Tactical Mastery Isn't Going Anywhere
by Mike Schramm 
Aug 31st 2006 at 9:22PM
Tactical Mastery: every Warrior both loves and hates it. Loves it, because it makes stance dancing much easier (the talent lets you keep rage around while you switch between stances to use different abilities). Hates it, because most warriors consider it so necessary that even if they don't spec Arms, they have to use at least 10 points to level it all the way up. Recently, this little love/hate relationship has gained fire, because in the new Burning Crusade talents, Blizzard has moved Tactical Mastery over to the first tier of the protection tree. Warriors, as they are wont to do, smell blood in the water, and lots of them are fighting with Tseric to try and get Blizz to make it trainable instead, and remove it from the tree completely.Now if my Shaman prediction hasn't convinced you of my greatness, it might interest you to know that I've leveled up not one but two warriors (and am working on a third). So I know what I'm talking about when I say: Blizzard will never take Tactical Mastery out of the talent tree. As Tseric says, learning how to stance dance and choose abilities by stance is one of the elemental parts of the class. Besides, Tactical Mastery isn't even completely necessary anyway-- one warrior in my guild never bothered to learn it, and instead counts on timed Bloodrages and DPS to make up the lost rage. So if you're waiting to TM to disappear from the tree, don't hold your breath.
Tseric has also posted an interesting "Design Philosophy for Warriors." Warriors, it seems, are like the workhorses of Azeroth-- every race can be one, and there are plenty to go around, so the class has to be as customizable and yet as viable as possible. The devs working on the Warrior class, Tseric says, aren't interested in removing tough choices-- they're interested in getting players to make them. Removing TM would do exactly the opposite. But at the same time, making those choices pays off-- as I learned yet again last night: dual wielding and duoing with a priest, my little gnome warrior was unstoppable.
Filed under: Warrior, Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard, Expansions
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Kallos Aug 31st 2006 10:25PM
Well, every race except Blood Elves.
Keeper of the Dumplings Sep 1st 2006 3:35AM
Speaking as a warrior who PvP's quite often, grinds solo quite often, and raids deep into Naxxramas, and having a 60 paladin, 60 priest, 2 60 shamans, and a 60 rogue, I will tell you this.
Warriors are the most punished gimpest class in the game. Blizzard gives mages and rogues talents to practically make them immune to snare, and what do warriors get?
Improved Rend. And our VITAL, our NECESSARY talent, Tactical Mastery, continues to remain a talent, while druids who whined about not being able to stay feral for raids got innervate, and mages who whined got instant arcane explosion.
But what do warriors get? Our balls chopped off and dropped in the protection tree, thats great for wars who have no interest in the game other thank tanking, but for those of us who pvp and like to actually kill things, we need our rage when we change stances.
Tseric's argument is that wars make tough choices when they change stances, we're not asking for freakin all abilities to be usable in all stances here, we just want to be able to switch to battle stance to mocking blow a mob we lost aggro on, or to go zerker to intercept.
We already have ZERO, NONE, ZIPPO defense against roots and snares, but hey, lets nerf warriors more.
Your little gnome warrior was unstoppable with a priest, but guess what? I've seen combat rogues with healbots decimate entire groups, I've seen shadow priests with healbots take on three MS warriors and a rogue.
ANY and EVERY class can do incredible things with healbots, just because you can doesn't mean your class is balanced.
And I get disgusted whenever someone throws the "this game isn't designed for 1 on 1 pvp into the argument" thats easy for you to say when you can frostbolt for 3k, thats easy for you to say when you can chain lightning for 2.2k, thats easy for you to say when you can kill an aq/naxx geared warrior with just 4 instant cast dots.
Are you trying to tell me that in a group that is supposed to be balanced? Hell no, in a group those overpowered classes get healers, and they become even more unstoppable.
I don't think a single developer plays a warrior as their main, and I'm starting to wonder why I play one myself.
I *pray* that these talents are just alpha phase, and get completely revamped by release of TBC, cuz right now all I have to look forward to is rolling a Blood elf rogue.
