#FeelsBadMan
Also, am I the only one that just finds prot’s rotation clunky AF?
I tried tanking on my warrior but I quickly realized that I would never enjoy this rotation.
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Well the word “clunky” lost all meaning when people started using it as the de facto buzzword for “anything I don’t like.” So there’s that.
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Overall poor flow of abilities into each other, CDs that either don’t line up and/or empty GCDs.
Could easily come down to preference or talents, but I enjoy both DPS specs and other tanks but prot feels awful to play for me, and I really wanted to tank on my warrior, too.
What does that mean, dude.
Are you using Devastator or something else?
Empty GCDs? Funny, I don’t have a single empty GCD in my build.
What is sword and board.
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I’m assuming you’re running Devastator but not using a swing timer?
There are other potential reasons, of course—from just the “unintuitive” feeling of your reward for procs being only yet another single-target generator, which means meaningful threat is delayed by yet another GCD, to the RNG-related frustrations of Thunderclap coming up again only after your AAs have just reset Shield Slam, thus reducing your in-practice throughput from what you had expected—but learning to play around Devastator’s swing timer (and AA-based resets) seems to mitigate a majority of concerns in regards to a “clunky Prot rotation”.
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Here’s the population of unique tanks that have done a 15+ key so far this season:
40.8% are Demon Hunters
16.9% are Paladins
16.5% are Monks
11.7% are Druids
9.6% are Death Knights
4.5% are Warriors
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It’s not a secret that demon hunters are the best tank in the current meta by a country mile.
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It’s great… until the level cap. We don’t generate rage from taking damage anymore, and we don’t deal any real damage, either–our only claim to fame from BfA.
The shifted from the reactive playstyle to what is really just an agonizingly slow rage dump akin to Arms, where there’s a lot of downtime because we’re fishing for Shield Slam resets. We generate so little rage right now that now we can’t effectively dump into Ignore Pain when Shield Block is down–a complete reversal from WoD. Couple this with our poor magic mitigation tools and no self-sustain, and you’ve got Diet VDH.
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The problem, that I believe, with warriors are numerical and mechanical
On the numbers front there are two issues: The first is that we just don’t generate enough rage with our current rage generation and our rage consumption is far too much to sustain a flowing gameplay rotation and experience. The second is that we just don’t deal enough damage currently.
Mechanically: Our rotation is hamstrung by the fact that Revenge is in our core rotation and costs rage. So when we need to turtle and use our defensive abilities against heavy oncoming damage it penalizes our already low amount of damage output even more. The basic rotation should be function and flow well and Revenge should be an additional damage button to insert into our rotation via use of a free proc, or if we want to convert excess rage to damage. This also is our classic feel back when we had Heroic Strike and Cleave as baseline abilities.
So to fix the Mechanical:
Whirl Wind
Whirl Wind takes Revenge’s place in the rotation. It hits all targets, dealing 23%*3 damage to the first 5 targets and reduced damage beyond 5 targets, just like revenge currently does. It now generates 4 rage plus 1 rage for the each target hit, up to 5 targets hit by whirl wind. Has a 3 second cooldown.
This gives us a similar-to-fury Whirl Wind and links the ability into the Protection Warrior. This means that all warrior specs use Whirl Wind and is core to their rotation. The small cooldown means that it is the “every other GCD” filler and generates a small amount of rage, between 5 and 9 depending on the amount of targets hit. Whirl Wind does not reset Shield Slam.
Shield Slam
Shield Slam increased from 85% attack power to 110% attack power. Shield Slam just needs to do more damage.
Thunder Clap
Thunder Clap rage generation increased. It can have its place in the rotation as a lower damage, higher rage generation skill that has talents to make it’s damage better. Whirl Wind will do more damage, but generate less rage on single targets.
Revenge
Revenge damage massively increased. Rage cost increased to prevent spamming. The damage needs to be high enough to want to use over everything else, save shield slam. Damage increased from 63% to 95%. Rage cost increased to 30 rage.
This would lead to REVENGE! procs being incredibly desirable and want to be pressed when it lights up. It also would allow warriors to convert excess rage generated into pretty good damage on ST or AE. Cooldown reverted to BFA design, with 3s cooldown and procs from parry/dodge.
