Any of you guys have any cool ideas for prot? Like… if you could change just a couple things, what would you do? Not to make Warrior tanking OP or anything like that… but just to make it more fun.
I feel like tanking in general should just be insanely fun/flashy. You already gotta be team leader and know the dungeon… and that is pretty intimidating for people. So I think making prot stupidly fun would make more people wanna tank. (Same thing goes for healers really… and I think that’d fix DPS queues).
Okay so for me, I’d wanna integrate their defense into their offense so it plays more like a DPS. So like… take the rage cost off shield block, and incorporate Ignore pain into revenge or shield slam. I’d also bring back rend. I really liked the rend>thunderclap interaction from way back in the day. That or make thunderclap apply deep wounds too.
That way you can just focus on smashing stuff and positioning/fighting the content and less on trying to decide if you should revenge for threat, or shield block or ignore pain to not get squished.
I always have decision paralysis when I’m tanking on my warrior, cause I’m like… do I go for DPS to kill things faster? do I go for shield block? do I go for ignore pain? What order should I do it in? These are all things that are floating around my noggin while I’m trying to pull mobs quickly, position enemies, and do mechanics. It’s… kind of a lot going on all at once and it really bogs down what could be super enjoyable.
If you don’t maximize your shield block uptime you will die in higher keys. You’ll need heavy repercussions until you either have great gear or rotation down with reprisal to fully utilize anger management.
Fun idea? Defense against 1 shot gibbs by getting hit in the back or magic enemas.
Oof, I haven’t gotten my warrior into any keystones yet, I just got back from a lengthy break cause I rage quit right before 9.1 hit. Looks like the current gear from heroics prolly makes the entry level stuff way easier though.
I’ll have to play with heavy repercussions and make sure I’m better about keeping shield block up. It didn’t look like something you could keep 100% uptime on.
I’m all for active mitigation, but I feel like it’s more meaningful when you only use it if an enemy is using some powerful telegraphed attack. Seems pretty stupid to have a defensive move you need to have up 100% of the time.
Tanking on the DH was getting really frustrating cause I felt like I was just juggling cooldowns and running away all the time. I was kinda hoping things were less terrible now.
Personally I don’t like ignore pain or old shield barrier which is basically the same idea as ignore pain.
While I’ve had ideas about baseline shield spike damage, ripostes when you parry and increasing chance to block on each hit received until an attack is blocked. While cool these don’t answer the problem that ignore pain is supposed to alleviate, magic damage.
If ignore pain is removed I think spell reflect should be given charges or the ability to reflect multiple spells, let’s say three before fading off.
I also feel that between shield block and ignore pain it can be tricky to hold aoe threat in hectic trash fights because we can’t afford rage to spend on revenge.
Maybe allow blocks a chance to deflect spells baseline at a lower rate than normal blocks? I’m not sure but I’d like to read other people’s ideas.
I had fun in bfa with gushing wounds. Was actually viable but not like crazy op like other tank specs. Druid and paladin kits just give them so much more utility.
Here is a few.
Left in The Dust- whenever using charge or intervene the warrior let’s out a Piercing Howl slowing all enemies at the warrior starting location.
Meteoric leap - When landing from Heroic Leap the warrior sends out a shock wave of
“x” damage “y” size radius.
( Maybe the dmg could work like shammy fae transfusion or maybe targets closer to the center of impact take more dmg.)
Absorbing Elements- For the next “x” amount of seconds the warriors shield adsorbs “X%” of elementel, shadow, magic damage. Pressing disability again after the time will deal “Y%” of magic damage. The type of damage done is based on the highest damage type adsorbed.
(This ability does not absorbed DOT damage that was already applied to the warrior)
Pvp talents
Better prepared- Upon being struck first when out of combat you have 100% chance to proc Shield Block. Also whenever you critically block incoming melee damage use your shield to toss the attacker straight up into the air.
Bulwark Stance- Raise your shield reducing all damage taken by by X% and done by Y%. While in this stance you move at 70% Speed but and slowed below 70% and are immune to crowd control effects.
