It's my understanding is that prot warriors bigger grief is that every combat takes so much longer because of their woeful DPS. Even if they were chugging health pots and bandaging and eating to minimise the non-combat downtime, they'd still be a grind to solo due to the length of each combat.
 

Hmm, it would be difficult to scale bandages if they were based of percentages, but I agree that there should be a better option for those cursed with massive HP. Perhaps another tier in bandages, or perhaps special items like warlock's health stones.

It's difficult to make a tanking spec that's also solo-able. Add too much dps and they are overpowered. Not enough and it's a crawl. Honestly, there really is no way to give the dps to compete with the other DPS classes as that's what they do, they kill things. Maybe if it was like the druid's spec where it's both a dps and tanking, but separate from each other. In any case there is no quick fix to this problem.
 

You really want to quit using Execute when grinding. Its a lot more time efficient to save the rage for an intercept to next mob, and spare yourself some effort of switching stances... (note that effort is sometimes more important to optimize than efficiency)

I think Blizzard likes warriors the way they are. Which sux as the other classes I have leveld to 70 were all a lot easier in all given situations. :P
 

Doesn't help. As a prot warrior, I can cheerfully solo 10 lvl 70 mobs in a row before my health gets low - with Shield Block, Demoralising Shout and Thunderclap they can barely touch my health bar. But I take SOOOOO long to kill them it doesn't really matter.
 

they knows that the game is imbalanced, the game has already printed so much money that they just dont care

im pretty sure the common answer from bliz is ¨make a lock or mage alt for farm¨
 

In order to be comparable with other classes while grinding, prot warriors would need to be able to have zero downtime given their low dps. Out of combat regen wouldn't help because if they spend time out of combat they've already lost the race.

More fundamentally, I agree with the previous comments saying prot warriors problem is NOT time spent out of combat, it's the long amount of time they spend IN combat, trying to kill things.
 

The only problem with bandages that do a percentage is that a linen bandage would then heal much more for a 70. I think it would be more fair but I'd bet they'd mess it up to balance it at 70 and you'd have linen bandages healing 2 percent which would make them useless at level 10.
 

I've no idea on what statistical data Blizzard balances classes in WoW... but it should be on the time and cost it takes to down, say, 10 mobs of any kind.
All classes should be equal in this matter.

Classes should basically just offer different experiences of playstyles with differences in DPS, regeneration, damage mitigation, downtime, and whatnot...

If scaleable bandage heal fix that, then that's the answer.
 

so basically you want bandages to have the same effect as the cannibalize undead racial
 

The problem with scaleable bandages as I posted is that a linen bandage that does 2 percent is a big deal at 70 but completely useless at level 10.

I guess you could have them do a set amount of healing plus a percentage That might work.
 

I think a fairly easy way to fix Warrior Prot DPS is to put a pretty substantial talent deep in the protection tree that buffs Zerker stance. Druids work cause you can't really tank in cat nor dps in bear. Warriors can’t really tank in Zerk so its pretty much the same mechanic. I understand warriors have to stance dance so the talent could be some kind of optional buff. Could be an attack applied buff or a castable buff.

Downtime is a problem because of lack of dps. And while decreasing the that time will speed up your kill rate. For the most part I doubt it will make prot warriors feel like they are going faster. So I'd rather have more dps as a protwarrior. My change has a lot of benefits in the fact that it would make a prot warrior not the most laughable idea for dpsing in an instance group, pvp, etc..

I play a druid on Medivh named Feralhawk and have a played a warrior to 60 (pre-bc). I firmly believe a prot warrior should be able to do descent damage. I'd say about where feral druids were pre BC is good place for their dps.
 

I've been thinking about the bandaging thing and I had an idea

How about having the same number of health healed (static value) but the cooldown being removed when out of combat

That way, it wouldnt make them overpowered on boss fights etc, but it would still be faster to get health back faster between pulls
 

What about scaling the bandages roughly like this:

Linen 15
H. Linen 20
Wool 25
H. Wool 30
Silk 35
H. Silk 40
Mageweave 45
H. Mageweave 50
Runecloth 55
H. Runecloth 60
Neatherweave 65
H. Neatherweave 70

It's 30 seconds between bandages, right?

H could be the the % healed in 30 seconds for each type of bandage, where x is the # listed about next to it and L is the char level being bandaged, could then be H = x^2/L^2. So if your char level is the same as the number listed above you get 100% health in 30 seconds. If you use lower bandages it scales down and also scales up if you use bandages above your level.

A simpler x/L seemed to give too much for a 70 using linen (21%), with the x^2/L^2 you get 4.6% healed, so it'd take you 11 minutes of using linen at 70. You also get a level 15 being healed with a heavy neatherweave being healed in 1.4 seconds this way.

Just thought I'd take the idea and try flushing it out a little.

The bigest downside I see is that it could be confusing to players how much their bandaging does.

