FEEDBACK: Protection Warrior Class Changes

In Development Ghosts of K'aresh PTR
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Welcome Protection Warriors! There are a number of changes to your talents and talent tree coming in 11.2. We’d like to share our goals for these changes and how we approached them.

Many of Protection Warrior’s talents in each gate provide either key capabilities or extremely powerful bonuses that make those talents “locked in.” As a result, Protection Warrior builds don’t change much in different situations or based on personal preferences.

In 11.2 there are still many key, high power talents in the Protection tree, such as Strategist, Shield Specialization, Shield Charge, and Shield Wall. But in this version of the tree, we tried to ensure you have some points left after taking the “must take” talents in each gate. We did this by rearranging the tree to remove some bottleneck talents, making Challenging Shout baseline, and reducing the power of some current “must take” talents so they’re at a comparable power level with optional or utility talents.

The best examples of this type of power equalization are Enduring Alacrity and Focused Vigor, which granted lots of defensiveness and stats. The new versions are still broadly useful boosts, but more specific alternatives are more competitive with their power now. Where talents lost power in this way, we gave it back in other talents or abilities so your overall power level remains similar.

Once we freed up some flexibility to choose more talents based on situation and personal preference, we wanted to add some options to let you lean in to different aspects of your kit or customize your defenses . You can opt for more physical or magic damage reduction based on the needs of an encounter. There’s a more accessible suite of Execute talents if you want to emphasize that source of damage. Tough as Nails is a more useful tool for holding AOE threat. Bloodborne is easier to take if you’re looking for more passive damage. And so on.

We are excited to see the builds you try and will be watching this thread for feedback!

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Restore spell block as a talent or baseline, you can’t push half the dungeons without it.

10 Likes
3

While Spell Block is obviously not a balanced ability, removing it and offering essentially no compensation is going to leave Prot in basically the same situation it was in Shadowlands, which is why it was added in the first place.

Spell block was added to address a specific problem (ironically one that was exemplified best by Halls of Atonement) and while we are more passively tanky vs magic damage than back then, removing the ability wholesale is going to leave us in exactly that bad spot again.

Is there space to adjust Last Stand to have some functionality similar to what Spell Block was bringing, in terms of a long duration magic reduction? Last stand has felt for a long time like a dead button that’s heavily carried by tier sets, borrowed power, or secondary talents. With the baseline addition of Shield Block uptime to Shield charge, is it time to ditch Bolster (a talent that has essentially only been played when a tier set from Dragonflight specifically told us to take it, which just gives more uptime of a buff that already has 100% uptime) and replace it with something to give Last Stand some power vs magic damage?

Spending 3 full talents to turn Last Stand into a… decent-ish defensive cooldown feels really, really brutal. If we could use it to actually fill a gap in our toolkit, it’d be much easier to stomach and would open up more spaces where we want to really change up our build.

9 Likes
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The good:

  • I like reaching Disrupting Shout more easily, tree pathing is somewhat improved. I also appreciate that Enduring Defenses are mandatory now, though making it a two-pointer is maybe questionable)
  • Shield Block being folded into Shield Charge is a good change, though losing Battering Ram and the Revenge! proc would need throughput compensation.
  • The reworked Brutal Vitality, Execute cleave and passive Ravager are all decent talents.

The bad:

