The 6.0 Protection warrior thread.

[Pua]

[Correct as of 25/06/14, but still to be completed.]

As there's a lot of general commentary on the patch notes regarding classes, I thought it'd be helpful to get together the most pertinent stuff purely for Protection warriors and generate a discussion around that. There are a lot of good commentators on these forums, many of which are in top quality guilds, so we could start providing some high-class feedback for the developers on how we think things are shaking up. A couple of general ground rules, then:

1) Keep it clean - we all know what happens when flaming begins.
2) This is for Protection warriors playing in PvE.
3) If there's something I've missed, let me know and I'll get it into the OP.
4) Alpha is alpha, beta is beta.

I'm going to go through the list as it is in the patch notes, just so it's easier for people to follow and get in any bits that I may have missed. This post is now a major revision of the original, and I can’t take full credit for it – much of it now includes commentary from other posters.

First up, I’ll post the summarised changes that matter to tanks.

• Character stats have been squished into smaller numbers that are easier to understand. It's important to understand that this is not a nerf as enemies have been squished as well.
• A new row of talents has been added for level 100, and new Draenor Perks from levels 91 to 99.
• Hit and Expertise have been removed; they're no longer needed in order to reliably land attacks!
• The pace of healing has been adjusted to allow for more tactical decision-making regarding efficiency and throughput, on both single-target and multi-target heals. Passive and auto-targeted healing have been reduced in effectiveness in order to emphasize the actions and choices of healers.
• Racial traits have been rebalanced so that all races have similar combat performance.
• All classes have had several abilities pruned, with a focus on redundant and less-used abilities, to cut down on button and keybind bloat.
• Several common buffs and debuffs have been merged, or removed, where they were redundant.
• All characters now learn a few important Major Glyphs automatically as they level up.
• Vengeance has been redesigned and renamed Resolve. Resolve does not increase outgoing damage, but does now increase tank self-healing and absorption based on damage taken.
• Professions no longer have combat benefit perks tied to them.

Okay, let’s get into the specifics.

Talents and Draenor Perks

A row of talents for level 100 has been added (with some of our other ones moved around), while Draenor Perks are passive abilities that warriors get from level 91 to 99 and in a random order.

Our new talent pane looks like this:

[To be completed.]

These are the Draenor Perks:

[To be completed.]

Statistic Changes

Many things have changed regarding our statistics and mechanics, but this is the posted summary:

We've consolidated the way that Attack Power and Spell Power function and scale, to make those values clearer and correct some scaling issues regarding caster weapons relative to physical weapons.

• Each point of Agility or Strength now grants 1 Attack Power (down from 2). All other sources of Attack Power now grant half as much as before.
• Weapon Damage values on all weapons have been reduced by 50%.
• Attack Power now increases Weapon Damage at a rate of 1 DPS per 3.5 Attack Power (up from 1 DPS per 14 Attack Power).
• Attack Power, Spell Power, or Weapon Damage now affect the entire healing or damage throughput of player spells.

Active mitigation has worked very well as a tanking model. So, moving forward we want to keep the amount of Dodge and Parry on tanks on the low side. This helps prevent encounters from causing very spiky damage on tanks, which generally isn't much fun. Dodge and Parry gains from Strength and Agility are being reduced to help accomplish this. Additionally, items in Warlords of Draenor will not have Dodge or Parry on them as a stat. Some Dodge and Parry can still be gained through class-specific effects.

• The amount of Parry gained per point of Strength has been reduced by 25%.

Itemization Changes

A lot of changes have been posted, but here are the highlights:

•New secondary stats added:

• Bonus Armor: Increases Armor and Attack Power for tanking specializations.
• Multistrike: Grants a chance for spells and abilities to fire up to 2 additional times, at 30% effectiveness (both damage and healing).
• Readiness: Reduces the cooldown on several abilities with long-cooldowns for the class. The tooltip for Readiness displays a list of affected abilities.
• Hit and Expertise on all items have been replaced with a universally useful secondary stat.
• Stats that are not useful to the current class specialization will be grayed out in the tooltip rather than green, and will not be counted on the character stat sheet.

