Warriors are perfectFollow

With the length of patch notes coming out and the scant info regarding ANY warrior relevant information. I believe blizzard is telling us that warriors are perfect at this moment in time. No nerfs, no buffs.

The short of the 3.3 text for warriors is;

Victory Rush: This ability is now trainable at level 6.
Damage Shield: This ability will no longer trigger any chance-on-hit effects from the warrior or the opponent it damages.
Glyph of Victory Rush: This glyph now increases the critical strike chance of Victory Rush by 30%, regardless of the percentage of the target’s remaining health.

Target Effects: When this UI feature is activated, Fear, Silence, Frostbolt, and Hamstring will all now display text over the target’s head indicating what type of effect has been applied.

And a bunch of tooltip fixes.

That's 4 lines of a massive update, that has very little to do with warriors.

I dunno. Does anyone else find this interesting?

Might be far from perfect, but you got both a tank and dps spec (fury) that are working, so it's just normal that improving Arms and fixing the threat mess isn't exactly on top of their priority list.

@idiggory

Warriors are one of the few dps classes that do MORE dps when they are taking damage.

I don't know if I'd bladestorm.

I know that's irrelevant to your point. Arms warriors are probably not intended to be primary PvE Dps... It was in BC 2.x due to 31/30 (even the 33/28 arena spec) being a primo easy and solid dps build.

@ArtemisEnteri
I mean, if I'm gonna die anyways, I might as well do as much dps right before exploding as possible.

Welcome to Wrath of the Lich King!

Look at every set of patch notes this expansion, and you will see the same thing. Im so glad the the missile speed of heroic throw was increased in 3.1! woohoo

They have already stated that warriors need work, but that they dont have time to do it until cataclysm.

Personally, im happy with where warriors are. No news is good news :)

as a rogue(who used to play an arms warrior) I get whispers form pissed off tanks quite a lot saying.

"TotT the Arms warrior at the start of the next pull." I thought all Arms warriors knew not to Bladestorm at the beginning of a pull anmore. seems A LOT are still learning?

Idk but as far as DK tanks..no offense but i been doing randoms as arms warrior and ret pally and i find dk tanks cannot hold threat no matter what the group make up. I have a warrior tank and have no probs holding threat grouping with mages rogues Dk; pallies or whoever.

I hear this a lot about DK tanks a well because I'm playing one. I've been tanking on my DK from 70 to (now) 74 and in probably a solid 1/3 of the groups when I zone in I hear some remark or another about terribad DK tanks being so prevalent. Fortunately I [seem to] know what I'm doing well enough that I've gotten nothing but good remarks at the ends of the runs.

In fairness though, I am seeing a LOT of dps rolling in the 300-700 range at level 74 which, frankly, is abysmal.

I also see a fair number of healers who are able to keep me (tank) alive but not much else (saving dps, clearing poison/curse/disease/effects, not standing in things which shouldn't be stood in, etc.)

So I don't think it's just that DK tanks suck, or suck more frequently than other tank classes, but that there are a lot of bad players out there and tanks really stand out when they're bad. And because there are probably more DKs out there than anything else (pallies maybe), it seems bad DK tanks ae more prevalent.


And for the OP, I think it's great that warriors get to stay pretty much the same. It's nice to not feel like I have to re-learn everything.

We have many tricks available to us. We need to use our cooldowns, without them we are just inferior.

Last Stand is one of my favorite abilities at this time.
Shield Block is great.
Shield Wall is mighty.
Challenging Shout is extremely useful.
Mocking Blow is another great ability.
Concussion Blow is wonderfully underrated for 1 talent point (and deals a good amount of threat).
Shockwave is awesome.
Heroic Throw is extremely useful both for it's silence and it's ranged threat (one of our few).


We have many many tricks available to us.

We have something that meets every situation. And while we may not be the best at everything, we are better at everything overall than any other single tanking class.

We MUST use our cooldowns. Don't get stuck in the old method of saving your cooldowns for that 'special moment'. The rotation of cooldowns is important. And I highly recommend that you don't double up on certain cooldowns, very few times have I needed to use Last Stand and Shield Wall at the same time.

Edited, Jan 16th 2010 9:27pm by devioususer

The best ability of arms warrior makes him immune of fear... that says it all about arms tree.




I personally dont see this happening. They usually do it whenever the largest pack exist at first second of fight... having this knowledge I just keep shockwave especially for those cases.



