Clearly, the vision is - USE REVENGE.
Devs - stop playing around the bush and revert everything, you failed with the changes and please admit it. Dead globals are the worst gameplay ever, and slow-paced gaming is the most unrewarding thing in the world.
Sad thing is Colossus was using Revenge yet Colossus is getting hit hardest by these nerfs. Honestly unless something major is done Colossus is a dead hero spec with all the rage nerfs.
No thank you Blizzard.
You are putting sub-par patches across the hole in the bottom of the boat that you chopped open yourself.
We don’t want these APM changes.
Revert.
Blizz i see youre tryna make revenge less expensive but still missing the mark.
Undo strategist changes and you’ll revive this whole spec. Don’t ruin it bc you refuse to admit being wrong.
Not going to lie, the APM as the rationale is an odd one because Paladins have equal or higher APM requirements.
Tested the PTB and some of the changes feel better. The lack of rage still hurts Colossus more than Mountain Thane and the random out of nowhere change to Colossal Might not getting stacks from Execute just is an odd change that is really not needed. The dmg boosts are nice. Nothing like lining up cooldowns and watching Demolish nail a target for 4 million +. Then hitting a sweet 1.3 million dmg Execute.
Warrior was fine in 11.0. We weren’t on top, that was Paladin, but I still loved the spec and had no desire to switch. The spec was actually FUN to play. If these changes go live, that fun is going to be significantly diminished.
Fun aside, speaking purely of mechanics, slowing the spec down is fine… but these current changes don’t just impact defense (which you attempt to compensate for), but also how well we perform offensively. This is a massive, spec-ruining change to our damage output, makes us less fun, and our defensive abilities are probably taking a small hit as well.
These fixes are solutions for a problem basically no one was complaining about. I haven’t met a single actual protection warrior main who thought “man, this spec has me pressing all these cool buttons, wish it could slow down.” We’re not a slow spec. I don’t want to slow down.
Frankly, these changes should just be rolled back entirely, complete revert. If that’s too much for Blizzard pride to handle, at least compensate our damage adequately so we don’t suddenly do dramatically less.
Hi Im a warrior and "man, this spec has me pressing all these cool buttons, wish it could slow down.”
Back in great war I got all my fingers blown off and its really hard to use these Jedi Mind tricks to get my mouse to move! My mind fingers ache so much…
-Signed No One!
I had a larger post, but it essentially boils down to this:
Why is the deadset direction to hinder gameplay, lower the amount of fun most warriors have with the spec, and dramatically reduce effective tankiness with a poorly thought out change?
I understand that there was a legitimate concern of APM and Rage Economy, but was there any foresight into the holistic nature of the changes and the reverberating impact that it would have across the specialization and its associated hero talents?
The nerfs came first, with no compensation or understanding of how negatively they impacted the players experience. The spec has seen some very soft buffs and compensations after all the feedback and discourse that has been mentioned, none of which were planned for of that I am sure. Can I expect to see protection warrior balancing to be on the backfoot, re-actively buffing every patch for the remainder of the expansion to account for unforeseen weakness in performance?
Where was any internal testing or delving into the nature of the changes prior to pushing it to the ptr public or was a design goal devised and met, and no further thoughts on the matter until the uproar from the testers?
Tenured and Veteran Protection Warriors have seen this exact song and dance in the past when it comes to Rage Economy discussions and it always, in almost every way, ends poorly for the player experience and die-hard and one-trick warriors end up in a bad place for the remainder of the expansion as small parts of the changes are walked back after “extensive testing and feedback.” Leading into the next expansion where we end up doing the same song and dance all over again.
I don’t mean to be so sour and assume the worst, but all previous interactions of this nature have lead me to be this jaded.
Please, for the good of the player experience:
Revert all of these unwanted and lukewarm changes. Delay any action on this until these changes can spend time cooking and percolating to provide no adverse changes to players’ experiences and can achieve the goals of reducing APM and Rage Economy concerns while also maintaining the current levels of tankiness and performance and not hinding the specialization for those who enjoy it currently.