• These stats include:

• Bonus Armor for non-tanking specializations
• Strength for Agility/Intellect-users
• For example, Intellect on a cloak will be greyed out for all Warrior specializations and they will not receive an increase to Intellect if equipped. However, if the same cloak is equipped by a Mage, Intellect will show up as green and they’ll receive the increase to their Intellect.

Mists of Pandaria and Future Items

• Dodge and Parry have been replaced with Bonus Armor. If an item had both Dodge and Parry on it, it has been replaced with an additional useful secondary stat.
• Head, Chest, Hand, Wrist, Waist, Leg, Feet, Weapon, Shield, and Off-hand items that had tanking stats (Dodge, Parry) or healer stats (Spirit) have been replaced with a different universally useful secondary stat.

Warlords of Draenor Items

• Plate Armor pieces will always have Strength and Intellect on it.

Hit and Expertise Removal

Hit and Expertise were not fun stats. They acted to remove a penalty, instead of making you stronger. Most players treated Hit/Expertise caps as mandatory (rightfully so), with failure to reach those caps as a trap of sorts. After adjusting, gemming, and reforging gear to meet that cap, players could then go after the actual damage-increasing stats. We decided to remove Hit and Expertise, and make it so you don't need them. We still want melee specializations to attack creatures from behind when possible, so attacks from the front will have a 3% chance to be parried that cannot be eliminated for non-tanking specializations.

• General

• All players now have a 100% chance to hit, 0% chance to be dodged, 3% chance to be parried, and 0% chance to glance, when fighting creatures up to 3 levels higher (bosses included).
• Tank specializations receive an additional 3% reduction in chance to be parried, so tank attacks have a 0% chance to be parried vs. creatures up to 3 levels higher.
• Creatures 4+ levels higher than you still have a chance to avoid your attacks in various ways, so as to discourage you from attempting to fight enemies that are much stronger than you.
• Dual Wielding still imposes a 17% chance to miss, so as to balance it with two-handed weapon use.
• Hit and Expertise bonuses on all items and item enhancements (gems, enchants, etc.) have been converted into Critical Strike, Haste, or Mastery.
• Unwavering Sentinel now also reduces the chance for attacks to be parried by 3%.

Secondary Stat Attunements

A new concept that we’re introducing is each specialization having an attunement to a particular secondary stat. These take the form of a passive ability that grants a 5% increase to the amount of a specific secondary stat gained. This provides a good starting point for where to focus your secondary stats. Usually, it will be your highest throughput stat (not counting Spirit for Healers, and Bonus Armor for Tanks, which is an optimal secondary stat in most cases). There are exceptions, and raw throughput may not even be the biggest concern in some situations. Treat this as a guideline, not a rule, about which secondary stat to favor.

•New passive abilities granting a 5% bonus to specific secondary stat bonuses received from equipped items have been added for all specializations.

• [Warrior] Protection: Mastery

Racial Traits

We want races to have fun and interesting perks, but if those traits are too powerful, players may feel compelled to play a specific race even if it doesn't suit their aesthetic preference. For example, Trolls' Berserking ability was extremely powerful, and their Beast Slaying passive was often irrelevant, but occasionally tremendously powerful compared to other racial passives. On the other end of the spectrum, many races had few or no performance affecting perks. We also needed to replace or update a number of racials that previously granted Hit or Expertise, since those stats have been removed.

We decided to bring down the couple high outliers, then establish a fair baseline and bring everyone else up to that. We achieved that by improving old passives, replacing obsolete ones, and occasionally adding new ones where needed. Our goal with these changes is to reach parity amongst races.

Ability Pruning

• Battle Shout now lasts 1 hour and no longer generates Rage.
• Berserker Stance has been removed.
• Cleave has been removed.
• Commanding Shout now lasts 1 hour and no longer generates Rage.
• Deep Wounds is now available only to Protection Warriors.
• Demoralizing Banner has been removed.
• Devastate now naturally has a 30% chance to reset the cooldown of Shield Slam.
• Sword and Board has been removed.
• Enraged Regeneration healing has been increased by 100%, but no longer is increased by being Enraged.
• Mass Spell Reflection now requires Defensive Stance.
• Mocking Banner now requires Defensive Stance.
• Rallying Cry is no longer available to Protection Warriors, and requires Defensive Stance.
• Revenge now requires Defensive Stance or Gladiator Stance.
• Safeguard now requires Defensive Stance.
• Shield Slam now requires Defensive stance or Gladiator Stance.
• Shield Wall is now available only to Protection Warriors.
• Spell Reflection now requires Defensive Stance.
• Taunt now requires Defensive Stance.
• Throw has been removed.
• Ultimatum has been removed.
• Vigilance now requires Defensive Stance.
• Warrior Stances once again have their own action bars.

