Point taken on the stamina scaling, although the devil's advocate in me wants to disagree on the "Warriors should get more stamina because paladins dont need expertise"-esque comment, since it assumes parrygib is the only realistic difference in mitigation between the two classes. Critical block and the alarmingly good Glyph of Blocking make for some very powerful scaling mitigation, although reliability is an issue admiteddly.

That said it has been stated a few times by Blizzard developers that Critical Block will have to be addressed in the future, so I'll hold my judgement until 3.1 at least. Paladins also don't have last stand or shield block, although they have ardent defender which is very powerful when combined with stamina stacking. I would say that in presenting an argument to Blizzard about the need for stamina scaling, the 'big picture' is a lot less clear cut, possibly due to Blizzard's taking of shield block spam out of the game and thusly reducing the number of certainties available to Warrior tanks (i.e. "Hits will be blocked").
This is more to do with the theme of the thread, but isn't really a vote in favour of mindlessly mashing an ability every 4 seconds along with heroic strike spam and all the rest, just that warrior tanking from an outsider's point of view at the moment looks like it lacks.. direction? Unless you consider that direction to be "stack a lot of expertise, and hope warrior tiered itemisation has more avoidance on it than the paladin set" a direction I suppose.

Maybe it's just me, but I don't really see why Blizzard or anyone else is concerned about Critical Block. What exactly is the fuss about it?

At best, it is a 30% increase in block value over time. At worst, it is much much less as it's possible that critical block value can be wasted on small hits. (e.g. if there is 2k damage to block and you 'critical block' for 3k, you're still only blocking for 500 more than you normally would.)

Even with Critical Block, point-for-point Block% still has very low returns. A random boss example that I tanked last night of Anub'Rekhan showed that I only mitigated 14.8% incoming damage through Block. 31k out of 181k physical damage taken. This is with Shield Block usage and even having 22% block (compared to 22.6% dodge and 21% parry, unbuffed.) Parry--which isn't affected by raid buffs--still had a return of 19.7% avoided attacks making it much larger return on a smaller amount of avoidance.

Sure, Critical Block probably accounts for around 4.44% damage reduction in the above exmaple (30% of 14.8%) for 3 talent points--which is slightly better than very early-tier avoidance talents... But I don't think 1.48% reduction per point is overbudget for a 9th tier talent in the slightest--especially without which Block for Warriors would be even more flimsy than it already is.

Other than trash, Block is lackluster even with Critical Block considered. And for trash, most trash doesn't hit hard enough to actually optimize the value of Critical Block. (See the issue above about 'over-blocking'.)

My feeling is that Blizzard should be less concerned about how overpowered Critical Block is and more concerned with the fact that Block and Strength are still anemic methods of mitigation for a Warrior with ridiculously low returns on item budget--which result in said items and talents being almost completely disregarded as important.

The fact is, if a Warrior took every bit of block-oriented mod or talent budget and stuck it into other forms of avoidance (if they were available) they would probably take less damage than they do now. Block is a handicap, not a bonus. Strength and Block Value/Block%, in their current form, simply serve as a way to dilute our itemization budget and lower our maximum tanking potential with significantly reduced value compared to Agility, Dodge, Defense, and other tanking stats.

Even Loatheb--which is the poster-child boss for Blocking, given that he could probably be tanked by a wet noodle--only resulted in a Physical damage mitigation of 26.4% from Block. When I look at such pathetic results such as a 3.7% blocked damage on Patchwerk vs. 18.1% parry and 28% dodge it's pretty clear that Block is only even passable on fights you have no real chance of dying on anyway, and pretty horrible in any situation where you will actually risk taking huge amounts of damage.

I guess they are afraid of what will happen when Warriors get enough gear to get what we called uncrushable in TBC (every hit is either avoided or blocked). While, yes, 1500 damage absorbed on top of our armor is nice for trash, it generally doesn't do jack for hard hitting bosses so I don't understand the reasoning either. Paladins are already uncrushable unless their HS charges run out (which generally indicates they are tanking multiple mobs, as in trash where it doesn't matter all that much) and Druids/DKs already mitigate more on hard hitting bosses via armor alone. Avoidance is still better than block as you noted.
So yeah, what's the big idea?