  • The justification for removing Spell Block is appalling. By that token, Spell Reflect should be the cut ability, because it has two layers of knowledge required: what gets reflected and what gets deflected. In addition, it’s also wrong: just in this tier there are multiple magic AOE/environmental damage and DOT sources that are blockable: on Chrome King Gallywix alone just about every source of magic damage is Spell Blockable, from the Giga Coils to the Ego Checked DoT. Yes, this requires a degree of knowledge/trial and error, but I think removing it is putting the cart before the horse. One can very well imagine that abilities can telegraph or just detail in their tooltips (e.g. in the Dungeon Journal) whether they can be blocked and/or spell blocked.
  • I don’t understand why Juggernaut was replaced with a flat 15% Execute increase, personally see that as much more boring.
  • Spellbreaker is not a good talent. 4% chance of not taking damage? At absolute least it should be tuned completely differently (e.g. much higher % chance to take lower damage). But I can’t stress enough how badly that will feel in moment-to-moment gameplay: first of all I can’t imagine this will work on ALL magic damage. But let’s say it does.
    Scenario: Dimensius has a magic tankbuster. I prepare to tank it by popping Shield Wall/Spell Reflect. However, because RNG was “good” to me on that attempt, the tankbuster damage fizzles thanks to Spellbreaker. I have now taken zero damage from the initial hit (nice) in exchange for wasting two cooldowns. In what way could that be seen as good design?
  • Finally, while as written above I think the pathing of the tree is a bit better, it accentuates the weakness of Last Stand. It’s a 3 minute CD Impending Victory, near useless without Bolster/Unnerving Focus; since Enduring Defenses is now effectively mandatory, projected Shield Block uptime should be ~100%, Bolster is made superfluous, Unnerving Focus is a weaker talent mostly useful for throughput.
    Unlike the previous iteration of the tree, Last Stand can now be entirely skipped unless you REALLY want Thundelord or Tough as Nails. The first is a once-great talent that only occasionally feels good (at least as Mountain Thane), the latter is frankly plain boring, though I appreciate that a 100% buff may make it more desirable.

Suggestions:

  • Similarly to how Shield Charge was handled, bake in some part of Bolster/Unnerving Focus into Last Stand.
  • Revise the decision to remove Spell Block. As an alternative to the above suggestion for Last Stand, one way to improve it would be to bake in it a reduction to all periodic damage. This was one of the strengths of Spell Block, but would additionally make Last Stand very useful in dealing with bleeds, a damage source Warriors have historically always had difficulty with and which the tree does not provide any method of dealing with either at the moment or in its proposed state (would add that that sounds thematically appropriate for the spec).
  • If the “required knowledge” behind utilizing an ability is seen internally as a problem, then tackle knowledge presentation and dissemination before removing abilities.
  • Remove/redesign Spellbreaker entirely.
12 Likes
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With spell block gone we’re back to the beginning of the cycle where we had literally nothing to protect us from magic tank buster and basic spells that went through on big pulls in M+ that made us by default bad for an entire season as soon you reveal the abilities of some trash mobs / bosses.

You brought back Hall of Atonnement, anyone who have ever played protection warrior during Shadowlands remember only too well what happened to us on the very first trash mobs of this dunjeon and how badly we were missing something to block spells.

What are we supposed to do nwithout spell block on Priory ? Floodgate ? And now Hall of Atonnement ? We have no self sustain. Each damage taken count and magic damage have always been the biggest weakness we’ve ever had with DoT and bleed.

The next time you’ll add magic tank buster we’ll be forced to rely on everybody else in the group to help us whereas any other tank can just make it through by using core rotation mitigation abilities.

Whatever you change, reconsider spell block. This spell was added for a reason and we’re just going back to shadowlands nightmare if you remove it.

4 Likes
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Warr will be droped down a few spots on a tank tier list looks like

1 Like
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If you want us dead in the water again yeah removal of spell block is a good idea.
To be honest you would need to really pump prot war full of magic defense talents to compensate for how good it is.

2 Likes
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Initial changes seem fine.

Some talents need 2nd iteration:

  • Spellbreaker: you never want to gamble if you live or not as tank especially on 4% chance. Talent is 100% never gonna be picked.
  • Bolster/Unnerving Focus are both porbably never a pick. Bolster because you are now forced into picking Enduring Defences so you will never pick it for block (maybe change to 100% crit block?) and last stand as a cd alone is rather weak (with proposed iteration Colossus will likely skip this talent). Unnerving Focus because without Bolster it doesnt do nearly enough.
  • both Fight Through Flames, Armor Specialization and Unyielding Stance are the most uninteresting talents that could be made and two of them are mandatory pathing choices
  • as current season proves Impenetrable Wall is inferior to Defender’s Aegis in every scenario after it was stripped of rage generation part after season 1.
  • Heavy Repercussions are good for low haste gear warriors but quickly falls off both defensively and offensively compared to Into the Fray.

