PTR, and what it means for warriors

Or, as we all know it by its full name, the Public Test Realm. No, I'm not referring to the WoW PTR, yet. Having suffered through 2 browser crashes, this is the third time I'm typing this all out. GAH! Anyways, what I'm talking about, is Dungeons and Dragons 4th Ed. The last of my DnD group has recently come back from the US, and this means that we are able to restart the DnD game. I'm sure they are all as eager as me to break out their gear and start adventuring again. This new game will feature me as either a DPS Barbarian, smashing the faces of baddies, or as a prot-warrioresque Warden, defending the frontlines while my party reduces enemies to dust. Having met at our Dungeon Master's place for a "PTR" combat round last Saturday, I have gained some insights that will hopefully allow me to maximise my own characters when the real game begins this coming Saturday.

Now that we're done sidetracking, its time to move on to the real WoW PTR. As you may, or may not know, the 3.2 PTR is all the rage nowadays. With a multitude of changes promised, it's quite safe to say that warriors are one of the classes receiving the least overhauls. However, one of the dangers of writing about the PTR is that what is discussed here could very well be old news tomorrow. That notwithstanding, let's look at some upcoming changes that I know you'll all like:

Protection

• Devastate now causes 60% weapon damage (up from 50%) plus 121 (up from 101) at max rank. Lower ranks increased accordingly.
• Shield Specialization now has a 20/40/60/80/100% to generate 5 rage (up from 2) when a block, dodge, or parry occurs. (Old - Only proc from blocks)

Glyph

• Glyph of Command - Increases the duration of your Commanding Shout ability by 2 min.
• Glyph of Battle - Increases the duration of your Battle Shout ability by 2 min.

Item

• Item - Warrior T9 Melee 2P Bonus (Berserker Stance and Battle Stance) - Berserker Stance grants an additional 2% critical strike chance, and Battle Stance grants an additional 6% armor penetration.
• Item - Warrior T9 Melee 4P Bonus (Heroic Strike and Slam) - Increases the critical strike chance of your Slam and Heroic Strike abilities by 5%.
• Item - Warrior T9 Tank 2P Bonus (Taunt) - Decreases the cooldown on your Taunt ability by 2 sec.
• Item - Warrior T9 Tank 4P Bonus (Shield Block) - Decreases the cooldown on your Shield Block ability by 10 sec.

Blood Frenzy - 10% attack speed modifier now only affects melee attack speed
Armored to the Teeth - now Increases your attack power by 3 for every 108 armor value you have. (Old - 3 AP every 180 Armor)

There is also this, as quoted from here, by GC:

There are some mechanics we'd like to change with warriors, as I have already stated. Having to spam Heroic Strike is definitely one of them. Rage starvation is never fun (which is not the same as "I can ignore rage.") This is a slightly different argument that whether or not warriors have the stats they need to do the job, which seems to be the bigger concern in this forum at the moment. I am personally not particularly interested in who is the "easier" tank. I don't think any of them are significantly different from each other. You still have to know when to use your cooldowns, when to swap your gear, how to coordinate with your raid and when it's you that's the problem and not your class.

I think it's easy to argue against your point that warriors have not gotten a pretty hefty overhaul this expansion. We changed the warrior Protection tree a lot more than the paladin Protection tree or the Feral tree. We made you press Shield Block less often and Shield Wall more often. We changed Thunderclap and Devastate and Shield Slam and so forth. My point here is: don't dilute your arguments. I hear a lot of players saying that warrior survivability is lower than other tanks. Okay, that is feedback we can use. I hear them saying, as you did, that some of the mechanics still need to be updated. That is feedback we can use. Saying you are neglected or somehow other tanks got more changes than you or whatever... that is hard to use. We don't balance around "neglect." We balance around numbers. Theorycrafted numbers and simulations are valuable. Actual encounters with a boss are even more valuable.

Supplemented by GC with this:

I’m not sure that statement is accurate, but here is the problem. There are A LOT of warrior tanks. They are tanking every fight in Ulduar. If warriors were too low and if we buffed them, I don’t see how that would increase the numbers on the other tanks. I don’t think the conclusion to be drawn is that warriors are overpowered. I think the conclusion to be drawn is that warriors were the traditional tank and lot of established guilds have established MTs who see no reason to reroll the FotM. It’s not actually a goal to have 25% of each tank in Ulduar, but is also seems strange to buff the most popular tank. Won’t that just make them more popular? Again, don’t misinterpret that as GC sez suck it up warriors. It is something we have to keep in mind, however.

Block is a systemic problem. We're not sure we can make it a very compelling mitigation stat in a world where tank avoidance is so high and bosses hit so hard. However I will say that the Coliseum fights should focus less on the blow-your-cooldowns-or-die style of encounter.

Rage starvation is a problem. Frankly, we're not sure a model where you have to get hit in order to tank is that compelling anymore. Something that has come up a lot is changing rage (even for Prot) to damage done. This is a slight nerf to the PvP mechanic of being punished when you hit the warrior, but there are other ways to solve that as well. Again, we're talking a big change here. I'm not sure we're comfortable jacking with such a core mechanic before 3.2. (Source)

However, the most important change that I want to talk about, is this:

• Block Value: The amount of bonus block value on all items has been doubled. This does not affect the base block value on shields or block value derived from strength.
• On-Use Block Value Items: All items and set bonuses that trigger temporary increases to block value have been modified. Instead of increasing their block value amount by 100% like other items, they have all had their effect durations doubled. This applies to Glyph of Deflection, Gnomeregan Autoblocker, Coren's Lucky Coin, Lavanthor's Talisman, Libram of Obstruction, Tome of the Lightbringer, Libram of the Sacred Shield, the tier 8 paladin Shield of Righteousness bonus, the tier 5 paladin Holy Shield bonus, and the tier 5 warrior Shield Block bonus. (Source)

What this means is you'll see bigger Shield Slams (yay!) and more threat all around (from the buff to AttT). What this also means, is that there will be warriors who don't know how to tank, but are now marginally able to hold aggro, with this change. IMO, more threat is good, but this will increase the number of warrior 'tanks' who have no idea how to tank properly in the first place, but claiming they can tank.

That aside, I'm going to agree with Matt Rossi here, that all these changes are starting to feel more and more like a band-aid fix on warriors main tanking cutting edge content. Having been through all that, my warriors feel lacklustre when it comes to tanking Ulduar bosses. Sporting one of the lowest Effective Health (EH) values and lowest avoidance values among the four classes, I would say that if raid content continues this trend, warriors could be effectively dead by Coliseum. After all, if you can't stay alive, you can't tank. All is not lost, however, since "the Coliseum fights should focus less on the blow-your-cooldowns-or-die style of encounter", which probably means that warriors can go back to stacking EH, instead of avoidance like in Ulduar, in order to make them marginally useful. Having H in EH gear for Ulduar-10, I could already feel the pain of each boss hit, and had to swap in some avoidance gear to stay alive. That said, my primary gear set has been, and will continue to be, based on high EH, and maybe, just maybe, we'll see a reversion to EH being better than avoidance for future raid bosses.