Mumbles

Any spec can provide shouts, an Arms can provide a DPS increase on the whole raid, granted Fury could have something similar as they don't have anything else atm besides raw DPS. Prot warriors along with Fury have nothing, but, I'm emphasizing on Protection as it is my spec of choice, although I do respec when needed, my focus remains on the tanking aspect of the game.

And repeating myself again, if you notice all other tanking classes besides warriors, have talents in they're 'tanking' tree which provide raid/group buffs, besides they're own inherent class spells/abilities which buff raid/group, we only have shouts which not denying they're good, they're our own inherent class raid/group buffs, only arms has Blood Frenzy as a raid utility talent.

I don't think (as I said above) something in the prot tree along the lines of a shout that increases Block rating or Dodge or Parry by x% which would help all tanks in the raid a bit, or any other reactive spell/skill that procs from either be hit or hit to buff the raid/group, is going to make the protection warriors too OP but at least it's going to add something for the raid setup decision makers not to discard the protection warrior right away.

 

• landsoul

I would say so. Most on-demand survivability, 15.4% reduction from spell damage, last stand, shield wall, amazing single target TPS, thunderclap, being able to block certain physical attacks, reducing the threat of a person who has high TPS through DPS, spell reflect...

He has a lot of strengths for personal tanking regardless of the synergy he provides to the raid. The HP shout is very important as well. Even if you had 2 DPS warriors to provide both shouts I still believe a prot warrior is not a bad choice for bringing.

 

Aanar

At the moment we bring nothing to the WotLK 25-man raid table, and thus I share your pessimism. Protadins are currently in line to be the new premier raid tanks, making up for their lack of "O sh!t!" buttons with all the goodies they bring to the show. Heck, even without our staples (Last Stand, SW, etc...) they're still getting some very nice goodies (20min LoH with no more mana drain, for example).

Blizz needs to give us something to bring to the party aside from Commanding Shout or, imho, they need to buff us a bit to put us over the top in threat output again. I'd love a deep Prot talent that converts a % of our Stamina into Block Value, a-la Touched by the Light. Shockwave is a fantastic 5-man talent but I find it hard to believe it'll be preferred to Consecrate in a raid setting.

Long story short, Blizz has given us some fantastic new viability in 5-mans while adding nothing for us in raids.

And remember, we're losing Vigilance in its current form so don't get too excited about being able to moderate the TPS of excessive DPSers. The only silver lining is that Blizz isn't done with us yet, although in the past that hasn't always been a good thing for us warriors.

 

Jivundus

One thing I've been trying to figure out, will Thunder Clap actually be needed for raid bosses?
Infected Wounds - Spell - World of Warcraft
Long as you've got a Feral druid, it seems like this talent is far better. Or will raid bosses be immune to it?

 

Gruntle

Well, sure, 10/20/30 extra maximum rage could be considered to be a nice alternative to the current Intensify rage talent, still I think it is rather boring to have 2 talents giving the same thing (although with different extra effects) in the same tree. It would be a solid talent anyway.

I agree that it's looking like Impale can be skipped, a 8/60/3 build looks viable to me (or similar). Having TM makes it possible to switch to Battle Stance, Rend, return to zerk stance and still have enough rage for a slam (midswing). Rend is not long after BT and WW in total damage (and actually beats them vs enraged targets and possibly targets with high armor mitigation).

 

Aeverius

Judgements of the Just, the new Paladin Thunder Clap

The intent is that all tanks have access to a Thunderclap-like ability. This becomes important when you consider that every raid will also be done as a 10-man, where you might not necessarily have a warrior all the time.

Improved Lay on Hands is really fucking good:

 

Jivundus

Which is good. My point was that the druid one is going to be stacking to... -50%? Both Thunder Clap and Judgement of Just cant even touch that.

 

Aeverius

Nope- check out the aura applied. It's only -4 melee haste (ie, slow), so it stacks to 20% with a full stack. The tooltip just isn't clear about that right now.

