The Care and Feeding of Warriors: A Few Wishes
by Matthew Rossi 
Jul 27th 2007 at 5:50PM
Every week Matthew Rossi writes The Care and Feeding of Warriors, the column that understands that yes, sometimes gear has good enough stats to get you to wear it even if you end up looking like the above picture when you do. Nothing says 'fearsome, powerful, deadly armed combatant' quite like pink goggles, I think you'll have to agree.
Playing a warrior can be exciting, satisfying and fun. The combination of heavy armor, rage, and the various options the class has for weapons (since warriors can equip anything but a wand) and talent spec means, with the effort put in, you can have a warrior who is ideally suited to keeping the mobs bashing away at him, or one who channels his rage into a blinding fury of attacks, or one who swings a sword as big as he is at your head. Nothing is perfect, of course - for some reason, gnomes in dresses are capable of surviving multiple blows from an axe as big as a tauren just by waving their hands and can burn through 9000 health before you get to swing your weapon twice - but no class is expected to be able to do everything.
Still, everyone always has ideas for how to improve on things, and I'm no different.
Playing a warrior can be exciting, satisfying and fun. The combination of heavy armor, rage, and the various options the class has for weapons (since warriors can equip anything but a wand) and talent spec means, with the effort put in, you can have a warrior who is ideally suited to keeping the mobs bashing away at him, or one who channels his rage into a blinding fury of attacks, or one who swings a sword as big as he is at your head. Nothing is perfect, of course - for some reason, gnomes in dresses are capable of surviving multiple blows from an axe as big as a tauren just by waving their hands and can burn through 9000 health before you get to swing your weapon twice - but no class is expected to be able to do everything.
Still, everyone always has ideas for how to improve on things, and I'm no different.
Something that's always bothered me is that speccing protection seems to be saying "I will be playing an alt outside of instances and raids". Now, warriors are hardly alone in this, as any holy priest can tell you, but it still seems unfair that a player finds herself or himself, after having leveled to 70, unable to do simple cash grinds or farm for crafting without it taking four times longer than it would outside that spec. While I agree that we don't want prot warriors out DPSing Arms or Fury warriors, there has to be a tool we can add to their arsenal that helps move farming and soloing/questing a few notches up the scale from 'awful' to 'tolerable'. Having Revenge do more damage was a nice first step, but I'd like to see something more.
One of the ideas I had was for a reflexive damage shield based on rage. Give it a 30 second duration, have it cost 30 rage to use, and have it do damage comparable to Thorns or Lightning Shield. The catch is, the more damage the warrior takes, the more damage the shield does to those hitting her or him. In effect, the mobs would be killing themselves on the warrior's damage shield. This keeps prot warriors from suddenly running around with insane damage that they can direct at will, and allows them to grind mobs (who are going to be hitting them anyway) faster. It could also be used while tanking to help with multi-mob pulls, which is currently where some warriors find themselves having trouble in the new instances.
Now that I've made a suggestion for prot spec, why not give a little imaginary love to fury warriors? I don't currently have a fury war at 70 (my fury warrior is my night elf, currently parked at level 69 and not going anywhere) but I have always enjoyed the spec, especially when playing around with new variations for unconventional builds that were a lot less practical than they could have been. (I still remember my 25/26 Arms/Fury build and how I refused to believe it wasn't working no matter how many corpse runs I had to make.) What I would really like to see for fury is a talent that helps them become the berserker archetype they're supposed to be, something that makes them harder to kill the closer they are to being dead. I was inspired by the changes to Aspect of the Viper in the upcoming patch, which improves mana regen as the Hunter's mana drops below 50%. Imagine a talent that increased a warrior's damage resistance or resilience as his health dropped, so that by the time he was down to 20% health he was almost uncrittable? Maybe increasing his stun resistance too? You'd have to balance it carefully but I'd like to see less warriors standing stock still, unable to fight and critted to death in permanent stunlock.
My most played warrior, my tauren, is now 42 Arms/ 5 Fury/ 14 Prot and I'll probably spec out of prot eventually, but either way I really enjoy arms personally and I always have. It's touted as a PvP spec but I've found it has talents like Second Wind and Improved Disciplines which I enjoy for tanking. Having a Shield Wall more often is never a bad thing for tanking. So what would I like to see added to arms? Honestly, arms is a pretty strong tree right now, the only thing I'd like to see added would be a talent that allowed arms warriors, the supposed masters of weapons, to temporarily add 100 or so to their weapon skill, not to exceed the weapon's max skill level for that character. So a level 60 arms warrior could temporarily take a weapon he or she isn't skilled in and add up to their maximum possible skill with that weapon, or +100 to their current skill, whichever is less. Basically, the idea would be that arms warriors are so skilled with weapons that they can familiarize themselves with them quickly - this means that an arms warrior could equip and use a weapon without worrying as much if she or he has been using, say, a mace for the past few levels.
