Warrior Talent Review for the Whiner in all of us!

[ima_nerd]

Huge post is huuuuuuge:)

A couple of thoughts:

Spell Reflect costs an abysmal 25 Rage (which is a great deal of Rage for any Warrior going sword-and-board, especially since it will not benefit from Focused Rage), has a lengthy cooldown, a noticeable cast effect (about the same as Shield Block's, which means it's not DO NOT ATTACK ME NOW like Retaliation's spinning red swords, but it's there if you look for it), and it does not reflect the spell back with spellpower gear factored in. If the Mage connects that Fireball, it will hit you for 900 or more; if you bounce it back, it will hit him for probably 500 or so (what's the base damage for max rank Fireball anyway?) It's pure PvE fodder, because you likely will not have 25 Rage just sitting around so you can bounce a skillcoil or sheep back at someone. Oh, and you can blow it with a simple rank 1 instant spell or wait out its 5 second duration and laugh at the Warrior's wasted 25 Rage.

My roomate was watching a beta PvP Mage video and saw a clever counter to SR - Ice Lance. It does trivial damage to the Mage since none of the special conditional damage goes to him. Instant cast, low as #$%& damage and easy to have on your bar for an off-cuff break of SR.

The core of the problem with Hunters (this also affects Warlocks and maybe some kinds of Mages, though because they wear paper armor and have relatively small HP pools, it's much less of a problem) is that they have superb tools for keeping a melee-only class like Warriors at bay (Wing Clip, Frost Trap or Freezing Trap, and they can gain numerous root effects from Improved Wing Clip, Counterattack, and Entrapment as well as a resistance to all snares and roots via the Survival talent), yet still have fairly high durability and very high DPS; I frankly do not think any ranged class should be able to out-damage any melee class. The reason I think this is because EVERY ranged class has multiple tools for keeping melee away or at least hampering their ability to do damage.

My Warrior in very nice blues got rocked by a Hunter in half Dungeon 1, half Teir 1 in a fight that was full melee the whole time. We stood there, toe to toe, and he beat me with his pet.

Mages have Frost Nova, Blink, and Polymorph as default abilities, and they can get Blast Wave, Blazing Speed, and Dragon's Breath from Fire, Permafrost, Frostbite, Improved Blizzard (I've seen Mages cast rank1 Blizzard with Permafrost to quickly snare entire groups of people before doing whatever), and Ice Barrier from Frost in addition to Frostbolt, and they can get tricks like Presence of Mind (instant Polymorph, maybe?) and Slow from Arcane. They have ample tools to keep melee at bay, and their damage is not mitigated by Armor. Their low HP and Armor definitely compensates for this, but I still believe their ability to do burst damage is too strong for their ability to CC people.

Mages aren't a huge source of pain for me. At least in world PvP, when I get the Charge on them (so I can Intercept their Blink), I can pull of a win around 60% of the time. Of course, pre-Pummel I lost every time but pre-38 is an insignificant amount of time.

Warlocks have a plethora of CC abilities, depending on which pet they're using. They have Fear, Seduce, and Death Coil (a.k.a. Skillcoil, for obvious reasons) as default abilities, as well as Drain Life. True, Warriors do have a method of countering Fear, but it's a short-term effect and doesn't protect against Seduce. With talents, they can gain a recastable ranged snare (Curse of Exhaustion) with no diminishing returns, a life-draining DoT (Siphon Life) and the ability to reduce the amount of damage a Warrior can cause (Shadow Embrace.) If they dip into Demonology, they gain the ability to increase their Armor by a fair amount (Demonic Aegis), the ability to reduce their damage taken by a significant amount while increasing the damage they deal, and access to the ever-popular Felguard, which comes with Intercept as a default ability. In Destruction, they gain access to a life-leech proc and an AE damage-stun.

As a Fury Warrior through and through, Warlocks are less of a concern to me than Arms or Prot Warriors. If they have the Succy out though, things can get very painful.

Hunters have already been mentioned, but we'll go over it again since they are - by far - the worst of the lot. By default, they have both a powerful ranged and melee snare (Concussive Shot and Wing Clip, respectively), the ability to lay traps in combat (one of which is a solid freeze that cannot be broken by any means aside from damage, and the other is a very powerful area-effect snare), and if they choose a Boar as their pet, a brief stun. Additionally, they have the ability to move at 130% of normal speed at will. If they take Beast Mastery, they receive a 5% increase to their total HP and a substantial increase to their Armor, and are also capable of moving at 138% of normal speed. The obvious hallmarks of this tree are Bestial Wrath and The Beast Within, which make both pet and Hunter cause more damage and become utterly immune to ALL forms of CC (including snares, which are a Warrior's only hope of keeping the Hunter in melee range), and this ability is on a short (120 second) cooldown. Marksmanship offers the least in terms of additional abilities to avoid melee combat, but it also greatly increases a Hunter's ranged DPS and it isn't as though they're completely vulnerable to melee with only their stock anti-melee abilities; they can gain (an extremely annoying) proc-based stun for their ranged snare and an instant-cast no-minimum-range attack that disorients the target for 4 seconds. Survival Hunters are, predictably, the hardest to keep in melee range and are likely the hardiest Hunters because of this; they can gain numerous roots via Improved Wing Clip (proc-based), Entrapment (another proc-based), and Counterattack (reactive attack in the same vein as Mongoose Bite and Overpower), they can gain significantly increased durability from talents like Survivalist, Survival Instincts, and Deflection, and they gain a resistance to snares and roots via Surefooted (again, a Warrior's only hope of keeping a Hunter in range.) When you consider that Hunters of all varieties have access to pets with a broad range of abilities (poisons, charge-stun, nature damage attacks, a damage debuff or a damage buff, stealth attacks), it really makes me wonder why some classes can have it so bad while others have it so great.

Yeah, you pretty much summed it up. Kind of sad it took oh so many sentences to list the strength of one class. Hunters are my main beef right now on the PvP front. I think the only reason they got mail was to prevent Rogue/Hunter gear fights. As a balance issue, it makes no sense for a very powerful ranged class to have the second highest armor type in the game.

Priests, the last of the ranged group, are the easiest to keep in range, but aren't easy to kill regardless. Because their Power Word: Shield ability prevents the generation of Rage while allowing them to cast unmolested, we can have a surprisingly difficult time with them, particularly if they're Shadow (who will giggle as they melt our faces) or Holy (who will simply outlast us until we either die or leave due to boredom.) Priests are perhaps the one example of a ranged class I feel is pretty well-balanced; they can put out fairly nice ranged DPS, yet are still vulnerable to melee classes.

Similar to Warlocks. I'll be fear immune for 50 seconds so I'll be in their face but still, the chances of wearing down a Holy/Disc Priest or outdamaging/healing a Shadow priest is iffy. I actually have a chance, so no complaints against Priests.

Yeah, I realized I started rambling about four paragraphs back, but right now it's extremely frustrating to be a Warrior, yet it's the only class I really enjoy:(

Yeah, I first rolled a Warrior on my first 60's server (didn't roll one initially due to WoW page saying they were "gear dependent" and I was coming straight from D2 where that means something entirely different), got him to 44 before leaving the server due to guild drama. I then rolled another Warrior who I leveled to 60 and geared up as much as possible without raiding before quitting the game in boredom. Now, I'm leveling yet another Warrior for play in the expansion on a new server. Have a 60 Rogue and a 60 Priest on the side and they just don't compare to a Warrior:)