The Warrior Protector of the Pandarian Mists: A Protection Warrior Guide 5.0

[Deleted]

It's just a nod to revalue avoidance, just like DKs got Scent of Blood and Paladins Grand Crusader, avoidance tanks don't need more benefits for their avoidance. Nothing to think of it.

So... nice to have, but the princess is in another castle. Weren't you Blizz people working on moar crit? Don't forget about that. 1 point of haste now gives 1 of crit, heroism now gives 30% crit to prot warrs it's what I want to hear about. That, or haste is no longer on str plate.

[Deleted]

Would old recklessness @ 50% on a 1 minute cd only for protection make any huge impact for us dps wise ?
Maybe thats easier for them to make happen then trying to balance riposte for 2 classes :P

[Deleted]

Well, instead of having 12 secs of 30% each 3 mins, you would have 12 secs of 50% each min, both covered by bloodbath but not skull banner. Wouldn't get close to the +~25% "missing". They wouldn't go that way, but it's fun to think of seemingly OP things only to realize they would fall short. It's that bad.

Though my bother of the day is haste. I reckon that having the greatest dps CD being non-existant (heroism) has always been annoying, but then you see how they like to slap haste to any encounter buff (see Sha of Pride) and it bothers you even more. Having a buff intended to make everyone OP for an encounter that leaves you untouched practically marks you as non-viable. Ra-den didn't like prot warrs, but imagine that instead of Ra-den the final boss for this tier was Sinestra. Who would you bring when a raid wide 100% haste 3 mins buff is applied for the burn phase?

And beyond all that, I can't shake the ominous feeling that haste will plague all SoO plate just like it plagued ToT ones.

[Brian23]

Well, instead of having 12 secs of 30% each 3 mins, you would have 12 secs of 50% each min, both covered by bloodbath but not skull banner. Wouldn't get close to the +~25% "missing". They wouldn't go that way, but it's fun to think of seemingly OP things only to realize they would fall short. It's that bad.

Though my bother of the day is haste. I reckon that having the greatest dps CD being non-existant (heroism) has always been annoying, but then you see how they like to slap haste to any encounter buff (see Sha of Pride) and it bothers you even more. Having a buff intended to make everyone OP for an encounter that leaves you untouched practically marks you as non-viable. Ra-den didn't like prot warrs, but imagine that instead of Ra-den the final boss for this tier was Sinestra. Who would you bring when a raid wide 100% haste 3 mins buff is applied for the burn phase?

And beyond all that, I can't shake the ominous feeling that haste will plague all SoO plate just like it plagued ToT ones.

I thought they were hitting Paladins with a pretty sizable nerf going into 5.4? Am I wrong?

Regardless, is there even a way for us to get better damage in the current environment without completely redesigning the class?

[Deleted]

I thought they were hitting Paladins with a pretty sizable nerf going into 5.4? Am I wrong?

Regardless, is there even a way for us to get better damage in the current environment without completely redesigning the class?

They are bitching like the sky is falling, but blizzard wont let them go oom, so they will get away unscathed. And then, monks. Untouched.

They dont need to redesign for a patch. Sell crit a bit better, itemize ok the raid and randomly buff core abilities, glyph of hr on Sbar so it has much higher uptime, etc. Just a lot of "minor" things together will suffice. Bolding the a lot.

[Deleted]

They aren't bitching, imagine you couldn't build any rage beyond the two minutes mark because you focused on the 'wrong' secondary stat. That's just flawed game design and needs to be reverted/fixed.

I really don't care to much for the dps gains on bloodlust to be honest, to many other mandatory construction sites i'd like to see being worked on before we should bother with that.

For santa's idee: i don't like cooldown based play to much, using blood bath every minute is okay... but if we tend to deal 30% of our overall damage in 10 seconds of a minute i can get boring in between and it leaves so much room for improvement/skill gaps.

[Deleted]

I thought they were hitting Paladins with a pretty sizable nerf going into 5.4? Am I wrong?

Regardless, is there even a way for us to get better damage in the current environment without completely redesigning the class?

So far there are no sizeable paladin nerfs. A few changes that are only nerfs or buffs in certain situations. The Grand Crusader change, for instance. Main or offtanking a boss? A nerf. Tanking a pack of melee mobs? Well... now the paladin can likely fill every GCD with Avenger's Shield and have 100% active mitigation uptime.

