That extra stamina would be pretty sweet. But I don't think I would be able to give up either Mortal Strike or Cruelty for it. :(

Also, it makes me wonder how long it will take for Om to break 8K HP unbuffed!

The Prodigal Om has returned.

I wonder if Crauch will go 31/20 now. It will certainly help his "Rogue Hitpoints" problem.

Because every Warrior specs Protection for PvP....

Uhh no

Fury/Prot will still be dumb, even with the stamina talent.

/shrug, I've never liked yellow.

The real question is whether 31/20 is now more worth it than 31/5(4)/15(16).

10% stamina is huge, and is definitely something I could see guilds requiring a few warriors to have, and Blizzard basing their encounters around, which goes against their previous philosophy.

I'd disagree with you there. While I don't think may have forseen guilds using flasks so frequently, they unintentionally balanced raids around them. They saw people beat things like Firemaw, Nefarion, and the Emps using them and said "Hey, they're beatable, no need to tone them down" whereas if every tank had 1200 less health, they may have made changes.

The same thing could apply with this talent. They won't balance an encounter assuming a warrior has X health, but they'll throw in a boss that does a bunch of spike damage and if people beat it, great. If not, they'll adjust the fight. Tanks having more health may lead them to not adjust a fight.

Granted 10% isn't THAT much, but it's enough to be where if your tank keeps dying to spike damage you'll want him to respec to at least 20 prot.

I don't understand your point. Your MT will be full prot. X% of your warriors will have Y in prot, and both of these values will be the exact same in 1.11 as they are in 1.10. Conceding that 10% more health is something they would balance encounters around, all future bosses will just be tuned to this and fight difficulty will be exactly the same. This has nothing to do with raid design, it just gives warriors a warm fuzzy feeling to know that they're not wasting talent points.

All I see this influencing is the strength of class roles in relation to each other, not the strength of individual class roles themselves. You have slightly less motivation for using bear tanks. Shrug.

...

Yes, if your tank is not 31 in prot that would probably be detrimental to your advancement. This isn't new in 1.11. It might be a little more detrimental now, but I'm not really in arrears over what guilds with non-prot warriors tanking go through.

It is though. In the live version, the only protection talents that increase survivability are shield spec, toughness, improved shield block, and last stand. (It could be argued to that anticipation and iron will do as well, but to a much lesser extent).

Going beyond those all the way to shield slam doesn't do anything for survivability, just utility and threat. Your raid is generally hard pressed to notice much of a difference between someone with 15-16 in protection, and someone with 31.

Actually it'll be likely be Y+5. Since this is shifted to 20 points in prot, which isn't that big of a deal, just means that many warriors will have to choose between 10% health and 5% crit.

I'm not complaining as it's a net gain no matter how you look at it. As a matter of fact, their original philosophy was "we plan on assuming there will be a few reasonably specced protection warriors in a 40 man raid group" and that still holds true.

I fail to see why people (including a warrior in my guild, who was just complaining about this on ventrilo) would expect to be the best possible tank and have mortal strike.

In addition people are overlooking the Shield Slam buff. Without details it's certainly possible that it could rival Mortal Strike.