[Prot] Undesirable? How can we fix it

[fzhfzh]

Having recently tanked mythic butcher in very sub par dps gear and little to no practice I can easily shoot down your claims. If you're running out of cooldowns then you're using too many cooldowns simultaneously ontop of not asking for externals.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...e=damage-taken

The answer to "what class is the best tank" might not be warriors, but that doesn't mean we're somehow fundamentally broken like you make it sound. We're designed for soaking heavy physical swings and mobility, and we do that well. Just because we don't have insane output or self healing doesn't mean _we_ are the problem.

Well, I don't see how your log shows there's no problem with warrior. You are doing significantly less damage than your paladin co-tank (more than 150% of your dps), and taking more damage (despite significantly less self-healing) than your paladin co-tank in what's supposed to be a physical damage heavy fight warrior is supposed to excel in.

Your gears are not subpar either, it's 666 vs your co-tank's 676, it's not supposed to be this big of a difference.


Well, just look at any of the logs:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/ranking...-abilities.NaN

The warrior tank is almost always at significantly lower dps than the co-tank, takes more damage, and have less self-heal+absorb than the co-tank. This definitely shows a problem. Before anything could be done about it, we must first at least acknowledge that there is an issue with prot warrior right now.

[Strafir]

Well, I don't see how your log shows there's no problem with warrior. You are doing significantly less damage than your paladin co-tank, and taking more damage (despite significantly less self-healing) than your paladin co-tank in what's supposed to be a physical damage heavy fight warrior is supposed to excel in.

Your gears are not subpar either, it's 666 vs your co-tank's 676, it's not supposed to be this big of a difference.

Keep looking. Specifically at the amount blocked, absorbed and healed. We're pretty close to being equals with me tanking for ~6% longer and having shittyass gear.

Paladins and warriors are both physical walls with the paladin having better tools to deal with magical damage while we have mobility, and the point with the log wasn't to start a discussion whether or not a paladin is a superior tank, but to show that even when a paladin plays defensively, the difference between us isn't that large.

[fzhfzh]

Keep looking. Specifically at the amount blocked, absorbed and healed. We're pretty close to being equals with me tanking for ~6% longer and having shittyass gear.

Paladins and warriors are both physical walls with the paladin having better tools to deal with magical damage while we have mobility, and the point with the log wasn't to start a discussion whether or not a paladin is a superior tank, but to show that even when a paladin plays defensively, the difference between us isn't that large.

Was edited.

Look at every log there, it's not just paladin, every other tank deals more dps than warrior, sometimes warrior with even higher ilevel, with the prot warrior taking more damage and less self-heal+absorb at the same time.

[Homsel]

The problems mentioned are quite surprising to me. I tank for 6 years on my pally now and seriously considered switching to warrior in WoD because of my experience on beta. The possibilities to control your AM is amazing for warriors, even for magical damage. On my paladin there are not many options and often I have to rely on RNG. FYI: on the contrary to the mechanics stated here, Sacred Shield is not completely passive.

Generally I think there are quite a lot of tanks out there, that are not used to the mechanics of Resolve yet. This buff gives the tank a huge boost to self healing and absorbs. But only, when used directly after a big hit! This especially applies for Shield Barrier. Warriors do have a lot of abilities that are suited towards AM, they are definitely not outdated in terms of their mechanics. Their mobility is astonishingly powerful.

[Deleted]

While tanking imperator hc (I am dps MS) shield block was really strong when it was up. We used our monk to roll out with the debuff mainly because he is ms tank and had done it before, so the boss ended up getting 15+ stacks quite regularly because of the way it timed out (we taunted ~20s left of mark cd in order to make it so the raid doesnt have to move). Anyway once block charges run out you basically fall over completely and I couldn't take the dmg. In the end I handled the debuff with leaps which worked out really well.

TLDR shield block is super strong but in times when you need to tank hardhitting bosses for longer periods of time warriors are pretty weak because barrier really does not do much.

[Sorthalis]

I was tanking Mythic Twins (I am glad main dps). Was pulling about 14-15k dps and mitigating decently until I ran out of block charges and demo shout was down, then I was getting crushed and causing healer shock.
I tried rolling barriers in between shield block uptime to try and last the whole fight without running out of block, it just caused more damage spike scares.

Our Monk tank finally showed up after about an hour. He proceeds to take FAR less damage than I do on melee swings, defuses magic if he accidentally takes a fire stack(s), and pulls as much damage as I am in glad stance.

