[5.4] Protection Warrior

[Nobleshield]

And I just switched to my Paladin D:

[Tokru]

I think its safe to assume the 2pc won't stay in its current form. Lets look;

- 100% critical block reachable
- Critical Block reduces damage by 60%
- 2pc Heals additional 18%
- Actual damage to tank 22% of hit for every blockable hit during shield block

Throw in a SBar with the rage you may have more because of the enrage change and you could potentially heal yourself from 1hp to full without any cooldowns and while the boss is attacking you.
While I like the change, it could lead to beeing impossible to kill.

[Deleted]

On topic: are we still looking like we can mastery cap and how would the t15 dps 4 DPS set bonus play out with active mitigation in the new model?

How should this change anything? 4 piece t15 is 35% additional crit while popping skull banner, you might get *some* crits during a 10 second timeframe every 180 seconds... Absolutely not worth it especially with the strong 2 piece from prot and the ilvl gap (you still need some well itemised pieces to achieve 22k mastery and only dps shoulder/pants offer mastery after all). Add that you regulary won't pop skull banner at will but when it's most useful for your raid, so you couldn't use it as a survivability cooldown.

I think its safe to assume the 2pc won't stay in its current form. Lets look;

- 100% critical block reachable
- Critical Block reduces damage by 60%
- 2pc Heals additional 18%
- Actual damage to tank 22% of hit for every blockable hit during shield block

What's with a prot paladin? They also sit at 50-60% physical damage reduction via active mitigation (and depending on their mastery) and have selfheals from sacred shield and seal of insight on top of that. Actually that new set bonus should finally make us attractive again on the defensive side even if it's only a bandaid. What i *can* see is that it gets an internal cooldown like 4-6 seconds so it won't procc on every melee hit.

[Pua]

Actually I see no love from the crit change.

Nope, none. It's a pointless change and one that doesn't address anything. Even if they took Enrage off of Critical Block, I'd still be looking at the two-piece (which won't go live in that state) before trying out a critical strike strategy.

It's desperation; nothing more.

[Valech]

Nope, none. It's a pointless change and one that doesn't address anything. Even if they took Enrage off of Critical Block, I'd still be looking at the two-piece (which won't go live in that state) before trying out a critical strike strategy.

It's desperation; nothing more.

So, we gain something, lose nothing in return and you people... complain?

[Pariah]

While I'm not sure I agree yet with him (I haven't done the math yet, I'm not saying he's wrong), it's not complaining. It's seeing very early PTR changes and seeing if it's good enough. Being active and vocal can bring change to a class. Just sitting there and being appreciative for a change (that could end up not being effective) does not benefit us.

Food for thought.

[dodonpachi]

While I'm not sure I agree yet with him (I haven't done the math yet, I'm not saying he's wrong), it's not complaining. It's seeing very early PTR changes and seeing if it's good enough. Being active and vocal can bring change to a class. Just sitting there and being appreciative for a change (that could end up not being effective) does not benefit us.

Food for thought.

I agree.

Its just one set of numbers and I didn't compare crit vs parry and dodge. Wait for more numbers and further ptr changes before you hang up your warrior. With such a significant change I would not be surprised if we see many iterations of change over the duration of the ptr.

[Neichus]

Nope, none. It's a pointless change and one that doesn't address anything...It's desperation; nothing more.

Or it could be something minor like a quality of life while soloing alteration. We don't know what their intent is so we can't say they failed at achieving it yet.

[Deleted]

Well, it's a clear attempt at making warriors scale defensively with offensive stats, being the only tank that haven't done so in the expansion. There is no second guessing to the change behind this. Having devastate and ss enrage it's not interesting for enrage uptime either, that's just a side effect.

The problem, though, is that even if the rage gain doesn't share an ICD with crit blocks, getting 9000 crit rating will give you around 1 rage/sec. Personally, I didn't expect them to even try before the expansion, so let them play with it and see where it takes us. It's a baby step not expected on 5.4. I already had an interest anyways on crit above avoidance and wanted to see ilvls on SoO. Tweek the numbers of rage generated, make SS crits put a X0% damage shield on a damaged raid member and you have a little neat experiment going on prot warrs before next expansion.

[Nobleshield]

I hope this is the precursor to the next expansion doing away with tanking stats entirely. Ideally I'd like to see Paladins/DK/Warriors use Parry only (obtained via Strength) and Monks/Druids use Dodge (obtained via Agility) with reworked mechanics so Haste becomes desirable (already is for Paladins, for DKs it increases the rune replenish rate as I recall, for Warriors perhaps something to do with Rage generation?), Mastery stays great, and Crit becomes useful (something like Paladin Judgment crits have a chance to add extra Holy Power, DKs maybe something with Runic Empowerment or whatever the one is that has a chance replenishes a depleted rune, Warriors something like the 5.4 changes where crits give you extra rage or make you enraged or something of that sort)

[Valech]

