11.2 Prot talent tree

Classes Warrior
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Why is Tough as Nails (TaN) locked behind Thunderlord? I take talent builds from sites like Wowhead & Icy Veins with a grain of salt, usually changing them up to fit my playstyle (though it’s not like we have much choice anymore), but when Prot Warrior, whose main shtick is blocking everything with a shield, has none of the talent builds pick the talent that makes your blocks do damage & bonus threat, you know there is something wrong with the talent layout or the talent, and imo, TaN is pretty good so that only leaves one option there.

To me there are two options to improve the layout, either option 1) Swap the position of TaN with Focused Vigor (FV) or Enduring Alacrity (EA); or option 2) Make Enduring Defenses (ED) 1 point from 2, and place TaN between ED and Shield Specialization, you can then have some other talent take the spot where TaN is currently if you want to keep the whole symmetrical talent layout theme going. With option 2 you could also have FV/EA connected to TaN rather than ED.

Now that I have made my suggestion, I’ll get back to my question, was the reasoning to have TaN off in the boonies the same reasoning behind having Execute talents spread out randomly around the talent tree? I’ll throw in a bonus question, why not just roll Thunderlord into the Mountain Thane hero tree?

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Prot talent positioning is the one of the most asinine changes they’ve made for no apparent reason.

-Tough as Nails tied to Demo Shout which doesn’t interact with blocking at all.
-Best served cold (revenge talent) tied to devastator instead of Revenge RIGHT ABOVE IT.
-Instigate tied to Strategist instead of Devastator.
-Sudden Death tied to Rend… ???
-Massacre tied to Shield wall talents
-Shield Wall talents required for Shield charge which is off on its own not tied to any blocking talents.
-Punish not tied to brace for impact or or strategist

So many seemingly random talent positioning choices in 11.2. It LOOKS like you have a lot of talent points to play with, but to get anywhere in the tree you have to waste a ton of talents. There’s no rhyme or reason of "this area is offense with execute talents, this area is defense with shield wall and dmg reduction talents, this area is block stuff, this area is shield slam stuff, etc. It’s just all vomited out at random.
It’s incredibly frustrating how restrictive this tree suddenly became, esp since it was their goal to move away from that feeling.

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Last time I checked a damage meter (first raid of this exp) TaN did so little damage it might as well have been healing the enemy. As for talent positions, ya, it’s crazy. Some execute talents far to one side, some far to the other. Not to mention all our talents that just make a move hit harder…WOW!!!

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Short Version:

  • We lost more optionality than we gained and the pathing is even more nonsensical than before.
  • Focused Vigor, Shield Specialization, Enduring Alacrity, and Unyeilding Stance should be axed and their capacity siphoned into baseline strength and/or Brutal Vitality / Fueled by Violence, Brace for Impact, and Punish (which should also have its suppression scale with SS damage —while retaining the current %DR as minimum— and therefore have more gameplay impact).
  • I still don’t think Blood and Thunder should exist, on Arms or Prot; it’s redundant with Deep Wounds and siphons damage from it while scaling worse. Outside of ST fights, Rend should be a niche option for niche builds (Bloodsurge and Fueled by Violence, adjusted to benefit from Rend) that rewards manual multi-DoTing.
  • Consolidating small gameplay loop adjustments (such as Show of Force into Better Served Cold) instead of empowering them enough to be decent but optional gains, especially where they pull away from the power given per the original talent’s intent (because it remains an optional talent anyways and cannot therefore be made overpowered), helps nothing.
  • Enduring Defenses being both obligatory (as it reduces then degrades alternatives like Bolster and Heavy Repercussions) and 2-point feels especially awful.
Longer Version

I’d really like to see Enduring Defenses compressed and maybe given an opposite choice in a faster Shield Block cooldown. And I’d like almost every stat-stick talent removed, made a split choice that’s generally non-optimal or made wholly avoidable through placement.

Personally, I’ve never really liked that all Prot builds essentially go towards 100% Shield Block uptime rather than focusing on making more powerful but sparing use of that active mit. Instead, we just… slow amp via Brace for Impact and the like.

