---

Q u o t e:

Of course it does, you're a warrior.
Hitting button 2 when it lights up, button 3 when it lights up, button 4 when it's off cooldown and button 5 when the red bar is over half full takes no more skill than Judging, then ShOR, then HS, then Hammer, then Consecrate. And if you think taking 3 steps back so the badguys are in front of you for your shockwave is vastly more complicated than dropping consecrate in the right place or throwing D&D in the path of those guys running for the healer, then your problem isn't the class.

And no, playing your warrior for 3 years with one guild doesn't mean you're a better tank than someone playing their tankadin for 2 years with the same guild, or someone who switched from a warrior or tankadin to roll a DK this go round. Sorry to burst your bubble there, but that's just plain delusional.

---

Ok, first I'll try to flame you for your inability to comprehend.

I have a 80 paladin and an 80 Druid tank, it isn't exactly hard to tank on those at all. A warrior requires a massive amount more attention to keep pace with the threat of the other tanks comparatively.

Feral druid rotations are considered some of the hardest to pull off properly and it works much like the warrior tanking priority system. Warrior tanks really get nothing for pulling off a more complicated rotation off. That is generally what is defined as taking skill in this game.

And generally experience does = more skilled at the role. That is why years of experience doing something makes you more employable, then someone fresh out of college. Same mentality applies here, the longer you do it the better you probably are at it. And if your raid group has been with you for a long time they know how you re-act and you know how they re-act to things making cohesion much better.

I'm sorry that a guild that has had the same tank for 3 years won't replace that person with the FoTM class always even if they are subpar.

The guilds that do that kind of stuff generally haven't been around that long.

I personally never said it took more skill. More effort than others for less results, yes indeed.

Let's say it's the same effort and the same skill, okay. I still get lesser results in terms of threat, dps, and survivability.

So I'd prefer a simpler form of play for the same results or more for what I'm putting into it. I'd certainly prefer one of those two to the other classes getting gutted.

---

Q u o t e:


Every progression guild on our server has replaced their warriors as the MT. Either with a druid or a DK. Including mine. (No, GC..I won't lose my slot, I'll still be playing with my guild long after WoW is dead and gone, I know many of them in RL.)

Did we have to? No. We could have done all the content thus far with a warrior (We'll be killing steel breaker and hodir this week on hard mode.). However, we only raid 3 days a week and its not very conducive to such a limited raid schedule to use a sub-par tank. These differences aren't cosmetic and as much as you would like to gloss them over, they are not small.

In the next patch, we already have a druid and paladin geared for the slot. We know they will go live stronger than the other tanks and we also know DKs will be crap for at least a few months. We'll use the current best progression tank because we, like most guilds, have a ton of great members and we have that option. The fact that we have to use an option like this is ridiculous but its there.

You're right GC, we play because we have fun. I played EQ because I had fun, to. EQ died for many reasons but for me, one of the main ones, was that the developers absolutely could not get class balance between tanks down. (And could not release finished content, which thankfully isn't a problem you guys have, which I apreciate.)

Now, GC, I have played this game for four years...You can choose to not listen to me, that is fine. You are the developer and I have always believed that "community" developed games=suck. I'm not "telling" you how to develop your game...I'm just letting you know that you are sorely mistaken if you think the differences are small. I'm also letting you know that some of your changes, make absolutely no sense...or seem to be done purely by happen-chance..for example.

An example...In one breath you state that having 3.5k bonus armor over the shield tanks is too much (It is)...But then you allow druids to have 3k more armor and 2% high base mitigation and a "block" mechanic (With higher mitigation rates than warrior block mechanics.)....Why?

I guess that is the best question I can ask right now. What is the mentality or "vision" behind the differences between druids and DKs. Why was it a problem for one and not the other?

I'm going to quote you now, GC.

As I explained, we compared DK armor, health and avoidance to other tanks, and found that the DKs ended up in better shape than other tanks even if you totally ignored cooldowns. When you consider cooldowns, things are even more skewed.

I just didn't want potentially disgruntled players to perpetuate a myth that DK armor got nerfed because their cooldowns were too good. DK armor got nerfed because their armor was too good

Now, again...You explained clearly that having 3k-3.5k more armor, 5-7% more health and roughly the same avoidance was out of line.

Druids have 3k more armor, 5% more health and roughly the same avoidance (2% or so less.)...And they also have a block mechanic and 2% high base mitigation.

Now do you see why you guys appear to be all over? Whats fine for one tank isn't fine for another. Why was it not fine for the DKs to be this good "outside of cool downs" but it is fine for druids to be even better "outside of cool downs".

Most of us players are scratching our heads, maybe you could enlighten us, GC.