[Deleted]

They aren't bitching, imagine you couldn't build any rage beyond the two minutes mark because you focused on the 'wrong' secondary stat. That's just flawed game design and needs to be reverted/fixed.

I really don't care to much for the dps gains on bloodlust to be honest, to many other mandatory construction sites i'd like to see being worked on before we should bother with that.

For santa's idee: i don't like cooldown based play to much, using blood bath every minute is okay... but if we tend to deal 30% of our overall damage in 10 seconds of a minute i can get boring in between and it leaves so much room for improvement/skill gaps.

If that happened to rage over a ptr note, I wouldnt think nothing of it instead of going "im going to kill myself and then unsuscribe". Any paladin with some logic knew it didnt make sense but man, did the rest bitch. Dont know how they ended not getting some buffs for the trouble.

[Pua]

I really don't care to much for the dps gains on bloodlust to be honest, to many other mandatory construction sites i'd like to see being worked on before we should bother with that.

It's not just a DPS gain, though, it's a mitigation gain... Or, rather, isn't. Haste should increase our rage generation for AM while Bloodlust is up, but doesn't - we get, literally, nothing from the game's best raid cooldown.

It's awful.

That said, I do agree that there are other dramatic fixes that are needed before this class can move into 6.0. Clearly, large changes aren't going to happen over a patch cycle; but we really, desperately, need to get some proper attention going into 6.0 or the spec is simply going to die off. Too many problems have been overlooked or topcoated for far too long, and we need a proper suite of solutions. I'm working on an overhaul for Protection 6.0 specifically, and I'd love your input on it when it's done.

When when I say "your", I mean those contributing to this thread in general. Regardless, I hope Kebess updates this post for 5.4... Not sure he's even still tracking it. o.O

[Deleted]

Fair enough, haven't thought about bloodlust from a defensive PoV until now.

I don't want to think all to much about 6.0, they'll have to re-invent so many things that sounded nice at first and were broken shortly thereafter in this expansion. Maybe even really add that Blademaster idea instead of the current Arms specc to have some totally different playstyles.

Add that we don't know what Blizzard want to give us (removing avoidance or whatever) for the next expansion, there was a nice blue post to prot paladins just yesterday ( http://blue.mmo-champion.com/topic/2...ladin-changes/ ) leaving us with lot of room for speculation and dreams.

For Kebess -> Last Activity 2013-05-14 so unless he just took a short summer break someone willing might have to step in and take over.

[Deleted]

For Kebess -> Last Activity 2013-05-14 so unless he just took a short summer break someone willing might have to step in and take over.

he quit wow months ago (2013-03-12)

"Hi guys,

Just a quick message to tell you folks I'll be taking a ''little'' break from WoW and the whole community this patch... (just not into it anymore, after my guild disbanded couple' weeks ago, )

If any of you guys wants to pick up where I'm leaving this guide, please let me know with a PM. I'll be sending you the coded text, and other details to keep updating it for all of those awesome Prot Warriors still out there.

Do let me know ! If no-one is interested, I'll still be making a quick and final 5.2 update in the upcoming days before ''drifting away''. "

[mongoose6]

Has there been any theorycrafting out there as far as how much overall raid damage is contibuted via crit banner and shattering throw? I know it wouldn't be nearly enough to make our overall dps contribution shine above our fellow tank classes, but it would be interesting to see.

[Deleted]

Don't think so, Shattering Throw varies widly depending on how many physical classes and how much they ignore armor (because most of them, either after a skill, or they have a % of damage that's not physical). It's on the verge of irrelevant I would say, being 10 seconds out of 300, affecting only a part of the raid for a part of their damage for a low %. And skull banner... I suppose it swings a lot too. The more crit stacking classes are on the raid, the higher it is. A number out of my ass says (1/18*1.2*0.3*0.8) 1.6% of raid dps. 1% to 2% I guess.

Thing is, if you ask me paladins and monks bring additional raid healing. Warriors should bring additional raid damage. Personal damage should be close to equal, not the sum of personal+raid increase vs personal of hybrids.

[mongoose6]

Don't think so, Shattering Throw varies widly depending on how many physical classes and how much they ignore armor (because most of them, either after a skill, or they have a % of damage that's not physical). It's on the verge of irrelevant I would say, being 10 seconds out of 300, affecting only a part of the raid for a part of their damage for a low %. And skull banner... I suppose it swings a lot too. The more crit stacking classes are on the raid, the higher it is. A number out of my ass says (1/18*1.2*0.3*0.8) 1.6% of raid dps. 1% to 2% I guess.

