Prot Warrior Dragonflight Talent Tree

[Breccia]

I saw a post I feel should be discussed:

This most likely won’t be a post liked by my fellow Protection Warriors, but my intent is to make it known that there is a massive inconsistency between Protection and any other tank specialization, particularly when it comes to power gained from primary stats.

Class Tree
In the class tree, Armored to the Teeth grants additional primary based on the player’s armor value. This averages out to approximately ~1000 primary gain on a premade at level 70 and at 340 item level. The concern that I have is that as gear improves, this will double dip because as better gear has higher armor, and more strength, the talent doubles down on that giving a larger gain piece by piece.

Conceptually, I like the idea, it emphasizes the critical path that you should always favor any item that has a higher item level just due to how this talent interacts with both armor and the gain of primary. Unfortunately, I dislike this talent being the way it is because no other tank has anything that comes close. Other tank classes gain single-digit percent gains on damage or mitigation, and the fact that this talent maxed grants +1000 primary, that’s a permanent on-use trinket buff in and of itself.

So either the other 5 tank specializations need to be re-evaluated to give something similar or this needs to be reworked to be less potent than what it is, because it will cause Prot Warrior to out scale any of their counterparts massively.

Protection Tree
In the same light, the Protection tree also has a talent called Focused Vigor that works in a similar way by compounding the gain of primary. This averages out to approximately another ~1000 primary gain on a premade at level 70 and 340 item level.

Again, no other tank specialization has anything in their spec tree that comes close to this, and the fact that 2 talents exist that double-down on primary gains seems egregious and biased when you compare talent options universally across all tanks.

Again the same applies, either the talent needs to be reworked, substantially adjusted to account for its potency, or other tanks need to have similar options to compensate to avoid protection warrior damage from out-pacing any other tank over the course of the expansion.

In short, there shouldn’t be a reason why a premade level 70 gains just over 2000 primary stat over any other tank specialization in the game, all based on their talent choices.

We can argue that numbers tuning can be done to align Prot Warrior damage with these talents taken into account, but that only fixes the issue at the outset. As the patch moves forward, Protection Warrior will out-pace other tanks regardless. Additionally, at the outset of every patch, Protection Warrior (if retuned to deal with the expected numbers at the end of the tier) will go into a new patch feeling less powerful than it did prior to all due to this scaling.

So please, tank designers please discuss among yourselves and consider the issue these talents present to the viability of any of the other 5 tanks throughout the expansion.

This is about 60% overlapping what I was worried about before. Before, we had a line of talents just over the 20 line that was nothing but stats -- armor, stamina, strength, haste and crit. It is now more varied, for example, Cruel Strikes is not just +2% crit but +10% more Execute Crit. Endurance Training is not just +5% stamina but also -15% fear/sap/incapacitate duration. One-Handed Specialization with its Leech was moved there, but it's terminal, so that's basically just diluting our strong talent choices. The problem I was talking about, a row of boring stats, is still mostly there.

But because it's an issue no other tank shares, that we have a whole bunch of just +stats, one of two things will happen.
1) Warriors will scale very well, other classes will complain, and the response will be "they had to burn talents to be this strong while you upgraded your powers, stop staring at the character sheet and read some logs".
Or
2) Warriors will scale very well, other classes will complain, and the response will be "we will tune down Warrior scaling so they have to burn talent points just to stay even, and also won't get anything interesting modifying their abilities".

I don't think we want either.

I re-checked that same line in other tanks.

Protadins have 10 options, none are terminal, two are choice nodes, and only one is +stats (speed and avoidance).

Bruids have 9 options, but admittedly 3 are terminal (ouch), one is a choice node, and only one is +stats.

Vengeance Hunters have 11 options, none terminal, one choice node, and only one is +stats (parry).

Death Bloods have 7 options (ouch), none terminal, one choice node, and none are +stats.

