Aureus Knights Community - Blogs - SW:ToR Tanking and the Assassin by Kiylie

Theorycrafting Lite - a look at SW:ToR tanking (Part 2)

Kiylie — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 13:29:45 GMT

What We Know About Threat
1) All damage has a threat rating of 1.
2) All healing has a threat rating of 0.5.
3) All abilities listed as "does additional threat" have a threat increase of 0.5.
4) Tank stances increase all threat ratings by 0.5.
5) In order for aggro to change targets from melee range, the aggressors threat pool has to be trumped by a rating of 1.1.
6) In order for aggro to change targets from range, the aggressors threat pool has to be trumped by a rating of 1.3.

What we don't know is how some of these factors work together.
- An example of this is the interaction between 3 and 4 and whether or not the modification is additive, multiplicative before stance modification or multiplicative after stance modification.
- Another thing to consider is the interaction between 5 and 6. According to Gankstah, these numbers result in a very realistic scenario where threat is harder to lose but also harder to reaqcuire. What does this mean for the dps/tank interaction? Tanks will have to work their ass off to reestablish lost aggro and a dps will have to completely dump their rotation for several cooldowns so that they won't threaten to pull aggro again.
- Another unknown is the way that healing threat is distributed and whether or not TOR follows other established MMOs in using a even distribution model. For example (as seen in WoW and Rift), if you healed for 2000 and have 5 targets then 1000 threat (remember healing threat is 50% of the value of the heal) would be split 5 ways among your targets for 200 threat per target.
- Finally, we have no idea if taunts actually have a threat component or not. My guess from experience is that they don't, and merely force your opponent to attack you for 6 seconds.

Baseline DR/Shield/Avoidance Calculations
WARNING: Heavy mathematical calculations ahead! These calculations are copied directly from Gankstah's primer where he mentions the following caveats:
1) Everything is listed for Imperial classes which are direct mirrors of their Republic counterparts - you will have to look up your own talent names to plug in if it really bothers you.
2) Everything here is always subject to change at Bioware's whim.
3) This information is for comparative purposes only as these calculations are only part of what corresponds to any given tanking class.
4) The provided calculations assume level 50 premium armor values. The BAV (base armor value) is representative of a full suit of each armor class.

Modified Armor Value (MAV)
- SI: (BAV Light 1909)*(Stance 2.5) or 1909*2.5 = 4772.5*(Eye of the Storm 20%) or 1.2*4772.5 = 5727
- SW: (BAV Heavy 3601)*(Stance 1.6) or 3601*1.6 = 5761.6
- BH: (BAV Heavy 3601)*(Stance 1.6) or 3601*1.6 = 5761.6*(Rebraced Armor +16%) or 5761.6*1.16 = 6683.5
Note: Armor bonuses are multiplicative exceptions to TOR's mountains of additive calcs. Now, we plug our MAV into our DR calculation (found in the Game Calculations section) to come up with our Base Armor DR (BADR):
Base Armor DR (BADR): SI = 34.65% | SW = 34.78% | BH = 38.22%

Modified Base Armor DR
TOR handles passive skill bonuses additively and NOT multiplicatively so let's plug in current DR passive skills:
- SI: (BADR 34.65%) + (Sith Defiance 2%) = 36.65%
- SW: (BADR 34.78%) + (Stance 6%) = 40.78%
- BH: (BADR 38.22%) + (Stance 5%) + (Ion Shield 2%) + (Power Armor 2%) = 47.22%

Resistance: Elemental/Internal DR
As mentioned earlier, Elemental/Internal DR does NOT factor in Armor. So after subtracting Armor and adding passive Elemental/Internal bonuses we get the following:
- SI: (Sith Defiance 2%) + (Charge Mastery 9%) = 11%
- SW: (Stance 6%) + (Dark Blood 4%) = 10%
- BH: (Stance 5%) + (Ion Shield 2%) + (Power Armor 2%) = 9%

Situational Modifiers
These are situational modifiers from abilities that directly affect DR. I mention these separately because the effects are longer than the CD so they can be applied constantly but are situational as not ALL targets on the board will be under their influence at ALL times.
- SI: (Wither 5%)
- SW: (Sonic Barrier Value Unknown)
- BH: (Combust 4%)

Shield Chance
For the purposes of simplicity we are going to assume a GlanceRating of 0.
- SI: (Shield Base 5%) + (Stance 15%) + (Dark Ward 15%) = 35%
- SW: (Shield Base 5%) + (Stance 15%) + (Shield Specialization 4%) = 24%
- BH: (Premium Shield Base 5%) + (Stance 15%) + (Shield Vents 2% + Empowered Tech 10%) = 32%

Shield Absorption
For purposes of simplicity we are going to assume a AbsorptionRating of 0.
- SI: (Premium Shield Base 20%) + (Hollow 4%) = 24%
- SW: (Premium Shield Base 20%) = 20%
- BH: (Premium Shield Base 20%) + (Ablative Upgrades 6%) = 26%

Avoidance: Ranged Deflection & Melee Parry
For purposes of simplicity we are going to assume a DFR of 0.
- SI: (Base 10%) + (Premonition 2%) + (Lightning Reflexes 4%) = 16% or 21% w/Discharge
- SW: (Base 5%) + (Guard Stance 6%) + (Blade Barricade 6%) = 17% or 22% w/Smash
- BH: (Base 5%) = 5%

Theorycrafting Lite - a look at SW:ToR tanking (Part 1)

Kiylie — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 13:02:18 GMT

I know I said this post would be up sooner than now, but the holidays and the push to 50 have gotten in my way. In no way will I take credit for the majority of the information contained within this post as I am no mathematician - most of this information was found over at www.sithwarrior.com. All of the information pertained herein came from a primer by Gankstah that I will attempt to put into "plain english", but some of it was copied directly to save time (why reword something that's already awesome). If you still have questions by the end of this blog post please comment and I will try to explain (or at the very least point you towards more information).

