Why did Blizzard favor warriors so much 15 years ago?

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
1

PVP Itemization for Warriors is obviously favoritism. We can argue that that’s because Warriors don’t get much DPS gear from raids, but PVP Gear shouldn’t take into consideration PVE Gear.

Here is some examples:

AV Rewards -
The Unstoppable Force
Two-Hand Mace
175 - 292 Damage Speed 3.80
(61.45 damage per second)
+19 Strength
+15 Stamina
Equip: Improves your chance to get a critical strike by 2%.
Chance on hit: Stuns target for 1 sec.

Compared to…

The Lobotomizer
One-Hand Dagger
59 - 111 Damage Speed 1.80
(47.22 damage per second)
Durability 75 / 75
Requires Level 60
Chance on hit: Wounds the target for 200 to 300 damage and lowers Intellect of target by 25 for 30 sec.

WSG Rewards -
They can use everything as there is no class restrictions.

AB Rewards - (this is where the favoritism really starts to shine)

Defiler’s Leather Girdle
159 Armor
+7 Stamina
Classes: [Rogue] [Druid]
Equip: Improves your chance to get a critical strike by 1%
Equip: +34 Attack Power

vs

Defiler’s Plate Girdle
369 Armor
+17 Strength
+10 Stamina
Classes: [Warrior]
Equip: Improves your chance to get a critical strike by 1%.

This theme continues on all Defiler items… Warriors get the same Attack Power (1 Str = 2 AP for warriors) and Crit chance, but also more Stamina than Rogue and Druid items.

Then we look at the Rank 14 Sets;

Rogue Rank 14 Set
Agility = 143 (143 AP/ 4.76% Crit)
Stamina = 164 (1640 Health)
Armor 1,319
Crit Chance = 4%
Hit Chance = 5%
Set Bonus = 20 Stam and 40 AP
Total = 183 Attack Power, 8.76% Crit, 5% Hit, 1840 Health

Druid Rank 14 Set (only looking at Melee DPS)
Strength = 121 (222 AP or 290 AP in Cat Form with Hearth of the Wild)
Agility = 95 (95 AP and 4.75 Crit)
Stamina = 98 (980 Health)
Armor = 1,249
Crit Chance = 3%
Set Bonus = 20 Stam and 40 AP
Total = 357 AP (or 425 AP), 7.75 Crit, 0% Hit, 1180 Health

Warrior Rank 14 Set
Strength = 120 (240 AP)
Agility = 42 (42 AP/ 2.1% Crit)
Stamina = 165 (1650 Health)
Armor = 4,087
Crit Chance = 5%
Hit Chance = 3%
Set Bonus = 20 Stam and 40 AP
Total = 322 AP, 7.1% Crit, 3% Hit, 1850 Health

Druids get slightly more Attack Power, but way less health and no hit at all. Rogues get a little more hit and crit, about the same health, but not much more AP…why Blizzard? Why couldn’t you give the other melee DPS classes more attention to detail? Raiding druids really get the shaft in early stages and have you looked at Rogue T1 set? +3 STR…STR should of never been added to rogue specific items…

I guess that was part of the learning curve on early Development of WOW…itemization! I mean, it gets a little better in later phases, but Warriors got a lot of attention to detail for some reason compared to the other two…

2

I think they were basing stuff off how warriors were doing in Vanilla.

Since most warriors were bad players at the time they got better stuff in order to « balance » them, lol

4 Likes
3

Ok, now put all that gear on a rogue and a warrior and let’s see who wins.

4

Because were chads and our class requires a skill level of like at least a million.

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5

Hey! No, wait, that’s accurate.

There’s really not much to talk about Blizzard favoritism back in the day. They were flying by the seat of their pants back then and a lot of their decisions they made could be considered pretty cring by today’s standards. Keep in mind that data interpretation/understanding was so bad back then that during Beta everyone thought warriors were underpowered until Indalamar proved everyone wrong and got them nerfed in the face.

As for why Warriors get more HP? They were supposed to be noticeably beefier compared to others because their armor and HP were their only line of defense. The ability they had to get away or reset the fight were a far cry from other classes.

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6

If you’re looking at the difference in +3 Stam between belts, keep in mind that warriors and rogues are played completely differently in PvP.

Should a warrior and rogue in PvP gear have the exact same amount of health? Should a warrior and MAGE have the exact same amount of stamina? It sounds like this is what you’re asking for, and that’s what led to the boring homogenization of retail.

With all those insane benefits you think warriors have, PvP is still pretty garbage on a warrior without a pocket healer and 300 engineering. 90% of fights consist of not being able to move.