And Brewmonksters have 11 options, one terminal, one choice node, and none are +stats because the ones that have +stats apply to all nearby party members and that's not the same thing.

Even if you say Quick Thinking, Cruel Strikes and Endurance Training...man, that sounds like Arms/Fury/Prot...as "not just +stats+" because of their secondary effect, that's still Prot Warriors with eight choices, one terminal, no choice nodes, and five +stats.

And then I checked. Fury and Arms aren't a ton better.

I just don't see the reasoning behind Warriors getting such different stat scaling, and that's over and above my original concern of it's just incredibly boring. I know, a there's a lot of "Your Bear Druid spell XXX cooldown is reduced" and "Holy Power spent reduces XXX cooldown" which could also be considered boring. But there's also a lot in there that affects actual playstyle. Demon Hunters get a personal CD, a party/raid CD, and a CC, for example. DKs get Blood Draw, Tombstone and Sanguine Ground. Paladins get a choice on how to change their Captain America Shield, Eye of Tyr, and hell even Faith in the Light is a little bit interesting.

Should they have them? Of course they should, some of them are amazing, have you seen Blood Draw I want it so much. Then I look at the Protection Warrior tree and say "...where's that?" Yes, we get interesting stuff, but we have to chew through boring stuff to get to the interesting stuff. The other tanks have this problem lessened, or not at all.

And we haven't received any substantial changes in weeks. We've been promised another look, I hope it's taking so long because it's significant. But even above and beyond how both boring and neglected Prot Warrior feels, the stat scaling issue is just more reason for this issue to be re-evaluated.

[Breccia]

Well, they've made their decision.

Protection Developer Notes

• We’ve started to put more focus on the Protection tree this week and you’ll see a large update next week also.
• We’re very happy with how Protection Warriors are playing, but they have been overperforming both in terms of survivability and damage, so we’ve made some tweaks to bring them more in line with the other tanking classes.
• We don’t intend to make large structural changes to Protection Warrior’s trees, our goals for the next week are mainly around bug fixing, tuning and to make the bottom left and right sides of the tree more appealing.
• We’ve made some changes to the baseline Vanguard ability to account for the large amount of survivability bonuses available in the talent tree.

This is what I suspected would happen. Promised changes, promised changes, promised changes, given nerfs and the line of stats stays (see underlined) -- the line of stats is likely why Prot Warriors are overperforming.

There are a TON of nerfs across the board. Again, it's possible Prot Warriors were overperforming, but I don't think that aforecited high scaling is going to help.

Heroic Throw has a 3sec CD now. And we lost the bleed removal -- not a fan of that.

Shield Charge now has no minimum range; Shockwave and Thunderous Roar now generate Rage; Spiked Shield now generates threat; and there were some bugfixes. So it's not all nerfs, just like 80-85% nerfs. While my core issue remains intact.

From the comments I've read, the class/spec will still be playable, and even competitive. I just tire of, ever expansion, Prot Warriors being neglected. There are multiple pages of other classes getting significant revamps, and it's Demoralizing Shout to see a page of nerfs and nothing else. Even if the nerfs are deserved.

[Puxycat]

The nerf on vanguard was really not good. Damage Tuning okay but that really not.

[cordrann]

The nerf on vanguard was really not good. Damage Tuning okay but that really not.

Prot warriors were walking around with 18k armor baseline and something like 30-40% more main stat than anyone else. In comparison, a prot pally would need to have SotR up to hit that armor value and a Demon Hunter would need Meta and Demon Spikes to hit that armor value. Prot was also doing more single target than most dps specs. It is a ton a of changes though, so wait to see how it all shakes out before you complain about it. Most of the feedback I've seen is that it plays really well but it's absurdly OP, so the changes they made make sense.

[Breccia]

Prot warriors were walking around with 18k armor baseline and something like 30-40% more main stat than anyone else.

It really feels like having a row of nothing but stats across the board is a pretty likely cause of this...

