How-to nerf warriors, player suggestions

So, protection has been identified as overpowered in arenas. I don't PvP, but like everyone else I'm VERY concerned about nerfs to PvE because they simply are not justified.

To deal with this in a constructive manner, I want all of you who feel the same way to come up with intelligent suggestions on how to nerf prot in PvP without negatively affecting PvE. Please feel free to bring this discussion to the US forums. I would do so myself if I wasn't a player from the EU. This isn't a discussion about whether or not prot IS overpowered or not because I don't have the slightest idea of arenas.

So here is my list of intelligent nerfs.

If Shield Bash silence is a problem:
Change it to only occur when Shield Bash is used against non-player targets. The reasoning is that the silence component is an ESSENTIAL tool to hoard mixed groups of caster and melee mobs, so they can be tanked and AOE'ed.

If Devastate damage is a problem:
Devastate only hits hard with a slow weapon (2.6 swing speed). Most tanks use weapons of 1.5 to 1.7 speed. Thus it seems reasonable to normalize Devastate damage to something like 2.0 weapon speed. This would be a buff to protection DPS in PvE, which is certainly not inappropriate.

If Concussion Blow damage is a problem:
Change it to only deal as much damage against non-player targets.

If there are simply too many stuns or silences:
Same course of action as for Shield Bash silence component.

Things that should not be nerfed:
Mobility: it's the holy grail, the only real reason to play a protection warrior.
Shield Block + Shield Slam: shield block value and shield block are both already weak, you don't want to make them even more weaker. If you have to do something, lower Shield Slam damage cap in PvP only.
Shockwave damage: doing so would not only further weaken our AOE tanking capabilities, but also risk making the ability not worth the GCD when tanking bosses.

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Originally Posted by Stengel

So, protection has been identified as overpowered in arenas. I don't PvP, but like everyone else I'm VERY concerned about nerfs to PvE because they simply are not justified.

To deal with this in a constructive manner, I want all of you who feel the same way to come up with intelligent suggestions on how to nerf prot in PvP without negatively affecting PvE. Please feel free to bring this discussion to the US forums. I would do so myself if I wasn't a player from the EU. This isn't a discussion about whether or not prot IS overpowered or not because I don't have the slightest idea of arenas.

So here is my list of intelligent nerfs.

If Shield Bash silence is a problem:
Change it to only occur when Shield Bash is used against non-player targets. The reasoning is that the silence component is an ESSENTIAL tool to hoard mixed groups of caster and melee mobs, so they can be tanked and AOE'ed.

If Devastate damage is a problem:
Devastate only hits hard with a slow weapon (2.6 swing speed). Most tanks use weapons of 1.5 to 1.7 speed. Thus it seems reasonable to normalize Devastate damage to something like 2.0 weapon speed. This would be a buff to protection DPS in PvE, which is certainly not inappropriate.

If Concussion Blow damage is a problem:
Change it to only deal as much damage against non-player targets.

If there are simply too many stuns or silences:
Same course of action as for Shield Bash silence component.

Things that should not be nerfed:
Mobility: it's the holy grail, the only real reason to play a protection warrior.
Shield Block + Shield Slam: shield block value and shield block are both already weak, you don't want to make them even more weaker. If you have to do something, lower Shield Slam damage cap in PvP only.
Shockwave damage: doing so would not only further weaken our AOE tanking capabilities, but also risk making the ability not worth the GCD when tanking bosses.

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Shield bash, well thats the whole point of the ability, to be a silence and interupt.... Having it not work in a particular field might be a nerf to pvp but not pve but what is the point of the ability then? Might as well just take it out completely.

Devastate, if they change devastate like you suggest it would be wonderful. More dps for me. Enough +threat crap please. While we are at it, take away vigilance please?

IDK about prot pvp but with conc blow it only hits for 3.2k for me in a raid. I would assume, since I dont PvP, that with resilienced targets, the damage would be lower.

Shockwave, take away the stun for all i care, I rather be hit than wait the stun period to gain rage again anyway, as long as they decreased the CD or increased it damage.

Take away a small part of our utility/mobility if they want as long as they dont butcher it, just dont touch our already lower dps.

