Showing posts with label Gladiator Stance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gladiator Stance. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 3, 2015

6.2 Gladiator Guide ( Updated 7/6/2015 )

6.2 Gladiator Guide


Recent changes to our spec has resulted in some changes to how we should gear, talents we want, and our rotation.This is meant to be a matter of fact, simple, guide for how to play as Glad in 6.2.


Stats


685-715 ilvl
Strength > Bonus Armor/Attack Power > Haste to 13% Buffed > Crit > Multistrike > Mastery > Vers > Haste after 13% buffed.

730 ilvl BIS
Wdps > Strength > AP/BonusArmor > Haste to 13% Buffed > Crit > Multistrike > Vers > Mastery > Haste after 13% Buffed.

Gear


730ilvl Mythic BIS :

head=faceguard_of_iron_wrath,id=124334,bonus_id=567
neck=world_enders_gorget,id=124222,bonus_id=567,enchant=gift_of_critical_strike
shoulders=doomcriers_shoulderplates,id=124343,bonus_id=567
back=void_lords_wizened_cloak,id=124147,bonus_id=567,enchant=gift_of_critical_strike
chest=breastplate_of_iron_wrath,id=124319,bonus_id=567
wrists=wristplate_of_the_wretched,id=124352,bonus_id=567
hands=gauntlets_of_iron_wrath,id=124329,bonus_id=567
waist=annihilans_waistplate,id=124349,bonus_id=567
legs=legplates_of_iron_wrath,id=124340,bonus_id=567
feet=treads_of_the_defiler,id=124322,bonus_id=567
finger1=thorasus_the_stone_heart_of_draenor,id=124634,enchant=gift_of_critical_strike
finger2=mannoroths_calcified_eye,id=124204,bonus_id=567,enchant=gift_of_critical_strike
trinket1=anzus_cursed_plume,id=124241,bonus_id=567
trinket2=empty_drinking_horn,id=124238,bonus_id=567
main_hand=fiendsbreath_warmace,id=124374,bonus_id=567,enchant=mark_of_the_thunderlord
off_hand=fallen_defender_of_argus,id=124355,bonus_id=567

Stat Weights

6.2 Gladiator T17/18 @ 700 ilvl. This build is fine all the way to Mythic HFC gear.
Scale Factors for T17 @ 700 ilvl BIS
Wdps
Str
AP
BonusArmor
Crit
Mult
Mastery
Vers
Haste
Normalized
1.03
1.00
0.96
0.96
0.73
0.62
0.61
0.56
0.49
·         Wdps > Str > AP ~= BonusArmor > Crit > Mult ~> Mastery > Vers > Haste

6.2 Gladiator @ 730 ilvl BIS
Scale Factors for T18 @ 730 ilvl BIS
Wdps
Str
AP
BonusArmor
Crit
Mult
Vers
Mastery
Haste
Normalized
1.04
1.00
0.95
0.95
0.83
0.76
0.73
0.69
0.50
·         Wdps ~= Str > AP ~= BonusArmor > Crit > Mult > Vers > Mastery > Haste

Update 7/1/2015!
Note that the trinket you're wearing greatly affects your stat weights. We should shoot for either Anzu and Drinking Horn. Whereas Worldbreakers Class Trinket favors Mastery more than Versatility.

HFC Talent Guide

On All Fights: Unyielding Strikes

Hellfire Assault : Dragon Roar/Bladestorm/Rude Interruptions
Iron Reaver : Dragon Roar/Avatar
Kormrok - Dragon Roar/Bladestorm
High Council - Dragon Roar/Bloodbath
Gorefiend - Stormbolt/Avatar ( I prefer the stormbolt stuns when you're in the stomach )/Rude Interruptions
Socrethar - Dragon Roar/Avatar/Rude Interruptions
Velhari - Dragon Roar / Bloodbath / Rude Interruptions
Fel Lord Zakuun - Dragon Roar / Bloodbath
Xhul'Thorac - Dragon Roar/Bladestorm/Rude Interruptions
Iskar - Dragon Roar/Bladestorm
Mannoroth - Dragon Roar/Bloodbath/Rude Interruptions
Archimonde - Dragon Roar/Avatar/Rude Interruptions

this is a work in progress!

