The Protection warrior of Pandaria.

[Deleted]

I'm still disappointed that tanking abilities (shield slam, revenge, devastate) are still about threat. I'd much rather see a tanking model that revolves completely around choices to avoid damage (ala active mitigation), but with just shield block, there doesn't seem much choice.

[Zamix]

I admit i didnt read past the first paragraph, tbh even scrolling till bottom tired me).
BUT. What i have to say is you have no reason to be worried when in comes to PVE protection.Its easy to balance. And you are just taking wild guesses here, nothing is final. Even if they do get it wrong they will fix it asap. We always have been fine and always will be. DKs and bears cant say the same for example.
(This does not apply to warriors pvp dps or other stuff and im not saying it)

If you didn't read past the first paragraph how would you know that the OP is making wild guesses?????
Your post is completely silly and holds no value in this discussion.

[fengosa]

I'm not too concerned about our mobility. Double time, intervene and heroic leap give you plenty of options when it comes to moving around. Overall the talents give you a lot of options which will help in different scenarios. Need burst threat? Spec into Deadly Calm. Sure you'll need to drop stormbolt but conc blow isn't used in pve too often anyways.

There may be some issues with the single target rotation but i don't think it's set in stone yet. I'll wait until we get a beta and more info before I judge that. That said our aoe rotation will still focus heavily on tclap, shockwave, hleap, revenge and cleave which is much different than our single target rotation.

---------- Post added 2012-02-21 at 05:38 PM ----------

If you didn't read past the first paragraph how would you know that the OP is making wild guesses?????
Your post is completely silly and holds no value in this discussion.

There was a blue post saying that tank rotations are very much still undergoing iterations. I don't expect them to get it right on the first pass in initial alpha. The odds that thing change are much greater than the odds things stay as is.

[Deleted]

I'm still disappointed that tanking abilities (shield slam, revenge, devastate) are still about threat. I'd much rather see a tanking model that revolves completely around choices to avoid damage (ala active mitigation), but with just shield block, there doesn't seem much choice.

This is the real important thingy we should looking into, if you perform certain ability combinations we could get minor, short time buffs greatly improving the idea of tanking. Hitting revenge with 2 piece bonus = i actually can help my healers with a several thousand absorb shield every few seconds, that's not much but adds up (~ 500 hps). Or what's with that new impending victory from the MoP calc? With half to third of that cooldown (10-15s) we could actively assist our healers. Paladin felt pretty well rounded in t11 with that word of glory spam, they just need to adjust the numbers.

I actually don't see a problem with the lack of shockwave and concussion blow for raiding and us priotising other abilities (avatar & deadly calm maybe?) over it, we still have them avaible when we need them: for 5 mans. With talents being resetable just like glyphs i don't worry about it at all.

When things go live as they are right now (read: cooldowns from the calculator) i'd assume they adjust having revenge proccing sword and board 100% of time basically leaving us with a

0.0 shield slam
1.5 revenge
3.0 shield slam
4.5 devastate
6.0 filler1
7.5 filler2

"rotation". I'd assume we'll use thunderclap as filler1 because it's rage free and helps keeping deep wounds rolling while filler2 could be: heroic throw, shockwave, stormbolt, victory rush. That's not as intuitive and fun as it is right now with spamable abilities but shouldn't be as bad as playing a paladin, should it?

Charge: we can either get it back to it's 12s cooldown via talent or pick up double time (charging twice before 20s cooldown), your choice. I'll go with double time, basically giving me what i had with charge + intercept and that was enough if you add heroic leap. If the pack all die before double time cooldown is ready again.. is double charge really needed at all?

Casters:
/cast spell reflect
/train
Reflecting two spells and one on your party, that's awesome! You're really worried about us not being capable of stunning/interrupting 20ish times per minute? If they greatly reduce it they'll have to adjust all future encounter around it as well, no boss will chain cast after cast into you if all we got is 1+ 0.5 (you + your party) reliable interrupts in a 15s timeframe.

What our MoP calc really lack is innovations. Druids gets symbiosis, mass entanglement and mass-deathgrip while DK's get execute, force choke (from Star Wars -_- ) and mass-deathgrip as well. All we get is that banner while we have to pick between already existing stuff? I know we'd complain about to many buttons in the past but they should about baking some stuff into less abilites and not removing them for us entirely.

With intim shout gone our only control cooldown is away while rogue get an aoe defensive smokebomb on top of regular smoke, sap & blind? Hunter getting a gazillion of new shots as well? Sadly it just looks like they don't care about us any longer and i don't want to rant about our pvp misery (again).

