#0 - Dec. 28, 2006, 2:04 a.m.
Added a 4th Rage Mechanic part. More of a question than anything.
1/4/07 - Added 2 links over to the EU forums. First one is right below and the second one is in the talents section at the very end. Second one obviously looks at our talents.
Added the tidbit I posted about range at the top of page 34 (assuming no post get deleted)
EU Warrior Forum post concerning this thread, since their input is equally as important as ours:
http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html;jsessionid=B1EF4BE2CE6F8C87A7475AC210A62884.forum03?topicId=104600725&sid=1
(Sorry to any other official WoW forum which talks of this thread, but I only know the EU's address and their page and forums are in English.)
Rage Mechanics
Dealing damage to gain rage is fine, a bit more linear and comparable to a rogues energy now more than ever since gear hardly changes our rage generation by more than a couple points. There is still some problems with it.
1) Shields - PW:S and other shields of the nature give us no rage even if damage is required to break through the shield. There's really no reason for it to be this way. Shields like the paladin shield where the player is immuned is fine, but shields that require a player to break through them by use of damage should generate rage for that damage.
2) Our Armor - as our damage mitigation through armor increases, the amount of rage we gain decreases. Until recently, simply upgrading our weapons would restore the rage loss, but with the rage normalization, this form of compensation was removed. Rage gained through taking damage should be normalized so that it's based off the unmitigated damage rather than the mitigated damage so that gear does not become a hindrance to our tanking ability.
3) Two-Handed Weapons - With the new formula, the difference between a 2h'er and a 1h'er gaining rage is a problem as 2h'ers are being considered more powerful, yet slower versions of a 1h'er instead of their own weapon type. 2h'ers are finding the rage change to be very detrimental, while 1h'ers, both shield and dual-wield haven't seen much of a change. A boost to 2h rage should be looked into as a way of creating more viable talent builds and to bring 2h Fury back up to par with what it used to be.
4) Damage DoTs - Might not have been the first time said, but a recent post by Gena from the Hyjal server made a thread concerning DoTs that deal damage to us. As it stands, most (if any) DoTs do not generate rage. This could be a possible alternative to us not generating rage off of damage shield at the very least.
PvP Combat
So we require a pocket healer to PvP. The problem is the pocket healer doesn't require us to PvP and they are finding themselves to be doing better with other classes that require less babysitting. Classes with range are exceeding the damage we are able to do when we're in range, while also having more survivability than what is presumed to be the class who is based around survivability.
Range vs Melee Question: Why are ranged classes given higher DPS, more crowd controls, and more escape methods than classes who are melee? When a class contains all three of these attributes, they control majority of what happens on the battlefield. They can nuke a person to death, CC the people near them, escape and repeat until their mana is depleted. Should the melee that lack crowd controls and escape methods not have more DPS to create a reason for giving ranged more CC and escape? Or should the melee not be give their own CC and escape methods to make up for the lack of DPS they have?
One would argue that a warrior is the most survivable class and use plated armor as their reasoning. The problem with that argument is that the majority of the damage in WoW is elemental damage rather than physical damage. Casters would obviously love plate armor, but on the flip side, melee would obviously love to have all of their CC abilities. Another argument is about mana vs energy/rage, but the mana pools are far too great in most situations to be considered a limiting factor and in the situation where it would be (Alterac Valley), there's enough mobility to remove yourself from combat and recharge without interference from the opposition.
Protecting the Casters Question: If our goal in PvP is to protect the casters, then why does the warrior class lack the utilities required to take the damage in place of the caster? Should we not be give more abilities like that of Intervene that allow us to take the damage trying to be dealt to the healer? If warriors are required to have a "pocket healer", there needs to be a reason for the healer to want to group with us. We need a way to take the damage they would otherwise be taking or else we are an inconvenience since our survivability is less than a ranged class and our DPS is both lower than ranged and requires us to be in range to do.
