The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Patch 4.2 lurches towards us
by Matthew Rossi 
Jun 25th 2011 at 4:00PM
All right. With patch 4.2 dropping next week, it's time to discuss it in detail -- at least, what it means for warriors. What changes will it have in store for tanks (almost none) and DPS (less of it) warriors? What will happen to us in PVP (arms and fury warriors will lose burst, prot won't)? Why is our PVP set so ridiculously ugly that it makes me cringe?
We'll start by looking at what Lead Systems Designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street said about class balance. And specifically about warriors, because that's the column, you see. I could give a rat's hindquarters about the other, lesser classes. Except shamans. If you can't be a warrior, being a shaman is a good backup plan. Why not be both? Go ahead and roll six warriors and a shaman, I'll wait.
A Tank's Life
First off, let's look at the patch 4.2 changes overall.
Patch 4.2 notes
Warriors
Talent Specializations
Arms
- Overpower now has a 1.5-second cooldown and global cooldown (Taste for Blood's Overpower cooldown has not changed).
- Recklessness and Deadly Calm can no longer be used at the same time. One cannot be used while the other is active, but using one does not put the other on its full cooldown.
- Retaliation, Recklessness and Shield Wall no longer have stance requirements.
Talent Specializations
Arms
- Two-Handed Weapon Specialization weapon damage increase has been lowered to 12%, down from 20%.
- Dual Wield Specialization weapon damage increase has been lowered to 5%, down from 10%.
- It is no longer possible in some encounters to use Charge when closer than its minimum range.
The initial thing to notice for protection: The only real changes are the bug fix that keeps us from abusing Charge to get infinite rage on specific fights (you know which ones) and the change to Recklessness, Retaliation and Shield Wall that will allow tanks to use Ret for AOE threat without switching stances (consider me to be callouing and callaying right now). Heck, if you're of a mind to, you could even use Reck for more burst threat if you don't mind taking extra damage. Which you should. I mean, really now. That's basically all we see from a tanking perspective. Does that mean warrior tanks are fine?
Warriors are still in the same "jack of all trades, master of none" tanking semi-niche we've been in for a while now. We lack the really astonishing self-healing capacity of a DK and the crazy block capping of a paladin, though we're probably better off than druids. Warriors can tank pretty much anything, and are neither in the lead nor too far behind compared to other tanks. That being said, if I were getting my wish list, there are some changes I wish 4.2 was bringing. Having to use Rend to get B&T up seems too much like a Death Knight, and I'd rather see Devastate simply apply the bleed effect, perhaps via a glyph.
However, a non-class specific change that will be affecting warrior tanks in patch 4.2 is the change to agility to dodge for plate tanking classes (namely, agility will no longer add any dodge for warriors, DKs and paladins) and strength will now be adding 27% to parry, up from 25%. With parry having a fairly high DR compared to dodge, this will most likely lead to even more parry reforging to dodge than we're already seeing. You'll also probably see a lot less people tanking with reforged agility weapons. Plate tanks will need to pick up the new leg armor kit, as well. In general, warrior tanks are going to have to make small but noticeable adjustments in the wake of this change, but it certainly won't be a major deal. No one's going to start hating dodge. In a few weeks, as gear with higher stat values becomes more common, we'll see how the priorities shake out. Still, I expect dodge to continue to be a popular stat to reforge on parry items. Mastery should remain fairly popular for warrior tanks.
Now that we've covered tanking in 4.2 (meet the new tank, same as the old tank) what do we have to look forward to for warrior DPS? Less of it. Whee.
DPS in 4.2
One of the aspects of the recent class balance post that really irritated me was the presentation of warriors as some kind of out-of-control DPS juggernauts. (Neither are frost DK's, for that matter.) Arms was finally at parity with other melee (certainly it wasn't so good that it needed to lose 8% from Two-Hand Weapon Specialization) and following the significant kick in the crotch fury's amount of mastery per point received in 4.1, it was once again comparable to other plate DPS. Could a talented SMF warrior top the charts? Yes, especially on a warrior-friendly fight like Chimaeron. Trash DPS is too high, yes, because of the change to Whirlwind that allows warriors to hit everything in melee range every four seconds with both weapons. The change should have been reverted, because 65% damage from each weapon every four seconds is simply put too much. Warriors don't need that much AOE damage.
