[5.4] Protection Warrior

[Gliff]

This is actually rather true. Unless you are apping to a new guild who is specifically looking for something.
Only guilds that are either incredibly low on the ranking scale (constantly rotating members), or guilds that are extremely high on the ranking scale (many alts to tackle different comps) really change out their players for a flavor of the month class. Especially with regards to Tanks.

If you are a stable player in a decent guild, you shouldn't have to worry about getting the axe simply because you got a few nerfs. My guild for example did all of MoP with two Warrior tanks, which was widely regarded as a very weak tanking comp.

Just thinking of your Throne progression. Ouch.

[Archimtiros]

Just thinking of your Throne progression. Ouch.

It hurts you to think about, how do you think I felt being there?

Actually it wasn't so bad. We did end up using a Monk tank for Lei Shen instead of one of our Warriors, which worked out rather better to be honest, but it wasn't intentional. One of our Warrior tanks was gone for the first few weeks of progression with his main squeeze and we weren't about to wait!

[Deleted]

It's not about being replaced. Let's talk 5.2, since it is a good example of vanilla like class balance. It annoyed me to no end that the travesty was up for a whole tier, you were a burden to your raid team
, specially on dps. Was I going to get the axe? No. Did I had both a monk and a paladin? Yes. I would have enjoyed the game far less playing them? Yes.

Blizzard has shown this expansion very little regard for balancing "extra" things tanks bring. If that horrid balance would have been between dps classes (because we are not talking about 10%s here), it would have been hotfixed asap. Anyways, alpha, yes.

[Archimtiros]

Thing is, one class is always going to be weaker than the others in some regard. The difference between them might fluctuate but it is there. You compensate by being a good player, being reliable, prepared, etc.

You can go back to any tier in the games history and there has always been an imbalance in Tank, DPS and Healing. One class will get buffed too far, or be too good on that tiers general mechanics, whereas the others will not. PvP is a different beast altogether but another prime example of that constantly evolving imbalance.
The gap between them has decreased sharply for the most part over the years however. That is some small comfort. The difference now is that we are more aware of that gap and perceive it to be much larger than it really is.

[Sal the Shieldhog]

Thing is, one class is always going to be weaker than the others in some regard. The difference between them might fluctuate but it is there. You compensate by being a good player, being reliable, prepared, etc.

You can go back to any tier in the games history and there has always been an imbalance in Tank, DPS and Healing. One class will get buffed too far, or be too good on that tiers general mechanics, whereas the others will not. PvP is a different beast altogether but another prime example of that constantly evolving imbalance.
The gap between them has decreased sharply for the most part over the years however. That is some small comfort. The difference now is that we are more aware of that gap and perceive it to be much larger than it really is.

Additionally, people tend to compare their shortcomings to others' strengths, rather than strengths to strengths, weaknesses to weaknesses. This doesn't help matters at all.

[trystero]

You do 10s, which is going to be different from the 20 mythic content. I'll point out that I swapped from Paladin to my Monk for the start of T16, and then swapped to the considerably better warrior later into the tier. The fact that he has a hot rolling on you does NOTHING in damage prevention, while your intervene/safeguard/vigilance will actually prevent damage instead of just healing it back up (preventing > healing).

Not to mention that the major cooldown that paladins tanks have outside of hands is being removed from them (devo aura). With how they are right now, there's no reason to bring one if you're trying to min/max the raid as everything they can do is replaced better by bringing a holy paladin now (or just bring a ret paladin for hands, if that's all you care about).

Agreed, in WoD I'm main swapping from paladin which is why I'm scouring every other class forum to devour alpha information. I'm thinking Brewmaster, as it's so fun to play, but since Warrior will be receiving a quasi-Sanctity of Battle it may have my vote.

Prot paladin is the most overrated tank in the game. When played well it's exceptionally powerful - but every tank is, except maybe DKs. It's got nothing on warrior damage, and its AM isn't as strong. People either believe in fallacies/myths (e.g. a paladin's 'huge raid healing') or they pay too much attention to strange situations like Eternal Flame keeping the tank alive, solo, on Thok 25H. Those are wipes in 99% of scenarios. What matters is how the tank performs in an actual raid group, with healers alive, and in that situation warriors (and monks I'd also say) outclass paladins.