Granted, no one has yet confirmed that it actually does affect bosses, but the 20% factor strongly points to it.

Improved Lay on Hands is really fucking good:

 

Eishara

Infected Wounds lists the actual melee dehaste effect as -4% a stack which would bring it in line with Thunderclap and Judgements of the Just, it could just be that the actual spell descriptions haven't been updated to list the reduced slowing effect. That or the Wowhead data is wrong.

 

Heisenberg

Probably the same reasons as now. Gimmicks like Shear or Spell Reflect, Magic damage and Emergency buttons like Shield Wall make up for our lower threat and physical mitigation compared to druids. Not much seems to be different apart from the new emergency buttons becoming available for other classes.

 

Jivundus

Aha, that makes much more sense then. Thanks.

 

Aanar

Paladins handle Shear now with far less trouble than warriors thanks to 8 charges of Holy Shield lasting 10 seconds, vs. our 2-for-5. Moreover, Paladins take reduced magic damage as well.

Barring any changes in warriors for WotLK we will become gimmick-tanks, useful only on specific fights, not unlike druids are now.

Sure, we'll always be wanted for tanking, but we won't be the premier tank class anymore.

 

• Morsexy

I just think it is still way to early to take this position. Without a doubt you should be concerned, I am concerned since one of our defining tank stregnths is total mitigation of crushing blows. I fully believe that however they balance the game, warriors will always have a place as one of the two premier tank classes along with a feral druid.

What evidence anywhere, in any form, has there been to show you otherwise? Frankly I feel somewhat bad for Paladins\Druids because by definition they've got to be the toughest to balance, and the most likely to get the shaft in this situation. Since they can heal, and there is a want to make their DPS spec more viable, perhaps even necessary, and tanking is the one area where the other class in the balance scale can only DPS or tank, they hand that feeds is most likely to take from them.

So viewed in another way, the warrior is the easiest to balance since the tweaking of a few minor things, that pertain only to us, would instantly make us the dominant tank.

As for Druids being gimmick tanks, assuming we use the latest iteration of content as Blizzard's barometer for tank roles, I can't fathom an encounter in Sunwell where you wouldn't want a druid tank. Arguably druids and paladins currently are far superior for 5 mans, and the OT role (at the very least, druid\pally OT probably the superior combo with DPS warrior) in any 10 man. You might even say warriors are the current "gimmick" tank as we are only truly superior single target mitigation + TPS + panic button outs. So we see Blizzard addressing this first and foremost since that is probably the easiest area to balance currently because our abilities in this regard amount to crap and more crap. Paladins certainly have a gimmick, that is anything but main tanking, they do with ease.

There is a lot to be nervous about, other classes continually gaining skill based abilities vs our reliance on 3 overwhelmingly good abilities around since the dawn of WoW for PVP, perhaps only one spot for a DPS warrior, talent trees that make little sense with skills bouncing around because developers are afraid of some 35\21\15 spec even though it seems most will be doing something odd come WotLK based on current info, but warriors losing their tank spot should be absolutely last on that list.

 

Aanar

I'm not concerned with warriors being no longer one of the "two premier" tank classes. But you clearly do not run with a Protadin and, as I said above, barring any changes to the way things are now in the beta, warrior tanks are not going to be superior to Protadins in a raid setting aside from certain gimmicky situations. Frankly, the only reason I see to bring a warrior tank in the x-pac will be that there won't be any point to bringing a DPS warrior anymore and people will still want at least one shout.

Blizz has done a fabulous job increasing our viability and ease of tanking in a 5-man or 10-man situation, areas where we are at a clear disadvantage to paladins and druids. But, unless they start doing some of that "easy" tweaking, we're losing the few things that have set us apart and made us the top tanking class in the game, not because of nerfs to us but because everyone else is catching up and bringing with them their longstanding synergy-enhancing abilities, of which we have almost none.

 

Tycho

In an ideal world, whenever the question of "drood, war or pally?" comes up, the answer should almost always be, "meh."

