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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsPatch 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: Warrior, Analysis / Opinion, News items
Reader Comments (Page 3 of 4)
Marshal Mar 1st 2011 9:26PM
I remember when Blizzard nerfed Flurry because we weren't supposed to have more than Enhancement Shamans. But now it's back, and doubled! I welcome this change.
VSUReaper Mar 1st 2011 10:07PM
To be brutally honest, I absolutely despise this patch so far.
First off, and I know its totally a flavor thing, but I hate pummel and love shield bash. I'm a warrior, and I hit shit with my shield. I dont want to punch people, I want to BASH them with my SHIELD.
Second, I want my melee silence. I have my ranged one, and if I have to spend 2 talent points for it, I want something else with it. Drop it to one point if we don't get to have a melee silence. If we have to keep it at 2 points, then we need something else to beef it up. More devastate dmg, more shield slam dmg, anything else.
Spell reflect is on to long of a cd now unless they change something else to it... like reflect 2 spells.
There is also the fact that our magic CD is now tied directly to our mitigation CD that is designed for us to use on CD...
IMHO, they should tie the magic CD into spell reflect and leave shield block alone.
Dont get me started on the Last Stand/Rallying Cry change. I'm convinced that they will add a sated style of debuff and keep warriors from popping a last stand as soon as a rallying cry drops. Nothing has been mentioned yet, but I just can not see them letting us chain the CD's
*grabs pitchfork and torch*
Dont fix what aint broke. If your gonna gut my class for PVP and PVE, then make Vic Rush (impending vic) usable at anytime, not just at execute range.
cidninja Mar 1st 2011 11:28PM
melee silence is not very useful in pve. the patch is making it so interrupts can't miss either, so unless you can't time pummel you're gonna be fine.
as for our magic cd being tied to shield block now... we didn't have a magic cd before. how can you complain about such a good change? if you stack mastery shield block is already like a 30% physical cooldown, so adding a magic cooldown to that basically makes it mini shield wall.
and if it even came to that, i'd rather have rallying cry than last stand. i'm so jealous of pally raid wall.
great time to be a prot warrior.
Plastic Rat Mar 1st 2011 11:43PM
@cidninja
"melee silence is not very useful in pve."
I couldn't disagree more with you. As a warrior tank, you use this all the time to control caster mobs and more importantly get them to move where you want them to. You can't tank caster mobs effectively without it.
loop_not_defined Mar 1st 2011 11:50PM
Plastic Rat, I don't know how you could disagree so strongly, considering a melee interrupt essentially performs the same function.
1) A caster mob having more than one spell school is pretty rare, and always has been.
2) The times when caster mobs aren't - casting - and vulnerable to interrupts are also pretty rare.
This change is an inconvenience, sure, but not the "massive nerf" people label on *everything*.
loop_not_defined Mar 1st 2011 11:52PM
This, of course, ignores the fact that LOS pulls are an essential tool in every tank's kit.
VSUReaper Mar 2nd 2011 12:53AM
@cidninja
My complaint isnt about getting a magic CD, its about having it tied to our physical CD so that I have to choose between taking less damage from a melee hit or save it for that magic attack that the boss will cast 3 seconds after shield block
While you are technically correct about the melee range interrupt, it is incredibly useful in a pinch. I have used it several times to move chain-casting mobs to where I want them, and while it is mostly a PVP move, not everyone is relegated to playing a prot warrior in PVE. I do enjoy prot-PVP and I do not enjoy seeing prot's loose that control they are so infamous for.
I do not see how Raid Stand is better than our Last Stand. If you are the only warrior in the raid, which are you going to use? If you use Last Stand, Raid Stand might not be up in time for when the raid needs it, so you feel guilty about using it for yourself.
Inversely, if you use Raid Stand, shit hits the fan and you need YOUR cd, Last Stand is still locked out b/c of the CD (remember, I'm assuming, and feeling quite confident, that a "sated" debuff will be applied that is on a 2+ minute CD)
Yes, LOS is a major part of tanking, you cant LOS in a BG/Arena all the time. Prot is used for more just PVE, and if I cant spam my caster-counters (spell reflect/silences/stuns) then I want something in return to bring me on par with the other tank's healing.
Druids have a passive 6% heal (8 sec ICD)
Protadins have several heals including WoG (20 sec CD?)
DK's have several ways to self heal including Death Strike, Rune Tap, and Ghoul Sac
Warriors have a heal IF they get a killing blow (not often) and a 3 min CD heal...
MattKrotzer Mar 2nd 2011 8:37AM
Plastic Rat:
"I couldn't disagree more with you. As a warrior tank, you use this all the time to control caster mobs and more importantly get them to move where you want them to. You can't tank caster mobs effectively without it."
So all the other tank classes without multiple silences are doing what, exactly?
Frankly put, the amount of caster control I have on my prot warrior borders on ridiculous. In most cases, I can make sure the average caster mob goes from 100% to dead without ever getting a cast off.
Plastic Rat Mar 1st 2011 11:39PM
VSUReaper nailed it in one. I've never hated a nerf or change in a patch as much as I'm hating this one. My main is a warrior tank. I thought Blizzard was beyond the idiocy of screwing up perfectly good PvE abilities because of PvP. I mean what are people even doing PvPing as Prot?! It's a freaking TANKING SPEC! Nerf prot damage if you want to nerf something. We do ridiculous amounts of damage for tanks. That's not our job. That's DPS's job.