The good changes:

  • Tough as nails can probably be justified pick at least for Mountain Thane in m+
  • Merging of Better Served Cold and Show of Force
  • Sudden Death vs 1 point Bloodborne is much better identity choice.
  • Changes to Brutal Vitality and Fueled by Violence
  • Shield Specialization going from 2 to 1 points
  • Barbaric Instinct increasing Thunder Clap damage.
  • Easier acces to Disrupting Shout
  • personal opinion: removing Juggernaut from Prot War is good.

The Bad Changes:

  • Shield Specialization block value 24% → 16%, you pick this talent for pathing ofcourse but the part you actually want is block value not chance.
  • The biggest elephant in the room with this iteration is removal of Spell Block. This skill was essential for some Bosses (Kyveza) and dungeons. Seeing the themes and dungeon pool for next season it’s safe to assume magic damage will be more present in it. As a recompensation we received basically 3 passive talents (sic!) that do the same - reduce magic dmg by 4% and Hunker Down. Warrior can really struggle to live through some pulls without ability to Spell Block. Also the proposed logic behind removing it is so wrong on many levels.
3 Likes
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I welcome the rework to Prot spec tree. I think it was needed for some time. First some context, I am a pug mythic+ player. I run dungeons up to where max gear/seasonal rewards are available, so around 3k this season. My opinions are based on this context.

Changes I like:

  • Pathing changes, pathing requires less talent points
  • Execute package (Massacre, Heavy Handed, Red Right Hand),
  • Deep Wounds package (Fueled by Violance, Bloodborne),
  • Passive magic dr increase (fight through flames, unyielding stance) are the things I like most.

Would be nice to have a look into:

  • Heavy repercussions/Into the fray choice node: Do these 2 fit in same choice node? HR is picked at the beginning of expansion to keep shield block up and is ditched for Into the Fray as soon as possible when enough haste rating is acquired.

  • Enduring Defenses becoming a 2 point node in its new position. Why 2 points as a gatekeeper talent? It feels like tax.

  • Spellbreaker talent, basically reverse fight through flames, has too little chance to proc to be useful. I can’t think of a scenario where I would spend a point for this talent.

  • Removal of Spell Block, being a 30 sec duration ability on 90 secs cd that gave roughly 45% spell damage reduction with block up, it was very good when you knew where to use it and hard to replace. So I can understand why developers would like to remove it. And if it comes to a choice between Spell Block and Spell Reflect, I would prefer Spell Block to be gone, because Spell Reflect has a much shorter cd and thus easier to experiment with. It’s ugly but I can live with it.

  • Revenge nerfs. This iteration has roughly 15% revenge specific nerf due to changes to Barbaric Training and Best Served Cold. Colossus also had some nerfs to Revenge during current season, at the end of March:

  • Colossus: Practiced Strikes’s bonus to Shield Slam and Revenge damage reduced to 10% (was 20%).
  • Colossus: One Against Many reduced to 3% per target (was 5%).
  • Colossus: Tide of Battle reduced to 7% per stack (was 10%).

One of the key reasons that made Colossus feasable for season 2 was damage buffs for 11.1, especially to Revenge though Thane had better aoe agro generation with Thunder Blasts and also better survival due to dumping rage into Ignore Pain. (Revenge was so bad, as a Thane, it was worse to spend a gcd on it instead of spamming Ignore pain for Anger Management). With these new Revenge nerfs, Thane may be rising again, especially with Execute package that gives Thane a second rage dump ability below 35% target health, that hits like a truck and also cleaves.