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Gladstance Representation and Suggestions

Gladiator Stance DPS is under represented in Mythic Blackrock Foundry. This makes me sad, I feel like we've been defending the pass for 2 patches and there's only a few guys left standing, stumbling around being stubborn about a switch to Fury/Arms to do 10-20k more damage. Gladiator is not BAD, but it's not keeping up with AOE damage done by Fury and Arms, and it lacks utility that a lot of raids want, like massive execute phases, or defensive raid cooldowns ( rallying cry ). Sure, on a single target fight you can beat the Arms Warrior ( maybe ) but to me, that's not good enough. Gladiator's aren't getting raid spots in Mythic Guilds.

Constructive feedback has always been a promoted part of the Blizzard communities. I can only name a handful of games that really listen to their player base. Some of my Warrior friends are working on constructive feedback and while I didn't agree with some of their suggestions I thought maybe I would throw my 2 cents on here. I see really good design ideas show up in the forums all the time, and I'm not sure I've ever seen as many "here's how to fix X-spec" than I did with the Beta for WoD. I'm not going to even try to re-design gladiator, but what I believe I am capable of is identifying the problems I see, to lend some weight to a ton of feedback the dev's see every day. Really just pouring water in an ocean of feedback at this point, which is okay. This will probably be a bit therapeutic.

1. Gear Scaling.
Gladiator's do not scale well with Gear. A lot of our damage relies on passive damage increases from Shield Charge or the 4piece bonus for example. The flipside of this is that at lower gear levels we do pretty well. I would prefer doing less damage with less gear, and the reverse.

Suggestions:

  • Move more damage onto the Damaging Abilities themselves. Move it off of Shield Charge.



2. Tank Gear
I like the idea of wearing tank gear and doing damage with it. But this creates situations where we need to compete for the same gear the tank does. Most guilds favor their tanks when it comes to gearing strategies and while you could argue Active Mitigation has made gear a bit less relevant, there just simply isn't a guild that's going to risk wipes during progression because the tanks didn't have enough gear. Gladiators would strongly benefit from being able to compete with Arms/Fury for items.

Suggestions:

  • Lower Bonus Armor's damage benefit. Let us get our damage from the other secondaries so we can go in for Crit/Haste cloaks and whatnot.
  • Allow Gladiators to wield either 1 or 2handed weapons. This means we can go in for weapons and also have the option to switch to Arms/Fury if we preferred it for a fight. Plus, it would be pretty sweet to use a 2handed spear with a shield. 


3. Utility
Mocking Banner is useful in a few situations. Rallying Cry is used every pull. We've been sat because a raid needed another RC for one of the rough damage phases.

Suggestions:

  • A Melee group specific Raid Defensive. Like AMZ or PW:B. Call it Shield Wall, make it a real shield wall. I've love to see a gladiator blow a defensive during Breath on Kromog and see all the melee huddle into a blade barrier or something. It could be like deterrence but for the melee group.
  • Execute. This phase should be all about execute, just like Arms and Fury. I don't want to be sat because the 20% burn is the most important part. Right now it's not much of a damage increase to even execute sub 20%, AFTER the buffs.

That's it. I want the spec to cause less frustration with a raid group by just using normal dps gear/weapons, less reliance on tank equipment, and better scaling and a defensive CD.


- Cyclonus

Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Gladstance Buffs!

Hello Gladiators!

If you are following the latest patch notes, you will see that we got some serious changes. This is going to be really nice for our AOE damage, and especially nice for our scaling. Look at that haste buff! I will need to do the math's to confirm ( and will update the post ), but I believe this to be the case.