The main problem i think with prot warriors is the ability to chain stun quite effectively, an charge>shockwave>concussion blow>intercept combo is 11 seconds, a lucky revenge stun afterwards is another 2seoncds, and 2 seconds after charge is off CD, and and 3.5 seconds later we can shockwave again. So for the first 24 seconds, we can stun them for around 16.5 seconds assuming no revenge stuns....


I reckon the we need a harsher form of diminishing returns on stuns, something similiar on scale and effect to how taunt's DR works.

alternatively each time we land a stun half the chance the the next stun will stun is landed within say 10 seconds of the last.


although i would aslo like to see something similiar donw to our stuns as to what was done to Frost Mages, increases damage to things immune to stun...if only against NPCs

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Originally Posted by Stengel

If Devastate damage is a problem:
Devastate only hits hard with a slow weapon (2.6 swing speed). Most tanks use weapons of 1.5 to 1.7 speed. Thus it seems reasonable to normalize Devastate damage to something like 2.0 weapon speed. This would be a buff to protection DPS in PvE, which is certainly not inappropriate.

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Are 1-H not normalised for instants to 2.4 already?

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Originally Posted by Bosk

Are 1-H not normalised for instants to 2.4 already?

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I'm not sure about the exact mechanics, but Devastate hits noticeably harder with a slow weapon. If it was normalized to 2.4 speed, there would be little difference between Devaste damage with a 1.5 speed weapon and a 2.6 one, but there is. Perhaps I'm underestimating how much the weapon itself damage actually contributes to the total damage.

Edit: regardless, whether or not it actually is normalized and to what speed, what I really meant was to make Devastate hit for WeaponDPS*2 plus whatever (normalized or not) attack power. If I'm not mistaken, this should turn out to the same damage as if using a 2.0 weapon regardless of the actual weapon speed.

On normalization, yes, all 1-handed weapons (except daggers) are normalized to the same speed. And you won't see that changed for a single move.

Normalization is a meta function that is used for everyone non-specifically after weapon type.

I'm not sure where the other issues are coming up. Is there chatter of nerfing Prot Warriors on account of PvP? Do we have Blue feedback, or is this just in response to player complaints?

Devastate is already normalized. The only difference is the base damage of the weapon. It makes a decent impact in PvE as the ability is spammed and has lowish base damage--and the fact that the difference between fast/slow weapon is almost double base damage given common weapon speeds. (1.4s vs. 2.6s)

More aggresive DR to stuns in PvP is really the main solution I would suspect makes sense.

I honestly feel that lowering Protection Warrior DPS in any way that would affect PvE would be a very large mistake and something to be heavily avoided. Our DPS is already on the low end as it is.

Satorri, the comment from GC was, "Protection warriors have too much utility and damage for PvP. (We don't want to hurt their tanking in PvE of course.)" and slate it for an upcoming 3.3 change.

Yes, there is a GC post saying they are looking into it on the roles forum.

I don't actually PvP anymore these days, but if they want to nerf prot for PvP while leaving it unharmed for PvE, Imp Spell Reflect is a very good start. Just remove the group reflect, it's way too good in PvP and has almost no use in PvE.

I would miss Warbringer not removing snares a bit, but that is definitely also a possibility. That might actually be too much of a PvP nerf though, not sure.

Concussion Blow is also a possiblity, I wouldn't really miss it much even if it was simply removed from the talent tree. In that case it would need a replacement though, which I don't see happening at this point. Maybe nerf the stun part for PvP only or something.

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Originally Posted by Tengenstein

The main problem i think with prot warriors is the ability to chain stun quite effectively, an charge>shockwave>concussion blow>intercept combo is 11 seconds, a lucky revenge stun afterwards is another 2seoncds, and 2 seconds after charge is off CD, and and 3.5 seconds later we can shockwave again. So for the first 24 seconds, we can stun them for around 16.5 seconds assuming no revenge stuns....


