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The latest patch 5.4 newsThe Care and Feeding of Warriors: Patch 4.0.1 is a good thing
by Matthew Rossi 
Sep 17th 2010 at 1:00PM
The Care and Feeding of Warriors is about warriors, who hurl themselves into the fray, the very teeth of danger, armed with nothing more than the biggest weapons and armored with the absolutely heaviest armor we can find. Hey, we're not stupid -- we're just crazy.
Well, we know patch 4.0.1 will be upon us soon. When it comes, there will be that tendency to panic. It's understandable, as this is a huge departure for every class. We warriors are as subject to change as anyone else. But my trademark cautious optimism tells me that it won't be as bad as you might think. For starters, you'll still be a warrior and thus, the best class ever conceived (which goes without saying, really; that's why I typed it, so I didn't have to say it). Some bullet points from my experience on the beta:
Well, we know patch 4.0.1 will be upon us soon. When it comes, there will be that tendency to panic. It's understandable, as this is a huge departure for every class. We warriors are as subject to change as anyone else. But my trademark cautious optimism tells me that it won't be as bad as you might think. For starters, you'll still be a warrior and thus, the best class ever conceived (which goes without saying, really; that's why I typed it, so I didn't have to say it). Some bullet points from my experience on the beta:
- Arms warriors will be unhappy to see Mortal Strike's debuff decrease, but the rotation remains interesting with just enough complexity to reward smart play. In general, it should be viable even for raiding (yes, I said "viable for raiding").
- Fury warriors who like one-handed weapons will love Single-Minded Fury. I took it out for a long test run through Hyjal and Deepholm on my worgen last night, and it holds up. It might be slightly behind TG right now; I couldn't get Skada to capture any data, but it didn't feel like it was at all. If, like me, you love fist weapons, then it's happydance time. In general, fury is inevitably going to see lower damage due to rage normalization and the changes to Heroic Strike/Cleave/Whirlwind, but Raging Blow does a lot to make up for those changes. Numbers aside, the new enrage mechanic is pretty interesting for fury.
- Assuming the current weird threat issues on the beta are solved by the time 4.0.1 is released (keep in mind that there hasn't been a damage pass yet), then the biggest problem facing protection warriors will be that it's a ridiculously solid tree filled with so many good talents that you might not even want to spend any elsewhere. Frankly, I'm thankful Safeguard is still bad. At least that's two points I know I can spend somewhere else.
Embrace change
One of the reasons for my being optimistic about 4.0.1 is that Blizzard is definitely not done with the damage pass.
Ghostcrawler - PTR damage out of controlQuote:
here I was thinking it was because the damage pass hadn't happened yet, afterall some specs are still hitting like wet noodles (mine). Please say the damage pass hasn't happened!blah blah blah
here I was thinking it was because the damage pass hadn't happened yet, afterall some specs are still hitting like wet noodles (mine). Please say the damage pass hasn't happened!blah blah blah
It hasn't. Off the top of my head, Fury warriors and Feral druid damage seems low. BM hunter damage seems high. There are probably others. You'll start to see more number tweaks over time, especially as more players get to 85 on the beta that we can compare to our internal testing.
Furthermore, a lot of issues people are having on the beta are due to decaying combat ratings as you level. Things like dodge, parry, crit, hit, expertise, etc. all decay every time you gain a level, requiring escalating levels to gain the same amount of actual percentage. So if you have 35 percent crit at level 80, you can easily drop to 27 percent at 81, then 22 percent at 82.
This is a non-issue for us when 4.0.1 drops, because we won't be leveling up. Your ratings won't decay. So if you have gobs of avoidance now, you should still have gobs of avoidance come the patch. Your hit and expertise caps will be the same (except that a lot of us fury warriors are going to find hit rating a lot more attractive, since the bug that allowed our off-hand strikes to use the Heroic Strike miss rate will be gone). So performance in your chosen role will see some changes (if you're gemming ArP and you don't want a massive amount of crit come the patch, you may want to start looking at collecting strength gems), but the floor is not going to drop out from under you.
If anything, arms will gain a much-needed interrupt and some fun tricks; fury may see more PvP viability with the greatly improved Blood Craze; and protection warriors will be scratching their heads at an abundance of good talents.