This leaves us with the core offensive abilities of:
Whirl Wind
Thunder Clap
Shield Slam
Devastate
Revenge
Execute
Mastery: Critical Block needs to go too. We’ve had this effect since WotLK and it can stay as a passive to the spec, but at a flat chance or one equal to our critical strike chance, but it needs to be changed in order to make room for a new mastery that actually improves our durability on both the blocking and ignore pain fronts.
Mastery: Enduring Fortitude
Increases Block Value, Ignore Pain damage reduction, and attack power.
Any current increase in block chance provided by our mastery is straight up wasted since Shield Block is 100% chance to block. Increasing our block value makes us sturdier inside and outside of shield block and ignore pain having a higher damage reduction makes sense as it is the “big” rage drain DR we have.
Shield Block
Cost reduced to 10 rage.
Ignore Pain
Actually not bad, but it feels bad currently due to our lackluster rage generation and how fast it disappears. More rage to use it and an increase from mastery would make it very good to use.
These changes would allow for warriors to have a solid rotation that is fun to use and allows us to fuel our damage like other tanks, but also allow for us to either consume rage and do more damage by substituting revenge in for Thunder Clap or Revenge when we don’t need to hit Ignore Pain or Shield Block, or pool rage for massive incoming damage by chaining Ignore Pains and a much more available Shield Block. We have a dynamic rotation with resets to Shield Slam from Devastate/Devastator, Thunder Clap, and Revenge (when used), and Free Revenge procs. The ability to block damage, ignore pain, and high default armor outside of active mitigation allows for us to be incredibly durable and versatile in our ability to mitigate damage.
Our niche as a tank would be a high damage/mitigation tank with good mobility, but lackluster group support, entirely dependent on healers for recovery of health, and minimal enemy control outside of shock wave.
6 Likes
It’s a secret to Ion Hazzikostas who hasn’t touched tank balance in weeks and has provided no hint to the contrary, even after a sloppy PvP balance patch.
I have absolutely no idea what’s in that man’s brain, but he isn’t up for this.
They absolutely need new class designers.
There is no communication, next to no feedback since release. They don’t even talk about the state of class design, nor do they engage with the players or explain their reasoning. At least Greg Street posted his thoughts, even when they were wrong.
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Maybe Protection should go to a cd based spec for rotation and use Rage just for the defensives.
Or generate more rage from blocks, parries and dodges.
We’re currently already using a CD based spec rotation when devastator is taken. We lack a filler and all offensive skills are on a cooldown.
I agree we need more rage generation from somewhere, but I also believe that we need to reduce our rage consumption from our core rotation.
Our defensive skills consume a massive amount of rage for their effects. I can stand one or the other having a hefty rage cost, but not both. Shield Block shouldn’t be prohibitively costly as it has a cooldown. Ignore Pain can be costly and fill a role as a Rage Dump styled-defensive since it has a 1s cooldown and a cap on its absorb value.
I’d personally prefer that most tanks have a bit more ability to flex between offensive and defensive throughput, as ProtWar has.
Though, if we were to go that route, I'd maybe like to see them be free on rotation, but then Rage allow you to "skip" CDs.
For instance, let’s say Revenge, Thunderclap, Shield Slam, Shield Block, and Spell Reflection start on a 3-, 4-, 6-, 10-, and globals CD, respectively (baseline: 4.5, 6, 15, seconds). Rather than a chance to reset ShS, each global spent by non-shield skills reduce the cooldown on shield skills by a global. Shield Block and Spell Reflection are each nerfed (ShB duration and SpR reflect cap, as not to be OP against Tyrannical caster bosses) to compensate, but in a fashion that keeps ShB net neutral and actually still buffs SpR a bit. Meanwhile, all skills cost, let’s say… 10 or 15 Rage per GCD’s worth of CD skipped.
The idea then is that you want to keep your skills desynced by sometimes using them a bit early, so that you never waste a readied skill, while trading between Rage generated (which affords more non-shield skills over time) and non-shield skills used enough to maximize effective Shield Block and Spell Reflection uptime. The complexity of that is of course doubled simply because Shield Slam essentially loses 2 GCDs of CD per GCD’s time (i.e. not only does Shield Slam’s CD tick down by a GCD over a Revenge cast, but Revenge cast reduces it by another GCD’s time, or 1.5 seconds at 0% Haste).
