MOUNTAIN THANE
I’ll come out directly saying I don’t mind so much the idea of leaning on the concepts of Thunder Clap and Stormstrike damage. As a Protection OTP, Thunder Clap is not an unfamiliar thematic choice, but I can’t say much about Mountain Thane itself inspires me on a level that makes me any more or less excited to play it. Moreover, the choices presented do not feel like they afford Warrior anything they don’t already have - they aren’t bad, I should stress, but they are very middling in how they come across. They don’t feel like they’ll change how I play at all.
WARRIOR HERO TALENTS/CATEGORIES
I applaud overall performance in tank balance being extremely close, however, the homogeny in numeric throughput means taking Warrior forgoes any number of additional utilities for your raid group that can make higher-end progression or keys much less stressful, or at least serve to contribute more.
Our Hero Talents need to do one of two things, honestly:
- Cement our role as the highest damage tank with strong proactive DR
- Begin to provide our class with unique utilities that make us more compelling to choose
Instead of trying to wedge defensive utility on them, make them offensive utility, or ones that synergize with the skill expression in our kit.
Attack Order
Range 40 yards
Cooldown 1 minute
You issue an order to your allies to focus all their fire on your target. For the next A seconds, the target takes an additional X% damage. The duration of this effect extends it by Y seconds for every Z rage you spend.
Or group utility that improves other people’s abilities like Augvoker does CC with Oppressing Roar.
Bolstering Command
Range 20 yards
Cooldown 2 minutes
A great, stentorian bellow commands cohesion and unity amid your allies. The next “raid cooldown” cast has its duration increased by 50%, and adds 2 seconds to existing effects.
This is the kind of thing I mean. We have a real opportunity in these hero talents to make a niche for warrior that can help bridge the divide we’ve long suffered by lacking healing and defensive utility by giving us utility all our own.
I would have preferred to see more battlefield leader type themes in one of our trees, and while I can optimistically hold out hope it’ll be the case for Colossus, it doesn’t quite scream that by its name.
Hell, even letting us stand alongside monks as the debuff provider for physical damage % wouldn’t be a leap for us, as that was part of our job for a large majority of Warrior’s formative development from Classic and TBC.