Gladiator Haste Changes and New Stat Weights

Gladiators!

With the recent changes to haste for World of Warcraft, we are now easily hitting the first haste breakpoint with less gear ( 225 instead of 330 ) and should be looking to also get the second. I've updated the original Stat Weights post to include this information as well. Here is what Haste looks like for my 667 Glad Warriors Gear. Because of these changes our stat weights are going to be different. I decided to show the entire graph on Cyclonus. From 0 haste on gear, all the way to 700 in 25 haste increments.

So, from 0 haste, we see the biggest gains between 200 and 225 Haste, and 650 and 675 Haste. Haste is also now a bit more valuable than it used to be, because we get more of it per stat now. From there the two caps are 225 and 675, Accounting for Interface and Network lag, I would recommend 250 and 700 haste for these caps.
Remember, these are raid buffed values!

New Stat Weights

630 ilvl

WDPS	250 Haste	STR	Bonus Arm/AP	700 Haste	Crit	700 Haste+	Multistrike	Versatility	Mastery
1.43	1.2	0.95	.90	.44	.42	.41	.36	.32	.30

665 ilvl

WDPS	250 Haste	STR	Bonus Arm/AP	700 Haste	Crit	700 Haste+	Multistrike	Versatility	Mastery
1.32	1.2	0.95	.90	.60	.53	.49	.48	.41	.38

695 ilvl

WDPS	250 Haste	STR	Bonus Arm/AP	700 Haste	Crit	700 Haste+	Multistrike	Versatility	Mastery
1.26	1.2	0.95	.90	.62	.62	.58	.55	.48	.45

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
    
    • Thunder Clap’s damage has been increased by 40%.
  • 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

Highmaul Gladiator : Logscraft #2

Hello Gladiators!

The world first race is over, and the champions Paragon made a few really interesting comments in their interview on manaflask. Most importantly ( to me ) is that Bear Prime aka Sejta, went Prot Warrior. When asked why Warrior, he said that when a fight has 50% tank time the ideal tank was Prot Warrior, since we're able to have mitigation up whenever we're the active tank. I would call this a win for Prot Warrior, he might not be a Gladiator, but it's nice to see.

Shortly before the release of Mythic Highmaul we saw buffs come in for Fury, and I heard some serious rioting over twitter and the forums. Basically a lot of people had the misconception that Glad wasn't the best choice in Highmaul. And from the numbers it looks like a lot of the Fury and Arms Warriors were able to do some pretty sick damage. Gladiator however, is up there on some of the fights. Lets take a look at how some of those who did have the constitution to stick to Glad ranked up. Right now it's a good time to look at the Mythic rankings on Warcraftlogs as most of these fights are still too hard to start using cheese/stacking strategies that inevitably ruin the rankings. I've taken a look at the Boss DPS for these examples because on >4 Add fights right now we're going to get ruined by Arms Warriors.

BOSS DPS: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/rankings/6#class=Warrior&metric=bossdps

One of the fights still being hidden is Butcher, a single target, patchwerk style, tunnel vision fight and I hope we see a few gladiators way up there. Looking at the current rankings it's telling in that we a competitive with fury and arms on the 1 or 2 Target fights, but we seem to fall out of the top 10 if the boss has more than 2 targets. Personally I've been stuck tanking and since i'm only in Normal/Heroic I've been keeping my APM up with Unyielding strikes and seeing some decent tank damage.

I thought it was interesting to see one of us in second place on Ko'Ragh, so I thought i'd take a deeper look at how it was done. Emperorz from the new Nihilium ranked 2nd for all warriors, and 21st worldwide on Mythic Ko'Ragh.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/CGAVbYFkqJWtBmZP#fight=61&type=damage-done&source=12&target=26

Using Bloodbath, Unyielding Strikes and Dragon Roar, he was definitely built to burn through Ko'ragh single target. He only used his dragon roar and thunder clap a few times to help with adds.
Also he chose to use the Rude Interruption glyph as you have to deal with Mind Controlled teammates on this fight. You can also see from his Heroic Strike damage that he was using the cleave glyph as they were keeping volatile anomalies near the boss until they were low enough to put in a suppression circle and kill. Looking at rage usage, you can also see that he wasn't using the extra rage glyph. Emperorz wasted 360 rage, which is pretty good considering the kind of situations you can get in at 4+ stacks of Unyielding and SS coming off cooldown.



- Cyc

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

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

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

Gladiator Optimization : Stat Priorities and Rotation * Updated Jan 20,2015*

Hello Gladiators!

Now that we are getting closer to the end of Beta, and actual release of the new stance, I'm happy to provide some of the basics that should hopefully be our bread and butter when we ding 100 and equip our shield again. Blizzard has addressed quite a few of the concerns I've had for Gladstance and it is definitely nice to be heard. They've buffed Execute, given PVP Gear Bonus Armor and delivered on a very fun spec to play.

This is just basic information I've collected through use of Simcraft and actual play in Beta, and it's very possible that changes in tuning might skewer these steps. Be warned that I may be editing this post :)

Stat Priority and Weights

With the 6.0.3 Changes. I've updated the scale factors. It still holds true that you need a bit of haste to get that extra GCDs inside Shield Charges. This factors in that you have the 5% haste buff as well. But going forward into Heroic and Mythic gear the values change a bit. I've detailed this below.

