I’d like to make some reasonable suggestions that make protection warrior relevant today and into the future without changes that bleed into DPS roles making the goal here clearly aimed at protection warrior.
Shield Slam (Capstone Talent Ability) - Shield Slam does technically scale already but not in any meaningful way. Bring this damage scaling more inline with other warrior capstone talents so that gearing and character investment has greater impact on the ability itself. This would also mean that in later phases of classic the ability remains relevant.
Furious Thunder (Rune) - Instead of the damage bonus being a flat percentage, it should be scaling off attack power.
Devastate (Rune) - Now that it’s damage has been addressed it should be usable in Battle and Defensive Stance, this is aimed at improving PVP viability giving a filler for one handed and shield in another stance other than Defensive. The role of Arms currently fills snare and healing debuff, protection with this change could fill snare and armour debuff role.
Gnomeregan Raid Tank Shield (Item) - The development team has made great strides improving other tradeskill’s not just engineering. There should be a tank shield drop from the Gnomeregan raid with power somewhere between the Aegis of the Scarlet Commander and Whirling Truesilver Gearwall even if it’s marginal over Aegis.
I can see some things to make the threat more reliable, but damage-wise warriors already scale better than everyone else with increased gear.
Decrease the miss chance on this guy.
This one is already pretty thick on damage/threat.
I mean, maybe if they cut the amount of armor reduction of devastate while in BattleStance?
Warriors already hit silly hard when the gear is up due to their scaling.
(The current raid loot is kinda set, and this time the prot warriors lost out, like enhancement DPS shamans in P1)
My Shaman just uses the Healing shield when it tanks, that Armor is THICC.
(Obviouisly Int/HSP not awesome for warrior, but the block and armor… very nice)
1- Leg slot NEEDS some alternative to Consumed by Rage. A LOT of people despise the 80-rage gameplay of Consumed and there is NOTHING else on the slot unless you’re using a 2-hander.
Furious Thunder is just a dungeon-tanking AOE thing. It’s has no use against raid bosses.
Just make Frenzied Assault give 10% haste (not even the full 20%) to 1-handers and dual wield. This would give us an alternative for tanking and dual-wielding on that slot that’s not Consumed.
2- Flagellation is miles ahead of anything else on the Chest slot. And constant stance-dancing to activate Berserker Rage as a tank is a major annoyance.
This is the core element of my suggestions and why I focused on what I did. While Arms/Fury scale very well Protection does not because the core abilities I listed do NOT scale.