Warrior tank problems

[Varlak]

Reading the OP make me feel that he should had rolled a paladin and not a warrior.

[Astray]

I agree on
* rng on blood craze
* rng on mastery
* rng on generating rage
* demoralizing shout being half broken
* spell reflect...:-(

[Valech]

I agree on
* rng on blood craze
* rng on mastery
* rng on generating rage
* demoralizing shout being half broken
* spell reflect...:-(

how again is blood craze rng?

[Deleted]

how again is blood craze rng?

are you serious?

[Valech]

whenever we multistrike we heal. that is not rng.

[uchiro]

Definitely some very good points made in this thread. I figured I'd chime in with my thoughts on the matter.

Firstly, a lot of the complaints; at least if you're coming from a mythic progressing guild is not so much that warriors are weak as a class tanking wise, but more that certain classes, primarily monk are just so strong for this content that warriors feel weak comparatively.

Granted there are some quality of life changes that would be nice to see in terms of our cd's, magic mitigation and self healing, but those are nothing game breaking when you take monks out of the context of comparison.

I don't think there is a person here that has tanked with a monk in this mythic content that can argue the difference between the classes. Having just 1 monk tank in the raid changes almost every fight drastically in terms of ease of management, especially where external cd's are concerned.

I currently co-tank with a monk and we're only 6/10M but on a night where he can't make it for some reason and we have to have somebody else step in, we have to completely re-figure out externals to compensate.

I'm not gonna dive any deeper into the issues with the balancing of certain classes, but I'll finish by saying that the shield barrier buff was a decent start and it is definitely more useful than it was and with just a small few tweaks we would be in a great spot. Blizzard really just need to look at monks and bring them in line with tanks and I think warriors specifically would feel much less weak at mythic content comparatively.

[Deleted]

whenever we multistrike we heal. that is not rng.

Multistrike is RNG. In other words, it is not something we have control over, and thus is rng.

[Deleted]

I would like to rephraise again that they need to stop making mechanics that are unblockeble but other tanks am just work fine and we have to rely on shitty barrier.

and please for the love of god WE are the bnlock tanks let us block fucking magic dmg already!!!!

- - - Updated - - -

tanking mythic brf again now and once again it just feels ime completely fucked in this whole raid trash included , you can tell me im doing it wront or that warriors are fine but they arent period.

[Deleted]

Or better idea make our block able to block everything from physical to magic to arrows/bullets .

It only makes sense and it would fix alto of the current problems we now face.

[Piano]

Where are you getting the impression warriors have unrivaled dps from? Checking a single target fight like Gruul you can see that all the tanks except DKs are very even on dps (top ranks being in the 30-33k range for the various classes, with monks highest there). DKs with endless breath of sindragosa are currently the unrivaled dps tanks (42k best on gruul).

If you are basing it off of simcraft ( http://www.simulationcraft.org/reports/Raid_T17M.html ? ), bear in mind that the prot warrior in that comparison sim is using gear that gives 15% multistrike which no real prot warrior would be aiming for given how useless it is for survival..

Have you looked at BiS lists for prot warriors? I'm sitting at 9.95% multistrike buffed at 693. We're going to have quite a bit without trying because that's how the itemization is in BRF.

[l0nglive]

I hate prot warr for the rotation

Too many procs. A procs B, B procs C. D procs out of nowhere.

I can't react on every GCD, it's my playstyle. I prefer DK where is little RNG.

[Deleted]

Have you looked at BiS lists for prot warriors? I'm sitting at 9.95% multistrike buffed at 693. We're going to have quite a bit without trying because that's how the itemization is in BRF.

9.95% buffed (i.e. 4.95% unbuffed), is significantly less than 15% unbuffed...

[Piano]

9.95% buffed (i.e. 4.95% unbuffed), is significantly less than 15% unbuffed...

693 is also 7 ilvl less than BiS assuming no warforged. I would wager most prot warriors will have darmacs belt with multi/vers long before the mastery/haste one from maidens. Also if you get 4pc you're going to get a lot from there as well.

Also the 15% from the sims is buffed. Sims assume all buffs.

EDIT: Wow, so I got home and took a deeper look into the gear the sim is using for prot warriors. It has DPS trinkets (forgemasters insignia and bottle of infesting spores) both of which would never happen unless you are in complete farm content and likely not doing mythic. It also has the 4pc using the offset shoulders, which is also not a good idea. I would personally prefer chest (from maidens) or gloves (from hans and franz) for my offpiece.