Yes. If they just make Devastator and Strategist go back to 30% the rest of these changes are not a problem. While yes we are all talking about other things we want to see happen for the spec at the end of the day the easiest dub is to just put these back to 30% and we will be mostly fine with the changes xD
Right now if we Shield Slam and then Thunder Clap then Revenge we have a 51% chance of resetting SS (this is not accounting for Devastator just Strat). With the chances going down to 20% we end up with a 36% chance to reset SS after TC → Revenge…pretty rough
Just change the strategist nerf. One nerf at a time and see if the rage is still an issue. That is the overall problem. It’s too many nerfs at once when it comes to our main resource. We don’t have a secondary resource like death runes, chi, holy power, whatever. So nerfing so much rage generated in one go really hurts warriors in an unfun direction.
I will understand if the nerfs were to get Prot at a baseline between MT and Colossus, then buff it from there. Having one spec with vastly more rage than the other was an issue.
Now, if they don’t make more changes…
It’s still the issue 
.
Thats the issue it hardly effects Mountain Thane but it hurts Colossus to almost untankable levels.
Best change would be undo the Strategist nerf, then look at Mountain Thane and its rage generation. After that you can adjust accordingly without just killing Colossus in a general rage nerf.
I’m taking that Ignore Pain is at the center of these recent design decisions.
That being said, I wasn’t a fan when they introduced it many years ago, and I still dislike it. I wouldn’t mind rolling its functionality in somehow and just dropping the spell entirely.
I’m also all for slowing down the spec, there are too many things to keep track already in M+, both visually and mentally. I’d love to be a brick wall again, not worrying about whether I’m doing enough damage, just being as tanky as possible. I don’t care if that’s not high APM or ‘engaging’.
I derive enjoyment from keeping threat and not dying. That’s it.
I know there are various play styles and ways people enjoy the game though, so I can’t demand any one spec cater specifically to my tastes, but I’ve played my warrior since 2004 and I just don’t see myself playing anything else.
We hear you Tunk, although nothing is forcing you not to spam the abilities. There I still will stand that we shouldn’t adjust down, ever as you hit both parties. Even if they keep the rage nerfs as they are now but revert the Strategist so we can have that extra ability to have no empty globals, you can still play slower at a lower level and achieve the same results. I doubt we will high so much less APM anyway, we will just spam IP less.
As for the IP, there are only rare occasions where I actually care about IP/how much I have stacked before hit - Ansurek Mythic. In any other content, I don’t care about that ability or absorb it provides, I just dump exceed rage into it. Blizzard is just looking at everything from some weird perspective and that is the main problem here.
Agreed, and if they do adjust rage up, they need to do it outside of hero talents. Bears are in the same place and trying to enjoy Druid of the Claw just feels so raged starved that its not worth the hassle.
Hello! We’ve continued to monitor feedback and PTR data, and we want to provide an update on Protection Warrior development.
As noted previously, our goal with the Protection Warrior changes is to bring the APM requirement of the spec down to reduce the performance gap the high APM creates.
We initially made significant adjustments to both burst and sustained Rage generation, as well as Shield Slam resets via Devastator and Strategist. We’ve since made adjustments as we fix bugs and evaluate the actual outcome of the changes versus our expectations.
Now that most of the dust has settled, we feel that we overshot the initial nerf to Shield Slam reset chance. In next week’s PTR build, it will be increased to 25%. After playing with this change, we feel that this gets Protection Warrior to where we want it to be-- an active and engaging playstyle without the rotation being dominated by too-frequent Shield Slam resets.
Thank you for your helpful feedback.
We’ll continue make tuning adjustments as needed.
Normally, I would consider this anchoring, but with the other changes, this doesn’t sound awful in my head. I am willing to test it out. Thanks for the communication.
Edit: I do want to add that Indomitable, Anger Management, and Violent Outburst may still need to be looked at. Also, as I have mentioned multiple times in this thread. Storm shield needs a balance pass. 600k shields next season are going to be laughable. Intervene wasn’t worth the gcd in >12 last season with how poorly tuned it was. It probably won’t be worth the gcd in a 10 next season. My suggestion is make it a meaningful value (or a flat DR, which is what I would recommend as it scales better in higher content and requires less season over season tuning) and add a longer cooldown like you did with Storm Bolts if you are worried about a 30s cooldown being too valuable.
Ok, so you came here - broke what you could, and made some ‘minor’ adjustments to compensate. Why bother in the first place, higher APM is used in higher levels of content, you don’t need that for heroic or delves… Just saying…
Anyway, as you look like a ‘take it or get lost’ kind of vibe, why not look at the talents, and utility (lack of it)? We needed help in other places instead of what we did get.