Upcoming Protection Warrior Tuning – March 29

Spot on, my Prot Paladin also outdpses my Prot Warrior by 2k (255 vs 262)

Prot Warriors have been getting hobbled since Legion…

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Lots of ideas here…regardless the buffs are welcomed and when you compound them together it’s a significant reduction in magic DR.

Off the bat we have vanguard buffed 5% DR that is a constant.

Ignore pain buffed 5% now just factor IP uptime in a run I’m sure it can be calculated. Let’s say it is 3%

Demo shout has limited uptime however another 5% is good and can help for Fort mobs and incoming dmg spikes.

Lastly and one im excited for is SR reduced cd. This will allow us to reflect even more plague injection, plauge stomp, piercing barb, cyclo slash ect ect…

Our passive mitigation along with 3 of our active mitigation abilities all received a needed boost…let’s be happy about that as we won’t be getting any serious rework to our talents/abilities/powers until 10.0

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I don’t see that happening at least for m+ as kyrian leggo+reprisal has synergy for setting up burst windows using revenge.

Now if demo increased dmg done to target like bfa that may be something.

It does if you take booming voice.

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Tell me you don’t understand how Shield Block works without telling me you don’t understand how Shield Block works.

No it does not.

Second best. And an argument can be made that Guardian Druids can push physical damage mitigation even higher than Paladins, albeit in spurts and not consistently.

The rest of your points are moot as far as I’m concerned as they do not pertain to physical damage mitigation.

Disclaimer: I never once mentioned who was the better tank between Warrior or Paladin as my vote would go to Paladin for having the superior kit for tanking.

But as far as physical damage mitigation goes, Warriors still reign supreme. That’s about their only niche

Thanks for the info Linxy - like many have said, surviving damage was low priority overall for picking the other tanks. I have a concern with this buff specifically… If the AP ratio on IP isn’t increased 10%, won’t this just cause the shield to be ripped off 10% faster (requiring additional rage generation to get any sort of actual survival buff from this change)?

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It would be removed sooner for sure, but for prot that’s non issue with no cooldown for ignore pain. For fury and arms it’ll be better for burst dmg, which is the biggest issue for survival in PvP.

Either way, small but good change.

the problem with prot warrior is the fact it feels like a storm ele shaman now. but if along with the ele nerf they got earth quake nerfed by 50%.

i hate revenge buff thunderclap nerf revenge god please

no?
They moved away from T-clap spam, and double downed the design intent behind revenge. I feel like a lot of warriors are missing out on the Revenge legendary for no reason. You will consistantly do the most damage on trash. I can push 30K on packs. Try something else?

The problem is 3 fold (imo) in Mythic keys:
We can’t control mob positioning (outside of LoS).
We can’t ranged interupt
We can’t deal with magic damage spikes.

Warriors need additional help from their group mates. I think thats good design. It’s bad design when Warriors are the only tank that needs that level of support.

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I don’t fully agree because now you have to burn Rage 10% sooner – Rage you could otherwise have going to damage. That ends up being a detriment to group speed and aggro generation… the reason other tanks are being taken to begin with.

It technically does. Any block over 100% stops doing anything, so as you get more parry from strength/crit and more block chance from mastery, shield block does less and less. It was a different story when overflow block converted into crit block, but it doesn’t do that anymore.

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IMO the problem is revenge because it contradicts how tanks are designed. for tanks their agro/dps generating abelites also give them resources that they use on defensives, creating a positive feedback loop. but for prot warrior its the opposite effect where you have to chose between revenge and ignore pain.

and yes magic dmg is a problem more than it should be. paladin can immune/heal, bdk can immune some what with AMS and heal, bear can heal 24% of their hp while buffing the healing they receive by 20%. I don’t know if I’m crazy but I remember vers for arms/prot buffing healing received which isn’t a thing

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The rage cost was also reduced so that’s basically a non issue.

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Sub optimal now defining crash and unstoppable force have been nerfed/removed our demo shout up time and subsequently dmg has reduced since bfa.

Revenge needs a massive buff, particularly hitting a single target. Prot Warriors did damage in WotLK and in WoD. It was gimmicky in BFA (and not very fun, imo).

We need more than just “best physical mitigation, yay!” when Mastery feels like balls for us. We rely so much on Versatility and Haste (to feed rage into IP) for dealing with unblockable damage. I think it’s okay that our sustain is balls, but our main perk has gradually become less valuable over time.