On a different note: Our Battle and Commanding shouts need either to last longer (5-10 mins) or their range should be increased to 40-50 yards. This isn't a matter of laziness but a matter of not being able to keep either BS or CS up on your whole raid when you tank - for example KT. There is no way you want to risk wandering over to your hunters to buff them then get back to your spot without risking frost blasts on the way. Blessing of Might, even the 10 min version, doesn't have these issues so in the sense of considilating buffs, why do shouts?

Here is WWS for Spore loser Loatheb: (no crit buffs)
http://http://wowwebstats.com/o1wxysao535xy?s=429632-471555
Longish fight, almost 5min and me (Trandor) tanking in naxx25 level tank gear. A bit rage starved, since he hits so soft, and I didn't use conc blow or shockwave to replace devastates much (could keep aggro anyway). I guess the max in full tank gear without being rage starved and with full raid buffs is around the 2k-2,5k dps ballpark.

Spec was 15/5/51.

Agreed. It seems to make even less sense that shouts are still on a 2-5 minute duration when you consider that they're changing paladin seals from 2 minutes to 30 (and after just revamping the system from refreshing after every judgement). One has to wonder why constantly refreshing seals is a gameplay issue while constantly refreshing shouts (and other short duration buffs, like horn of winter) is not. Especially when, as you've pointed out, it can be a big hassle to hit everyone with shouts in spread out encounters.

Where is the "tanking" ranged weapon in 25 man naxx? Today, our best option is an ilvl 200 crafted epic. It is 13-26 ilvls behind what most of the rest of our gear is. One subspec of one class will actually use a ranged weapon with tanking stats on it. It's highly unlikely that we will get that slot updated in every tier, whereas a higher stamina multiple increases in every tier, regardless of itemization (let's face it, tanking items always increase in stamina as you progress from one tier to the next). It's not a huge difference, but it will be if they don't itemize for it.

Re: crit block - I see a lot of paladins complain that this talent is "very powerful, far better than our holy shield". Even if we get to the point that 100% of the hit table is covered, the cost to do so is huge and the returns are poor. You will never be in a position where you don't have the option to swap from a block rating piece to a piece that has no block rating. Why? Because deathknights need tanking plate too, and they don't block. Also, in a lot of cases the items WITHOUT block rating are superior ([Bindings of the Hapless Prey] or [Bracers of the Unholy Knight]; [Ablative Chitin Girdle] or [Fleshless Girdle]). You will never be in a position where 30% block rating from holy shield is wasted unless you choose your items poorly or you're extremely unlucky with drops.


The number differences between Paladins and warriors are close enough that we're interchangeable, any major differences are in playstyle rather than core functionality or our ability to do a job. It's far different from the situation both classes face when they're compared to a DK or druid right now.

I don't think the parry-haste mechanic is really the issue with the expertise/stamina thing. The point, as I understand it, is that with the way rage, warriors and warrior threat generation work, warriors have to keep an eye on expertise and hit rating to even stand a chance of keeping up on threat, which means they fall way behind on pure health because they can't stack stamina any more (EDIT: and, due to talents, get less benefit from the stamina they do have).

Warriors do still have Shield Block and Shield Wall and Last Stand, but as druids are already showing, there's less need for panic buttons when you have enough health to just absorb the biggest attack a boss can throw at you and still have 10-15k left in reserve.

Additionally, I'd say Last Stand feels a bit flimsy nowadays when using it grants you roughly the same HP as another tank.

(I hardly even view Last Stand as an 'oh shit' button anymore, because it basically doesn't do much of anything in the current damage environment. I think they need to beef it up somehow--even if it's not in regard to health. I use it less now than I did back when it was on twice as long of a cooldown. I mostly just use it to buff Enraged Regeneration.)

I actually think Shield Block's current implementation is part of what's crippling block rating for warriors. Basically, the more block rating you have, the less Shield Block actually does when it's up. With a block rating suit and Shield Block up, you have 35k hp and 100% block. With an HP/avoidance suit and Shield Block up, you probably have 6k more health, 6-8% more avoidance, and...100% block. Either way, your combat table is full of blocks for 10 seconds out of every 40, which is a big chunk of time (particularly when there are a lot of fights - like Sapphiron and Malygos - when you can predict crunch time for healers/etc and use it to maximum effect).