[Nyxolem]

The fact that things aren't decided is exactly why feedback is important.

When things go live as they are right now (read: cooldowns from the calculator) i'd assume they adjust having revenge proccing sword and board 100% of time basically leaving us with a

0.0 shield slam
1.5 revenge
3.0 shield slam
4.5 devastate
6.0 filler1
7.5 filler2

"rotation". I'd assume we'll use thunderclap as filler1 because it's rage free and helps keeping deep wounds rolling while filler2 could be: heroic throw, shockwave, stormbolt, victory rush. That's not as intuitive and fun as it is right now with spamable abilities but shouldn't be as bad as playing a paladin, should it?

You're assuming a lot and I don't see how that is smart. All we know is what they've told us so far, and that some things will be changing. So all we can do is comment on the current iteration and provide meaningful feedback based off of that iteration. It's fair to point out that even with shockwave and impending victory, we will most likely have a decent amount of dead globals. It's fair to point out that the talent system as far as charge is a downgrade from live. It's fair to point out that devastate is worse than sunder as it will require a longer time to get 3 stacks onto the target. Spamming thunderclap, if that were to happen, is not obvious and feels awkward.

Innovation is a good point. It's not just the talents that lack it. Our mitigation model is essentially 90% untouched. Except we lost Enraged Regen to the talent system and spell barrier is a separate cooldown.

Our mitigation model is deeply flawed assuming that they do not change how block is treated. Tanks will still desire to ctc cap if possible due to masteries being unchanged. As we get closer to the cap, Shield Block becomes less worthwhile making our active mitigation less useful. Block and block capping still has the same issues as on live.

What really gets me is that our active mitigation is nothing more than rage management. Fill up your bucket, pour it out. Rinse and repeat. Because we have to build up resources to use our mitigation, it's a step removed from the action. Which, in turn, makes it feel much more passive than it should. Instead of getting mitigation by doing our rotation well we get rage. I don't see how this enables good tanks to take less damage by using their tools better.

[Daimon]

I had to drop my long time played Prot Warr for a BloodDK in order to progress decently in DS HM content. Warriors are the worst tank in this patch and what they are bringing in MoP is nothing pretty for warriors, the class took a big pvp turn, very disappointing overall. The sad part is when they realize this what they do is 1- Nerf Dks or 2- Nerf the raids so "all the classes can enjoy the same difficulty" instead of the obvious fix to the class with problems they nerf everybody to the same lvl, making the game a lit bit less enjoyable for everybody. Looks like you mention the word "buff" in Blizzard HQ and you get fired..."the word that shall not be named". Quit the freaking buff taboo already and fix what really needs to be fixed instead of nerfing the hell out of everybody. Warrior changes in MoP suck big time.

And they keep saying how an improvement is to remove abilities that are not used anymore and making the class more practical... when what they should do is make those abilities actually usefull which is why we dont use them, i don't remember a boss that is actually able to be spell reflected in the past 6-7 raids, and maybe even more, so why dont you make the freaking spell useful instead of changing it completely, when a boss was able to be disarmed? etc etc, make the abilities actually work instead of removing them for "lack of use" duh.

[Nyxolem]

You're right. Warriors are in a painful place for HM content. I'm 7/8 atm and we're fourth platform on HM Madness. Madness is just painful as a warrior. You have to use all of your cooldowns and several externals to survive Impales, and then you have to deal with the dot from the bloods. The problem is that we have very few tools and several of them end up being used as raid cooldowns leaving us with even fewer cooldowns. I'll try to give feedback and see if I can help make warriors better tanks for MoP. But you better know I'll have backup tanks next expac if they mess it up

[Daimon]

Its really disappointing that some really cool spells we have that are completely useless in PVE and even PVP, they think that we don't use them because we don't like them, well what we don't like is that they don't work at all!! Make them viable for PVE and blizzard won't even have to try hard and invent dumb gimmicks to make the warrior "appealing" to us. Cataclysm was a cataclysm for warrior tanks, in every sense. We had to work hard to reach a cap that after getting there we realized it was pointless, even paladins with similar block system had a much easier time to reach the block cap, for us even in partial heroic gear it was still difficult. Our threat had to be buffed to be sustainable for dps when they should worry more in mitigation mechanics and in burst dmg abilities.

[Pua]

I'll come back and comment further shortly, but I felt I needed to throw out two comments. First, I agree with a lot of the issues brought up in this thread. Second, we should be writing about this on the main wow forums. Blizzard won't see our feedback here--and I am convinced they are, in fact, interested in well reasoned feedback.