Even if these changes go live (as they absolutely will at this point) and WW is left as is, I don't expect warrior DPS to suffer all that much. It will certainly drop in the first month or two, as it always has following a content patch DPS nerf. (Ulduar, anyone?) And as has always been the case, as better gear becomes more and more available and reforging allows warriors to aim for stat caps and stack the stats they want for DPS, we'll see it climb back up again. As we covered in the Rage posts, DPS warriors (especially fury) still benefit from gear increase in a way other classes don't (hit = more white hits = more rage) and we'll see warrior DPS climb as rage gain increases. It will be gear and encounter design, and not these nerfs, that show us where DPS is going to go in patch 4.2. And I expect to see it go up, especially fury. If dual wielding warriors came come close to hit capping, expect to see fury as the number one DPS among the melee.
Next week, Firelands will be here, and we'll cover gearing options. I may be a tauren.
At the center of the dury of battle stand the warriors: protection, arms and fury. Check out more strategies and tips especially for warriors, including Cataclysm 101 for DPS warriors, a guide to new reputation gear for warriors, and a look back at six years of warrior trends.
Filed under: Warrior, Analysis / Opinion, (Warrior) The Care and Feeding of Warriors
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Thunderblade Jun 25th 2011 4:13PM
Watch as blizzard begins to sell premium warrior services, in which your warrior won't be nerfed as long as you pay $4,99 a month.
Ray Jun 25th 2011 4:57PM
great post matt, my main being an arms warrior the 8% decrease is a shovel to the back of the head if u ask me as i have already been considering switching to fury for quite some time. My only question to the other commenters is, why is blizzard still so adament about the idea that hybrid classes CAN NOT be top of dps? That is an old design... if someone can be more than one type of class, they shouldnt do as well as other types of classes.. for example: moonkins should never do as much dps as mages, yet i know several moonkins who do more dps than mages who outgear them heavily... Why can druids be an al-around good hybrid class but warriors and paladins can't?
Sqtsquish Jun 25th 2011 10:24PM
What "should" happen is warriors should stay as they are and buff rogues in pve to be on the same par, fix the enhance shammy problems so they can compete.
Essentially, make the average max dps of all the melee or ranged be about the same, while still enhancing the flexibility and utility of each class. Not to the point where you HAVE to have a certain class or where it is best to stack say ferals or shammies for a particular fight, but make equivalently skilled and geared players have about the same output overall and deepen each spec's "feel".
ElrithCC Jun 25th 2011 4:36PM
I've been playing my original main character warrior nonstop almost since 2004.
I've never had as much fun as I have now in pvp the last few months, not since the days of my arcanite reaper in my valor set.
I'm sad to hear these nerfs, but I'll always love the idea of just being a guy with a weapon.
Hopefully arms doesnt go back to being the mediocre red headed step child. I've felt impotent and redundant for most of my years playing an arms warrior, and that's just not a good thing.
I always end up finally gearing up and then a few things are balanced and tweaked and the last half or third of an expansion finally I start feeling viable again, but nothing has been as exciting and fun as the last few months I've been playing arms.
I even have dual spec'd for arms, pvp and pve specs.
I'll wince, but bring it on. Let's get this over with.
Joe Jun 25th 2011 4:36PM
"We also nerfed Arms and Fury damage across the board because they were doing too much damage in both PvP and PvE. While we are sensitive to casters outperforming melee on several raid encounters, having warriors handily outperform all other melee isn’t the solution to that problem."