Basically, it's like the situation with paladin Holy Shield that Fellwraith outlines above except less flexible. Instead of having 30% additional block 100% of the time, we have 100% additional block 25% of the time. It guarantees that for 10 seconds out of every 40, all the block rating on your gear might as well not be there.

Block value still scales very well with your Shield Block, of course, but it would take a *lot* of block value to outweigh the lost HP and avoidance there. And opportunities for picking up block value without block rating are almost non-existent.




I also agree with Jayde's point on Last Stand. It doesn't help that the Glyph is effectively useless (why are some glyphs quid-pro-quos in the first place? This almost universally makes those glyphs inferior to gylphs where the only 'cost' associated is the fact that it takes up one of your glyph slots.)

I have been a protection warrior for 4 years now, and I was suspicious about the changes made in 3.0. I was totally wrong, the protection warrior never was so much fun to play. In my opinion, the balancing to other tanking classes needs much work, but I really don't want changes to the warrior playstyle - it feels great. I love it.

@critical block: I don't see the issue there. If Blizzard is concerned, take it away. Take it, because I don't care - it doesn't do anything good for me. Give it to the paladins, if they want it. Just give me some of the paladin threat in return I feel, blocking is more for the paladin. At least, palas seem to have much more interest in blocking gear, than I do.

@Aggro: I'm already starting to struggle with single target aggro in some raid encounters, forcing me to re-gem for expertise and hit. There is absolutely no problem with aggro, if I do heroics with the same people. I think, it is the raid buffs, and the poor scaling of warrior threat. I refuse to believe, after 4 years I just don't know, how to play

@slow weapon vs fast weapon: On bosses I use a fast weapon - I think, everyone does. On trash, slow weapons may do better. A combination of a slow weapon, glyph of cleave and high parry chance works extremely well on trash, and seems to be superior to stacking block value/rating. I think, having a choice is interesting, and I don't want to see weapons to be normalized to the point, where all weapons are equal. Yes, a fast weapon for human warriors is missing in the game, and I share this problem. Maybe on the next gear level, the best weapon will be a sword. I will be happy, and someone else will be complaining.

@Devastate: Devastate now is so bad, it really needs a buff. I would like to see revenge being replaced by devastate completely, it would improve the game for me. With the shield block change, and the new sword and board, warrior tanking has become too situational. I'm a tank. I want to manage encounters, not cooldowns. Replacing revenge would solve two problems: Low threat as an offtank, and threat issues while tanking casters.

@Patch 3.1: The warrior has been designed as a hybrid class. There are talents, that allow a dps warrior, to be a tank. Restrictions have been made to the protection tree, that make sure, a protection warrior doesn't outperform a tanking dps warrior greatly. With the introduction of dual specs, this concept is made obsolete. No warrior will be tanking with a hybrid spec, ever. Changes need to be made to the warrior talent trees. I see it as an opportunity, to specialize the warrior further.

The rage related only talents definitely need an overhaul. The rest could use some tweaks but imp spell reflect I could see being very useful if for no other reason for the -4 spell miss. You have to keep in mind that some talents in the trees have potential application in the future we're not seeing now, have pvp applications, and in general are there to give us a bigger, jack of all trades, tanking toolkit. Priests are in a very similar place.

Spell Reflection never has disadvantages for you. If the spell can be reflected, then it will be reflected be 100% of the time; it will never miss (try it against lower level mobs where you basically resist 90% of the spells: the moment you SR, it will "hit" you then get reflected). If a spell cannot be reflected, then the 4% miss chance will apply. Really, no drawbacks.

And I certainly agree with your second paragraph.

I thought you ALWAYS reflected a spell if spell reflect up, no matter what would have happened had it not been there? And the -4% to hit is up always, not just when spell reflect is up, right? I've never used the talent myself. I thought about using it for Malygos a couple times, but decided against it. But you have a good idea for the magic reduction for non reflectable spells.

The only reason I mentioned the stam conversion was because, like it has been mentioned in this thread a couple times now, that stam is pretty consistenly a good choice for gem and enchant choices where its available. Avoidance is great, but without enough hp behind it, damage starts to get too spiky (thats just my opinion though) and we already lag behind in some fights (like Sarth 3d). I mean, I would imagine that was the reasoning behind Blizzard making the Stam to spellpower talent... because they knew that they were going to have a ton of it.

