#1 - April 5, 2012, 7:19 a.m.
However, the current active prot warrior model is not working properly, and I am going to briefly list my major reasons why I do not find it to be fun.
1. Mastery. Mastery. Mastery. All of the other tanks (save for Prot paladins) have a mastery that provides them with a guaranteed chance to reduce damage. Much like the AM button Shield Block, prot warrior mastery only gives us a CHANCE to take less damage. I'm not necessarily advocating for homogenization here, but since Blizzard has put Shield Block on a separate dice AND removed our ability to CTC cap, prot warrior mastery is currently the weakest of the pack and will surely make us the least desirable tank when MoP drops, especially when we are all undergeared.
2. The "rotation," or lack thereof. The single target prot warrior rotation is not active or fun by any means. You keep revenge, heroic throw, shield slam, and shockwave on CD and spam devastate when you have nothing else to use. You don't use heroic strike unless you're trying to grab opening burst threat; instead, you wait for your rage bar to hit 60 rage and then you hit shield block. This is not active by any means. Hitting the devastate button over and over is boring, and it makes my finger hurt :(
3. Shield Block is a vastly inferior CD compared to Death Strike, Guard, and Savage Defense. What makes the latter three cooldowns so great is that you are guaranteed to take less damage. With shield block, there is only a CHANCE that you won't take less damage, save for the melee attack after you hit SB. I like the idea with Shield Barrier, though; and, I like being able to choose between Shield Barrier and Shield Block.
Suggestions:
1. If you want to keep mastery the way it is, give warriors a one or two more attractive CDs. Several people in this thread already have pointed out that all of the other tank classes (Prot Paladins included) have multiple cooldowns to deal with different situations. Prot Warriors do not have this. It would be OK if we could still CTC cap, but we are guaranteed to be the squishiest tanks in MoP if you keep things the way they are now.
2. Make Shield Block block ALL incoming attacks for the next six seconds. If MoP were to release tomorrow, prot warriors would be the worst tanks in the game largely because of Shield Block. Conversely, you could make the shield block CD provide a flat physical damage reduction, much like Shield Barrier, which provides a flat magic damage reduction.
3. Increase rage generation from auto swings and/or Devastate and other free abilities. The rage gain could be something marginal like 3-5 rage, and even that would make a huge difference. It is a little weird not receiving rage from taking damage anymore, but I can completely deal with it if you could slightly increase rage generation from Shield Slam and auto attacks. I understand that Blizzard does not want tanks swimming in infinite rage, but the rage bar right now is like a very slow-moving energy bar, and it is not fun.
Conclusion:
I think that Blizzard is taking a step in the right direction with making tanking more active. However, I am skeptical about how this will work with Prot Warriors. I have been playing this same character since 2005, and this is the first time in my WoW life that I have ever considered not playing him. I know this is anecdotal evidence, but it is significant if I, one of the biggest prot warrior nuts in the world (of warcraft), is considering abandoning this character.
tl;dr: Ghostcrawler said in another thread that they aren't trying to nerf anything; they just want to make it more fun. I COMPLETELY get this and I want tanking to be more fun. So far, however, every tanking class that I have tried (save for the Guardian Druid because I have not tried that) is infinitely more fun than playing a prot warrior. I feel as if we prot warriors are old straw dogs who are trying to relive their glory days back in vanilla and BC.
Edit: I've updated this post based on some of the datamined information that we have. Also, I've thrown in a few more suggestions based on my own thinking and the excellent feedback from players in this thread.