Warriors will be cooling down faster in Northrend
by Matthew Rossi 
Aug 10th 2008 at 2:00PM
If you've been playing a warrior for a long time, you've probably gotten used to the way your three big class abilities work. Presently, Shield Wall, Retaliation and Recklessness are linked abilities with a shared 30 minute cooldown. This means if you use one of them you can't use any of the other two in addition to the one you used for half an hour. Not only has this restriction kept warriors from using any of their big cooldowns in Arenas, it also serves as an inhibitor in raiding and soloing and questing. You don't pop Shield Wall unless you're absolutely sure you're going to die, because then you won't have it for possibly two or three boss attempts.
This will no longer be the case in Wrath. In a move that simultaneously nerfs and buffs these long-standing warrior abilities, the base effect of each has been reduced but their cooldown shortened to 5 minutes. The tooltips of each ability spell it out now. The duration of each has dropped to about 12 seconds (not a huge deal), Recklessness has lost its fear breaking ability, Shield Wall only reduces incoming damage by 50%, and Retaliation only hits 20 attacks now. Yes, these are all nerfs. But the upside of a 5 minute duration makes them far more friendly for use. You can pop shield wall on trash if needed and still have it for a boss. A fury warrior can use reck secure in the knowledge that he'll most likely have it back up by the time the boss hits execute range. And retaliation might even be viable for multi-mob tanking now! A little stance dancing and you don't have to fret that shield wall is gone for half an hour.
To me, this is an awesome change. It makes those abilities less restricted and thus, makes me more willing to use them.
Filed under: Warrior, Analysis / Opinion, Expansions, Buffs, Wrath of the Lich King
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
archangel723 Aug 10th 2008 2:08PM
Sounds good to me. Are they still on a linked CD?
Naix Aug 11th 2008 10:42AM
Sounds OP to me. But if every class gets some badass skills to counter this I guess I will let it by.
Jay Aug 10th 2008 2:08PM
Also Improved Shield Wall now reduces the cooldown by 30/60 secs. (Previously increased duration by 3/5 secs)
Veras Aug 11th 2008 5:25AM
I was wondering what that talent did, I thought it was a bit strange that they'd still let us increase it's duration length when they shortened the cooltime. But this sort of shows us one thing. If improved shield wall shortens the cooldown, perhaps the 3 abilities are no longer linked with CD.
Procris Aug 10th 2008 2:19PM
Really awesome change for warriors as you rarely ever see these used in pvp and now shieldwall will be more usable in instances/raids.
Recklessness every 5 mins? Bring on the pain :o!
arrogance Aug 10th 2008 2:19PM
woohoo! great changes. good for raiding soloing pvp... everything!!! i agree that though they're slightly nerfed, they've all become way more usable.
and yesss.. retaliation at 5min cooldown will make soloing way fun. i'm envisioning a titan gripped fury warrior with 2 massive 2handers popping it... for massive damage to multiple mobs.
only problem now is i don't know whether to main the warrior or shammy for the expansion.
Ironhide Aug 10th 2008 2:21PM
I gotta say *yawn*
Doesnt fix a damn thing. Tanking heroics is still a Pallies realm, even 10 mans.. and AE tanking on a warrior still a lot more stressful than tanking on a Pally.
Warrior tanking is just so freaking boring, or it's so freaking stressful.. it's not fun most of the time.
Jordrah Aug 10th 2008 3:06PM
coming from pally tanking, i gotta tell you that currently, pally tanking is awfully boring as well. judge/seal, HS and consecrate is all you ever do.
when i tank on my warrior i find it a lot more enjoyable if only because i have more to do. devastate, shield slam, revenge, shield bash, spell reflect, shield block, heroic strike when i have too much rage, thunder clap, demo shout. and yes i use almost all of those on most fights, with the exception of shield bash and spell reflect.
sure pally tanking is easy and superior for 5-mans because of the fact that you can go with no CC, but then it just makes it TOO easy imo.