I hope this is the precursor to the next expansion doing away with tanking stats entirely. Ideally I'd like to see Paladins/DK/Warriors use Parry only (obtained via Strength) and Monks/Druids use Dodge (obtained via Agility) with reworked mechanics so Haste becomes desirable (already is for Paladins, for DKs it increases the rune replenish rate as I recall, for Warriors perhaps something to do with Rage generation?), Mastery stays great, and Crit becomes useful (something like Paladin Judgment crits have a chance to add extra Holy Power, DKs maybe something with Runic Empowerment or whatever the one is that has a chance replenishes a depleted rune, Warriors something like the 5.4 changes where crits give you extra rage or make you enraged or something of that sort)

I´d like to see it quite the other way. Make haste and crit useless to all tanks. strength may still add pary, agility may still add dodge, hit/exp stay strong for ressource generation and pary/dodge stay nice-to-have

[Odina]

Is it just me or do the Tier pieces look like a last ditch effort to force dodge parry on us even though there both pretty much useless atm compared to the alternative stats we could go for? As well WTB some mastery on the prot tier items!

[Deleted]

Is it just me or do the Tier pieces look like a last ditch effort to force dodge parry on us even though there both pretty much useless atm compared to the alternative stats we could go for? As well WTB some mastery on the prot tier items!

If they followed the same itemization we would hit 100% crit block easily. The design was so you would rarely cap anything (Only under trinkets and stuff).

[Tirivaria]

I´d like to see it quite the other way. Make haste and crit useless to all tanks. strength may still add pary, agility may still add dodge, hit/exp stay strong for ressource generation and pary/dodge stay nice-to-have

The problem there is then you'd have to go back to having separate tanking and physical dps leather. If you get rid of parry and dodge rating on gear while making crit and haste useful to all tanks, you could have just physical leather and spell leather and physical plate and spell plate.

[Pua]

So, we gain something, lose nothing in return and you people... complain?

Yes.

I complain because we've been here so many times before.

Warriors have been DPS-light since WotLK (TBC in fact, but warriors were still typically main tanks) and the developers have never once tried to wrestle with the problem properly. Instead, they've just hidden behind "all tanks tank all content" rather than balancing them out. Well, guess what? Playing a weaker class sucks. It sucks because you have to play better than someone else who was no more than luckier than you were on the character selection screen, and even then still get worse results.

Frankly, I'm sick to the back fucking teeth of it. We've waited the better part of two full expansions now to be taken from the bottom of the barrel and instead we get a shitty Enrage buff that makes next to no difference to anything. I'll tell you what this change was aimed at.

Street and his team realized that they'd just repeated the paladin of Cataclysm, with warriors about to start trading mastery for avoidance.

Not only are we the only tanks stuck in this boat, the repeat of something they clearly haven't learned from two years ago is fucking embarrassing.

I'm sorry if I seem to be having a go at you, I'm honestly not, but it's about time warriors hit the design table first rather than treated as an afterthought when the developers run out of time.

[Valech]

Yes.

I complain because we've been here so many times before.

Warriors have been DPS-light since WotLK (TBC in fact, but warriors were still typically main tanks) and the developers have never once tried to wrestle with the problem properly. Instead, they've just hidden behind "all tanks tank all content" rather than balancing them out. Well, guess what? Playing a weaker class sucks. It sucks because you have to play better than someone else who was no more than luckier than you were on the character selection screen, and even then still get worse results.

Frankly, I'm sick to the back fucking teeth of it. We've waited the better part of two full expansions now to be taken from the bottom of the barrel and instead we get a shitty Enrage buff that makes next to no difference to anything. I'll tell you what this change was aimed at.

Street and his team realized that they'd just repeated the paladin of Cataclysm, with warriors about to start trading mastery for avoidance.

Not only are we the only tanks stuck in this boat, the repeat of something they clearly haven't learned from two years ago is fucking embarrassing.

I'm sorry if I seem to be having a go at you, I'm honestly not, but it's about time warriors hit the design table first rather than treated as an afterthought when the developers run out of time.

No offence taken, don´t worry.
I really have issues with that "now it´s our turn" mentality, because it clearly leads to a downward spiral if followed. Imagine designers suddenly indeed let us hit the design table first. Make us as viable as you wish. In that case, other clases would be what you call a "afterthought". In two expansions or two patches or two weeks this thread will pop up again - just in the drood´s forum. or in the paladin´s.
You are right when you say, that we profit less from offensive secondary stats then all other classes. But I like to think, that tanks are designed to fit certain niches. I am currently tanking with a druid, doing 10 man heroics. I have easily 100k hp more than him, but his armor is far superior to mine. In terms of damage he´s slightly ahead, but if it comes to collecting adds at diffrent points he struggles. But all in all warriors are doing quite FINE. I don´t think we underperform, I think other tanks, namely paladins and perhaps monks overperform currently. Thus, they should not adress our "problems", for we are only fitting our niche, they should adjust what makes paladins and monks overpowered. And that clearly can´t be done by "letting us hit the design table first".
Also, it sounds like the enrage thingy is the only buff we receive. But aside from that our survivability AND usefulness to the raid get buffed as well. Impending victory - doubled. Enraged Regeneration - doubled. Vigilance - at least en par with Pain surpression, if not better. Our 2-piece-bonus will boost our survivability ridicolously.