Prot is the WORST tank by far and has a niche for Imp.

They need help, but blizzard has their privates dangling in a toaster. IF they fix Prot they could cause glad to move back into the dps range of fury and arms, which they don't want because they already backed out of glad being competitive dps because of all the QQ from newbs.

[Tehterokkar]

Another thing I would like Blizzard to somewhat fix is Multi-strike scaling.

Blood Craze sounds cool in theory, but it's just not strong enough in practice compared to other stats. Even if it was buffed, self healing in small quantities on tanks is worth fuck all. Healers got tanks very well covered in most cases, tanking is still about smooth intake for the most part, so sacrificing other stats, which offer better damage smoothing, for slightly RNG heal is not that wise.

They could just make it so that auto-attack multi-strikes have a chance to reset the CD of Victory Rush/Impending Victory(and in case of VR, allow it to be used), that way the heal is very helpful when you have it and can save your ass sometimes.

[Ulfhedinn]

Sounds like several people actually want to be a faceroll tank.

The only issue I have with my warrior is Shield Barrier is really weak. It will likely get changed just like Guard did for Monks which was also just about useless at release.

[Deleted]

The issue is really that there is no decisionmaking between whether you should be using block or barrier. As long as something is hitting you block will be better. Not very engaging gameplay.

[Deleted]

Prot does shit damage and shield barrier absorbs for shit all, even if you wait for a melee swing to boosts its resolve scalign it stil doesnt absorb for a reasoneble amount.

So the times shield block is down and i need to weave in shield barriers it doesnt cut it especialy considiring shield block recharge timer has been nerfed by a staggering 3 sec (all tanks got this treatment i suppose with the nerf tanks abroad thingie but yeah its stil rediculous) it hit us really hard seeing we cant keep up our am more than 50% of the time.

- - - Updated - - -

Btw i dont mind we dont have any self heals that scale with resolve, i suppose thats the warrior way but atleast fix the current tools they dont cut it anymore we have huge gaps of dmg intake and shield barrier just doesnt cover it to make it a smooth dmg intake.

[Deleted]

Having recently tanked mythic butcher in very sub par dps gear and little to no practice I can easily shoot down your claims. If you're running out of cooldowns then you're using too many cooldowns simultaneously ontop of not asking for externals.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...e=damage-taken

The answer to "what class is the best tank" might not be warriors, but that doesn't mean we're somehow fundamentally broken like you make it sound. We're designed for soaking heavy physical swings and mobility, and we do that well. Just because we don't have insane output or self healing doesn't mean _we_ are the problem.

To be fair you also had 24 secs of 30% damage reduction more than the paladin and you still took more damage.

[keiona]

To be fair you also had 24 secs of 30% damage reduction more than the paladin and you still took more damage.

Except SotR on a 670+ Paladin is more than 30%.

Edit: And Strafir only has 40% uptime on Shield Block

[Deleted]

Except SotR on a 670+ Paladin is more than 30%.

Edit: And Strafir only has 40% uptime on Shield Block

but you're missing the point because when comparing the survival capabilities of 2 tanks when one needs more external cooldowns and still takes more damage you can't really say as a counter point "ah yes but the paladin has an ability that is better than externals!" you're proving my point for me... they arent reliant on externals like we are thus the class is innately better even when we have the help of other players which requires more coordination and skill.

[Reinholder]

Sorry to burst your bubble but it is stated nowhere that they nerfed revenge and shield slam because of gladiator. It was meant as a protection nerf and is not a side effect. You should stop blaming things that don't concern you for your own benefit and deal with it.

You don't think that the shield slam and revenge nerf had anything to do with gladiator stance? You honestly think they nerfed it because of protection only and not because gladiator was way out in front damage wise compared to the traditional warrior DPS spec, and a majority of other classes (if we're being honest)?

[Neehs]

My biggest gripe with prot is how poor barrier feels, might get a 'lil bit better with a higher flow or rage, but soaking half a melee attack with 60 rage...I dno.

Otherwise bloodcraze dosen't feel worthwhile I guess, even with fairly high uptime. The deaths I have in mythic are usually to rng burst, blood craze not doing much good there, in most other scenarios it just feels like overhealing.

I'm also curious why enraged regen don't stack with resolve, just drop the values a wee bit for prot first, else it be silly op.

Still, I feel fairly solid as a protection warrior, but wouldn't mind a slight dps boost.

