So I don’t post often but I wanted to see if anyone else was on the same page here.
Looking to Shadowlands, I really wanted to main Prot Warrior but the depruning/changes really have me struggling with that choice from a pure gameplay perspective.
I feel like Prot has become a bit of a mess.
There’s just too many buttons/abilities that look and feel the same and the spec in general feels like it doesn’t know exactly what the core identity is supposed to be.
Examples of Buttons that “Feel” Similar and could be consolidated:
Cooldowns:
-Rallying Cry
-Last Stand
-Shield Wall
-Avatar
-Demoralizing Shout
Movement:
-Charge
-Intervene
-Heroic Leap
Throws:
-Shattering Throw
-Heroic Throw
Spending Rage on AOE Threat:
-Revenge
-Whirlwind
Random situational (only usable under limited conditions):
-Victory Rush
-Execute
At its core, I BELIEVE the spec it trying to be a builder/spender with rage where you dump in to two main categories: shield block (primary), ignore pain (secondary), and revenge (DPS).
However, there’s just so many extra/duplicated noise abilities now that makes this spec a confusing and difficult slog to play.
/end rant
Let me know your thoughts.
3 Likes
Protection is awesome, go away.
Only things that I agree with - charge/intervene and whirrrrllllwind, which isn’t even on my action bar.
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General comment first: Are you even aware of the design goal for classes in Shadowlands and how we got here? They trimmed down abilities, a lot, this upset a good deal of the playerbase, and they are deliberately scaling that back. Yeah, there’s more abilities, that’s intentional.
Rallying Cry is a raid survivability cooldown.
Avatar is a dps cooldown.
Demoralizing Shout is a debuff and a major part of the rotation when talented with booming voice, which most people do.
Last Stand and Shield Wall are the only two that are actually both in the same category, personal survivability, and they go about it in very different ways.
No? 3 very different ways of moving about the battlefield. You could combine charge and intervene the way they were before, but that has it’s own issues, particularly when they’re classwide now.
The only thing these two have in common is they’re ranged abilities with the word ‘throw’ in their name. Is this part really serious? Ones a shield counter on a 3 minute cooldown, the other is a 6 second cooldown that exists for no other purpose than high threat at range, which would otherwise be a serious gap in prot’s toolkit.
Sure ok.
One is a heal and the other is a powerful single target damage spender. They have nothing in common.
7 Likes
My eyes are bleeding right now. PLEASE explain to me how Shield wall, Last stand and avatar are at all the same. How is revenge and whirlwind at ALL the same. Please do a LITTLE research before posting something like this.
What you just said is like saying Consecration and Divine storm are the same ability because theyre both AoE spells… please
2 Likes
You’re off your rocker mate.
6 Likes
Wow, glad to know the player base is friendly as always!
So one point of clarification, I’m aware there are slight differences between abilities. My comment was on overall feel when playing.
Its not that were unfriendly. Try seeing it from our perspective. A Paladin comes in, with a negative post saying something inflamitory and factually incorrect. The abilities listed are not at all similar and if you are using those abilities interchangeably then you arent playing the class correctly. Your tone came across as outrage and it seems it has been met with outrage.
1 Like
So while I posted from my pally on the op, for a bit of background, I’ve played warrior quite a bit (3 lvl 50) and have played since vanilla so I’m aware of the pruning/depruning history as well as the nuances between abilities.
That wasn’t really my argument here.
Again, if you take it from a macro level, as an example all of the below have the same general result: button you can press every 1-4 min to reduce damage/increase rage. For me, I was saying that it feels clunky from a gameplay flow to have so many buttons dedicated to things that “feel” similar.
-Rallying Cry
-Last Stand
-Shield Wall
-Avatar
-Demoralizing Shout
Okay, I recognize that you have this opinion. But The abilities you’re listing is where you lose me.
-Rallying cry is a temp health buff for you and allies, useful for yourself and those around you.
-Last stand is a primary defensive which boosts our max HP AND a heal for that amount to yourself. This provides us with a great “oh crap” button, gives healers a chance to heal us back up.