[tomten]

From the comments I've read, the class/spec will still be playable, and even competitive. I just tire of, ever expansion, Prot Warriors being neglected. There are multiple pages of other classes getting significant revamps, and it's Demoralizing Shout to see a page of nerfs and nothing else. Even if the nerfs are deserved.

The class is still the strongest tank by far in all aspects, both offensive and defensive. And all nerfs were expected and nothing was over the top.
It's also getting good changes, pwarr looking both fun and strong.
Do you even have beta?

[Breccia]

The class is still the strongest tank by far in all aspects, both offensive and defensive.

I've said multiple times that my only real concern is the line of stats, which causes scaling issues and is also very boring. They promised a revamp and it never happened. I've never said the spec was poor, just that they said they'd make changes to the least interesting stuff and then just didn't.

[tomten]

I've said multiple times that my only real concern is the line of stats, which causes scaling issues and is also very boring. They promised a revamp and it never happened. I've never said the spec was poor, just that they said they'd make changes to the least interesting stuff and then just didn't.

Have you seen the latest tree? Its beyond good and not boring at all?
Its the opposite, it has so many good picks it feels bad not being able to pick them all and you're overaggerating how much are just "line of stats".
What revamp exactly were you looking for? We literally can't have more good or interesting options, its impossible.

[Breccia]

Have you seen the latest tree? Its beyond good and not boring at all?

Does it still have the line of almost entirely +stats only just below the 20 line? Across Warrior and through Prot? Because, again, that's like my only concern.

[cordrann]

Does it still have the line of almost entirely +stats only just below the 20 line? Across Warrior and through Prot? Because, again, that's like my only concern.

Yes, but two of them are only one point now so it feels much less bad. It kind of makes sense those are there to gate keep you from getting too much synergistic cool stuff or too many new buttons, and at least they are more than 1 or 2 percent like every other spec so you don't feel like you're wasting points taking them. They also added extra capstone modifiers that make shield charge look much better than it was before.

[Breccia]

They also added extra capstone modifiers that make shield charge look much better than it was before.

Yeah that made a LOT of people happy.

[tomten]

Does it still have the line of almost entirely +stats only just below the 20 line? Across Warrior and through Prot? Because, again, that's like my only concern.

Take a screenshot and make circles.
So we can really get down to the issue here because the rest of us don't see it.

[Breccia]

Take a screenshot and make circles.
So we can really get down to the issue here because the rest of us don't see it.

I...really? You don't see the line of Armored to the Teeth, Quick Thinking, One-Handed Weapon Specialization, Cruel Strikes, Endurance Training, Focused Vigor, Shield Specialization, and Enduring Alacrity? Five of which are solely +stats and three of which were until recently?

[Beelzebull]

hmmm - personally this last tree structure seems really nice to me and I have no issue with the stat +.

There are many possibilities to flow through with many different synergies.

I think as a level 60 i will try this - https://www.wowhead.com/beta/talent-...VUVERFRlBYRCQA Since we have tier bonus + lgendry I dont need the tree abilities.

The towards 70 I would go for something like this.

https://www.wowhead.com/beta/talent-...VERFRlBZRRQCQA

I will try some builds with the maxed branch and will change here and there as needed. It seems very flexible to me as I could take more then one final branch but not maximizing it.

My thought was to improve melee attacks, bleeds and revenge (i like that ability).

As for shield charge, what can I say i loved gladiator stance

There is some utility available and I can change that part of it as I go along.

I am gonna miss the necrolord banner it was a sort of minigame to keep it up as long as possible

[tomten]

I...really? You don't see the line of Armored to the Teeth, Quick Thinking, One-Handed Weapon Specialization, Cruel Strikes, Endurance Training, Focused Vigor, Shield Specialization, and Enduring Alacrity? Five of which are solely +stats and three of which were until recently?