Stuff I hate:
1) Flavor loss
Hitting people on the face with your shield is part of being a warrior tank. Now they're removing 50% of my opportunities to hit people in the face with my shield. This significantly reduces my enjoyment of the class. Pummel is lame compared to HITTING PEOPLE IN THE FACE WITH MY SHIELD!!
2) Melee silence loss.
A melee silence is invaluable for maneuvering caster mobs around when tanking trash, especially in heroic. This drastically reduces my options when tanking. I don't mind the extra difficulty, but it's going to be compensated for with stats instead of gameplay. Where I WOULD be doing something proactive about caster mobs, now I'm just going to stack stuff that lets me stand there and take the damage.
3) Less spell reflect
Again, we NEED spell reflect for caster trash tanking. It forms a huge part of our threat generation. Most often we don't have enough CC in a group to control all the caster mobs and we end up with two, three or sometimes even four caster mobs that we have to control and HOLD THREAT ON at one time. Spell reflect on a short cooldown was ideal for this.
4) Glyph of Spell Reflect doesn't improve anything
As a tank, our 3 major glyph slots are taken up with much more important glyphs. Glyph of spell reflect is STILL going to just get ignored. Just save your energy and don't bother changing it Blizzard. It's still going to be a glyph nobody uses.
None of this stuff was broken in PvE. Why is it being changed?
Again, if you want to nerf something, nerf our damage.
loop_not_defined Mar 1st 2011 11:54PM
I don't think you have the credentials to judge the necessity of nerfs with such a narrow perspective, i.e. that of only one tanking class.
Plastic Rat Mar 2nd 2011 12:12AM
Take a quick guess at my credentials. Go ahead.
Natsumi Mar 2nd 2011 12:49AM
Let's see, your name is Plastic Rat, so my guess would be that you're a factory worker that makes decent money churning out some sort of plastic product OR rat traps. Am I close? :D
loop_not_defined Mar 2nd 2011 1:23AM
You exaggerate and fly into rhetoric easily. I wouldn't believe anything you said, as you're clearly biased.
You don't know what the word "balance" means.
Helston Mar 2nd 2011 1:44AM
I'll admit, if they didn't include the following change, I'd be complaining about the rest. But I'd be happy even if they nerfed us to a nigh-unplayable state if they reverted the following:
SHIELD BASH. WE NEED FLAVOUR BABY!
Eirik Mar 2nd 2011 1:43PM
They could keep a good bit of the lamented flavor by simply using the shield bash animation/SFX, when using pummel in defensive stance. The NAME is wrong, but the action would be essentially unchanged.
Natsumi Mar 2nd 2011 12:48AM
I'm just super excited about the Arms buffs, MS refreshing Rend is a godsend, I don't know how many times I've JUST missed hitting TC to refresh my rend on a boss because of all the other wonderful things I have to keep track of. Rend is now "set it and forget it" because if you aren't hitting MS more than once every 15 seconds you're doing it wrong. ;) I Also like the .2% they tacked onto my already amazing Mastery ability, this is going to give me about an extra 3% chance to proc SoO.
Did I mention that I like the face that if I go to Def stance for any reason I still have access to my interrupt? Got to love not needing a macro to swap to my non-existent shield to do an interrupt if my health gets too low. Oh, and Rallying Cry is going to be AMAZING!! As the only Warrior in our 10 man raid group (apparently Blizz added other plate classes to the game that can tank, go figure) I'll be bringing some sweet survival utility. It also makes PvP a bit more fun, just think if TB had a Warrior at each base for this AND someone with the mighty Heroism/Bloodlust/Time Warp/Ancient Hysteria Would make your team quite powerful for a short time, perhaps enough to skew the odds during a fresh zerg incoming.
Jonisjalopy Mar 2nd 2011 12:50AM
"The question is whether it's a balanced and fair change..."
"Very balanced. Very fair."
Jonisjalopy Mar 2nd 2011 12:51AM
YES! Comment failure!
Downrate to your heart's content
VSUReaper Mar 2nd 2011 12:52AM
@cidninja
My complaint isnt about getting a magic CD, its about having it tied to our physical CD so that I have to choose between taking less damage from a melee hit or save it for that magic attack that the boss will cast 3 seconds after shield block
While you are technically correct about the melee range interrupt, it is incredibly useful in a pinch. I have used it several times to move chain-casting mobs to where I want them, and while it is mostly a PVP move, not everyone is relegated to playing a prot warrior in PVE. I do enjoy prot-PVP and I do not enjoy seeing prot's loose that control they are so infamous for.
I do not see how Raid Stand is better than our Last Stand. If you are the only warrior in the raid, which are you going to use? If you use Last Stand, Raid Stand might not be up in time for when the raid needs it, so you feel guilty about using it for yourself.
Inversely, if you use Raid Stand, shit hits the fan and you need YOUR cd, Last Stand is still locked out b/c of the CD (remember, I'm assuming, and feeling quite confident, that a "sated" debuff will be applied that is on a 2+ minute CD)
Yes, LOS is a major part of tanking, you cant LOS in a BG/Arena all the time. Prot is used for more just PVE, and if I cant spam my caster-counters (spell reflect/silences/stuns) then I want something in return to bring me on par with the other tank's healing.
Druids have a passive 6% heal (8 sec ICD)
Protadins have several heals including WoG (20 sec CD?)
DK's have several ways to self heal including Death Strike, Rune Tap, and Ghoul Sac
Warriors have a heal IF they get a killing blow (not often) and a 3 min CD heal...
VSUReaper Mar 2nd 2011 12:53AM
fail response is fail >.