Warrior Tier 16 (T16) Set Bonuses

[Sajakain 104]

DPS:

• (2) Set: Special attacks against a target with your Colossus Smash debuff generate 5 Rage.
• (4) Set: Your Mortal Strike and Bloodthirst have a chance to activate Death Sentence, allowing Execute to be used above 20% target health. Below 20% target health, Death Sentence makes Execute free.

Prot:

• (2) Set: You heal for 30% of all damage blocked with a shield and 30% of all damage absorbed by Shield Barrier.
• (4) Set: For 10 sec after Shield Wall fades, you gain rage from taking damage.

==============


I haven't played Prot this tier. However (as most on these forums know; I am Arms) the set bonuses for melee warriors.... wow.

Discuss.

Edited September 2, 2013 by ragebarr

[ragebarr 153]

For DPS: The 2p's power depends if it procs on all attacks or just autoattacks. I tend to go for the first one only because only autoattacks would make it OP for SMF wars and underwhelming for arms, but if it's the case it is simple OP, As we'll basically have a crazy rage generation during CS.

The 4p depends on it's proc chance. Hopefully it'll be a better proc chance than the T15 2p, else it's underwhelming. If the proc chance is decent, it's going to be a huge DPS increase, especially if the buff lasts long enough to be able to save the execute for the next CS as fury.

For Prot: The 2p is *really* nice. With the critical blocks and everything, it's going to be a massive heal over the course of the fight, considering that you can keep a very high uptime on both SBar and SBlk.

The 4p seems underwhelming, 10s of rage gained from damage taken every 2 minutes... Depends how big of a rage gain it is, but I'm not convinced.

[Sajakain 104]

I'll be on the PTR testing it out, no doubt...... or I hope to anyway lol.

Edited June 12, 2013 by Sajakain

[Nemo 27]

I think the prot 4 piece could be great, providing that the rage gain is big enough for a couple of whatever active mitigation ability fits the bill.

It basically allow you to extend your shield wall (kinda) for something like 3-6 seconds, which could potentially be a life saver.

Otherwise it'll just be a little bit more dps...

[Estarriol 167]

The 2p is awesome enough that I don't care about the 4p. Linking more rage to Shield Wall? Why? If I have Shield Wall up, I don't need the extra rage just then. At least with the t15 4p, the extra rage is linked to a small CD where the increase in rage generation is useful. At least prot warriors will finally get some damned self-heals. I'll be excited to see those. In current heroics, I often get up to 300k vengeance with ~600k SBars, which would give me 200k in heals back. Sexy.

[ragebarr 153]

Warrior DPS 2p is being, unsurprisingly, nerfed.

Item - Warrior T16 DPS 2P Bonus: Special Attacks against a target with your Colossus Smash debuff generate 5 Rage.

I does not proc off white hits anymore, and it generates half as much rage as it did before. It's still going to be pretty powerful, especially for arms, but it's not broken anymore.

[Fillingi 0]

I'm actually glad white hits don't generate extra rage during the CS debuff anymore. It seemed a little OP... And it makes the fury warrior rotation less interesting. If you can pretty much spam heroic strike without having to focus on rage management, it takes out the fun. And yeah, if the 4-piece only procs as much as the tier 15 2-piece, that would be quite lame.

Edited June 27, 2013 by Fillingi

[ragebarr 153]

The past incarnation was actually so OP for arms (since Sudden Death resets the CD of CS) that they basically had infinite rage.

It still is an interesting set bonus but it won't be as broken as it was :)

P.S.: I'm still waiting for that BattleTag invite Fillingi :)

[Estarriol 167]

I hadn't paid any attention to the DPS 4-set until now, but... I want free Executes...

[Sajakain 104]

I edited the OP to reflect changes.

[ragebarr 153]

DPS 4p for fury is kinda lame though. The buff only lasts 12 seconds which is barely not enough to pool the Executes until the next colossus smash if we get an unlucky proc.

[ragebarr 153]

Edited first post to add links and stickied it since 5.4 is pretty much at our doorstep :)

[Estarriol 167]

They fixed the 4p for prot a bit, but if I go avoidance build (which I'll be trying out), I'm completely forgoing the 4p because 3/5 of the tier pieces have no dodge or parry. Boo!

