Round two of "Awesome" warrior changes incoming

[Tuco]

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.

I really don't understand what's impeding Blizzard from adding talents that protect damage from other players, rather than from yourself.

By adding in some AE shout buffs and a skill to directly protect other people, a prot warrior would be desired on the team.

Speaking as a priest, there is a niche to be filled of this nature. Intelligent PVPers will call me out first(My name is Heals, and my tabard is a big white X =\), right now we're using hunters, paladins, rogues, mages... anything we can to stop attackers(not all at once, we're just using a variety of classes to do their job and stop enemies however they can from getting to me), but they're not built to do it. Having a warrior with skills like 'shield cover the clothe dude' or 'taunt player', would really go a long way to help a prot warrior in PVP. Sure, they'd be a support class, but then again, so am I and I love it.

For PVE... AE buff shouts(Just keep the sounds of the barbie from d2 shouting around) and 'shield cover the clothe dude' would be good or something.

[Zorlac]

My ideas for protection fix:

- Boost Toughness to 20%
- Boost Shield Specialization to 10% block rate.
- Boost Anticipation to 25 +Defense, 5 / rank.
- Leave Shield Discipline, lower it's rage cost and cooldown.
- Change current shields to block more, future shields should block more too.
- Move Toughness, Shield Specialization and Anticipation deep in the tree (20+ points prereq).
- Change Improved Sunder armor to make mobs more vulnerable to melee/range attacks. Warrior's specialty should be to know the vulnerabilities of the mobs and show his party where these vulnerabilities are, rogues/hunter/warriors will profit from it. Casters already have something similar.
- Maybe add a D2 like passive (or active) resistance talent instead of garbage like Improved Disarm.

[Vekruul Shuth]

This shit isn't rocket science.

Just add a percentage based damage increase for shield disc.Up to 10%.Plus whatever absorbtion shields/gear gives.I would definately spec for that 31 points deep.And its not overpowered.

Want a PvP use out of the prot tree.Give us an ability to absorb damage for others...Shield wall that can be used on others..Or a much quicker refresh thats percentage based.

WTF do I give a shit about debuffing someone for...If those "leaked" notes are true.

[Xarpolis]

Originally Posted by beepbeepbeep

In four months of MC my guild has looted three obsidian etched blades and two shadowstrikes (Yay, worthless weapon!).

You've got the worst luck ever. I shit you not, all but 3 warriors in our guild have Obsidian. We've got a ton of Hurricane's as well, and one Spinal Reaper. 3 Ingots and an Eye away from Sulfuros(sp?)... but yeah. We never get the caster staff or daggers. They're aparantly like... never going to drop.

[WillzZz]

Originally Posted by Vekruul Shuth

Want a PvP use out of the prot tree.Give us an ability to absorb damage for others...Shield wall that can be used on others..Or a much quicker refresh thats percentage based.

Paladins get a blessing that lets me take 55dmg from every hit on someone. I toss it on priests all the time, saves their ass vs rogues, just wish it lasted longer. Bet none of you alliance know about that, your paladins are too busy consecrating to open up their spell book =x

[Dyvim]

One talent a lot of people are neglecting to mention in the prot tree is the stun resist one, which on top of orc stun resist is fricken awesome in PVP now that it's been fixed. Defiance is also very nice against the new Ragnaros, and Onyxia (not that it matters since she's easy anyways). I wouldn't be surprised if there are bosses in BWL that really favour warriors with an extra 15% threat gen.

I'd really like to try out the new Bloodthirst.

[slitz]

I'm not really convinced that shield spec was that good anyway...
It seems to me that the "block" check is before a parry/dodge check when it comes to game mechanics. So while you most of the time block instead of a dodge/parry when forcing a block with the block skill (sorry, can't recall the name of the skill), a parry/dodge should still happen from time to time. I can't recall if it has happened to me, and if it did, it sure isn't as frequent as it should be. Meaning, while you force a block for lets say 150dmg ten times a row, you would still only need one dodge/parry on those 10 attacks to make it even (if a mob hit for 1500 normally).
Perhaps I just don't pay too much attention to all the block/parry/dodges, but if block does have "higher priority" or rather is calculated before parry/dodge, a normal warrior would want block as close to 0% as possible and thus also wanted to block as rarely as possible, making it better without the talent than with it.

Perhaps I'm completly wrong however...

[Vekruul Shuth]

Originally Posted by WillTR

Paladins get a blessing that lets me take 55dmg from every hit on someone. I toss it on priests all the time, saves their ass vs rogues, just wish it lasted longer. Bet none of you alliance know about that, your paladins are too busy consecrating to open up their spell book =x

I'm Horde man.