Catastrophic fall- Heroic Leap can now be preformed directly on top of yourself. Any leap performed directly on top of yourself causes additional hang time. ( Similar to rogues Death from Above’s hang time. This is To synergize with the meteoric leap talent)
I’m having a blast with NL Banner Prot right now. I think it’s a good synergy with the frenetic pace of warrior tanking and it’s fun to try and keep up banner for as long as possible. Would make a good talent row too if the banner itself is baseline. Different banners with different effects.
I remember when the game first came out, you’d fight these gnolls and they had this shield bash knockdown attack. I always thought that would be awesome for protection warriors.
Haha, thats a great idea – I’d love that. Even if it didn’t work in PvP, It’d be fun for tanking.
Condemn in Torghast has a power that knocks enemies down for .5 seconds and it’s hilariously fun to spam.
Crit provides parry (a defensive stat), which provides rage management (by making revenge free), and also crit is a dps stat. Mastery provides block and attack power. Haste reduces the cool downs of our main defensive abilities. It’s hard to get more integrated than having literally every secondary stat boost both offense and defense.
Shattering Throw disables the most used covenant ability and, yeah that’s not prot specific, but you know who’s the only spec to think to do that? Well, in my experience, it’s prot and only prot.
Ancient Aftershock has an AoE knock down on it, and creates a ground dot for the knocked down target to lay in.
True, but a lot of your mitigation comes from spending rage on ignore pain and shield block. So you never really feel safe using 100% of your rage for offense.
It just makes me feel like I’m resource guarding a big chunk of my rage instead of going completely ham. Shield blocks rage cost forces me to be conservative which reduces how much fun I’m having. Same for ignore pain.
It doesn’t feel like it has synergy… it feels like you have two modes that are warring for your attention and it could be much better imo.
One of my favorite things to do is spam all my rage generation and dump it into Condemn… and that’s kinda what I mean by integrating offense into defense. Condemn reduces the damage you take, so you get to go wild while being defensive.
Condemn also has a great animation/visual so it’s extra fun to just pop off.
I think Reprisal existing is kind of an acknowledgement from the developers of the problem I’m describing. It’s 1000000% a step in the right direction though!
It’s kind of a band aid fix though. I get what you’re saying, and I’m not trying to be negative. I just think it can be better!
My biggest issue with warrior tanking is the shared resource from Revenge, Shield Block and Ignore Pain. Shield Block not having a rage cost fixes most of my complaint, and I don’t really think that is a big ask. It just prevents a situation where you have no rage and need to be defensive. And doesn’t make you wait an important GCD to use another ability to get Shield Block up.
I’m not saying Warriors are bad… I just think they’re so close to being so fun… and for me it’s just kinda ruined by that little bit of responsibility it forces me to have where I have to save some rage.
Tanking is all about managing defensives. You’re not supposed to blow everything on offensive abilities. I mean you CAN. But you have to still be able to mitigate damage some how.
If I have a Druid healer, I find myself doing more damage because I don’t have to worry about dropping hp a lot. I know I can spend rage on Revenge instead of IP because whatever damage gets through my Shield Block will be made up in the next tick of 4-5 different HoTs rolling on me.
Same with Shield Block. If I’m going through high magic damage primarily, then Shield Block loses a lot of importance and that extra rage can go into damage to end the magic damage sooner and help everyone else.
And let’s not forget about Crit. Usually an offensive stat, and it helps us mitigate and gives us free offensive capabilities. And this is increased in higher mob counts where we have multiple chances to dodge/party.
And that leads into more free Shield Slams which in turn leads to more Rage and more defensives and around and around it goes
But is this not true for all tanks?
Druids: can either Maul for more damage or save Rage for Iron Fur
DKs: can spend Runic Power on Death Strikes whenever they have it, or save it for when they take big chunks of damage.
Paladins, can burn Holy Power as soon as they get it on Shield of the Righteousness, or hold onto it so they’re not wasting uptime on their defensives
Prot warrior is fine on the damage side of things but what prot truly needs is some form of self sustain because every tank in the game has it but warrior. The Reprisal legendary needs to be baked into prots kit baseline.