[Larssen 7]

I agree that the four set for Prot is underwhelming (again), but if you have access to heroic gear, which will be easier to farm with the 20% nerf to ToT once 5.4 goes live, the double two piece (two heroic T15 and two reg T16) was stellar when I tested it on the PTR. It's so good, we can almost pretend that we have real self-healing. The only caveat is that my beloved Glyph of Victory Rush will no longer work with the free Impending Victory procs, but that just gave me a reason to try Glyph of Incite again, which adds quite a bit of extra damage when combined with the new Ultimatum design.

[Estarriol 167]

I noticed last night on the PTR that they actually finally fixed Incite, too! Instead of using both Ultimatum and a charge of Incite if Ultimatum procs, it'll use the Ultimatum proc and still allow the full use of all charges of Incite. And yes, I tried out that double two piece set up. At best, I can call it a temporary measure. I'll probably keep it until I get WF or heroic gear, but the buffs to Enraged Regen and the T16 2p make having free VRs not nearly as nice, especially as it's always been an issue that the healing of the procced VR gets "sniped." Plus, having hard dodge/parry pieces in all of the offset slots have a noticeable effect on rage generation, leading to more SBars, and not taking damage is better than healing it back once it's been taken.

[FadiHedzh 0]

So it seems that 4p bonus is not as good for fury warriors and on other hand, my raid has decent amount of monks,hunters and mostly shamans, who may need the pieces more than me. In this case, I will be aiming at 2 set pieces. Considering the different shinies that may drop-which 2 pieces of the set shall I pick? My guess is gloves and maybe pants, but want to see what you guys think on this matter.

[ragebarr 153]

Tier gloves and helm are itemized better than any available offpiece. The legs are decently itemized too but the legs from Malkorok (9th boss) should be just as good, especially if you can get them Warforged.

 

Both the shoulders and the chest are horribly itemized, so stay away from them if you can and aim for the shoulders from Garrosh and the chest from Kor'Kron Dark Shaman, once again both Warforged if you can.

[FadiHedzh 0]

So it will be whatever I can get my hands on first than, legs or helm. 

[ragebarr 153]

Well, you want to get your 2p asap, so at first yes, whatever since anyway any 553 piece is going to be better than what oyu currently have. However, as the tier goes on, try and get any 2 of the Helm/Gloves/Legs and go for offpieces in the 3 other slots.

[Larssen 7]

I lucked out yesterday and got the T16 Prot tier gloves by rolling a coin on the first celestial killed for my legendary cloak. I immediately upgraded them to a 561 item and I must say they are quite nice, even though my traditional luck with gear means I will never get another tier piece until the last week of MoP.

 

I had been using Expertise and Stamina hybrid gems in my red sockets, and even reforging Exp to meet the hard cap. After a string of lucky day one upgrades, I suddenly went from 15% Exp to almost 21%, so I tried an experiment based on some advice given by Estarriol (I believe) some time ago. Rather than going with Parry and Stam, I regemmed my red sockets to Strength and Stam. As expected, I got almost the same amount of Parry as I would have had I used Parry and Stam gems. However, my tank damage seems noticeably higher (because of the added Strength and Riposte and other buffs), but my Shield Barriers are bigger than ever before. This bodes well for free healing from the Prot two piece set, if I can ever get it, and the new tanking tier gear is loaded with Expertise and Hit, and almost all red sockets. I'm not sure how far into the content this approach will be viable, but it seemed solid so far even against the hard-hitting Timeless Isle elites and early Flex content.

 

It's also interesting to see Mastery being downplayed in favor of Dodge and Parry. So far, an avoidance build is giving me good rage generation and extra damage from Riposte, while damage intake is not as spiky as it was previously with such builds. But since blocking consistently is crucial to the healing from the Prot two piece set, I don't expect to see warriors dumping Mastery any time soon. I'm currently regemming and reforging constantly to experiment with different builds, and I'll post any interesting results here.

[Estarriol 167]

Ah, a few days ago, I would have cheered. For 5.0-5.3, str/mastery gems provided both DPS and survivability whereas parry/mastery gave only survivability. Now, it is not so. While strength does give parry and will have a beneficial effect on DPS, Riposte is based on your parry/dodge ratings and although str gives parry %, it does not give parry rating. The DPS increase from parry due to Riposte now outshines strength's contribution to AP.

