Warrior talents

[Slyvar]

Quick question for you warriors...

The stated aim of the talent changes in each patch is to bring each class up to the same kind of level. So far they've done shaman, loladins, locks, warriors and hunters. Tell me warriors - do you think blizz are succeeding in their aim?

[krktie]

Can't say too much about the last warrior changes, they were in the 'wrong tree' for me. Hunter.. well, liked the old Beastmaster talents better. Some talent changes were an improvement, but others..

I don't think they're bringing anything up to the same level, they're just changing around skills, for the better and the worse. I don't really mind, I play the class I like how I want to play it, but Blizzard listens too much to complaints imo. They're obviously changing skills due to complaints from players, which shouldn't happen (at least not to that extent). Fixing skills that aren't working right (like their tooltip says or something) is okay, but there are too many PVP changes that affect PvE WAY too much.

Then again there's talent trees (like Holy for priest or the shammy healing tree) that just need a revamp. Hm hm.. all three talent trees should be brought to the same level for all classes, making you pick one (like druids!). I think the classes themselves are pretty balanced, if you know how to play them and don't expect all to work the same.

The 'unbalance' of the classes doesn't come from the talent trees anyway. It's either the skills themselves(1), or how the game mechanics work for or against them. I remember warrior right after beta was just horrible to play, because your melee miss rate was just THAT high, it was like trying to kill a mob three levels above you as a mage and going splat on the resist wall. (Not even talking about dual wielding here, just using two-hander or 1h.) That must have been changed at some point. Now if the resist rate for spells could be fixed, people might actually start playing the caster classes more. (Every time a mage dies to three resists in a row someone rolls a warrior alt...)

PS: I want my old Retaliation back plz :<

(1) To clarify, the skills that you get with your class, not from your talent trees.

[Felbane]

huge factor is also the conditions to bring the abilities to bear, sorta. I mean, just listen to a rogue talk for 20 seconds about the damage he can do and rogues sound invincible. then you take into account the CC abilities of every other class, and the rogue is suddenly hugely nerfed. same with all other classes, the main balancing factor in pvp isnt the dps, but how easy they are to get to people with. hunters being the prime example of an 'easy' class, at least in alterac valley and similar situations.

in pve, all classes can bring their abilities to full use, thereby making the same set of skills blance out in a completely different way. The way I see it, most of the pve inbalance is due to pvp balance.

(warriors whine when they can't kill any other class because they only do moderate damage, AND have trouble reaching the target. The whine from people being outdamaged in MC by warriors is substantially smaller. Thus warriors are balanced up by adding more damage for pvp, and pve gets to come in second hand.)

[ukkoshukka]

krktie said:

I remember warrior right after beta was just horrible to play, because your melee miss rate was just THAT high, it was like trying to kill a mob three levels above you as a mage and going splat on the resist wall. (Not even talking about dual wielding here, just using two-hander or 1h.) That must have been changed at some point.

I think that before 1.4 or something all dodges, parries and whatnot were shown as misses... I remember something like that from reading the old patch notes.

Oh, and just some short notes about the topics in this thread. I don't like warrior talents, since there are not enough options in them. 31/20 MS build is the only good one, and that's how everyone is specced. And also, I don't think that warriors themselves are unbalanced, just their gear is.

[Grul]

I agree with a lot that's been said already, so I won't repeat it again.

There are a few issues I have with the warrior talents trees outside of the whole PvP/PvE thing.

One is that there are really only a few viable builds, partly due to the fact that having one of the 31 point talents is pretty essential.
Unlike some classes where there are choices between 5/30/21, 30/21, 27/24 etc., it's very hard to have an effective talent build without one of the 31 point talents as a rage sink.

There's also the fact that many talents don't scale, and therefore become less and less effective over time as the warrior faces tougher opponents and bosses. Every single aggro holding ability a warrior has (sunder armour, heroic strike, revenge, shield slam) causes the same amount of aggro for a fresh level 60 as it does for a fully geared up epic warrior (barring stuff like 8/8 might bonuses etc.).

As a raid gets better and better gear and does more DPS, hardly any talents go towards helping the warrior keep aggro better.
The only scaleable talents a warrior has for this are those that increase the warrior's damage output (all but one of which are outside the protection tree), and defiance (+15% threat in def stance).
Most of the protection tree is about mitigating damage, rather than about holding aggro better, and has a lot of talents that are useless in high end raids (i.e. the stuns, silence etc.).