---

This the game design balance wise really feels schizophrenic at best. There seems to be some extremely complex rules of balance that have to be met, via clearly overly harsh nerfs, or buffs.

I think that is more the cause of all the change whiplash posts you get too, because the changes per patch seem to be to extreme and look even with napkin math to be to extreme but tend to make live anyway.

---

Q u o t e:

And generally experience does = more skilled at the role. That is why years of experience doing something makes you more employable, then someone fresh out of college. Same mentality applies here, the longer you do it the better you probably are at it. And if your raid group has been with you for a long time they know how you re-act and you know how they re-act to things making cohesion much better.

I'm sorry that a guild that has had the same tank for 3 years won't replace that person with the FoTM class always even if they are subpar.

The guilds that do that kind of stuff generally haven't been around that long.

---

Yeah, I can see your epic failure to understand what's being said here.
Even if we ignore the quite relevant point that the classes and tanking itself are rather different now than they were way back when, the 'I'm a warrior so I'm better because I've been doing this longer' ignores the likelihood that someone tanking with a non-warrior can in fact have been tanking just as long, and in fact now has a broader range of experience.
Besides, while experience can equal skill, it doesn't necessarily make it so. I'm certain you can go on any server in this game and find someone who's played a warrior since vanilla who's worse at what they do than someone else playing a warrior who only started in TBC or Wrath.

my 2 cents on the warrior buffs: yes they are better than nothing

admittedly I'm not involved in tanking on the highest levels of content, but the proposed changes to rage, attack power and shield block value (read: shield slams) look like a lot of fun. for what I do in this game, regular 10 mans, it's going to be a ball if these changes go through.

also, one of the main complaints of highend warriors, that of the current "broken" blocking system, is something that GC has repeatedly said that blizzard is looking at, which is encouraging. Personally, my highest hope for the warrior class is that shield stats become as effective for survivablity on hard-hitting bossses as they are for threat and damage, now that would be FUN

as to the complaint that warriors have the least effective health of all tanks, I haven't noticed any blue posts saying that they want to help warriors in that area. did I overlook it somewhere? that seems to be a concern

so on the whole things seem to be moving in a good direction although the EH question is kind of floating there

...on the other hand...

let's face it, the biggest problem for a lot of warriors is that we are too stuborn to reroll. I know what it's like because I remember how in TBC I recognized immediately that pally was lightyears ahead of my warrior in threat which was what really mattered to me at the time, and yet for some reason I was too stuborn to reroll. Now in the current expansion warriors are still falling behind in important areas and yet for some reason I still haven't rerolled.

Fact: Blizz doesn't want to buff warriors too much because then the tanking population would become dissproportionally heavy on warriors. To be honest, I aggree, this game would be a lot more boring if everyone used the same tank. Does this mean that the way of the warrior will always be the way of heart break? I think we really should stop and think about why we as warriors identify with our class so much. there's nothing logical about being emotionally attached to the warrior class: the more you think about it the more it doesn't make sense. in fact I think that I'm going to level my pally as soon as the servers come back online

yes, it's clear to me now, I'm going to reroll

edit: "bosses"

---

Q u o t e:
I personally never said it took more skill. More effort than others for less results, yes indeed.

Let's say it's the same effort and the same skill, okay. I still get lesser results in terms of threat, dps, and survivability.

So I'd prefer a simpler form of play for the same results or more for what I'm putting into it. I'd certainly prefer one of those two to the other classes getting gutted.

---

Oh, I won't dispute that warriors put the same in for less returns, that's pretty much obvious. I wouldn't say more effort, but equal effort isn't yielding equal results.
And I won't argue against my warrior getting buffed, either.

Self-instigated epiphany on the WoW Forums.

This is a red-letter day.

---

Q u o t e:

Yeah, I can see your epic failure to understand what's being said here.
Even if we ignore the quite relevant point that the classes and tanking itself are rather different now than they were way back when, the 'I'm a warrior so I'm better because I've been doing this longer' ignores the likelihood that someone tanking with a non-warrior can in fact have been tanking just as long, and in fact now has a broader range of experience.
Besides, while experience can equal skill, it doesn't necessarily make it so. I'm certain you can go on any server in this game and find someone who's played a warrior since vanilla who's worse at what they do than someone else playing a warrior who only started in TBC or Wrath.

---

When did I ever state that all other tanking classes were worse players. I simply said it takes more to play a warrior tank then it does to play a druid tank, which isn't mutually exclusive with being better tanking the raid boss.

The skill cap ends at the same place the slope there is just higher for warriors.