The Patch Notes from MMO-C :

  • The Haste stat is now 11.1% more effective. For example, characters at level 100 now receive a 1% increase per 90 Haste (up from 1% per 100 Haste).
  •  Warrior (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
    • General
    • Arms
      • Mastery: Weapons Master’s effects have been increased by 57.1%.
    • Protection
      • Deep Wounds’ damage has been increased by 40%.
      • Devastate’s damage has been increased by 20%.
      • Revenge’s damage has been increased by 40%.
      • Shield Slam’s damage has been increased by 20%.
    • Talents
      • Gladiator Stance (Protection) now increases damage by 5% (down from 20%).

First, I'd like to explain that this was a brilliant design decision by Blizzard. We're seeing a 15% damage nerf to Gladiator Stance, and between 20 and 40% buff to the other abilities here. This means that we're going to scale better with gear ( devastate is based on weapon damage ). What is also important is to note that at the beginning of the tier, when weapons and gear were a lot harder to get, we had that damage passively ( though less of it ) and the original design would have kept us up with our Fury and Arms friends. As I said earlier though, I'm going to be working on the updated simcraft whenever it becomes available to confirm all of this, but I thought i'd get the word out there before I started having to read forum threads saying RIP Gladiator LOL.

As a side note, I was also seeing a ton of threads popping up by Raid Leaders and new Prot Warriors talking about jumping into Challenge Modes and Raids and getting trucked by the bosses. Most often when they posted logs they weren't even keeping shield slam up, so I did a guide on how to analyze your Tank on Warcraftlogs. Here is the guide:
http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/1678334-Protection-Tank-Logs-Guide-amp-Analysis-(-Read-OP-First-)

- Cyc


Friday, December 5, 2014

Highmaul Gladiator : Logscraft #1

Gladiators!


After having been required to tank for my guild this week, suffice to say I'm a bit sad to see everyone else shield charging without me. However, Prot Tanking itself has been a blast and not all is grim. I know I'm always 1 GCD away from Gladstance. Today's topic will be some advice on what talents/configurations are working best for Gladiators in Highmaul Heroic. This will be a series and as of next week I'll start digging into Mythic kills instead :).  What I've done is review the top parsers on Warcraftlogs to look for any tricks/common themes.

Remember that your raid leaders strategy may not allow for these recommendations.

Kargath Bladefist

Reviewing the top Gladiator's on Kargath shows that there are two route to go here. You can either focus Kargath the entire time, or help with adds. We've got Bladestorm and Dragon Roar which is decent, but in this instance I think it's our best bet to forgo the adds for some pretty amazing single target damage. If you wanted to focus adds for your raid, I would recommend you go Arms!

In the top 10 Gladiator parses we're seeing between 23 and 25k DPS. The top parse is also the top damage done to Kargath himself by Intrepid ( Armory ). Dropping a staggering 8.6M Damage on Kargath in a 22man raid.

Unyielding Strikes

If you take a look at the above picture, you can see a great uptime on Unyielding Strikes. 91.36% is a great uptime. Just having US up is half the game though, you need to make sure you don't let it drop early, and take advantage of it at top stacks. Below you can see that Intrepid only ONCE let US drop at 5 stacks. And It looks like he decided to start executing sub 20% and stopped keeping US going. This was actually a DPS Loss, as you can see that he dropped to 23k DPS from a Solid 25k before that.



Lining up CD's. 
One of the most important factors is to look at how he lined up use of his Scabbard ( Sword Technique ) with his other Trinket ( Strength of Steel ), Potion and Bloodbath proc's.

This really shows the power of a right click trinket being used effectively!


Tracking these sorts of Proc's is a UI Issue, and while I plan to do a comprehensive post for gladiator UI soon, I think what you will want to do is either have an addon that automatically shows you when proc's like "Strength of Steel" are active, and even the internal cooldown of that trinket to know when to save a right click trinket like the scabbard. With the RPPM trinkets, is very important to know when the trinket CAN'T proc. Look at the mountains of DPS when all of that lined up.


- Cyc

Wednesday, December 3, 2014

Gladiator's First Night in Highmaul

Gladiators!

Heroic Highmaul has been released, and I am happy to say we're doing extremely well. Just browsing Warcraftlogs you can see that the top parses for Warriors in Heroic Highmaul are almost all Gladiators.