Why 4.0.1 will be a good thing
Yes, there will be adjustments. Currently, on the PTR and in the beta, damage for warriors is low and threat for warrior tanks is inconsistent. These are real issues, important issues, and I understand and sympathize with players who feel frustrated (well, warrior players, anyway -- screw those other classes). But ultimately, that issue is one that will be solved with the damage pass. (Admittedly, it may take a few passes, and nothing is ever perfect.) What's more important is the retuning of rage and redesigning of all three trees.
With the reduction in talent points, the revision of the talent trees to 31 points and the consequential concision of various talents as well as the reduction of stats like armor penetration and defense, warriors are finally entering a world where no tanking hybrid holds a clear, mechanical, designed superiority over any other. Why is that a good thing? Because, at long last, tanks will have to be compared based on what they can actually do instead of what they once did.
Frankly, the legacy of original endgame raiding has haunted the warrior class for a long time. Our original rage design ensured that we would always pay for our ultimate endgame superiority in best-in-slot gear by being horribly weak until we got it when we were damage dealers, and that any tanking shortfalls would always be answered with, "Warriors are fine; look how many fights are designed around them." The way it was became the way it has always been, enshrined in the minds of players who couldn't see past it, a sacred cow.
Patch 4.0.1 and Cataclysm are good because they will finally kill that cow. Everyone is getting a complete redesign. Everyone is seeing changes that will affect how they tank or DPS (or heal, but we don't do that, thank the maker), and while some classes will come out ahead at first and adjustments will need to be made, we know one thing: No class will be inherently favored by encounter design or legacy talents, and that means that no complaints of tank favoritism based on old mechanics can be levied against us anymore. Similarly, if warriors still manage to top damage meters with the new rage design, then no one can complain about the rage mechanic, because it's been adjusted. At last, when we win, they'll have to suck it up and accept that they were outplayed.
At present (and it could, of course, still change), rage is generated either through attacking, being hit (at normalized rates, so a swing always generates the same amount of rage and a percentage of your total health taken in damage always generates the same rage) or using Battle or Commanding Shout. This means that you'll hopefully see less rage starvation when leveling an undergeared warrior.
A host of improvements
A lot of improvements will come into the game with 4.0.1, including a very elegant and easy-to-use system telling you exactly when one of your proc-based abilities (Sudden Death, Bloodsurge, Sword and Board) is useable. Most of us use an addon for that functionality now, but it's fully baked into the UI in 4.0.1. Also, the character pane is greatly improved, with the ability to expand and contract at will and direct calculations for how much each combat rating converts to and how much you need to hit mobs within three levels of your current level.
With the changes to how talents and abilities are learned and the removal of the ranking system, you'll never have to go back to a trainer to get the latest rank of Battle Shout or what have you. You'll only get trained when you actually learn something new, and you'll see alternation between gaining a new talent point and gaining new abilities. It's a lot smoother. From experience, the new system is a lot more seamless for a leveling warrior; it took very little time to go from 1 to 70 with it.
In the end, pretty much everything bad you can say about patch 4.0.1 for warriors is based on a PTR and beta that have not been balanced yet. When those balancing passes are done, we can then decide to panic or not. Until then, what we have is a really fascinating, provocative and frankly much more well-designed set of trees than I expected going into this. It would not surprise me if by the time 4.0.1 drops, we actually have three trees viable for both PvP and PvE. Three viable trees for both! Imagine that for a moment. Aren't you glad you rolled the right class?
Check out more strategies, tips and leveling guides for warriors in Matthew Rossi's weekly class column, The Care and Feeding of Warriors.Filed under: Warrior, Analysis / Opinion, (Warrior) The Care and Feeding of Warriors, Cataclysm
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 3)
Feldring Sep 17th 2010 1:55PM
I'm glad you commented, DragonFire, because I was going to ask Safeguard. My fledgling warrior is still enjoying old Azeroth at level 59 and Safeguard has never been a part of my leveling talent build plans, but it sounds useful later.
Why is it so widely denigrated? Is it simply because it's a situational talent that takes points which might be better spent elsewhere on threat or avoidance talents? As a baby warrior, I'm genuinely curious. Will it be more useful in Cataclysm? I'm curious what Mr. Rossi (and the WoW Insider community) think, especially about the latter question.
My impression is that it might be looked on more fondly in an environment where healers need bolstering and everyone is a little more responsible for their own survivability.
Maz Sep 17th 2010 2:14PM
There IS a reason to use Safeguard in Lich King: Intervene makes the obvius to the Soul Reaper (I have even seen some parrys to it) and the damage reduction from Safeguard protects your buddy from that haste buff that Arthas gets. No one has to use a cooldown and can use it for other things. Ever. Don't have to do complicated plans concerning agro, cooldowns or positioning the boss. I cannot understand how that can be considered useless or "god awful". And taunting makes you take the Soul Reaper anyways.