There are a number of ways to solve the ranged vs melee issues and some of them are as followed:
1) 3-5 minute cooldown ability that breaks a certain type of CC effect and granting immunity to that effect for a short time.
2) Changing Intercept so that it can break roots. With it being on a 30 second timer with the ability to lower it some, still costing rage, still requiring Berserker Stance, and still having a min/max distance, it's hard to see how this could really be overpowered and honestly needs to be tested in the game by players before being thrown out.
However, if the goal is to make warriors more like tanks, then we need new abilities that promote this concept. In DAoC there was an ability that as long as you were within range, you would block melee attacks on the a selected player. An ability like this could be adjusted to fit WoW so that it would not mitigate all the damage, but a portion of both physical and magic damage, effectively giving healers a reason to want to bring a class who lacks the damage output of others.
Simply put, we lack utility and require far too much babysitting to become even close to as useful as a class that is self-sufficient with more dps or utility. Other classes do not want to deal with a class that cannot pull it's own weigh.
Something else to think about for the pocket healer argument is this:
A warrior doing damage with a pocket healer means the healer is within 40 yards.
A ranged class doing damage with a pocket healer means the healer is within 80 yards.
Healers in general are overall safer with a ranged class for the simple fact they are further away from the battle if they choose to heal. We seem to always find ourselves thinking strictly damage output numbers and not so much about the additive nature of ranged distance for a ranged class and a healer. The further the healer is from the battle, the safer they are in most cases.
PvE Tanking
By now, it's no shock to anyone that warriors are not scaling in threat like that of druids and paladins. Obviously this was not intended and changes should be made. Some changing of the threat mechanics are in order and that is beyond a players ability to decide on how it should be done. Simply changes that would help multi-mob tanking however can be suggested and it gets no simpler than changing Thunderclap to cost a bit less and be usable in defensive stance.
PvE DPS
Hardly much of a concern if our tanking is fixed to bring us back in line. For the most part it's fine.
Talents
As far as new talents, Endless Rage = band aid. Rampage = pain in the butt version of Battle Shout. Devastate = awesome idea, but it's current threat values are low. Personal suggestion on this is to also make the extra threat only in Battle and Defensive stance, so that it's a more viable DPS ability when used in Berserker stance.
We really do need a true talent review or just sweeping changes like that other classes saw. Too many talents are considered useless or just fillers and we're still WAY too reliant on our 31 pt talents. Abilities like Imp Demo Shout and Imp Battle Shout should of been merged, Bloodcraze should of been buffed to a higher percent, and the reliance on 31 pt abilities removed (make them lower on the tree so we can have all 3, but link the timers is suggested). Other abilities like Imp Taunt, Imp Revenge, and Imp Disarm aren't very useful for tanking anything past a 5 man and you really don't have a need for them in there as well. For instance, Imp Taunt should reduce the cooldown of both Taunt and Challenging Shout.
Just too many useless and filler talents that other classes have, but not to the same extent as us. See Tendris' post (#6) below mine for concerns about talents.
HellCry's post on the EU forums concerning talents:
http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=85348858&sid=1&pageNo=1
Conclusion
This is just a short summary of things I've read on the forums and experienced in the game. Take what you will of these concerns, but none the less, these are the problems we have faced since the original game hit the shelves. It would be nice to have a proper review for a change that does what it did for other classes. It's a shame it took two years for our problems with Imp Thunderclap and Tactical Mastery to be dealt with and it doesn't need to be another 2 years for the rest of these problems to be dealt with. You have a place to start, so please listen to our pleas for a change and give this class the same treatment other classes have seen.
For other post, ones that put more emphasis on areas, check out these post on this thread:
Page 1 - #18 - Post by Jonthrei - Does a decent job describing class roles in PvP.
Page 4 - #75 - Post by Xosa - DO NOT SKIP THIS POST! One of the best yet.
Page 8 - #157 - Post by Flapjack - Adds valid points.