[krktie]

I'm not 31/20? I thought everyone was fury specced these days, at least until they get one big epic two-hander.

[Grul]

I'm also not 31/20...
90% of warrior builds seems to be one of:
31/20/0 (MS arms/fury)
31/5/15 (MS/prot for defiance)
18/33/0 (Fury)
11/5/35 (Protection)

Futher variations are made harder by the fact that Tactical Mastery in the arms tree is an extremely hard talent to live without (lets you maintain some rage between stance changes), and pretty much every warrior I know makes use of this talent and stance switching mid-combat.

[coben]

I myself am specced 31/5/15 with the 15 in prot beeing

5pts Shield Specialization
5pts Anticipation
5pts Defiance

allthough I have been thinking about swapping Shield Spec for Imp. Bloodrage and Last Stand.

As far as balancing etc. goes, I'm quite dissatisfied with Blizz. Over the last few patches, warriors have recieved several bad nerfs, and that was AFTER our talent revamp was done.
Those nerfs were mainly aimed at our damage output with a 31/20 spec. As it seems a lot of caster-classes complained that they got killed within seconds by a warrior.
What they forgot was, that those warriors either had high-rank PvP gear or were otherwise clad in Epics.

And, hey, mages/warlocks etc can 2shot us easily from range, especially since our oh-so-massive armor does nothing whatsoever against arcane/frost/fire damage and they can keep us at range quite successfully.

Now, I say, if a warrior DOES manage to get in melee range with a caster, he not only NEEDS to be able to dish out high damage within seconds in order to have the slightest chance, no, he DESERVES to be able to do that.

The case is different with rogues. I've been levelling a rogue lately and I find it great fun. Now, I know all is not right with rogues in general, but warriors are supposed to be rogue-eaters. Yet we get stunlocked like your average guy, defense doesn't seem to help prevent crits from rogues either. So, if OUR nemesis (the mage) manages to easily kill us, shouldn't WE be able to do the same to OUR prey of choice, the rogue? I feel it is not so.

Blizz is nerfing warrior skills instead of warrior gear, so those warriors who always have the latest high-end epics manage to stay on top, whereas regular blue-clad warriors get pushed further down with every patch.

Oh, one more thing: Last patch, Blizz implemented the "sticky targetting", meaning you don't lose your target unless you hit Esc. Well, whenever i get sheeped by a mage, I STILL lose my target. Same goes for a pet's growl ability. Yet warriors are denied to use Taunt in PvP, which is an essential skill and could be used nicely in PvP.

I could go on and on about warrior itemization, but i think this post has gotten too long already, and I think I will appear as a big whiner. ;D

Let me sum it up like this: I love playing my warrior, but I think 99% of us got nerfed bad because of 1-2% warriors who are uber-equipped. Wrong way to balance classes, Blizzard!

[Grul]

coben said:

allthough I have been thinking about swapping Shield Spec for Imp. Bloodrage and Last Stand.

Last Stand is indeed very nice, though Imp. Bloodrage feels like a waste of points to get there annoyingly.

coben said:

What they forgot was, that those warriors either had high-rank PvP gear or were otherwise clad in Epics.

Yup... Similarly the reason that Thunderfury was toned down (much to the distress of those who went to the effort of getting it) was because it was dealing too much damage in PvP. So they toned the weapon down, and made it much less desirable in PvE as well (though it's still meant to be the best tanking sword in the game).

coben said:

And, hey, mages/warlocks etc can 2shot us easily from range, especially since our oh-so-massive armor does nothing whatsoever against arcane/frost/fire damage and they can keep us at range quite successfully.

Quite a few people have wanted the Protection tree to help with this in some way. Since Prot warriors can't deal huge burst damage in PvP, some feel they should have better defense in it.
Suggestions include things like a talent to break out of immobilizing effects/stuns, or a talent to improve innate resistances to magic.

[Felbane]

grul said:

coben said:

And, hey, mages/warlocks etc can 2shot us easily from range, especially since our oh-so-massive armor does nothing whatsoever against arcane/frost/fire damage and they can keep us at range quite successfully.

Quite a few people have wanted the Protection tree to help with this in some way. Since Prot warriors can't deal huge burst damage in PvP, some feel they should have better defense in it.
Suggestions include things like a talent to break out of immobilizing effects/stuns, or a talent to improve innate resistances to magic.

there is a problem here, mainly because of spell interrupts.

basically, if a mage stands in close combat with a warrior, our best dps alternative is our wand.... yay.
thus we are given the ability to keep warriors at a distance (and rogues for that matter)
suddenly the warrior becomes the useless one, staring at us menacingly while taking damage at a distance. thus warriors are given trinket and intercept and other tricks to get back in range.

the balance should be in this CC process, not in dps.
as a frost mage I can keep a warrior off me for 98% of a duel currently. if the warrior got the dps to have a chance to kill me in those 2% of the fight, they would become insane and instakill every mage that has any CC ability on cooldown.