I agree, but I’m serving a permanent forum ban in Europe and can’t post to the US forums where a developer might actually see it. As a result, anyone who wishes to copy and paste the OP to the appropriate place should feel free to do so.

In fact, I’d appreciate it.

I'm still disappointed that tanking abilities (shield slam, revenge, devastate) are still about threat. I'd much rather see a tanking model that revolves completely around choices to avoid damage (ala active mitigation), but with just shield block, there doesn't seem much choice.

Something I forgot to mention to Mest, though might already be understood, is that this model actually makes Shield Block more passive than it currently is; it’ll just be macro’d into Shield Slam, Revenge and Devastate to ensure highest uptime. There’s literally no reason not to do that.

I'm not too concerned about our mobility. Double time, intervene and heroic leap give you plenty of options when it comes to moving around. Overall the talents give you a lot of options which will help in different scenarios.

I’m very worried about mobility, because we’re losing the ability to break roots on our own. Also, I don’t get what people like about Double Time; it seems (to me, anyway) to be designed purely for Blink, in the same way Shattering Throw was designed specifically to counter paladins. Yes, there are other uses but they’re just not compelling at all as far as abilities go. Honestly? I was sad to see Shattering Throw make the cut.

The other problem with Double Time is how absurdly awkward it’s going to be. If you don’t use that second Charge within 8 to 9 seconds, then it’s essentially a wash and Juggernaut beats it all ends up. Considering what they could have done with Charge related talents, it’s just tired and dull.

As for Heroic Leap… With it supposedly being such a signature move, why hasn’t it received any talents to make it more interesting?

Need burst threat? Spec into Deadly Calm. Sure you'll need to drop stormbolt but conc blow isn't used in pve too often anyways.

The only reason I’d take Stormbolt would be to fill a GCD, but Deadly Calm is a garbage cooldown – it’s the least interesting one I can think of. And considering Heroic Strike is about to bite the dust thanks to tanks using all of their rage for Shield Block, having a talent prop up an otherwise ditched attack is very weak.

There may be some issues with the single target rotation but i don't think it's set in stone yet. I'll wait until we get a beta and more info before I judge that. That said our aoe rotation will still focus heavily on tclap, shockwave, hleap, revenge and cleave which is much different than our single target rotation.

The comment from Kaivax is extremely worrying; if they’re happy with some dead time in a rotation, would they mind telling us what they think has changed so dramatically since the last time they tried it and had it resolutely refused?

This is the real important thingy we should looking into, if you perform certain ability combinations we could get minor, short time buffs greatly improving the idea of tanking. Hitting revenge with 2 piece bonus = i actually can help my healers with a several thousand absorb shield every few seconds, that's not much but adds up (~ 500 hps). Or what's with that new impending victory from the MoP calc? With half to third of that cooldown (10-15s) we could actively assist our healers. Paladin felt pretty well rounded in t11 with that word of glory spam, they just need to adjust the numbers.

I largely agree with you, but don’t forget that Blizzard didn’t like Word of Glory spamming because it devalued Shield of the Righteous. Guess what’s about to happen to Heroic Strike? The preference of Shield Block will see it devalued.

We already know the solution – a cooldown on Shield Block that will hammer our mitigation without changes. This lack of foresight is frightening.

I actually don't see a problem with the lack of shockwave and concussion blow for raiding and us priotising other abilities (avatar & deadly calm maybe?) over it, we still have them avaible when we need them: for 5 mans. With talents being resetable just like glyphs i don't worry about it at all.

The problem is that they had a place in the Protection warrior threat/DPS rotation, as well as being abilities that helped us to control enemies. Good players also managed to use them intelligently so that they never competed with truck fishing.

0.0 shield slam
1.5 revenge
3.0 shield slam
4.5 devastate
6.0 filler1
7.5 filler2

"rotation". I'd assume we'll use thunderclap as filler1 because it's rage free and helps keeping deep wounds rolling while filler2 could be: heroic throw, shockwave, stormbolt, victory rush. That's not as intuitive and fun as it is right now with spamable abilities but shouldn't be as bad as playing a paladin, should it?

It’s worse. What are we supposed to do once Heroic Throw, Shockwave, Stormbolt and Victory Rush are all on cooldown for the second pass (which they will be)? Am I supposed to shoe-horn in shouts as part of my rotation? Not to mention I’m not allowed to take the talents I prefer because I need to prop up a rotation that has been needlessly wrecked?

It’s garbage.

Charge: we can either get it back to it's 12s cooldown via talent or pick up double time (charging twice before 20s cooldown), your choice. I'll go with double time, basically giving me what i had with charge + intercept and that was enough if you add heroic leap. If the pack all die before double time cooldown is ready again.. is double charge really needed at all?