The basic stat priority is when gearing up to raid Highmaul :
250 Haste > STR > Bonus Armor > Haste to 700 > Crit > Haste  after 700 > Multistrike > Versatility > Mastery >

Here are the new stat weights:


630 ilvl

WDPS	250 Haste	STR	Bonus Arm/AP	700 Haste	Crit	700 Haste+	Multistrike	Versatility	Mastery
1.43	1.2	0.95	.90	.44	.42	.41	.36	.32	.30

665 ilvl

WDPS	250 Haste	STR	Bonus Arm/AP	700 Haste	Crit	700 Haste+	Multistrike	Versatility	Mastery
1.32	1.2	0.95	.90	.60	.53	.49	.48	.41	.38

695 ilvl

WDPS	250 Haste	STR	Bonus Arm/AP	700 Haste	Crit	700 Haste+	Multistrike	Versatility	Mastery
1.26	1.2	0.95	.90	.62	.62	.58	.55	.48	.45

Importable for Ask Mr Robot(edit depending on ilvl):

If you can Reach 7% Haste:
MainHandDps               1.32
Strength                  1.00
AttackPower               0.94
BonusArmor                0.94
Haste          < 7%    0.60
CriticalStrike            0.53
Haste          7% +    0.49
Multistrike               0.48
Versatility               0.41
Mastery                   0.38



What this means for us when we hit 100 is the following:
1. Use the Draenic Armor Potion, this is because you get a lot more stat then you would with a strength potion.
2. Use Crit enchants on cloak/neck/rings. This is assuming you made that 700 haste breakpoint with your gear.
3. Get Bonus Armor gear on your Neck, Rings, Cloak and Trinkets, otherwise use the stat priority for the rest of your gear.
4. Mark of the Thunderlord is your best bet for DPS. The Mark of Blackrock looks like it could be competitive, but you don't want to be trying to drop to 50% hp to set it off.


Talents

Level 15 : Juggernaut / Double Time / Warbringer

This is definitely just your preference. I like the mobility of Double Time so I usually choose that.

Level 30 : Enraged Regen / Second Wind / Impending Victory

Impending is a DPS loss, Second Wind isn't as powerful as it used to be, and Enraged seems to be the best with my own testing thus far. I'd still go with Second Wind if I was soloing old content or fights where I was low on health for long periods.

Level 45: Heavy Repercussions / Sudden Death / Unyielding Strikes

US is currently going to net you the most dps. You should try out heavy repercussions, sudden death and unyielding strikes to choose here. They greatly affect how the rotation feels and if I had to choose, I would do the following:

HR/SD for PVP where burst is needed.
Otherwise, US with the Cleave Glyph.

Level 60 : Storm Bolt / Shockwave / Dragon Roar

The DPS Difference is enough that I would recommend Dragon Roar. Especially if using Bloodbath below.

Level 75 : Mass Spell Reflection / Safeguard / Vigilance

I've used MSR all through levelling and dungeons, it's been awesome. But in raids I'd go with safeguard. It's hard to top the 20% damage reduction all the time on your tanks/comrades.

Level 90 : Avatar / Bloodbath / Bladestorm

Bloodbath unless you have waves of 3+ adds every minute. Avatar if you overgear the fight so bad you won't see a second CD needed or the raid needed some intense dps burn every 3mins.

Level 100 : GLADIATOR STANCE!!!!!

Rotation

The Glad rotation will primarily be the similar to the one Protection Warriors have been using all through 5.4. However with the addition of shield charge, it is better to pool rage until you are within a Shield Charge.

Unyielding Strikes Rotation:
Devastate if under 6 stacks of US and US is about to Fall Off > Bloodbath + Shield Slam + Shield Charge > Revenge > Dragon Roar > Devastate

Heavy Repercussions Rotation:
Bloodbath + Shield Slam + Shield Charge > Revenge > Dragon Roar > Devastate

Sudden Death Rotation:
SD Execute > Bloodbath + Shield Slam + Shield Charge > Revenge > Dragon Roar > Devastate

Optional Execute Rotation:
Simply Execute (Sub 20%) before Devastate at the end of each rotation. Adding in Execute is optional and I cover reasons for and against in another post HERE.
Example:
Bloodbath + Shield Slam + Shield Charge > Revenge > Dragon Roar > Execute (Sub 20%) Devastate

For All Rotations Use Heroic Strike to prevent capping rage, or when you get Ultimatum Proc's. Unyielding Strikes users will be using Heroic Strike a lot. Be sure to dump your rage during Shield Charge using Heroic Strike.

Note: Remember that you can hit Shield Charge and Slam at the same time, and should. You can delay a Shield Charge for 1 Second to allow for an extra Slam inside the charge, but should NEVER Delay Shield Slam.

The Perfect Pull

Charge
Bloodbath+Berserker Rage+Shield Charge+Shield Slam
Heroic Strike + Revenge
Heroic Strike + Dragon Roar
Heroic Strike + Devastate
Shield Slam


Also one side tidbit I found funny with some other Warriors on Twitter was that because some races perform pretty visual jumps, twirls, flips etc on heroic strikes you might be able to look fairly hilarious playing as glad :)

- Cyc out :)