Round two of "Awesome" warrior changes incoming

[Shinrai]

Originally Posted by frott

... I'm not seeing why their particular problems are worthy of a total rebuild when they can perform both tanking and DPS roles just fine *nearly* regardless of build, with distinct benefits going if you're a tanking warrior or a dps warrior and specced accordingly.

The protection specced warrior is totally dominated by the arms warrior in DPS, to the point where protection DPS is *not* viable, and offers incredibly small gains in tanking. This change accentuates this imbalance.

... do you have any idea how happy protection warriors would be if "distinct benefits if your a tanking warrior" held true? The issue is people are trying to find any meaningfull benefit in the protection tree and coming up empty. Shield disc, which was actually the only mitigation ability in the upper half of the tree, now being even less useful for a tank.

[Jovec]

Originally Posted by Shinrai

The protection specced warrior is totally dominated by the arms warrior in DPS, to the point where protection DPS is *not* viable, and offers incredibly small gains in tanking. This change accentuates this imbalance.

... do you have any idea how happy protection warriors would be if "distinct benefits if your a tanking warrior" held true? The issue is people are trying to find any meaningfull benefit in the protection tree and coming up empty. Shield disc, which was actually the only mitigation ability in the upper half of the tree, now being even less useful for a tank.

The warrior protection tree is probably the hardest single tree to balance among any class. Any serious increase in tanking ability will force encounters to be designed around a Prot warrior more so than the little bit they are now, which can lead to situations where content either requires a heavy Prot warrior because of its difficulty or where bringing a heavy Prot warrior will make encounters too easy (although not anywhere on the same scale, think EQ /disc defensive warriors tanking versus knights). It's one thing if in a guild raid of 40 some warriors are willing to spec heavily in Protection for the minor benifits, but it would be another if heavy Prot grew to be practically required for 5-mans or trivialized them. I think it's pretty clear from the talent trees and game mechanics that Blizzard is trying to kept tanking ability as close to the same baseline as realistically possible between warrior builds. Sometimes I think it will almost be better if the protection tree never existed and all warrior tanking was identical between builds.

-Jovec

[DJk_zero]

Originally Posted by frott

Warriors are probably close to the last, if not the last, of the classes that need any changes.

And you're pretty fucking ignorant. Arms warriors need no changes, the other two have been gimp since beta.

[beepbeepbeep]

That's just a really quick overview of the engima that is the "protection" tree and doesn't touch on all the problems of the talents in depth.

Jovec nailed it though, they don't want to pigeon-hole warriors into the protection tree.

They still need to rework the entire tree no matter what direction they take it in, the talents are horrible.

[findar]

Originally Posted by Duppin

You're reading too much into priests with varying specs.

This doesn't mean that different trees are viable; it means that for the most part, spec is almost completely irrelevant to the core functions of a priest. Healing ability gets almost no improvement through Holy tree, so it's not necessary to spec much in it; Disc is more about mana conservation and regeneration so it benefits pretty much anything you cast; and Shadow is DPS so it's fun for PvP.

But for healing, the core function of a priest, you wouldn't see a ton of difference if you had no talent points spent at all.

no, what it really means is the game right now revolves around spamming flash heal which gains no REAL benefits from any tree.

greater heal gets significant improvements and its very viable, but the concept of a Gheal chain is impossible for most people to wrap their minds around.

[GrobbeeTrull]

Originally Posted by beepbeepbeep

That's just a really quick overview of the engima that is the "protection" tree and doesn't touch on all the problems of the talents in depth.

Jovec nailed it though, they don't want to pigeon-hole warriors into the protection tree.

They still need to rework the entire tree no matter what direction they take it in, the talents are horrible.

I don't play WoW, but that's pretty.

[FoghornDeadhorn]

If they gave protection warriors just a little more utility in PvP and gave them mitigation worth pursuing deep in the tree (think Anticipation being changed to 4/8/12/16/20% bonus to defense from worn items and being around the 20-25 line in the tree), yeah warriors concerned about being better tanks for their guild would go protection. I don't want to hear this "they're trying not to pidgeon-hole tanking warriors" shit, they aren't even fucking CLOSE and they aren't trying to get any closer. They should be. Nearly useless is a far shot from "necessary and balanced around." Changing anticipation as I advised would be right on that borderline, not completely necessary but would make protection warriors happy about their gains from the tree. It would also make them even harder targets for hunters and rogues.

[Kildace]

What I'd do, is revamp the whole upper protection tree to utility abilities.
Shit like making sunder also affect spell resists, additional shouts that are + to hit % or manaregen, a +dmg /healing to spells shout, a 5 minutes recast, 1 fear absorbing shout, a 1 minute refresh taunt that makes the mob's next secondary target ability target you instead.

You can't really beef prot in tanking ability without indirectly nerfing every fight in the game, but by giving prot real raid utility spells, raid warriors would still pick it over Arms.