And that part of "(yes, I said "viable for raiding")" about Arms is ridiculous. Not by a long shot that Arms is that crap lots of people want to make of it, but it takes a lot of effort to get decent results (and that fury is a broken and overpowered facerolling spec). The word is not "viable", is "overcomplicated". And that's a different subject.
Believe me, I don't want to be the troll here or question your authority in the matter, but that simplistic and simplified point of view is not something I would expect in this kind of articles. =(
Sleutel Sep 17th 2010 2:32PM
@Matthew:
Taunting for Soul Reaper means they still take the full hit. Intervene knocks 30% off the damage (and also picks up one or two of the LK's hasted blows, depending on whether you have the glyph). Is it worth having for 99% of fights? No. But if you're working on Heroic LK, it may very well be worth your while to respec just for that fight, because it means that you now have an external damage reduction cooldown that can be used *every 30 seconds*. That means that if you time it properly, you can hit *every single Reaper* and allow the LK tank's CDs and other external CDs like Pain Suppression to be reserved for other situations.
DragonFireKai Sep 17th 2010 2:42PM
@Matt
If your Lich King tank is an equivilently geared DK, Druid, or Paladin, at the moment, They'll take less damage than a warrior due to WotN, Ardent Defender, and savage defenses. By taunt trading, you you create the oportunity for confusion amongst healers as both tanks will be getting hit hard when the soul reaper ticks, and then exposing a tank who will take more damage to the Lich King. Meanwhile,Valk'yrs snatch up your friends, and require stuns and snares, which is a prot warrior's stock in trade.
The other option is to have you hit one button, and the Lich King tank has another set of damage reduction to keep him secure.
I understand, as a fellow tank, the irritation that comes with getting talents that pigeonhole you into a certain role. But this has given all tanks, except DKs, added functionality when they are not tanking the boss. And you will spend time not tanking the boss. While I understand your concerns from a tanking perspective, as a raid leader,I know it is the job of a raid leader to get players to set aside their egos and idiosynchracies in favor of maximizing performance and utility. I force my pally tanks to take Divine Sacrifice and my ret pallies to take aura mastery for the same reason. They don't like it, but it allows us to kill bosses.
@Feldring
Safegaurd is a talent that modifies intervene. Intervene,on it's own, it a fairly lackluster ability in the current raiding environment, used mostly for movement purposes, rather than the melee intercept. It's nice to get out of novas and shockblasts with panache, rather than running like those lesser melee dps.
Safegaurd turns intercept into an external cooldown. I don't know if you've raided on other characters, but there are some fights where a boss ability will outright kill the tank if they don't have a CD up. Sarth 3D, Steelbreaker, Mimiron, Vezax, Gormak, and the Lich King are examples from across the spectrum of wrath content. Warriors only have two active CDs, both need to be glyphed down to two minutes, and Paladins only have one active and one passive. On those fights a paladin or warrior must have CDs from other players to stay alive. Divine/hand of sacrifice from a paladin and Pain Supression/Gaurdian Spirit from a priest are the only viable options. Safegaurd turns intercept into a warrior's Hand of Sacrifice, and opens up new options with both raid composition, and rotation options.
In short, safegaurd doesn't have much use until you're raiding hard content, but when it does, expect your raid leader to demand it.
Jeff Sep 17th 2010 6:24PM
Rossi: Taunt trade Soul Reaper? Why, when I can intervene the other tank, vigi him, and use his constant damage to taunt the vile spirits away from the raid? Makes a lot more sense to me than passing the boss back and forth.
cidninja Sep 17th 2010 6:58PM
yeah it's really stupid to just flat out say it's awful like that. safeguard got me my first LK kill, and it's been in my spec since. i like the idea of there being more ways to protect someone than by yelling at monsters so they hit you instead.
Kallix Sep 18th 2010 4:16PM
While Rossi's comment may have been a bit harsh, and Safeguard can be used in certain fights, I think the main point in his article that he was making is that compared to the other talents in the tree, its a no brainer. Trying to find talents that you don't want/need is really difficult, and Safeguard is just really lackluster compared to all the others.