Mastery need to be redesigned. It’s a completely worthless stat right now. Critical block? Really? We already have the best physical mitigation when shield block is up what’s the point of critical blocks. Just give us something more interesting like Spiked Shields or the ability to block a % of magic damage for our mastery.

Our 4 piece tier bonus is pretty much a joke as well compared to all the other tanks. I’ve seen paladins and guardian druids do 100k dps on some packs, dks are now immune to necrotic, monks are invincible, DHS get infinite immo aura and what do we get? 10% extra Dr and damage on our 1.5min cool down… Yay…

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Imo we should be expanding on what makes us unique as prot warriors.

Spell reflect and intervene are two I can think of off the top of my head that are exclusive to warriors. We need a bit more of a niche then “physical dmg mitigation king” in order to compete in the current meta. We want to be wanted in the group for more then 5% AP.

Let’s take the two abilities I listed: spell reflect and intervene. I can think of two talents we used to have that build on them: mass spell reflect and vigilance respectively.

Let us not only go back and re visit those old talents but also think of new and unique ways in witch protection warriors are competitive.

I disagree. We already have those tools that are unique to prot warrior which are pretty cool but also very niche. The problem is not the lack of uniqueness but the lack of similarities with some of the other tanks. Most other tanks work on a builder spender system that also grants them some sort of mitigation during that rotation whereas we have to make a choice between revenge and IP. Other tanks also have a lot of abilities that are passive/spammable when it comes to AOE damage and have have clap on a CD and revenge which costs resources. I think this tier specially we are very underpowered compared to other tanks when it comes to damage, my tank partner just got 4set this week, he’s a guardian druid and whenever he hits incarn or bark skin I instantly lose threat no matter what I do.

Not wrong there mostly. Some tanks do have to make choices of offense or defense, however their options are less extreme than ours.

Ex, Blood Death Knight: Consume Runes for Marrowrend for Bone Shield, yet you do get a Single Target hit off of it or for Heart Strike (DnD/DD without proc sometimes) for AE grab and in terms of Heart Strike, Runic Power (Talent increases Runic Power gen).

Further detail for this example, having to build Bone Shield when you would rather be using Heart Strike, especially during a DnD, even more so a Death Due.

Just one example of decision making that can happen. I’ve gone through this on my Death Knight, only irritable on her at worst, but yeah as I mentioned, not AS detrimental as our choice for Rage Spending. On my warrior, it’s very detrimental.

Yes, Warrior can proc Revenge, however, if mobs are just “ranged” spamming, especially stuff that can not be dodged/parried . … . . . yeah … . . . no Revenge Procs. (And don’t mention the Reprisal legendary. I hate that style of playing.)

More or less. ESPECIALLY when we have to give up defense to go aggressive a majority of the time.

Also note Prot Warr DO have a “certain” control of mobs, some of the other tanks do have more “direct” control over mobs than Prot Warr. (Avenger Shield Silence, Sigils, Gorefiend Grasp)

I suppose so. Do consider that some of those abilities are somewhat limited. (AMS, 1 min CD, Paladin immunities CAN have drawbacks, even with the talent(s), CD is somewhat considerable). Got to be picky about when to use those.

Prot Warr has a FEW abilities to deal with magic (Demo Shout, Spell Reflection, IP to an extent.) Still, those abilities are somewhat limited as well. Demo Shout on a 45 sec CD. Spell Reflection might has a spell damage reduction for 5 secs, however it’s GONE if it reflects a spell (rather dumb). Ignore … . .well. DOES help, but with the “buff”, it’s consumed even more quickly.

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Well. Crit Block does help, however in a sense, I do also think it could be better. Don’t forget it also contributes to Attack Power, which means bigger Ignores (somewhat).

How about this for a mastery, including the Attack Power:

Instead of Critical Blocking, flat out increase our block value (% of damage blocked).
And yeah, Block spells at 15% + Mastery effectiveness (a nice idea, Swordfish) (probably need to balance that, lol).
Increase Ignore Pain size by a small %.

As a lols, I’d call this mastery “Shield Master”

A note: Spell Reflection should have two separate buffs: 1 for reflection, other for spell reduction.

Prot Warr DOES lack consistent “Self Sustain”, so they should take significantly less DMG

Just my thoughts, nothing more.