I've recently come to think about how in fact is a Warrior gonna manage to bring back up his health bar in MoP, as we don't seem to have any real tool to manage such a feat, especially when compared to other melee classes.
Why is MoP Warrior self heal, so low compared to other classes, and especially when compared to the today's Cataclysm Warrior ? It really has become a great concern for me.
Right now we have 5 sources of self heal;
*Enraged Regeneration - You regenerate 30% (36% with FD) of your total health over 10 sec. 3 min CD.
*Blood Craze - After taking any damage, you have a 10% chance to regenerate 3% (4% with FD) of your total Health over 5 sec.
*Second Wind - Whenever you are struck by a Stun or Immobilize effect you regenerate 5% (6% with FD) of your total health over 10 sec.
*Impending Victory - Using Devastate on a target with 20% or less health has a 50% chance to allow the use of Victory Rush but that Victory Rush only heals for 5% (9.5% with FD and Victory Rush glyph) of your health.
*Victory Rush - Instantly attack the target causing damage and healing you for 20% (36% with FD and VR glyph) of your maximum health. Can only be used within 20 sec after you kill an enemy that yields experience or honor.
Except for Impending Victory these abilities are accessible to all 3 specs, and the Prot Warrior can have them all. In addition to this we have Field Dressing, which increases these abilities by 20%.
Now lets see what we have in MoP Beta so far.
In the new Talent system, at lvl 30, we will be able to chose 1 self heal ability (1. Not 2 or all 3, no, only 1), similar to one in the list above with some little twitching or improvement ;
*1* MoP Enraged Regeneration - Instantly heals for 15% HP, and 1% every 1 sec for 15 seconds long. 2min CD.
*2* MoP Blood Craze (Renamed Second Wind) - Whenever a direct hit is taken, you have a 10% chance to heal for 1% HP every 1 sec for 10 seconds long.
*3* MoP Impending Victory - Instantly heals for 10% max HP. 30 sec CD.
We still have Victory Rush, in every spec working the same way as CT's, but we no longer have Field Dressing - only a glyph that increases Bandage healing by 20% (why not make it every self heal, as we have now with FD talent, instead of just bandages ?? I simply don't understand why.)
I'm pretty glad with the improvements made to these 3 abilities individually. They are now, on their own, more effective and more useful than what they used to be. My concern however is that we can only have ONE of them, which makes it that compared to what we have now (the 4, 5 combined abilities), it's a HUGE nerf in the face.
If one is to take MoP ER, he will be able to self heal just slightly more with it than with CT ER, thanks to its 2 min CD, compared to the 3 min CD of the Cataclysm version of this spell. But he will automatically lose the 3 other self heal we presently have => BC, Sec W, IV. If he takes MoP BC (which isn't even better than the CT version, as it only works on ''direct'' hits) he loses, ER and IV. If he takes IV instead, he loses ER and BC, etc... And the Cataclysm version of Second wind has simply disappeared from the game, with nothing to replace it.
This makes it that no matter the choice we make, we will always be losing not less than some 50% self heal, when compared to what we have now. We will also have less options, as instead of 4 abilities, we will only be having 1.
Is this because developers consider that presently Warriors have ''too much'' self heal ? If this is the case then I'm utterly shocked, as we simply represent the melee/tank class with the least overall self heal. One could say, well we now have other abilities to counter balanced the nerf in our self heal, such as, Die by the Sword (a really great talent btw), Avatar for greater mobility in PvP and Demo Banner.
Yes in a PvP environment, the Warriors should do better, and perhaps not ''need'' any more self heal, justifying such a nerf, but what about the PvE Prot Warrior ?
As a Prot Warrior when I look at my MoP arsenals, I don't see any new tool that could replace the lose in my self healing abilities. I don't have DbtS (which would be the greatest thing to have), Avatar and Enraged increased mobility doesn't help my survivability, the banner could be a nice ''Raid Wall'' if my raid do let me use it as such instead of the Skull Banner, but it doesn't even come close in replacing anything.
Thus, when we compare all this to the other tanks self heal, one really gets to ask why are Prot Warriors being so much pushed back in this particular section, and not have anything to balance it ?
I ask myself, why go nerf us even more, when we are already doing so bad in this field ? We could think it's because other melee/tanks are also receiving nerfs in this department but not at all - Pallys have 2 or 3 new healing/mitigation spells, same for droods and DKs; WoG now doesn't even have any CD on it, so on bosses that block isn't that important they can simply spam WoG with their Holy Power, resulting in some ridiculously high amount of self heal. Same for druid's Frenzied Regen, no CD, lasts for 6 sec and heals them for 5% max HP per 1 sec - they can keep it up as long as they want, if they decide to spend their rage mainly in that, whilst Warriors are losing at least 2 healing spells, with absolutely nothing new to replace them. Why is this ?
If one could give me any ''reasonable'' answer, I'd gladly accept it, and get on with things, but right now I simply can't think of any.