All in all warriors are not the tank with most problems currently and with the buffs in 5.4 they surely won´t be in the future.

[Calamari]

@Zellviren

Well this seems like a small tip of the hat towards the problem if not much else, and hopefully the first of many steps towards adapting the monk style dps-for-avoidance model for warriors further down the road (if people are right in assuming dodge/parry gear is going dodo, which really would make sense with brewmasters running around in full crit gear, then they've got to come up with ideas sooner or later).

At least they acknowledge the existence of a dps secondary for prot warriors all of a sudden, knowing Street I was entirely expecting them to do absolutely nothing about prot warriors having 0 survival scaling with dps stats for the rest of the expansion.

[Deleted]

The crit change is for prot warriors tanking in dps gear. I run LFR and 5mans in full dps gear aswell. The only thing you loose is dodge. Parry isn't that bad because of the STR conversion.

Thus you can grab your DPS gear and tank instances/raids that have low requirements. That will be viable for 5man, LFR and FLEX raids imo. I doubt it is an option for normal/heroic.

That is actually a good thing. It will improve my defense when tanking in full dps gear.

Haste is a problem though. We get nothing out of it. So any haste on gear is bad.
Mastery on dps gear is superb while tanking.
Crit will give us more enrage uptime thus more active mitigation making up for the loss of mastery we would have in full tank gear. It has still yet to be determined if there is any dimishing return on the rage gain from getting enraged.

We cannot just "switch gear" without reforging though. You need 15% exp not 7.5%.

It is a good thing if you do low req encounters that can be done in full dps gear without any dodge, low mastery and/or low stamina.

[Raugnaut]

The first T16 tank bonus is absurd...I doubt it will make it through. Totally OP.

Compared to DK's tier? Meh. Generally, the end-tier bonus for tanks tends to be really really good. The monk, paladin, and druid tier bonuses are about the same as ours. The DK tier bonus is ahead of ours (It could become possible for them to have a constant 100% uptime 20% damage reduction cooldown. Not to mention the ability to use Death Strike 6x+ in a row once every 90 seconds. Thats like being able to have Shield Block AND Barrier up for like 40 seconds.

[Pua]

I really have issues with that "now it´s our turn" mentality, because it clearly leads to a downward spiral if followed. Imagine designers suddenly indeed let us hit the design table first. Make us as viable as you wish. In that case, other clases would be what you call a "afterthought". In two expansions or two patches or two weeks this thread will pop up again - just in the drood´s forum. or in the paladin´s.

That’s fair. My point is merely that it’s extraordinarily frustrating to see things like Retaliation, Disarm and Hamstring fixed… And given to MONKS. I can also understand the argument that the new active mitigation system was going to be hard for existing tanks that didn’t use it, because it would have potentially been a bit too jarring.

So then paladins DO get the new system of tanking baked in (via Sanctity of Battle), while warriors and druids get left out. Why? That’s what I’m talking about; it’s not about relative power or strength, it’s about the design team tacking on a crap version of active mitigation for warriors and druids, while the other three tanks get the gold. This has been happening since WotLK and actually has very little to do with how weak warriors are currently. As tanks, our damage has always been crap and we’ve been the most healer-dependent since Wrath. Honestly, I can accept the idea of a tank niche because, honestly, I think the tanking classes are far too homogenized right now and I would like to see that regress.

But being inferior to two tanking classes at everything? There’s no benefit to being a Protection warrior when paladins and monks are available (and, to a lesser extent, death knights) and that is simply bad design.

Please believe me, I’m not a “OUR TURN” kind of guy – I’m just sick of being an also ran.

@Zellviren

Well this seems like a small tip of the hat towards the problem if not much else, and hopefully the first of many steps towards adapting the monk style dps-for-avoidance model for warriors further down the road (if people are right in assuming dodge/parry gear is going dodo, which really would make sense with brewmasters running around in full crit gear, then they've got to come up with ideas sooner or later).

At least they acknowledge the existence of a dps secondary for prot warriors all of a sudden, knowing Street I was entirely expecting them to do absolutely nothing about prot warriors having 0 survival scaling with dps stats for the rest of the expansion.

That’s true, I fully expected an apology from Street (not one taking any responsibility, of course) and that “the next expansion will fix it”. My gripe is that this Enrage change isn’t even really a tip of the hat for raiding warriors – nobody is going to sacrifice mastery for critical strike to make use of this, unless you get to the point where you’re mastery capped and going for more critical strike rating will make next to no difference to your Enrage uptime. As hinted, it’s rank bad design, and it’s all over the class.

They need to take what they think the basic building blocks of a warrior is, and then bear that in mind while they melt the entire fucking class and rebuild it from the ground up.

Protection warriors can barely move for all the bandages.