Rankings:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/rankings/6#difficulty=4&metric=dps&class=Warrior

Looking at the first two bosses we did extremely well. The Arms warrior who beat us on Kargath only did 11K DPS to Kargath himself ( with glads bringing in 22k ). Arms is for killing adds, and this is expected.



Kargath




The top ranked Formality has a glad and arms warrior at around 18k dps.
Near the bottom of their raid. Link
Enigma had a Glad doing 22k dps here. Middle of the pack.
Consolium at 21k DPS here. Also middle of the pack.

Kargath is an easy fight with only a few short windows to do aoe burst ( the coliseum adds ) so unless the Glad is going up there, and planning for that burst it's going to fall behind Boomkin, Ret, and of course Arms. Rest assured though, planning for burst that inconsequential is padding ( anyone remember Mythic Immerseus? ).

Butcher

A fight more in our favor would be the Butcher. Basically Patchwerk, and depending on strat, you really shouldn't lose more than a second or two on the boss ( when he knocks us back ).

Hard in the Paint - Jin with a respectable 21k DPS, Ranking 6th in his raid.
Reckless - Rigge in 5th at nearly 23k DPS. Ranking 5th.
Enigma - Tartarus at 22.1k DPS. Ranking 4th.
Adapt - With TWO Gladiators at 3rd and 6th.

So we're not topping the meters, but the difference between us and the top class is within a thousand or two dps. NOT TOO BAD Gladiators.  I can't wait to see how we do in Mythic, once we've had a week to gear up.

One other note is the Hotfixed Trinket Changes make Knight's Badge extremely desirable for Gladiator's now. Far outshining the Skull of War.



- Cyc

Monday, November 24, 2014

Gladiator Warriors : To Execute or Not to Execute

Gladiator's

The latest simcraft results have been posted for the different ilvl groups and we're doing extremely well! Glad is a top parsing spec currently, and I'm sure you've all heard the hype that seems to only build every day since WoD launch. 

Remember though, that Simcraft results are dps in a vaccuum, with 0 movement and no mechanics, or a Patchwerk style fight. They simulate encounters and should always be taken with a grain of salt. Just because a spec might be low on simcraft doesn't mean that the spec is worthless either. I'm sure everyone had those moments in 5.4 when a Boomkin or Arcane mage destroyed the meters, and the fury warriors cried WHAAAT? It can happen, and to be fair, 5.4 was a large minigame of using trinket proc's effectively once you were done gearing.

Execute is viable. But Optional.

What I found the most interesting was that Execute was re-introduced to the gladiator warrior rotation! Sub 20% it is a DPS increase, a small one ( only a few hundred dps ) to execute under a few conditions. So because this change is only a few hundred dps, this is an optional rotation.

BASIC Rotation ( about 200 dps increase seen in current simC doing this )

BB+SC+SS > Revenge > Execute > Devastate

ADVANCED Execute Rotation :

BB+SC+SS > Revenge > Devastate > Execute if SS CD is 1.5-2s remaining

Only use Execute when Shield Slam is about to come off CD, and resetting via Devastate won't speed it up.

Example:
You are sub 20%, Revenge has 5s left, Shield Slam has 2-1.5s left, you're above 60 Rage, and might or might not be inside a Shield Charge. Then you Execute.

Also I've updated the rotation/stat priorities post to include execute and linked it to this post as well.

One other caveat in the use of Execute within your rotation ( sub 20% ) is that it changes the APM required for the spec, so you end up pressing less buttons. I know most of you will want to do the most dps so you'll already be wearing out hands/mice/keyboards spamming heroic strike with unyielding strikes, so this might be a nice change if you're looking to slow it down a little without costing too much dps.

Cyc

Friday, August 22, 2014

Gladiator Stance is a GO

Gladiators!

I am happy to announce that through some crafty keyword trapping on twitter, I managed to get myself a WoD Beta Key. I've probably entered 40 contests so I'm pretty happy with myself. This guy on twitter asked if anyone wanted a key, and I happened to be on twitter at 10am on a Sunday morning. I responded immediately, opened up my code redemption page in case he responded with the key out loud, and he sure did. I had the fasted copy/paste that day.