Nuff said, have a dumpling.
http://murlocdumplings.com/
AcceptableRisk Sep 1st 2006 4:09AM
I know no one likes to hear about "poor" warlocks, but I feel there's something that can be applied here. Warlocks are somewhat in a similar position in that we specialize our actions around which pet we have out. In order for us to quickly switch we need to go seventeen points into a tree. Granted, it's not quite as drastic as a warrior switching stances; we don't lose half of our abilities by not having the right pet at the right time. But my point is, you pay for versatility.
Adrida Sep 1st 2006 10:41AM
Keeper of the Dumplings, I have to say I agree with you. I'm not playing any high level characters yet (my highest is 31) but I have levelled almost every class for both Horde and Alliance parallel and the warrior seems to get very little in comparison to the other classes even at low levels. Ok, a warrior is a tank, but sometimes you want to solo.. or as in my case, a lot of the time soloing...
mike Sep 1st 2006 10:48AM
Ok, Keeper. Technically my gnome warrior can get out of snares every minute (thanks to Escape Artist)-- does that make him the perfect warrior? I think so (but I'm biased, of course).
And of course in the original article I already said I disagreed that Tactical Mastery was necessary. Does it make things easier? Of course. Five points (even ten points) is almost nothing to ask for a talent that basically takes the whole stance mechanism out of the game completely. But I don't think it's required-- especially if you have such a specific spec in mind that you can't spare those five points, you should be able to play the class well enough to make up that rage anyway.
No class gets everything they want, and warriors are no different. I highly disagree that "warriors are the most punished gimpest class in the game." Warriors are necessary to almost any party, and they can shake up any field in PVP.
Argent Sep 1st 2006 1:57PM
in terms of pvp, the ability to break fear in 'zerker imo far exceeds the value of being easily snared. if warriors would be able to break snares at will, they pretty much would be the most unbeatable class there is -- more hp than any other class, dps that can approach that of rogues and abilities to counter any type of movement/control impairment effect done to them.
the absense of a snare counter simply means you gotta learn to play cooperatively to overcome that. a good warrior+paladin combo in any of the 3 BGs right now can be an absolute difference maker in terms of winning and losing.
also, even as a pure fury warr, tossing 5 points into prot really seems to be a bit of a fair tradeoff (versus the 10 needed now). it also kinda makes me think that with the 25 man raidcaps coming, blizz is subtly hinting that even dps warriors might wanna pick up at least a few tanking talents for those fights when more than 1-2 tanks are needed.
theflyingorc Sep 1st 2006 2:24PM
Make charge so that it works in Berserker stance, and I will happily let you have my tactical mastery.
Keeper of the Dumplings Sep 1st 2006 3:19PM
Just to correct you, warriors do not have the most hit points in the game, that little award goes to warlocks.
Unless I wear my full tanking set, in which case I'm just a joke in PvP unless I'm running the flag.
But all that armor and defense makes no difference when a mage or warlock can drop me in 2-3 shots.
And its not an issue of making up the rage.
When a mage see's you're stacking fire resists and decides to spam frostbolts instead, does he go to 0 mana?
When a warlock see's he needs to swap to his felhunter to fight a mage, does he lose all his soulshards?
Its a double standard treatment of warriors that have so many of us fed up with the development team.
And I hope you are joking when you say TM takes the stance aspect of the game out completely, 25 rage is HARDLY giving you more than a fighting chance in a situation. There are plenty of times where I have a full bar of rage in one stance but drop it down to 25 just to use a different ability.
Also, you may have it easier being alliance, but Horde warriors have to be even more skilled at stance dancing since we have no Fear Ward in our raids. When I first found out that Onyxia/Nef MT's didn't have to move an inch when tanking I was flabbergasted, but I dealt with it.
There I am in Naxx on Gluth, and I don't know if you know the mechanics of the fight, but he does an AOE fear every 20 seconds in which two tanks trade off MT position, and you have NO CHOICE but to go zerker to trade fear breaks. And guess what? No rage? No aggro generation, no aggro generation? DPS gets aggro.
