Thought about prot warrior and a bit about warrior and tanks in general

[AnIh 0]

Hi guys , im thinking about going back for WoD , I was playing a prot warrior as main and looking if im gonna play it again.

 

I went throught the changes and it stay pretty much the same except 2 things that can look minor but that have important impact imo

 

the removal of skull banner and rallying cry

 

So my question is :

 

Dont you think prot warrior gameplay will become too simple and boring because you dont have any raid wide ability to control that require to pay attention to the fight entirely and be synchronized with your raid mates and not just focus on his own thing and ignoring what others do since you dont have interaction with them anymore

 

 

And aswell, what do you think about DPS warrior ? for what I have read the DPS gameplay is pretty shitty now , since tanks deal 75% of dps damage output now wouldnt it be overpowered to pex as prot ?

 

Also , what do you think about brewmaster monk ? its an other tank I have that I can play instead but i always thought it was just a prot warrior but that doest his job worst in anyway, now that If im not mistaken damage are less spiky and you have more health as a tank in PVE (correct me if im wrong) and warrior dont have raid CDs anymore wouldnt the gap between them be closed ?

 

Thanks for your enligthment

[Estarriol 167]

The removal of Skull Banner, Rallying Cry, and Demoralizing Banner are among the most minor changes made thus far. Especially so since every tanking class lost comparable abilities (such as Devotion Aura for paladins). I don't see how this particular removal will simplify warrior tanking in any meaningful way. As a tank, you still have to be cognizant of what's going on in the rest of the fight. You can hone in on only what happens to you whether or not you have raid-wide CDs. You still need to know how and where to move bosses in order to maximize your DPS' uptime and you still have to plan for and mitigate damage. The gap between what a tank can endure versus what a DPS can endure in terms of damage isn't as wide as it used to be, so raid-wide AoE will be more of a consideration for tanks than it was previously. That isn't to say that DPS are effective in tanking- they're not- it's just that now it take 3-4 big add melees to kill a DPS instead of one.

 

That said, prot warriors have lost some complexity. Before, we had an active and dynamic choice between Shield Barrier (SBar) and Shield Block (SBlk), but Blizzard has nerfed SBar to the extent that at no point in time should you ever choose SBar over SBlk. I remain hopeful that the devs will see the error in this and fix it. However, there's still rage waste to contend with and three new talents to play with. There remains sufficient complexity for prot to be interesting.

 

 

And aswell, what do you think about DPS warrior ? for what I have read the DPS gameplay is pretty shitty now , since tanks deal 75% of dps damage output now wouldnt it be overpowered to pex as prot ?

 

I don't actually know what you're asking here. Are you asking if it's better to DPS as a prot warrior instead of Arms or Fury because tank baseline damage has been buffed? If so, not at all. Although tanks are tuned to be roughly 75% of a DPS' output, that doesn't make the 25% (rough) loss of DPS worthwhile.Keep in mind that Arms and Fury still have Rallying Cry, giving them a bit of raid utility, and they're also doing quite well as far as damage output goes.

 

What do I think about Brewmaster? Some people really like it. I think it feels too much like DPSing. Their active mitigation is very passive. However, that is purely my opinion. Many people very much enjoy the gameplay. It's very smooth and has a lot of utility. Spend the next few weeks playing around with both warrior and monk and see which feels better to you, then go with that. Both monks and warriors are likely to be strong in WoD.

[Troels 9]

There's not many tanks with raidwide CDs anymore, prot pala lost devo aura, bear lost tranq and i don't know if brewmaster lost zen med, and ofc blood dks never had one.

From what i've seen prot warriors seem pretty strong, and brewmasters pretty weak, but i'm not an expert on those two tanking classes. I've played brewmaster a bit in 5.4, and in 6.0 it seems that you're purifying your stagger a lot more which to me is a boring playstyle.

I'm maining my blood dk since they seem to be in a good place and i think they are fun to play :)

[AnIh 0]

 

I don't actually know what you're asking here. Are you asking if it's better to DPS as a prot warrior instead of Arms or Fury because tank baseline damage has been buffed? If so, not at all. Although tanks are tuned to be roughly 75% of a DPS' output, that doesn't make the 25% (rough) loss of DPS worthwhile.Keep in mind that Arms and Fury still have Rallying Cry, giving them a bit of raid utility, and they're also doing quite well as far as damage output goes.

