Are we going to have to wait until late in BRF for Sbarrier to get changed?

[Hellkung]

Yo,

So I just tried M Brackenspore properly with my guild for the first time. Tanking this fight as a warrior....

Especially considering I have 4 tanks that I have played and play pretty regularly still (and how easy this fight is for a DK/Monk and to a certain extent pallies), weaknesses like this are just frustrating to deal with especially when they last longer than a lockout.

I know that most of the top guilds used warriors. I know that Sblock is OP and how we're impenetrable walls when it comes to physical (melee) damage. And even the fact that we have little to no self-healing fits the class in my opinion.

But part of our AM toolkit, specifically what you would use against magical damage having little to no value is kind of broken if you ask me.

It's not stopped me or probably anyone from progressing and it won't, for M Brackenspore it will just require a lot of handholding.


How long do you guys actually predict it taking before a change is made?

[Saiyoran]

I actually straight up dropped my warrior on Brackenspore progression and instead tanked it on my monk (20 ilvls lower than my warrior at the time) and the fight was a joke. Shield Barrier needs a change.

[blackblade]

It's kind of funny to, because between barrier and block, barrier is the one that scales to resolve where block is just a flat modifier.

[Hellkung]

I actually straight up dropped my warrior on Brackenspore progression and instead tanked it on my monk (20 ilvls lower than my warrior at the time) and the fight was a joke. Shield Barrier needs a change.

I have a 654 BRM monk and it's been on my mind constantly. Think his ilvl is just a tad too low.

Maybe I can convince my guild to 3 tank it, I know a lot of people do that as well. I can be on add/interrupt duty.

[Deemerbob]

- - - Updated - - -

We progressed with a prot warrior and 2 tanked it and had tank deaths for a while. It just takes disciplined tank cooldowns. The adds spawn in 2 minute intervals so you pretty much have all the CDs up every add. Start rolling vigilance, hand of sac, ironbark, pain sup, etc at 4+ stacks and you'll get through it. Hand of purity from paladins used during the breath instead of sac can make a big difference as well.

[PaladinBash]

Get your defensive CDs tossed on every time man. Sometimes you'll have slack DPS that don't toss up vig/sac. Get them on their game.

[CamelLogic]

I was under the impression that it was the Breath that was killing Warriors, not the add?

[Hellkung]

I was under the impression that it was the Breath that was killing Warriors, not the add?

It's that or the added effect of running out of CDs because of it when you could defo use one tanking an add with 6+ stacks.

[Drevi]

SB is not fulfilling it's role in any aspect of the game.
It's underwhelming for the 3 specs in both pve and pvp.

Can't believe shit like this to go on for so long.

[Deleted]

I dunno how you guys do it, but my guild have me as tanking warrior on the add at all times pretty much and our guardian druid tanking the boss meanwhile, then after add I taunt to let the druid stacks drop off, works like a charm with hand of purity for breaths. I think the druid usually end at like 7-8 stacks of rot when we swap

[Deleted]

Barrier is weak, it does need a boost. Considering Brackenspore i tanked him once since my main spec is dps. I didn't experience any problems. Other tank told me we taunt off boss at 3-4 stacks and that we did, i even got once to 7-8stacks cause of slack, poped wall up, all good. Just do what you would normally, keep your block up and try to put in the extra range in barriers during breath.

[Deleted]

Barrier is weak, it does need a boost. Considering Brackenspore i tanked him once since my main spec is dps. I didn't experience any problems. Other tank told me we taunt off boss at 3-4 stacks and that we did, i even got once to 7-8stacks cause of slack, poped wall up, all good. Just do what you would normally, keep your block up and try to put in the extra range in barriers during breath.

If you were tanking the boss during breath with 7 stacks you have some insane healing carry in your group.

But for the topic, barrier is weak. Too weak. My guild also went the same route as Blaeed having me tank the add all the time seeing as any other tank can cope with magic damage easier. Now, the main damage source during breath is still likely to be melee hits so block should still be active but the fact that we cant reduce the breath dmg in a reliable way is rather frustrating.

[Darus]

Barrier is weak, it does need a boost. Considering Brackenspore i tanked him once since my main spec is dps. I didn't experience any problems. Other tank told me we taunt off boss at 3-4 stacks and that we did, i even got once to 7-8stacks cause of slack, poped wall up, all good. Just do what you would normally, keep your block up and try to put in the extra range in barriers during breath.

Its obviously possible to tank brackespore as a warrior but shield barrier is still not doing what it should be doing well enough.

I remember progressing that boss first reset and pooling 120 rage aswell as making sure to keep revenge and shield slam ready soon as I hit my first barrier while using minor cooldowns or externals leaving me rage starved for a tank swap to an add with 4-6 stacks after having used 2x60 rage sbars and a shield block.

Relying on external cooldowns isnt good design and I rather they remove them like they did with most raid cooldowns and give us the tools neccessary to deal with heavy spike damage that isnt purely physical.

Shield barrier have a few major roles to fill and its buying healers time to heal us up when we go low and counter big forseeable burst or magic damage. The answer to what they should with sbar is pretty simple and that is to make it absorb more but I would suggest that the absorb would scale with a percentage of the total hp as baseline so it would still scale nicely as our gear progresses and without the chance for it to overshoot and get "op".

I dont expect this to happen and at this time Id just be happy if a full 60rage barrier would absorb one swing off a boss.