As far as the LK fight goes, I was recommended to use pick up Safeguard for the fight, but I found that I'd normally be on the other side of the platform chasing a Val'kyr when it dropped, and our main tank would normally die. Rather than taunting once the debuff is on one tank, so that one tank takes the shadow damage and the other takes the hasted attacks, we found the easiest way around it was just have one tank pop a cooldown each reaper, and then switch tanks. It meant we only have our cooldowns for those parts of phase 2/3, but you shouldn't really need them at any other point.
Hvaing a DK and warrior setup may have made it easier, as we had a fair few cooldowns, but it meant we always had either chains of ice or charge/shockwave/conc blow for val'kyrs, and I didn't have to try and get around defiles to get back to the tank in time.
deviationer Sep 17th 2010 1:38PM
I'm curious how well the self healing talents work. Field Dressing & Blood Craze + Impending Victory. It seams like it might be worth it for leveling as prot (80-85) to pic up those talents. They would also probably be usefull in the 5 mans and maybe even heroics.
Hih Sep 17th 2010 1:39PM
What happened to the "doom and gloom" "warriors are going to suck" "rage normalization is the worst thing that's ever going to happen to warriors" and "zomg MS debuff nerf!" of a few months ago?
Oh, what's that? Everything's going to be fine and I told you so? You're right. I did.
Matthew Rossi Sep 17th 2010 1:48PM
And you're so classy about it, too.
I've expressed cautious optimism about the beta and talent changes for months now. If you can't be bothered to read those columns, why are you commenting? So you can be a jerk, and an inaccurate jerk at that? Show me where I said a single thing more severe than "Rage normalization will need to be very carefully monitored and it will lower our DPS." Which was and is true.
The MS debuff nerf is pretty bad. But it's a done deal. There's no point in complaining about it. I mean, I CAN gripe, but then you'd complain about that, right?
Sithril Sep 17th 2010 1:50PM
The idea of a fury warrior dual wielding two fist weapons makes me want to roll one!
Furious Kalleck Sep 17th 2010 2:32PM
Do. Want. Too.
Ichigo Sep 17th 2010 1:51PM
This patch cannot come soon enough. Very interested to see new class combos and the new Cataclysm mechanics before the expansion.
Jeff Sep 17th 2010 1:55PM
You're right, Safeguard is a _terrible_ talent. I sure hate being able to give the other tank a mini-shield wall prior to Frost Breaths, Soul Reapings, etc. Absolutely awful.
Kadin1399 Sep 17th 2010 2:19PM
I truly am glad I made my main a warrior! Tanking sounds like it'll be so much more interesting as well, though that might be asking a bit much as I have yet to find something as much fun xD. Dps I'm looking forward to a bit, as I hate Fury, but enjoy Arms. It just sucks that Arms hasn't really been viable due to Fury's scaling =(. Either way, there is only one last thing I must ask from Blizz for my warrior... Tanking fist weapon please! =D
Anaughtybear Sep 17th 2010 2:55PM
"...the biggest problem facing protection warriors will be that it's a ridiculously solid tree filled with so many good talents that you might not even want to spend any elsewhere."
Then it's a good thing you don't get a choice with the new talent trees, eh? I don't like being locked into one tree and simply having to take every talent in it until level 70, whether it's awesome or not. I really hope they reconsider this change, because I believe WoW players aren't as stupid as Blizzard thinks they are. If we don't want to play the cookie-cutter builds, we shouldn't have to.
Boobah Sep 17th 2010 3:32PM
Since the 31-point lock-in is at least as much about preventing broken (as in 'overpowered') builds that snag a couple of mid-tier talents in different trees as it is guiding players to a competent build, I just don't see it happening.
Nobody really wants to see Readiness + Bestial Wrath again, both for balance and to keep tooltips down to a reasonable length.
michaelgdavis Sep 18th 2010 11:30AM
Ironically, Double Big Red is coming back. See the beta noted on MMO that state that Readiness again affects Beastial Wrath. About time BM got some love again, since 3.0.8 its been for baddies and RPers that have to have cool looking pets.
shade Sep 17th 2010 3:04PM
"So if you have gobs of avoidance now, you should still have gobs of avoidance come the patch. "
That is not quite accurate. Defense is going away in 4.0.1 which is a massive loss of avoidance. I lost well north of 10% from live to PTR (can't get exact numbers, work computer). There is a slight compensation in that Defense is turned into Dodge, but I still lost 7% dodge not to mention Parry.
Boobah Sep 17th 2010 3:35PM
Don't forget, you also lost 5.6% chance to be missed (assuming you were at exactly 540 defense.)