Why should my first talent choice prop-up an ability that should be baseline? And don’t forget that you don’t have a choice in how Double-Time is used because if you wait for 8 or 9 seconds, Juggernaut is better.

As bad as the talent is, Warbringer is comfortably the most compelling choice of the three because it makes Charge do something. All Juggernaut does is lower it’s cooldown. All Double Time does is let you use it again.

Is that honestly the best they can come up with?

Reflecting two spells and one on your party, that's awesome!

Not if you’re a boss tank.

What our MoP calc really lack is innovations. Druids gets symbiosis, mass entanglement and mass-deathgrip while DK's get execute, force choke (from Star Wars -_- ) and mass-deathgrip as well. All we get is that banner while we have to pick between already existing stuff? I know we'd complain about to many buttons in the past but they should about baking some stuff into less abilites and not removing them for us entirely.

I’ve never complained about too many buttons, because the way the Protection warrior is structured is exactly how a class should be made; easy to pick up, hard to master, fun to play.

First of all, you can get by with only Shield Slam, Revenge and Devastate. Once you’ve mastered that, you can start weaving in Heroic Strike or Cleave. Okay, that’s sorted, now let’s throw Thunderclap and Demoralizing Shout into the mix. Wow, we’re really getting the hang of this, let’s add in Concussion Blow, Shockwave and Rend. Of course, we ARE being hit by bosses, so some mitigation abilities might be worthwhile, too.

Here’s the point:

If you say Protection warriors need to use Shield Slam, Revenge, Devastate, Heroic Strike, Thunderclap, Demoralizing Shout, Concussion Blow, Shockwave, Rend, Shield Block, Disarm, Spell Reflect, Pummel, Shield Wall and Last Stand then it’s obviously far too much to learn off the bat. Yet, I’m telling you categorically that I use every single one of those frequently.

Luckily, that’s not what happens.

The player learns his base rotation of Shield Slam, Revenge and Devastate first, while basic mitigation through Shield Block also comes early. That’s not overwhelming at all. After that, you start considering extra threat so Concussion Blow and Shockwave work their way in. Again, that’ll take a bit of time to master but once it’s done, it’s done. Next up, we want to do even more for our healers, so we fit in Demoralizing Shout and Thunderclap and start making good use of our major cooldowns (Last Stand and Shield Wall). Finally, the finishing touches of keeping Rend up with B&T or using Heroic Strike properly are added, as well as advanced defensive abilities such as Spell Reflect and Disarm (not forgetting trinket use) and you have a fully fledged Protection warrior.

I don’t think I need to explain what the new version is going to look like and why I’m worried about it.

With intim shout gone our only control cooldown is away while rogue get an aoe defensive smokebomb on top of regular smoke, sap & blind? Hunter getting a gazillion of new shots as well? Sadly it just looks like they don't care about us any longer and i don't want to rant about our pvp misery (again).

I never thought I’d say this, but I am getting the feeling that Blizzard want to retire warriors. It just seems that their traditional role has been replaced by other classes, while warriors get stuck with what’s left.

Innovation is a good point. It's not just the talents that lack it. Our mitigation model is essentially 90% untouched. Except we lost Enraged Regen to the talent system and spell barrier is a separate cooldown.

Our mitigation model is deeply flawed assuming that they do not change how block is treated. Tanks will still desire to ctc cap if possible due to masteries being unchanged. As we get closer to the cap, Shield Block becomes less worthwhile making our active mitigation less useful. Block and block capping still has the same issues as on live.

Of all the "big issues", this is up there. Gearing up reducing the need to bother with active mitigation is a real worry because it implies they've just not thought about it properly, or don't have any solutions to the issue (also extant to paladins, I might add). What I suggested earlier isn't a great idea by any stretch, but it puts the warrior into a more clearly-defined role and also makes mastery play a part in his active mitigation. If you want the benefit of your mastery (more armour), you have to use the right ability. Hell, there's no reason you couldn't bake it into magic defence as well.

As for innovation, well, they're clean out. We've known that for a while and until they get developers onto the warrior team who've actually played the class properly for a period of time, we're going to keep getting rubbish like this.

[Deleted]

I dunno where to start with my ranting feedback on this, really. I have been getting a bit frustrated with what I am seeing in MoP and the evolution, or lack of, the warrior tank.

I feel like prot warriors literally have no place in tanking anymore. We have 3 classes that can do anything we can do, better and the one thing that we did have Mobility which other than some gimmicky tactics served no proper purpose in raiding PVE due to lack of inspiration from raid design, is being reduced. Don't misunderstand me, there is plenty of places we can use our mobility to tank but its they are just that, gimmick tactics. At best we feel more like an off tank, kiting adds, debuffing and safeguarding the real tank and have done since WotLK.