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7

Did not read wall of text, but if you knew they favored warriors so much 15 years ago, why didn’t you roll one instead of complain?

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8

Not sure but a geared Warrior with free action pots and a healer really has no counters

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9

its really hard to pin it down to one or two specific causes. you examine the raiding meta of classic and it seems like it is perfectly crafted around warriors and capitalizing on their strengths. warriors gain the most bonus from world buffs (ony, fengus, zg, songflower all stacked is like two tiers’ worth of gear skip for a warrior), they have the best tanking toolkit to mitigate things like crushing blows or botched pulls, best unique trinkets (lifegiving gem and diamond flask). they have access to the most useful consumables (mongoose, rage pots, firewater, juju, sharpening stones, strength food). because of all these resources, they scale the hardest from weapon upgrades.

we’re talking about patch 1.11 warriors here, though. i didn’t play vanilla so i’m unsure on how good warrior dps was before the talents were re-worked. tanking they were always top, and there is some old information floating around on this topic. Search “Furor and Tigole hate paladins” to see the relevant posts. Basically, these guys were everquest guild leaders, tanks, who hated seeing classes with mana bars being able to tank the end-game content. Both Furor and Tigole were invited to the Blizz team around 2002-2003, so plenty of time to influence the development of the game before launch. Its a lot of hearsay though - few primary sources of evidence exist from those days of the internet

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10

Correction, why did Blizzard favor gear so much 15 years ago? Let’s not forget warriors were meant to be highly gear dependent. Warriors had nothing but gear. Their utility and most talents were absolute garbage compared to other classes. When people whined how warriors were so weak without gear they were told to just get better gear. Mages and rogues didn’t suffer as much without the best gear. Hence why naked rogues and mages could go around killing tier geared warriors.

11

Warriors had nothing but gear. Their utility and most talents were absolute garbage compared to other classes.

How are they garbage? Are we talking 1.12 warriors or prior? Because the 1.12 trees are chock full of good talents. In prot tree: defiance, last stand. Recklessness, flurry, death wish in fury. These are all top tier talents in terms of value. Threat generating abilities, sunder armor, revenge, heroic strike, aoe taunt, no other class has nearly as much variety there. Shield wall and shield block for mitigation, again no other class comes close to that level of utility.

12

The “meta” mindset was only shared and discussed within a small, niche community at that time. People were just trying to fill raid spots, not wipe, and clear the raid. I can imagine the same concept can be applied to Blizzard when making the raids…they were just trying to throw this whole thing together and not have their MMO tank.

This is why you don’t understand…you were not around when there wasn’t a “meta” or the “meta” wasn’t known by all. I didn’t even start hearing this term until TBC arena anyways.

13

Yeah let me stop you right there.

It’s a PvP set. It wasn’t designed exclusively for melee DPS. It’s a hybrid set.

And at any rate, #nochanges.

14

well, thats fine and all, i was just trying to answer the question because it is an interesting one. Warriors are undeniably broken in vanilla wow. All three trees are useful for something highly sought after/desirable (arms: amazing pvp/ fury: amazing raid dps/prot: amazing tank), only class in the game that can make that claim. also, warriors back in vanilla were known to do high dps in naxx. the scaling of gear and consumables likely made them impossible to ignore on meters for top-end 2006 guilds

15

I understand what you are saying…but people as a whole, (your average raider, not your elitistjerk exceptions or Naxx raiders) were not playing warriors as well in Vanilla as they are in Classic.

People were starting to finally “get” the game and all of it’s stats and theorycrafting…so was Blizzard. Look at the itemization between BWL and Naxx…it’s LOADS better. By Naxx…the “meta” was starting to finally become more slowly widespread. So, I won’t say it didn’t exist, it just took people awhile to figure out what they were doing.

And again…like a VERY, VERY minuscule amount of people even saw Naxxramas…that should tell you more about the “meta” of the time.

16

Why would you think that rogues need the same stam as a Warr in pvp? You clearly haven’t been doing this long.

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17

Warriors were underpowered for a long time. They didn’t have a functional fury or prot spec.

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18

Yeah but thise specs are also all complete trash without the itemization to support them.

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19

Warriors were actaully one of the weakest classes for most of vanilla. After the talent revamp is when people finally started logging back on their warriors and fotm rolling them. Also the threat changes really helped them in pve dps since they had no threat dumps.

In many aspects, patch 1.12 is not very good representation for the majority of the vanilla wow experience.

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20

In PvE warriors could only tank. And they had to do it with a 2-hander most of the time.

It was fine because there weren’t too many warriors to begin with. Everyone was a tank and the few dps had to deal with the hybrid tax.

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