So this entire discussion is now moot since you are correct that the gear set they are using gives them over 20% multistrike buffed which is laughable. According to my BiS list (which coincides with what AMR has with my stat weights) I would end up with about 14.5% multistrike buffed in all BiS w/o any warforged gear.

[Neehs]

Demo has some odd drawbacks, just make it a buff on the warrior already.

I feel very naked once block falls off. Additional gear does very little outside of the minor boost to rage gen, I think the flaw here was how you could keep the best block uptime from the start, ANY additional rage is barrier only, not a higher block uptime, but it's a tricky slope to balance I guess..

Otherwise I feel very solid, outside of maybe last stand lacking abit for a 3min cd, just a relic of the past..

To be fair, just drop the resolve mechanic for all tanks, and just leave DK's with the old death strike mechanic. I never understood why we have to scale with damage intake, shouldn't gear be enough to make a difference?

Make most things scales with %hp, like Enraged Regen, while DK's get to keep their reactive mitigation niche.

[Deleted]

To be fair, just drop the resolve mechanic for all tanks, and just leave DK's with the old death strike mechanic. I never understood why we have to scale with damage intake, shouldn't gear be enough to make a difference?

It's because they don't want us to scale uncontrollably on older/easier content. i.e. if resolve doesn't exist, now I can run through a 5man spamming 120k shield barriers and take 0 dmg. By the end of the last tier, I can probably run through the 5mans and spam 250k barriers. With resolve in place as the scaling mechanism, you'll keep doing 20-50k shield barriers in the 5mans until the expansion is over. Which is better in blizzard's eyes because... arbitrary reasons.

Even with resolve, all of the tanks can dominate most older content anyways.. so it only makes it slightly later before we can solo older bosses by having the resolve mechanic..

[Deleted]

It's because they don't want us to scale uncontrollably on older/easier content. i.e. if resolve doesn't exist, now I can run through a 5man spamming 120k shield barriers and take 0 dmg. By the end of the last tier, I can probably run through the 5mans and spam 250k barriers. With resolve in place as the scaling mechanism, you'll keep doing 20-50k shield barriers in the 5mans until the expansion is over. Which is better in blizzard's eyes because... arbitrary reasons.

Even with resolve, all of the tanks can dominate most older content anyways.. so it only makes it slightly later before we can solo older bosses by having the resolve mechanic..

It fixed a lot more than that... Anyone who played in Wrath how awful it was to try hold aggro against DPS who would scale far and beyond our capability to rival their DPS output. It caused the need to do all kinds of shenanigans with double threat mechanics on specific abilities, for us to need to taunt + reck on pulls, plus help from hunters and rogues, and that was only for those who were on the same gear level as the DPS.

Starting tanks in early gear doing a dungeon with DPS who had gear 2-3 patches above them could not hope to hold aggro on anything if the DPS so wished, and they rarely did.

Vengeance was the first attempt at fixing that and resolve improved upon that design.

[Neehs]

Resolve has nothing to do with threat anymore though..

I still think it's flawed, and it complicates more than it solves. And overgearing 5's isn't really an issue that should affect how end game is balanced.

Don't get me wrong, it works, but it's far from perfect...atleast when it only covers random things here and there.

Anyways, bit offtopic, but atleast barrier could be more reliable as a front instead of a reactive abilitiy if it was a flat value.

[Threetrees]

I'll try to keep this short, but here are my proposed changes to making warriors fall a little more in line with the other tanks. I am currently 5/10M as a protection warrior, and my co-tank is a Monk, so I will generally use him as my point of comparison.

*Note: Use of the lvl 100 talent Serenity makes the choice between keeping up Shuffle and Purifying damage largely irrelevant provided the proper rotation for BrM is followed. A properly played BrM will instantly Purify off big hits of damage like Inferno Slice and Acid Torrent, making it essentially a fully mitigated hit. Keep that in mind as I make comparisons.

Problem #1: Special Attacks are not "blockable" by our active mitigation.

