Sunder Armor vs. Exposed Armor

In Development WoW Forever Beta Discussion
1

After hearing Blizzards claim, that all roles and specs will be viable in raids I was stoked.

However, after investigating both tooltips at all ranks for both Expose Armor and Sunder Armor, I can see they are giving the same values of reduced armor. Considering, that the Improved Exposed Armor talent for rogue has been ‘nerfed’ and does not further reduce armor, I simply fail to see how a rogue will fit into a raid comp especially when raids are being composed to 10/20 mans.

Take TBC as an example, you want to only run one rogue on 25 players for Improved Exposed Armor… For 10/20 mans, its going to be even harder for rogues to enter raids/pugs as we know people who creates pugs tend to bring the most viable comps/raid composition for buffs.

Warriors have Battle Shout + sunder armor which then makes rogues not compatible in raid comps.

Please at least just make Exposed Armor either baseline better, or rework the Improved Exposed Armor Talent so rogues are viable.

2

they just dont want rogues to roll on hunter weapons

3

We just need suppression rooms in every raid. Problem solved :slight_smile:

1 Like
4

or the boss loot is locked inside a chest and only a rogue can open it.. no rogue = no loot

5

Also - does any class besides warrior have thunder clap debuff analogs?

6

I do not believe so - which ultimately makes warriors, even though they have rage generation problems, almost mandatory if you want to run a comp that makes sense considering buffs etc.

Just makes it much more hard for rogues to enter raids. I encountered this problem in SSC/TK when it launched for anniversary, where pugging was made very difficult for rogues if you were not a frequent player in the given pug groups. As they were limited to only 1-2 rogues per raid on a 25 man roster, I just can’t see how they would fit on a 10 or 20 man roster.

7

Worth noting I believe most if not all talents that no longer exist are actually just baked in, just checked on wowhead and it looks to be baked into the actual ability so not an issue at all. Although I would prefer if it wasn’t since taking rogues for expose armor is annoying I’d rather they get something.

8

Does “best single target dps” fit that bell maybe?

9

Problem is, you will not have a guaranteed raid spot for being “best single target dps” as you bring nothing to buff the other 4 members in your party. As it is now, without raid wide buffs, you would have to bring x2 shamans in each melee group for windfury + grace of air, as totem swapping is gone. You need a warrior for shout, feral for crit and probably a marksman for trueshot. Buffing all other 4 party members rather than being highest ST is much more valuable.

Also, every pug, guild leader or raid leaders will consider running the best viable comp for buffs in each raid, even though the game is based for casuals. The pug leaders and raid makers are in most cases not casual, and will affect rogue players probably. As raids been reduced from 40 to 10/20 it definitively makes room for a rogue less viable.

10

Yeah so, no. Windfury and Grace of Air does not stack. It’s intentional. You either have Windfury or you have Grace of Air, but you do not have both. Same goes for the Strength/Damage reduction totem, you can have one, but not the other.

There’s not going to be 2 melee groups, there’s space for 14 dps in a large raid. That’s 5 casters, 5 melee and some support classes for tank group/healer group. By this extend, you wouldn’t invite mages either, because they provide nothing to the raid aside from an Intellect buff that you can get through Campfires, zero reason to bring a resto druid because you can just bring a balance or feral druid, no reason to bring an spriest, because they don’t buff warlocks anymore and poor hunters have nothing to offer anyone, 'cos their one party buff is ranged AP only etc.

That and rogue’s improved exposed armor was never as good as 5x Improved Sunder Armor. It lagged behind significantly and somehow, Rogues were still invited to raids, even though Warriors were far superior DPS to Rogues.

If people want to min-max a raid so hard that every single buff has to be account for, otherwise the game is unplayable and you can only take the most contributing classes, they will do that regardless or have we forgotten how guilds stacked warriors in classic? And if you want to hamper gear progression that way, be my guest, but most people don’t enjoy having to fight 10 other people for the same loot (warriors certainly didn’t in classic)

Except for Onyxia, but in so far that is going to be a one off raid size. The primary raids are 10 and 20man and 10 man is going to be entirely impossible to make perfect.

1 Like
11

If Windfury and Grace of Air does not stack, that is indeed great, I have not tested it myself yet or seen any1 do it. (And I don’t know if that can be done in 30).

By two meele groups I meant including group with tanks, where melee buffs are present. The buffs through campfires are not 1:1 as the class buffs, which means that you would want to bring the class for the buff.

IEA was of course superior to x5 sunders in TBC, which meant that generally there was room for only 1 rogue on a 25 man roster even. Rogues in Classic were invited to raid, because there was a 40 man roster to fill and they scaled better than warriors early. Later, they were brought for BWL for traps, AQ for stuns/cc.

People are of course going to min-max raiding comps, as they have been in later iterations of the game, because the raid roster got reduced, leaving more room to min-maxing. Problem with warriors stacking in classic is their infinite scaling, which now has been reduced, so they will not be stacked anymore (maybe only for speed runs as cleave kings, like blizz calls them).

Rogues were invited to Naxxramas for cc’ing the trash… their damage was inferior to warriors. Rogues with full wbuffs etc. were also inferior to warriors, so you’d only bring 2-3 rogues pr. Naxx for stuns.

The problem is, Blizzard is claiming every spec brings something to a raid, but they clearly do not fit in a min-maxed roster, as they bring nothing but “highest single target DPS”. Ego DPS specs does not have a spot in a raid leader / pug, as they by far are mostly not casual players, wanting to clear the raids as smooth as possible.

12

Continuing the discussion from WoW Forever Beta Development Notes – Updated 1 October:

It apparently does not apply to Earth totems, who knew. So, shaman stacking is not going to be a thing. It also depends on how buffs will be work, they have said they are considering making certain buffs raid wide instead of group wide to prevent locking out certain classes from min-max raids. They specifically mentioned druids as an example for Balance and Feral, so we can strike off at least 4 druids :).

As I see it you’d probably look at something like this:
2 Tanks - probably Warrior/Paladin as that’s the most optimal setup unless you want to run 2x Ret Paladins
4 Healers - 1 Paladin, 1 Shaman, 1 Druid, 1 Priest
14 DPS - 1 Feral, 1 Balance, 1 Warrior, 1 Mage, 1 Warlock, 1 Spriest, 2 Shamans, 1 Ret + 5 other classes (so 1 rogue and 1 hunter spot at the very least, probably even 2 rogue spots too be honest).

If I were to minmax this I would do
G1 - Prot Paladin, Prot Warrior, Feral, Spriest, Resto Shaman
G2 - Ret Paladin, 1-2x Warrior, 1-2x Rogue, Enh Shaman.
G3 - 2x Mage, 2x Warlock (2 Curses), Ele shaman
G4 - Disc/Holy Priest, Holy Paladin, Resto Druid, 1 Balance Druid, Hunter (sorry hunters, but you’re hard to justify in a melee group when you don’t get any boost from Shout).

You would get: Feral + Balance, full shout coverage, both curses from Warlocks, full shaman coverage for the 3 important groups (the threat generators and the dps), BoW, BoK, BoS for casters and BoK, BoM, BoS for melee and BoK, BoL and BoW/BoM for Tanks.
And all class related buffs, some are probably going to be less happy about their spots, that’s the way it goes..

But that’s just me and I would expect them to actually go through with that raid wide buff consideration to solve these issues.