S1 was mid, ProtWarr was just really good early on compared to other tanks regardless of the tier set.
S2 was toxic, I hate using survival cooldowns as “DPS” cooldowns, I understand the direction that tanks are in right now is we’re a glorified 2/3rds of a DPS that can take 1/10th the damage a DPS takes, but I’m a WoW boomer that believes a tanks job should be as tanky and survival focused as possible. I’m fine with specs like Vengeance being about doing damage for mitigation, as that’s been their niche since DH’s were introduced, but feels like its spreading to other tanks a bit too much.
S3 is kinda mid, I don’t really notice it outside of the reduced DRoar cooldown, and my uptime on the 2pc buff is pretty high, too bad the 4pc 2%/4%/6% based on bleeds consumed is replaced by subsequent applications, primary gain is the Thunder Clap reset on Shield Slam proc use.
Gonna vote S3 just because it feels the least niche and most consistent bonus to DR, and the TClap reset is nice to have.
The thing about game decisions being made like this is you end up with a busted combo or you end up with hot garbage because the mouth breathing masses think sims, parses and the like don’t matter and what does matter is having fun in a game. Fun meaning a cool looking ability that does 1% of damage over a fight vs a lame looking ability that does 11.4%.
That’s not this expansion. That was from our legendary (Reprisal, I think) in Shadowlands. Recharging had novelty, but it was very counterintuitive for the majority of Warrior players.
Warriors were doing fine in S3 and S4. In fact, Banner was pretty insane and easily put us leaps and bounds ahead of other tanks both survival-wise and damage-wise.
In fact, Fated literally made us the most premier tank in throughput if you could roll Banner properly.
These are not mutually exclusive concepts.
Even in Classic tanks are pushing damage because damage = threat, and the more threat your tanks generate, the more damage your DPS can safely do, and the faster the boss dies. It also means you’re devaluing your own talents that emphasize building and spending rage efficiently (Anger Management, Indomitable).
Our survival has, for several years now, been intrinsically linked to how much damage we’re doing because the more damage you’re doing - generally speaking - the more rage you’re generating, spending, and the more CDs you have offensively and defensively to generate rage and do more damage. Tangentially, even the thing we derive the role’s namesake from is heinously destructive and devastating offensively.
I think this has more to do with your personal expectation of what a tank is as a role, rather than how it’s been played for… well, most of this game’s lifespan at this point, frankly.
I didn’t play S4, and we were definitely not the meta tank in S3. Banner, with extreme uptime, was the same hypothetical situation that got Fury completely destroyed before SFO even launched. I don’t think that’s a good example for us being meta or close to it.
As a baseline, nowadays Protection is good, and it just lacks some utility to compete and compare. I feel like the devs might be weighting Spell Reflect higher than they should, since that feels like our special niche.
PWarr was able to maintain banner for entire fights barring scripted downtime or misplay. I’m not sure who told you it was hypothetical, it was THE build for PWarr during S3 and only got better with S4 when we could all BIS a max ILVL OWS.
In no world did the amount of rage we were generating both passively and actively, alongside the absolutely BONKERS amount of free STR we derived from Banner and Necro talents ever approach the concept of “hypothetically good”. It was just good.
Warrior was keeping pace just fine in S3, and did more than adequate in S2 to cop CE.
The point I’m making is that you’re making some pretty broad statements about our performance during Shadowlands and the statistics do not reflect your “F tier” assessment. People flopping and floundering on PWarr after S1 was explicitly a skill issue, nothing more.
Have we needed utility or something to give us a reason to be in groups beyond Battle Shout and Rally? Yes, for a while, but F tier is a comically poor assessment of our actual throughput and performance when played correctly.
I see your defense, but did you really argue for M+ viability and link me Sepulcher of the First Ones tank damage statistics? Why?
A Protection Warrior was in the RWF for Liquid’s victory in Castle Nathria during 9.0, when we were objectively the worst tank for keys, and relatively mediocre in raid overall. Max just really liked having double Rally in their RWF comps up until the very recent nerf. He even talked about running a Brewmaster in its place during the post-mortem, since that’s what literally every other guild did.
Tank damage, yes. Surviving as a tank has almost never been an issue any spec has faced in recent expansions except perhaps… I dunno, maybe S1 CN during gearing before we got the Reprisal rework that enabled recharging. We had large gaps in Shield Block that hobbled both our DPS and survival.
If all the tanks are able to survive fine, then the only throughput you can judge them by is damage - damage kills bosses, it times keys. If you have two tanks and both can do the mechanics fine, but one is doing 50% more damage than the other, it’d matter a lot more. Similar issues arise with utility. If both tanks survive well, do similar damage - which has more group value? Not warrior, but that doesn’t mean it’s F tier.
Warriors were still titling in S2 and S3. That it can be done means our overall throughput was still not in question. You can see us pacing just fine alongside other tanks all the way to +28 in S2, and +31 in S3.
Our biggest hang-up was, and still is, utility. It alone, however, has not stopped people from being able to play the class at the highest level alongside other tanks with only a key level or three behind at the bleeding edge of M+.
In general, yes - lots of players would rather have a bear druid that’ll be able to pull the entire first room of Necrotic Wake where they can lust and throw all their CDs, but that kind of performance eclipsed every other tank - not just warriors.
I apologize if it seems I’m being pedantic over what was likely a very off-handed remark about our class performance, but I’m just tired of seeing grossly disingenuous assessments of our class past and present, because it only muddies the general understanding of our current failings and needs as a spec.
Yes, but Blizzard didn’t take into accommodation all the butthurt trolls that would come and purposely vote on the bad tier sets.
There are going to be A LOT of “bitter votes” made by people that play a class they don’t want to see outshined.
Stop saying prot warr was meta in season 1, it just is not true, it was an effective hit job perpetuated by the community. The true meta tank for season 1 was prot paladin, saying otherwise is either ignorance or straight malice at this point.
100%. People were claiming it was 10.1.5 that made them but that really didn’t change anything other than make their off-heals worse by default in exchange for very slight tankiness.
I was saw tank warriors on 25+ keys on S1, idk maybe im blind or just the warrior was a good option to play on S1. The paladin was good too it’s similar on S3 DH or Paladin
Being able to time +25 is not a distinction of meta. +25 isn’t even the upper bounds of the season.
At +25 there are over 12,000 timed runs across all tank specs. At +28 it craters down to a little under 400, of which 336 are paladins, and 20 are warriors as the second-most represented tank. The divide narrows the higher you go, but paladins stay ahead the entire way.
While warrior was able to hang in at the highest key levels, paladins were far and away the meta of the season. People were just dazzled by how front-loaded and seemingly easy it was to perform as a warrior due to - of all things - a bug as a result of Battering Ram applying its bonus to all of our critical damage. It has since been fixed, and a blanket damage buff applied that more or less supplants the lost DPS.
Warriors were very good in S1. There is no contest there, but their supremacy was realized in the lower gradient of the season, not the upper bounds.
The difference between a +25 and a +29 is not even funny.