tier tokens from the Valor vendor is probably another unspoken indication of same.