First, we will need to clear up a few terms and basic mathematical calculations (if you hate math like I do you can skip past that part and just assume that that's how it works):

Tanking Terms
DR = Damage Resistance: This is the % that incoming damage is reduced by. If your DR is 50% and you are hit by a 100 dmg blast you only suffer 50 points of dmg.
DFR = Defense Rating: This is a stat found on tanking armor and directly affects your Parry/Deflection on a 10:1 scale. That is to say, for every 10 points of DFR you gain 1% Parry/Deflection.
Avoidance: Avoidance is the negation of all damage from an individual attack via in game mechanics such as Parrying or Deflection.

Primary Stats
Primary stats are assigned by your core class. Str = SW/JK, Aim = BH/TR, Cunning = IA/SM and Will = SI/JC.
Crit% from Stats: 5+30*(1-(1-(0.01/0.3))^((Stat/Lvl)/2.5))
All Primary Stats yield +0.2 bonus damage per point

Secondary Stats (tanking)
Accuracy = improves your chance to hit your opponent, anything over 100% results in defense penetration
Absorption = increases the amount absorbed by your shield
Shield Chance = increases the chance you will proc a shield to absorb damage
Defense = increases your chance to avoid attacks (i.e. parry and deflect)

Damage Types
There are four damage types in TOR: Kinetic, Energy, Internal and Elemental. There are three important things to note about damage types:
Force powers and Tech powers, unless otherwise listed, are considered Kinetic damage.
Armor increases DR to Kinetic and Energy damage only.
Some skills and abilities increase specific types of damage (i.e. Dark Blood in the Immortal tree).
What does this mean? This means that certain trees will have a DPS advantage vs. tanks. Trees with a high yield of Elemental and Internal damage which bypasses our high armor rating. Examples would be Lethality for Agents (Elemental), Madness for SI's (Internal) and Advanced Prototypes for BH's (combination of both).

Basic Game Calculations
Armor Damage Reduction = AR/AR+(200*Level+800)
Deflection/Parry = (5% Base Chance) + 30*(1-(1-(0.01/0.3))^((DFR/Level)/0.55))
Shield Absorb = (GeneratorBonus) + 50*(1-(1-(0.01/0.5))^((AbsorbRating/Lvl)/0.18))
Shield Chance = (GeneratorBonus) + 50*(1-(1-(0.01/0.5))^((GlanceRating/Lvl)/0.32))
Accuracy = (90% Base Chance) + 30*(1-(1-(0.01/0.3))^((AccuracyRating/Lvl)/0.55))

To Hit
The first thing we need to discuss is the way that the game deals with "To Hit Rolls". TOR uses a 2 roll system to determine whether you are going to defend an attack or get hit/crit. The way this works is an initial roll is done to determine whether or not you defended the hit first based on your defense stat - hit or miss (a miss is parried or deflected). If the roll is positive for a hit, a second roll is done to determine whether or not the attack is a shielded hit, a normal hit or a critical hit. The results come out that shielded hits can never crit and vice versa. An important part of this concept to note is the following quote from Gankstah: "As your Shield Chance and the Crit Chance of the attacker rises the odds of a normal hit landing is reduced until it is pushed off of the table." What's that mean for a tank? It means that, at some point, all hits on us will either be shielded or crits for very high amounts of shield chance and opponent crit chance. At this point I don't know the crit chance of PvE bosses, but I can assume that this is incredibly important for PvP tanks.

The following is credited to Elobi.
Stat Weights:
Remember Endurance and your primary stat comes with all of your gear – so you don’t have to worry too much about those stats in terms of stat weighing.
Generally defense gear/mods have more endurance than dps.

Primary stats:
Endurance > [insert your primary stat here]

Defensive stats:
Shield Rating / Defense Rating > Shield Absorption
- Generally you have a large amount of defense on your gear, don't necessarily stack defense, but don't forget it either!
- Shield Rating doesn't occur as much, meaning you will have to modify your way to the top.
- Shield Rating and Shield Absorption go hand in hand – > stacking Shield Rating like a champ but not having any absorption rating would negate the effectiveness drastically. The same goes the other way around.
- As a rule of thumb go 2 Shield Rating for every 1 Absorption Rating
- Shield Rating is a cheaper stat than defense rating, and defense hits diminishing returns faster. So augmenting/modfying defense and shield stats on a 1:2 basis will decrease the likelyhood of you recieving a full hit, without inflating your stats.

What makes a good tank?

Kiylie — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 15:46:50 GMT

I've encountered this question a lot, and what seems like an easy answer is actually a complicated series of concepts. I will list everything, in no particular order, that I believe makes a good tank. To some this may be common knowledge, but to an aspiring first-time tank it might be enlightening.

1. Gear - a good tank always needs to stay on top of their gear. Unlike dps (or to a lesser extent healers), a tank can't just slide by with mediocre gear. Our entire usefulness is defined by our ability to mitigate damage, and if you are hanging onto outdated items chances are the stats are far below what you should have. This only hurts your ability to tank and makes you take more damage than you might have with better gear.

2. Abilities - always read and understand what all of your abilities do. Don't gloss over something just because the first part of the description didn't seem to relate to tanking. I've noticed a lot of abilities that have secondary benefits such as short-term buffs or debuffs. This is particularly true when it comes to talents. The MOST important thing from this section, though, is to know what cooldowns you possess and when you should use them. This will be a learning process for sure and don't be afraid to experiment.