Ever played Dominos?
Grats on being a gnome, but not all of us have healbots, paladins, or any kind of dispellers following us around 24/7.
Here is my write up of warrior 1 on 1 scenarios, if you truly think we are "the top of the pvp food chain"
And forgive me for not doing one for druids, but I haven't fought enough moonkins personally to get a good grasp of druid battles. Druids continue to surprise me.
For those who are misinformed, here is a run down of how just about most warrior vs other classes go. We're going to assume you have all your cooldowns, because saying you don't is the same as saying we don't have ours, so even playing field.
Warrior vs Mage:
a) Warrior gets the first strike and charges, hamstrings. Mage frost nova's, walks away a bit, sheeps the warrior. Mage gets to max range, fires up cooldowns and trinkets. If a fire mage, about 75% of HP gone in the first volley as we intercept. Mage blinks immediately before a hit lands. If the warrior had his fear up, he could of intercepted and feared to give himself an ace, he runs up to the mage, gets an instant attack and a HS in, blastwave, dead. If this was an ice mage, the intercept would of bugged and sent the warrior 10 yards off course away from the mage. If close enough to use the fear, the mage would of iceblocked, and then finished off the warrior.
b) Mage gets jump on the warrior, no charge. Game over. If we don't get the charge on a mage, its over, no ifs ands or buts.
Warrior vs Warlock:
a) Charge, hamstring, zerker stance. Deathcoiled, hit with 3-4 instant cast DOTS, shadow bolted. Intercept, immolated. Try to do as much damage as possible, 1000 MS/HS crits back to back, look at the warlock's HP, around 50-60%, my own, too late I died.
b) Succubus out, seduced, curse of shadows, warlock pops trinkets, shadowbolts, intercept the lock, seduced again, shadowbolt, dots, deathcoil, dead.
c) Succubus scenario again, except this time I kill the succubus after the first seduce gets interrupted, rush the lock, deathcoiled, dotted, dead.
d) Voidwalker Soul link lock, hahaha...dead.
Warrior vs Rogue:
a) Dagger rogue. Easier than combat, cheapshot, stab stab stab, kidneyshot, stab stab stab, gouged, (if not in zerker stance) rogue hangs around till he gets energy back, more stabs, cold blood, eviscerate.
Oh still alive? Vanish, cheap shot, stab stab, repeat, dead.
If in zerker stance, break the gouge, rogue does 1 of 2 things.
1) Evasion, try to hamstring, dodges it, piercing howl to snare him, go battle stance to overpower, kidneyshot, stab stab stab, gouge, waits for energy, stab stab eviscerate. Dead.
2) Vanishes, cheapshots instantly (if not gets caught by an aoe shout) stab stab stab kidney shot stab stab stab, evasion, dead.
b) Kiting technique, rogue uses double crippling, and stays within intercept range, but out of melee range, this forces the warrior into a spot where he cannot keep the rogue in combat as he helplessly roams after him with crippling poison on, rogue drops combat, stuns, stabs, and repeats the kite till the warrior is dead.
c) Combat rogues. Cuts thru plate like paper. Not as much strategy involved, the usual stuns and timed evasions and gouges.
Warrior vs Priest:
a) Shadow priest, good game. No rage while their shield is up so we have to rely on the rage we generate from the damage we're taking. Needless to say, owned. A shadow priest in blues can drop epicced out warriors with little challenge.
b) Holy priest, similar to a shadow priest, but not as vicious, holy novas is what wins the fight besides SW pain.
If the warrior gets the charge, and doesn't swap stances in that second, priest fears, dots, nuked, warrior goes zerker and intercepts, whacks away at a shield gaining no rage, and just dies cuz he can't use his own abilities since he has no rage to work with.
If the warrior doesn't get the charge, he goes zerker and melees away, but has even less of a chance since he didn't get the free rage you get from charging. Needless to say its a GG.
Warrior vs Hunter
a) Hunters are really a dice roll. If the pet is out, the warrior can charge, aoe taunt to get the pet on himself so it will force break the hunters ice trap if he tries to use one. The warrior can then target the pet and use his fear to send the hunter running, then intercept the hunter, disarm him to stop him from wingclipping him, and then proceed to kill.