[Grailyn]

Shield Mastery (1 rank) Req 30pts in Protection Tree
Passive: +50% to shields block rating.

Simple and fits the role of the tree. The exact same effect as Shield Disc -shield bash bonus damage and it's passive.

[Hozz]

I think they ought to have made Shield Disc Passive.

Added a few more 'protection' talents, something like a 10/20/30 to all resists talent and a 2/4/6/8/10% to total HP talent.

Finally, I think a self only cleanse type ability deep in the tree would be great. This would have PvE and PvP applications. Too much of the tree is situationally 100% useless(Defiance, Improved Taunt in PvP and Imp Revenge/Conc Blow/Imp Disarm/Improved Shield Bash in PvE raiding).

Do all that for Protection and there is perhaps a compelling reason to do something other than the current 31+Arms build just about everyone is running with.

H

[Sinter1]

seems they did a decent job of making the fury line not suck... but to counteract this, they made protection even worse... which I thought would be hard to do. When will blizzard get a clue?

[Kasonic]

Jovec hit the nail on the head. Too good, either other warriors become useless and prot is the raid-cookie cutter, and encounters become too easy; too bad, we have what we have today.

Protection doesn't need sheer numerical power, but utility. A targetable Shield Wall or something like Blessing of Sacrifice would go a long way to giving Prot a point. Shield Slam is a step in the right direction, but it's the wrong kind of ability.

[Shinrai]

Originally Posted by Kasonic

Jovec hit the nail on the head. Too good, either other warriors become useless and prot is the raid-cookie cutter, and encounters become too easy; too bad, we have what we have today.

Screw that, they've done that with warriors in PvP where mortal strike dominates. Why shouldn't warriors who want to be PvE tanks be able to have the same pride?

That said the shield mechanic is effectively impossible to balance. If it can block for enough to be meaningful in MC then it offers near immunity to player attacks and non-raid mobs. The right answer is to rethink the mechanic. The boneheaded answer is to remove shield discipline so that this scaling issue is concealed for a while longer. No surprise which Blizzard would pick.

[Dynalisia]

Originally Posted by Kasonic

Jovec hit the nail on the head. Too good, either other warriors become useless and prot is the raid-cookie cutter, and encounters become too easy; too bad, we have what we have today.

Protection doesn't need sheer numerical power, but utility. A targetable Shield Wall or something like Blessing of Sacrifice would go a long way to giving Prot a point. Shield Slam is a step in the right direction, but it's the wrong kind of ability.

If being Arms+ specced is a requirement for PvP prowess, why should Protective+ not be the very same for PvE? I really don't get the problem people are having with that.
I hear complaints like "Yeah, but then a Protective tank will turn out to be a requirement for every raid encounter, wah" and don't understand what the fuss is about. Isn't it exactly the same for PvP? If there was such a thing as guilds as a whole profiting from their members' PvP, wouldn't Offensive speccing be as good as a requirement also? (yeah, I'm sure protective warriors have their niche in PvP, but the point is obvious I think) If you want to do a good job tanking in PvE, shouldn't the choice for a Defensive build be a quick and useful one? Like choosing for an offensive build for PvP is at the moment?

I think a big part of these problems is being created by people that don't want to be inferior to any other of their class in both PvE and PvP and the fact that Blizzard actually caters to them at the moment.

Hell in the end it gets even more complicated when we get to issues like "both an offensive and a defensive build should be viable pvp AND pve builds", because they'll need to keep the class' role somewhat unique.

Oh dear, so much to think about, combining both PvE and PvP as an afterthought in a game of this type just doesn't seem like a very smart thing to do eh

[ElGallo]

Originally Posted by Dynalisia

If being Arms+ specced is a requirement for PvP prowess, why should Protective+ not be the very same for PvE? I really don't get the problem people are having with that.

Because under that scenario any warrior could only be viable in 1/2 the game, PvP or PvE. That would utterly suck for a lot of players. Right now, you can build a warrior that is very viable at both aspects, which I believe Blizzard wants.

The big mistake was making a tree called "protection" in the first place. As was pointed out above, an increased tanking talent tree for the best tanking class is pretty much guaranteed to be either worthless or required. Of those two options, "worthless" is probably healthier for the game.

They should axe the tree entirely and replace it with utility skills or something.

(btw, I completely agree that trying to balance PvP and PvE in the same game with the same basic rules was asking for lots of trouble)