3. Talents - obviously as a tank you will want to primarily spec within your class's tank tree, but if you haven't noticed yet they tend to litter the tree with secondary dps- or pvp-related talents that may or may not prove useful. Knowing and understanding how these talents effect your abilities is extremely important. Some talents may seem like a "big deal" until you put them into context. A good example of this are the following: 3% increased endurance and 2% decreased damage taken. I call these icing talents. After the bulk of your points are invested into the important talents you will want to take these to give you that slight boost - the icing on the cake so to speak. Always skip the dps-related talents until you've gotten everything tank-related.

4. Situational Awareness - as a tank it's your job to control the fight and to keep your groupmates safe. You need to be able to keep one eye on the mobs and one eye on your party at all times. An easy way to help this is to set your zoom level to a much farther distance - being able to see more of the playing field never hurt anyone. Also always assume your dps will do something stupid like attack the wrong enemy and be prepared. Catching an enemy on its way to your healer before it smashes him in the face is probably a good idea. If your healer is running or concerned for their life, chances are his heals are going to himself and not you. Also realizing when more enemies spawn or when a cc'ed one breaks is incredibly important. Also along this vein is the age old question of: are you standing in the fire? Sure a tank has a ton of hp and can withstand a beating but that doesn't mean you should stress your healer by taking unneeded damage.

5. Preparedness - this encompasses a lot of things that are important such as consumables, strategies and group composition. If possible always try to find out about a fight ahead of time to know what you will be getting into. There are sites scattered across the net that are specifically geared towards boss strategies and tactics. Knowing these ahead of time will allow you to determine if you have what it takes to defeat the encounter.

6. Leadership Qualities - are you a leader type? Most groups tend to look to the tank to run the group. It's our job to set the pace and to control the flow of the fights. You should be comfortable with marking targets (knowing the fight helps here) for kill order and crowd control.

Now, what sets apart the truly amazing tanks from the good tanks is all of the above plus a supreme knowledge of the game and their class. These are the people that you will consider class experts and theorycrafters. They will be the ones that are constantly reading up on any changes to their class or evaluating additions like new armor drops, mods, buffs, etc. Even if you aren't one of the math-heads out there, being able to understand the how and why of something goes a long way. I will go over a good portion of the mechanics of the game in my next post titled 'Theorycraft Lite - a look at SW:ToR tanking'.

So you want to be a slayer...

Kiylie — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 23:41:42 GMT

Disclaimer: Min/maxing ahead.

There has been a hot mess of a debate going on in the Rift warrior forums over here regarding post-patch 1.1 damage specs. I managed to slog through the entirety of that monster of a post and, sadly, come up with very few competitive dps specs. Even after the nerf to BM, it still looks like having a pet is mandatory for pulling the best dps, but 1 or 2 other specs may be close.
(note: BM gains a lot of buffs by itself that other specs only obtain once they join a raid which has a tendency to skew the numbers in favor of BM, but no one knows for sure how much).
I will list the specs in order from highest to lowest sustainable single target damage. Do note, however, that I have not tested these myself since the patch but I plan to do so this weekend. Several people have posted parses in the thread that I linked above if you feel like wading through half a ton of BS and slander to get to them.

29 Champion/24 Beastmaster/13 Paragon
Weapon: 2-hander
Macros:
#show rising waterfall
petcast bite
suppressmacrofailures
cast Rising Waterfall
cast Flesh Rip
cast Slashing Strike
cast Path of the Wind
cast debilitating strike
cast power strike
cast Frenzied Strike
cast Flinching strike

#show tearing slash
suppressmacrofailures
cast Proper Timing
cast Deathblow
cast Tearing Slash
cast Frenzied Strike

*note: use SLI on cooldown with 3 AP manually.

5 Champion/51 Paragon/10 Paladin
Weapon: 2x 1 handers
Macro:
#show Rising Waterfall
cast Path of the Hurricane
cast Rising Waterfall
cast Paired Strike
cast Dual Strike
cast Path of the Wind
cast Flinching Strike (add this only in a setting that doesn't energy-starve you)

#show Strike Like Iron
cast Strike Like Iron
cast Shifting Blades
cast Path of the Tempest

6 Paragon/38 Riftblade/22 Champion
Weapon: 2-hander
Macros:
#show Rift Strike
cast Rift Strike
cast Rising Waterfall
cast frost strike
cast Searing Strike
cast frenzied strike

#show strike like iron
cast strike like iron
cast deathblow
cast earth burst
cast storm burst
cast fiery burst

EDIT: I just got done testing the first two specs, and the BM spec (on a raid dummy) does outperform the Paragon spec by quite a bit, but you need to take into account the lack of buffs for Paragon. However, even with equal buffs it will parse out lower than the BM spec, but in my opinion it's a great spec for someone who hates having to deal with a pet (i.e. me!). The last spec I haven't tried and, to be honest, am quite skeptical about due to the way that our spell damage doesn't scale well.

NOTE 1: Warriors are very weapon dependent. Yes, you heard me right... not gear, just weapon. This is due to the fact that our attack power scales horribly. As such, it's actually better to take leather gear with a ton of dex and crit on it. Go figure. Hopefully they fix this.
NOTE 2: Adding flinching strike to the macros for the first 2 specs are a definite dps increase if you have the energy for it. In other words, you need to be grouped with a bard running Fervor, or a chloromancer running Living Energy. If you have one of those buffs, you are golden.
NOTE 3: The macro setups are just suggestions. You are better off using them as a starting point only and then deciding how you would like to set everything up. Everyone plays differently!

Macros and You!

