Protection legion Discussion

[Ashenia]

Have you seen what else others tanks got, for example d3 hammers, aegis or talent with passive DR on paladin. I dont see why this should make us happy as we r in worse position atm. Have you seen rage gen or how often you will be able to use ss/rev? I havent seen any 1% heals yet, so this might just be an idea for next patch or i was too angry to take a glance at combat log. still with current rage gen this is like pff and you can add our laugable raid utility on top of it (3% leech).

[Deliverer]

I was more judging prot spec from a tanking perspective like how good of a tank we are going to be. I'm yet to log on alpha but I saw prot gameplay and it was just boring and we didn't get any new cool ability.

[Pua]

Okay, after having another look this morning, it's very difficult to look at warriors in a vacuum now - and I suspect it's the same for every class. The reason for this is how abilities, talents and artefact traits all interplay with one another. Let's start with our favourite attack, Shield Slam.

First of all, it's been given a 9 second cooldown. A nerf from live. It's backed up by:

1) Heroic Strike. This means you can spend 30 rage and increase its damage by 105%/210%/315% of your attack power.
2) Devastate. Each Devastate gives you a 30% chance to reset Shield Slam.
3) Shield Block. This puts an additional 30% damage onto your Shield Slam when it's up.
4) Critical Block. It's indirect, but mastery as a statistic increases your attack power and, thus, buffs Shield Slam and Heroic Strike.

Now, from here, we're looking at Shield Slam having a potential of hitting every second GCD, for an additional 30% flat damage, plus 315% of your attack power which is increased by mastery.

That's quite meaty in and of itself, so let's look at our talents. What do they do?

1) Renewed Fury/Avatar. These put either 10% or 20% more damage onto your Shield Slam. Ultimatum will presumably be changed.
2) Vengeance/Booming Voice. Vengeance makes Heroic Strike cost 30% less, while Booming Voice adds another 20% flat damage.
3) Heavy Repercussions. Another 30% damage on top of Shield Slam, with Shield Block extended by two seconds.

So let's now say, under good conditions, Shield Slam lands for 100% more damage on top of the other effects.

We now get to artefacts.

1) Shatter the Bones. This increases Shield Slam's critical strike chance by 15%.
2) Might of the Vrykul. Demoralizing Shout can reduce Shield Slam's cooldown by 50%.
3) Artefact Relics. If you check it out, all three artefact relics can buff Shatter the Bones, bringing its buff to 30% (three more ranks).

So from here, we get an additional chance at a 4.5 second cooldown (ignoring haste, obviously) and 30% additional critical strike chance on top of gear and raid buffs.

The sum total of all that is that Shield Slam hits like a fucking meteor when you line it up. Under normal conditions, with Shield Block up, you'll get another 60% of damage on top of it, plus whatever you give it from Heroic Strike, and it has a passive 30% additional chance to critically strike.

Now, there are several examples of this across our abilities. Rare relics, for example, can buff six things:

- Shatter the Bones: Increases critical strike chance of Shield Slam.
- Intolerance: Increases maximum rage.
- Strength of the Earth Aspect: Increases Devastate damage.
- Vrykul Shield Training: Increases armour.
- Will to Survive: Increases health on Last Stand.
- Leaping Giants: Reduces the cooldown of Heroic Leap.

I'm not bothering with uncommon relics, as most won't want to use them, but they do house other options. Taking the last example, Leaping Giants, you can use relics and talents to get Heroic Leap down to a cooldown of 18 seconds, with a 70% speed buff after it lands, while still taking Double Time. This is largely equivalent to live, where it requires glyphs and talents to do it.

Nota bene:

I'm not saying how good or bad this is. I'm just saying that it's hard to simply judge what we've seen when we don't line up the entire package, including the potential of our artefact relics. I've just made a large TLDR post, and I was only talking about Shield Slam. The introduction of artefacts has significantly changed the way we need to be looking at the class, and we can no longer just wrap up several glances with "there's a nerf, there's a nerf, there's a nerf". At this point in time, I'm still not convinced that there's anything especially good here (the artefacts themselves aren't well balanced, as few will want "Will to Survive" and I don't think "Leaping Giants" is powerful enough), but we need to be more careful about writing things off.

As hinted before, I really need alpha or beta access and I'm likely to get neither. I've been available for all betas since Wrath, and never been invited once.

I'm just asking you to bear a few things in mind.

[Deleted]

I'm just asking you to bear a few things in mind.

I mean sure, theoretically shield slam can hit every second GCD with 2 stacks of heroic strike, but presumably you have to be hit by a train every second GCD too to get the rage for that.