Thing is, if you ask me paladins and monks bring additional raid healing. Warriors should bring additional raid damage. Personal damage should be close to equal, not the sum of personal+raid increase vs personal of hybrids.

Agreed, my personal fear though is that they purposely tune down prot warrior damage to reflect the overall damage contribution a warrior can bring to the raid. This contribution is so widely limited though (as explained by Espada above). The thing that got me thinking about this is the fact that warriors and druids are the bottom two, and warriors and druids both bring sunder armor as part of thier rotation which increases overall raid damage (dependent upon raid comp). If that really is a deliberate part of tank damage design, then I proudly raise the bullshit flag on a flawed design.

[Ashenia]

"When warrior hit critical strike with Shield Slam it gives..."

- ala stormlash ability to people
- little damage boost for next ability

"When warrior critically block with his shield it gives..."

- Small absorbs for whole raid
- Reduce damage taken by whole raid by 2% for 5sec/next ability
- etc

Something like that? I don't want to bring raid healing as a warrior, it's for pussies but would like to see something like that tho. They could easly add up few things like that around the table for Druids and DK's.

[Deleted]

I think they just need to keep tanks to themselves and not bring the smart raid healing that Paladin and Brewmaster have. Damage wise I think that we will be doing extremely well next patch and quite easily on a par with paladins

Also keep in mind that the Skull Banner will have even more potency if you have people with the crit damage trinket in the next patch

[Damosapien]

"When warrior hit critical strike with Shield Slam it gives..."

- ala stormlash ability to people
- little damage boost for next ability

"When warrior critically block with his shield it gives..."

- Small absorbs for whole raid
- Reduce damage taken by whole raid by 2% for 5sec/next ability
- etc

Something like that? I don't want to bring raid healing as a warrior, it's for pussies but would like to see something like that tho. They could easly add up few things like that around the table for Druids and DK's.

i like the damage reduction... fits with warriors, we reduce damage not heal it and our absorb is their for balance more than anything so i don't think any raid effects should do that, but I'd prefer if it was bigger and on less people, 8%-10% for 12 secs for only one person per crit block, with a 0.5 second icd, maybe 1 second, so it isn't op in multiple add situations.

dks already have blood burst from their worms.

druids could have a mini raid wide spirit link type effect, call it 'natural harmonization' or something. eg on singe target critical strikes (again small icd, probably 1 second) 1% hp goes from each raid member to heal a player by that percentage, 24% in 25, 9% in 10 (perhaps have it scale up to 14% in 10 man?) but i was thinking of sub 1% numbers instead, 0.5% for example, and have it unable to kill a player.

[Gliff]

I would prefer that tanks brought ZERO raid utility then give all tanks raid utility. Its just another thing they will havre to balance. they have a hard enough balancing survivability and DPS as it is.

[Ashenia]

If they would take raid healing from Monk/Paladins and even the DPS around tanks it would finally be skill to maximize damage done/taken that comes into play instead of broken mechanics where you can close your eyes on more damage taken etc.

Of course above is only a idea of "if they keep things like it is how to make it more or less balanced" otherwise it gonna be doable by nerfing their damage because of healing they provide and buff other damage because of lack of it to compensate. Dunno what Blizzard actually think of it...

[Deleted]

Blizzard thinks that hybrid shouldn't pay their taxes. They should, but that's not a problem that goes with only with tanks, though it's fairly evident with us, and you just have to take a look at the talent tree to see the problem: let's see, warriors have one tier of extremely shitty self healing and two of pure DPS CDs. Monks or paladins don't get pure damage CDs. Instead, they get a couple of damage/healing talents, and the brutal strong healing tier that goes with having a healing spec. Since everyone must have the same damage numbers, and that "minor" healing is supposed to be a plus and never something they have to pay somewhere else, warriors end up taking two talents that only do damage, and must not go above what they can do. God forbid you need a stun, because you are balanced by picking the damage CD. You will pay for that stun.

That the class fail to keep up goes apart, but by design you are simply getting spanked for not being a healing hybrid. Where are my perks for having two DPS specs as secondary trees? Because theirs are here to stay unless they separate talent trees by spec again. Don't be naive thinking they won't get away with it for expansions to come.