Now a problem can arise if the hunter FD's after you disarm him and the fear has broken, cuz you get trapped, he gets away, and proceeds to whale on you while you have no charge, intercept, or fear at your disposal, the ball is in the hunters court at this point, and he can kite you out for 30 seconds until your intercept is up again, in an open field, you are dead, whether or not that hunter has 10% hp will make no difference since you can no longer close the gap.
b) Hunter has no pet out, no nice fear tricks to use, you charge, get trapped, hunter walks off, fires away, intercept, trapped, hunter walks off again, fires away, you run up, hamstring, and at this point the hunter can laugh at you as he finishes you off with melee, as embarrassing as it is. Sometimes a warrior can get godly lucky, and that tiny moment where the hunter underestimates you in melee range is where you land a nasty stream of crits and kill him before he realizes what happened.
Warrior vs Shaman
a) Elemental shaman, you will most likely lose. Enhancement shaman, you will most likely win, especially if they have a 2h out. Resto shaman, you will most likely win if you are MS.
Warrior vs Paladin
Paladins can either go spell damage, or melee, if they are a melee 2hadin, you will most likely win as MS, you disarm, stay in zerker, you will eat a stun while they heal up, you gotta dps them down again, if they repentance you, zerker rage out of it, and finish them off. If you don't crit at all, you have a good chance of losing if they pop a bubble.
The spell damage paladins are just impossible, can't resist holy damage, 1h and shield out, stun and they just judge and shock the fuck out of you with consecration to boot.
That took a lot out of me so I'm going to get something to eat...perhaps dumplings?!
http://murlocdumplings.com/
Spyker Sep 1st 2006 3:57PM
The man knows what he is talking about....
GIVE US OUR TACTICAL MASTERY!!! (w/o the tree). the "solution" to move it to the first tier is a baby step at most.
mike Sep 1st 2006 3:58PM
Wow, Keeper, you've thought about this way more than I have. Enjoy those dumplings.
I don't have time to go point-by-point with you, but I do have two things for you:
-Obviously, those are ideal situations for the other class. You're assuming that they're going to play their best and be at full health with no cooldowns all the time. That's not the case in many PVP scenarios, and I'm guessing it's not what the devs design the classes by. Yes, I'm basically pulling out the "isn't designed for 1v1" argument... because right now it's true. If there were a 1v1 arena, maybe, but there isn't yet, so while your cases might be ideals, they rarely ever happen.
-And even if a perfectly skilled warrior was going up against an equally skilled other class, I don't think you've described the fights correctly. I don't see a shield bash anywhere, and that's the first thing I try to whip out when fighting casters. It's also possible to time Intercept or Charge correctly, too, and cut off spellcasting. (Yes, I know it doesn't help against instants but in practice it's very valuable.) I-shout can break spellcasting and interrupt the rogue's stabstabstabby.
Again, I can't go point by point with you because obviously you've spent lots of time on this. But I'll still contend your point that warriors are completely gimped without a trained TM. My warrior is not.
James Sep 1st 2006 4:24PM
I was going to do the exact same thing that Keeper already did. I'm a 28/5/18 dual wield non-epic warrior, nothing higher than the standard pre-MC instances. Goofy build of my own choice. Talk smack about my build if you want, but I have to be prot and I like to do damage, and I haven't gotten my Unstoppable Force yet. My best chance in a PvP situation is a Rogue that dodges but doesn't stun (don't know which build) because I can overpower every dodge and barely outlast his damage dealing. My next best opportunity is a Hunter who doesn't know how to trap properly and/or wingclip.
Warriors flatout suck in PvP unless you are geared up to the very highest level. The biggest problem is crowd control. Every other class has either an AOE or a handy snare or vanish effect to effectively put distance between them and an enemy. Warriors have nothing of the sort.
