Wait, where are the Prot Warrior changes?

#0 - April 8, 2010, 5:45 p.m.

Is it just me or was the entire Warrior preview aimed at Fury and Arms? I mean, we're theoretically affected by Inner Rage, Gushing Wound, and Heroic Leap, but they're hardly in the tanking domain?

Inner rage feels like the dreaded balanced around scenario where we want to hit it to do max threat/damage, but that may be very hard to do (yay intentional stand in fire?). It may even be a nerf depending on ability costs and rage generation? Also, GG offtanks?

Gushing Wound also seems pathetic/annoying in a raid setting? Are we supposed to be severely ticking off our non warrior dps by moving Bosses around slightly to maintain 3 stacks for ourselves and the dps warriors?.

Heroic Leap...sharing the GBC with charge means it adds no mobility and you have to be in a good place with rage to want it more? Blizzard's not even certain it can be used in combat?

Heroic Strike is the only real change to our current rotation? All the changes to shouts are just to make up for our gimped rage production? Our unique Tree bonus is RNG Based Block? This better have a damned high chance to proc if it's going to be worth a damn?

Where are the real rotation changes? Are we still doing the mostly the same: devastate till revenge or SS procs or is off cd, throw in shockwave when it's off cd, and hit heroic strike now only after we get 100% rage bonus?

Where is a reason to use a different stance?

Where is the fix or outright deletion of VIGILANCE? Are we stuck with this godawful talent for another expansion?

Where is the improvement or deletion of improved disarm/spell reflect? Are these still just PVP talents?

Where is the improvement or deletion of one of our cooldown talents? Are we still expected to glyph and talent for the same versions of last stand and shield wall as everyone else?

What the heck is going on with damage shield?

Where is the talent for prot warriors to gain rage from damage taken? Or are we going to wait to see how this is balanced around dps warriors?

edit: Also, I guess we finally see if they can force prot warrior population down by making sunder part of the fury dps rotation and nerfing its effect? I'll say good riddance to that but it certainly doesn't leave much to be desired for a warrior if Bears as GC said are still the main health tank, and assumedly DKs are the cd tank and Paladin's retain AD's auto-life+EH.

Ghostcrawler

#208 - April 9, 2010, 1:38 a.m.

As a tank, you don't need to worry about nerfs to Sunder Armor and Demo Shout. We'll still tune the bosses to whatever damage we think they need to do. You don't need to worry about suddenly becoming less survivable or generating less threat.

We changed Sunder Armor because the debuff was too massive, meaning realistically you couldn't raid without it. (Perhaps you still can't, but it's closer.)

We changed Demo Shout because it was confusing. Nobody knows how much attack power a creature has, and we found that many players underestimated what a massive damage reduction Demo Shout actually provided.

I can understand PvP concerns of changing these abilities. I'm less sympathetic if you're worried you'll lose your spot to another class because of them, since we're really trying to design a game where you aren't brought along just for your awesome buff.

As far as other Protection warrior concerns go, you're welcome to bring up issues you think that the talent tree has. Our general feedback from warriors is they really like the Protection tree and playstyle (with a few exceptions, like Heroic Strike and perhaps Vigilance) and it was really the tuning relative to other tanks that bothered them. We try not to offer too many changes just for the sake of change (though a few can be fun, and there will be some in your talent tree).

Ghostcrawler

#219 - April 9, 2010, 2:12 a.m.

Q u o t e:
Huh? I don't think you've mentioned anything about Demo Shout anywhere else. What did you change it to?

Oh, uh, I mean "We didn't change Demo Shout at all! Who told you that?"

Actually we changed it to a percent physical damage reduction instead of attack power reduction. I thought that had made the preview and was the source of some of the QQ. :)

Ghostcrawler

#275 - April 9, 2010, 9:01 p.m.

Q u o t e:
the QQ about demo shout is the addition of the CD, making it so if it misses we can't jsut try to apply it again

We can't have Demo Shout give you rage if it's not on a cooldown, but we could make Demo Shout work differently from Battle / Commanding. It's not like anything with the word "shout" has to work the same way. Intimidating Shout doesn't. :)