No, this isn’t a joke/meme/troll. Trying it out for myself, I’m genuinely finding Prot to be extremely effective at solo questing. At least, once you hit level 16 and get the Shield Block ability.
Two crucial talents:
Shield Specialization, so you get 5 rage for free every time you block.
Improved Revenge, +60% damage on Revenge, which was baseline buffed to do a ton more damage.
Once you get Shield Block at level 16, you can pretty much spam Revenge on cooldown. And since you have Shield Specialization, those two blocks give you +10 rage, making Shield Block essentially free. This also has the benefit of solving the “rage starvation” issue that many Warriors run into. Shield Block is free, and Revenge only costs 5 rage. You’ve got plenty of spare rage to throw in other abilities like Rend, Demo shout, even Thunderclap.
Since you’re in defensive stance, and wearing a shield, and blocking so many attacks, you take very little damage. Fighting an equal level mob would only cost about 5% of my health. It’s nuts. And since Revenge is not based on weapon damage (I think?) you don’t need a fancy blue weapon either. The fat +60% from the talent makes it hit for really good damage; it’s arguably the highest damage ability you have in this level range after 3/3 points in the talent. At level 17, it was hitting for about 70 damage, and that’s with no Sunders up.
Try it out, it almost feels like a cheat code for Warrior leveling. Something to break up the monotony of swinging a big stick and hitting weakass Rend/Sunder while you pray for overpower procs.
Almost inclined to say those two Talents are the bread and butter for leveling and everything else could just go into Arms/Fury, unless you look for more Threat in Leveling Dungeons or the QoL of Deff Stance Charge (although Bstance Charge into Dstance swap with improved Tact Mastery does virtually the same thing with a few more inoffensive steps).
Didn’t you know? The exp from killing lower level mobs is much sharper of a drop off now, because reasons I guess. Killing lower level on Forever yields less than you’d get in classc/era.
Correct. It does a preset amount of damage per rank, with a small amount of additional AP scaling added in Forever.
In fact, the only abilities Protection Warriors have that use weapon damage at all are Heroic Strike, Cleave, and Deep Wounds, none of which are particularly relevant which leveling. Although auto-attack damage is still meaningful, you can use just about any weapon (even daggers), since normalization means they all result in the same amount of rage over time.
Master of Defense is also very good, especially when tanking multiple enemies. I still prefer Vanguard over Tactical Mastery as well, and that will naturally lead you to Focused Rage, Bastion, and Shield Slam, all of which are quite good.
Unless you’re dual wielding, I don’t think Arms or Fury talents are particularly impactful until you get to at least 30 or usually 40. The current numbers indicate Shield Slam is going to out damage and cost less rage than Bloodthirst or Mortal Strike though, so Protection could very well remain the better leveling spec all the way to 60.
It’s a relative statement, perhaps not small in comparison to other abilities, but not a majority of AP to damage. I believe Thunder Clap is 0.068, Rend is 0.189, Revenge is 0.25, Bloodthirst is 0.45, etc.
Revenge definitely does a lot of damage for the spec, as has already been pointed out.
And then when you and in the 60% scaling 25% becomes 40% if you add in enrage and bastion you’ve almost entirely negates the loss to def stance and the scaling is 44% of AP meaning it hits just a hair lighter than bloodthirst at 1/15th the cost (after focused rage)
To be fair, Bloodthirst is also generally considered a mediocre attack, but again relative statement. We can all agree that Revenge is doing a lot of heavy lifting for Protection.
I have some wishful thinking on how practical some of the Arms or Fury stuff could be, depending on what you do with it.. but. Yeah. More and more inclined to agree and see reason, that full Prot will probably just be the way to 60 and then you converge more into what you want to do.
Fair enough. I was screaming about rage economy from day one of beta and some people still haven’t caught on that it’s completely different in Forever either.
Yeah Shield Slam’s initial damage is kind of nutty, curious to see if that makes it to live or they don’t readjust somewhere.
There are so many things they could do to improve the early Arms/Fury experience, though it’s a careful balancing act of making them accessible at low levels without becoming core parts of the endgame rotation for both specs.
For example, Taste for Blood (or even its lesser cousin, Bloodthrill) becoming available as a 2 point talent around level 15 would be fantastic for early leveling, but without a strict stipulation (like 2h weapon requirement) it’s all but certain that Arms and Fury would play around it at level 60.
Similarly instant Slam becoming accessible at low levels would also pretty much ensure that it becomes a part of Fury’s rotation.
These wouldn’t necessarily be bad things, but they are considerations. At least Prot is still a good option… for now.
