Breaking Warrior Rule #2
Warrior Rule #1
There shalt be no PvP spec beside Arms, for thou only has one Mortal Strike and no other. Thou shalt not worship any other Mortal Strike.
Warrior Rule #2
Respect Critical Strike. Thou shall always take five points in said talent.
Preach Away, Preacher Man!
Alright, well, I mentioned several weeks ago that Amelio had tried a build that included Concussion Blow. More specifically, his spec was something like 39/1/21. Well, I broke Warrior Rule #2. I gave up 4% critical strike to get Concussion Blow.
Before you call me crazy, let me preface this by saying: It works. Oh God (I think I just broke a commandment), it works. That 2k Shoulder wearing Druid didn’t even have a chance to cheese cannon us with his cyclones because he was too busy getting beat in the face. I recommend every warrior try this spec (or a variation thereof) at least once in his career.
Why take Concussion Blow?
+ Five second stun. Again: FIVE SECONDS.
+ You get Defiance (6 expertise - Ignore 1.5% Dodge and 1.5% Parry)
+ You get Last Stand (30% Temporary HP Buff on DEMAND)
+ 20 Defense (Gogo increased dodge and parry)
+ 10% more Armor (I’m almost to 12k!)
+ Improved Sunder (12 rage vs. 15 is pretty nice)
+ You get the option of tanking if the need in PvE arises …
+ Oh yeah, it’s a 45 second cooldown too.
You get the option of taking Imp. Revenge (45% stun chance that doesn’t share DR with Concussion Blow) or improved disarm (3 more seconds of disarm is pretty nice). It’s a judgement call. In any case, those are a lot of nice benefits.
There is a Cost to Gaining a Stun
- Lose Anti-Disarm Talent (situational)
- Lose Sweeping Strike (situational)
- Lose 4% critical strike (painful!)
- Lose Piercing Howl (If they get out of range … bye bye.)
- No option for Enrage.
- No option for Endless Rage.
My Thought Train
Well, my first thought is that “man, I gave up so much just for an on-demand stun.” But then I thought, “Well, on the plus side, every talent I put into Protection is actually useful in its own right. In many respects, it guarantees that I don’t instant die.” I’ve found that it comes incredibly useful when intercepting someone and then stunning the healer standing near by, or something to that effect. You get to lock out two people at once. Since I’m Sword Spec, I don’t have any actual on-demand stuns outside of intercept. This ability gives me quick access at least one stun.
We played 3v3 tonight (Shadow Priest/Warrior/Holy Paladin) and we had no problem on any team that sported a Druid. Even a Rogue/Druid/Warrior team was easy. The druid tried to outrun us, but between Judge of Justice, hamstring, and instant stuns, it was over.
Disclaimer
This talent does not fit all team setups. Concussion Blow works best when the warrior is actually a secondary DPSer for the group instead of the primary DPS. 3v3 teams that rock 2 healers might not benefit at all from having a strong-CC oriented warrior. On the flip side, a team that has a warlock, shadow priest, hunter, or mage (and any combination of the listed) can allow the Warrior the ability to play partial CC. Nothing is more brutal than conc’ing your target DPS target when they thought they could run away.
P.S. Vitamins, you can pretend that’s a picture of me since you keep asking.
-ERP-
February 12th, 2008 at 12:03 am
I’ve always loved that picture.
February 12th, 2008 at 12:09 am
run it with a pally for maximal 5second stun cds. to the max
February 12th, 2008 at 12:11 am
man that girl is fucking cute :(
February 12th, 2008 at 7:43 am
Chris - I happened to see it on 4chan and I instantly thought: “That’s amazing.”
Kaylie - Shared DR, unfortunately. It also shares a DR with Intercept. That said, it doesn’t stop us from stunning two separate targets. I even fought a warrior last night 1v1 (All Gear equal), and I managed to take him to 20% from 100% before he took me to 70% just because I conc’d him and generated a few rounds of free hits.
Vitamins - I know. It was just for you.
February 12th, 2008 at 8:54 am
“Why is this team splitting DPS?”