Yes they bring inferior aoe , inferior dps. they excell on single Target boss IF boss needs to be interrypted or counter feared or if boss does one to 3 major physical abilities during figh. Commanding shout is nice to have.

In my opinion they offer limited mitigation since there is a -20% dodge in ICC and our Block Rating through abilities is limited.
A paladin tank has +30% Block rating through Holy shield with uptime 100% .. beat that :(

Stun mechanisms = they offer the best stun mechanisms as tanks on trash ..not on boss .. fail mechanism in my opinion.



ICC 25 Trash :A warrior is just inferior
ICC 25 first boss :Druid tank(s) with lots of HP wins
ICC 25 second boss :Warrior tank is needles if 2-3 rogues or DK exists on boss
ICC 25 3rd boss :He has no special abilities that can help with something
ICC 25 4th boss :All tanks are equal
ICC 25 5th boss :Again I prefere 2 Druids
ICC 25 6th boss :DK FTW kitting the slime

So where exactly does the warrior tools fit in all this? He can do all bosses basically but in spesific fights a Druid or pala or DK could do better.
Better to be good at something than overall average , since there are tons of tanks out there competing for a raid spot.



That is probably it. Warriors can save ppl from dying by ping pong between mobs coming from rear , left , right... but you need to be a ping pong tank in order to do that. Also by ping pong you refer to kitting, well slime in 6th boss can only be kited from distance...so thats bad knews for warr tank.

So yes Warriors talents need work, else we are just average.

Edited, Jan 18th 2010 10:32am by eldik

The question is, is this enough? Don't take me wrong - I have no problem with warrior tanks and we have one in our guild that does a fine job, but it's just that - especially with the Rotface fight in mind - I'm really wondering what warrior tanks specifically bring to the table, assuming they aren't somewhat underpowered.


All good, but up 'till here, this isn't something a warrior tank specifically adds to the group. Druids have a Survival Instincts, Paladins have Holy Shield which is fairly comparable to Shield Block (or heck, compare it to Frenzied Regeneration or any other 'minor CD' if you will), Shield wall is Divine Intervention, Mocking Blow is Lacerate and Concussion Blow equals Hammer of Justice or Bash. This is stuff all tanks have.


Heroic Throw doesn't even compare to the ranged capabilities even Death Knights have, though. And it isn't spammable unlike Faerie Fire.


And this is the only prot-warrior only thing you've listed that's actually interesting. The problem is that I can't find a lot of specific good use for an AOE stun (Anub HM is the only thing that comes to mind), and the talent seems to be more of a standard warrior AOE-threat button than anything else.

My question really is, I guess, can you name me at least one encounter where a warrior specifically comes in handy? I'm not saying warriors can't tank stuff, but for nearly every encounter I can think off, a Death Knight, Druid or Paladin would do either an equal or better job. Warriors don't seem to be specifically good on any encounters in a similar way to how, say, Death Knights are good as off-tanks on Ignis because of CoI or how Druids make good tanks on Festergut because of the 80% DPS buff+cat form. Sometimes a Paladin is better than a Druid, while another time a Death Knight is better than a Paladin - but never does a Warrior actually seem a 'better' choice to me.

I think you're heavily underestimating warrior tanks. They do the highest single target threat (this is anecdotal, but i notice that where i do well on trash threat as a prot paladin in ICC, i can't even come close to the warrior tank on bosses) allowing the highest potential dps from your players who lack threat wipes especially in addition to vigilance.

They keep a 20% armor debuff on the boss which adds incomparable raid dps from your melee. Fury or prot warriors, or rogues with expose armor even, could apply and maintain it in theory but i've never ever seen this in a raid that lacked a warrior tank.

Shield block has a great advantage over holy shield in how bursty it is. I can use divine protection once every other time i leap over to tank the airship general but the times i don't have it i feel increasingly uncomfortable taking massive hits if the dps are taking a while to kill the mage. Especially when i'll have to turn my back for a few hits to rocket pack back over. The warrior tank can pop shield wall every 50 seconds and block 8.8k damage of each hit with critical block. Ditto on saurfang to prevent him gaining blood power, or to add more mitigation against festergut on 3 stacks of inhale gas etc etc.

They can effortlessly interrupt any dangerous boss casts with pummel and shield bash. Fury warriors and rogus can maintain higher dps when they don't have to interrupt.