Ignore Pain and Devastate would remain your (only) no-CD skills. (Though, let’s say we put Ignore Pain at a more convenient cost of 20 + half one’s remaining total Rage for 20-60 Rage spent.)
So, greater QoL on cold opens than present, but also far more nuance available.
An opener and its following flow (pre borrowed powers) would then look something like this (no AA-based Rage):
- Charge in for 20 Rage. [20]
- Shield Block and Revenge, each free. [20; Rev in 3, ShB in 9]
- Shield Slam for 15 Rage. [35; Rev in 2, ShB in 8]
- Thunder Clap for 5 Rage. [40; Rev in 1, ShB in 6, ShS in 3, TC in 3]
- Revenge, free. [40; Rev in 3, Shb in 4, ShS in 1, TC in 2]
- Shield Slam for 15 Rage; [55; Rev in 2, ShB in 3, TC in 1, ShS in 6]
- Thunder Clap for 5 Rage; [60; Rev in 1, ShB in 1, TC in 6, ShS in 4]
- Shield Block and Revenge, free. [60; Rev in 3, ShB in 9, TC in 5, ShS in 2]
- Shield Slam at t-1, net +5 Rage. [65; Rev in 2, ShB in 8, TC in 4, ShS in 6]
- Revenge at t-1, -10 Rage. [55; Rev in 3, ShB in 6, TC in 3, ShS in 5]
- Devastate. [55; Rev in 2, ShB in 4, TC in 2, ShS in 3.
- Thunder Clap at t-1, -5 Rage. [50; Rev in 1, ShB in 2, ShS in 1]
- Shield Slam, +15 Rage [65; Rev ready, ShB in 1, ShS in 6.]
- Shield Block, then Revenge. [65; Rev in 3, ShB in 9, ShS in 4.]
Etc., etc. Note that you’d be spending a fair bit on either accelerating your defensive CDs or on Ignore Pain, however.
- Even in the pandemic margin of Shield Block, accelerating Shield Block would, in this setup, only be worth doing (outside of severe danger) when having enough Rage standing to smooth your rotation (e.g. at least as many globals skippable as are between you and your next Shield Slam, given acceleration). These rotational concerns add to its decision-making against Ignore Pain, the one remaining no-CD defensive, atop its inherent considerations…
- e.g. whereas most sources of percentile mitigation stack multiplicatively (have additive eHP increases, but do not additively increase the relative value of healing done to you) [a 20% reduction and a 50% reduction together make for .8x * .5x, or .4x damage taken, or a 60% reduction], Ignore Pain provides flat total mitigation and thus doesn’t lose anything from the maximum damage it could mitigate over a period of time when stacked with other CDs., unless it literally times out.
/spitball_explanatory_rant_done
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Are you serious? You do realize that you don’t have to take Devastator.
Someone saying Prot doesn’t have a filler ability, God help me what is this.
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Didn’tcha know? Neither does Havoc.
I wanted to understand what you posted but it was just too much XD
But still, last time I played protection was in the end of legion to get my Mage Tower and Proving Ground and it was kinda cool to play. With the right ammount of haste I could manage to have a 85% uptime in Shield Block and wasnt concerned about Rage to use abilities.
I playes Prot again in BfA and it was a slug. Slow and dull. No stimulation at all. It was like standing there in front of mobs waiting around. I never picked devastator because it just made everything even worse.
Maybe autoattacks should generate rage just like Arms and Fury, and the damage received be a plus on top of that to power up the defensives exactly when you are being punished.
I wanna add this:
Sound effects for Warriors are trash. Specially for Protection. Total garbage.
I’m sorry. I should have posted warnings before loading a hide block with that much technical garbage. In my (only) defense, it started out as a simple idea. I just didn’t realize how difficult the gameplay changes it’d cause would be to explain.
Gasp. I actually like Revenge and Condemn.
…I’ll defend nothing further.
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I like hearing the thump 42,000 times when you pop shield block
Honest question,
Has warrior changed for better or worse since ignore pain was added into the kit? I played Protection Warrior since BC and stopped in WoD. One thing I see is Prot Warrior being not as used as each expansion passes. I loved the old playstyle with the most fun being WotLK with revenge procs. I was wanting to get back into warrior preferably Prot but it would have to be for raiding since I do not care for kiting in higher keys.
I am all for making my day one spec stronger.