This, as a frost DK even, made me pissed. You (Blizz) obviously know that caster dps is too high, and it has been for too long. Almost every fight has been dominated by casters as far as meters go, yet you completely delude to this. Caster dps is too high, so you nerf the only melee class that can compete with them? How about buffing all the melee classes rather than keeping casters the only raiders that don't feel like a hazard to bring to raids. It's just ridiculous. Caster DPS needs to either be nerfed, or melee classes buffed.
Bumblebee Jun 25th 2011 5:50PM
Casters outperforming melee in the 1st tier of Cata is mostly to do with the encounter design favoring ranged quite a bit over close combat classes. This means, that either encounter design needs to be rethought, so that all types of DPS get their chance at the spotlight, or straight up buffing melee damage. That, of course, will cause problems in PvP.
MysticalOS Jun 25th 2011 6:41PM
that's ture to some extent bumble, it's very obvious on a fight like omnotron heroic where target swapping is every 30 seconds, by time you get your ramp up going you're changing targets again. Heck when i dps the fight on warrior i gotta sunder the new boss cause the tanks are a paladin/DK.
But that's just blizzards excuse as well, but that's really not true for all the fights and casters still dominate melee on pretty standstill fights too.
As for warriors getting nerfed i dont think the problem even had anything to do with their damage, but rathor the rage generation of this tier. look at chimeron the standstill fight warriors dominate. did it occur to blizz the problem isn't the damage, but rathor massacre? nothing says "hell big deeps" to a warrior like massive amounts of raid damage that fill up your rage bar. heck on chim you get instant full rage every 30 seconds, you can essencially pop endless rage each massacre and throw a couple fast heroic strikes in. omnotron, nef, magmaw, etc. all these fights on heroic are just loads of raid damage piled onto warriors. This will inflate numbers considerbly with heroic strike usage that blizz still didn't intend for warriors to spam as much as they have been able to this tier.
I think the true fix for warriors is to remove rage generation from damage taken, and then balance around swings only. then there is a consistent value to tweak as opposed to planning for infinite rage situations like big raid damage. to make this change would require something specia for prot, like much higher rage generated from white swings, or still generating rage from damage being part of prot specilisation.
Kitita Jun 25th 2011 4:47PM
Do everyone a favour, go away you absolute muppet.
dj_stevie_c Jun 25th 2011 4:50PM
Thing is, the more they nerf, the more we'll adapt. Warriors have always been good at finding ways around nerfs, the only issue I have is that they seem to continue to nerf because warriors are good at PVP, but it affects PVE, being mostly a PVE'er it was nice finally getting up to speed with everyone, but hey, give me a week (and some of that nice new gear) and I'll be back where I was and you can start planning your next nerf Blizz....
Bring it on.
MysticalOS Jun 25th 2011 4:59PM
My biggest annoyance is their failure to acknowledge prot warrior threat is at major desarpity to the 3 other tanks on pull. masked by vengeanec which makes threat irrelevent to ALL tanks about 30-60 seconds in fight (really depends on gear and heroic vs non heroic, if you overgear it, or it's normal mode, threat is dicey for longer as you dont just instantly get 10k attack power first 30 seconds of pull like you do heroic). But before vengeance, prot damage is a lot lower then other tanks, in fact it's lower then other tanks later too. I have a prot paladin and prot warrior both raiding heroic content, warrior is 13/13 and paladin is less successful 5/13. because of that paladin is less geared, and STILL out threats and damages warrior. On paladin i feel like when i hit their shield slam i just hit the boss with a mack truck. When i use shield slam on warrior i feel like i hit it with a devastate unless shield block was up. Sure paladins complain about pull ramp up, but they also start pull with full mana, and have option to wings on pull. Warriors ramp up is building rage and no real dps cd to speak off to use on pull. Granted recklessness is a little more viable in 4.2, but really? 20% increased damage is a lot to ask for such a minor cd, that still honestly isn't as powerful as avenging wrath, which is a flat damage increase, ours just gives us more crit and for a shorter duration. prot paladin can also use DP smart on pull to have a 3HP opener too.
as for dks, don't get me started about their threat, they embarass all the other tanks.