-Shield wall is a percentage damage reduction. Great for preemptive reaction to incoming damage.
-Avatar has a bit of defense but it buffs our damage which is pretty nice to have as a tank.
-Demo shout reduces the damage the enemy deals to you and gives you a burst of rage with the talent. This is a lower CD and lower impact damage reduction to smooth the incoming damage you take on bigger pulls and in general.
Each of these abilities has their place. Yes some part of a spell might overlap with another, but that doesnt mean they are cumbersome or needless extra. Each has their place.
The most similar spells are rallying cry and last stand. But to point at those two and say theyre the same is like pointing to Chain heal and Healing wave as the same skill because they both heal, and yet are useful for completely different things. I see what you’re saying, and how you could come to this conclusion, but I just think you’re dead wrong in this regard.
2 Likes
Id like Rallying Cry to just become a passive aura, like the Guardian Druid aura Den Mother.
Your desired “feel of playing” appears to be league of legends or some other literal 4-button game.
1 Like
It literally sounds like you’re saying you want a pair of buttons just labeled ‘Survive!’ and ‘Pew!’. If a variety of tools for a variety of situations is ‘clunky’ (whatever that means) then you probably just need an easier or simpler game.
3 Likes
You forgot the button labaled “Move!” and “throw!”
2 Likes
Regarding Rallying Cry and Last Stand, Rallying Cry is a huge raid cooldown. It buffs the health of your raid, allowing you to save someone from death or anticipate raidwide damage spikes.
As far as Last Stand - I use it as a personal cooldown, obviously, as a sustain/heal, and as an oh Sh-- button.
I like having these two separate abilities because it allows me to, say, pop rallying cry for +15% max health, then Last Stand for +30% max health and a +30% health heal, then pop, say, Impending Victory for a +30% heal. My understanding is that these abilities modifying your max health will affect your % based heals, meaning you can combine them for bigger heals.
Conversely, I might just want to use Rallying Cry because someone hit 5% health on a damage spike, whereas I am at full health.
The goofiest thing in the OP was equating Shattering Throw and Heroic Throw. First of all, I use Heroic Throw all the time, and it having no cooldown now is a godsend. Every pull should begin by tab targeting and casting Heroic Throw on each enemy. Heroic Throw is important for holding aggro when kiting, say, Obelisk bosses in M+. It’s also important for holding or building threat on caster mobs when they are out of melee range. It has a huge burst threat modifier and is nearly always worth the GCD because its min-range guarantees it’s going to be used on mobs you otherwise cannot reach in melee range.
Shattering Throw breaks immunities. Enough said. Not even remotely comparable.
Heroic Throw isn’t even used for the damage, it’s used for the threat.
1 Like
If it’s overwhelming then just add the essentials to your bars and forget the rest. Whirlwind, Shattering Throw, and Execute? Pretend like they don’t exist.
Once you’re comfortable with the spec you can add them back to your bars and get a feel for how to use them.
I’m always of the opinion it’s better to have too many buttons than not enough. You can always ignore abilities and just focus on what’s essential to the spec, but when you’re short on abilities there’s nothing you can do about your neutered state.
Whirlwind, execute, and shattering throw can be safely discarded. Of those three, execute is the only one I’m using (and boy am I, nothing like 4k-7k crits followed by a victory rush proc).
As has been stated before, whirlywind does less damage than revenge or t clap and literally has no reason for existing in prot spec in its current form. The only possible use right now would be if you had to pick up mobs standing behind you and t clap was on CD.
Shattering throw is almost too situational and such a long CD there is almost no lost value from dropping it from your bars when tanking, plus cast timers make you vulnerable to physical damage. This is an (almost) exclusively pvp utility.
The other stuff mentioned - rallying cry, last stand, demo shout, shield wall, heroic throw - these ARE baseline toolkit abilities that should be keybound individually and used in every dungeon. Not using them is a huge loss to your performance and not playing your spec correctly. The only one of these abilities I would recommend keeping on a rainy day keybound would be heroic throw if you’re still working on how to tank, and focus on spamming it when kiting or using it to pull.
Not sure how any one them are the same, they do different things when I press them 