Crowd Control and Diminishing Returns

• Charge now Roots the target (instead of stunning). The Root effect does not share a Diminishing Return with other Roots.
• Disarm has been removed.
• Intimidating Shout now has a 6-second duration in PvP (down from 8 seconds).
• Warbringer now causes Charge to stun the target for 1.5 seconds instead of rooting it.

Buffs and Debuffs

Warrior (Protection): Devastate no longer applies Weakened Armor.
Warrior (Protection): Thunder Clap no longer applies the Weakened Blows effect.

Raid Utility Balance

• Rallying Cry now increases health by 15% (down from 20%), and is no longer available to Protection Warriors.
• Skull Banner has been removed.

Tank Vengeance and Resolve

• Vengeance has been removed and replaced with a new passive ability, Resolve.

• Resolve: Increases your healing and absorption done to yourself, based on Stamina and damage taken (before avoidance and mitigation) in the last 10 seconds.

• Warrior
• Mastery: Critical Block now also passively increases Attack Power by 8% (percentage increased by Mastery), in addition to its current effects.

Self-Sustainability

Victory Rush and Impending Victory now heal for 25% of maximum health (up from 15%).

Glyphs

We made several improvements to the Glyph system. While leveling, characters unlock Glyph slots at several specific levels. However, in order to get glyphs, characters need to visit an Auction House (and potentially pay way more gold than an average character of that level has yet), or know a Scribe from which to request them. To solve this, we've made characters learn some Glyphs automatically as they level. Additionally, we now have the ability to make some glyphs exclusive with each other, or require specific specializations.

• Many glyphs have been removed, and many new glyphs have been added.
• Exclusive categories have been added for some glyphs. Other glyphs from the same category cannot be applied at the same time.
• Some glyphs are now exclusive to a specialization.
• All classes now learn some of their Major Glyphs as they level. Recipes for these Glyphs have been removed.

• At level 25, the following Glyphs are automatically learned by characters of the appropriate class:
• Long Charge, Victory Rush, Bloodthirst, Gag Order.

• At level 50, the following Glyphs are automatically learned by characters of the appropriate class:
• Fear, Executor.

• At level 75, the following Glyphs are automatically learned by characters of the appropriate class:
• Bull Rush, Enraged Speed, Shield Wall.

Class Changes

Burst Damage Cooldowns

As with other classes, we wanted to reduce cooldown stacking. Cutting Skull Banner did a ton to help that across the whole game. But for Warriors specifically, we needed to make further changes, including merging some of the personal benefit of Skull Banner back into Recklessness. Also, to make up for Throw being removed, we modified Heroic Throw to be more frequently usable.

• Heroic Throw is now a high-threat ability, generating 300% extra threat, has a 6-second cooldown (down from 30 seconds), but now has a 15 yard minimum range.
• Shattering Throw no longer reduces the armor of the target; it only does damage and breaks immunities.
• It also is no longer learned via any specialization, but instead through a new Major Glyph, Glyph of Shattering Throw.

Haste for Warriors

Haste has long been a problematic stat for Warriors, usually being of little value. As part of our commitment to ensuring all secondary stats are valuable (except Bonus Armor for non-tanks and Spirit for non-healers, of course), we're making a significant change to Warriors, to ensure that Haste has strong, competitive value. We're giving all Warriors a new passive, which lets haste affect their global cooldown, and the cooldowns of their very-short-cooldown rotational abilities.

• Headlong Rush is a new passive ability for Warriors:
• Headlong Rush: Haste reduces global cooldown and the cooldowns of Mortal Strike, Bloodthirst, Shield Slam, and Thunder Clap.

Protection Changes

Protection Warriors have received a few notable changes. First, we removed Dodge and Parry from gear, and expect Protection Warriors to value Haste and Crit as important secondary stats. In order to achieve that, we made Riposte give defensive value to Crits. The aforementioned Headlong Rush also helps for valuing Haste.