“Cuz they, like Shin, seem to think it’s a good idea…”
February 12th, 2008 at 9:13 am
I reckon my next topic oughta be about “When to Split DPS, When to Focus DPS, and When the Switch DPS.” Most players just assume that focus firing works. Of course, it’s less obvious to the team dealing the damage, but there are times where split DPS is more effective.
I typically disregard Cira’s comments on how to best DPS as he’s not fully aware of all the nuances in DPSing. It’s the same reason I’m not qualified to say “Just cleanse me, forget about healing other people.”
February 12th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
To be fair I’m most often 35/5/21, so I usually have all the crit talents. I’m sitting somewhere around 1670ap with 37% crit with this build. I’ll soon be switching that crappy 1750 health on use trinket for Berserker’s Call which will put me to 1750ap 35.3% crit, and a use of +360ap to be combined with heroism.
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=LV0xbAbqM0dbZVZfxk0Ibz
The only reason I dropped to 1/5 crit is when I had picked up Improved Hamstring.
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=LV0xdAbqMhdbZzZfxk0Ibz
Even with Imp HS though, you could still get 4/5 crit and give up points in 2h spec. Realistically though, 1% increased damage from 2h spec is going to be more dps than 1% more crit, but it’s pretty close and can be mostly preference. I found Imp Hamstring to be quite nice in 3’s since my priest/mage partners get pressured pretty hard most times, but don’t miss it at all in my current 5’s.
As far as prot talents, I’ve pretty much decided Imp. Revenge is mostly useless, and I don’t get points in the armor talent very often. Getting 20 defense is probably better than 10% armor since it gives you .8% dodge/parry/miss which is an effective 2.4% avoidance from damage AND targetted stuns/disarms/hamstrings. I use sunder a ton in 3’s and a decent amount in 5’s. Often times in 3’s I’ll have two targets fully sundered that I’m bouncing between.
Ultimately the Fury tree has a lot of fluffy filler that doesn’t affect much of anything. Enrage can be almost entirely wasted points depending on what 3’s or 5’s you run. For me, I either get zerged hard and can’t afford to be dpsing while enrage is up, or I’m not attacked at all and it never procs. Sweeping strikes is in the same boat, can you afford to do random aoe damage or do you have precise CC on your team? Really I generally only find this talent useful for killing warlock+pets anymore, and that’s if you actually take the time to regularly taunt the pet to keep it in range. Therefore it comes down to Last Stand + Concussion blow vs Piercing Howl.
February 12th, 2008 at 8:32 pm
shared dr doesnt mean 7.5seconds of stuns isn’t phenomenal if you need to keep something still
February 13th, 2008 at 9:01 am
Amelio - Yeah. I ended up doing was going for a slightly different version of your 35/5/21. http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=LV0xkIbogbdbZVZfxu0I0z
I’m a huge fan of Endless Rage. I find that extra 1RP3 to be immensely helpful. I think this build will make a little more sense come 2.4 when I can get the 44 Expertise Rating (11 Expertise) trinket. That trinket combined with the Defiance talent would let me ignore 4.25% dodge and 4.25% parry.
I didn’t bother with imp revenge, but it could be a fun anti-rogue or anti-warrior ability if you don’t have a mace already. Though, it’s not often that a rogue or warrior will go after you and give you a chance to just stance dance to Revenge.
There have been a lot of occassions where I miss having Piercing Howl (helping my team slow down pillar humpers or the like), but when it comes down to focusing a target, one of our biggest struggles is preventing him from running away. Piercing howl doesn’t quite work on targets with freedom and sometimes we don’t have the time to necessarily clean the target’s buffs off. A stun will (almost) always stop them dead in their tracks. Five seconds is a long time.
And as Kaylie says, another stun on top of that (HoJ) makes that 2.5 more seconds. Not bad for locking someone out.
As many players say: “Healing through burst can be done, but healing through stuns is much harder.”
February 14th, 2008 at 1:46 pm
“As many players say: “Healing through burst can be done, but healing through stuns is much harder.””
I think you made that quote up.
February 14th, 2008 at 1:50 pm
It was actually a priest that said it. The real context was “It’s hard to deal with sword warriors because they take the shield down so fast, but it’s hard to heal through stuns.” I don’t quite remember where I read it, but my guess is the WoW forums.
June 25th, 2010 at 5:53 pm
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