I recently decided to dust off my mad old warrior from vanilla and had to take a pause and ask myself what was the point of the class. Please explain to me what im missing…
Group utility is basically zero
Survivability is negligible
Damage is decent i guess… thats it.
Simplicity? Maybe?
Basically anything warrior does can be done much better with any other class. So… why warrior?
This is the biggest area where Warrior struggles. Really the only unique utility the spec has is Battle Shout and Rallying Cry. That being said, it does still have access to Stormbolt and Shockwave which can allow the spec to still have a decent amount of stops.
Blizzard appears to be aware of this and in the War Within, the class is getting some changes.
Fury and Protection actually have fantastic defensives with Arms only lagging behind a bit from Fury. Spell Reflect is an absolutely insane ability (I think I ended up doing 9 Million damage with Spell Reflect as a Fury Warrior in Throne of Tides one run) that every spec has access to. Even Arms being the lesser of the three specs has weird taunt shenanigans it can do with Die by the Sword.
If you’re not tanky as a Warrior you’re not pressing your buttons.
Arms and Fury both have very unique damage profiles. While we’re not the best in any single encounter, we are consistently high across most encounters.
For me? Familiarity and Fantasy. It is a game after all.
The warrior class can be thought of as the only pure melee class in the game with zero ranged damaging abilities compared to all the other melee classes in the game. That is our design and Fantasy not just in Warcraft but in almost in every other MMO before it.
Yes, we do lack the Group Utility compared to other classes with only Battle Shout (mainly for heavy melee comps get a use for it) and Rally (which was nerfed but then again they targeted a lot of that type of Utility across the board in 10.2.0) In PvP however, we just got a PvP talent that gives us some more Utility (like Battle shout giving team mates Stamina as an example)
Survivability, Protection should have the best out of the 3 specs and really they are very strong when it comes to that. Protection might not be like other tanks but played to it’s potential, Protection Survivability is strong. The way Fury survives is tied into it’s self healing within its own rotation along with spells like Bitter immunity (works well as a self dispell when needed) and Victory rush (which all 3 specs have access to) Arms has ignore pain that helps mitigate when needed but it’s bread and butter is Die by the Sword which allows Arms to Parry physical attacks in front of them (making them pseudo tanks when needed (making their defensive almost like a self Utility when a tank goes down or soloing world content)
Yes, Warriors are pure damage dealers with very little fancy bells and whistles like other classes. That’s the simplicity of the class as a whole. Between Arms and Fury, our profiles are just different when it comes to dealing damage. Arms are slower hitters (due to everything on the GCD) while Fury hits with more strikes and rage free abilities.
Because… “ROOOOAAAARRRRR” … and “SMASH!”
Because… “drinking mead out of the skulls of my enemies” just doesn’t seem apropos for, say, a Shaman or a Paladin
Because…hands down, the best shield xmog in the game
Oh, and like @Curoar said, the survivability isn’t bad, particularly when you’re using Spell Reflect well. Utility isn’t great, but Shockwave will be easier to pick up in the next expansion, so that’s nice. Damage is ok; I find the specs to all pretty fun to play. Fury is pretty simple and fast-paced, and I think the mechanics of the spec fit the fantasy especially well.
In a world of magic, demons and other crazy things. We just need a really big weapon or a shield and one hander and we fight.
Class fantasy is enough for me and the mogs we have some really sick mogs.
The pvp shout talents is so good and Fun, I wish we had our class fantasy based on shouts, like the dragonborn in Skyrim.
https:// www.youtube .com/watch?v=6hMqvb8QiUk
Because chasing meta leaves you unable, in most cases, to play any of the classes well. A well-played warrior will do more dps than a poorly played meta dps. For example, my purple and orange parses far outperform your green parses.
Play what you find fun and learn to play it well. The meta will always change.
Because we have:
An option to tank if we want
Great Mogs
Good damage (usually)
A great class fantasy (IMO)
Because not everything is pure numbers. I enjoy the class that’s why I play it.
To be more specific.
I prefer melee
I prefer plate gear looks
Fury or Arms is at least middle tier or above in DPS so I can be reasonably relevant in either DPS spec
Because they are super fun imo.
The only real reason is if you think the class is cool/fun. Like if you play the game as an RPG and not just an e-sport.
Mechanically there is no reason to play a Warrior, unless maybe your raid team just needs one for the buff.
I’m basically Marge Simpson when it comes to warriors, I just think they are neat.
Legit the worst tank in M+, Pretty crappy dps and utility across both dps specs in M+. In PVP we are outclassed by DH and Rogue as better melee. War does do well in the raid tho, especially the latter half. So we have that.
Personally I perform better with my warrior than other classes, I guess frost dk would end up being similar though.
Arms warrior was what I finally got back into retail raids with in shadowlands and finally hit 2500 in m+ with, like I said frost dk I think I could do well with too but my arms warrior achieved what was for me a large accomplishment and I don’t intend to change things that already work for me.
Also I have Thunderfury and Sulfuras on this character and a few other collectables and I don’t want to start over.
I think the issue is community. Most people knows warrior lack the utility to deal with 2 affix in M+ so why bother inviting them in pugs when there are class that have more utilities and can deal with all affix and do more damage than a warrior. Other class out shine is a lot. Sure warrior are still good but in a pug setting they are not brining special.
My warrior has High Warlord title and as much as i dont want to lose it to my warlock, i feel like im going to lose it to my warlock. Warriors need not just a redesign but a complete overhaul from concept on up. How do you keep class fantasy but introduce utility? If you refuse to introduce utility then warrior damage needs to be 10 % higher than the classes with utility. I dont know.
Would you like to have demoralizing shout available to all specs and reduce enemy damage done rather than reduce damage done to the warrior.
Disarm available baseline.
Sunder armor added into devastate/devastator to increase physical damage taken by affected target.
Could add Skull Banner back in I guess to beef your party up for a short time.
Ease of use, no wind up, no fuss…just get in and smash things. Survivability, impending victory helps a ton when taking frontals to the face or standing in stuff.
Pretty easily. Here are a few ideas that could be implemented in The War Within.
Re-arrange talents to gaining access to Intimidating Shout & Piercing Howl. Both of these helped Warriors in SL & BfA for utility that we simply haven’t had access to since Dragonflight’s Talent changes.
Adding a Bloodlust type effect would do wonders for compositions and leave Warrior as the only tank with Bloodlust.
Some way to physically move enemies. In Dragonflight beta warriors were going to get a modifier to heroic leap that pulled enemies towards them. Something like that could be explored.
Add in that Colossus and Mountain Thane are both modifying existing CC effects to be more potent in War Within, and there’s not really any fantasy or class idea you have to change.