BUT I also agree with the str conversion. They're dumping a ton of it on us, and I feel like I'm getting so little out of it compared to everything else. With every other stat, I feel like there is a noticeable difference. With str, its kind of like "ehh, I dont see it."

The way I feel about gearing as a warrior flat out: I feel like I need more hit than when I'm Fury spec'd, that I have to give up a lot for expertise, that expertise has too huge an impact, that shield block has too little, and that even set pieces lack cohesiveness. I dont feel like its a terribly huge problem now, but with having done most content now, and looking towards Ulduar, I just want to put myself in a place where I'm not the gimp in the box.

I had been just skipping over Focused Rage until recently. But like you said, I needed to put points into either that or Shield Spec to get down the tree, and figured I'd give that a go this time around. But my worry is that they'll never look to change them because most of those have more of a PvP impact. Imp BR and Puncture help with rage (in pvp its terrible), Imp Disarm, Spell Reflect and Safeguard give some PvP utility. Imp Disciplines... I've never been a fan of, I dont know where anyone finds this useful.

Shield Spec, there's potential there, as its not entirely useless. I think if they put in a dodge/parry to rage mechanic for Prot, then the rage on blocks from that talented could be converted to spell mitigation or something. Just an idea.

So far this thread has been a good read. I know that I'm seeing things a little differently now.

Also, just had this idea. What if a block was % of damage incoming? Makes it so its not OP in low damage fights, but actually useful on hard hitting bosses? That would make Shield Block a very nice 3rd "OH SHIT!" button. Would that be too overpowered, or what?

My other idea for what to do with shields [if you're not making them avoidance] is make some function of strength along the same lines as the mitigation function that gives a percentage of incoming damage that your shield mitigates. You now lose the block rating stat completely and it's just another piece of mitigation. Good for paladins and warriors!

In any case, block should work on magical effects - refer to the archetypical image of the knight using his shield to reduce the dragon's breath.

1) The combined issue of a broken rage model providing infinite rage scenarios, and the assumption that given an infinite rage scenario the threat from HS spam being a threat 'equalizer' when comparing classes. Normalizing rage from incoming attacks based on mob's weapon speed (regardless of hit/miss) provides a more consistent tanking experience from soloing to 25-mans and infinite rage scenarios become a function of number of mobs and mob design rather than how much damage is being done (i.e. constant with increasingly better gear). HS becomes used less on bosses as a result of less rage needing to be dumped. Then buff dmg or threat coefficients on SS, Dev, CB, and/or SW (not Revenge as that further gimps OT threat generation). This preserves HS as an ability to dump rage, but not at the cost of having to spam it to make sure we counter latency vs. swing timer. Incidentally, AoE packs are likely to provide infinite rage scenarios allowing you to spam Cleave... this seems a more desirable means of competing on AoE threat given the relative brevity of AoE pulls.

2) Even if #1 is solved, OT threat generation is hideously miserable. As has been mentioned previously in this thread, a huge chunk of our threat originates with being hit. If Revenge was proc'd off some ability (possibly caked into Vigilance) it would go a little way in fixing this as it is high threat for low rage, but we're still too rage starved to keep up a 'standard rotation'. Even with a standard rotation we're still looking at not gaining threat from Damage Shield (and associated Deep Wounds procs). There's just too much threat we're missing out on if we're not a monster's target. Being an OT shouldn't mean that I can't produce just as much threat as the MT, only that I shouldn't do so at risk of pulling the mob (just like the DPS shouldn't). I see this as a similarity we share with Paladins as well who rely on their shield for generating gobs of threat, just that our lack of rage makes the scenario that much worse for us.

3) Dmg/Threat scaling *can* turn out to be troublesome if later tiers don't begin adding more dps oriented stats in addition to the existing defensive stats. Already we can become hit and expertise capped with a very respectable health pool leaving our only real avenues to improve dps/threat with more block% for Damage Shield (which can still be capped relatively easily) and more strength (for all our abilities). The 'obvious' argument against this is to only use defensive gear up to your minimum requirements and then gear for dps past that, but the realities are that there aren't enough highly specialized defensive pieces of equipment to do this in the general case. Without adding crit, haste, armor pen, or just increasing proportions of strength (could make dps warriors jealous), our dps/threat will scale much slower than our dps counterparts. Perhaps this isn't as big a problem given our current typical lead in threat, but there will come a point where dps *will* be threat capped once again if our dps/threat doesn't scale better in future tiers.

