Patch 3.3.3 PTR: What the Vitality change means for warriors
by Matthew Rossi 
Feb 24th 2010 at 9:00PM
- Revenge: Damage done by this ability (base and scaling) increased by 50%.
- Talents
- Fury
- Rampage: This effect is now passive instead of being a proc from critical strikes.
- Protection
- Vitality: Now boosts Stamina by 3/6/9%, up from 2/4/6%. Strength and expertise benefits have not changed.
- Fury
The recent change to Devastate (that required a hotfix to fully implement) lead to the Revenge change. Similarly, the recent hotfix to Paladins Sacred Duty talent (the class had the best stamina scaling because unlike other tanks they had two talents that affected it, Sacred Duty and Combat Expertise) leads directly to this recent buff to Vitality. Even with this change, Vitality won't provide as much health as these two talents maxed, of course, but it'll bring tanks closer which is clearly a long term goal of the tanking design in Wrath of the Lich King. It remains to be seen if this talent change makes it to live... I could see the strength being buffed to match stamina as a means to add more sustained prot DPS (one of their stated goals) or the change reverted totally. That is, after all, what public test realms are for, testing things.
Filed under: Warrior, Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard, News items
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Sleutel Feb 24th 2010 9:17PM
I, for one, was thrilled to see this change. I'd been getting awfully sick of getting only a 6% bonus to every point of Stamina, compared to the 14% Paladins had, considering how essential EH is for endgame raiding in the current paradigm.
Dave Feb 24th 2010 9:41PM
Warriors get a ton of extra stamina from their gun slot that paladins will never get. That's why paladins have two talents for stam. There's a difference, it's not as big as you're making it out to me.
Sleutel Feb 24th 2010 9:45PM
@Dave:
I know, Pallies had some catching up to do. But IIRC, the numbers equalized a couple of tiers ago.
bkimice Feb 24th 2010 9:50PM
100some stam is nothing compared to 14%, or even the 8% difference.
Moyanna Feb 24th 2010 10:05PM
@Dave
The gun slot doesn't provide lots of effective health and pala's come out better on top regardless because it scales better rather than a fixed ammount thats dependant on one drop.
lets take an abitary ammount of stam a icc tank may have without the best in slot tanking rifle atm, 3200 stam for the pala
Pala 3200 + (3200*14%) = 3648 total stam for the pala
Warrior base 3200 stam + 77 for the rifle, so 3277 + (3277*6%) = 3473.62
or post fix 3277 + (3277*9%) = 3571.93
Sooo... buff long due but still not as much as the pala's advatange in the effective health arena
Ezence Feb 25th 2010 4:46AM
That would make perfect sense but last patch Paladins had Sacred Duty (hidden nerf) scaled down to better balance us with other tanks. Tinkering a warriors tree and increasing their stamina % is just insulting.
Moyanna Feb 25th 2010 12:44PM
@Ezence
Ok lets account for that "hidden" nerf the combination of talent buffs reduces it to a 12.5% increase for pala's Soo
Pala 3200 + (3200*12.5%) = 3600 total stam for the pala
down from the original 3648
compared to the post buff warrior with the 77 stam rifle with stam of 3571.93
Soo its gone from a 5% difference in hp between the two classes pre sacred duty nerf and vitality buff to 0.8% difference but with the pala's still coming out on top
nuggz Feb 24th 2010 10:41PM
so is revenge back on the rotation now?
Tim Feb 25th 2010 10:39AM
Seems like it. I know some people only use it at low rage situations. Due to its low rage cost I see it as a good threat/ rage ratio. I am excited to see the theorycrafters spreadsheet this out. Maybe it will allow us to use Heroic strike more. I use it aboe 75% of the time and I get low on rage.
navvarro Feb 25th 2010 12:10AM
Grats warriors! Though my main is a paladin tank I do like seeing other classes get buffed.
KronosIII Feb 25th 2010 1:10AM
mmmmm mmm
Man this is good. About time also....
Most tanks are measured by how much health they got. And well....pallys with the 14% more stam always towered over warriors with a little 6%
Plus in all honestly on a lore point of view. Aren't warriors supposed to have more endurance then pallys?
Even in D and D settings warrior arch types are supposed to be the guys having the most endurance.
And in D and D history pallys have always been a support class. That is till 4th edition when they can be a defender.
But even then they are no where near the power of endurance of a warrior. Mostly for BALANCE issues because the pally is a HYBRID class. And making it excel in even 1 roll compared to others will make it way too op
Maybe blizzard can learn a thing or two about dungeons and dragons. In short(actually make a hybrid tax exist maybe?)
Making hybrids excel in any 1 roll is a no no
KronosIII Feb 25th 2010 1:17AM
In short.
If a pally did more dps then a warlock. The game is partly broken
The warlocks only roll is dps. Whats the point of being a lock if a class that can tank/heal/dps is doing better then your one roll.