So your complaint is that 5 out of 93 talent choices have stats increase on them and instead they should be...what exactly?
Fully ignoring you can't even pick all of them to begin with.
Yeh, you're whining for no reason and you also dont have beta.

[Breccia]

So your complaint is that 5 out of 93 talent choices have stats increase on them and instead they should be...what exactly?

Wow. Totally misrepresenting my points. I probably shouldn't do this, you seem to be itching for a fight for no reason, but here goes.
1) When I first brought the issue up, it wasn't 5 out of 9 (with 3 of the remaining 9 being pretty close) it was all seven out of seven.
2) They made the entire gatekeeper wall after 20 talents before you got to anything "interesting" like Avatar, Spear of Bastion, and the aforementioned really tasty Shield Charge. You were forced to take those. One-Handed Weapon Spec isn't a gatekeeper, but it wasn't there until recently either. So, they were mandatory and mostly still are.
3) They're fucking boring. +2% Crit is not interesting. +stats are the stuff you expect to see in early talent choices, especially the Vanilla days where every Prot warrior reached into Arms for +5% Parry. Stuff past 20 talents is supposed be the good stuff, things like "you have a new major ability" or "your existing abilities now do extra effects" or even "Your X has a chance to allow Y".
4) The "causes Warriors stat tuning to be ugly" wasn't one of my original points, but as we've seen from these recent nerfs, it was a point that was brought up. It's hard to argue that a row of nothing but stats doesn't contribute to "your stats are too high".
5) No other class has this problem. Go ahead, pick any class and any spec at random. Take that 20 talent line, go straight across. Yes, you get some stuff like reduced cooldowns and increases to effects, which I would understand if you thought they were boring too. But also get stuff like Evocation and mana gems; Unravel and Rescue; Nether Portal and Summon Demonic Tyrant; Mind Games and Empowered Renew. None of which are locked behind something else which is also under the 20 talent line. Warriors are forced to take basic boring stats, just to get to the things that actually affect gameplay.

Or, to put it another way: if an entire line across all the talent choices being nothing but +stats was okay...why does nobody else have that? Why are (Prot) Warriors getting all those capstone stats that everyone else either gets a few or none? Surely if +primary and +secondary stats were so good, that we have no choice but to take so many of them, why don't Fire Mages have a bunch of +Int/haste/crit/mastery options? Where's the Enhancement talent for +Agility or +crit? They don't have that at the 20-tier line. They don't have it at all. I've been to the Enchancement Shammy page, and there's no outcry "Where is the talent that does +Agility and nothing else?" They get Feral Spirits, Primordial Wave, and Ascendance, and they get to keep all three. Ain't none of them mad about that, and instead, asking for +haste.

And, increasingly, this:

6) They said they were going to have a significant redesign of Prot, and then they admitted they weren't going to. Oh they nerfed them, they were overperforming and it was necessary, but they said they were going to come back and give the tree a second pass, and just flat-out didn't do that.

Yet.

I don't like being neglected, but I despise being lied to. Confirmation bias admitted, but it feels like every xpac every class/spec gets more attention than Prot Warriors do. Remember Gladiator Stance? Remember how long that lasted? That's about it. The Beta class notes, Prot Warrior seemed to have the fewest lines just about every single time. That's disappointing enough. Then, to say "we're going to make significant changes in the next pass" several times only to end with "we decided we're fine with it, here's all those nerfs to bring you down to everyone else's level but nothing else"? I'm not happy with that. Why would anyone be?

You asked what I'd change them to. Remember when Quick Thinking was just +haste and nothing else? Now it's +haste but also your auto-attack criticals do etc etc? That's the absolute minimum they could have done, and they didn't even do that across the board. Seriously, pick literally any other class/spec, pick literally anything just past the 20 talents line. "Your XXX lasts longer" "Your XXX is 10% more effective" "You get the CD Overgrowth with no gatekeeper". "Your overheals become absorb shields". Like, pick any of those, throw a rock at the Warrior skill page, and do that.