• Blood Craze is a new passive ability for Protection Warriors.
• Blood Craze causes Multistrike auto attacks to trigger a Blood Craze, which regenerates 3% of the Warrior's health over 3 seconds. When this effect is refreshed, the remaining duration is added to the new effect.
• Riposte has been redesigned.
• Riposte now gives the Warrior Parry equal to their Critical Strike bonus from gear.

Talent Changes

A few Warrior Talents also were in need of revision. First, Second Wind was problematic; it was sometimes too weak, and sometimes too strong. We chose to change it from a passive health regeneration effect to the new Leech effect, so that low-health Warriors have to maintain combat in order to benefit, instead of kiting, hiding, or otherwise playing defensively. For the level-60 and level-90 Talent rows, certain combinations were proving problematic. We decided that Stormbolt would better compete with Shockwave and Dragon Roar, and that Bladestorm would better compete with Avatar and Bloodbath, so swapped Stormbolt and Bladestorm's positions. We also adjusted the effects of a few talents in order to make them more competitive with the talents on their row.

• Bladestorm is now a level-90 Talent, swapping places with Stormbolt.
• Bladestorm no longer allows use of Shouts except Demoralizing Shout while active. It does still allow the use of Taunt, Enraged Regeneration, Shield Wall, and Last Stand.
• Dragon Roar’s damage is no longer reduced when hitting more than 1 target.
• Mass Spell Reflection’s cooldown has been reduced to 30 seconds, but it now replaces Spell Reflection.
• Second Wind no longer directly heals the Warrior while active. Instead, Second Wind grants the Warrior 10% Leech while active, which causes the Warrior to heal for 10% of all damage and healing done by the Warrior while active.
• Stormbolt is now a level-60 Talent, swapping places with Bladestorm.

--------------------

•Glyph of Cleave - Your Heroic Strike now hits 2 targets.
•Glyph of Heroic Leap - Increases your speed by 70% for 10 after using Heroic Leap.
•Glyph of Mocking Banner - Your Mocking Banner now causes creatures to attack the tank specialization player you had targeted when placing the Mocking Banner, instead of attacking you.
•Glyph of Shattering Throw - Teaches you the ability Shattering Throw.

The Cleave glyph strikes me as a pretty elegant solution to the actual attack being removed, and Heroic Leap looks as if it could be fantastic if married up with Death from Above (assuming that remains). Later in the notes we see reference to the minimum range of Heroic Leap being removed, which means such a combination could be powerful... Arguably too powerful. I'd expect something to be nerfed in that little combination.

The Mocking Banner glyph is pretty neat, meaning you can stream adds to another tank, though it has the chance to be abused. As for Shattering Throw, well... I'd imagine it'll be useless in PvE.

Alas, as hinted, I just can't see past Gladiator's Resolve at the moment. An extra 5% flat damage reduction on Defensive Stance? Yes, please! There is, however, another thread already dedicated to Gladiator's Resolve, so I'd recommend reading that for more discussion on it.

From the WoWDB, this is our Readiness list:

Readiness: Protection

Increases the cooldown recovery rate by [ 50% of Spell Power ]% on your Recklessness, Shield Wall, Demoralizing Shout, Last Stand, Heroic Leap, and Mocking Banner abilities ( -50% of Spell Power % cooldown reduction).

Now, obviously, Recklessness isn't going to be given to Protection warriors so we're really looking at lowered cooldowns for Shield Wall, Last Stand, Demoralizing Shout, Heroic Leap and Mocking Banner. Again, with readiness as a secondary that competes with mastery, it's hard to say how good this will really be but I'd never shy from lowered cooldowns on our major cooldowns, our minor mitigation cooldown and Heroic Leap. The question is really whether or not that could ever realistically compete with the benefits from other stats.

[Ssateneth]

Probably a more general question, but still relates to (prot) warriors. Whatever happened to the amplify stat (extra crit damage/heal, extra haste, mastery, spirit, multistrike)? Is that staying, or was it removed?

Also, the video blog today on converttoraid said that crit will add parry, as if it were adding parry rating, so it wont be 100% anymore.

