Patch 4.1 PTR: Warrior buffs and nerfs
by Matthew Rossi 
Mar 1st 2011 at 8:00PM
Another set of patch notes for the 4.1 PTR is among us, and as always, some of the changes are unforeseen. While I am not surprised at the removal of Shield Slam and the change to Pummel (the two abilites were doing the same job and one was better), some of these other changes, clearly aimed at PvP protection warriors, did surprise me. Just when I thought I was getting my bearings, another set of patch notes came along today and completely altered things again.
Let's take a look at exactly what they did and then discuss what it means.
Let's take a look at exactly what they did and then discuss what it means.
Patch 4.1 PTR patch notes - Warrior section
Warriors
- Heroic Throw is now available from trainers at level 20.
- Pummel is now usable in all stances.
- Shield Bash has been removed from the game.
- Spell Reflection cooldown has been increased to 25 seconds, up from 10.
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Talent Specializations
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Arms
- Juggernaut no longer adds 2 seconds to the Charge stun, but instead lowers the cooldown of Charge by 2 seconds (to 13 seconds total without the glyph).
- Lambs to the Slaughter now causes Mortal Strike to refresh Rend in addition to its current effects.
- Strikes of Opportunity damage has been increased by 10% to keep stat parity with other strike changes.
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Fury
- Flurry haste bonus has been doubled to 16/32/50%.
- Unshackled Fury now only grants 2 base points of mastery, down from 8. This change offsets the Flurry boost to better control Fury burst damage.
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Protection
- Shield Mastery no longer affects the cooldown of Spell Reflection, however, it now allows Shield Block to reduce magic damage as well.
- Gag Order now only affects Heroic Throw.
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Arms
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Glyphs
- Glyph of Spell Reflection reduces the cooldown of Spell Reflection by 5 seconds, up from 1 second.
Keep in mind that changed like Charge and Intercept once again no longer having diminishing returns on their stun effects are still in place; these are just additions to the patch notes since the last go around. (If you go to the complete 4.1 patch notes, you can see the entire warrior section is by now quite extensive.) What we can see right away is that much of the changes to protection (Spell Refection duration, the loss of Gag Order's silence on Shield Bash without adding it to Pummel, Sheild Mastery no longer affecting SR) were made to nerf protection in PvP. In one case (the Shield Mastery change), it's actually a buff to PvE tanking, as SR doesn't work on quite a few boss mechanics that the new reduction to magic damage should work on, buffing Shield Block for boss tanking. The Glyph of Spell Reflection is now significantly more powerful, proportionately speaking, than it was.
It's not surprising to see Pummel and Shield Bash streamlined this way. Pummel had a shorter cooldown and could be used in two out of three stances already; might as well complete the ability rather than having two nearly identical spells in the arsenal. The lack of extending Pummel to Gag Order does surprise me, however, even with PvP concerns in mind. It's a big loss for PvE tanking warriors.
Meanwhile, the Juggernaut change, combined with the removal of stun DR to Charge, is somewhat of a buff (trading 2 seconds of stun for 2 seconds sooner to Charge again), and the Lambs to the Slaughter change is a straight-up buff, making it so that arms warriors will almost never have to hit Rend again between Mortal Strike and Thunder Clap (since Blood and Thunder means that TC also refreshes Rend.) The change to Strikes of Opportunity should also increase arms' damage output and keeps mastery a good stat for them.
Fury also gets a pretty significant buff in Flurry's new increased haste, tuning up damage output and rage generation at once. This is most likely intended to compensate for the lost damage from Colossus Smash now only lowering armor by 70%, another PvP-inspired nerf. However, this buff is pretty well offset by a savage nerf to Unshackled Fury, a mauling 6% reduction in the base mastery granted by the specialization. This reduction means that while every point of mastery on gear will have the same baseline effect it does now, a warrior who currently has 18% mastery will be taken down to 12%, a rather huge loss. With these two changes, I find myself wondering if crit has become the absolute killer stat for fury warriors now. It seems vastly unwarranted - a reduction of 2 or 3 points would have sufficied, six is just brutal.
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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, News items, Warrior
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
bizkit2289 Mar 1st 2011 8:09PM
Removal of Shield bash not Shield Slam
North Mar 1st 2011 8:51PM
When I read that sentence in the article I had a mini-panic attack until I realized the typo.
Jeff Mar 2nd 2011 2:12PM
Ditto on the panic attack. "Wait, they... what? Why? And why is he being so nonchalant about it?"
My brain completely locked up before I was able to get to the part about pummel.
Undercovercandyluver Mar 3rd 2011 3:05PM
A telepathic Freudian slip between me, Matthew and blizz maybe? Because that would have been a much better solution to the problem that they are trying to fix! And yes there is a problem.