1 Like
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SPELL BLOCK(long intro ramble):

During all these expansions learning when to use Shield Block has been straight forward with maybe some rare exceptions.
Now Spell Reflection , proper use(or delaying) is EXTREMLY POWERFULL , but you just need to learn when to use it for every single possible pull out there.

-When : to soon and spell reflect might be removed by a other spell , to late and you might miss out on full mitigation.Sometimes you want the damage reduction and not having something reflected at all.
-What : many spells can not be reflected at all , partially , some the full channel , some only the first procs of damage etc
-Results : crap on floor not being applied , tiny bit of damage reduction , reflecting big chunks of damage (Motherload - robots), being the number one dps on a boss encounter and can solo the fight if people die(Halls of Infucion last boss),…

People can properly write a full page on proper use of Spell Reflection alone for each seasonal content these days.

So now to quote

“Developers’ notes: Spell Block required a lot of specialized knowledge to use.
Not only did you need to know when damage was coming,
but also whether it was a form of magic damage that could be blocked
or not and thus affected by the ability. AOE damage isn’t blockable,
neither is periodic damage. Some tank busters are and others aren’t.
We weren’t happy with the knowledge demanded to use the ability effectively”

So this weird viewpoint of “Use of Spell Block is too complicated” baffles me on so many levels. Spell Block can be extremely powerful when used well , so to just remove it but leaving Spell Reflection requiring even more complicated knowledge and usage because of shorter window is staggering.

Will all the knowledge required for good use of Spell Block still be needed after removal : YES!
Will warrior be weaker when it is removed : my gut feeling says yes?
Will removing Spell Block solve any of your arguments : NO , since spell reflection exist and is even more complicated.

Do i like this complicated play , YES , it is a fun puzzle/challenge to learn each season.
Spell Block in my mind was a easier to use ability than Spell Reflection and giving warrior a second and easier option then Spell Reflection for direct magical hits.

SPELLBREAKER

New Talent: Spellbreaker – You have a 4% chance to disrupt magic damage dealt to you, negating 100% of it.

Ok does it actually work like the description? Or will we just like Spell Reflection need to know a lot of information.
Wipe hitting mechanics , aoe , special tank hitting mechanics,internal cooldown?
Because you just creating a Spell Block but passively active but might be poor performing in certain content and then dumped by meta following people FOREVER!
In general most of your tank content evolves around certain moments or pulls to survive certain checkpoint, this ability feels underwhelming for those.

TANKS(off topic)

I myself only ever tanked in WoW , so i have seen tanks becoming walking gods. I hate every single thing about it , you can heal a insane amount , can do insane amount of damage and are indestructible.(I know I am the tiny minority!)

This always lead to extremely arrogant tanks and lot of people learning to tank , go immediately for : ALL DPS talents

Then yell at everyone for not interrupting , while for example they can spec one of the most powerful AOE silences in the game but that would be ridicules off course because they are GOD AND ALL WILL SUFFER EXCEPT THE TANK!

I have seen this evolution for 20 years now and i understand why it happened, if you don’t make tanks powerful , nobody plays them and waiting for a tank in queue is hopeless endless torture.

But pretty pretty pretty pretty please , add some abilities in tanks trees that promotes mitigation and group play. can’t stand a other 20 years of all these GODS DEMANDING MORE POOOOOOOOOOOWER.

Quick brain fart: Banner of the Beholder 3min cooldown . Successful interrupts,critical blocks,stuns. Reduce cooldown by 1 second.
Banner stays active above 80% and increase all party members their mastery by 3%.

4 Likes
11

This feedback should mostly be regarded from a keystone perspective.

  • Last Stand
    Seen little iterations since its original conception.
    Maybe incorporate Unnerving Focus into the base version and make additional defensive values apply to Bolster as the follow up talent. (Leech, parry or health regeneration) to make this a more attractive option.