I understand that they are trying to work out a hybrid tax. But the numbers are not balanced at all. Sadly the hybrid tax should be more then 5%.
The game has serious balance issues. Mostly because of qq for a hybrid class doing less damage in raids.
In all honestly my warrior should never be able to dps close to the amount a mage/hunter/lock/rogue and put out. Or should any other class.
The margin has to be bigger to maintain balance
Falcom Feb 25th 2010 1:19AM
Please point me to the non-hybrid tank we have in game.....oh, wait.
thevitruvianman Feb 25th 2010 8:21AM
Hybrid tax is a concept that applies to DPS only. There are no 'pure' tanks or healers so having a hybrid tax for them would be beyond pointless. I'm pretty sure Ghostcrawler himself stated this somewhere. This article is about tanking, so 'hybrid tax' has absolutely no place in the discussion.
Also, DnD is HORRIBLY unbalanced. Just go and play any of the bioware/obsidian DnD games on a PvP enabled server and you will see. While you're at it, take a look at DnD online and how much they had to butcher the rules to make it work as an MMO. Holding DnD up as some kind of paragon of balanced gameplay is totally absurd.
As much as we like to bash them, the WoW devs are actually pretty good at what they do. They've noticed a potential issue with stamina scaling on tanks, and they are addressing it before it becomes a massive issue when we're all in tier 14 in cataclysm and paladins have 15k more health than warriors in the same gear. Good job WoW devs, thanks for the buff, end of story.
KronosIII Feb 25th 2010 1:21PM
thanks for reading or not.
I have said warriors are hydrids in my post. If the part that my warrior should not be doing the same dps as a mage/lock/rogue/hunter was enough of a hint.
And I brought this up because this buff to warriors having much less stam then pallys in high level gear.
And still pallys are most likely the best tank even after this. And they do comparable dps to warriors. And even to go more far they have the biggest heals in raids.
You can't have a hybrid class excell in every roll. It will just make everyone flock to one class like.........idk how it is now? How on most servers pallys make up around 12-16% of the player population at 80? Even more then the Dk's that start at level 56 when leaving the level area. Hell it is almost impossible to do a 10 man without 2 pallys in it. Just because they are the most used class.
And this is why you can not make hybrids excel too high. However this could of been a plan from blizzard to make pallys a powerful force in lich king. Where pallys are known to be stronger against the undead and against a pally that went against the order.
If anything it is most likely a great idea to make pallys a strong force during a expansion. On a lore point of view. Game wise it is not smart at all.
Hell maybe in Cata. shaman's become OP all of a sudden? And it will fit the lore perfectly.
pnm326 Feb 25th 2010 1:44PM
This qq is more effective due to the lack of punctuation.
AxnJackson11 Feb 25th 2010 3:32AM
sweet, 44k hp unbuffed here i come (ya i'm a noob lol)
Christopher Schmidt Feb 25th 2010 7:25AM
Wait, wha? They nerf pally health then they buff warrior hp twice now? I used to be about 300-400 hp different then warriors in similar gear (im in 245/251 gear) now im 1700-2k less then most warriors i see...in lesser gear. Now im going to be further behind? And it will get worse the better gear I get. I really don't think health is the reason other tanks were below pally's or that adding more hp to warriors will fix them. It feels like they are doing the "Lets throw shit at the wall and see what sticks" method of fixing classes now.
Bender Feb 25th 2010 9:53AM
When did warriors get a health buff before this? They have been at 6% since forever.
Lets not forget that Paladins have a superior cooldown with AD. Paladins still have a 1% Sta advantage plus a 3% less damage advantage from talents of a warrior.
It does balance out.
Xenix Feb 25th 2010 7:45AM
Keep in mind that the entire reason paladins got more health scaling is that our class has almost 2k less base health than warriors. We needed it to make up for that plus the ranged slot, and the break-even point used to be full 232-ilvl gear. With the current scaling, it's well out of reach, not even counting the changes in 3.3.3.
With Warriors getting 2k more base + 9% scaling, and any DK getting the same 2 more base + ~10% scaling (8 frost, 2 runeforge), and paladins getting 2k less base health than the other two + 10% scaling, we're easily the lowest on the totem pole in terms of health. On the other hand, the damage reduction from AD makes us still take slightly more damage to kill from full, which is what Blizzard realizes.
On the other hand, we do only having one real activated cooldown (50% DR, 12 second duration), plus a possible two minor 6-second 20% ones with 3 talent points or a glyph, making us probably the worst class at having a decent cooldown for predictable damage. The AD heal is not only easy to get gibbed through on most bosses (It sets me at ~18k health after the one hit it keeps from killing me), we can't control it - basically only ever procs when healers aren't expecting a burst, making it nice for learning a fight and much worse for execution after you know what to expect.