Okay, it's your turn. What do you want to see added to the warrior?
Filed under: Tauren, Warrior, (Warrior) The Care and Feeding of Warriors
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Warrior_Tess Jul 27th 2007 6:13PM
A damage shield is something I've been hoping for for a long time. It's not a huge buff, but it can make a big difference when questing. I feel totally gimped as a prot warrior when fighting multiple mobs solo.
Case in point: just recently I watched a mage and pally work together to aoe 14 mobs in the time it took for me to kill 2. I almost cried.
Chris Sep 14th 2007 3:57PM
I think an addition for a prot warrior to regen health would be so beneficial. In fact a ability that helps all specs do that. Convert rage into health. I realize this is a druid ability but here's my take on it. Have the ability have a hangup. One would be it could only be used outside of combat. That means after a fight you convert all your leftover rage into health to allow you to continue on.
Make it a percentage and the hang up would be that if you used it all on execute or something else then your SOL. But if you have half life and a lot of rage left after any fight. You can then take that and convert it. Such as 300hp per rage point or something. Makes grinding and farming so much easier.
Another addition I would like would be what you said. Shield spikes suck and arnt worth the ore used to make them. If they improved them to allow us to do damage with our shield as you said I would be so much more happy.
Lastly, get ride of the damage increase in berserker stance!!! Its an annoyance and no one likes being in that stance because of the increase in damage they take which doesn't give a great enough damage increase to be beneficial at all. Its uncalled for. Buff the stances more, make them truly what they stand for. Make the buffs make more sense.
nebuchadnezzar447 Jul 27th 2007 6:41PM
How about less Paladin gear for quest rewards?
Aeneas Jul 27th 2007 6:56PM
I read comment 1 and it gave me a small, and very weak, idea. How feasible is this? A high-level Protection talent ability that could be activated on a good block that affected Cleave in these ways: (1) Cleave hits all enemies in melee range, regardless of location (i.e. it will hit enemies behind the Warrior); (2) Cleave does a great deal more damage; (3) Cleave's cooldown is shortened. When used after a good block, this buff lasts for 30 seconds. For comparison, see how Rampage works for Fury Warriors; this new ability would be very similar in form, but slightly different in execution.
The ability would allow the Protection Warrior to essentially AoE damage enemies. As long as one is careful in considering the amount of damage it does, it would successfully allow the Protection Warrior to participate in solo PvE in the same way that the AoE Mage does. Additionally, it adds more tanking options and does not seem to affect the nature of the Protection spec.
For the happy roleplayer, this ability would be called something like "Combat Awareness" and it would be explained that the ability allows the Warrior to see and successfully attack all of the enemies in his vicinity. For you who would comment that it is not essentially similar to the defensive personality of the Protection tree, I would ask you to look at the character of Intervene. This new ability lets the Warrior protect all those around him (cut me some slack, eh?).
Of course, I jest really. But I suppose an idea is better than no idea; mock away as you will! :P
Jason Jul 27th 2007 7:17PM
I would like to see a shout that does a decent amount of threat on about a 10 sec cooldown. A big problem warriors have is multi-mob aggro. Even with Imp Thunder clap it's tough to hold em all, shouts hit all targets rather than a fixed number so it would be helpful for aoe tanking and damage free so it wouldn't break CC. or have challenging shout on a MUCH shorter cooldown.
Lunar Wolf Jul 27th 2007 7:22PM
Speaking in a pvp sense, its about time we made taunt and challenging shout work against players. First, i get sick of distract forcing me to turn around and fiegn death deselcting my target and yet i can't do to a player for some reason. figure that out. Next in arenas, i feel that protection needs a pvp addition and making taunt work in arenas can open strategies that makes a warrior a welcome addition. I feel like a 3rd wheel when my arena buddies get nuked then they turn to me. To fix this: add to the taunt in the protection tree that taunt can work and 50 percent less resistance to taunt. gives protection warriors a job OUTSIDE of instances and raids
DragonPup Jul 27th 2007 7:30PM
How about armor absorbs magic damage to a degree so warriors aren't forced to min-max resistance gears in certain raids as much. :p
Illithiel Jul 27th 2007 7:49PM
A damage shield is too close to the paladin's Holy shield, and so really cant be used, because then you would have to buff up and add a new unique skill to paladins.
however, I do agree with the fury spec idea,
because a fury warrior needs something more then dual wielding to make them special.