I reckon the we need a harsher form of diminishing returns on stuns, something similiar on scale and effect to how taunt's DR works.

alternatively each time we land a stun half the chance the the next stun will stun is landed within say 10 seconds of the last.


although i would aslo like to see something similiar donw to our stuns as to what was done to Frost Mages, increases damage to things immune to stun...if only against NPCs

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We already have DR on most of the stuns. I think charge/intercept share a DR and believe rev/conc/SW all share one as well. The 11 seconds you speak of is more like 7 or 8.

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Originally Posted by Dreador

We already have DR on most of the stuns. I think charge/intercept share a DR and believe rev/conc/SW all share one as well. The 11 seconds you speak of is more like 7 or 8.

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Charge has no DR.
Revenge Stun has a DR with other random (ie proc) stuns, so it doesn't affect the other prot warrior stuns.
All the controlled stuns share the same DR, this includes Intercept, Concussion Blow and Shockwave.

Charge has a 1 sec stun, really it's little more than an interrupt. =)

Prot's utility in PvP is the ability to control people more than anything, but I don't know if it is in need of direct patching necessarily. Locks can still chain fear people.

If anything I'd imagine they'll find a way for stuns to break on X damage taken, but I wouldn't be thrilled about that in PvE either.


All of this appears to be in response to a very vague mention by GC recently, no?

Not vague, no.

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As many of you have suspected, we think rogue damage is too high.
...
Other things on our radar that you might see soon -- none of these are promises and we have no specific changes to announce yet:
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Protection warriors have too much utility and damage for PvP. (We don't want to hurt their tanking in PvE of course.)

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Very shortly followed by:

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The base damage bonus from Hunger for Blood has been reduced from 10% to 5%.
The bonus damage rogues gain from attack power for poisons has been decreased. This applies to Instant Poison, Deadly Poison, and Wound Poison.

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I'd like to see Imp Disarm nerfed (pointless in pve, nasty in pvp) and various things changed to "non-player targets", whether that be gag order, imp def stance or whatever they see fit.

God no, just no. Prot is just fine in PvP. I'd much rather face a geared prot warrior than a geared arms warrior any day of the week.

Honestly, the thing I like about Prot is that it's virtually the only warrior tree that can handle mages very effectively. If they get rid of my ability to interrupt casts and stun mages, I may as well go Arms and try to hack through their absorb shield before I get CC'ed. I'd almost rather have lower pvp damage then get rid of my ability to silence or stun enemies effectively.

I don't see this as really a problem honestly, so a handful of players used an "zomg prot should stay pve" spec for their arenas, and did good with them. Overpowered? I read a post from a blue stating, mages, and rogues, still by far outnumber the number of "prot" warriors in the arena system. It's just something for people to QQ about right now. Sure if they want to "nerf prot" for utility/damage then so be it, but I think it's pretty lame for them to bring it up because I don't think it's really a problem.

But let me try to address the points form the OP:

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If Shield Bash silence is a problem:
Change it to only occur when Shield Bash is used against non-player targets. The reasoning is that the silence component is an ESSENTIAL tool to hoard mixed groups of caster and melee mobs, so they can be tanked and AOE'ed.

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Really? I just don't see this being the case, mages, dks, and all blood elves have ranged silences/interrupts, and shield bash has ALWAYS been one of the few things warriors can do to stop a healer from just rofl healing from 30% back to 100%. Especially since prot warriors don't have MS. Definitely not a change here, removing the interrupt from this would just be dumb.

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If Devastate damage is a problem:
Devastate only hits hard with a slow weapon (2.6 swing speed). Most tanks use weapons of 1.5 to 1.7 speed. Thus it seems reasonable to normalize Devastate damage to something like 2.0 weapon speed. This would be a buff to protection DPS in PvE, which is certainly not inappropriate.

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This could be the case, I wouldn't be against this change. Devastate is spammable, for a low rage cost (pvp prot spec'd it costs only 9 rage) and it does deal a hefty bit of damage, normalization will definitely help a bit, but if you normalize it to 2.0 speed, wouldn't all the pvp warriors just pick up 1.5 speed weapons and still devastate as hard as a slow 2.6 and suffer none of the consequences?

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If Concussion Blow damage is a problem:
Change it to only deal as much damage against non-player targets.

