With 5.4 on the PTR, it’s safe to say that the designers are going to be moving onto 6.0 in the pretty near future. We all knew that no fundamental changes were going to be made for the final patch of this expansion, so now is potentially the time when we want to start discussing how warriors could potentially look in the next expansion. This post is going to concentrate on Protection (it’s what I know the most about), but some of my thinking and/or suggestions will touch on Fury and Arms respectively, too.
For me, I think the class needs a significant overhaul in the main and nothing less than that is going to stop warriors from effectively coming apart at the seams. Every fix has brought new problems, and it’s now time to start stripping off the bandages and casts and sorting the situation out. What I would ask people to bear in mind, however, is that I’m also of the opinion that every class needs to start losing some of its ability bloat. Please try and remember that when you want to argue that “we can’t lose anything”.
So, let’s make a start and I’ll add or remove anything that is worth adding after it’s been discussed.
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Remove Berserker Stance
They’ve tried their absolute hardest to make this work, and it simply hasn’t. At this point it’s unlikely we’ll see the GCD lowering of Unholy Presence, and nobody in PvP is going to use this for rage when under attack (that’s what Defensive Stance is for). We’ve also moved away from attacks that are stance-dependent, so I reckon it’s time to retire ‘zerker once and for all.
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Remove Demoralizing Shout and Die by the Sword
This might seem like a strange move, but not when you read the next suggestion.
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Rework Disarm
Rather than having Disarm work solely in PvP and next to never in PvE, make Disarm work on
everything with a flat 20% damage reduction for its duration. This means we can safely remove the spec-specific minor cooldowns with no cost to tanks and only a limited cost to damage dealers.
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Rework Demoralizing Banner
A raid cooldown that doesn’t work on environmental damage is simply very strange. Rename this banner to “Inspiring” and give everyone in range a flat 30% damage reduction for its duration. This would be an awful lot better than how it currently works, and will make the loss of the second mitigation cooldown (when we don’t need two, anyway) easier to swallow.
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Remove Rallying Cry
If our banner worked the way it does above, we can get rid of Rallying Cry as a defensive raid cooldown. Honestly? We don’t need two.
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Make Piercing Howl baseline
I’m still amazed this hasn’t happened yet. It’s frightening. We really need to see it happen, as it’ll allow us to:
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Remove Hamstring
Probably the worst snare in the game at this point, and has fallen into disuse with Piercing Howl available to everyone. We’ve moved on from it at this stage of the game, so it’s time to retire it.
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Make Second Wind baseline
This has already been discussed by Ghostcrawler himself and the talent dominates in PvP, so just do it. It’s a half decent talent for PvE warriors too, so making it our sole baseline heal makes sense. From this point, nobody is losing anything much with this change.
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Return Shockwave to Protection only
Sustained Protection warrior AoE is anaemic without Shockwave, while Arms and Fury have Whirlwind (plus talents) to cushion this blow; Protection has nothing. Even on a 40-second cooldown an AoE Kidney Shot is abnormally strong in PvP, but the nerf hit PvE tanks hard and forced them into Dragon Roar. If it’s too hard to balance, get it back where it causes the least problems – back with tanks.
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Make Storm Bolt baseline and remove Heroic Throw - OR - Remove the cooldown on Heroic Throw
Essentially, replace Heroic Throw with Storm Bolt and tune its damage accordingly or simply buff Heroic Throw and get rid of Storm Bolt. Heroic Throw hits for an embarrassingly low amount, particularly for tanks, and there’s simply no need for it to hit for so little. Another option, suggested by Akoroth, is to make Heroic Throw spammable so that when a warrior is rooted, or on fights such as Horridon heroic where you need a constant ranged attack, the class has one. At time of writing, warriors seem to be the only melee class that has such a dramatically limited ranged arsenal.
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Rework Skull Banner
Skull Banner’s AoE effect is a nice raid DPS cooldown and doesn’t need changed, but I’d also put 25% extra critical strike chance for the warrior onto Skull Banner as baseline. This allows us to:
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Remove Recklessness
With the same cooldown as Skull Banner, and with the effect already accounted for, we can save another spot on the ol’ action bar.
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Rework the talent pane
It’s relatively safe to say that too many of our talents are lacklustre, while some of my suggestions here would also prompt some necessary changes. Tier one is probably okay as it is, but Second Wind as baseline would mean the whole second tier would need reworked; more self-healing is unnecessary, but more defensive utility might be worth it.
Something that made Disarm also reduce casting speed (Violent Disarm?) might be interesting, as would something that lets Spell Reflect absorb 50% of magical damage taken over 6 seconds and apply the remaining 50% as a DoT over 12 seconds (Consume Magic?). Finally, a talent that allows the warrior to *whispers* use Shield Wall without having a shield (Blade Ward?) would be cool, but would need to also do something for Protection.
After that we’d need to look at the gaps left by Piercing Howl, Shockwave and Storm Bolt and also look to make some of the existing talents more attractive. With Shockwave and Storm Bolt as baseline, it’d maybe be simplest to have a buffed Bladestorm replace Storm Bolt on the final tier and remove Dragon Roar outright – it’s just not an interesting ability. That then gives us a whole new tier to get something more interesting out of.
Anyway, that’s my general ideas for all warrior stripes as of right now; I’ll continue with the Protection specific section shortly, but will add to this as people get involved in the debate. All I ask is that we try and keep it clean and, if we can get consensus on some things we’ll flag it up to the calamitous crab himself and see what he thinks.
Be good to each other.