  • Armor Specialization
    Removing armor from Enduring Alacrity and making it a seperate talent feels mediocre.

  • Spellbreaker
    In what world is the tank looking for reliance to this instead of a dependable (soon to be departed) tool that ties in to our sword & board mythos.

  • Unyielding Stance & Fight Through the Flames
    Defensive stance reduces damage / magic damage taken by 4%
    Once this was included, now one of them is a requisite for anger management.
    Somewhat passionless design where valuable nodes repeatedly is separated and bestowed into a two part options.

  • Focused Vigor & Enduring Alacrity
    Weak bonuses after multiple alterations , merge them, remove them, idk.

Not every node has to be exceedingly interesting, but lately it seems like we ended up with quite a few talents that only provides small increments and bear resemblance to a classic tree. Impactful talents are more intriguing than multiple 1% gains which are hard to acknowledge without sims. “I really felt that extra 5% armor in that last key”

Interaction amongst different abilities that provides a satisfying gameplay loop, like managing stacks of Juggernaut. This might seen more frequent play were it not contested with a stronger alternative.
Providing a flat increase to execute via Red Right Hand is less rewarding is my view.

Personal wish list of talents that I think might be improved are:

  • Intimidating Shout
    Still target capped and makes it unreliable as AOE stop.

  • Revenge
    Slightly increase the arc and length of this ability. Frustratingly small area to work with when gathering mobs.

  • Rallying Cry
    Having a shorter cooldown and being more impactful in 5-man content.

  • Battle Stance
    Maybe something extra that incentives further stance-dance.

  • Storm Shield
    Current multiplier with armor makes this less impactful at a higher level.

  • Intervene
    I wish there were more applications for this to alleviate pressaure on the group.
    Plagued by the same inconsistencies in its seemingly random nature.
    Remeber Dragon Strike from Chargath

Spell Block

Developers’ notes: Spell Block required a lot of specialized knowledge to use.
Not only did you need to know when damage was coming, but also whether it was a form of magic damage that could be blocked or not and thus affected by the ability. AOE damage isn’t blockable, neither is periodic damage. Some tankbusters are and others aren’t. We weren’t happy with the knowledge demanded to use the ability effectively.*

There has always been a problem with inconsistency with magic mitigation.
Occasionally spells can be reflected/deflected or not interacted with.
Concerning the AOE damage isn’t blockable makes me worried because multiple sources of both aoe/dots can indeed be spell blocked.

Revisiting Dawnbreaker with plethora of options to counter lethal engagements with spell block, makes a post like this carry much uncertainty.

Discussion about visuals and spells being intuitively properly telegraphed without relying on weakauras seems to contradict your action when you remove spell block without providing a reliable alternative. Removing one of two problems still leaves us wanting…

Take Elaena Emberlanz Divine Judgment. 1st boss Priory (Coming soon, again).
I am astonished how this ability is not spell-blockable/reflectable/deflectable.
Not only can we not mitigate the magical component, despite us having multiple tools you would assume a situation like this calls for, but you throw in a bleed as well.
This makes Warriors with limited self sustain extremely vulnerable once their weakness been rounded and left in the hands of the healer.

Eventually it comes down to us crossing our fingers and hope you keep this in mind when you design an encounter. I’d be more intrigued if you’d create the puzzle that can be solved by applying our toolbox.

Engaging gameplay comes from anticipation, knowledge and planning accordingly.
Our ability to recover health rapidly is what differentiate us from other classes. If provided with a wide array of tools, then application makes great gameplay if executed well.

Being a vulnerability to the team and looking for options to circumvent pulls because of the class being inadequate, or Blizzard for “reasons” left out the ability counter it, leaves a feeling that your not playing the right class to begin with.

I don’t want this post to be perceived as overwhelmingly negative, I believe Protection Warriors are currently in a good spot. The new tree is looking healthier but more work can still be done.