Kiylie — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 18:51:54 GMT

I've heard a lot of people complain "Oh my god, I have so many abilities that I don't know what to use and when!" Considering that your average spec has approximately 20-30 abilities that can be used (note that I don't say should be used), managing them can become a problem. Luckily for us, Trion included a built-in macro feature much like WoW's to help us out. At the end of the combat macros section I will post a few other useful macros that everyone should check out.

Here are a few of the basic macro commands to get you started (I am currently looking for a list of all of the supported commands):

suppressmacrofailures - no more error messages! Put this in ALL macros.
show - this is what ability will show on your macro button (i.e. what spell icon will be used)
cast - this will tell the macro what ability to cast. You can chain a good number of abilities back to back within a macro, spamming that macro repeatedly will move down the list of abilities from top to bottom. As such, you should put long cooldown or reactive abilities at the top and lesser important abilities at the bottom.
@ - this is a modifier that allows you to cast your abilities AT something of your choosing.
---ex: @focus, @targetoftarget, @mouseover

What I like to do is group all of my AP builders and reactives into one macro that I spam to build towards my finishers. Lately I have kept my finishers separate so that I can test a few things out, but you can macro these as well (and for certain specs it will probably be a dps increase as the finisher macro below will show).

Example of finished macros
I'm going to just use a few examples from my own arsenal as a dps warrior. I will annotate what the abilities do in italics after the macro sequence to give you an idea of why they are in the order that they are.

AP Generator
#show rising waterfall
suppressmacrofailures
cast Rising Waterfall follow-up, can only be used after an AP-generating ability
cast Flesh Rip reactive based on pet crit
cast Slashing Strike 10s bleed, 6s cooldown
cast Backhanded Blow 1 AP with bonuses if bleeds are up
cast Path of the Wind 1 AP procs crit chance to follow-ups (from talents) - also ranged, 4s CD
cast Fierce Strike 1 AP buffs pet damage on target
cast Frenzied Strike off-gcd following a crit
cast Inescapable Fury off-gcd following a dodge or parry

Finisher
#show Deathblow
suppressmacrofailures
cast Strike Like Iron 12s buff to all attacks that follow, double for follow-up attacks
cast Deathblow execute style ability, only usable <30% health
cast Tearing Slash damage + bleed

Situational Macro (this is from my tank spec for twin manticores)
cast @focus Spark taunt
cast @focus Discharge air damage based on # of pacts
cast @focus Catalyze ignites their mana, converts mana to fire damage over time, buffs the warrior to take 5% less damage

I don't recommend macroing ALL of your abilities since some are best used at specific times and not every time they are available; however, using macros will save you a lot of space on your ability bars and allow you to keybind more abilities within easy reach. Just remember, when using macros, to put the important abilities at the top starting with fleeting abilities (like reactives) and long cooldown abilities. If you put a spammable ability at the top, the macro will never make it past that point. As you spam the button it pretty much checks for the first available working command and uses that one.

Now for a macro set that every person should learn to use: role and equipment swaps!

The first thing you need to do is set up your equipment sets: equip any given set and assign it a number by typing /saveequip #. If you choose 1 (and as far as I know this works for any number), your equipment will be saved to slot 1. Do this for all equipment sets you may have. For example, I have a PvP set, a PvE dps set and a PvE tank set saved to 1, 2, and 3.
**Don't forget to re-save your equipment every time you gain an upgrade!

Setting up your macro is now easy:
role #
loadequip #

This will change your role to the number indicated (they go in order from left to right in your talents tab) and load the equipment number specified.

On my mage, I used mouseover macros for my 2 healing spells - this is incredibly effective in a fast-paced environment such as PvP or raiding where you might not have the time to target someone specifically - just mouse over their nameplate either in the environment or in the party/raid frame.
example:
show Bloom
cast @mouseover Bloom

Hopefully this has been informative, enjoy!

Tanking Roulette - trial and speculation

Kiylie — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 12:48:28 GMT

So, I was having problems last night on the double manticore fight in expert King's Breach due to the fact that I have no dots or ranged attacks to keep the caster (Mondrach) from killing my healers. I even tried a macro that targeted him, taunted, then targeted back to Autoch.... to no avail. Needless to say, I spoke with Xerathe (one of our seasoned warrior tanks) and he suggested a new spec to me (albeit I will tweak it a little bit for this discussion):

Spec

Okay, I'll try to break it down on why I took what I did and how it might be useful to you. This spec, ironically, is amazing for both physical AND magical mitigation. I never quite realized its potential until it was pointed out to me last night, but just from some simple tests I can assure you that this spec is pretty beast as far as mitigation goes.

Paladin
I've gone over most of these talents before in my Warlord tank thread, but for those that haven't read it, I'll do a quick recap:
Stalwart Shield: Block +10% **
Defender: Armor +10% **
Aggressive Guardian: Threat +20%
Hardened Will: 9% less spell damage taken **
Martial Shield: chance on block to gain AP
Unyielding Defense: -20% damage taken when blocked **
Reverent Protection: group Absorb Shield finisher, 3min CD
Shield of the Chosen: +5% block and +armor **

Yes, I left out quite a few talents from my "basic" tank spec, but here's why: with the proposed changes for 1.1, we lose a lot of healing back from Balance of Power and Tip the Balance. While you can argue that any healing is less that the healer has to do, I can also argue that the healing from that and Karmic Resolution are so minute as to not save you in a dungeon or raid setting. If you are making a tank spec to solo content then this might not be the spec for you.