If paladins were so strong, I wouldn't see so many good players swapping from them and not the other way around.

[Deleted]

Why not just go Safeguard for that fight? You get the Vigilance every 30 seconds in the form of Intervene + a CD. You don't need extra taunt spam on Shamans.

Safeguard works on several fights but regulary you want that damage reduction on another raid member and not your co-tank in 10m.

You do 10s, which is going to be different from the 20 mythic content.

I also killed 'em in 25s, i don't see your point. More Tank incoming damage -> more vengeance -> more selfheal. It's not like you'd need dedicated tank healer for 25s, you just live from beacon + a set of hots + smartheals which is exactly the same.

Having a tank that is totally self reliant like monk/paladin and can cope with any amount of physical damage thrown at them is insanely strong from our PoV. Yes, we tend to deal more damage but that's at the cost of a healer having our back. Considering damage prevention versus healing: there's simply nothing wrong with healing it back up if you're in no danger of either dieing to burst or create some healer panic.

As for raid guards, you should really look into it more. I don't recall being too overpowered with it once the 15% damage nerf went in.

Raid guard is basically 15% weaker than before. Don't get me wrong, a monk/prot paladin tanking duo isn't likely going to replace a third healer versus a double prot warrior team but it clearly helps. Just as any hybrid is helping on smoothing the hps requirements compared to a pure dps class. If you can bring a shadow/owl/any kind of dps shaman over a mage/hunter of equal gear/skill you're most likely going to do that on progression.

This is actually rather true. Unless you are apping to a new guild who is specifically looking for something.
Only guilds that are either incredibly low on the ranking scale (constantly rotating members), or guilds that are extremely high on the ranking scale (many alts to tackle different comps) really change out their players for a flavor of the month class. Especially with regards to Tanks.

I tend to disagree with that: we're basically raiding with the same team for three years now and we're neither top dogs nor we tend to kill bosses after the 20% nerf. According to wowprogress we hover around worldrank 300 and we're 13-14 guys'n'gals. The fight is melee unfriendly (eg: Garrosh)? Shorten on that end. The fight requires a high amount of dps and short term hps (à la Thok)? Bring the hybrids in. Oh we need to aoe hard? Who's got a warlock alt, doesn't matter what their ilvl is.

And please don't tell me that most of you raiders here didn't bring an monk alt/second specc for Garrosh on 25m if you hadn't have one already in your roster. Heck most guilds (disregard raidsize) brought a monk of along for Lei Shen just for the speed-taunt.

edit: I didn't explain my guild situation to brag about anything, there are several top players among us contributing to this very thread. I posted it to give you a better idea of what "more average" players are struggling with, basically all "semi hardcore progression guilds" whose tend to progress for 3/4 of the time each tier, using less hours per week and more gear to achieve success. We're far more likely to cheese, taking shortcuts etc to overcome the lack of perfect execution on all ends.

Additionally, people tend to compare their shortcomings to others' strengths, rather than strengths to strengths, weaknesses to weaknesses. This doesn't help matters at all.

That's a good point, one of you guys ever tried to aoe tank any kind of trash on a paladin recently? It's the most hilarious and underwhelming experience you might get as a tank.

[Deleted]

The gap between them has decreased sharply for the most part over the years however. That is some small comfort. The difference now is that we are more aware of that gap and perceive it to be much larger than it really is.

The difference in dps in 5.2 was around 50%, I remember it extremely well. Thats not small, when a tank is one dps more. Add on top of that the raid healing. Back then, blizzard simply disregard it claiming that between tank players, there was a big % that didnt care about damage done.

[Archimtiros]

The difference in dps in 5.2 was around 50%, I remember it extremely well. Thats not small, when a tank is one dps more. Add on top of that the raid healing. Back then, blizzard simply disregard it claiming that between tank players, there was a big % that didnt care about damage done.

Point but to be fair, Vengeance is going away to fix that. Vengeance has always been very unfair when it came to balancing tank damage and I always thought it was a bad design.
I was speaking more of the gap with regards to what a tank should be traditionally more focused on, ie: Threat, mitigation, survivability and utility.