The main problem is that a mage becomes so useless in melee due to spell interrupts, that he or she will get pissed off and cranky rather than see the fairness in a warriors ability to break their CC. The same goes the other way as a warrior gets frustrated when he/She can't even reach the target. A mage-warrior fight can never reach an equilibrium, but is always heavily in favour of either part, and usually ends with either side having rather large amounts of health left. Either the mage successfully CC's and hands the warrior his or her ass on a silver plate from a distance, or the warrior breaks out enough to get in melee and tears the mage to shreds.

not to mention that mage CC varies hugely between builds, while all builds retain the exact same need of CC.
Balance for frost mages means arcane and fire becomes walkovers for anything meleeing them.

(in this discussion I might add that the mere presence of a hunter completely ruins any mages day, since our ONLY viable method of killing them is to kill their pet AND stay in their deadzone, all at onnce. As soon as a hunter starts autoshooting a mage, the mage can get into deadzone, get out of range, or die. as soon as a pet attacks a mage, the mage must disable/kill the pet or die. Most of the time it ends with death. mage vunerability = physical. mage strength = dps/CC Hunters deal physical, disrupts mage dps, and has only a very limited vunerability to cc. yay for balance.)

( CC = crowd control )

[ukkoshukka]

grul said:

There's also the fact that many talents don't scale, and therefore become less and less effective over time as the warrior faces tougher opponents and bosses. Every single aggro holding ability a warrior has (sunder armour, heroic strike, revenge, shield slam) causes the same amount of aggro for a fresh level 60 as it does for a fully geared up epic warrior (barring stuff like 8/8 might bonuses etc.).

I'd just like to mention that druid aggro abilities scale with the damage they deal, instead of adding static threat... So, essentially we are tanking with dps

[Grul]

felbane said:

the balance should be in this CC process, not in dps.
as a frost mage I can keep a warrior off me for 98% of a duel currently. if the warrior got the dps to have a chance to kill me in those 2% of the fight, they would become insane and instakill every mage that has any CC ability on cooldown.

not to mention that mage CC varies hugely between builds, while all builds retain the exact same need of CC.
Balance for frost mages means arcane and fire becomes walkovers for anything meleeing them.

I completely agree with this, if a high DPS warrior could reliable break out of CC then it would give very little chance in fights with classes that are weak in melee.

I think I was more getting at that it would be nice to be able to give up most of that DPS for more survivability/utility, in a similar way that frost mages have less burst DPS than fire in exchange for more control (from what I've read, I've not played a mage enough to say for sure ), and that hunters can take up survival to get more snares and more ways to break out of them in exchange for losing DPS and pet damage.

Not that I'm complaining in anyway, have lots of fun warrioring about

[coben]

grul said:

I completely agree with this, if a high DPS warrior could reliable break out of CC then it would give very little chance in fights with classes that are weak in melee.

I think I was more getting at that it would be nice to be able to give up most of that DPS for more survivability/utility, in a similar way that frost mages have less burst DPS than fire in exchange for more control (from what I've read, I've not played a mage enough to say for sure ), and that hunters can take up survival to get more snares and more ways to break out of them in exchange for losing DPS and pet damage.

Not that I'm complaining in anyway, have lots of fun warrioring about

Indeed.
As it is now, a warrior's Protection tree has some VERY good talents in the lower tiers, yet a lot of the higher-tier talents are nearly useless (even for a MT)
Replacing those with some Magic Resistance (different talents for different energy types) and possibly some means to counter roots/morphs would make Protection both more useful in PvE AND PvP.
A warrior could chose between High-DPS/low res and Low-dps/high res (magebane build, sort of)

[ukkoshukka]

About warriors and CC... at 1 on 1 they seem to be very vulnerable to them, but the real balance problems happen in group combat when there is a paladin/priest behind that warrior, ready to dispel all the different kinds of CC that gets thrown to them. Also, when people keep poking warrior to give him an unlimited supply of rage and keeping him enraged, the results can be pretty devastating.

If you have seen Pats pvp video or Avolc in AV, you kinda know what I mean