My experiences on Beta as Gladiator have so far been pretty much amazing. Here is why:

1. Gladiator Stance does good damage. We compete extremely well in single target, and right now with current AOE tuning I can say we're slightly behind. The lack of Ravager at level 100 hurts but there has been mention that current AOE Damage tuning is still being worked on.

2. Gladiator Stance is extremely fun to play. We have next to NO downtime in our rotation because we have a filler ability that doesn't cost us anything ( devastate ). We also have Heroic Strike, so I expect we hit more buttons than a lot of our DPS comrades.

3. Some of our concerns have been addressed! While the Blues haven't done a lot of tweeting about us lately, the biggest bug on the Beta was that Heavy Repercussions wasn't actually giving our shield slams that sweet 50% bonus after a shield charge.

4. Unyielding Strikes is actually good! Sudden Death not so much. Right now Execute hits like a wet noodle (we're missing the execute perk), so you won't want to use Sudden Death. But the damage output between US and Heavy Repercussions is pretty close, so you're able to play an even MORE spammy playstyle if you are missing that burn in your wrist =P.

5. Survivability. With Shield Barrier, you can very much help the healer out a ton. There have been a few boss situations where it was just me, the tank, and the healer left, and I was having to do my damndest to stay alive. Barrier will put a bubble on you to allow your Blood Craze healing to catch up. Between this and the levels of Resolve you can get with your defensives ( shield wall and demo shout ), you can do a very nice amount of healing.

Current Issues that still stick out for Glad on Beta:

- We can't shield charge a Boss that we can't walk up to. Think of Ultraxion. The Shield Charge thankfully doesn't just run you off the cliff haha. It just doesn't work. There is a new Boss in UBRS like this. You fight it on a Bridge.

I actually recorded a stream of the Beta I played last night. I tanked a dungeon with a Blue! And then I went and killed Bashiok in PVP. To be fair, both Bashiok and myself are PVE Allstars, so that probably helped :).


Then I also ran the new UBRS as Gladiator! This one is a pretty good example of some bad play at times.. but I had a ton of fun. The only person I was really competing with on the meters was the Tank!
http://www.twitch.tv/cyclonus_wow/b/560678452

Friday, May 23, 2014

Gladiation Station : Bonus Armor = A top DPS stat

Hello Gladiator's,

Thanks for visiting! I've been keeping up with the latest over twitter and class changes mentioned for Warriors over the past month and we haven't seen a lot of iteration for Gladiator's Resolve changes. I just wanted to do a quick post to highlight some of the current plans for our newest DPS spec.


  • Bonus Armor will be MORE attractive for us than the other stats. I asked Celestalon, "Is bladed armor gear expected to be sub-part to dps stat gear?"
@Cyclonus_WOW No, above par. Bonus Armor will be your most valuable secondary stat as a Gladiator. (ie, same as Defensive Protection)

  • Since it will be more attractive itemization for us,  it's important to note that this stat is going to only be available on a few specific slots:
@SoukieBillard We're not adding Spirit of Bonus Armor to any armor slot equipment, only ring/trinket/cloak/neck.




Finally, this awesome picture is by Miguel Coimbra. This guy is definitely a Gladiator :).  Check out his amazing work here: http://www.miguelcoimbra.com/myblog/folio.php

Tuesday, April 22, 2014

* Spoilers * More Tweets, Armor Blades, New Tier, Final Boss! * Spoilers *


Hello Gladiators!

Redesigns are the talk of the week, and will continue to be for months before release. I should probably warn that the entire Glad Stance idea COULD be cut right out of the game, and our hearts. However, this looks to be an exciting experiment, so I will do my damndest to test the hell out of it come Beta ( if I can get in. ).

First, I'd like to draw attention to one of my favorite shows on the internet, FinalBoss.TV. If you're reading my blog you're probably already interested in Endgame content, and Prot Warriors. This happens to be an awesome talk show where they've interviewed a few of the more vocal Prot Warriors from the MMOC message boards. I had actually rallied for another Prot War Ep as the first one was a much different format of show from what I've come to love in the current episodes. Be sure to go show your support @ the Finalboss site too! Here is the Ep!



