I’ve just seen the new Paladin abilities and talent tree, coupled with the new druid feral tree and the FOTE (Flavour of the Expansion) Deathknight, I’m seriously considering calling protection warriors a near extinction species (please note, talent trees and abilities in beta as of 22/07/2008).

In my latest rambling about why there is a tank shortage i pointed out that the one of the reasons that dictates how much players of the X class exist on a server is directly related to how much high end raiding guilds desire them to raid, and since I’m seriously convinced that WotLK tank changes (all of them, palas/druids/warriors/dk’s) are going to decrease how much a warrior is required in raiding, i foresee protection warriors a near extinction species, but, let’s analyse this a bit further.

My concern to be very blunt and direct, is, the Protection Warrior need in high end raiding guilds.

OK, it’s true, it’s beta, it’s true that we don’t know how raids will be, although some might think it’s a bit too soon to worry about this, i disagree, if WotLK development doesn’t keep this issue in mind, I’m fairly sure it will be too late to deal with post expansion release, and we will end up in a similar situations like the four horsemen, where all of a sudden due to a boss gimmick the guild is required to either recruit more tanks and/or have internal re-rolls, so, to avoid future ‘problems’ either on the player base or in the high end guilds, i feel this issue should be brought up earlier in the development stage in order to keep a balanced class development.

If we ‘analyse’ the current trend regarding protection warriors by looking at the differences between Mount Hyjal/Black Temple and Sunwell Plateau, i can safely assume that blizzard intends to decrease the amount of protection warriors in raids, and favour other classes also, while i do agree with it to a certain extent (of course, it’s the class i play for 3 years and like other players i would like to defend my raid spot), if we think about it, there’s no fight in SWP that you could say there is a need to have a warrior tanking or participating in boss X fight, when this happens, why should a raid leader want a protection warrior instead of any of it’s tanking counterparts ? Shield wall ? Last Stand ? well, that is really overrated and completely unnecessary in farmed bosses, in learning ? of course, very useful, can seriously increase the chances of a first kill, on farm ? no, not at all.

Now given the information available about the new beta talents and skills, I’d like to know what or which unique ability does a warrior have that will make him wanted in a raid ? With the end of crushing blows (which I welcome yes), with the significant buff on Feral druids and Protection paladins, Rogues and new Death knight, which got most of THE warrior unique abilities that made them wanted in raids, I’m seriously concerned if they will be wanted at all.

Let’s make a quick review:
This review is thought on a single target tanking, aka, Boss

Protection Paladins:
- Judgements of the Just, judges reducing melee attack speed of the target by 10/20%

Hello thunderclap, one of the famous warrior debuffs that would make them wanted in raiding. Granted DPS warriors can do it also, but, would mean they would loose a tiny bit of dps, on min max guilds this would be a reason to have 1 of the tanks a warrior, instead of having a DPS warrior keeping it up.

Protection Paladins also bring raid utility, another blessing, the casual heal when required although a crappy one but can save a player, the BoP, Divine intervention, JoW/JoL

Feral Druids:
- Demoralizing Roar, decreases enemies melee attack power by 408, talented 571 AP

Although warriors Demo shout is 2 AP higher, and talented some measly 4 AP more, this is by any means any valid reason a raid leader would prefer a protection warrior instead of a feral druid, plus, feral druids are already the best melee mitigation tank in the game due to they’re armour, and how easy they can tank multi mobs.

Feral druids bring also to the raid 5% crit aura, bleed damage increase from mangle, combat resurrection, occasional life saving heal, hibernate.

Death Knight:
- Icy Touch deals damage modified by AP, decreases melee and casting speed by 15%

The new and improved thunderclap, granted, TC and Judgement of just are 20%, but, the casting speed decrease > 5% speed anywhere in the world.

- Anti-Magic Shell, absorbs 75% of magic damage for 3 seconds

OK, it’s nice to have a dedicated magic tank, i don’t have problems with that, but, at the moment, warriors are the best magic tank with 10% damage reduction plus 6% talented, making it the preferred magic tank, with the death knight on the scene, 1 less reason to bring a protection warrior to a raid.

Death knights also bring DPS, as all trees can do ALLOT of dps and still tank, coupled with (talented) Crypt Fever, -5% attributes, and Ebon Plaguebringer, 3% magic damage increase, and, although i don’t know yet how viable it can be, Anti-Magic zone, see, several unique skills that would make a death knight wanted in a raid.