For those on the alpha btw: heroic strike does have a time limit on it right?

[Warriorsarri]

Heroic Strike currently has no time limit, it even keeps its stacks if you get 3 stacks, log out over night, and log back in. It's a weird buff atm.

[Pua]

I mean sure, theoretically shield slam can hit every second GCD with 2 stacks of heroic strike, but presumably you have to be hit by a train every second GCD too to get the rage for that.

That's what I'm getting at - I'm not somehow arguing that it's wonderful or anything; just that the whole picture needs to be borne in mind when looking at abilities, talents and artefacts. As things stand, the Shield Slam build I listed looks like the thing to go for, as only really Vrykul Shield Training probably competes (it works in addition to the on-equip armour proc).

It wouldn't be too big of a jump to suggest that your relic slots are really your major glyphs.

The issue, really, is that only Shield Slam is backed up properly by talents and relics. The other issue is that, assuming warriors go down that route, they should really be seeing very strong single target DPS. If we go all out on Shield Slam to maximise damage, yet still fall behind the others, there's a huge problem.

[Tyze]

I have not played much of Protection Warrior on live, mostly off spec, doing solo content and some LFR, but looking at the Alpha. It's not much changes overall on the gameplay is it? Prot gets Ignore Pain which is a better version of Shield Barrier (Thanks that they remove that one)?

[Deleted]

I have not played much of Protection Warrior on live, mostly off spec, doing solo content and some LFR, but looking at the Alpha. It's not much changes overall on the gameplay is it? Prot gets Ignore Pain which is a better version of Shield Barrier (Thanks that they remove that one)?

Don't have acces to the alpha itself. But looking at the way we gain rage, and the cooldown increase on let's say shieldslam and the proc cooldown of revenge, it'll play slower.

[Tyze]

Don't have acces to the alpha itself. But looking at the way we gain rage, and the cooldown increase on let's say shieldslam and the proc cooldown of revenge, it'll play slower.

Actually fine with this if I will main Prot, alot of APM as Prot in live

[Ashenia]

The whole spec feel very slow when you are out of lack for procs (rev/ss). I did have times of nothing for 3-4sec, spamming Dev and that isn't really fun. To get 1 buff of Heroic Strike on typical trash/quests mobs, you need at least to kill 2-3 before getting it..

There is tho ONE thing I really liked, which is HR and 2sec refresh on SB after each Slam.That is worth to be final talent, as passive 30% damage to SS would be.. shite. Tomorrow is raid testing (1 boss) but if there is someone able to get into it (I will try also), we could see how it looks like ON raid boss.

[Deleted]

They increased all the cooldowns of all the tank specs, they even nerfed the effect of several such as Blood dk's vampiric blood 40>30%, prot warrior only got one minute extra on shield wall, and 30 seconds on demo-shout. Other tanks such as paladin have both their cooldowns doubled in duration (1>2 minutes and 3>5 minutes). so based on cooldowns we dodged most of the blows with the nerf hammer.

Except our cooldowns are straight up worse than everybodies anyway.

Getting the bargin bin skills but faster is nothing to brag about.

[Charge me Doctor]

I think that we should not leave artifact out of question - we get pretty neat stuff with it, like, dealing damage + vulnerability on shield blocks, breathing fire out of shield, reduced cooldowns on stuff for spammy windows of unlimited rage and so on. I'm really happy with what was announced

[Toppy]

I think that we should not leave artifact out of question - we get pretty neat stuff with it, like, dealing damage + vulnerability on shield blocks, breathing fire out of shield, reduced cooldowns on stuff for spammy windows of unlimited rage and so on. I'm really happy with what was announced

lots of passive and the fire thing currently is this tiny little gout of flame that root you in place to use that is pretty much a waste of bar space

[Breccia]

I think that we should not leave artifact out of question - we get pretty neat stuff with it, like, dealing damage + vulnerability on shield blocks, breathing fire out of shield, reduced cooldowns on stuff for spammy windows of unlimited rage and so on. I'm really happy with what was announced

Oh, shall we? Fine.

Blood DK mandatory first power: a 45-second CD that heals for 50% of all damage taken in the last 12 seconds, min 14% max health.
Three major unlockables:
1) When Vampiric on its shiny new 90 second cooldown expires, get an absorb shield equal to 5x the damage caused by Blood Plague during VB.
2) When your Blood Shield expires, do damage equal to half your missing health to your enemy target. Heal that damage done.
3) Bone Shield passively grants a chance equal to your Crit% to reduce damage by 50%.

That's right: one of the Blood DK artifact abilities IS OUR ENTIRE MASTERY.

Shall we compare it to our own artifact?