Void Knight
- Note that you gain a new resource with this spec called pacts. They are EXTREMELY important and you should strive to keep them maxxed at all times (we will get into that in a moment)
Insatiable Hunger + Blood from a Stone: ensures that no matter what you are hitting you have a chance to gain a pact
Rift Tap: Essentially a spell reflect, lasts 30 seconds on an 8 second CD
Ravenous Strength: +5% strength per pact **
Ravenous Defense: +5% armor per pact **
Spell Sunder: offensive purge
Spellbreaker: defensive cleanse
Quality Care: 30% chance when healed to gain a pact
Devourer: Increases the damage reduction of our Void buff by an additional 15% **

Warlord
Powerful Countenance: +10% armor **
Defensive Experience: +5% block **

Okay, so now you are probably giving me the wonky eye and asking me how the hell does this spec mitigate what I say it does. I'd like to draw your attention back to the above synopsis, specifically to the talents that have the double asterisk (**) next to them. Before factoring in pacts, the spec gains +20% armor, +20% block, and +29% magic mitigation (note that I am unsure if these are additive or multiplicative, so let's just use these numbers roughly).

Now, here comes the bread and butter of the spec. We can gain up to 10 pacts at any given time. Take a look at ravenous strength and defense! That's +50% to both armor and strength when we are at full pacts. Let me remind you that strength gives us block, parry and attack power. This is where you say: holy shit! That was about my reaction last night. By using Warlord's Empowering Strike (increases my armor by 505) and gaining 10 pacts I was able to get my armor above 12k and my block was upwards of 55% when I had Aggressive Block up. Also note, that these gains are percentile based so they will scale with gear - the better the gear, the better these talents become.

Factor all of that in with the added perks that were chosen from each spec and you get a really well-rounded tanking spec. You get a group bubble, offensive purge, defensive cleanse, and a spell reflect all just from talents.

I haven't had a chance to actually apply this build since it was midnight last night when Xerathe and I talked about it, but I plan on doing some monkeying around with it this week. If anyone has any suggestions or comments regarding the build please post them!

Warrior Alpha Changes and You

Kiylie — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 17:43:13 GMT

Some of these changes I don't understand completely but I will attempt to go over each of them and what kind of impact it might have on our play styles (it can be fairly agreed upon that the majority of these nerfs were intended for PvP purposes with a few exceptions).

BEASTMASTER
* Flesh Rip: Will now properly show up in the reactive ability UI when your pet critically hits. Fixed an issue where this was gaining weapon damage to each tick of the bleed effect. Base damage reduced.
* Backhanded Blow: Now correctly triggers global cooldown. Fixed a bug causing Rank 3 to do 20% more damage than intended. Base damage reduced. Corrected Power cost on ranks 2 through 8 to cost the proper 25 Power.
* Slashing Strike: Fixed a bug where this ability was doing the damage of a single target ability. The damage has been reduced to match other cleave-style abilities.
* Fight as One: The benefits gained from Fight as One have been reduced to 5-15% for Hit, Critical Hit, and Damage. This ability has been taken off of global cooldown.
* Diversion Strike: Increases Critical Hit chance of the Beastmaster and their pet by 5% instead of 10%. Damage lowered.
* Tenacious Wounds: Now increases bleed damage by 2-4% instead of 3-6%.
* Feral Sweep: Resolved a bug where this was dealing extra damage on each tick of the Bleed effect. Base damage lowered.
* Tearing Slash, Fierce Strike: Damage lowered.

These changes were mainly to combat the fact that Beastmaster/Champ/Paragon builds were far outperforming other dps specs in end-game PvE (by a margin of several hundred dps). From what I can tell, these nerfs should bring this spec down to the level of other dps specs with no other real negative impact other than you can't guarantee top dps anymore. The addition of Flesh Rip to the reactives bar is a huge buff for us - currently the best you can do is place it high up in a spammable macro and hope you catch it in time, so if you don't use macros you are losing out on a good portion of dps from your pet.

CHAMPION
* Debilitating Strike: Made the tooltip for the debuff from this ability more clear.
* Titan's Strike: Damage has been lowered and the stun has been reduced to 1-3 seconds, down from 1-5 seconds.
* Mark of Extermination and Mark of Inevitability: Will now cause the target to attack.

The only real thing to note here is the nerf to Titan's Strike. As a PvP champion this was our biggest contributor to our burst damage. The main reason for the nerf was the OP combination of Champion/Paragon specs where you could stack several long duration buffs right before charging in and stun-locking some hapless person down for the count. Does this completely break Champion PvP? Probably not.... what it will do is make it so that the monkeys with good macros and crap gear are no longer competitive with the skilled/geared players. It still makes me sad, though. The stun-lock method was the only way I killed some Cleric specs.

PALADIN
* Touch of Life: Now continues cooldown timer on logout.
* Balance of Power: Now deals 25-75% of weapon damage.
* Aegis of Salvation: Ranks 1 and 2 have their cooldowns changed to 1.5 seconds to match with other buffs.
* Reverent Protection: Now only affects up to 5 targets, and range increased from 10 meters to 35 meters.

The first one on this list is a clear buff. Our Touch of Life has a 10 minute cooldown, and currently the cooldown timer stops when logged out (meaning you come back online 24 hours later and it's still got 8 minutes left before you can use it). The Reverent Protection change is a mixed blessing. The range increase allows us to hit our ranged friends in groups, but the limit to 5 players makes it not nearly as powerful as it used to be. And now the real kicker - Balance of Power. The current tooltip says that at 3/3 blocked attacks deal 160% of weapon damage back to the attacker.... where this really hurts us, as tanks, is its affect on the follow-up talent Tip the Balance. At 2/2 it currently heals you for 100% of the damage that Balance of Power did. This seriously nerfs our self-healing capabilities and could have a major impact on PvE tanking.