The other tanks can be just as effective, but generally the longer a tank has been with the same guild regardless of class, they tend to always be the best choice even if there class is UP at the time because guild cohesion while raiding works better with that player over a new player that rolled the FoTM tank.

That is why it is incredibly hard to de-seat the MT of a guild, and you don't see it happening in the top 5 world guilds. The kind of guilds that end up with 50-70% of there roster being different between expansions on the other hand is a lot less stable and a MT change doesn't have as much effect if the players are about equal in ability.

I don't see how you fail to understand that.

High end guild that are more stable with membership tend to be a terrible place to look for FoTM tanks replacement because they are much more stable then your average player guild, where it would be much more common.

i see no mention of it, but remember the AotT buff is a tanking buff, despite being in Fury. We get more than double the ATP out of it than that do. AND it boosts the damage of both out AoE abilites. While i agree that more would be better, these three buffs are pretty good.

---

Q u o t e:
i see no mention of it, but remember the AotT buff is a tanking buff, despite being in Fury. We get more than double the ATP out of it than that do. AND it boosts the damage of both out AoE abilites. While i agree that more would be better, these three buffs are pretty good.

---

300 ap isn't going to close the tanking dps or threat gaps.

---

Q u o t e:
i see no mention of it, but remember the AotT buff is a tanking buff, despite being in Fury. We get more than double the ATP out of it than that do. AND it boosts the damage of both out AoE abilites. While i agree that more would be better, these three buffs are pretty good.

---

Think about the change to Inspiration and Ancestral Fortitude, it might help you re-evaluate how much of a buff this is relative to the current situation for a warrior that is tanking.

---

Q u o t e:
We think warrior tanks need some help. We do not think they are as far behind as some of these forum posts would have you believe, and we do not see many progression-oriented guilds replacing their warrior MTs. The arguments about who is the best tank tend to get pretty vicious because players think it could mean the difference between them getting to raid or not.

---

I totally agree with the bulk of your post. I think the problem most of us have is that warriors are still using some older mechanics that are "clunky" and/or have band-aid fixes for issues that have cropped up this expansion, whereas the other tanking classes have gotten a pretty hefty overhaul for this expansion.

While I will never get sat for a fight, I do get pretty aggravated with some of the mechanics in place and feel like I have to work a lot harder to get the same result as someone else. I also think most people who have been tanking for a long time for their guilds don't like feeling like they're a burden to their friends, so they want to be able to perform just as well as the next guy. If that means some homogenization, I really doubt most people would have a problem with that. I don't want to be a special flower, I just want to be able to raid without feeling like I'm making things harder on everyone else.


A couple things I think you could change to make our life easier:
1) Make 2 minute shieldwall just require the 2 talent points in improved disciplines, add the reduction to mitigation to the talent. This frees up a glyph spot for threat-related glyphs.

Right now, we're basically ignoring glyphing options specifically set up for tanks because of the solution that was implemented for tanking cooldowns. We will almost never use a sunder armor glyph, a revenge glyph, a spell reflect glyph, etc. Why? Because I need to spend a slot making my shieldwall useful for most fights. This is contributing to our threat/damage issues.

2) Make last stand's baseline 2 minutes. The same for survival instincts. This gives all 4 tanks 2x 2 minute cooldowns, making it easier for you to balance content.

3) Change thunderclap to a 4 second cooldown. We would probably be fine with a threat reduction on the ability to help compensate (not 1 for 1, but enough so that it isn't overwelming).

4) Increase the base duration of demo shout and demo roar (~2 minutes seems fair), increase the base AP reduction, elminate the improved talents. Give DKs an AP reduction. Right now we're going to be spending precious GCDs to reduce a mobs AP while a paladin just needs to hit the mob. I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume that you intend to give them AP reduction equivalent to a max rank improved demo roar/shout.

5) Adjust your rage formula, give us bonus rage generation on attacks in defensive stance or overhaul it (I'd expect this isn't going to happen until next expansion). Make the rage on avoidance baseline in defensive stance or tie it to something other than shield spec (tie it into focused rage, vitality or damage shield). We already have more talents to spend points on than we have available.

6) Allow damage shield to function on avoided attacks in addition to hits and blocks. It'd be nice if deep wounds still functioned on crits from this ability too. It's kind of silly that I turn my back on some mobs in heroics in order to help out my passive threat generation while we aoe it down.

7) Change our 4pc T9 bonus


Heroic strike is a whole different animal. There's a lot you could potentially do, but most of it is going to result in a serious overhaul of how a warrior works and threat generation works. I don't know if you want to tackle that monster now, but you should definitely have it on your radar for the next expansion.

---

Q u o t e:


Think about the change to Inspiration and Ancestral Fortitude, it might help you re-evaluate how much of a buff this is relative to the current situation for a warrior that is tanking.