 

Mumbles

Yes, that would be the ideal, and as most of us have been stating, that's what all want, but unfortunately at the moment, the answer is clearly "drood or pally" because all 3 tank the same way without any significant difference, and protection warriors don't bring any raid utility unlike druids and paladins.

Best regards,

 

Graul

Something else I didn't think about until just now. Wasn't the DW miss rate at 60 on a boss 24%, or was it also 28%?

*edit, ok nevermind. Thanks.

 

Nite_Moogle

We've known for over a week that warriors are going to receive updates in the next patch, so you can stop posting until then.

No. It's always been 28%.

 

Shha

Actually at 1.X patch time , DW miss rate was 24%, and 2h cap was 6%. Miss rates were solely based on weapon skill which equalled to 0.2% per level difference - so actually DW miss rate was 23.6 (but since you could only get full % ...)

 

JamesVZ

Wrong on both accounts. Old Math lead us to believe the miss rate was 8.6% for level 63/boss mobs, and Too Goddamn High for dual wield. Since we could only go up in whole percentages at the time, everyone assumed it to be true.

Official Slackie Fanclub. The dude gets ALL the ladies.

In regards to Icecrown Radiance:

 

Fellwraith

I'll be brutally honest: I'm getting very sick of "OMG I'M NOT A UNIQUE SNOWFLAKE" posts.


Reasons why you're still special:

1) Warriors provide 2255 hp or 550 AP with their shouts for the entire raid that's in range of the shout. Even with scaled up stats on gear, that's a significant buff (for reference paladins greater blessing of might is only 300 AP at level 79). A DPS warrior only provides one of those.

2) Warriors reduce a foe's armor by a significant amount without costing your rogue's or DPS warriors any dps. Talented imp expose armor at level 80 is 4200 armor reduction, 5 stack sunder at level 80 is 3925 armor. The gap between the two abilities is smaller than it was at 70.

3) Warriors take less spell damage than any tanking class except deathknights (by the look of things, an unholy deathknight is almost too good in this regard). In addition, warriors can generate a significant amount of damage and threat while completely mitigating one single-target spell every 10 seconds (note: this can include critical debuffs like deaden or voidblast).

4) Warriors have the most reliable and shortest cooldown fear-breaking ability. Feral druids and deathknights can break one fear every 5 minutes.

5) Warriors have the shortest cooldown taunt ability (8 seconds with talents) and 2 other back-up taunts should their taunt be resisted. Paladin taunt has 15 second cooldown with no back-up ability and redirects 3 mobs to the paladin (this can fuck them over pretty badly if they aren't supposed to be tanking all 3), the taunt requires mana. Feral druid taunt cooldown is 10 seconds, they have one back-up taunt every 3 minutes. Deathknight's bloodboil ability is on a 15 second cooldown and requires runic power, their back-up ability (deathgrip) is a really nifty ranged mocking blow with a 3 second duration (it's worth noting that mocking blow lasts 6 seconds, i.e. until your taunt cooldown is up).

6) Only warriors and feral druids have both AP and attack-slowing debuffs. A paladin or deathknight is going to require a feral druid or warrior to reduce their mob's AP.

7) From what I've seen, Warriors are the only tanking class with an offensive dispel (every 6 seconds).

8) Warriors have the most stuns of any tanking class (I count 4 that could realistically be used) and the only aoe stun in the game (aside from warstomp).

9) Deathknights and warriors are the only 2 tanking classes that can interrupt a spell being cast, even if the mob is immune to silence and stuns.

10) Warriors are the only tanking class that has 2 survival emergency buttons at their disposal. Things can go horribly wrong or the boss can reach an enrage timer and a warrior has the best chance of surviving.


Warriors still provide the longest list of capabilities in addition to numerous other special abilities. You can call them gimmicks if you want, but there's enough on that list that you wouldn't want to avoid bringing them to every raid.

