Warrior Q&A, food for thought

I just read through the posted Warrior Q&A after stumbling over Spinks' thoughts on it over on her blog.

Both the full Q&A session and Spinks response on it gave me a lot to think about and are worth checking out.

I'll just dive right into it!

Vads comments on 3.2 Warrior Q&A:

No warrior discussion in general is complete without the rage mechanic brought up, but what I got from the GC on it is pretty much a "We know you are too gear dependant, but we're not really sure how to fix it." The dev team have my full understanding that in its current form, the rage and gear dependance is a bish to balance. But so far, can't see anything is happening to prevent bad geared ones from sucking balls, to Best in Slot clad ones inducing nerf after nerf.

I have no master solution to offer either but my tip would be to look at how Death Knights runic power is generated, it is more stable and perhaps that mechanic with a minor influence from damage dealt could be a way to go?

Both my Paladin and Warrior are glad the value of shields for tanking was brought up also and that the way their damage reduction is totally unsignificant in "endgame" tanking hasn't slipped off their radar. Even getting a crit block with trinkets and shield block popped wouldn't make the tiniest difference on many of the bosses in Ulduar and this problem will only get bigger unless fixed somehow.

But how to do that while making sure it doesnt turn shield tanks completely invulnerable against weaker hitting mobs or other players? One possible road was mentioned to buff shield block values significantly, but also reduce chance to block by the same amount. Using shield block then would actually be a good tool to survive the damage increase from General in Ulduar, if each of those blocks would shave off 5k+ more.

I have another suggestion to add too, simply change shield block value completely from fixed values, to a percent based mitigation on top of the armour reduction. Add diminishing returns or make the block percent value gained per item so low it will be impossible to stack up "over the top" to keep it balanced, and we're fixed, too. Or yet another possibility, keep block value as is but instead change the armor stat from the shields into the mentioned percent based reduction.

I liked to see the (lack of?) differences between arms and fury is still being looked at, there's for and against having Arms as the PvP spec and I can certainly feel those wishing to tear it up with Fury or Protection in BG/Arena, but I think ultimately we should keep it as it were from the get go..



My vision of how the talent specializations should be:

Arms as THE PvP spec, a versatile spec with powerful debuffs and (hopefully, one day..) resilience, I miss that feeling of being tough to take down in PvP and I wont mind at all trading some outgoing damage for it.

Fury as the raging and reckless dps monster spec, focusing raw damage and little to no defensive tricks. I miss 1H fury too, I somehow feel it fits better with the frenzied berserker style combat I picture fury warriors should do.

Protection.. yeah. Tanking of course but seeing how successful the other tank capable classes can be in bg's and even in arena, why not Warriors too? Overall, Protection Warriors work quite well in their current form and can tank anything, I still hate the spamminess of having to use hs/cleave on every damn 1.6s swing manually in addition to the regular gcd abilities though. But I think I've said more than my piece on that matter in other older posts.



I may do more on this later but that is what I had to offer on 3.2 Q&A for now. Like Spinks, I actually like these Q&A sessions with Ghostcrawler quite a bit, but I will be a bit sceptic about taking anything said by the fellow without a grain of salt.

We are after all reading an interview with the guy that said Juggernaut would never be nerfed, because it would cripple warriors in PvP again. Then mere days later we saw the crit bonus chopped off (used to be 100%)... and then again increased charge cooldown by 5 seconds...

Yay, I got some whine snuck in this time as well, better sign off now!

Still around

I've had a bit of a break from writing, but I'm still around, on WoW and checking various blogs etc.

Since my last update I've mostly been working on the Paladin, got him ready for raids while getting a steady fix of pvp. Of course I couldn't go into raiding without trying out Protection Paladin tankage, to compare it with my Warrior, but hes main spec is Retribution, mostly cause it was just easier to get up to speed for the raids that way.

First off, anyone saying Rets are all about placing your face on the keyboard need to actually give it a try themselves. Granted its not incredibly complicated, but while dpsing I am juggling a heck of a lot more abilities than most my dps counterparts. That said, I'm not really a fan of the FCFS (first come first serve) cooldown based play style. There's not much thought behind it and you just watch your cooldowns and the damage happens. It'll get looked at for 3.2, but the only real game play change so far seems to be that I'll have to keep a look out for Art of War procs to use Exorsism. Will be interesting to see how it turns out.

Tanking on my Paladin I have to say has been a lot of fun! In contrast to Warrior tanking, there's no button mashing involved whatsoever and it is in most cases quite relaxing. Paladin AoE tanking is not what it used to be, that is still a stronger point for Warriors, shown in particular on fights like the arena floor at Thorim (or is it Hodir? I always mix those up). Paladins lay down Consecration and hope for the best in most cases not really getting aoe aggro on anything while Warriors have the edge there with decent burst aoe threat from Thunder Clap and Shockwaves.

This weakness aside, I think I contribute a lot more with the Paladin than my old Warrior, having similar survivability and threat output but also bringing a lot of buffs and powerful defensive cooldowns, this goes for Retribution and Protection both of course.

PvP with my Paladin has been a mixed experience so far. I'm all for not being able to insta gib all classes. I do quite well against dps classes, depending on how well they're played. Rogues have been giving me more trouble than I expected, often being forced to bubble before I've been able to do any damage at all, and the really excellent ones will then proceed to wtfpwn me again after its out :)

Going toe to toe against any kind of healer is my biggest problem though. Its just not possible to kill a healer unless I have a dps train with me and kill them in a single stun. A few days ago I revived the old Warrior for the purpose of PvP only, and while he still has his nemesis counterparts, he does a lot better against healers now. Teamed up with a Druid as rusty as I am for some 2v2s and its still a rock solid combo. :)

Anyways! I reckon I've ranted enough for one sitting, I'm parting for now with a screenie from our recent and first 10 man Yogi kill! Go TOG!