[Deleted]

Yeah the point was, seems i didn't make it clear or you missed it, if you tank it properly and do the tank swaps as you should you don't have a problem in that fight. Even in the occasion that shit happens and you get more stacks you "can" get away with it with cds, either personal or externals or both.

This tier there isn't so much magical damage that could make us the weakest link cause of barrier being shit. The problem is that we don't have as much block uptime as we used to, and during that block downtime barrier doesn't do much to offset that.

External cooldowns should stay as they are, its a team effort. A healer having a cd doesn't necessarily mean it will give it to a tank. Plenty of times can go to a dpser cause he slacked and got 3-4stacks on fire on Twins (random example).

Its certain that barrier needs a buff but it can be tricky. If say they buff it by 60% it might be enough in general but if you are low enough on hp with resolve it might get boosted so much it could make a warrior -die hard- with 60rage barrier at 10-20% hp. We want to have a tool to work as it should not be op.

[Deemerbob]

I agree externals need to stay. Blizzard wanted to move away from tanks being so self sufficient, and that's why fights like brackenspore are difficult for some. Its just a big shift from tanks doing all the work to allowing others to play a more significant role in their survival. Your group will get used to it and things will run more smoothly.

[Nightstalker]

they nerfed the t16 2piece and that might be a hint for a potential sbar buff in 6.1

[Saiyoran]

I agree externals need to stay. Blizzard wanted to move away from tanks being so self sufficient, and that's why fights like brackenspore are difficult for some. Its just a big shift from tanks doing all the work to allowing others to play a more significant role in their survival. Your group will get used to it and things will run more smoothly.

The problem isn't the new tanking model. Its the fact that warriors have no self-sufficiency (intended apparently by the designers) while DKs, Monks, and Pallies literally don't need healing for large portions of the hardest content. My monk running Serenity requires less than half the healing my warrior did on M Brackenspore, and likewise in comparison on Tectus. Warriors are great for damage smoothing with Block, but Block isn't always up. Guess what? Shuffle is always up. Death Strike is almost always available. Warrior just feels like shit right now without a way to keep ourselves up. It got extreme in SoO with 1mil+ barriers every global, but there's hardly even a point to using the ability nowadays. I can tank M Brackenspore as a warrior, sure, but I have to call for externals or use a CD for every breath, and whenever the add is above 6 stacks, sometimes even dying through those CDs if I don't have blocks to last me until the add dies. You do that fight as a brewmaster, and you have guard for every breath, which completely negates it. You dont need a single CD for the add, at any point, ever, because you can purify every melee hit for the entire fight as long as you're using Serenity properly. The imbalance is just stupid.

EDIT: To be clear, I'm not saying nerf monks or DKs or Pallies. They feel FUN to play because you have a large amount of control over your health. Being entirely dependent on other players to heal you is not fun in any way. Skillful play does not keep me at high health, it just makes me die slower. Skillful play as a monk lets you not only die slower but also heal yourself to full inside of guards with little assistance. You actually feel like your abilities are doing something relevant, not like you're just waiting for the healers to carry you the whole fight.

[Passive Apathy]

Well said Saiyoran, I completely agree that it is challenging and even difficult to justify the gap bitween tanks as far as mitigation and healing is concernd. On my longest pulls of Imperator I account for just over 10% of my healing where as my monk counterpart manages nearly four times that with less damage taken to boot. Im not adverse to having a harder time tanking doing the same job as another class but I find it a little absurd when resolve, a mechanic intended to keep mitigation and healing relevant to content, accounts for just over one million in effective healing over an eleven minute pull where I sustain over twenty six million damage.

I wish I had a better idea than just saying buff barrier, but it needs to be an effective button when it gets used. Shield Block mitigating three 200k attacks over its duration will on average negate 240k of the 600k damage and currently for that same 60 rage my best Shield Barrier does 130k for a single hit. Now it's usually managable for fights with downtime and tank swaps but the second I have to sustain tanking for longer than 25-30 seconds I'm toast without externals if the content is anything threatening. It just doesn't feel right to be so dependant on the raid for just dealing with auto attacks where another tank would shrug it off.

[Fatalfuror]

SBarrier uses up too much rage, IMO. The only time you can really afford to use it at all is either against pure magic damage, or when SBlock isn't available. But if you rage starve yourself so you can't use your next SBlock, you just crippled yourself.

Reduce the rage cost by 50% and you'd see it used a lot more, even in its current paltry mitigation form - in fact I'd dare say that alone would fix the core issue. Add a very small cooldown (3 secs) if that feels too strong. When the absorb gets eaten up/broken, it should also heal us a little (say 5% - possibly as a glyph, but concerns over how it'd be mandatory make me think not).

People wouldn't feel so heavily penalized for using it if the rage cost weren't so absurd for such a small absorb. We also desperately need some kind of self-healing beyond Enraged Regen. Every other tank can, and when you watch their health bar during heavy-hitting boss fights, it's very clear the effect it has on stabilizing damage.

[Deleted]

Maybe irrelevant but I still dont get all the fuss about brackenspore as a prot warrior, just use the externals you have available there are so many. So what if other classes dont have to use them and are more self sufficient how much effort is it to say, "pain suppression" on a voice comm. Yes they should fix shield barrier but in no way should people be saying they have to reroll for the boss because then you're just bad. that being said i was in 667 ilvl gear so i did out gear it slightly at the time.