[Skiboy]

I'll start by saying there is no reason to assume resolve won't effect your chosen healing talent. The reason that other tanks had their healing buffed by vengeance and warriors did not is simply the mechanics. Our healing has always been percentage based with no AP scaling. The other tank classes had AP scaling built in because their heals were originally built for SP scaling(clearly a broad unspecific statement as some other tank class heals where non-ap scaling also). However our heals have always scaled with for example the MS glyph that increases healing recieved with MS on a target and this is essentially the same type of mechanic.

Also blood craze is coming back not sure of the exact specifics on how it will work but it's yet another healing healing source for prot.
Also unless they change something shield barrier still scales with AP and now also scales with resolve and because of the way haste will work increasing out rage generation both passively and actively we should be able to get ash I or more use out of it then we do already.

[Laego]

The first thing that I notice is that due to Riposte being a 100% occurrence, tanking with a dagger will be the only way going forward, as all other one-handers are 2.5 or 2.6 speed.

[Pua]

Also, the video blog today on converttoraid said that crit will add parry, as if it were adding parry rating, so it wont be 100% anymore.

I'll need to check that out, but I think Riposte works by giving you 100% parry until you parry after an auto-attack crit. I suppose that makes critical strike rating our "avoidance" stat.

I'll start by saying there is no reason to assume resolve won't effect your chosen healing talent.

The thing is, they're all percentage based which makes me think they won't be added to Resolve. Other tanking heals/absorbs weren't necessarily based on percentages, which is why they tended to benefit from Vengeance.

Also blood craze is coming back not sure of the exact specifics on how it will work but it's yet another healing healing source for prot.
Also unless they change something shield barrier still scales with AP and now also scales with resolve and because of the way haste will work increasing out rage generation both passively and actively we should be able to get ash I or more use out of it then we do already.

I noticed Blood Craze was making a comeback thanks to (I think) Requiel in another thread, and it procs from auto-attacks - yet another addition that would make haste beneficial. Also:

The first thing that I notice is that due to Riposte being a 100% occurrence, tanking with a dagger will be the only way going forward, as all other one-handers are 2.5 or 2.6 speed.

Blood Craze and Riposte may well support the haste and critical strike gearing paradigm already discussed, especially if we go with a dagger where the strength loss may not be all that meaningful. It would be interesting to see this simulated against a mastery and strength weapon, if anyone's setting them up yet.

[Roshar]

Probably a more general question, but still relates to (prot) warriors. Whatever happened to the amplify stat (extra crit damage/heal, extra haste, mastery, spirit, multistrike)? Is that staying, or was it removed?

Yes, Amplify and the Cleave stats were removed.

[Gliff]

The first thing that I notice is that due to Riposte being a 100% occurrence, tanking with a dagger will be the only way going forward, as all other one-handers are 2.5 or 2.6 speed.

This was one of the first things I though about when I read that. I doubt it will be optimal but it is probably atleast half viable lol.

Based on these VERY early notes, the 2 classes I am looking at closely right now are Warriors and Druids. This means nothing though. I was 100% sure I wasnt gonna play my Warrior this xpac until very late in Beta. 100+ days played later here I am...

[idefiler6]

What are the Draenor perks? Do we get access to all of them or have to pick and choose like glyphs? This is the first I'm reading of this one.

EDIT: Went back to the blue post, we get them along the leveling process, all of them. Pretty damn sweet.

[Cyclonus-WOW]

I'm don't quite agree the Gladstance talent will be optimal if you're planning to play Prot War as a tank. 5% increase defstance reduction is good, but way less useful than the other two talents. The stance itself means you're now a DPS class, with your shield. I don't know about you guys, but I'm extremely excited to be dps'ing with my shield equipped.

[Promdates]

Gladiator talent gives you the option of being able to dps with a prot spec. As it is right now, they said yesterday that the list of "readiness-available" skills isn't finalized yet. It could be very close to the current trinket reflected ones, and it could also change.

It's probably also going to depend on which fight it is, your raid comp, and other various variables to figure out which is the better talent for each fight.

[Gliff]

The 5% DR is probably the best option in most cases.
Ravager should be the AOE talent. (Spoils)
Assuming the talents from the "readiness" list are similar to the Vial talents (Shield Wall, Demo Shout, Last Stand ect.) then it will not be as good as the other 2 unless the extra externals are necessary. If the "readiness" list include stuff like Shield Slam, Revenge and Shield Block then it will get nerfed anyways so not really worth thinking about.