Adam Aug 10th 2008 6:47PM
I also have to add that heroics are not hard on a warrior. It's just knowing your class and who to balance it with. I have no problems tanking up to 4 mobs. I run many times through shattered halls timer runs on my warrior, most of the time only having 1 cc. Having a paladin healer with salv, or a priest who can fade is all i require for healer aggro. ANd thunderclap will hold multiple targets just fine with single target dps. granted a warrior isn't doing crap on aoe pulls (ie kara) but with a disciplined and organized group it's not hard either. Although one of my biggest peaves is the fact that TC only hits 4 targets. Most senseless nerf of all. Not like it does insane damage, and it has a 5 second cooldown, it's hardly overpowered like they claimed when they nerfed it to begin with cause warriors were using it to aggro snatch during questing/leveling. I didn't see them nerf consecrate or arcane explosion or blizzard to hit 4 targets for same reasons.
gareth Aug 12th 2008 9:48AM
The problem isn't that heroics are only the realm of paladin tanks, every heroic can be done by a warrior although some need some truly heroic work to do them.
The problem is the retarded simple tanking of paladins, as the other poster said its too much a question of just hitting consecrate rather then trying respond to multiple mob's abilities and attacks like the warrior/druid has to.
Basically I think the warrior tanking is where it should be, its a challenge because it is hard, shattered halls is the toughest with up to 7 mobs and to me really needs two tanks (even if one is a dps warrior or shaman) since you would rely on luck to get aggro consistently on all of them.
I'm hoping here that Blizzard can redress somehow the balance come WotLK, as right now having a easy mode route through the dungeons trivialises them and makes the effort needed to do them with a warrior or druid unrewarding.
Also the rewards then that heroics should drop should be better, getting one reward for 1.5 hours of instance that doesn't meet a kara drop isn't great and just makes for that huge and annoying gear gap between t4 and t5 that seems to have been more of a road block to progress then anything else.
I'd love to do something other then kara to gear up the guildies, mgt heroic is where it should be although there are probably too many purple drops really.
tchernobyl Aug 10th 2008 2:22PM
A few things to add to this... no, they are not linked but DO share a 12 second "cooldown" once one is used.. the other two would then be usable, just not the first (as it still has 5 minutes left on cooldown).
Also recklessness is nerfed beyond any sort of utility. It allows the next *three* yellow attacks to be crit. No white damage crits.
Tcgjarhead Aug 10th 2008 2:41PM
wtb less Fury PvE nerfs. As if our new talents werent bad enough they nerf our burst potential by knocking it to 3 charges on yellow hits.
/sigh
Nick S Aug 10th 2008 2:45PM
Yeah that pretty much turns Reck into an Arena ability. 3 crits in a row in PvE is almost as likely as not for geared DPS Warriors in a raid environment.
Tcgjarhead Aug 10th 2008 2:46PM
Dont forget the 20% damage you will take while recklessness is popped. And it doesnt even have the fear break anymore. Who would want to take the 20% on top of the 10% zerker stance dmg for 3 crits. O.o
Matthew Rossi Aug 10th 2008 3:12PM
Weird, I'm seeing white crits when I use recklessness, not just yellow. I know the tooltip specifies specials, so I'm wondering what's up with that.
tchernobyl Aug 10th 2008 3:37PM
Matthew: oh I dunno, maybe white crits affected by your normal crit rate? :P
STereo Aug 10th 2008 2:31PM
Making all these abilities available in arena. Must be Kalgan's birthday.
Zep Aug 10th 2008 2:42PM
Or not, since they're nerfed enough to be practically useless in arenas. 12 seconds? A single sheep/root/fear/blind will take a warrior out till that fades. No fear canceling on Recklessness, which is the only thing that might have any use in PVP for burst damage.
jason Aug 10th 2008 2:44PM
flippin' sweet
STereo Aug 10th 2008 2:49PM
Zep, not to be rude but I laughed out loud at your post. I have a 70 warrior. Recklessness is an "I win" button for the super crits. Warriors had 88 ways to be immune to fear, so now they have 87.