The Fix: I realize you can block Gruul's Inferno Slice, but his mechanic is the exception rather than the rule. Ironically, this mechanic also highlights the other weaknesses in the warrior tank meta, but I'll touch on those later. Inferno Slice is a good example of being rewarded for timing your active mitigation well: a 30%-60% DR on a huge attack. I feel that this model needs to be extended to other fights. Oregorger's "Special Attack" is Acid Torrent, whose initial hit on the tank is still physical, but cannot be blocked. It can, however, be reduced by Shuffle, Shield of the Righteous, and Bloodshield, making warriors and druids especially prone to it (see also Crippling Suplex on Hans/Franz, Stone Breath on Kromog, Shattering Smash on Blackhand, etc). So, make these attacks able to be DRed by Sblk and SavD. Straight dodging it would be a bit of a stretch, nor would it solve the problem, but providing a flat 30% DR for having Savage Defense up at the time would be fine.

Problem #2: Shield Barrier's values are too low, and the duration too short.

The Fix: Simply put, Shield Barrier could use another buff, maybe another 25% or so, and have the absorb shield last until it is consumed through damage taken instead of expiring after the 6 second elapsed time. Using Gruul as the example again, consider the standard method of taunting Gruul into the group meant to eat the Slice. A Warrior will, of course, have Sblk up, in addition to any other externals to survive the hit, and is now left with a ton of Resolve. A good warrior will generate rage, and get up a nice barrier (which will still be under 200k, mind). But, what was that Resolve enhanced Barrier for? By the time you would need it again (the next Slice) either your Resolve or the Barrier you put up with it will be gone, and you'll take the next Slice with only Sblk+externals. Compare this the BrM Guard, which can easily absorb up to 800k+ damage, and lasts for 30 seconds. One could easily have 2 full resolve Guards for each 3 Slice rotation. Same deal for Acid Torrent, Crippling Suplex, etc. In short, because of the short expiration, the already weak value of Sbar can't be applied to the next spike of damage.

Problem #3 Demo Shout is too weak and limited to be on a 1 min CD.

The Fix: Coupled with the issues presented in 1 and 2, Demo Shout is simply not effective enough to be a stop-gap between unblockable specials and a weak Sbar (I would also argue Barkskin is in the same boat). Compare its effectiveness (20% damage done debuff to the target on a 1 min CD) to something like Divine Protection (40% magic, or 20%Phys/20% Magic on a 30 s CD). Considering this is our only internal CD aside from Shield Wall, I think it could stand to have its CD reduced by half, and reworked to simply provide a DR buff to the warrior, rather than be a debuff to the target. Call it "Invigorating Shout," or "Adrenaline Rush" or something.

Problem #4: Warriors are too dependent on external DRCDs.

The Fix: In short, the warrior tank problems are: unblockable special attacks, weak/limited time Sbar, and low value/long CD Demo Shout. These reasons are why warriors are so external dependent: we simply lack the necessary tools to effectively deal with the current tanking meta. All we can do is use our external CDs cleverly. Don't get me wrong, I've said before and will say again that I have no problem utilizing externals. It is just that we as a tanking class are chained to them more firmly than the other 4 (though we aren't far behind Guardian Druids in this regard, but my proposed changes also largely fix them as well I think). The difference is that we NEED them, whereas Monks/DKs/Pallies can largely manage with their own internal toolkit, with externals being saved for screw-ups or their warrior comrades.

[Deleted]

The above poster summed it up pretty nicely , and tbf its the only way to fix this big giant hole atm.

[Deleted]

I am glad to see its not just me having some issues with my warrior tank in mythic progression right now. I have been raiding on it for many years and it does feel particularly weak this tier, especially compared to what I can see DKs or Brewmasters doing. I am finding they tend to need few if any external cooldowns on something like mythic gruul, while I need all of the ones available, and still end up more squishy than they are. Not a good feeling at all, but after nearly 10 years tanking very happily on a warrior I am very reluctant to switch to a Brewmaster alt.

Making Shield Block work against magic damage as well would be a good change, though I feel with critical Block it could easily become a bit OP. To be honest, I'm not a fan of the critical block mechanic anyway, I don't really want RNG involved in my AM in any way. I would much mastery to increase my passive block chance and also increase my block value in a linear fashion, and get rid of crit blocks entirely.

I actually like the way Shield Barrier works, but it definitely needs a slight buff to both its power and duration. I feel the choice between SB and SBar would be just as interesting as it is in the current format if SB were changed to block a % of magic damage too.

These changed alone would probably be enough to fix most of a warrior tanks squishyness and reliance on externals, though a change to Demo Shout to be a straight DR cooldown on a 30 sec timer could help too. Depends how they want to balance our reliance between AM and defensive cooldowns really.

Finally our damage is a tad low I feel, and I am not a fan of Revenge hitting as hard or even harder than Shield Slam.