There's a few undocumented changes to warriors on the latest WoTLK beta build that deserve some attention. The big one is in the picture (from World of Raids): Shield Wall reduced to a 5 minute cooldown, with 50% damage reduction (with similar cooldowns for Recklessness and Retaliation). The Improved Shield Wall talent has changed accordingly: it now reduces the cooldown by 30/60 seconds. This is something we've seen coming after the news of the Paladin shield wall-alike (Divine Protection), but nevertheless deserving of a good solid woohoo!Another change worth mentioning is for the talent Bloodletting, which now has only 2 ranks, and increases the bleed damage by Rend and Bloodbath by 25/50% - an appealing aoe tanking talent and no doubt.
For now, the rest of the changes are primarily for further up the Arms tree, but this does at least suggest the overhaul of Protection talents isn't far behind. So while we wait patiently and well-behaved for news (alright, impatiently and banging on the Blizzard offices), let me take the opportunity to give my wish-list of talent changes:
- An increase in the rage produced by Stalwart Protector. The idea is great, and something all rage-starved warriors have been crying out for, but the current gain of 1/2 dodge per parry or dodge is a pittance.
- Shockwave moved to the 31-point talent. Although it's a decent enough ability, for the top tier talent it's simply underwhelming and inappropriate. Yes please for more aoe-tanking viability, no thanks for a tree defining talent that says "you're now a bit like a paladin". We want a talent that screams Warrior - basically, we want a talent that's good against single targets.
- Vigilance scrapped or severely reworked. In it's current form, it's just... well, weird. And very limited in its usefulness.
- Current beta tests have shown Sword and Board to be not as great as it first appears; for a 5 point talent the rage savings have turned out to be underwhelming, and there's concerns of rotations being interrupted and the free shield slam being a pain to manage (I'm not sold on this latter one just yet, but time will tell). This talent just needs a little tweaking to become a solid one - possibilities could be the free shield slam not affecting the global cooldown, or it having double the block value.
- A new prot talent that allows 2-handers to be wielded with a shield. They could call it Big Bloody Sword and Board.
...What? A tank can dream can't he?
1 comment:
I have said this in another blog article which someone posted (I think it was on Friday's site), they still are yet to work with the Warrior and give it a good hard look. Blizzard are definately taking their time with this expeansion, more so than BC if I remember rightly. They want this to be absolutely perfect and balancing is on their list for perfection.
When Warriors come up in the review it should be quite exciting to see what they have in line for us. Maybe, Aru, we will see some of your wishes come true.
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