I’ve been reading this thread with some interest, and it seems that there are 2 particular issues with Protection Warriors at this point in time;

1. Itemisation requires too many trade-offs between different stats, more-so than any other tanking class, resulting in lesser effectiveness as a tank
2. Infinite rage situations resulting in broken keyboards and/or carpal tunnel syndrome

To address the first, people have suggested a number of minor talent changes and other similar tweaks affecting Warriors only. Personally, I fear that these would only act as a band-aid and do not go far enough to balancing tanking classes in the long term.

The main problem, as I see it, is balancing defensive stats to put tanks on an equal footing from a defensive perspective. Its all well and good trying to make each tanking class feel different, but where there is difference people will always perceive that one is better than the other - and as such we need to minimise the differences as far as possible from a defensive perspective, while maintaining the unique play-style and offensive abilities that each class has to offer.

Considering the 3 Plate-wearing tank classes in particular, my suggestion would be to homogenise avoidance and mitigation by condensing the current 3 stats (dodge, parry, and block) into 2 stats: Dodge and Deflection. Dodge would retain its current functionality, while deflection would have a similar functionality to block in allowing a player to deflect part of an incoming attack using either a weapon or shield. As shields currently have a block value, so weapons would also have a deflection value (maybe based off weapon DPS since this tends to be consistent across weapons of the same ilevel). In order to retain the current attack tables, deflection chance would be applied twice in the case of tanks who dual wield or use a weapon and shield combo (once for the main-hand in the place of parry and once for the off-hand in the place of block). Shields could have a multiplier applied to give a greater chance to deflect an attack than using a weapon in the off-hand.

This would bring Death Knight’s onto a level playing field with Warriors and Paladins in terms of defensive stat requirements, and allow for more consistent scaling of defensive stats between the 3 Plate-wearing tank classes. Balancing the 4 tanking classes would also become more straight-forward, as you can ensure that gearing allows each class to achieve the same amount of avoidance (dodge) and balance health/armour in such a way that a Druid tank with higher overall HP will die in as many hits as a Plate tank with lower HP but taking less damage per hit due to deflection.

Stat-wise, dodge for all classes would be based on agility while deflection would be derived from strength. Current plate gear would clearly need tweaking to include both.

Once general tank survivability is balanced so that there is no clear best class, then magical damage mitigation can be looked at in a similar manner. Perhaps remove the emphasis from gearing to survive magical attacks in non-resistance fights by making them a fixed percentage of target maximum health. The emphasis is then on the healers to top the tank up before and after such attacks to ensure that he/she has sufficient health to survive the physical damage which is constantly ongoing.


Regarding the second issue, something clearly needs to be done to make rage gain more consistent. After all, someone getting in my way in a 5-man instance isn’t going to make me any less angry than someone getting in my way in a 25-man instance! I currently operate with 2 bars set up with the same abilities, but one combining each of them with Heroic Strike for use during high rage situations, that I switch between as and when I need to dump rage.

To make rage generation more consistent, removing the component from incoming damage and adding a baseline rage generation when in defensive stance and in combat would be one method that could be employed. This would make for more consistent rage generation, whether tanking and taking damage or off-tanking and not taking damage, and also make it so that rage generation would scale with damage done.

Some people have suggested a ‘toggle’ that allows you to activate Heroic Strike on each swing during high rage situations. Personally, I’d take things further and limit HS to Arms and Berserker Stance to give Protection Warriors a new ability that functions differently. Let’s call it ‘Focused Aggression’, and make it a passive ability when in Defensive Stance - when you have more than 50 rage, your abilities cost an additional 50% rage and deal an additional 25% damage. Goodbye excess rage, hello DPS/TPS increase, and you can keep your attention on what’s going on around you and maintaining your tanking rotation. Hell, it could even have an ‘execute’ type function for Protection built in - when your target is below 20% health, your rate of rage generation is doubled.


In conclusion, I think that the solutions to these issues have to be lasting long-term solutions. We don’t need another band-aid to hold us together until the next major patch or expansion, only to wind up in the same situation once everyone has upgraded to the new best-in-slot gear.

Edited in the requirement for defensive stance, which I missed out when I first posted. I have PvP'd as Prot Spec (always have - PvP'd to Rank 11 as Prot way back), and it's a lot of fun when you have a good team working with you. The level of lockdown and control you can provide is quite impressive. And being able to destroy rogues is always good fun! But I don't think such an ability would be all that unbalanced in PvP, particularly if they reduce or remove rage earned from damage taken to address infinte rage issues in PvE.

I know it's optimistic, but my concern is that we'll get some nice little tweaks in 3.1, the Devs will say 'there, Warriors are fixed', and by the time Ulduar is on farm we'll be right back in the same position of being overlooked in preference to the other tanking classes. The issues we have are more deep-rooted within the overall mechanics and interactions of tanking stats, and I don't believe it's something that can be fully addressed simply by making changes to Warriors.

A minor development, perhaps, but not one that solves the problem in a satisfactory way... and also one which may have no real benefit if they address the issues relating to infinite rage situations.

Wouldn't help because prot PvP uses defensive stance almost exclusively now (dance for intercept sometimes).

A heroic strike toggle isn't a solution to threat or dps issues, it just would save a lot of key mashing. Whether heroic strike needs to be rebalanced from the fast vs slow weapon thing for threat/dps is a different question. If I'm tanking a boss now, a toggle would save me at least 60 keypresses a minute. For threat they could take all the modified threat off of heroic strike and add it to shield slam, revenge, and devastate/sunder armor. This would make the use of heroic strike spam with a fast weapon more optional and also allow off tanks more threat generation when they have low rage.

Infinite rage situations are only a problem if we are required to mash a heroic strike every 0.5 seconds to reach the best TPS/DPS. I would rather they don't give us any more moves to dump rage, but instead make us a lot less reliant on heroic strike threat and buff the threat of other skills.

My point was to have something available within Defensive Stance - so we don't have to switch stance, lose a big chunk of our damage reduction and risk taking a big hit that could kill us and potentially result in a wipe. Something that can be slotted into the standard tanking rotation, or which augments a current tanking ability, without causing any interruption or distraction during what is often a critical part of the encounter.