PARAGON
* Strike Like Iron: Ability is no longer on the global cooldown. Increased from a 10-30% damage buff up to a 16-48% damage buff, with the value doubled for follow-up attacks.
* Death Touch: Due to the Strike Like Iron changes, damage of Death Touch has been lowered.
* Force of Will: Due to the Strike Like Iron changes, damage bonus to follow-up attacks from Force of Will has been reduced from 20 per point to 10 per point.
* Path of the Wind, Path of the Raptor: Now have cooldowns of 6 seconds and a slight increase in damage due to the longer reuse time.
* Dual Strike: Fixed a bug causing this to do less damage than intended - as a result, damage from this ability has increased.
* Deadly Grace: Increased from 7% of Dual Strike damage per point to 9% Dual Strike damage per point.
* Weapon Master: Increased from a 4-20% chance to gain a second attack point up to a 10-50% chance.
* Rising Waterfall: Damage increased.
* Turn the Blade: Damage increased.
* Flurry: Damage lowered.

Paragon really got some love in the damage department. With SLI being off of the global cooldown and its damage modifier buffed and DOUBLED for follow-ups, this spec should now make its way to the top of the damage parses for both PvE and PvP. The nerf to Path of Wind and Path of Raptor, while somewhat warranted, really puts warriors at a disadvantage as far as being kited in PvP and, more notably, in experts where being a melee is a huge problem for a lot of fights. The buffs to Paragon now put the soul on par with Champion as far as damage output, giving warriors more of a choice between which weapon types are preferred.

REAVER
* Due to the below changes, characters with soul points spent in Reaver will receive a free soul point respec.
* Soul Sickness, Flesh Rot, Necrotic Wounds, Blood Fever: The damage on additional targets when using Plague Bringer has been lowered. The Threat generation has been increased to keep overall threat gain of the abilities the same.
* Crippling Infestation: Moves down one tier to unlock at 21 points.
* Wasting Away: Moves down one tier to unlock at 16 points.
* Grisly Works: Moves up two tiers, now unlocked at 26 points. Now increases the healing of Soul Feast by 30-90% for 15 seconds after killing a target the Reaver has engaged.
* Soul Devour: Now increases the damage of Soul Feast by 50%, instead of 150%.
* Power from the Masses: Changed to give a stack per nearby party/raid member rather than per nearby enemy.
* Infestation: Cooldown increased to 1 minute, and damage increased based on the new cooldown.

The nerfs listed here, as far as I can tell, are all aimed to bring Reaver in line as far as PvP goes. As I stated earlier, combining Riftblade's ability to buff non-physical damage coupled with Reaver dots was horribly overpowered in a PvP setting. These changes, however, also cripple the most common leveling and grind spec used by many people. Where I get sketchy on these patch notes are the changes to Soul Devour. I believe they are nerfing the amount of health generated through our Soul Feast abilities. This ability has been fairly crucial for the spec considering it doesn't receive as many defensive abilities as the other tank specs. In experts thus far I have relied on my self healing to buffer the attending healer - with such a drastic reduction I fear that it may no longer be a viable spec for anything outside of normal dungeons. I will reserve my final thoughts for when this hits the live servers, but so far: ouch. Couple this with the change to Grisly Works and it looks like you will HAVE to pick that talent up to make up for the losses. Power from the masses is pretty nice, though. In a 5 man group you can guarantee an almost constant 5% damage reduction.

RIFTBLADE
* Earth Burst: Now properly interrupts elites and other high level mobs.
* Avatar of Wind: Fixed a bug causing the tooltip of this ability to report improper values.
* Rift Surge: Can now be removed with abilities that remove Curses. Now has a 30 second cooldown instead of 10 seconds and is no longer adjusted by Attack Power.
* Flamespear: Now has a cooldown of 6 seconds and has its damage slightly increased to reflect the longer cooldown.
* Burning Blood: Now deals damage based on 10-30% of the character's Strength.

Ah Rift Surge.... the bane of anyone who doesn't pay attention to their debuffs. The addition to allow it to be removed as a curse along with the increase in cooldown is a definite PvP hit. Making so that it doesn't scale with attack power, however, is probably something that really needed to be done (although it was pretty hilarious to watch someone kill themselves). The cooldown on flamespear, like paragon's ranged nerfs, really hurts the warrior class in terms of any ranged viability. I agree that warriors shouldn't do ranged damage comparable to true ranged classes, but if that's the case then the devs need to take a look at PvE encounters that penalize you for being in melee range. I supposed that you could probably produce some silly riftblade/paragon ranged spec that might be halfway viable for PvE. The change to burning blood is a flat-out nerf. The original tooltip at 3/3 states that critical hits done to you will reflect 45% of the damage taken back to the attacker. I guess reflecting 900 damage back when you were crit for 2k was too good. Now, you get a minor reflection of damage based on your strength. This might mean that 5 pts low in the Champion tree become somewhat mandatory (percentile increase to strength).

The Warrior Tank (Part 1)

Kiylie — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 20:44:58 GMT

The warrior tank is the single most versatile tank in the game. We have so many options to choose from as far as spec goes that it is almost overwhelming to put together a soul setup. I am just going to go over a few practical tanking setups within this post, just be aware that there are other specs that are just as viable as these. This post won't be a min/max discussion, but I will go into detail on why I picked certain talents and why I didn't pick others. The 3 major tank specs that I will talk about will be the Physical Main Tank, AoE Tank, and Magical Main Tank. The one thing that all 3 of these specs have in common is the inclusion of the Paladin soul. This soul, in my opinion, should be the backbone of any serious tanking spec. Your mileage may vary!

