warrior Mists of Pandaria Preview: Warrior Talents

[Vlad 411]

The Mists of Pandaria Beta is moving along at a steady pace. We feel that its content is now sufficiently stable and polished as to allow us to truly begin our work on it.

Today, we present you with an overview of the talents for Warriors, and our thoughts and feelings on each of the relevant choices. Note that Beta content is a work in progress, so this could change at any time.

Most of the talents have no actual effect on your performance (DPS for Arms and Fury and survival for Protection). In the cases where the talents do have relevance, all of the talents in the tier seem to be very evenly matched.

Feel free to share your thoughts on both the talents and our initial evaluation of them.

Tier 1 (level 15)

[*]Juggernaut (reduces the cooldown of Charge by 8 seconds) [*]Double Time (Charge twice before triggering the cooldown) [*]Warbringer (Charge stuns the target for 3 seconds)

Arms, Fury and Protection: the right choice is most likely going to be based on what the encounter requires of you, with Juggernaut seeming slightly more valuable. If there's a need to Charge twice in a row (such as to cross a large distance quickly), Double Time may prove useful. Warbringer could be of value against stunnable adds.

Tier 2 (level 30)

[*]Enraged Regeneration (20% of max health self-heal, 1 minute cooldown) [*]Second Wind (passive self-heal when below 35% health) [*]Impending Victory (10% of max health self-heal, 30 second cooldown)

Arms, Fury and Protection: Impending Victory seems to be the best choice in almost every conceivable situation. The low cooldown allows rather free usage at the precise moment when the heal is needed. It costs a low amount of rage and deals a decent amount of damage, as well. Enraged Regeneration may prove useful, as it heals for more and can be free of rage cost if you are enraged (but extremely costly, at 60 rage, otherwise). Making sure that it is available and that you are enraged exactly when you need it might be rather difficult.

Tier 3 (level 45)

[*]Staggering Shout (roots all snared enemies within 20 yards) [*]Piercing Howl (snares all enemies within 15 yards, 50% slow) [*]Disrupting Shout (interrupts and locks out all spellcasters within 10 yards)

Arms, Fury and Protection: all of these talents are highly situational, but generally seem to be irrelevant for raiding.

Tier 4 (level 60)

[*]Bladestorm (75% weapon damage per second for 6 seconds to all enemies within 8 yards, immunity to stuns and movement impairing effects) [*]Shockwave (AoE frontal cone 4 second stun and damaging ability) [*]Dragon Roar (AoE damage and 3 second stun)

Arms, Fury and Protection: Dragon Roar seems like the obvious choice, since it deals a much higher amount of damage than the other two (it is a guaranteed critical strike). Shockwave may be useful for fights where you must stun adds, whereas Bladestorm's uses seem to be mostly PvP oriented (immunity to stuns, fears etc.)

Tier 5 (level 75)

[*]Mass Spell Reflection (causes Spell Reflection to extend to your whole party/raid) [*]Safeguard (reduces the damage taken by the target of your Intervene by 20% for 6 seconds) [*]Vigilance (tranfers 30% of the damage taken by the target to you for 12 seconds; your Taunt has no cooldown and attacks against the target enrage you)

Arms and Fury: the choice here is rather difficult. Mass Spell Reflection seems like the most useless of the three, but it must still be seen how many spells can be reflected in the Mists of Pandaria raid encounters. As a DPS, you will probably prefer Vigilance. It can ease the damage on the tank, or even save him, while the healers keep you alive. Safeguard will probably be unusable by non-tanks, since the transfered melee hit could be a critical strike against you and instantly kill you.

Protection: Safeguard looks like an excellent choice for Protection Warriors, allowing you to effectively gain an "external cooldown" to help mitigate the damage taken by your fellow tank. Depending on the situation (for instance, the fight requiring a single tank), you may opt for one of the other two talents.

Tier 6 (level 90)

[*]Avatar (damage done increased by 20% and rage generation increased by 50% for 20 seconds; immune to stuns and movement impairing effects) [*]Bloodbath (for 12 seconds, all your special attacks cause the target to bleed for an additional 30% damage and move 50% slower) [*]Storm Bolt (deals 100% weapon damage to the target and stuns it for 3 seconds; deals 400% weapon damage to bosses)

Arms, Fury and Protection: Tier 6 talents are not available on the Beta (since the character level cap is still 89), so testing them is not possible. Still, it appears that the decision will come down between Avatar and Storm Bolt, depending on which deals the most damage.

Here is a sample of what a proper Warrior talent build might look like:

[Gaghiel 0]

Is dual talent specialization still possible in MoP? I mean, can I pick a diferent set of talents for each tree?

In my case, I'm Dual talented into Protection-PvE-Tank and Protection-PvP-Pain-in-the-butt-for-casters-and-near-immortal-for-melee, and I would like to maintain both specializations for MoP.

And so far, I can see multiple talents combinataions that can be of use on PvE and others useful in PvP.

What I would like to know is if I can have two Protection specializations each with diferent talents.

Edited May 26, 2012 by Gaghiel

[Vlad 411]

Dual talent specialization still exists in MoP, yes. So far, it works exactly like it does in Cataclysm.

So, you can have two Protection specs each with different talents, or an Arms and Protection spec or whatever you want. But you are limited to two.

Edit: you can also make an individual change to just one talent tier, without having to get a complete re-spec, now. There are some "tomes" you can buy (kind of like Dust of Disappearance), that allow you to reset a single tier. They aren't very costly.

Edited May 26, 2012 by Vlad
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