Rogue = Vanish
Druid = Root AND Escape ANY Immobilizing Effect
Paladin = Bubble + Heal
Priest = Bubble + Heal
Mage = Blink AND Frost to trap/slow
Hunter = Trap AND Wingclip AND Disorient
Warlock = Chain Fears
What do we get?
Warriors = a little used Improved Hamstring talent that many other characters can GET RID OF EASILY.
Even the best warrior is a dead warrior 95% of the time in PvP. Makes me wish my main 60 wasn't a warrior. :(
At least I'm familiar with where every graveyard is. Very handy knowledge.
AareDub Sep 1st 2006 7:46PM
If you guys are having problems with rogues, respec protection :-p
Demo shout, concussion blow, unload on him until he's no longer stunned. Disarm, throw a few heroic strikes, stance dance, execute. Bye bye rogue.
Casters? Concussion blow followed by a Shield Bash (w/ silence) after the stun wears off, should be enough time to finish them off.
Errr, locks can still be troublesome.
Chronos Sep 2nd 2006 10:36PM
"Does it make things easier? Of course. Five points (even ten points) is almost nothing to ask for a talent that basically takes the whole stance mechanism out of the game completely"
uhhh, no. It doesnt basicly take the whole stance mechanism out of the game completely at all. The player still needs to know what stance goes with what skill he wants to use. Making all the skills work in any stance would take the mechanism out of the game completely. Moving TM is just a band-aid on the problem I agree.
Again its also easier having a healer follow you around so you dont have to worry about such things right? Some warriors dont have that luxury I'm afraid, grats to any one who does though.
Honeslty the dev teams "wanted to give warriors tough choices" comment seem like a crock to me. Theres alot of tough choices for so many of the classes out there and warriors dont really need another one, the question of what they're going to do with their spec seems to be one of the hardest of all without the question of "Do I need TM or not?". To me at least it seems like they just want to be lazy about it, as if making it trainable would change the coding of the entire class, though I'm not a programmer.
Theres so much that could be fixed or at least changed with warriors. This isnt the only thing out there that could be said (and have been said), its just at the top of the list now because blizzard decided to open its mouth about the supposed talents that will be added in BC. It seems like a much smaller task to ask for it to be made trainable then any thing else that could be asked for,snair releases included. If Blizzard's dev teams didnt want the flack for it they shouldnt have said any thing about the talents even with all the leaks going around, they could have just not commented on rumors like they do so often.
just a few pro-warrior thoughts from a non-warrior
Kaylos Sep 5th 2006 11:09AM
I am sorry mike, but TM is as close to as necessary as any ability any class has. For DPS, TM is hands down one of the best DPS abilites warriors have since if makes you rage efficient when stance dancing. For tanking, you need it, cause not all of us have dwarf priests. (I am alliance in a Naxx guild and we don't have a dwarf priest, wtf) PvP is nearly impossible without TM.
While I don't really have a problem with the TM move since I plan on going 0/31/30, saying TM isn't really necessary shows a lack of understanding on how to maximize your potential as a warrior in all asepcts of the game. Sorry Mike, I like most of your commentary, but you are wrong on that point.
Lyon Sep 10th 2006 11:15AM
I would have to agree with Keeper. If Blizzard wanted the classes to be balanced what would that entail? Mike you say that not everyone has the same skill level, or even equal, that some different combo of skill would work. Looking at the descriptions of Keeper, I can see that his combo's are what those at an equal high level have evolved to. Yes, someone who has been soloing for a long time will be able to overcome any class who has not or (in new X-pvp BG's) I'm in tier 2 and they're still in blues. I find your argument lacking. So back to balance. To me and in my opinion, if the classes are truly balanced it means no matter what two meet, in a duel, with both of equal skill and gear, the battle would be a draw. No one would have an advantage over the other. Having a warrior as my main, I find that this is not true. Warriors are nerfed. I can go in a long list of talents and skills given to other classes to overcome the benefit of my plate and melee damage capabilities. I watched as other classes complained about not having one thing or another, and they giving over. As for TM in prot tree, it does again suggest that the developers want warriors first value as a tank for PVE and not to be competive in BG's. Just my two coppers.