I can’t for the life of me find an answer to this question; last time I remember DPS Warrior was the top teir Dps, was back in ICC.
So I have to ask, since I change spec often and go into tanking each year, Do I just miss the news that Warrior DPS is good at some point, or did I just fumble my way into missing every time Warriors were needed for not only their buff?
I mean some raids I just get invited because I’m a warrior, and they need my buff, its so sad.
Rank 3 for melee dps in m+ for shadowlands season 1 and 2. (fury)
At one point rank 2 dps in sanctum of domination. (fury)
Arms was also top 5 at times in sanctum.
Im sure war has been good at other times aswell, this is just what i found with a quick search.
Fury Warrior in Firelands - Amazing, but it got nerfed due to this.
Arms Warrior in Dragon Soul - It got a huge buff and was amazing.
Arms was mixed in MOP - Pre nerf at launch and later after SOO buff they were really good, but didn’t scale so dropped off in SOO.
Fury in MOP was good whole expansion, in SOO it was S-tier.
Blackrock Foundry - Arms/Fury good except for Blackhand where it mattered, they sucked on Blackhand.
Hellfire Citadel - Arms/Fury amazing on progression, they got massively outscaled though unless you could hard cleave as Arms or hard Bladestorm as Fury.
Legion - Arms was amazing in Emerald Nightmare, but required both the Mortal Strike and Sudden Death Legendary, so it only half counts.
Nighthold - Fury was really good when you got the CDR trinket. Arms with Draught of Souls was really good but got outscaled mid-late tier.
Tomb of Sargeras - Arms got reworked/redesigned and was easier to play + now pretty much S-tier.
Nylotha - Both Fury/Arms were amazing with corruptions.
I stopped playing in TOS patch until Nylotha, so can’t comment on between.
This is really misleading, I played SL Season 1 and Warrior was undesirable for most of it. This improved only after they nerfed the M+ dungeons into oblivion and then buffed Fury, making Warrior good on Fortified weeks because of good sustained AOE. But it was still a low prio pick for pugs and you didn’t see a single Warrior in either the MDI or top M+ keys. If you look at WCL statistics for S1-3 in SL you can also see, both Fury and Arms are in the bottom half and there is a huge gap to the top specs.
In Castle Nathria (which is really actually what matters, not M+), Warrior was good. Execute/Bladestorm were really strong for Nathria progression, but on the meters Warrior was pretty sad looking. The selection of really high dps parses you would see were majorly cheesing AOE fights like Sun King, and that kind of performance would not be reflected in a normal run, Warlocks, Boomkins ruled and again you can check statistics for the raid, both Warrior specs in the bottom half of performers.
The rankings ive provided for m+ are from subcreation and based on statistics. They might have been undisreable still i wouldnt know (rank 3 melee still means theres plenty of options b4 u take a warrior), didnt start playing warrior until season 2 sl myself.
Based on what statistics, Warcraftlogs statistics show quite clearly that Warrior wasn’t great. Warrior suffered mediocre single target dps, being melee in melee unfriendly dungeons with much stronger melee picks (like Outlaw Rogues) available.
Fury was so bad at the start of the season but it started getting some popularity sort of mid season when it got the buffs (and it got the buffs because it was hilariously bad), after the dungeons had seen a lot of big nerfs, but it was still never used for anything like the MDI or higher keys, and nobody wanted them in pugs.
Now I’m not saying they were terrible, by S1 end they were fine, but a long long way from being a top M+ spec, honestly quite comparable to how they are right now.
Based on how many keys were ran at higher key levels through the season with a fury warrior, taken from raider io/warcraftlogs api. If you want more precise information of how subcreation does their measurements you will probably have to ask them or read the faq.
This is just one of those situations where if you look at the right set of data from the right angle, it can paint a picture. Go look at the forums for S1 in Shadowlands, it’s just Warriors crying nobody wants Warriors for M+ runs. It’s Warriors crying because Fury is so bad and needs buffs.
Fury got the buffs, they weren’t what people were expecting, but it was enough for Warrior to gain some ground back, but like I said they were not a priority choice in pugs, weren’t taken for the MDI and were not taken for the top keys. Eventually at the end of the season Fury was pretty good, you saw the shift from Venthyr to Kyrian/Nightfae happen to further improve that after Venthyr had been pretty much a requirement for raid progression.
But this is all as the season is winding down anyway. If we’re talking about top dps specs in SL S1, people are looking at MM Hunters, Affliction Warlocks, Boomkins, Outlaw Rogues, Unholy Death Knights, Fire Mages, Shadow Priests, Ele Shamans. Some specs were good in M+ but not so much in the raid (Outlaw for example) and vice versa, but the only time Warrior really shined was during raid progression, when they were running Venthyr anyway.
So this is interesting I checked logs quickly to see and it seems since Legion there were some tiers where we were strong like being 2nd or 3rd DPS overall.
But never really on top as best dps. We were also never considered best DPS to bring in M+ keys for that matter.
I guess we will however be best class to do Delves solo on.
We did it boys, after 8 years we finally may find content where it does not suck to be a warrior.
The start of Shadowlands was the reason why I abandoned WOW for a while. I was choosing between paladin and warrior to start the expansion and landed on my warrior. Then I SUFFERED while leveling because of extremely low dps and survivability. After that I SUFFERED as a tank in normal dungeons because I couldn’t hold agro even when I clicked all the buttons as hard as if it was an actual raid. And then I saw castle nathria class rankings and warrior was one of the lowest in the rankings, and the worst tank. Don’t you dare say that warrior was good in shadowlands
Sorry, got triggered a bit
Also, yes, it is extremely frustrating to see warriors and paladins - my two favourite classes always at the lower half of dps ranking
You’re definitely overstating it here. Warrior didn’t have threat issues as a tank, the primary reason Warrior tank wasn’t as desired in early Shadowlands was due to not being able to kite like other tanks, DH in particular. Kiting in dungeons was more the realms of high end M+ keys, where Warriors were undesirable. Suffering in normal dungeons was not a problem with Warrior tanks, they were actually strong at that level of content.
And as for Arms/Fury, they were quite good in the open world for levelling, great sustainability and survival, good mix of single and multi target damage, definitely not one of the weaker classes on that front. DPS Warrior was also key to progression in Castle Nathria, because Fury was exceptional for Stone Legion Generals thanks to Bladestorm and Arms (later Fury after the buff too) was exceptional on Sire Denathrius because they could cleave the entire fight with the Sword/Boss, and then they had very very good execute dps which turned out to be vital for the fight.
If we’re going to complain about things, you have to acknowledge the strengths, Sire Denathrius world first had 2 dps Warriors.
Since Legion was the turning point for modern wow i wont include anything before this
Legion Warrior was S tier. We had actual niche situations , both specs were fun and performed really good.
Bfa warrior was ok whole xpac ( not fun wise dont get me wrong) and nyalotha we pumped with corruptions.
We were good till sepulcher then destro/survival happened. Not top but good. At that time we had more flexibility with talents which opened up window for parsing but in reality we were somewhere around upper mid / lower high till sepulcher ( sepulcher was really bad tier for dps warriors , we had a meme weapon dropped from jailer with rng effect that decided how well we gonna perform ) .
Dragonflight we started strong dps wise without gear then fall behind really fast when people start getting tier set and it continued every single patch of the xpac.
For m+ we were always somewhat mid of the pack. We never were unwanted guy which gets picked last on every activity , we were more like the guy knows the captain of the team which doesnt hurt anyone but the captain secretly wishes we dont show up.