Are warriors in shape where we can't tank at all without losing aggro, no. not less you are in a 10 man group that has no rogues or hunters, then your dps might go get a drink on the pull and come back in 20 seconds. But other then that we can still do our job. But dps still have to hold off a lot longer or use threat wiping talents earlier in a fight with a warrior tanking vs anyone else. I really feel shield slam was a good canidate for buffing to bring it more in line with the damage paladins shield does, and then remove the damage increase of shield block. cause that's what it boils down to, they have to make shield slam fairly week to balnace it around it's burst damage with shield block up.
Would also be nice if they made heroic throw not able to miss, or found a way to address the hit/expertise thing they keep talking about. If my AS misses on paladin at least i can cast judgement on a ranged target, or if i wanted i have option to hard cast exo to initiate a pull then i have AS and judg to throw at it too while it runs in, plenty of opertunity for something to land. on warrior if Heroic throw misses on a pickup what a pain in ass that is, unless you happen to have another tank already taking hits with vigilence then you just spam taunt for the 3 times you lose threat on the mob running at you.
Guess that's end of my warrior rant for now.
splodesondeath Jun 25th 2011 5:11PM
I'm happy with the Agility change, mostly on my non-plate classes. I felt kind of ripped off when a tank took agility necklaces/rings/trinkets from my lowbie hunter because agility gave them dodge. For some reason, that didn't feel right to me (I know, I'll probably get downvoted since agility does logically make you better at dodging) - anyways, being Mr. Strong Warrior Who Stops Your Weapon Before You Smash Him won't really be the case either, seeing as parry isn't quite as super fantastic as dodge in the first place. Oh well.
Makoto99 Jun 25th 2011 6:27PM
For Warriors at least, Parry is slightly more desirable than Dodge anyways, because Parry will proc the Hold The Line talent.
MrJackSauce Jun 25th 2011 5:47PM
That belt reminds me of the final fight in Tekken 5 vs that big purple fellow.
Joshua.danial Jun 25th 2011 7:14PM
Parry and dodge share the same DR coefficient nowadays. There's no difference between dodge and parry unless one gets modified by a talent(HtL for example.) I'd post the numbers but I'm on my mobile and that's just too much damn work.
The only difference we'll realistically see is a slight avoidance nerf due to no longer gaining dodge from buffs like MotW/Kings/Totems/HoW. The only people really affected will be those using lackluster agi items or the few high agi trinkets.
edeesis Jun 25th 2011 7:40PM
^ This
And I don't see there being much of an avoidance difference with Kings, since they're buffing the amount of parry received from strength. Warriors, Pallies, and DKs didn't have much agility to begin with (I have 174), so the change from 25% to 27% strength to parry will make up for that.
edeesis Jun 25th 2011 7:28PM
I thought that when 4.0 dropped, Blizzard changed it so that Parry and Dodge were subject to the same diminishing returns, since the Caps are now the same.
Confirmed: according to EJ, the Cap for both dodge and parry is approx 66%. Although obviously unrealistic, it's important to know that in order to calculate the amount of Dodge or Parry received after diminishing returns, the Cap is used in the equation.
edeesis Jun 25th 2011 7:28PM
http://elitistjerks.com/f15/t29453-combat_ratings_level_85_cataclysm/
Link ^
fainda Jun 26th 2011 2:03AM
This is a noob melee asking a noob question here, but is there a way to keep autoattacking when I switch targets without having to cast another ability? Sort of like a macro on tab to continue attacking (68 warrior having Target switching difficulties)
Unain Jun 26th 2011 6:00AM
Right-click on the mob (start auto-attacking) instead of left-click (just select it) :).
mpascoewow Jun 27th 2011 7:13PM
u have got to put
/startattack
/cast mortal strike.
make a macro for every ability. and put /startattack in front of it.