Warrior Tanking In Cataclysm.

Quite a lot of changes coming to protection warriors in the new expansion. Most of them appear to be mechanics changes, with only a few brand new abilities showing up. I'll post the protection-specific and general changes here, and comment on each one individually, then wrap up with an overall perspective:

Inner Rage (Level 81): Whenever the character reaches a full 100 Rage, he or she will gain a buff that causes attacks to consume 50% more Rage and do 15% more damage for a short amount of time. This is a passive ability so it won't need to be activated by the player. The goal for this ability is to provide a benefit for hitting max Rage instead of it feeling like a penalty. However, we also don't want warriors to feel like they're supposed to pool Rage and do nothing until they hit 100, so we'll be closely monitoring how this plays out during the beta testing, and making adjustments as needed.


I can foresee this passive ability becoming a boon to protection warriors, as on bosses, we tend to sit at 100 rage most of the time, though this may change in Cataclysm. Oftentimes we can't seem to dump our rage fast enough. At the least, when we are sitting at 100 rage, we will be able to use that excessive rage and do more damage.


Heroic Leap (Level 85): This ability makes the character leap at their target and apply the Thunder Clap ability to all enemies in the area when they land. Heroic Leap will be usable in Battle Stance and shares a cooldown with Charge, but the Juggernaut and Warbringer talents will allow Heroic Leap to be used in any stance and possibly while in combat. The cooldown for this ability might be longer than the Charge ability, but it will also apply a stun effect so you can make sure the target will still be there when you land.


Some guildmates of mine have expressed concern that this ability will either replace the standard Charge and Thunderclap pull, or it will find itself never being used, based on cooldowns or power. Ghostcrawler has stated that we will be using both of them, and I tend to agree with him. Heroic Leap will have a longer cooldown, but will be more powerful than either Charge or Thunderclap combined. The way I see it, the more Charges, the more Thunderclap-like abilities we have the better. I already spend a good amount of time charging over a battlefield, why complain about another ability that lets me do that?


Heroic Strike will no longer be an "on next swing" attack, as we are removing this mechanic in Cataclysm. To keep the niche of Heroic Strike as a Rage dump, it will become an instant attack, but will cost between 10 and 30 Rage. This ability will not be usable until you have 10 Rage, but if you have more than 10, it will consume up to 30, adding additional damage for each point of Rage consumed above the base 10. Other abilities, such as Cleave, Execute, and Maul (for druids) will work similarly. The goal is to provide players with an option where if you can't afford the Rage, you don't push the button, but if you have excess Rage, you can push it a lot.


This ability is a godsend. No longer being required to spam Heroic Strike will relieve the aching joints of every protection warrior I know. I could not be more excited about this change, and will help to remind me not to use it during the first couple seconds of a fight, which I am prone to do, leading to rage starvation early on.


Battle Shout, Commanding Shout, and possibly Demoralizing Shout will work more like the death knight's Horn of Winter ability. Specifically, these shouts will cost no resources, generate rage in addition to their current effects, and be on a short cooldown.


I completely love this ability. Goodbye Bloodrage, hello shouts! I believe warriors will be shouting before every pull, and anytime we think we need rage. Like say on magic damage heavy fights where our rage generation slows to a crawl. It will remind me to shout and shout often, which during a fight I tend to forget, mostly because it's not extremely important to me. Now I have no excuse.


Sunder Armor will be reduced to three stacks instead of five, and still provide only a 4% reduction in armor per stack. We want to make this debuff easier to apply and less of a damage swing when it falls off.


While I am disappointed that our trademark move is being nerfed, I understand their thinking behind the change. Less important if it falls off, if there's no warrior to apply it, it won't be as huge a drop in dps, and just generally taking less time to reach max sunders. It fits in the design philosophy of Cataclysm.


Several talents that reduce the Rage cost of abilities will be changed to focus on increased damage for those abilities instead.


This is consistent with the other changes, including the normalization of rage, that I see being a benefit to protection as well as the other trees. Since rage will foreseeably be a resource to manage, when and where to use our abilities will become a lot more important, especially since we won't be spamming as much. The increased damage along with other changes makes me wonder if tanking is going to be more of a damage dealing role than it previously has, especially for warriors.


Critical Block Chance: As we mentioned in the stat changes preview, block rating is changing to a chance to block 30% of a melee swing's damage. Protection warriors have a chance that the block will be a critical block and block for 60% of a melee swing's damage instead. There will likely be talents available to push the amount blocked even higher.


I am in full support of the changes to block. While some tanks would build elaborate block sets presumably for heroics, I always found them to be a total waste of time. I believe all tanks really need one set of gear to do whatever tanking they do, whether fighting heroic trash or the Lich King himself. These changes to block make a nearly useless passive ability into something people can actually use, and removing the confusion between block value and block rating can only be a good thing. Critical Block Chance frees up more talents to use elsewhere.


Vengeance: This is a mechanic to ensure that tank damage (and therefore threat) doesn't fall behind as damage-dealing classes improve their gear during the course of the expansion. All tanking specs will have Vengeance as their second talent tree passive bonus. Whenever a tank gets hit, Vengeance will give them a stacking attack power buff equal to 5% of the damage done, up to a maximum of 10% of the character's un-buffed health. For boss encounters, we expect that tanks will always have the attack power bonus equal to 10% of their health. The 5% and 10% bonuses assume 51 talent points have been put into the Protection tree. These values will be smaller at lower levels. Remember, you only get this bonus if you have spent the most talent points in the Protection tree, so you won't see Arms or Fury warriors running around with it. Vengeance will let us continue to make tank gear more or less the way we do today – there will be some damage-dealing stats, but mostly survival-oriented stats. Druids typically have more damage-dealing stats even on their tanking gear, so their Vengeance benefit may be smaller, but overall the goal is for all four tanks do about the same damage when tanking.


The biggest change to all tanking in Cataclysm, and one of the most amazing changes I've seen yet. Vengeance further solidifies the idea of tanking through damage, where on bosses, effectively the more health we have, the more damage we do. Our threat scales with our gear, as it always should have, and we will be able to put out beastly numbers for damage. Probably not in comparison to the insane numbers the dps classes will be able to, but far far more than we would ever have been able to without this change.


Overall, I am really happy with the warrior changes, and excited for Cataclysm. I've heard of some people complaining or being disappointed with the changes, but I figure people will always find something to whine about. They enjoy the whining, it has nothing to do with the game. While it's too early to tell the complete picture, I see tanks being able to focus solely on survivability and not having to worry too much about their gear having threat stats on it, as their mastery will provide for them those stats. All classes seem to be getting easier to gear for, and find gear for, without as much stat balancing, which is rarely fun and never simple. I can't wait to see what else is going to change.


Thanks for reading, and stay tuned next entry for: Good Riddance, Twenty-Five Mans.