Warbringer adds a huge skill cap to warrior tanking. I've seen the warrior tank get saurfang taunted off him when he gets the rune debuff and immediately charge > concussion blow one add that was hitting a ranged dps, intercept and shield bash snare the other add and intervene back to me in time to taunt. DKs have batter ranged capabilities but a warrior can move basically anywhere he wants in a fight to deal with problem casters/adds.

This warrior know his stuff , thats for sure.

Wouldnt be easier though if the 2 mobs were just rooted? By the time the root expires one of the adds if focused fired is over . Thats means that 2-3 ranged dps can kite just one add. I could try to do what you are suggesting but whats the point?
Also in what the above warrior did, it involves stance change...!rage starvation!...he got enough rage to return to other tank with intervene?? Either he was hitted by beasts (which he shouldnt have)or GOD of WoW gave him unlimited rage.
Pretty impressive though, Im a fun:)




Agree. Although in 25 mans there is allways 1-2 rogues , a DK
In 10 mans I totally agree.




Totally agree. Its bursty.
Taunt the boss to the edge of the ship , have one healer in mother ship in range.No reason to panic.Never turn your back to a boss, just strafe the camera use your jets on your mother ship.
I never use Divine protection when I tank with pala or shield wall wall when I tank with warrior tank in the gunship battle.Critical block works if you block.
Since most warriors and my self concentrate on stamina , dodge and parry .. our passive block rating is quite low. Critical block Is also on a chance of 60%. So when you block you got a 60% chance to double block. c m on.This works well only when you hit the shield block ability.Then again when I got lets say 15% block rating and hit shield block it goes to 115%. I can understand the 100% chance..what does 115% means?Its fail mechanism trust me. I prefere to know that I got(30% through holy shield + 15% passive) 45% block rating all the time. Healers prefere that too. I believe this need fixing.




Its not "with pummel and shield bash" its "with shield bass" since once one is used the other is on CD. And when tanking boss we never switch to zerk stance. You make it sound like its 2 seperate abilities. Its not this way. Its one ability for interrupt and its CD is quite long. If you execute it wrnongly ,after the boss casts his ability, the cooldown will most probably prevent you from re using in next time. It needs good timing.Unless the boss is spamming all the time abilities able to be interrupted. Regardless of that I still love this ability..but feel its wasted since there is allways a rogue faster than me.If the cooldown was shorter and we got seperate CD's then this would be great.A true advantage over other tanking classes.


What is your hit rating on your pally tank?Can you link your char? I have never lost threat so far with pally and my gear score is. Maybe you are not using the 69696 rule? Maybe Warrior threat is 'Anecdotal' but thats only after rest people Stop DPS ing for the first 10 seconds of their fight because Warrior burst threat is a joke.Vigilance and similar glyph is intented to fix this burst threat problem that warriors have. Its not something good ..its bad in my opinion.On the contraire my friend burst threat is what paladins got in their pocket. Also in IC most bosses no DPS can stay 100% focused on boss they all need to do something , run , stun , avoid damage , give debuufs...so their threat drops eventually. This anecdotal threat is generally good if there is a tank and spank fight.The Warriors allways had problems with initial threat. This needs fixing.


No I didnt. You posted that Warriors probably need fixing. Because you think that some parts work good on your warrior tank that doesnt mean that rest people see it same whay you do. And my opinions/suggestions are still a mole. I never said that we had hudge problems , since warriors act as 'we can do all tanking' but average. This is not a bad statment. Other classes cant do all. They are good at 1 thing and suck terribly on the rest.

Edited, Jan 20th 2010 5:53am by eldik

My pally is hit and expertise capped (for dodge anyway). I believe the warrior does a lot more single target threat than me because what with sword and board he is shield slamming a lot more than my own shield attack, and revenge and devastate/heroic strike are 2 big single target hitters compared to HotR which is designed for multiple targets.

On the snap threat issue: we both need a few seconds at the start of any fight because where dps can start nuking immediately, our first few global cooldowns are needed for things like holy shield, divine plea, sacred shield (or bloodrage, berserker rage, shield block and so on for the warrior). And positioning takes a little time too though i'm lucky the dps in my guild understand all this and hold off for a few seconds.

I didn't know pummel put shield bash on cooldown and vice versa. SB is a longer lockout though, 6 seconds compared to pummels 4 so i imagine that is always better to use.