Hi everyone,
I am a protection warrior. I have not played alpha and am not sure how these class tree changes impact the feel of the class. I tend to play more m+ than other forms of content. Below are some of the issues that I see with the new class talent tree.
Lack of Free Talent Points
When going through the new talent tree, I feel that protection warrior does not have alot of freedom to select other compelling options as most talents seems at the very least mandatory in the mythic plus context. Below is a link to wowhead to talents that I feel would be fairly hard to give up at least in a mythic plus context. This tree only has 1 point for alternative talents.
This is in comparison to the live talent tree in which you have 4 total points to place of whichever additional talents that you would like to take. Below is a tree with similar abilities on live.
While I do appreciate shockwave further up in the tree, I feel that the current state of the class tree is too limiting as it currently stands.
Unable to Sacrifice Utility for Damage
This is connected to the above issue. While on the minor side, I did enjoy the current class tree that as a prot warrior you could sacrifice you utility for damage. I would do open world content and wouldnt need for many utility buttons and the extra damage was welcomed. Perhaps, I was doing a lower level content like heroic dungeons while I was mythic geared and wanted extra damage. The current class tree allowed for more damage options. Below is a comparison. I feel that the beta version of the tree is rather static.
current
TWW
Tier 3 Talents
I have been mostly discussing the upper parts of the talents tree as the Tier 3 talents will use all points available usually in that tier. As it seems right now, all warriors will have thunderous roar, spear, and avatar. These abilities are locked in for the most part and points will be unlikely to shift. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as this expansion, I rolled with the same tier 3 class talents for the most part despite the content; perhaps i would have dropped shockwave more often if I played raid content.
As this has been, I suppose, the theme of the post, I will be hard to give up a whole ability for a buff to another ability as the options are not compelling. While the TWW will bring spear into my gameplay, the tree does not offer variety in a way that this compelling.
A Note of Thunderous Roar
This ability has been change in the TWW to exclude the 15% damage buff to at all times to bleeds and to apply a 30% damage buff during use. While I feel that this would be a fine change to make, thunderous roar bleed buff helped to maintain threat on mobs with deep wounds and rend. Threat generation was the best QoL of this talent. When making this change, please consider the threat generation this talent provided.