4) Stamina scaling should be something that is pretty consistent between all tanks... the differentiators should be in style of play (i.e. methods of generating threat and reducing incoming damage). Going against mobs with a considerable amount of magic damage puts anyone with lower stamina modifiers puts them at a disadvantage before they even get around to using their abilities. The differences aren't yet to the point that I've ever been envious of another class's health pool, but by T9+ things could get out of hand.

I'm with Satrina. As long as Block value is a flat value, balancing it around the various levels of content is going to be impossible, unless they start making all raid bosses hit for the same amount as heroic bosses, only faster and faster and faster and faster. Setting it up so Block Value becomes a rating, or is just removed entirely, and making strength increase the percentage seems like a good way to go. They would then need to find a new value to scale Shield slam to, but that shouldn't be too hard. They could also set up a combination, making it a flat value plus a percentage.

On another topic, I realize the conversation has moved away from Heroic Strike, but I was reading the Tankspot news post discussion on it yesterday, and thinking about it at work, and decided to put an idea before the court. Copied from the post I put on the HS discussion on Tankspot:

We put up Tanking Topics #2 today over at Tankspot and on the official forums for discussing rage problems.
Tankspot: Warrior Tanking Topics #2: Rage - TankSpot
WoW Forums: World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Tanking Topics #2: Rage

I asked our resident DK tank about what his avoidance is last night, and he's around 70% with raid buffs. I'm in the low 50s, also raid buffed. Assuming a 70%-55% comparison: Sure, the DK only has 15% more avoidance, and Jayde's blocking was a 15% mitigation, so they're even, right?

Here's the thing, Jayde stated he blocked 31k/181k incoming damage, (comes out to 17.1%, I assume he's rounding.), which means that ~15% is applied AFTER avoidance. If we consider the damage taken without block, the DK is taking 30%, Warrior is taking 45%.

The DK is taking -two-thirds- the damage the warrior is taking. Now I suppose this might have been evened out when DKs had less armor, but with the 80% armor from Frost presence, aforementioned DK has the same mitigation within 1% of my own Mitigation. (US|Elune|Ahraman is the DK, for item comparisons. He's at 29997 with paw buff and frost presence, I believe.)

Our shield needs to average 33% damage reduction per swing to match the DK with his higher health pool. Don't even consider shield block, because Icebound Fortitude is on a 1 minute cooldown, and lasts 15 seconds with the 4 piece set bonus, and is up 25% of the time, just like shield block. Even without the set bonus, it's up 20% of the time.

Unless Jayde's using a mod that averages in a boss hit for every parry/dodge/miss, in which case that 15% really does even us out, and this whole post is pointless, but I'm skeptical.

I'm rather hoping I've missed something. Someone poke a hole in this...

Armor is sort of a red herring. You didn't account for defensive stance for the warrior in your example. You're comparing apples and oranges when you say that the DK's higher armor value is more mitigation than what a warrior has. Jayde has a little over 24k armor in his armory profile. Raid-buffed he's probably close to 28k armor. 1k worse than the DK, right? However, his damage mitigated per hit (before block) is going to be much better because he also gets a flat 10% taken off any hit after the armor mitigation is applied. The DK is taking 35.7% of any damage, Jayde is only taking 33.54% once you factor in defensive stance. The DK would need 32.9K armor to be equivalent to Jayde's base mitigation. In effect, that 80% armor multiplier from frost presence is not just the equivalent of a shield but also our defensive stance multiplier, protector of the pack, or a paladin's righteous fury multiplier.

Looking at damage taken over the entire duration of a fight is always going to make avoidance look better. However, avoidance is still going to be spikey if you're talking about a slow-swinging, hard-hitting mob (someone like Morogrim Tidewalker). I think the problem with DKs is that their baseline avoidance is very high. They have a number of things that sidestep the DR calculations, however, none of those things will scale. Future increases to avoidance for them are going to be very hard to come by. Their forceful deflection ability is parry RATING, which is the worst possible avoidance stat to have. Their base parry rating is so high that any incremental gains from gear are going to be mostly wasted.