[Deleted]

Unfortunatelly the traditional way has died with active mitigation. When i can tank and top dps meters on at least half the fights that means a great deal in my book. Will make the difference if you wipe on that last 1-5% or not during progress. So if the tank isn't getting smashed you will get the tank with the highest dps in or even solo tank if thats duable, everything to get the kill.
Vengeance or not is the same for all tanks. If x class tank can pull 20% more that will give you that extra bit to get the kill you will get that. I think thats what the rest are saying, ie ToT prot wars, they could tank just fine but the rest could just do it plain better.

[Deleted]

Point but to be fair, Vengeance is going away to fix that. Vengeance has always been very unfair when it came to balancing tank damage and I always thought it was a bad design.
I was speaking more of the gap with regards to what a tank should be traditionally more focused on, ie: Threat, mitigation, survivability and utility.

Yes, I agree on the second part, besides Raden and the poor DKs, but that was more a fail on boss design that on class design.

But about the first part, I am not that sure. Vengeance made tanks do damage like a DPS, but the imbalance came from the fact that warriors didn't scale offensively with defensive stats, or defensively with offensive stats. Riposte plus a -15% damage done (and keg smash nerf, ~-5% total dps they claimed?) on monks fixed that (good lord, needing a free +35% crit and a 15%+5% nerf on another class to do the same DPS...).

But we will see on 6.0. They want tanks doing 75% of the DPS of a damage dealer. We will choose between mastery, haste and crit. Maybe readiness, but I very much doubt it. Multistrike looks better, I guess... though there aren't that many details. I guess that if they want to get an interesting choice, there will be a stat to stack that will provide better damage, and another that will provide better survivability. They have my vote of trust, but it's very possible that some tanks will get lucky and have one stat doing both things better than the others, and the others will get shafted having to choose between better surv or better damage. Vengeance becoming Resolve will make it so that the problem won't get out of hand, but it will also make them not give a shit if you end up having a 90% DPS of a DD tank, and a 65% DPS of a DD tank, both optimized for tanking.

Anyways, let's hope that they pull it off. And that they finally remove the non-hybrid tax on tanks.

[Deleted]

This is actually rather true. Unless you are apping to a new guild who is specifically looking for something.
Only guilds that are either incredibly low on the ranking scale (constantly rotating members), or guilds that are extremely high on the ranking scale (many alts to tackle different comps) really change out their players for a flavor of the month class. Especially with regards to Tanks.

If you are a stable player in a decent guild, you shouldn't have to worry about getting the axe simply because you got a few nerfs. My guild for example did all of MoP with two Warrior tanks, which was widely regarded as a very weak tanking comp.

I would say that it depends on who you're raiding with I constantly out performed my paladin co-tank less damage taken (taking self healing and absorbs into consideration) more damage done, less deaths etc.. etc.. and my raid leader still wanted the paladin tank to take the solo 10man hc bosses or mechanics (solo soak blood rage solo tank garrosh solo tank thok) fortunately for me they left the guild so I got my opportunity but atleast in my experience the elite players say that X or Y is "so good for an encounter" and what the wannabes or middle tier players hear is "x or y is necessary or you're gimping yourself"
It's a failure in understanding the issue being people assuming that because a great player said something is OP against a mechanic that its the only way to do go about it.

[Khorm]

Yes, I agree on the second part, besides Raden and the poor DKs, but that was more a fail on boss design that on class design.

But about the first part, I am not that sure. Vengeance made tanks do damage like a DPS, but the imbalance came from the fact that warriors didn't scale offensively with defensive stats, or defensively with offensive stats. Riposte plus a -15% damage done (and keg smash nerf, ~-5% total dps they claimed?) on monks fixed that (good lord, needing a free +35% crit and a 15%+5% nerf on another class to do the same DPS...).

But we will see on 6.0. They want tanks doing 75% of the DPS of a damage dealer. We will choose between mastery, haste and crit. Maybe readiness, but I very much doubt it. Multistrike looks better, I guess... though there aren't that many details. I guess that if they want to get an interesting choice, there will be a stat to stack that will provide better damage, and another that will provide better survivability. They have my vote of trust, but it's very possible that some tanks will get lucky and have one stat doing both things better than the others, and the others will get shafted having to choose between better surv or better damage. Vengeance becoming Resolve will make it so that the problem won't get out of hand, but it will also make them not give a shit if you end up having a 90% DPS of a DD tank, and a 65% DPS of a DD tank, both optimized for tanking.

