Recent events

Ok, Druid. Even though I'm getting a little weary of other classes coming onto the Warrior boards, whether it be for pity, trolling, support, disdain or what have you, I'll entertain this post rather than move it or delete it.

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In light of Tseric's sudden bout of chattiness we have seen 1 small buff for warriors.

Some would regard it as a buff, some as a non-nerf, some as a bug fix, some as simply a change. I lean towards the latter of the two.

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We are not taking a raid spot.

The devs would agree. From what they've seen, warrior tanks tend to out-perform hybrid tanks in raid encounters. Rage mechanics lend themselves better to larger hits and crits from bosses and that won't drastically change in the near future. Threat generation can be separated from damage through game mechanics and the warrior tank ends up as more definitive as a tank in a raid situation. Pallys and Druids have good off-tank, multi-target abilities, which means they can clean up a sloppy pull or peeling targets better than a single target threat generator like the Warrior. The Warrior requires more twitch and target switching to hold aggro on multiple targets.

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If you look at it, pallies are even better healers than they used to be. So are druids, and as far as im aware shaman healing has been buffed a bit. That means that at least 1 person from each of the healing classes can afford to be an off-spec in order to benefit the raid in unique ways.

Agreed, yet this will be the crux of the more hybrid classes. They may be called on to operate in other ways. A Paladin main tank might run into mana efficiency issues. A druid tank might run into mitigation/rage issues. They may be called on to heal or dps or buff, but during that time they won't be tanking. Those will be real demands from a smaller raid group or even a 5-person group.

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I totally agree that Warriors are broken due to the new rage generation tables and their consistently nerfed damage.

Hyperbolic. What's a rage generation 'table'? While there may be threat generation issues to work out, rage normalization fears should only be relegated to the over-geared. Armor mitigating rage generation is something the devs are aware of, but it is far from 'broken'. Change could be made, but at the moment that is neither here nor there. As for consistently nerfed damage, a mechanic that has the potential to generate infinite damage will usually seem like it has to be nerfed, because mathmatically rage mechanics have no top end. You're always trying to keep it in reason against a zero line. Subtractive changes, not additive are more of the common course.

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I do not however see that as a cause for calling out Druids as being OP, as we are seen as the most whole of the tanking classes at this point in time.

Druids are high on situational appeal. Yes, their tanking will serve a purpose, but that "new hotness" feel will wither like any other class balance issue that folks butt heads over. Same as it ever was.

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I see this as Blizzard trying to add a new dynamic to raiding, instead of utilizing the holy trinity for all encounters.

I think they'd agree with you on that. I know I do.

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Please do not direct your frustration over your class onto the Druid community, if we get nerfed back to what we were there are no tanks, no loot and a hell of a lot of whinging on the forums.

I wish all class forums would do the same. Rogues and warlocks arguing. Pallys/Druids arguing with Warriors. Priests/Shaman just wanting to hate themselves. Mages have always been crazy...And Hunter's? Dealt with some recent nerfs fairly reasonably, so cheers to them. If they complain about this post, tell them I said to sic their pet on me and I hope they spec'ed BM.

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Do not ask for nerfs, look at the issues with the Warrior class and try to point them out in a reasonable way.

Reasonable advice for any class. Bug reports and specific reports of effects and abilities are more accessible than term papers and sweeping theories of game design. That's not to say we can't talk about sweeping theories of game design, but doing so is more suggestion or opinion than feedback. You'll find less concrete response in your 'treatise of how [x] class should be revised, revamped or completely deleted' than you would with 'ability [y] seems to function wierd in [z] way'.

And as a final note, the devs don't like nerfing, they like buffing. As it stands, they see legitimate issues of class balance for Warriors and Shaman in the current situation. Changes may occur to any and all other classes, as per usual, but those are points of concern for the devs. Try not to wrap those legitimate concerns in too much exaggeration. Don't tell me it can't happen; I've already seen it.

Slanche.

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I take issue with this.

Rage normalization is hitting every Warrior that so much as touches gear that is as simple to get as the Halaani Claymore from Halaa, a 9G vendored sword.

So while they should only be relegated to the over-geared, they are hitting home with the normally geared.

Ok, personally I won't take issue with that. However, the devs would probably want to see more math behind that statement.

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Given that only the dev's have this math, nudge them a bit into doing their own calculations and then testing their calculations in the game environment and yes, that means making a warrior (possibly through leveling) and using AVERAGE gear.

The thing is, they do test it and play it. They have the math. They also understand that it is not beyond the capacity of the community to provide critical insight into specific game mechanics. There are plenty of reverse-engineered formulas out there to draw from already. The matter comes down to them comparing your claims with their data. Granted, the data doesn't tell the whole story, which is a strong reason why I told y'all a month back that they want warriors to play the game and gear up. In a middle game, a 1v1 situation changes from day to day as different players level up, gain new gear and fight each other. The hard data is so chaotic, it makes it much less worthwhile to hand out buffs in a middle game and end up nerfing them in the end game. And, as Iv'e said before and I hate to say again, the Warrior is gear-dependant and that can require questing, grouping and raiding for good items to fill the potential of the class.

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Our rage and threat generation is balanced behind the fact that we are in a raid setting, tanking a single target, usually the boss mob. This design creates problems when we are in a smaller setting like a 5 or a 10 man tanking multiple trash mobs.