Mandatory first power: all blocks are critical for three seconds, 45-second CD.
Three major unlockables:
1) When you use Demo Shout on its shiny new 90 second cooldown, you have A CHANCE TO (unspecified) reduce the CD of Shield Slam, Revenge, and Thunderclap by 50% for 10 seconds.
2) When Ignore Pain ends, increase Block chance by 2% until cancelled. No mention of it stacking.
3) Blocking has A CHANCE TO (unspecified) generate 3 black scales. Being hit consumes a scale to grant 10 Rage and increases the value of the next Ignore Pain by 100%.

#2 is very likely just flat-out wrong. 2% nonstacking block indefinitely sounds like a badly set up mechanic. Either it should be "you get +2% block" which feels weak, or it should stack with a duration or...I dunno. It reads poorly.

But taken as written:
Mandatorty vs Mandatory goes to the DK. There might be some niche situations where 3 seconds (lined up with Shield Block) of "all attacks are critically blocked" reducing their damage by 60%, will be nice. No question.
However, the DKs can reduce all that damage, plus the previous 9 seconds' damage, by 50%. And it doesn't have to be blockable melee attacks. Also, if the damage is low, they can heal all of it.
And they don't have to line it up with anything, while we have to line it up with Shield Block (which is easy, but still active).
#1 vs #1 goes handily to the DK. It is 100% tanky, and has a 100% success rate. Ours lets us reduce damage by virtue of pumping out more Rage by offensive attacks, but this will be, what, one extra Revenge and one extra Shield Slam's worth. I'm not impressed. And it could fail.
#2 vs #2 goes handily to the DK. I don't think anyone here will argue "heal half your missing health over and over" is worse than "you get +2% block".
#3 vs #3 is fucking bullshit.
DKs steal our entire mastery without losing theirs, and change their rotation by zero.
In a twisted way, we steal theirs. We get to add an absorb shield in terms of the extra +100% boost from the extra Rage we get. However, after we take the hit that procs it, then we get a three-two-one countdown, then we can almost use it (10 Rage short).
This boosted Ignore Pain will eat 45% max health (90% of double the 25% max health). I don't know what's needed in Legion for a DK to make a 45% max health absorb shield, but it doesn't seem very hard now.
When comparing two wildly unpredictable effects, one of which is instant and the other takes three hits later to almost use, I know which one I'd call better.

So yes, please, bring up the Artifact effects when comparing warriors to other classes. It's completely worth discussing.

And it's not that what we get is bad (#2 is, again, very likely wrong as written). It's just that, like our core abilities and cooldowns, everyone else's is better.

Again.

[Charge me Doctor]

It's entirely possible that demo shout wording is a mistake, and will have its wording changed and it actually won't give you a "chance" to reduce cooldown on abilities, but will plainly reduce it.

Ignore Pain probably have it's wording wrong too, and it will stack this 2% block to X amount while in combat.

No issues with last one

[Pua]

It's just that, like our core abilities and cooldowns, everyone else's is better.

Again.

Yep; pretty good summary, Breccia, and just as predicted by those who've been playing a Protection warrior long enough to know.

I've spent a bit more time going over our most recent release and, even allowing for errors, the results all come down the same. We'll end up the weakest comparative tank again, and there are so many problems with where we are that it's hard to know where to begin. The problem is that we're dealing with a class design team that's not especially interested in what its community has to say, and is led by someone well known to be pretty poor at the job.

And if you think Protection is bad? Take a look at the Fury thread. That spec is in a similar mess.

I'm afraid it's another expansion to ignore Protection warriors. At least in previous incarnations, when we were weak, we were fun to play.

Nowadays, it doesn't look as if we even have that.

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

Moving on, as of the latest build, there are three things that something needs done about prior to beta. If not, then we're 99% certain to be stuck with all of them and nothing more can be done. As a result, I request anyone who has alpha access to either verify these issues or to clarify any misunderstanding on my part. At the moment, there are three things that are upsetting me more than anything else.

Rage on damage taken: We moved away from this model for several reasons, and I can't lie when I say its return is a huge concern. It means that, essentially, warriors will no longer be rewarded for executing a good rotation (from a defensive standpoint, anyway), and will instead be rewarded for mitigating badly. The one thing a tank needs is a level of control; given the other comments about tanking recently made by Chadd Nervig, it's strikes me as fundamentally bizarre that we're going to be losing control of our sole resource.