Anyways, let's hope that they pull it off. And that they finally remove the non-hybrid tax on tanks.

This is where Draenor perks will shine because they are easily changed so things can be balanced better.

[Odina]

Going to be hitting 25man Thok heroic again this week... last week was trying to work on CD's but I think we got that sorted now. Looking for any feedback on what I could be doing better!

http://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/...pe=damage-done

Any criticism be it positive or negative always welcomed and wanted

PS: to thok's tail tip or not... got a Vial of living corruption normal mode I can run with as well.

[Deleted]

This is where Draenor perks will shine because they are easily changed so things can be balanced better.

I have heard that before about mastery, after all, it was presented at a knob they could easily use to balance specs. Didn't end well.

The perks won't be able to do that either. Let's imagine that mastery warriors end up being the best mitigation tank, but they are far worse than haste warriors for damage done. They can't really increase SS, revenge or TC damage via perks to fix it, because they are increasing the damage for everyone. In fact, the haste warrior would outdistance even more the mastery one after the fix. In that situation they can make mastery give 15% instead of 10% AP, but they question is if they would.

[Deleted]

Tank Balance in 5.4 is superb. Paladins/Monks/DK have less passive reduction so they got gibbed sometimes on our Garrosh HC. I myself tank with a warrior and heal with a shaman and have healed/tanked SoO hc.

Warrior by far easiest to heal, the others spike twice as bad. Plus i found out that our DK tank was rubbish after healing another DK who knew what he was doing He always complained about how bad DKs are and i thought they were.

Removal of Recklessness is really bugging me considering its my favorite DPS cooldown, i actually might quit just because of that. Oh also theyre removing the only fun cooldowns from Rogues, way to go Blizz. They need to "streamline" more, my dog is still unable to maintain a good rotation.

[Tofifi]

They need to "streamline" more, my dog is still unable to maintain a good rotation.

Yup. Sad but that's the way the game is heading.

[Khorm]

Rotation is the same, that button you press once every 2 minutes MINIMUM TIME is gone. Sky is falling?

[Deleted]

I have heard that before about mastery, after all, it was presented at a knob they could easily use to balance specs. Didn't end well.

The perks won't be able to do that either. Let's imagine that mastery warriors end up being the best mitigation tank, but they are far worse than haste warriors for damage done. They can't really increase SS, revenge or TC damage via perks to fix it, because they are increasing the damage for everyone. In fact, the haste warrior would outdistance even more the mastery one after the fix. In that situation they can make mastery give 15% instead of 10% AP, but they question is if they would.

Isn't the conclusion usually Just that blizzard are terrible at balancing the game and instead opt for FoTM specs/classes which they rotate every couple of major patches? This is what puts me off and at the same time makes me laugh about gladiator stance given that its one more thing to balance when they already struggle and fail to balance what they currently have.
I dont understand this whole making every 2nd stat viable aswell no matter what they do one stat will be better than the other and that will be the cookie cutter way to go, unless they want us to have 2 armor sets that we switch between based on boss fights which just seems dumb its one more thing to remember per boss fight on top of talents and glyphs. So what do they hope to achieve by making all secondary stats viable?

[Odina]

I dont understand this whole making every 2nd stat viable aswell no matter what they do one stat will be better than the other and that will be the cookie cutter way to go

With the removal of reforging, with gem slots being a bonus that will be very rare etc they have no choice but to try and make all secondary's worth something. Imagine if you did not have reforging and gemming atm where would you be at with your gear? As they keep trying to make a BIS list harder and harder to get through more and more drops per boss etc the only thing they can do is make everything some what useful or many drop s will just be wasted and gearing up will take a stupid long time. We will have a mathematical BIS but getting there will probably be much harder and without reforging and gemming hitting certain points will be like it was in the past! As such no real alternative than trying to make things beneficial even if they are not the best secondary.