I am a pve tank who also pvp as prot in BG (ctf & keeping cap-points alive (av,arati,...all of them really)) and arena (just for the free candy (1,9k in 2v2 is the highest)), so i do understand that there is a problem here. But the problem is not Shield Bash/Gag Order. Its Battle Stance! Yes, the secret is out ... prot-warriors pvp in Battle Stance (or at least they shuld) and here is why.
What we loose is next to nothing from abandoning Defensive Stance. We take 5% more and do 5% more damage. Then we loose Shield Wall, Shield Block, Disarm, Intervene, but all of those are on long cooldowns so a simple macro will fix all of them. We also loose Revenge but get Overpower to replace it with witch is much better for pvp.
What we gain from Battle Stance is unbelievable. Except for the +5%damage and Overpower we get: Shattering Throw and Retaliation (ok, long cooldown and can still be used with macros), Colossus Smash and Hamstring (can you pvp without it?), Execute and ... wait for it ... Pummel. Yes we have both Shield Bash and Pummel!
So per one minute fight (excluding time 0): Fury/Arms gets 6 interrupts and a prot-war in Battle Stance gets 11. Gag Order witch is mutch more accessible for prot gives Fury/Arms 6sec of silence and 21sec for pot (per one min). Add to that Shield Mastery+Glyph that puts Spell Reflect on a 6sec cooldown = 10/min. Now throw in Warbringer, Concussion Blow and a glyphed Shockwave and you'll understand the problem.
Despite all that we are far from overpowered. One singel retri-paladin or a blood dk can not and i repeat NOT fail in eating a prot-warr alive while having more then 90% of its health. An icemage who knows what hes doing can still kill you easy and you basically can not kill anything with selfhealing, specialy druid and shawman or any healer and thats only one on one. In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice they are not, so make no mistake, all these candy cant all be used perfectly on every cooldown like on paper and you are never alone and never targeted for kill so all that spelreflect and Mastery (critical block) and resil is waisted. We (prot-pvp) are still overpowered in what we do and that is staying alive with the flag or protecting capturepoints/graveyards until reinforcements come (blood dk's are still mutch better! Both at staying alive and doing more damage (150% vs dummy and 2x in arena) so op we are not). Eating/avoiding phisical damage and shutting down caster damage is what we do ... maby a little 2 good on that caster part and thats what they are fixing.
As a pvp prot-war im sad to see 6sec spelreflect go and crying a little to say goodbye to Shield Bash. As a pve tank i can not believe these changes. These are all clearly for pvp reasons and for that there are so many other more elegant fixes, that removing them entirely from the game just stunned me (not in a good way (Second Wind)) .
How about removing Shield Slam as Matthew accidentally kind of suggested, but from a pvp point of view. Remove Shield Slam, Shield Bash, Spell Reflect and any other shield abilities (that will come in future i hope) from Battle Stance and put Shield Bash and Pummel on a shared 10sec cooldown.
Shield Slam (+Sword and Board & Heavy Repercussions) is our biggest damage dealer (pvp). On a 6sec cooldown you can no longer stay in Battle Stance and change to use it. And no more Shield Bash and Spell Reflect means you can never again even think about going Battle Stance. That means you loose Colossus Smash, Hamstring, Execute and Pummel and 1sec stance penalty for using shattering Throw and Retaliation and another 1sec again for changing back. You get your pvp nerf and much much more and pve stays unchanged!
And for god sake, make the new Shield Mastery give its magic damage reduction effect to Spell Reflect and NOT Shield Block. Or make Spell Reflect 20sec and glyph that adds 10-20sec cooldown and gives it the magic damage reduction effect. We use Heavy Repercussions for the initial aggro spike and initial damage from bosses and heaving our magic damage reduction bind to Shield Block reduces our control over our cooldowns. We use Spell Reflect for casters adds spell, and should use the same ability for the boss spell!
Ye ... i didnt feel like playing today.
Daynthebold Mar 1st 2011 8:12PM
It's more of the same fury development yo-yo we've been saddled with since the beginning of Wrath. Remember how many changes they made to Titan's Grip before finally settling on its current incarnation.
Pyromelter Mar 1st 2011 8:34PM
What I find interesting is that blizzard seems to be forever tweaking with warriors, but for the most part they end up in good spots - competitive pve damage, good in tanking for all situations, and viable in pvp.
niko Mar 2nd 2011 12:19AM
That's because Blizzard fears Rossi. :)
Natsumi Mar 2nd 2011 12:56AM
That's the way it SHOULD be. Warriors SHOULD be viable in PvP and PvE, not just one or the other. What they are trying to do is stop the 2 minute instajib that is Fury PvP while not crushing Fury's PvE DPS. As far as PvP goes I think WoW (and just about every other MMO out there) are completely broken. I'm looking forward to Diablo 3's PvP game where the PvE portion of the spell/skill has absolutely ZERO impact on the PvP portion. It's looking to be a very balanced system and I think it MAY replace Arena as the E-Sport of choice for small teams. Who knows, if it works out WoW (or at least "Titan") may integrate it in the future.