Madjack Jul 27th 2007 8:08PM
Personally, I think the problem with Prot-spec warriors being unable to farm can be solved by taking a look at my favorite class, the Feral Druid. You say that prot-spec warriors have a hard time outside the dungeon? Instead of coming up with special skills to give to the prot warrior to increase his damage, why not redo the entire concept. Take a look at how the Feral-spec does it's job for tanking and dps, both handled together, and separated by the form the Druid chooses. In Bear form, he's a tank, while in Cat form, he's a fighter. The forms sort of remind me of the Warrior's stances. You can switch from one to the other, but it costs you to do so.
I don't know how I'd do the talents to reflect this. I think it would require a massive revamping of the Warrior trees. But once done, any Warrior could be both a tank and a fighter.
Laukidh Jul 27th 2007 8:09PM
"A damage shield is too close to the paladin's Holy shield, and so really cant be used, because then you would have to buff up and add a new unique skill to paladins."
Yup, what the article describes sounds just like a prot pally... holy shield, ret aura and BoS. Prot pally's kill not through hitting the mob but by being hit. Its why they can tank multimob pulls so well.
Pelle Jul 27th 2007 8:39PM
how about a Reflect % dmg (melee/magic) Talent in Prot tree, with low or none aggro, with no special aggro addision to raids and a welcome dps boost in PvE/Grinding/"Daily Questing".
Wulfhere Jul 27th 2007 10:22PM
Buffing prot pallies... you mean, like giving them an AoE taunt similar to Challenging Shout, only *better*? Because you can pick exactly who you're taunting mobs off of and it's on a faster cooldown? Buff them like that?
Since we already went and did that, seems okay to me to buff prot warriors.
Daf Jul 27th 2007 9:56PM
Personaly I think blizzard had already hint at a possible solution that was to make devastate hit with both weapons when dual wielding, unfortunatly that was reverted because it was consider to be doing too much damage.
Besides that the only thing i'd like changed is the durations of shouts, paladin blessings have now been doubled in duration yeat again and us warriors still need to refresh our shouts every 2m. I don't think it would be overpowered to double that duration or at least add 1 more minute to it :\
Grimm Jul 27th 2007 10:09PM
@ 11:
"Besides that the only thing i'd like changed is the durations of shouts, paladin blessings have now been doubled in duration yeat again and us warriors still need to refresh our shouts every 2m."
On every class individually? Or individuals within a class who all want something different? I think it's a slightly different situation.
Wolfstalker Jul 27th 2007 11:05PM
QQ posts should really stay on the forums. Warriors are already the best PvP class and one of the most desired raiding classes.
Rees Aug 27th 2007 10:17PM
all i would wish for is reducing the cooldown for retaliation
Gerrick Jul 28th 2007 6:35AM
Yeah, give us prot pally's your health and mocking blow and we'll give you our ONLY taunt.
Heraclea Jul 28th 2007 12:24PM
All Warriors ought to have a natural, inherent, and always on regardless of stance, resistance to fear. Frankly, it's theme-breaking that they do not.
Armor ought to provide some mitigation against ranged non-physical damage apart from stamina buffs.
I also agree with @2's suggestion that some kind of mechanism to convert rage into health is needed.
I played a tanker to the top level in City of Heroes, and a warrior to level 70 here. There, the tanker class comes with a great deal of inherent survivability but can still solo effectively. We take too big of a DPS hit the deeper we spec into prot, which in turn makes us ineffective and dull to play in the game content outside of raids and instances.
J Aug 1st 2007 1:04PM
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned this yet... f'in respec out of prot during the part of the week you're not raiding! The most it will ever cost you is 50g. You can make that in very little time doing 4 daily quests or a plethora of other ways to make gold.
Most healing specs suffer the same limitations for soloing, so quit being so lazy and make a little gold to respec.
Jen Aug 1st 2007 3:15PM
At the moment prot warriors not being able to do damage is also a big problem in raids, since you will need between 1 and 5 tanks and the rest of the time those other 4 tanks could be contributing dps, except they're prot warriors. The solution is to use protection warriors for what they are good at: single, single-target dps. You need exactly as many as you need shadow priests or hemo rogues. Then grab feral druids for off-tanking and paladins for multi-target tanking. It is clear that no one tanking class is designed to be able to do everything better than every other tank, and that is the way it should be.
My favorite ideas are a) threat dump! Please, for the love of all that is right in the world, give dpsing warriors a threat dump. If Nightbane eats me one more time because the fury warrior can't control his threat I'm going to take away his Decapitator and make him use a Stopable Force. b) A 5-point talent that deflated the warrior's ego. This would be complemented by a 42-point fury talent that makes them realize once and for all, they really, really, REALLY can't tank just because they can hold a shield.