With block scaling, you guys also need to think about how armor mitigation increases block's effective mitigation. As armor values scale up in each tier, the flat value taken after armor is going to become more valuable. Once we got to Sunwell, block was still a big part of my mitigation even as I moved toward more avoidance and less block value/rating gear.

I agree that being able to block magical damage may help with some of the issues we see when comparing paladin/warrior health to druids and DKs. The reason they were given more health was to help compensate for block, but physical mitigation isn't really the same as a big health pool in a lot of content.

I actually think the protection tree is fairly polished. I think the problem is that 2 classes are horribly imbalanced right now, so we don't look as good in comparison. I don't have a problem with the "pvp related" talents in the tree, we are actually pretty viable as a "control" class if paired with a dps or a healer. I disagree with some people's assessment of imp spell reflect. That ability is VERY powerful in a couple encounters. The one thing I don't like about it is that they don't mention the range limitation in the talent text. You can't reflect for people in your party that are too far away.

I think the problem is less with improved spell reflect specifically and more with the tank disparities in magic damage mitigation more generally. Improved Spell Reflect feels fine until you compare it to Barkskin and the suite of DK magic mitigation tools. I do think it would be a lot better if they switched it from 4% chance for spells to miss to 4% reduced magic damage.

No harder than a warrior though, right? A DK with (hypothetically) 20% avoidance from talents/blade barrier/etc and 30% from gear is going to be at the same place on the DR curve as a warrior with 10% avoidance from talents and 30% from gear, because talents and the like don't count against DR.

Forceful Deflection is the only exception to this, and really I think it's a drop in the bucket - the biggest chunks of the avoidance they're getting that we aren't are blade barrier and runeforging.

I agree though, I actually don't think their avoidance total is the real problem - as you point out, the health difference (and the cooldown differences probably merit a mention here too) is where the real issues are coming from.

Well, I think the topic was more Block vs. Avoidance than Block vs. Armor... and Block isn't less spiky than Avoidance.

The previous point about the mitigation % being after avoidance and such is totally accurate by the way. I was using WWS's figures, which calculates Block Mitigation % based on damage taken, not damage avoided. So, yes, the value of Block is much lower than it appears as the roughly 40-50% avoidance I have on the majority of boss encounters is being taken out before it's calculated. So, go ahead and half the figures I posted above.

Basically, the returns on Block are pretty abysmal for anything other than trash.

Also, the point wasn't that Improved Spell Reflect wasn't uber on Malygos P2 (it is), but more the point that it's generally trash any other time--which is 98% of the time Warriors play. Additionally, as I gave examples of above, there would be tons of ways to make it a more interesting and dynamic talent.

Tell me how many Warriors spec into Imp Spell Reflect when not having specific issues with Malygos and you'll get my point as to why it should be redesigned.

We may have to agree to disagree here, but I can't think of many other trees in the game where players regularly avoid so many talents almost universally. In fact, I can't actually think of another tree where the same amount applies other than possibly some Warlock trees which Blizzard has already said they are substantially revamping in 3.1.

There is a big difference, in my mind, between having a lot of talents that are situational and a lot of talents which fall under the category of "No player in their right mind would train this unless they were forced to." Given the fact that pretty much all tanking builds have at least 17-20 points outside of the tanking tree, I think it's safe to say that the general interest and polish level in Protection talents is lackluster at best.

Comparing to other hybrid classes, Shadow Priests usually spend 57 points in their primary tree, Druids often go around 58, Shaman are usually in the 55-57 range, etc. Warriors pretty much say '51 points just to get Shockwave, then I'm outta here.'--which feels broken to me.

Having 7 talents which nobody really wants either at all or if they weren't a pre-req for getting Shockwave is just not good enough.

I DID include defensive stance. You're comparing Jayde raid buffed to the DK with just a paw buff. You added about 4k to Jayde for raid buffs. Add about 4k to the DK, and he easily matches that 32.9k armor value you mentioned. I did the comparison between him and myself, in the middle of the raid, when I asked what his % mitigation was.

As for scaling you mentioned, you do bring up a good point. As our gear gets significantly better through the tiers, we will get larger gains than the DK. The question is, will we scale fast enough to catch up to them? Since they gain little from further avoidance, they can simply start stacking more threat stats, and more health. Which brings us to the previous problem, health scaling, and our own dependence on hit/expertise.