I main a ret pally and have a fury/prot warrior alt.
Warriors are fun to play, do about the same damage (although they can peak higher) and get stronger each tier.
My warrior after getting a handful of upgrades from Ulduar gained more overall DPS than my main pally did after getting almost every piece upgraded.
Warriors are fine. They play well, and as we’ve already known for months they get way stronger over the expansion just like they do in pretty much every expansion before.
Prot has the most tanking tools and is by far one of the most fun to play because of it. I tanked all of ulduar pretty much solo as a warrior and it went without a hitch. If you can’t do that, you either need more gear or need to play better/with better players.
IMO it comes down to “the squeaky wheel gets the oil”.
I don’t begrudge Ret the buff but I have concerns as to why they got it. To me it seems clear that Blizzard weren’t considering buffing specs until the forums lit up for Ret. It’s literally a response to forum outcry - and that’s problematic.
Why are Ret louder than Fury? Simply put - weight of numbers. There are a lot more Paladin players than Warrior players. And a lot of them would like to play Ret.
If how it looks is how it really is that is a problem. Balancing classes on the basis of who makes the most noise on the official forums is not systematic or fair. Note that I’m not claiming that the Ret buff is in anyway unbalancing. just that the reason Blizzard acted on it and not other issues is concerning.
If Blizzard are going to rebalance specs they need to do it properly and fairly - doing the work of analyzing all the balance across all specs as well as class representation. Not just responding to forum campaigns.
I was initially against any class balance changes for this reason. But now the can is open. They have to commit. The whole thing of “just this one case” doesn’t cut it. They need to commit to balancing all specs and classes now. Fury and Prot need to be next.
I saw people talking about it in fgh club before ulduar dropped but I could be wrong, I was under the impression it was patched, I’ll have to double check!
The argument that warriors aren’t good in pvp is a little disingenuous because I believe you’re primarily polling 2s. 2s suck and are difficult to balance; there’s a reason blizzard removed 2s from giving titles in wotlk… in 3s and 5s warriors are great (along with 2s which is very rock paper scissors.)
Paladins cried the hardest for a hand out. That’s all it was. But yes, I tried to argue against this because it makes warriors/rogues look obsolete now. If paladins can bring that damage, plus a ton of other things those classes don’t, why even play them anymore?
Also, if we’re going to make custom balance changes rather than stay true to the original game we’re supposed to be playing… why even rehost this? May as well just play retail. The flood gate on changes is indeed wide open because everyone of every class will want custom changes, and Blizzard has shown they’re willing to do it.
again, for every warrior, in 2s there are 5+ rogues and in 3s 5+ shamans, and just as many druids and other bursty caster cleave stuff in 3s
then consider that multiple of the warriors are even alts, meaning, theres only like, 3 players actually pushing
additionally, look at the tournaments
0 warriors, or theyre in last place
warriors are not strong in PVP at all. If youre a rank 1 warrior, yes, you can be carried by a rank 1 paladin, but overall they are very underrepresented and for obvious reasons. Low utility, squishy, easy to focus (can even disarm their shield so no defensives) and poo damage.
The reason Blizzard buffed rets was because it was the classes only dps spec and was least represented in raids.
Warriors have a choice between arms and fury. They can switch based on which spec is strong and doing decent dps. Ret pallies do not have the choice. If ret is doing bad then they are stuck with it.
PVP had nothing to do with the decision to buff ret pallies.
Fury are not poor dps. I have seen Fury do well in Ulduar. Warriors scale with gear way better than Paladins do. Balancing warriors has always been problematic.
