tuskerdu wrote:
Blizz has innovated themselves into a corner with warriors.
Once upon a time, there were different levels of dps among classes. Rogues had the highest melee dps but were the squishiest. Pallies were the hardest to kill but ergo had the lowest level of dps. The concept of the warrior was just pure hand to hand damage and plate armor -- nothing else. No stealth, no shapeshifting, no totems, no bubble, etc.
Then Blizz decided that all dps had to have the same damage output. So indestructible pallies were out dpsing rogues. At least rogues could vanish and stunlock. There was nothing a warrior could do that a ret couldnt do (huge melee damage while wearing plate). Then, to top it off, the DK was born -- another plate-wearing class, this time with some decent ranged attacks, high dps, a pet. All the remaining melee classes still had their nifty abilities -- druids could ditch snares, shammies could drop totems, etc, but warriors had literally nothing.
Blizz has been trying to find a way out ever since. But frankly the only way is to make warriors hit harder than dks and rets, since they lack the invulnerability/pet/self heal abilities of those classes. That would go against the entire new, all-classes-are-equal ethos, though. So Blizz keeps buffing warriors and frantically nerfing them because it doesnt want to admit that thats the only way to make them a vaguely interesting class.
Don't get me wrong -- I loved leveling my warrior. I have a feral and an enhancer, for example, and love the fact that the warrior is more stripped down and doesnt have oh-sh*t buttons, cant run. I like the challenge. But there's really no point in playing the guy now. In a PvP setting he's a free kill. He lacks a decent PvE damage tree. And I already have a tank.
It's not so difficult. For example, if it were up to me I'd go this way:
You have 3 plate wearing face-to-face classes I refer to as "heavy melee". You put all 3 next to each other in their respective DPS flavors. All 3 get about the same DPS, but a completely different personality.
Paladin: Defensive caster type. With heals, buffs, cleanses, etc. This is the guy that will take a fireball to the face and cleanse the DoT and heal the damage.
DK: Offensive caster type. Coming in 3 different specs bla bla. This is the guy that will throw a ugly things to the face of anyone.
Warrior: The physical type. Combat abilties and a lot of toughness. This is the guy that will take a fireball to the face because it won't stop him from continuing to chop things to pieces.
And to get there, I'd give warriors certain different qualities that that make them be the type. For example greatly increased HP and a passive that reduces DoT damage suffered and the duration of snare effects. I don't just mean an extra buff, I mean so much of it that it
makes them different from the other classes.
The other thing that warriors need is to have the abilities become more effective and less numerous. We have too many buttons and too little abilities.
Heroic Strike and Cleave I would change them so that they still generate rage. Disarm so that it disarms all weapons, even the wand. And Demo Shout could just be merged into thunder clap, I really just have both buttons next to each other because I just click both each time I use them. Also, pummel and shield bash should already have their stance restrictions lifted and probably be merged with something "if you have a shield equipped you will shield bash instead bla bla". I would drive the changes along those lines instead of going with "lets give them a useless ability to remove 1 immunity every 5 minutes but for 25 rage and in the stance that isn't used against 1 of the 2 classes that will use an immunity". Also, charge/intercept/intervene could be merged too. Not much reason at the moment for not just making charge be intercept, one stuns for 2 sec and the other for 3.