I haven't run numbers testing or anything, but things like this:
A) Swap Cruel Strikes and Storm Bolt.
B) Remove Armored to the Teeth entirely (instead of some of the nerfs we got for having too much AP which Armored to the Teeth directly contributed to) and put Bitter Immunity there.
C) Remove Focused Vigor, rebalance Warrior stats to keep us in line with other tanks without it, and put Booming Voice there. Booming Voice is in the wrong place anyhow, you should not be able to access Booming Voice without taking Demoralizing Shout, it should be in the left side.
D) Remove Endurance Training, rebalance Warrior Stamina scaling to compensate, move the Fear/Sap/Incap thing into Overwhelming Rage (or just drop it entirely, we didn't have it before) and replace it with "Mosh Pit: When Whirlwind, Revenge, or Sidearm hits 3 or more targets, heal 1% of your max HP and remove 1 second from the CD of all your Shouts, no more than once per 10 seconds, also Rallying Cry is a Shout".

And those are just quick examples I came up with over about 10 minutes total. I'm not a class design team, I shouldn't have to be the one doing this, but apparently nobody else is.

If you'll go back and read my other posts -- this thread is not that long -- you'll see at no point did I say the class/spec was bad. I've even said several times I'm excited about a lot of it. But just because one of my students gets a 90% grade on a test doesn't mean I won't point out why they missed the other 10%. And if that same student makes the same mistakes again and again, I'll call it out each time. I should be fired if I don't. Repeated mistakes are proof someone isn't learning.

So no, it's not about "5 of the 93 talent choices". That's such a misrepresentation, I'm curious if it was intentional. It's the fact that those 5 are making a Wall of Boring I have to chew through to get Avatar, Shockwave, Ravager, etc. The fact that they were so overtuned that we required an entire page and a half of nerfs, just to put us back in line with everyone else, is seemingly a symptom of that. Repeated posting testers like Denbaugh, Archimtiros and the Naros have pointed some of this out. Maybe I don't have Beta, but I can still read.

Speaking of which:

You are objectively wrong about "you can't even pick all of them to begin with". Yes you can, they're all in the top row, you have enough talent points to take every single one. I wouldn't, I doubt you would either, but you could. Hell, @Beelzebull almost did, that looks like a pretty decent offensive mix there, is that a PvP build by any chance?

[Xath]

Prot warriors were walking around with 18k armor baseline and something like 30-40% more main stat than anyone else. In comparison, a prot pally would need to have SotR up to hit that armor value and a Demon Hunter would need Meta and Demon Spikes to hit that armor value. Prot was also doing more single target than most dps specs. It is a ton a of changes though, so wait to see how it all shakes out before you complain about it. Most of the feedback I've seen is that it plays really well but it's absurdly OP, so the changes they made make sense.

Any semi competent paladin will have 100% uptime on sotr so that's not really a comparison point.

[tomten]

I don't like being neglected, but I despise being lied to. Confirmation bias admitted, but it feels like every xpac every class/spec gets more attention than Prot Warriors do. Remember Gladiator Stance? Remember how long that lasted? That's about it. The Beta class notes, Prot Warrior seemed to have the fewest lines just about every single time. That's disappointing enough. Then, to say "we're going to make significant changes in the next pass" several times only to end with "we decided we're fine with it, here's all those nerfs to bring you down to everyone else's level but nothing else"? I'm not happy with that. Why would anyone be?

Having played warrior since wotlk, I can sorta understand where this is coming from and I do understand. I've felt this way before but it's as you say, confirmation bias and a bit only remembering "the bad" and easily forgetting "the good".

Wow. Totally misrepresenting my points. I probably shouldn't do this, you seem to be itching for a fight for no reason, but here goes.

Not intentionally no, I just dont see where your hate is coming from, prot warr haven't looked this good in literally years.
You have several builds, you have a shit ton of meaningful choices and some of your complaints are also capstones, which just adds to the power of your chosen build.