---

Well put.

It's an overall buff to tank survivability but a nerf to Prot Warrior DPS.

I'm fairly certain this "buff" was to offset the difference.

---

Q u o t e:

I tank on my warrior daily. I also have this tank, and a prot pally (all at different levels of content, obviously). Heroic Strike is no more annoying or painful than RP dumping.

And for the claim that warrior have far more buttons to press than any other tank?
Sorry, also not true. I've got 24 actions bound to my mouse alone for this guy and use them all during a hard fight, and still make heavy use of keyboard hotkeys.
The warrior has a lot to do, sure, but it's not far and away more than anyone else (even my pally uses as many), but all this 'oh, woe is us... we take so much more skill to play but still get treated like red-headed stepchildren' QQ is really wearing thin.

---

24 is all?

25 is the number i come up with. at least use on a regular basis. by regular basis, i mean multiple times through any given raid. obviously not in a single rotation. however, when raiding it doesn't seem like that much. playing a warrior tank isn't hard or difficult. but it gets annoying spamming heroic strike constantly. the idea that i have to use 2-3 abilities per GCD, and get less threat then any other tank is somewhat disheartening.

1.heroic strike
2.devestate
3.revenge
4.shield slam
5.shield bash
6.commanding shout
7.demo shout
8.taunt
9.heroic throw
10.shockwave
11.thunderclap
12.spell reflect
13.shield block
14.last stand
15.enraged regeneration
16.shield wall
17.charge
18.intercept
19.intervene
20.zerker rage
21.trinket
22. vigilance
23.concussion blow
24.bloodrage
25.cleave

For what it's worth, our guild master quit raiding on his warrior because he felt worthless in the face of hard modes in favor of his rogue. Our other protection warrior always gets sat when we have druids and death knights available to tank. Our tanking paladins will probably replace the death knights when 3.2 hits, but warriors will still be the weakest tanks. It sucks too, because our warriors can't even DPS because warrior DPS is terrible too.

---

Q u o t e:
For what it's worth, our guild master quit raiding on his warrior because he felt worthless in the face of hard modes in favor of his rogue. Our other protection warrior always gets sat when we have druids and death knights available to tank. Our tanking paladins will probably replace the death knights when 3.2 hits, but warriors will still be the weakest tanks. It sucks too, because our warriors can't even DPS because warrior DPS is terrible too.

---

I don't know about your guild in specific, but for the most part, top guilds are very closeknit and care about each other more than a few advantages/disadvantages in game, and keep their main tanks who usually have been there for a long, long time. They are exceptional players at their class--to the point where a few disadvantages are not such a big deal. It only becomes a major problem if the people playing your warriors or whatever other class suck at it. In my opinion, it doesn't matter how much the devs nerf warriors or buff other classes--tanks are extremely hesitant to reroll because A: we love our characters. We don't play warriors because they are the "essential tanking class," but because we love how fun it is, and B: tanks are horrendously gear dependent, and it would take months and months to gear up to the level our main characters are. If warrior tanks are forced to reroll, it's usually for a dps or healing class, and not tanking. Why make two tanks just because WoW has made one slightly better than the other? Honestly, though, I'm slowly lvling a paladin alt for healing/tanking depending on which direction the devs take Warriors and paladins in this next patch.

---

Q u o t e:
Let me save you the disappointment; GC lied to you. GC is in the business of keeping people paying Blizzard, which does not, as a matter necessity, entail keeping them happy. Only happy *enough* to keep paying. If you truly believe what he has to say to you regarding class balance, well thats great and I won't attempt to convince you otherwise aside from doing what I am now - pointing out the obvious facts. Otherwise, don't indulge your willful ignorance and continue trying to defend him to people who have seen his crap enough times to know what he is doing.

---

Hahaha.

Thank heavens he's got that coffee mug.

---

Q u o t e:
For what it's worth, our guild master quit raiding on his warrior because he felt worthless in the face
of hard modes in favor of his rogue. Our other protection warrior always gets sat when we have druids and death knights available to tank. Our tanking paladins will probably replace the death knights when 3.2 hits, but warriors will still be the weakest tanks. It sucks too, because our warriors can't even DPS because warrior DPS is terrible too.

---

It's not always the guild that sits the Warrior, sometimes it's the Warrior themselves.

I'm currently considering doing exactly the same.

---

Q u o t e:
I don't know about your guild in specific, but for the most part, top guilds are very closeknit and care about each other more than a few advantages/disadvantages in game, and
keep their main tanks who usually have been there for a long, long time.

---

It's because I care about my guild I'm considering stepping down.