Rogues:
- Expose armour/Imp Expose armour reduces the target armour

It’s a common knowledge that Imp Expose armour is mildly better than Sunder armour (mildly as in, not really an importance at the moment) but, if it’s required the armour debuff in a fight, and someone would need to make a choice in either speccing into Imp. EA or bringing a protection warrior what would be the choice ? i think it’s pretty obvious with the above points, why bring a useless protection warrior without any unique useful abilities to a raid when a DPS that does already alot of it can do a almost negligible better sunder armour ?

- Dismantle, Disarm the enemy, removing all weapons, shield or other equipment carried for 10 sec

Warriors improved disarm, hell, same cool down and lasting time, besides, removes all weapons (MH AND OH), shield, and other equipment (I’m guessing ranged here, but it’s a guess) while warriors disarm what ? main hand, plus, it’s a trained ability, not talented, comes along with any rogue u might have in the raid.

OK, after all of the above, let’s try to search any warrior ability that would make him wanted or that someone might think they would be wanted in a raid:

Sunder Armour, Demoralizing shout, Thunderclap, Defensive stance/imp defensive stance are already pointed out above as things that are not longer warrior unique abilities that would make them wanted in raids, so, I’ll skip them.

- Intercept ?

Well, intercept in a Boss is only required for you to reach the boss quickly if you loose agro, you most likely won’t save who stole agro, the boss as soon as he enters melee range (which is usually big for a boss) he’s dead, and even if you are quick enough to press intervene, several latency issues won’t make you reach there in time ever, clearly, not needed at all.

- Vigilance ?

Vigilance was a great talent, at this current state, the 10% threat reduction makes it useless, what’s the purpose of this talent ? 5 man tanking ? i really can’t see the purpose for boss tanking, why does a caster that pulled agro need 5% dodge ? like if that would save him, or any other cloth, only class that can take high advantage of that is rogues, rogues tanking also ? at the moment, this talent is completely useless in raiding in my point of view.

- Shockwave ?

Please, don’t make me laugh, protection paladins ? feral druids ? death knights ?, in fact i would say this ability should be the 41 point talent in the beginning of the burning crusade, not now, yes warriors need a bit of help multi-mob tanking but a small buff on TC would be enough, now a new talent ? although i like it, looks great, why a 51 talent point in a protection tree of a class which for years was THE single target tank, this either should be a less damage trainable skill or a side grade talent, not a 51 point talent… and definitely not a reason to take a warrior to a raid instead of any of they’re fellow counterparts.

- Crushing Blows

Crushing blows are gone.

Conclusion, what was done on WotLK (beta) on the tanks:

Warrior concerns in TBC were addressed, true, we get rage from parries and dodges, we got a 51 point ability (this is ridiculous sorry) to aid on multi mob tanking, a useless new 31 point talent replacing shield slam, sorry i still think it’s useless until someone proves me wrong, safeguard ?, for starters the movement impairing effects removal should have been an intervene component from the start, on the skill not talented, the damage reduction is nice, and yeah that should be a talented component, ok’ish change, Critical block ? well, either were going to see a major boost, and i mean MAJOR in prot warrior gear on block value, or the Block value coefficient earned by other stat (at the moment is strength and ridiculous….) to make it appealing I don’t see it’s usefulness, 30% chance ? another RNG (Random Number Generator) ? furthermore, an RNG that keeps the survivability at stake ?

Now what I see is that the changes in WotLK were mainly the issues that have been brought up by allot of players in each class, which is good, proves that in fact developers read each class concerns, but, instead of fixing those issues while keeping the uniqueness of each class in order to make them all wanted in a way or another in a raid, we see the almost murder of the protection warrior in raids, while the others just got a renamed copy of the warrior unique abilities that coupled with they’re raid buffing abilities makes them more wanted.

It seems warriors were promoted to somewhat decent 5 man tanks, and the others decent raid boss single target tanks, only problem is, the ‘decent’ coupled with raid utility will make protection paladins, feral druids and death knights more wanted in min max guilds than protection warriors.

I’m seriously concerned about my future in raids at the moment, and since my game goals are not standing on the door looking at the raid entrance in standby, they are in fact, the new fights, the progression fights, downing bosses for the first time, and the learning stage, etc, this changes make this goals almost impossible for me to fulfil. I play a protection warrior as it’s in my humble opinion one of the hardest classes to master, I like challenges, but it seems that my next challenge will be the fight for a raid spot.

Will the protection warriors be completely extinguished ? no I don’t think so, but they will suffer heavy losses for sure, I don’t want protection warriors to be the only class/spec stealing places of other tanks in raids, what I do want is all classes to be wanted at the same time in raids, at the moment, I think I would be thankful if I have 1 tiny little spot in raiding when WotLK hits the deck.

I hope things change, i really do.

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