[Deleted]

I kind of don't know. They will go for 2 tanks encounters almost always. If they go for the classic tank swap bosses, let's say the typical 15-30 seconds debuff, ravager gives you 20% parry with a 50% uptime (since is cooling down while the other tank takes over), plus the unknown added DPS. That beats 5% for me, unless a) the combat is way too magical based, b) riposte gives you a very high 100% parry uptime.

PS: You know that if sub 2.6 weapons are remotely useful, they will fix both blood craze and riposte to avoid warriors using agi weapons. If they had chosen to go the route of AP on weapons... it might have been.

[Ampere]

I'm happy about the Shout changes, Cleave being removed, Hamstring being baked in, Skull Banner and Recklessness being removed. Rallying Cry was nice, but I'm OK with all tanks losing raid CDs since they are trying to give the power back to the healers. Dps CDs for tanks aren't really necessary, plus there are already some talents that fill that role.

I like the Heroic Throw changes, now it's a ranged pickup ability that you can always use. Potentially tab through a few enemies that are far away if Charge/Leap are on CD.

Warriors still seem to sorely lack self heals, which is a bummer.

[Gliff]

I'm happy about the Shout changes, Cleave being removed, Hamstring being baked in, Skull Banner and Recklessness being removed. Rallying Cry was nice, but I'm OK with all tanks losing raid CDs since they are trying to give the power back to the healers. Dps CDs for tanks aren't really necessary, plus there are already some talents that fill that role.

I like the Heroic Throw changes, now it's a ranged pickup ability that you can always use. Potentially tab through a few enemies that are far away if Charge/Leap are on CD.

Warriors still seem to sorely lack self heals, which is a bummer.

When will people understand that absorbs are better then self healing in 25 man (and 20 man) raiding 95% if the time. I cant think of any boss where I would rather have had Eternal Flame then SB for my own personal survivability.

[Deleted]

When will people understand that absorbs are better then self healing in 25 man (and 20 man) raiding 95% if the time. I cant think of any boss where I would rather have had Eternal Flame then SB for my own personal survivability.

Agreed. I wouldn't trade Shield Barrier for any of the self-healing active mitigation

[Pua]

When will people understand that absorbs are better then self healing in 25 man (and 20 man) raiding 95% if the time. I cant think of any boss where I would rather have had Eternal Flame then SB for my own personal survivability.

I think with Blood Craze making a comeback, assuming it makes the cut, our self-healing will be better than it is now; it's the one place where we'll pick up utility.

Self-healing itself, however, is a much bigger deal in 10-man where an allocated tank healer is much less likely. If you're going with a two-healer set up, which is pretty much a given for competitive 10-man guilds, tanks that can take care of their own health for a while are worth far more than those that can't.

Absorbs are fine, but they don't restore health.

[Deleted]

The warrior class, especially protection spec seems really strong/sturdy in 6.0. I'm not sure if I should go back to tauren paladin with the new health increase and go dps warrior tauren with the crit increase, or switch it around and go ret tauren pala and prot warrior tauren. What do you guys think?

[Pua]

The warrior class, especially protection spec seems really strong/sturdy in 6.0. I'm not sure if I should go back to tauren paladin with the new health increase and go dps warrior tauren with the crit increase, or switch it around and go ret tauren pala and prot warrior tauren. What do you guys think?

That's not really the point of this thread, mate. I'm not trying to be a douche, but I'd like to keep this thread for theorycrafting discussions around Protection in 6.0.

[Gliff]

I think with Blood Craze making a comeback, assuming it makes the cut, our self-healing will be better than it is now; it's the one place where we'll pick up utility.

Self-healing itself, however, is a much bigger deal in 10-man where an allocated tank healer is much less likely. If you're going with a two-healer set up, which is pretty much a given for competitive 10-man guilds, tanks that can take care of their own health for a while are worth far more than those that can't.

Absorbs are fine, but they don't restore health.

Thats why I said 25 man and 20 mans. I dont really care if we dont have the self healing for 10 mans since 10 man raiding is dead.

[Pua]

Thats why I said 25 man and 20 mans. I dont really care if we dont have the self healing for 10 mans since 10 man raiding is dead.

I daresay 10-12 man raiding will still end up more popular than Mythic, but I take your point about legitimate progression.