I have always said for atleast 2 expansions that we should get shot of Heroic Strike and cleave in their current standard. Instead give them to us early, (pre 10) and then bake our 3 spec abilitys into them. So Prot gets "Devastating strike", arms gets "Mortal Strike" and Fury gets "Furious Strike"" (blood strike sounds DK) for single target, and "Devastating Cleave" to help us AOE tank. I have never reallly enjoyed the spammy'ness of Devastate but I see no reason for any spec to truely have HS, just bake them together.

I don't mind having plenty of tools to do the job, but let me use them in a PVE enviroment, active tanking doesn't have to be about mitigating/avoiding damage incoming, but it can be about preventing it even being cast. Pulling ideas with no thought, let us disarm bosses more often so I can stop them hitting me hard, give me back concussion blow, but if a target cant be stunned, let me stop it casting for x amount of seconds. How about letting spell reflect actually do the spell reflecting/mitigation rather than letting new or other abilitys do the job.

Imagine disarming a focused attack instead of hitting a bubble/shield wall or disarming a boss so he cant sunder/mortal strike so quickly.

Hell, I don't even mind loosing mobility if I gain something that we can excel in that separates us from other tanks.

This whole War banner thing. Its warrior totems and yet more things we have to press that we already have ability's for. So its not really new and not offering us expansion. Infact warrior shouts was a pretty unique thing, why didn't they just expand on that? Why not make shouts a better part of our active tanking. Having offensive and defence shouts we can use like we use Last Stand and Shield wall. Look at Skyrim for inspiration on how a shout system could work, War banners makes no sense for warriors.

As for the talent system, we have abilities we use day to day, taken away or nerfed and reintroduced/used to pack out a talent tree that the dev's clearly have no idea where to go with. I don't see a single tier that for PVE Prot made me go "WOW", at best I went "meh". Infact Tier 3 is about as close as it gets to something they could have done with the whole tree.

[loki504]

@OP i understand you want to hear your voice. but may i ask where is your post on the original forums?
because blizz ain't going to here you when you shout at mmo-champion. blizzard forum is miles away.
they don't bother to read here. so pls make a topic on the original forum instead of here.
maybe post here with a link for extra attension. but posting only here ain't going to fix anyting.

[Deleted]

@OP i understand you want to hear your voice. but may i ask where is your post on the original forums?
because blizz ain't going to here you when you shout at mmo-champion. blizzard forum is miles away.
they don't bother to read here. so pls make a topic on the original forum instead of here.
maybe post here with a link for extra attension. but posting only here ain't going to fix anyting.

It's actually very likely Blizzard read MMO-Champion, "OP" just mentioned he can't post on the official boards, and it's fun to discuss things like these.

[Deleted]

@loki, perhaps he may not "fix anything" but he is providing feedback, with some agreeable points. Perhaps someone may copy and paste his OP onto offical forums where it'll be read, or perhaps some people reading this thread may have their opinions changed, and they go on to post on offical forums with similar opinions. I honestly don't see it as wanting to hear his voice, or attension (as you said it). rather providing feedback, which in early stages like this is needed for development. He's trying to make the game better for the prot warriors of WoW, by pointing out what he thinks will be ultimately detrimental to the class, I fail to see what the malice of this is?
Also, even if you viewed it as a negative rant (not that I do), it's MMO champ forums, are you really supprised?

[loki504]

well i read all the comment. and looks like i judged and misunderstud some of his words. there by i apologize.

[zox2]

I really liked when you said "you have to chose this clearly inferior talent to get this awesome thing"... Umm. How is that inferior then?

[Pua]

well i read all the comment. and looks like i judged and misunderstud some of his words. there by i apologize.

Accepted.

You should feel free to repost on the official tanking forums, assuming it hasn’t already been done, and see if the blues care enough to respond. I don’t even mind if someone passes it off for their own work.

You (or anyone else, for that matter) have my complete blessing.

---------- Post added 2012-02-23 at 10:08 AM ----------

I really liked when you said "you have to chose this clearly inferior talent to get this awesome thing"... Umm. How is that inferior then?

I take responsibility for this misunderstanding; what I meant was that choosing a talent (such as Stormbolt or Shockwave) is no fun when you're choosing that talent purely to fill a rotational hole. I would imagine Avatar is the better, more enjoyable choice - but I feel compelled to take Shockwave, though I believe it inferior, just to plug gaps.

It's crap design.