Morotak Mar 1st 2011 8:14PM
I too found the base mastery loss for Fury warriors a bit much, just as I was getting used to it being a desirable stat. But not listed up there is I believe Raging Blow going back to 120% base weapon damage, up from 100%.
Sleutel Mar 1st 2011 8:14PM
The loss of a short-CD interrupt with a silence effect is going to be a huge problem for PvE Warriors. Welcome to having to LOS every single pack with more than one caster. (Not to mention having to wait for a cast to actually start to move a pack with even just one caster.)
MattKrotzer Mar 1st 2011 8:22PM
I just don't see it as a big issue, really. I've yet to encounter any pack where I was dealing with more than one caster, where CC wasn't available. It's at worst a minor inconvenience.
If you're getting through packs fast enough that Heroic Throw hasn't come off of cooldown by the time you get to the next pull, then you're probably geared enough that this isn't so much of an issue, really.
MattKrotzer Mar 1st 2011 8:23PM
That said, I think Gag Order has just become ridiculously overpriced for 2 talent points for just Heroic Throw's silence effect.
cidninja Mar 1st 2011 8:28PM
it's not gonna be that much of a problem. i don't even take it most of the time anymore, the talent points are too valuable. even if you still want it, heroic throw is still there and it was always the more useful silence of the two. charging in to shield bash a caster just to run out again never made much sense.
Pyromelter Mar 1st 2011 8:37PM
A 3 second blanket silence every 30 seconds is powerful enough. While I think prot warriors should have a lot of options for locking down casters, having pummel be part of gag order would simply be overpowered.
Jonisjalopy Mar 1st 2011 8:39PM
I'm going to have to agree with Matt.
You aren't losing an "interrupt with a short cooldown". In fact, Pummel has a SHORTER cooldown than Shield Bash. Sure, it doesn't have a silence, but I think that was a bit much anyways.
And honestly, if you have an issue where you can't just interrupt the target, once pulled, and move him to where you need him...you have an issue greater than one missing ability. If Silencing Throw isn't enough on the pull to get the pack in order and pulled...again, you may want to go back to Tanking 101 and practice a bit.
Sleutel Mar 1st 2011 8:56PM
The PvP problems would be easily solved by shortening the lockout on SB from its current six seconds and/or removing the Daze effect. Anybody who thinks I need to "learn to tank" because I'm actually *using* all the abilities my class offers is laughable. Having my only silence be on a 30-second cooldown would be incredibly obnoxious.
Jonisjalopy Mar 1st 2011 9:17PM
It's not you using all of your abilities that's the issue...
It's you complaining about losing one, insignificant talent that suddenly makes your job so hard you have to complain about it. And it's not just you. It's also the other Chicken Littles who are screaming with open umbrellas.
Tanked 2 whole games worth of content without it. I think we'll be fine.
Sleutel Mar 1st 2011 9:27PM
You could remove most of my abilities and I'd still be able to tank. The question is whether it's a balanced and fair change, or if it's yet another PvE nerf to quell PvP QQing, because Blizzard, even though they've admitted that Arenas are the biggest mistake they've ever made, is still balancing for them.
MattKrotzer Mar 2nd 2011 12:35AM
Very balanced. Very fair. We still have numerous stuns, an interrupt and an interrupt/silence. We needed a 10s Interrupt to balance with the other tanks. We're getting one.
We needed a magic mitigation cooldown to balance with the other tanks. We're getting one of those, too.
Would I give up a silence that I barely have use for in most fights to get either of these? Absolutely. And in so doing, I get both.
Keep in mind that many high-level progression warrior tanks don't even take Gag Order, so it's even LESS of a necessity than you may be thinking. Tonight I did 9/12 raid bosses, and I didn't once use Shield Bash for a silence.
I won't miss it.
Sleutel Mar 2nd 2011 12:51AM
@MattKrotzer:
I cleared 9/12 this evening, too (plus BH). Know what I used on trash? Silences.
Will it break boss encounters in raids? No. Will it make trash even more obnoxious in raids and Heroic five-mans? Yes.
This PvP balance problem could easily have been solved by changing how Shield Bash works against PCs (or even changing it completely by baseline removing the Daze and shortening the lockout). Instead, they are at least looking at eliminating an entire mechanic from our toolbox.
I'm not going to thank someone for giving me a cookie with one hand while they punch me with the other.