2 Likes
12

As the main problem with Spell Block is that the game doesn’t tell the player when they can actually use it, why not just add a boolean “blockable: true/false” flag to the spells that are blockable so that the UI can actually telegraph that infornation to the player?

That way players will know when they can use it without extensive practical experimentation.

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I’m fine with getting rid of the Spell Block ability but there needs to be something to take it’s place. The current magic mitigation talents are not a good replacement for something so powerful.

The simplest solution is to buff Spell Reflect’s duration and damage reduction. This would alleviate the magical tank buster issue.

Additionally, since Avatar essentially turns us to stone why not increase our magical/bleed defences during Avatar? Just a thought.

For M+ it might also be prudent to bring Berserker Rage back as button we actually press. Make it generate A LOT of rage over time so Ignore Pain can be used more during high damage scenarios. It’s called ‘Rage’ players will know it’s the ‘Rage’ button.

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Spellbreaker talent, names after the Blood Elf elite infantry specialising in countering magic users, should be the one that helps Warriors mitigate magic damage the most, not something that is useless 96% of the time. With the removal of Spell Block (which I think is not bad due to reasons provided, but devastating if the spell mitigation is not addressed elsewhere).

I would suggest expanding Spellbreaker to transfer some of the Spell Block power into standard Shield Block, for instance:

Spellbreaker
Your Shield Block now also allows blocking spells with 50% effectiveness. Additionally, you have a 4% chance to disrupt magic damage dealt to you, negating 100% of it.

  • Blocked DoTs wouls have their initial damage reduced as well as the DoT component for it’s all duration.
  • Actual percentage value needs balancing obviously, might need more than 50%, though it should be less than Spell Block due to the ability to maintain 100% uptime on Shield Block.
    • Instead of static % effectiveness, it could be replaced to scale with some stat, i.e., at the effectiveness equal to your critical strike chance.

I think this something like it could help solve the issue, as it provides limited spell mitigation on a short CD and duration ability, one that is mostly up anyway when actively tanking. If additional spell mitigation is needed, Spell Reflect used in unison should cover tankbusters.

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In a separate note, hence on a separate post, the talent distribution in the new spec tree looks has some questionable decisions and limited pathing in gate 1 and 2, with a lot of dead ends. The developer notes state:

Obviously, this is a great decision, but execution missed the mark in few points. A few examples:

  • It appears Devastator is now mandatory, as it offers the only path down through the right side of the 2nd gate. Sure, it was taken by like 100% of warrior tanks, but if you want to take away this choice you could as well make it passive.
    • As a side note, almost all talents across all classes and specs (Havoc, Retribution, Prot Warrior, Destruction, etc.) that offer an active and a passive option, the passive one wins in majority of the time. I think in the past one of Blizzard goals stated that the passive ability should be an easier option that reduces rotation complexity but tuned slightly lower as opposed to the active which offer more rotational complexity with higher reward when executed properly… however this is not the case currently.
    • For Prot Warrior, the Devastator passive should be the easy option (or optimal for certain builds at certain stat levels, i.e., high haste levels), but active Devastate should be the stronger option due to needing to find a spot for it in the rotation.
      • Alternatively, it would be interesting if each option was better for one hero spec. Havoc tried that with Fel Scared letting active Demon’s Bite giving more Fury, but general spec design makes DB absolutely useless anyway.
  • Best Served Cold (BSC) is not only a dead end, but also paths from unrelated talent (Devastator). On the other hand, Instigate buffs Devastate, so looks like Instigate should swap places with BSC.
  • There are a total of 10 dead end talents that are not capstones - I don’t think there is any class that has even half that. Moreover, there are 3+ bottleneck nodes that are either not avoidable or not reachable via alternative path. I’d the goal was to enable the tree to make more personal choices, unfortunately you managed to kick the ball in the opposite direction - what is the point of removing mandatory picks and freeing points if you severely limit pathing?