The differences between the 4 tanking classes is going to be as much about itemization at level 80 as it is about the talent trees. You have no idea what the block value amounts are going to be, you have no idea what the plate items stats look like, you have no idea what the base armor level is going to look like on feral leather. We have no idea what the class set bonuses are.

It seems like you guys are really jumping the gun by saying "woe is me, I'll never get a raid spot in the hypothetical min/max raidgroup that I'd never join in the first place". Who cares? You probably aren't going to get sat for another class if you've got history with your current guild and you're competent.

I can identify with the dps warrior who says "gee, I don't know where I fit now" because they won't really need to be offtanking all that much with deathknights in the raid and dps spots are generally pretty interchangeable (especially with raid-wide buffs).

 

Shha

Im pretty sure I never missed with a 2h with 6% hit , but hell was so long ago I guess I could be wrong.

 

Mumbles

I know that were going to have another 'polish pass', I hope the rage nerf on Block that has been classed as a change for the next patch is not the only thing. Nevertheless, I'm still confident we will be addressed.

But I feel some people aren't seeing the big picture yet, like you Fellwraith.

I could refute every point you brought up and provide examples in each one of them how other classes would be preferred instead of the warrior skills/abilities you list and provide more.

True we know nothing about high end itemization, true we know nothing about how combat might have been changed, but, I would rather this issues are kept in mind of the developers so that we don't have another 4 horsemen in the future, where where all of a sudden guilds without protection warriors will require a protection warrior because the developers introduced a patch in the middle of WotLK that favours prot warriors for the new bosses because they completely disregarded that issue on launch.

Most of us might be overreacting, I truly hope so, but Blizzard doesn't have a good history on class balance, the constant buffs/nerfs middle expansion happened allot in TBC.

Best regards,

 

Shha

To further advocate against "whiners" who complain about Prot tree. I mildy recall same posts when BC came out - truth is we were a bit weak early on, but we scaled better. There might be some tweaks sure but lets get more detailed about tanks comparison , because HELL lot of stuff has been omitted.


Warriors vs Paladins.

1) Warriors have just better stats. Thats a fact. A lvl 70 warrior has significantly more hp naked then a Paladin. Im pretty sure the trend continues at 80. The difference is substantial and noticeable.

2) Paladins use a really significant item budgeting on aggro. You can complain or be happy about warrior TPS, but truth is most sunwell warriors holds aggro in gear that is barring some expertise not focusing on threat.

- Paladins seem to usually use A'lar trinket and around 500-600 spell damage (correct me if im wrong). 600 spell damage for example equals to TWENTY FIVE PERCENT DODGE if it was itemized in dodge. Thats HUGE. Now of course Paladins get it as bonus stat on items so itemization rules make it a bit cheaper. Still its a huge chunk of itemization just for threat. Warriors need 25 expertise (6 through talents) to get capped on dodge and do decent enough threat. They usually have more so lets count 35 expertise 40 hit rating. Thats 40% of Paladin budgeting for threat. To make it simpler just converting that to stamina gives us 3500 more hp with raid buffs assuming same avoidance.

3) 1) and 2) add up to 5-5.5k more hp for warrior tank. Its not as visible because Paladins less avoidance and the lack of stats is spread among different attributes. Still - it is there - a Paladin will have less hp/avoidance/threat then a similiar level warrior. In sunwell "era", its mostly avoidance that "has to go" for Paladins compared to warriors. I do M'uru fight in gear giving me 43% dodge 24% parry and 13% miss (all rounded down actually) so over 80% avoidance UNBUFFED. I still hold threat and have over 20.5k hp. Paladins have no problem getting close to that hp, but not the avoidance.

4) Crushing blows being removed solve another "imbalance" in favor of warriors actually - Paladins could get uncrushable , but it required a substantial item budget early on. Right now if you count for sunwell radiance its still a problem, without it not as much. Still on an only Sunwell fight with crushes Paladins are probably worst tanks.