I also dont agree with your sentiment that everything has to be some talent or functionality and some stat choices are fine (I dont know ALL tanks inside out but most get similar) and if you compare the prot pala tree to prot warrior for example? Its very evident the prot warrior design is PhD level and the paladin is caveman crayon design.
And as you have mentioned some of them will help scale the class very good in future tiers, why would you be against that? It's not a problem, its a blessing bro...

I also think you need to judge the class on builds and how it plays rather than a direct comparison between all 40 specs and their talent trees/choices. (which is why I keep saying you don't have beta)
And what I meant with "cant even pick all of them" are the capstone choices, ravager, thunderous roar, spear of bastion, shield charge etc
Which no other tank gets as good or as many choices in my opinion.

And to touch on the "significant" redesign, it is bro... Warrior is getting so much love I'm getting triggered by this post because its so out of touch with reality I find it hard to argue in a polite manner...
We're getting a mix of old and new, like I haven't seen any other tank get. And they have really cherry picked the best shit... Remember the tier set from dragon soul that gave shield wall to the entire raid? Yeh, that's back.
Disputing shout in a better version is also back
You're not only getting rend with a sick bleed build, you're also getting the QOL with blood and thunder spreading it to every mob.

And I can keep this up for a while.
And its sooo much good stuff, the last concern is having to pick some stat increases as tree padding.

So yeh, I find your concerns hard to justify when prot warrior is looking insanely good, have so much meaningful choices, different talent builds, where most seem to come down to playstyle preference rather than some "must have cookie cutter build", they're gonna scale very well, they have insane defense, ridiculously strong DPS and aoe, the best snap threat of any tanks and most fun toolkit. Shield charge, getting a death grip, bleeds and omg, how can you not just love all of this???

I really dont get it lol...

[Breccia]

Having played warrior since wotlk, I can sorta understand where this is coming from and I do understand. I've felt this way before but it's as you say, confirmation bias and a bit only remembering "the bad" and easily forgetting "the good".

Then we are agreed. The tree really is that good.

I do believe, however, that it's still worth raising concerns about the parts that aren't, even if they are few. A row filled with nothing but +stats is boring, and I still believe it caused, or at least contributed to, the overperformance that mandated a downtune across the board, that could potentially have been handled by removing the excessive stats and adding more interesting options. But I'm getting my Kyrian Spear and Bitter Immunity which I'm using right now in the next xpac and I'm stoked about that. And yes, there's more build options than we've seen in...ever? So I'm not going anywhere. That row sucks, the suckage is mandatory, and it shouldn't be there like that, but it's not enough to kick me out of the class and spec.

[cordrann]

Then we are agreed. The tree really is that good.

I do believe, however, that it's still worth raising concerns about the parts that aren't, even if they are few. A row filled with nothing but +stats is boring, and I still believe it caused, or at least contributed to, the overperformance that mandated a downtune across the board, that could potentially have been handled by removing the excessive stats and adding more interesting options. But I'm getting my Kyrian Spear and Bitter Immunity which I'm using right now in the next xpac and I'm stoked about that. And yes, there's more build options than we've seen in...ever? So I'm not going anywhere. That row sucks, the suckage is mandatory, and it shouldn't be there like that, but it's not enough to kick me out of the class and spec.

Stop thinking about them as just stat nodes. Think of them as making Ravager, Shield Charge, and etc. two or three point talents without making the first point give you nothing and without adding something that will affect the way you play, which given how much prot has going on atm they may not want to do.

Any semi competent paladin will have 100% uptime on sotr so that's not really a comparison point.

Warrior without active mitigation up being as tanky as a paladin with active mitigation up isn't a comparison point? You're acting like warriors don't also have active mitigation.

As an aside, after these pretty massive nerfs warrior is still by far the strongest tank on the beta.