  • I’d almost like it if we could take a talent that, say… reduced the effectiveness of non-critical Blocks but caused all attacks that deal less than 40% (exact value TBR) of their original damage to apply no additional negative effects. Stack Shield Block, Ignore Pain, and any among a Shield Wall, Demo Shout, or a critical block —> no bleeds, slows, vulnerability, etc., taken, allowing for some unique anti-physical cheese opposite the likes of DK’s AMS.
  • Or, heck, to even just have Block Value additionally reduce incoming damage flatly after its percentile mitigation during Shield Block. Just anything to give it a bit more character beyond guaranteeing your otherwise RNG mitigation.
  • As they stand right now, it’d almost make more sense to me that Ignore Pain would be the rarer and uncapped mitigation while Shield Block would be the stronger %DR with a cap (with your shield eventually knocked aside), but that’s thematics with no actual gameplay impact so /shrug.

Tbh, even obligatory and allegedly “iconic” talents like Brace for Impact and Punish don’t feel that interesting. Punish doesn’t scale with Shield Slam’s damage dealt and is therefore only noticeable vs. bosses-that-are-currently-tankbusting-you. Similarly, Brace for Impact feels more negligible than the 8% Leech-Barrier of Brutal Vitality not only because 15% more of 40% really is slightly less than 8% and BfI’s bonus block mit does nothing against magic, but (and more importantly imo) also because there’s a bit of non-rote playflow involved in saving up Rage enough to pop Ignore Pain before burst and reapplying it often enough not to waste that Leech-Barrier advantage… while Punish’s effects are mostly coincidental to basic rote rotation.

Accordingly, I’d really like to see all three of those obligatory talents — Brace for Impact, Punish, and Fueled by Violence / Brutal Vitality — amped up a bit in place of Focused Vigor, Shield Specialization, Enduring Alacrity, and Unyielding Stance.

While we’re at it… are/were these talents actually fun for any gameplay reason to anyone (including what you can get out of excess resources in terms of Execute frequency, or what timely burst it can provide, etc.), or only ever for their capacity:

  • Rend (as the 1–5 target passive second layer of Deep Wounds that makes Prot take an extra GCD to reach normal damage and might well ultimately just makes Prot scale slightly worse at 6+ targets… or as the thing to actively maintain on focus targets that used to be in a few expansions)
  • Violent Outburst
  • Instigate
  • Into the Fray (as compared to just, say, Vanguard providing 5% more of each secondary stat baseline)
  • Indomitable
  • Juggernaut (removed; including if we could have gotten something far faster to reach max ramp)
  • Show of Force (removed/consolidated)
  • Dance of Death (removed; e.g., in terms of delaying Ravager slightly in packs with focus targeting against squishies / if the effect had been stronger)
  • Storm of Steel (removed; here considering it mostly for its Rage-on-demand and therefore synergy with Execute builds)
  • Battering Ram (removed; also interested in the pre-nerf AA rate increase for the glut of Shield Slam refreshes)

For my part, Indomitable and Storm of Steel felt like they had interesting enough impact, while Instigate made rotation feel less underwhelming in ST, but Battering Ram was barely enough to care about even pre-nerf, and Show of Force only mattered in combination with Unstoppable Force (as reason to ready more Rage before and use Shield Slam only maintain Brace for Impact at 4+ enemies if I could afford it) but still added a bit of interest as an optional “ideally, use X before each Y” talent. I used WA to track Violent Outburst but it rarely even seemed as rewarding to track as Show of Force.

Anywho, just related to what I’d ideally replace the passive talents with, if not just opening up pathing while having 2–4 fewer nodes.

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Yeah, I see what you mean, I just went and checked some of the damage logs I had left over from before the patch and it does 0.4% - 2.2% damage, usually around 0.8%. but my logs were mostly mob fights, the best it did in my logs was from the Gobfather world boss, my weapon enchant does more than it most of the time.

I remember it doing a lot more in previous expansions but now it seems most of the damage is mitigated by enemy armor and now I wonder how much it benefits threat generation. Give me back some decent thorns damage dang it :frowning:

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