5) Paladins have no "active" spell protection. They cant interrupt and cant spell reflect. In multimob encounters that can be a serious problem - Just take lets say Illidari council as example and Priest or Paladin tanking.

6) Disarm seems like a potent mechanic in WOTLK but its to be seen. In a lot of multimob encounters its a powerful tool. Other Oh-shit buttons are there as well.

7) Shieldslam is a dispel that goes through magic immunity and cant be resisted - its actually potentially another gimmick.

All in all Paladins vs Warriors boils down to Warriors being better numerically, and both classes have some gimmicks not alvaiable to other classes. None of what I said above seems to be changing much in WOTLK except for 4).


Warrior vs Druid

1) There is the main problem of Druids - they dont bring anything special to the fight. Putting numbers aside - what a Druid tank brings in terms of new QUALITY. If you have a mob that you need to disarm/spell reflect/shieldbash - you need a warrior. If you have 30 mobs to be aoe tanked - you need a paladin. No realistic scenarios I think call for druid tank (well maybe if mobs disarm shields? But then its still interchangeable with DK). That is a serious concern - you can do everything in game without a Druid tank - not so much other tanking classes now.

2) Crushing blows had to be redesigned or late game druids run into too much problems. When tanks reach 80+% avoidance like they do now, crushing blows current mechanics becomes horribly unfair. It was supposed to be random burst, but as it is now, lets say on Mother or some BT boss (cant really use Sunwell bosses as comparison), a druid can take up to HUNDRED PERCENT of crushing blows. When EVERY hit you take is a crushing, and a mob is hitting you for more physical damage then a warrior on every hit there is something wrong.

3) Armor as source of mitigation is double edged blade. For one spell damage owns druids. For two, even in physical damage it has serious drawback - no "buffing". I know a lot of people frown upon using such stuff, but honestly - improved LOH, inspiration/anc fortitude ARE powerful tools. If a boss hits really hard lets say 2 holy/prot paladins can keep your warrior/paladin tank with CAPPED armor for 4 minutes - usually enough for the fight to conclude (or the enrage/whatever part that calls for physical mitigation). Normally a Druid can outperform Warrior on physical damage mobs mitigation - but during LOH their armor gets even, while warrior retains Defensive Stance/Block to his advantage.

As for LOH - a clickable ability that reduces damage taken by tank by 15% for 2 minutes, seems really powerful, and I really wonder why people dont use it more often . Cooldown isnt such a huge problem - its not much longer then SS, ankhs etc.

Well I guess druids have the "bonus" of being able to dps better then other classes in same spec/gear once their tanked mob dies. So yea that can be the "gimmick" going for them - but its still not as much.



Do warriors still look that weak with this point of view?

P.S. If anything here is horribly wrong because I missed some WOTLK changes please correct me. However I'm pretty sure most of this is true still.

 

Fellwraith

I just need to have as many toys as the next guy to get a spot in a raid group. I don't need to have some special class advantage to justify my spot, which definitely seems to be what a couple of you are arguing.

I really think you guys are over-reating to the crushing blow changes. It makes a lot of sense for them to remove the armor bonuses on feral leather pieces if they do that. Why do you think they wouldn't? The whole purpose behind having higher armor on a feral was to compensate for crushing blows. It shouldn't take a whole hell of a lot of playtesting before someone at Blizzard will remember that. Also FYI - there isn't a single piece of leather armor in the beta that has bonus armor on it so far. The level 70 armor pieces that had bonus armor will be replaced by the higher stat, level 80 pieces that have comparable armor values (by virtue of the itemlevel) and there isn't a problem.

I'd like to hear the arguments as to why you guys seem to think warriors are so inferior to every other tanking class just by looking at the talent trees. Ferals bring a lot to the table, but most of their big benefits come when they don't have to be actively tanking the whole fight (and the armor bonus issue above is material). I don't think paladins are markedly better than a warrior in any way. Deathknights are still being tested and there's clearly a few things that are overtuned and going to be adjusted.