 

I mean for leveling (pex), since tanks always had the advantage to be able to pull multiple mobs and aoe them wont it be overpowered now that they deal more damage ? before you never had vengeance againts mobs they do non existent dmg

 

 

for the spec as a whole my concern is that they removed everything that made prot warrior difficult to play :

 

for instance I had to manage a lot of different things in relation to vengeance skull banner recklesness and dragon roar to make sure that you could use a those stuff as much as possible together when vengeance was high and with similar raid CD, for instance I would use my skull banner like 5 sec after the pull to match it with trinkets procs , when I tanked 2 nd I would use reckelessness after a few seconds to make sure I make use of the extra rage it give by having it used while im low on rage and just when my shield slam comes back up also it allow me to build some vengeance in the meantime so it provide me more damage , same for dragon roar with the damage easily being multiplicated by 5 between low vengeance and high vengeance

 

You had so many things to make sure you use at the right moment in regards to you shield slam CD shield blocks remaining time your rage your vengeance your recklessness/dragon roar/skull banner/other ppl raid CD aswell as having raid rotation for with rallying cry

 

they pretty much deleted everyone of those aspects so im really worried that prot warrior became way too simple and there is pretty much nothing else to do than doing your basic rotation and having general awareness needed for a tank which is way less than before, im worried there is nothing to master anymore in the prot warrior playstyle that keep you on alert to try to do all these different little things there is to do as best as you can

 

its pretty much like fury warrior , it was a very very chalenging difficult and attention consuming playstyle and its why it was fun , with the removal of colossus smash pretty much the whole point of the previous rotation is gone so how it's fun now ?

Edited October 21, 2014 by AnIh

[Estarriol 167]

Eh, I suppose. Not really, though. It's just leveling.

 

The removal of Vengeance does not mean that timing is unimportant. For SBar, there's still resolve. For your offensive abilities, you will still need to time things with pots, lust, and procs in order to use them well. Further, at level 100, if you're using Anger Management, you would want to time your Bloodbath/DR just before using rage. Counting to ten on pull before popping a macro of CDs isn't a significant level of complexity that we've lost. Timing is still a thing, it's just slightly different. We also have Sudden Death and Unyielding Strikes now, which add layers of complexity of their own. Albeit rather minor in the case of SD.

 

You still need to optimize your SBlk and SBar uses, arguably moreso now that there's a longer CD on SBlk. You still need to plan your ability usage to not waste rage or dump it into SBars that aren't being used. Sure, you don't have Reck and Skull Banner, but you still have plenty of other CDs. The loss of the raid CDs is pretty insignificant. Once every three minutes you hit one button that your RL planned or called for. They certainly have not removed everything that made prot warrior complex and difficult to master. You are entitled to your own opinion, but I wholly disagree with your statement that warriors lack complexity because we've lost a handful of three minute CDs.

[MaxwellDemonic 0]

I mean for leveling (pex), since tanks always had the advantage to be able to pull multiple mobs and aoe them wont it be overpowered now that they deal more damage ? before you never had vengeance againts mobs they do non existent dmg

 

 

for the spec as a whole my concern is that they removed everything that made prot warrior difficult to play :

 

for instance I had to manage a lot of different things in relation to vengeance skull banner recklesness and dragon roar to make sure that you could use a those stuff as much as possible together when vengeance was high and with similar raid CD, for instance I would use my skull banner like 5 sec after the pull to match it with trinkets procs , when I tanked 2 nd I would use reckelessness after a few seconds to make sure I make use of the extra rage it give by having it used while im low on rage and just when my shield slam comes back up also it allow me to build some vengeance in the meantime so it provide me more damage , same for dragon roar with the damage easily being multiplicated by 5 between low vengeance and high vengeance

 

You had so many things to make sure you use at the right moment in regards to you shield slam CD shield blocks remaining time your rage your vengeance your recklessness/dragon roar/skull banner/other ppl raid CD aswell as having raid rotation for with rallying cry

 

they pretty much deleted everyone of those aspects so im really worried that prot warrior became way too simple and there is pretty much nothing else to do than doing your basic rotation and having general awareness needed for a tank which is way less than before, im worried there is nothing to master anymore in the prot warrior playstyle that keep you on alert to try to do all these different little things there is to do as best as you can

 

its pretty much like fury warrior , it was a very very chalenging difficult and attention consuming playstyle and its why it was fun , with the removal of colossus smash pretty much the whole point of the previous rotation is gone so how it's fun now ?

Simplifying abilities does not mean that the skill cap has been lowered. There are a whole host of things that go into playing a Prot Warrior correctly rather than just knowing the optimal time to use abilities / raid walls. I'd argue that one of the greatest strengths warriors have is managing positioning and maximizing on movement effects (see bombs on Iron Juggernaut). The skill cap is basically the same (from a survival aspect). How much effort was it to pop SB/DB/RC at the right time anyway? If you planned ahead, virtually none.

 

As far as vengeance, Resolve covers the defensive enhancements to it. For those who weren't great at maximizing vengeance, they won't see much of a difference; If you were good at it, you were probably doing more damage than you should have been (according to Blizz). Keep in mind, solo tanking and mechanic cheesing for maximum vengeance gains is what caused the change in the first place.

 

These changes may have made our job a little easier, but they certainly haven't made it trivial.