Ignore Pain: It just... It just doesn't make fucking sense. Shield Block and Shield Barrier, though imperfect, were at least easily comprehensible. Ignore Pain is such a poorly conceived idea, it chills the blood that so much investment has gone into it. When push comes to shove, it's just a horribly convoluted absorb and not a lot else. It doesn't work with our statistics, there's no real interplay with it, and it's impossible to tell at a glance if it's going to be better than Shield Block in any given situation. I've tried to get into this, but I can't. It needs replaced.

Talents and Artefacts: Our talent tree is a complete mess, some talents are either too strong or awful, and our artefact doesn't promote enough choices while also being abnormally weak when compared to other tanks. It's also too focused on Shatter the Bones that, while sounding cool, means Heavy Repercussions becomes close to mandatory. There's just too much RNG. Talents, in and of themselves, are all over the place and things like Second Wind or a wider radius on Thunderclap are close to being absolutely useless in all scenarios.

Now, there are many other problems that I've got. The increased cooldown on Shield Slam, the increased cooldown on Revenge procs, and the fact that we still only have one AoE attack at baseline with no offensive cooldown to speak of... These are all problems, but secondary to the three above. I'm not interested in Devastate spamming, and it seems that's where we're headed. Certain artefact traits just aren't widely supported, and I utterly despise the practice of nerfing abilities and then making them talents, but I think the ship has probably sailed on these issues. Rounding out with us being the only tank without any self-healing is probably a reasonable place to round out for now.

Any relevant updates and amendments I'm cool with. Like I said, I don't have access to the alpha so some of my issues are guesswork.

[Deliverer]

Tanked with demon hunter yesterday and it wasn't so bad, the rotation is simple and talent tree is not done yet. DK blood and druid have for sure a much better talent tree than warrior and all the CD they lost compensate for all the cds they get from the talents.
For example they increased survival instinct and ironbark CD but you can decrease it by 50% from a talent while we get anger management...

[Valech]

Tanked with demon hunter yesterday and it wasn't so bad, the rotation is simple and talent tree is not done yet. DK blood and druid have for sure a much better talent tree than warrior and all the CD they lost compensate for all the cds they get from the talents.
For example they increased survival instinct and ironbark CD but you can decrease it by 50% from a talent while we get anger management...

doesnt anger management decrease the duration of the cooldown of two(?) of our big cooldowns aswell?

[KrotosTheTank]

SO:

If they revert the rage-gain change, back to damage done. (Or at least find a middle ground.) And they smooth out the power ratios of the artifact talents.

What do you think they'll need to do for Ignore Pain?

I like the idea of them reworking Shadowflame Shield into something a little more rotational, with a healing component.

Ignore Pain doesn't sound like the kind of ability that would mitigate damage, but rather stagger it. But you could see a warrior taking up that purely defensive position.

So:

Barricade:
1/1 Protection (Req. Scale o t E)
Barricade yourself behind your shield for 3 seconds, converting X rage into Y health over the duration of the spell/ability.

I think, thematically, a warrior taking a breather and regrouping behind a shield fits well. It could even increase healing done to you by X for the duration.

A thought I had about a warrior "heal" would be something like: Adrenaline (rename, but the idea is there): Gain X% of hp instantly, possesses an aspect of ignore pain as well, and then over the next 10-20 sec, lose (X/20)% of HP per second as you calm down, also reducing the ignore pain aspect % based over time .(delayed 10 sec).

I feel like that matches how actual adrenaline works in the real world, keeps within the class fantasy, and with the "calming" portion of it you lose HP to mechanically allow it to be a larger burst "heal". There is also the possibility in there for an experienced player to time it's usage with a last stand mechanic to gain the most out of the heal and lose the least out of the back to reality portion.

Second heal could be like enraged regen only its more like a combat medic / bandage.

doesnt anger management decrease the duration of the cooldown of two(?) of our big cooldowns aswell?

Yes, though from a DPS aspect I'm disappointed that everything else is no longer effected by it. I use it all the time and can line up Avatar with the ring every time, it's huge, and to be honest, more fun, to feel like im generating and spending like made to reduce 30 seconds within a 60 sec window.

If we get no heals, we should bring something else to the table, be the tank with the longest chance for healers to "ignore" through exceptional damage mitigation or perhaps go an old vengeance-like route where what we bring is extra raid damage, to compensate for the extra healer attention. Since healer damage is being increased it seems like even less of a reason to take a tank who has to use every healer GCD defensively rather than weave in offensive abilities to push DPS checks early on.

[NightTrain32]

doesnt anger management decrease the duration of the cooldown of two(?) of our big cooldowns aswell?

He is saying we have anger management that reduces cool downs by spending rage, where there talents just reduce cool downs so they are shorter even if they are not spending resources or what ever. I would argue overall reduction is usually better unless you can gain and spend a lot of rage.