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I dunno if it's so much the damage from conc blow but the stun component of it coupled with decent damage, chained with all of our stuns/interrupts. I think the biggest qualm is that people are offended when a prot warrior can devastate spam to 5 sunders and 60% health then go stun, interrupt, stun, interrupt, dead. The reality is this only happens IF no cooldowns are up, if there are any, the player will normally survive this and the warrior simply waits for his cds to come back up and do it again. I dunno if extending the cd on conc blow would necessarily fix this and how much of an impact it would have on pve, but at least if it was more lined up with other classes defensive cooldowns, then if you bait the player to use his cds early, then you can win by blowing your combo still, but under advanced fights, the person will know not to blow his cds till you've conc blowed (think mages who blink before a charge, and after a charge and how much it makes the difference...)

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If there are simply too many stuns or silences:
Same course of action as for Shield Bash silence component.

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Stuns are already on a DR, the only one we have that isn't on DR is charge, I'd say this was already addressed when they nerfed rapid charge glyph. The silence component I suppose of shield bash could be removed for pvp (left for pve) and leave it simply as an interrupt but I dunno about that either. Maybe make it only silence if you interrupt, otherwise it does nothing?

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Things that should not be nerfed:
Mobility: it's the holy grail, the only real reason to play a protection warrior.
Shield Block + Shield Slam: shield block value and shield block are both already weak, you don't want to make them even more weaker. If you have to do something, lower Shield Slam damage cap in PvP only.
Shockwave damage: doing so would not only further weaken our AOE tanking capabilities, but also risk making the ability not worth the GCD when tanking bosses.

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agreed.

Want to fix the current pvp situation, and largely why prot warriors are being viewed as overpowered?

Disable pve set bonuses while in arenas. Problem solved.
It's using 10% more devastate damage, and 5% more damage here, + 6% more arp in bstance, and what not that disbalances pvp. When arena balance changes ar emade, they're made assuming that most classes (and most do..) wear the pvp gear, and get the pvp set bonuses, hunky doory, everyone gains damage, probably some burst, and some survivability. The large discrepancy is that prot warriors due to cooldown usage, can wear pve gear to get higher than normal damage (full pvp gear a prot warrior wouldn't be so scary, believe me, i've tried) and largely this is due to abusing pve set bonuses.

I think fix this, and you fix a lot of things, for not just prot warriors either (I know there are other classes that abuse pve tier sets to get more burst/etc in pvp) and it's always bothered me that for something that is supposed to be "disjoint" from pve, even so far as having it's own gear and stats (resilience anyone?) created solely for it, they allow things in pve still affect it. This also makes future balancing easier for developers because they could make pve set bonuses good for pve, and not worry about how that'd make x class overpowered in pvp.

Just my 2 cents.

does anyone know what the DR on our Stuns is?

I believe it was changed to 5 stuns DR, but that was PvE and I have no idea in PvP.

I am with Kaz on this one, and I think that would make a huge difference that would level out the playing field.

I love you kaz, have my babehs

i still think making the tourney realms playable full-time just for arenas (they are set up strictly for pvp anyways) will be the best way to go about it. then you can have prot warrior dmg buffed and have less baked in threat on the live realms which will be the pve side. then you can have your pvp vendors and premade 80s for the tourney realms like it is now and have less dmg done by x class for y ability and have limited pve item access (maybe just certain weapons and offset items). the pvp jocks wont have to complain anymore about "omg why cant you nerf prot warriors?! they kill my mage too easy!" and blizz wont have to hear from the pve nerds saying "well, you cant nerf x class/spec because..." and post math comparable to einstein's theory of relativity on why you shouldn't nerf it.

edit: Jon Pardo during an interview during the five year anniversary of wow--
"If I was going to pick on a game design thing that I look back on and think was a mistake? We really never designed WoW to be a competitive e-sports game"

Apologies for creating the other thread. Didn't see this earlier and the terms I used for search didn't point here.

I do think stuns are the biggest issue. Blizz has kvetched about them before (sentiment being losing control of your toon is not fun). Maybe removing the proc stun from imp revenge would be an initial baby step.