Prot Warrior Moving Forward

[Moozedude 47]

Hey all.  Been trying to keep abreast of the changes, harder to do with no beta invite.  I know Estarriol put up some Prot stuff a while back, but there have been many adjustments since then, and I'm concerned.

 

Basically, I'm looking at the fact that, as of today, all of our defensives have been drastically reduced.  Resolve, the new tanking mechanic, only affects healing, which Warriors are legendarily last in as tanks.  Additionally, what healing we did have got nerfed, as Enraged Regen got cut in half and SBar just got nerfed by like 50% or something (if I understand the coefficient).  However, our old standby of SBlk got it's recharge time increased, reducing effective uptime.  To top it all off, a bunch of our personals got reduced in duration or effectiveness.

 

My concern is less the Tank Vs. DPS survivability battle.  I hear damage got tuned in such a way that DPS are still kind of squishy, just not instagib.  And the damage modification with the removal of Vengeance is a huge QoL improvement, no more wet noodle questing.

 

What I'm really worried about is the Tank vs. Tank comparisons.  All the other tanking classes have significant self-heals.  In my raid experience, I can take as little as half the damage my cotank takes in current norms.  However, they have a massive ability to self-heal, and compensate that way for the additional damage taken.  If our usual mitigation is nerfed, plus our healing is nerfed, plus the bonus mechanic for tanking is for our nerfed healing, where does that leave us standing going forward?  I have no doubt that we'll be "viable."  But being last on the list makes it hard to get a raid spot. 

[Estarriol 167]

You shouldn't be concerned. Every tanking class has had their CD duration nerfed, their active mitigation nerfed, and their baseline healing nerfed. Resolve boosts heals and SBar is counted as a heal. Enraged Regen, Impending Victory, and Blood Craze are also affected by Resolve. When the devs nerfed every class' mitigation, they also changed the way Resolve calculates and actually made SBar stronger. In fact, they made it so incredibly strong that with the last few Mythic tests, there was simply no point in using SBlk because it was possible to spam these massive SBars. I think 50% is a bit excessive, but it's certainly not crippling.

 

SBlk got nerfed, but when you look at the t17 2 set bonus, we'll actually be able to have a much higher uptime on it. Through that set bonus, we get a 25% chance of proccing SBlk for free when using Shield Slam. Then, to make it even better, the 4p set bonus gives each block an extra 30% reduction. Thus, you're essentially getting 100% crit block during SBlk and your actual crit blocks will mitigate 90%. Keep in mind how incredibly powerful those bonuses are when looking at the nerfs to the recharge time and the size nerf on SBar.

 

Even with the nerf, we're still in a spectacularly good position. Before, we were easily the most powerful tanking class. Since then, only paladins have gotten a very small buff with the others staying the same. As of right now, we're still very likely to be on top, we're just not game-breaking anymore. I wouldn't be surprised to see the recharge time get buffed after t17, though.

 

I realize all of these changes look really drastic, but they really even themselves out. Overall, the feel of prot warrior really hasn't changed and we're still very powerful.

[Moozedude 47]

I really appreciate you taking the time to put it all into context for someone who can't be there to test it out themselves.  I always value the way you present and define information, Estarriol.  It's why I keep coming here for guidance and conversation.  I greatly look forward to maybe some of those Warrior Chats coming back after we all actually have something to talk about again.  :)

[Estarriol 167]

Glad I'm able to put things in a way you like! It's kind of funny, I was thinking the other week that if I was not able to get on and play with the changes, I'm pretty sure it'd feel like the end of prot as we know it. Big changes generally look bigger on paper, especially for expansion releases because it is so hard to get that feeling. Especially so since we're switching from Vengeance where Sbar=1.8*Vengeance to a system where SBar is based on a fluctuating percent of AP that is then multiplied by Resolve, which is calculated differently from Vengeance, plus the stat squish. It's really hard to see all of this on paper and know how it works out.