**This will be a 3 part discussion since my writeup actually ended up a lot longer than I had anticipated. Part 1 will focus on the physical main tank as seen below. Parts 2 and 3 will go over the other two specs I mentioned and will be posted at a later date.

1. Physical Main Tank
I dub this one as such because of the fact that you will have very little in the way of aoe, and you will be mostly geared towards mitigating and avoiding physical damage attacks.
Spec
Paladin
Stalwart Shield: Block +10%
Defender: Armor +10%
Aggressive Guardian: Threat +20%
Hardened Will: 9% less spell damage taken
Martial Shield: chance on block to gain AP
Unyielding Defense: -20% damage taken when blocked
Vengeful Wrath: +30% damage to your off-GCD abilities
Reverent Protection: group Absorb Shield finisher, 3min CD
Balance of Power: Blocked attacks reflect damage back to attackers (160% weapon dmg)
Karmic Resolution: 2 of your 3 off-GCD abilities heal you for 30% of the dmg done
Tip the Balance: Any damage done by Balance of Power heals you for the same amt.
Shield of the Chosen: +5% block and +armor
Paladin's Reprisal: off-GCD ability aoe + 3 second stun (up to 10 enemies) procs from a block

Hopefully most of these talent choices seem pretty solid to you. The reason why I did not take Shield of the Hero (+5% block +5% hit) is because you really ought to be hit capped easily through gear... if not, as a tank, it shouldn't matter too much if you miss a few abilities. If you find it is a problem, you can drop your Paladin's Reprisal for this but you will lose some AoE capability.

Obviously this tree is dedicated to mitigation and self-healing. Since this will be the core of all 3 of these specs, I won't repeat this farther down this post.

Warlord
I took all of the obvious mitigation and avoidance talents low in the tree:
Powerful Countenance: +10% armor
Intimidating: When struck in combat, opponent loses 5% attack power and spell power
Enhances Dodge: +5% dodge
Defensive Experience: +5% block

This is where I might need to do some explaining as far as talent choices go.
Call to Battle - increases AP and SP of group mates for up to 18seconds.
- this is a support tree. As such, you need to increase the effectiveness of your group. That said, every time you use a Call ability, you also increase your own dodge by 8% for the duration.
That Which Doesn't Kill Me: When you get crit you are healed for 25% of the damage.
- here's where I expect the obvious question from most MMO players: But Jen, if I have enough toughness won't I be immune to crits? The short answer to this is No. If you read the tooltip on toughness it states that it reduces the extra damage produced by a crit by a percentage. I can therefore speculate that you can still have critical strikes rolled against you by a mob, but these criticals won't hit you any harder than a normal attack if you have the correct amount of toughness.
Call to Entrench: Reduces raid damage by 5% for up to 18 seconds
- this goes hand in hand with call to battle... they last 18 seconds on a 3 pt AP and have a 15 second cooldown. In theory you should be able to weave these two and never have them fall off. In practice, I am sure that shit happens and you'll lose the buffs occasionally.
Figurehead: Increases healing received by 6%
- I am not 100% sure, but I believe this also affects your self healing abilities from the paladin tree.
Aid Command: 20 second buff to all raid healing +15%, 5min lockout
Rallying Command: 20 second buff to max health and resistances, 5min lockout

Now for the talents I did not take and why.
1. Weapon Blow/ Improved Weapon Blow - this ability seems very situational, and without some kind of Recount-esque addon, I cannot tell for certain that bosses can be disarmed. If they can, then a few points can probably be reallocated to these talents. Most likely from Enhanced dodge since it is the weakest of our talents.
2. Dramatic Presence - wasting 5 points to increase your group buffs by a few percent just isn't worth it. i.e. your endurance buff goes from +30 to +45. Other classes can achieve this easier and we have better places to put 5 points
3. Battlefield Domination - increasing the radius of your debuff aura is very situational. The only place I can see this being worthwhile is if you have a dual boss encounter where they have to be tanked away from each other.
4. Locked Down - an attack that causes an AoE root for 8 seconds. Also situational, and this build is really for single tanking a boss.
5. Commanding Presence - increases call duration. If you find you are having trouble keeping at least 1 call up 100% of the time you might want to look into this talent at the expense of enhanced dodge.
6. Untenable Position - reduces chance to hit of targets hit by 3 specific abilites, 2 of which this spec doesn't even pick up (one of them is the 51 pt root ability).
7. Rapid Recovery - when you block you gain 3 power. This is probably a good ability, I just don't have points leftover for it. However, if you are in a raid setting hopefully you have at least 1 bard or chloro with the ability cost reduction buff. This, coupled with Martial Shield from paladin should ensure that you have plenty of power to spend when you need it.

The third soul, Void Knight, I merely took for the buff that gives me a little magic mitigation. There's really no other 0-pt ability worth it.

"Why not pick up a third soul and devote some points into it, like low tree reaver for some more mitigation?"
- This is very tempting, but I would recommend against it. One of the big reasons is the 32 pt root ability given to warlords: Assault Command. It's a 20 second buff to your party's damage by 15%. Pretty much akin to WoW's Heroism. This is shared by the Archon ability Flaring Power, however. If you find yourself the lucky group mate of an Archon, you can probably drop a few points from warlord and place them elsewhere. In my limited experience, though, no one plays Archon.

Choosing your Role

Kiylie — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 14:05:35 GMT

Now that I have my term paper completed for my graduate class, I can sit down and do some warrior discussion for those that are interested. I'd like to kick this blog off with a quick synopsis of the warrior souls and which you should look at for each role. I won't be going into great detail concerning each of these just yet, but check back later since I plan to go through each Role and why I picked what I did for mine.