[DJk_zero]

The only good thing about the supposed changes is that imp revenge is no longer needed as well as imp shield bash as pre-reqs.

[Keltan]

Originally Posted by Kildace

What I'd do, is revamp the whole upper protection tree to utility abilities.
Shit like making sunder also affect spell resists, additional shouts that are + to hit % or manaregen, a +dmg /healing to spells shout, a 5 minutes recast, 1 fear absorbing shout, a 1 minute refresh taunt that makes the mob's next secondary target ability target you instead.

You can't really beef prot in tanking ability without indirectly nerfing every fight in the game, but by giving prot real raid utility spells, raid warriors would still pick it over Arms.

Ladies and gentleman, we have a winner!

...and beepbeepbeep, that picture was pure GOLD.

[frott]

Originally Posted by DJk_zero

And you're pretty fucking ignorant. Arms warriors need no changes, the other two have been gimp since beta.

And this relates to other classes how? In short, find me another class that doesn't have "gimp" talent trees "since beta" that point to one obvious answer.

I could scribble over probably the majority of the talent trees in the game in ms paint that are laden with arbitrary and marginally useful abilities that you are forced to blow points on only to be able to unlock equally or moreso trivial abilities.

yeah, warriors truly need beefing up in the defensive department. LAUGH. Get over it: with classes hitting nearly 0 desirability and fringe talents not able to pick up the slack it's just a bit tedious for a class that dominates an aspect of the game to claim that their talent tree that would make them clearly dominate it more is bwoken.

As far as giving warriors "preventative" buffs, yeah, sure why not - they sure as fuck haven't done much to, yknow, any of the healing classes in regards to prevention.

[Hozz]

That picture rules. Except, 1h wep spec is +10% damage now!

H

[Luthair]

Originally Posted by Jovec

The warrior protection tree is probably the hardest single tree to balance among any class. Any serious increase in tanking ability will force encounters to be designed around a Prot warrior more so than the little bit they are now, which can lead to situations where content either requires a heavy Prot warrior because of its difficulty or where bringing a heavy Prot warrior will make encounters too easy (although not anywhere on the same scale, think EQ /disc defensive warriors tanking versus knights). It's one thing if in a guild raid of 40 some warriors are willing to spec heavily in Protection for the minor benifits, but it would be another if heavy Prot grew to be practically required for 5-mans or trivialized them. I think it's pretty clear from the talent trees and game mechanics that Blizzard is trying to kept tanking ability as close to the same baseline as realistically possible between warrior builds. Sometimes I think it will almost be better if the protection tree never existed and all warrior tanking was identical between builds.

-Jovec

I think this is a symptom of a fundamental flaw in how talent trees were designed. Talent trees should improve a class' primary role, they did it for some (Mage, Rogue, etc), while the others (Warrior, Druid, Priest, etc ) got a bastardized mishmash.

[Schatze]

First, I agree that warriors are one of the last classes to need this. While my paladin is long retired... You think warriors have it bad? EVERY paladin talent tree is along the lines of the warrior protection tree. Except, y'know, the corresponding abilities are far worse, and the unique class specific ones mostly garbage... But that's off topic.

Yeah, like many other classes, the warrior talents trees need to be changed. Arms is fine as is, it's the "balanced" tree. I don't know much about fury, as I've never paid much attention to it. I'll take other warrior's word on it that it needs improvement.

Now, protection tree. Why would you go protection? As it stands now the tree only improves functionality in tanking by a marginal degree, mainly because the focus is on blocking. Sure, yeah, the right gear and the right abilities actually make it useful, but by how much? Not much, not for 31 talent points.

Instead of making just focusing on making it PVP viable, they should be looking at increasing the usefulness of the tree at least partially via gear. Arcanite reaper and weapons like that make the MS tree, so why not address part of the problem with the protection tree through gear? Drillborer disk is a start, but top end shields need to absorb more damage on a block, not just one shield.

As well, a high end warrior tree ability to allow spells to be blocked (for the same damage reduction as melee, same % chance) would be pretty sweet and add to the universal functionality of a protection spec'd warrior using a shield. I don't know how viable this is, but it'd actually make the mantra of "survivability" in PVP somewhat true, while increasing a protection warrior's functionality PVE. And I assume most other casters would be happier fighting a non-MS warrior, yes?

As to the other abilities, stuff like improved sunder should have a component that lowers the targets defense (or equivalent) rating by maybe 1 or 2% per ranking. The other targeted abilities in protection tree should along similar lines.

I wouldn't know how to get the balance right, but that's what devs are for. As for this latest offering? Well, I don't imagine I'd ever spec fury. As to protection, I'd really, really like to. But I can't stomache gimping myself in other areas of play just to squeeze out some marginal PVE functionality. I did that with my priest once, and I'm not going to do it again.

[Froofy-D]

If the protection tree had a talent where you could intercept/parry/shield block for other players (like in DAOC) it would be great for PVE and PVP.

Also a +resists talent line (like the D2 barbarian) would make protection a lot more desireable.