Single target lends itself better as a raid mechanic. It isn't necessarily balanced around that mechanic. This is something that the devs have priority on in changes for this class. Keeping viability of the other tank classes has to be balanced with this. It would be improper to think that all tank classes will function the same way. This is one of the ways they diverge.

I'll certainly agree that Druid tanks are seeing high demand in smaller settings at this point, but I have also seen the need for single target threat in several small group situations. But that's just my own experience.

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Maybe the community is over analyzing the words MAIN TANK because most think of the title as the one who takes the most damage, instead of the one who just "holds the main target."

Maybe. It's an interesting point, nonetheless.

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Ideally in a bad pull, shouldn't it still be that the majority of the mobs are on the MT while the offtanks pick up the 1, maybe 2 that wander off?

What is an ideal bad pull? If it's a bad pull, I should hope you have off-tanks to support. Is that not an ideal situation?

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Examples are the best way to argue a point imo so lets say we have a pull of 5 mobs. There is only one CC, polymorph. The mobs are hard hitting so that heals need to be thrown while aggro is being established. The targets are each marked and the main target has been established. However, a careless mistake leads to the CC breaking and all mobs running at the group. The warrior serves his purpose of picking up mobs and picks up two with a taunt and sunder but the mobs hit hard so they damage the tank enough to require healing. There are still 3 mobs running around and they are heading for the healer due to healing aggro.

In this situation, what is the warrior to do without sufficient aggro generation on multiple mobs? A druld or paladin could swipe/consecrate, picking up almost every mob while the warrior who should be the one taking the damage is unable to do so. This is a common-place in 5 mans that needs a bit of explanation. Many have discussed thunderclap as a solution but currently, it is very restrictive due to stance requirements and a cooldown.

You've already explained the situation. The Warrior is main tanking while the pally/druid may pick up the adds that slip. If you have both classes, more power to ya. I fail to see the problem for the group.

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the druid and paladin would be tanking more mobs which would require more healing. How are they off-tanks in this situation? Is developer design really geared towards offtanks taking all the initial aggro and then having the main tank single pulling a mob off with taunt? That doesn't seem very logical considering the community has established the idea that main tanks are supposed to divert the majority of the damage from mobs to themselves and generate enough aggro to keep the attention of as many mobs as possible.

Have you never been in a group where you could focus DPS onto healer aggro while main-tank and off-tank are consolidating aggro? Then dps targets and peel them off as you will? Choices in bad circumstances. You're suggesting that a single point of threat (the tank) bear all possible threat. Again, we're going to include off-tanks in class balance and PVE encounter balance. Much of the community has already considered the fact that a lot of encounters don't adhere to the 'tank and spank' scenario.

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Prot warriors have always had superior damage mitigation. The real issue is this:

Druids and paladins face reasonably less mitigation when single target tanking.
Warriors face mutli-player organization hazards when aoe tanking.

Warriors have the larger, and in my opinion off-the-scale, disadvantage here.

That is one way to look at it, yes. Or, as the internet fads would have it, QFE. Devs might agree with your last sentence, but may also consider it variation of tank abilites and situations which are within reasonalbe game play. By that I mean, able to be compensated by the group.

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I'm not sure you fully thought this out before posting. "Infinite damage" is the real hyperbolic statement. Yes, I fully understand that warriors scale better than linearly, unlike every other class in the game. But consider the following constraints:

Rage bar goes to 100.
Finite number of instant attacks available for any given spec.
Global Cooldown of 1.5 seconds for most skills.
On-next-attack skill damage limited by finite weapon delay.

So, rather than warriors getting infinite damage from infinite rage, I see warriors topping out at a max effective rage beyond which point warriors scale completely linearly like any other class. And I don't believe that max effective rage is hard to obtain in certain circumstances, such as group PvP and raid bosses with powerful AoE attacks, the two regimes where warriors have traditionally been the most sucessful.

I can't speak for anyone else, but my main (rage-related) complaint is that, while I like the rage mechanic and think it is fun, the necessity of balancing warriors for the high damage, high rage situation really makes life harder than it ought for everyone whose rage generation is below the balance point.

You're focusing on the constraints put on rage mechanics by game design. As a pure mechanic, rage always increases through intended play.

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And I don't believe that max effective rage is hard to obtain in certain circumstances

No , it isn't hard to obtain. That's why the community has concerned itself with rage dumps previously. That's why there are particular constraints put on it.

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This is because Paladins don't rely on rage to build hate and they have a very effective AoE

They rely on mana for threat generation which is its own problem.

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and Druids build hate more easily because of the amount of damage they can deal while in bear form.

While dealing damage does cause threat, the two mechanics are separate and mitigation will diverge in larger encounters.

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So we're required to have epics to be as efficient and effective as another class in blues?


And I fixed your typo. <3 You've been hard at work in the Warrior forum today, so I'll let you slide this time, hehe.

Are you required? No. Does it help? Obviously. You do the math.

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Question...

Do the Devs EVER play around in the real game with Pick Up Groups? Or are they always running around with each other in IDEAL 5 man parties with top notch gear? Serious question

They play the same as anyone and do pick-ups and group with friends the same as anyone else as well. They also are on the same gear hunt as you all are on. Believe me, we all share what cool new loot we get and our dreams of even cooler new loot we want with each other.