Tank
So you've decided that you want to be the one to go toe-to-toe with the big nasty PvE bosses. You have a few options for tanking souls as a warrior, which is better than the other 2 callings (rogue and cleric).

Reaver - This is your aoe DoT tank. The reaver is specialized in debuffing their oponents and siphoning their life essence to help heal themselves. Note, however, that the amount of life you get back from these dots is minor and I would merely consider it a buffer that supports your healers. These guys are the AoE kings; they can spread high-threat diseases to up to 6 targest at a time. I highly recommend this spec for AoE trash packs and/or a leveling tank spec.

Paladin - Your meat and potatoes tank tree. This is the most robust tank tree we've got and should probably be the basis for any serious tank spec (i.e. the tree with the most points in it). The pally tree focuses on blocking and mitigation, and talents higher in the tree allow for healing from blocking (which should get more and more powerful the better your gear becomes).

Void Knight - This soul is fairly unique to Rift in that this is your magical mitigation tank tree. A lot of the talents are highly specialized for dealing with mana users and, as such, it has become a very powerful and very viable PvP tree. As of right now, I don't know of any bosses that are primarily magic-based, but this is definitely a viable option for a second tank spec.

Warlord - This is our support tree. Besides adding to our avoidance and mitigation, this tree has a ton of goodies to make your group better. Pretty much every finishing move in the warlord tree will lead to an overall group dps increase. The tree also offers other perks like group mitigation talents along with a group "last stand" for those of you that come from WoW.

Personally, when picking a tank role I would start with Paladin as my basis and then pick a secondary soul depending on what type of tank I would like to be. I will go into more detail on exact specs later.

DPS
Okay, so you want to do damage in PvE! In creating a pure DPS spec for dungeons/raids I highly recommend that you choose only from the list below. Taking a tank tree will greatly reduce the amount of damage output that you do in addition to causing you to output much higher threat due to the nature of the abilities in those trees.

Beastmaster - Here is your iconic pet class. The spec focuses on physical damage and bleeds in addition to having a pet. This soul can do a lot of damage if paired correctly, the only major drawback is if you lose your pet you lose a good portion of your damage. Weapon selection should be based on whichever secondary souls you choose as this spec does not buff anything besides bleed damage.

Champion - While mostly considered a PvP soul, you can absolutely use this tree as a secondary soul if you wish to play as a two-handed warrior. Skip the obviously PvP talents and focus on the ones that increase your damage. Also note that this soul is a burst damage soul and, as such, is less likely to sustain a good amount of DPS for longer fights.

Paragon - This is your dual wield spec and has a lot of talents that can only be used if you are using 2 weapons. There are, however, enough general talents to use it as a backup tree if you so wish. Personally I have found that this is a fairly good sustained damage tree. The interesting point to this tree is its follow-up attacks: off the global cooldown, these attacks can (and should) be used immediately following an attack point generating ability.

Riftblade - This is our magic damage spec. Yes, you heard me right.... warriors can be "casters". A lot of the abilities in this tree have a 20 yard range and most, if not all, of them are considered magical damage. Currently, some of the core abilities of this spec scale poorly with gear level (meaning that this spec can be incredibly powerful at low levels but falls off quickly as you get to end-game).

PvP
If monsters aren't your thing then you might consider jumping into some player-versus-player combat in the warfronts. Most of the souls can be used in combination to create some pretty powerful PvP specs. The ones you choose will be based around who your chosen enemy player is.

Champion is a solid tree with a lot of crowd control abilities and quite a few anti-cc for themselves. This is also your burst damage spec. You can pair it with Paragon to create a bursty crittastic powerhouse.

Beastmaster has some PvP talents that are kind of decent: pet stealth detection, snare reduction and stun reduction. Unfortunately hinges on your pet being alive and within range of you and your group. Luckily, I have found that most players don't actually kill pets.

Riftblade is great as it has a lot of ranged attacks that allow you to still do damage while being kited. Rift surge is also an amazing ability that causes your enemy to take damage every time they use an ability. Slap that on a cleric at low health and watch them heal themselves to death. Has quite a few CC abilities including a blink that teleports you to your target. Coupled with voidknight this spec becomes the caster-killer.

Void Knight specs are highly competitive in PvP as the anti-caster spec. These guys take reduced damage versus magic and can suck the mana out of a caster faster than you can think. They generate pacts from doing and taking damage that they can then discharge and use against their enemies

Any of the trees that I didn't mention here I don't particularly recommend for PvP, although other setups are viable but don't generally fall into the 'amazing' category. Your best bet, however, is to pick 2 souls that complement your playstyle the best and reserve the 3rd for your Vindicator PvP soul (if nothing else for the 0-point 5 minute CD cc break).

Introduction

Kiylie — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 15:50:07 GMT

Hi, my name's Jen. Yes, you read that right: I am a girl gamer. *waits for the boys to sit back down* I have been gaming for over a decade now, which is pretty scary in itself. In that time I have played everything from Ultima Online to World of Warcraft and now Rift (and most MMOs in between). I am currently an officer in a WoW guild that does end game progression raiding, so I feel that my gaming is both robust and experienced. I am currently leveling a warrior calling in the new Rift game. I am level 48 as of last night with 3 roles: tank, PvE dps, and PvP. I plan to post here in the future my ramblings and ideas concerning the calling. If anyone has any suggestions for topics, please feel free to post and let me know. In the meantime, I will be working on a Tanking 101 guide for those that are new to the art.

Stay tuned for more.

In other news, for anyone just starting Rift, I highly recommend you read my boyfriend's blog concerning soul choices for your roles. It is highly informative even for someone that has been playing since beta, and will be the foundation for what we talk about here.