* Spoilers * Second, Our new Tier was Datamined. Well We think its our new tier, and it looks AMAZING! Thanks to the MMO Champion Team for this! Don't fret if its not quite fitting your new Tauren Model face right now. I'm sure they'll fix that. * Spoilers *

 

Finally, the Glad Stance Related Changes:

The latest patch notes had a few interesting changes. Riposte and Blood Craze:

Blood Craze is a new passive ability for Protection Warriors.
Blood Craze causes Multistrike auto attacks to trigger a Blood Craze, which regenerates 3% of the Warrior's health over 3 seconds. When this effect is refreshed, the remaining duration is added to the new effect.

Riposte has been redesigned.
Riposte now gives the Warrior Parry equal to their Critical Strike bonus from gear. gives the Warrior +100% to Parry chance until they Parry an attack after getting a critical strike with an Auto Attack.

I'm thinking this means we're going to have a metric ton of parry to keep us nice and survivable for some of those niche situations where we'll drop a Mocking Banner and get beat on for a few seconds ( Protectors of the Endless Sun's Bubble ). The Blood Craze change is huge though! We should be healing a ton as we're going to be loving Multistrike already for the extra damage, and extra passive healing is a nice bonus.
Remember they've changed second wind so you will be less able to kite for 5 seconds and climb back to 35%.

This leads me to the last point, and to me, the most exciting:


This is another trade of defensive stats for offensive stats. And I think this sounds great. Not only do we get to continue to look for gear with tank stats on it, straight up Plate DPS gear will also be useful. This sort of versatility in our gearing strategy also means we're going to need to do a ton of testing :). Remember our SPEC ( protection ) is going to be deciding how our gear rolls. So we should also expect that the Tier Set bonuses for the tank gear are going to be useful to us as well. 

- Cyclonus

Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Blue Tweets: Gladstance is Confirmed Competitive DPS!

Hello Gladiators!


There have been a few informative Blue Tweets on our new DPS spec that I wanted to review.

First, there was definitely some needed clarity on whether we are still intended to be able to tank with the Gladiator's Resolve Talent. Other than the obvious lack of being able to switch out of this stance in Combat, it needed to be said. Matthew is a WowInsider Editor who blogs about Warriors as well.

  1. The way that Gladiator Stance and the talent is worded, it seems like prot warriors who take it will still be able to tank
  2. If you take the Gladiator Stance talent, you can still tank, with 5% extra DR, but none of the offensive benefits.

Second, We wanted to know if Gladiator Stance would give us the ability to compete with dps. That was confirmed as well by Celestalon, that it is not only tuned for DPS, but will remove your ability to tank all that much better than an Arms warrior.

  1. How do you plan to balance glad stance? In the essence that it's a DPS spec? Or a halfway between tank and DPS?
  2. Gladiator Stance will be tuned as a DPS. It will not be able to tank much more than an Arms warrior can (ie, not much).


So, to be clear, Gladiator's Resolve enables Warriors to have a 3rd DPS Spec. It will be tuned for DPS, and we can therefore expect it to compete with Arms and Fury. Thusfar, I can only think of one downside to this if you prefer dps with a shield, and simply that we as Protection are not on the list to get the Draenor Perk for 50% increased Execute damage. We're also losing Recklessness and Therefore the newly baked together Skull Banner benefit.

•Recklessness is now available only to Fury and Arms Warriors.

As with other classes, we wanted to reduce cooldown stacking. Cutting Skull Banner did a ton to help that across the whole game. But for Warriors specifically, we needed to make further changes, including merging some of the personal benefit of Skull Banner back into Recklessness. Also, to make up for Throw being removed, we modified Heroic Throw to be more frequently usable.

I managed to catch Mr Celestalon's attention today on twitter, and he confirmed that regardless of us missing out on the new Reck, and (S)Execute, we will be keeping up!




Here's the Protection Warrior Draenor Perks list from WOWHead:
Vs Fury