 

You're saying that blocking is crucial to utilize the 2p and it's not. Using either SBar or SBlk will utilize the 2p's healing effect. Thus, mastery isn't as valuable as you may have thought. With the sheer amount of rage that a hard avoidance build gives, one may use SBlk to smooth and layer in SBar for some truly spectacular mitigation. With the 2p, you'll be healing constantly. Many excellent warriors really are dumping mastery. Critical blocks "cap." There is only so much damage you can possibly mitigate through blocking, but getting more avoidance and therefore more rage gives more frequent beefy SBars. What's the most SBlk can give you? 60% reduction up to an effective 80% reduction when factoring in the 2p. What's the most SBar can give you? 0 damage taken. Granted, those statements are a bit hyperbolic. Blizzard would never allow so much rage that warriors could all-out spam SBar for no damage taken and they are right for not doing so.

 

However, keep in mind that a mastery build and an avoidance build are different builds for different purposes. As one may stack stam to survive mechanics, one would stack mastery for a heavy-bruiser type fight (Ra-den), and avoidance for basically everything else as it does well with mixed damage, magic damage (assuming there is some meleeing going on, if not then crit is on top), and very good for semi-frequent, hard-hitting attacks.

[Larssen 7]

After a week of testing, I'm back to Parry and Stamina gems. My experiments with Strength and Stam gems were mainly to see how they would affect the scaling of Shield Barrier. They did help some, but the difference was not worth keeping them when weighed against the benefits of extra Parry. Although the difference was fairly small for now, I expect gear scaling will widen the gap in the future. Once I get full SoO gear, I might try the Parry and Dodge gems.

 

On the bright side, a fellow warrior player tells me that the 2pc healing procs can crit, and Riposte complements that nicely, although I'm not sure if this was intended by Blizzard.

 

As for Mastery, I'm also reforging it away in favor of pure avoidance, but I thought I was in the minority for doing so. There seems to some disagreement in stat priority between the Icy Veins guide (that still recommends Mastery) and Ask Mr Robot's default build (which favors avoidance). When asked by a fan about Mastery for Prot warriors in 5.4, Slootbag (who plays a Prot paladin, but gives advice to all types of tanks) recommended that warriors try for 75% Mastery but expected some to cap out at 100%. Back in the 5.3 days, Theck posted on the Blizzard forums about the benefits of Stamina and EH as a mitigation tool, which led to a lively debate. At the end of the day, everyone will choose the build that suits their play style, but avoidance is performing well for me right now.

 

That being said, I'm keeping an eye on what Mastery is left over after reforging it away to keep my "passive block" at a reasonable level in case I miss a SBlock or Sbar at a key moment, and for extra "passive heals" from the 2pc set. I tend to favor SBar myself unless a fight has lots of predictable melee damage, and I'm really just a sucker for those big absorbs.

[Estarriol 167]

I cringe whenever someone lists AskMrRobot as a good source for tanking wisdom. It is so often flat out wrong or just outdated that it is harmful. Some of the same can be said for the IV guides (sorry, guys, don't hate me), though they tend to be more outdated. That happens though, trying to keep every class and every spec updated is a huge, huge job. I am surprised to see that AMR actually got with the program this time.

 

Theck does some interesting things and I enjoy reading what he has to say. Stamina is, in its own way, a mitigation tool. The caveat is that it is a mitigation tool IF and ONLY IF your healers can keep up. By stacking stamina, you are taking unnecessary, avoidable damage. You  are costing your healers both mana and attention that could be conserved or devoted to something else. However, your percent damage taken per hit is unarguably lower, that much is true. There is a finite point at which stamina stops being effective in "mitigation." I would highly recommend that you drop your stamina to give it a try to see how it goes. I stripped away every last hint of stamina I could in order to stack hard dodge and parry and asked my healers how it felt this week. My response is that they threw hots on me and ignored me because they knew I didn't need their attention. I have never been given such a huge compliment about my tanking. Because I needed less attention, they were able to focus on my offtank and the raid to a higher degree. Not only did I benefit, but my entire raid benefited from my choice. I am pleased.

[Ramanor 0]

Is not going for the 4 set for dps warrior tier 16 still the way to go?

[ragebarr 153]

Yes. On pure single target, with all equivalent ilvl pieces, 4p is BiS by a very small margin for fury, and that margin disappears as soon as you add more than one target.

 

If you can get better itemized or higher ilvl pieces for Fury go for it. As far as I know 4p is BiS for Arms, but once again it starts losing in value as you add more and more target to the encounter.