[Gorsameth]

As others have said we are to squishy outside of shield block.

A big part of it is Shield Barrier being to weak to fill in. I dont feel that we should be forced to use every defensive ability and externals we have just so we can reliably survive in between shield block cooldowns.

[Bigbazz]

Prot Warriors are only "undesirable" in Challenge Modes, in high end raiding they are arguably the most desirable tank.

You don't think that the shield slam and revenge nerf had anything to do with gladiator stance? You honestly think they nerfed it because of protection only and not because gladiator was way out in front damage wise compared to the traditional warrior DPS spec, and a majority of other classes (if we're being honest)?

One could argue quite the opposite, Fury and Arms were behind simply because they were behind in general, Fury is now one of the strongest single target specs in the game and higher than Gladiator pre-nerf, which would have been upper-mid tier in Mythic gear, strong but not overpowered. Protection on the other hand had the strongest single target damage of all the tanks, by a fair measure too.

So from that point of view it's more likely that it was a tanking nerf with a Gladiator side effect thrown in as a possible way to tame PVP damage, following the large outcry on the forums about Gladiator PVP. Blizzard seems happy with Warrior tanks despite them being weak in challenge modes and already being behind on AOE dps compared to the others, mostly because of the fact that Warriors are performing well in Mythic Raiding.

[fzhfzh]

The problems mentioned are quite surprising to me. I tank for 6 years on my pally now and seriously considered switching to warrior in WoD because of my experience on beta. The possibilities to control your AM is amazing for warriors, even for magical damage. On my paladin there are not many options and often I have to rely on RNG. FYI: on the contrary to the mechanics stated here, Sacred Shield is not completely passive.

Generally I think there are quite a lot of tanks out there, that are not used to the mechanics of Resolve yet. This buff gives the tank a huge boost to self healing and absorbs. But only, when used directly after a big hit! This especially applies for Shield Barrier. Warriors do have a lot of abilities that are suited towards AM, they are definitely not outdated in terms of their mechanics. Their mobility is astonishingly powerful.

I had been tanking with warrior since WoTLK and switched to pally during MoP, now switched back again and so far regretted doing so. Pally tank is not unreliable at all, you don't have to spam ShoTR once holy power is up, if you know there's big damage coming, you can wait for that, just like shield block.

Well, look at the logs, quite sure the mythic warrior tanks know what they are doing, but they are simply falling behind the other tanks in terms of dps and mitigation.

Yes, mobility is warrior's strong point, but I see it as a kind of utility to skip on some boss mechanics, every tank as some form of utility, DK with grip, gorefiend's grip etc, paladin with their hands and bubble to ignore certain mechanics etc. It's fun to be mobile, but it's not really an edge over other tanks.

[PowerGamez]

Completely agree with Choice above. We're currently 2/7M and very close to kills on Brack and Tectus (sub 20% wipes). I'm so reliant on other characters externals it's not funny. I rotate through HoSac, Vigilence and Ironbark every fight while our DK tank is just like "sup, whatevs, I tank stuff and do double your dps and sick healing".

It's really frustrating because I actually rerolled to a warrior after 2 expansions as a Dk tank. DKs hp buff is great while our blood craze is garbage.

Potential buffs i'd like to see:

-Shield Barrier - Raise your shield, absorbing 10% of your max HP as damage for the next 6 sec. Consumes up to 40 additional Rage to increase the amount absorbed to a maximum of 30% of your max HP. Does not scale with resolve.

Blood Craze - Your multistrikes from auto attacks trigger a Blood Craze. Blood Craze regenerates 5% of your health over 5 sec. When this effect is refreshed, the remaining portion is added to the new effect.

Defensive Stance - A tanking combat stance that decreases damage taken by 20%, increases threat generation, and generates 1 Rage every 3 sec while in combat. Defensive Stance now increases your armor by 5% and damage by 10%.

Shield block - Raise your shield, blocking every melee attack against you for 6 sec. These blocks can be critical blocks. Maximum 2 charges. All damage increased by 20% while shield block is active.

[keiona]

I like your suggestions PowerGamez, but this takes our biggest heal/absorb off the effects of Resolve, which is almost certainly not a path Blizzard will take. But an increase in flat absorb as well as a better scaling with Resolve should be doable.

Blood Craze needs a change. Insignificant at the moment. Should be balanced a little lower than Sacred Shield IMO. It is passive, but relies on multistrikes. It is also healing and not absorb.