-Aanar
 

Prot warriors are not poor at soloing because of the time spent eating. Honestly, this isn’t much different than other classes who have to drink (or in the case of Rogues eat). The difference is in time to kill. It simply takes a protection warrior 2-3 times longer to kill something than it does most other classes. If you are trying to grind out a 100 mobs, it’ll take the prot warrior significantly longer to complete that task.

The concept I like best for fixing Prot warriors solo ability is to: Make Improved Sunder take off more armor in addition to the lower rage cost. One of the challenges with fixing Prot DPS is how to do it without increasing DPS all warrior specs. Imp Sunder is deep enough into the Prot tree that DPS warriors who would benefit from it are unlikely to go this deep to get it. Secondly, another challenge to improving Prot DPS is that it improving their DPS starts to infringe upon the Bear Druid’s and Fury Warriors roles as off-tanks. However, Sunder Armor contributes to all melee DPS, so the gain is applied to all melee in a group situation. In fact, it actually solves a problem for melee DPS in that ranged DPS is always preferred due to superior positioning in fights. A boost here makes melee DPS a bit more desirable in groups that have a Warrior.

What makes this a tidy solution is that a) Prot warriors can solo kill stuff faster, b) DPS warriors don’t benefit from the change, and c) in a group situation, the Prot warriors DPS stays similar relative to the other melee classes.
 

I see no problem with having different bandage tiers, maybe a 2% starting bandage with the final uber bandage doing 30% of health or 50% or something.
 

"So why not change bandages to work on a percentage of health instead of fixed points basis?"

If you want a higher % return, just drop all your stamina gear....
 

Prot palis AOE grind, Mages AOE grind. Neither class is single target dmg efficient yet give them 6-20 melee mobs (20 more for mages) and they can grind quite well. Perhaps a skill that raised the prot warriors attack power with every mob that he was tanking would fix things a bit. It wouldn't mess up normal tank PVE mechanics as tanks rarely take on more than 2 or 3 mobs at a time in any situation, yet it would allow prot warriors to excell in multi mob/player situations (where a tank should excel logically imo). The question is how much of a buff to give em? 100AP per mob? 200?

-Wolfgangdoom
 

All protection warriors need is some way to deal damage based on damage they have taken. There was a class feature from Dungeons and Dragons class called Furious Counterstrike. The player had a delayed damage pool (damage was not assigned until the round after it was dealt), but this delayed damage pool increased the character's damage dealt and chance to hit.

Something similar for protection would be grand (a stacking buff that triggers on being hit or taking damage, that turns damage taken into a DoT, and based on how much damage is currently stored will increase damage output).

--Rawr
 

They simply need to revisit the idea of having Devastate strike with both weapons while dual-wielding. They tried it before on the ptr and it was deemed too powerful, but I don't think it would be that difficult to give the off-hand Devastate enough of a penalty to balance it. It should do less damage than a competitively geared fury warrior, but much more than is currently possible. That would allow prot warriors to solo more effectively, make us more useful in high-end pvp, and make us more useful off-tanks if we're not needed to tank on a specific encounter. That's 3 of our biggest problems right there. Plus it wouldn't change any of our current mechanics when we're using a shield, which we will always have to do when tanking content appropriate for our level and gear.
 

Perhaps it's just better to grind multiple mobs instead of 1 mob at a time? Give Prot warriors ability to whirlwind and tank multiple opponents and AOE farm.
 

I think you have sold your reader's idea short. They did not suggest the use of rage to pay for a quicker heal - they suggested two ideas. First a faster hp regen when out of combat (not unlike some skills in LOTRO).

Second a rage-tap ability - where when you kill a mob for which you get experience, your rage meter begins to fill up.

I am intrigued by your reader's second idea. Do your other readers think that some additional rage between battles would allow for faster combats? I certainly do, and it seems to be the more critical aspect of soloing a prot warrior.

Skavvy
 

I'd add something simpler. A talent in the prot tree (let's call it field medicine or FM). FM makes out of combat bandaging instant. This has no effect on tanking ability and little on PvP ( disable it in arena etc), but it speeds grinding.
 

What about a new shield based ability that not only mitigates damage but deflects it onto another near by (unfriendly?) target, but not back at the actual damange dealer itself.

That way you are still adding an ability that would be used for tanking, would improve aoe tanking and make tanks a class that is best when grinding multiple mobs at once.
 

I think scaling bandages is a good idea and it's not without a precedent already in the game. For example, many of the special holiday stat food regens health/mana based on a fixed percentage of the player's maximum health/mana pool. They do this so that they can make the holiday stat food useful for any level of player.


As far as the tanks having low dps then other roles, that's a convention that has been used in many MMO's for a while now. The problem is that many players are opting to go for DPS specs due to the popularity of PVP Arenas. Blizzard will definately have to address this problem soon to deal with the growing shortage of people that want to play tanks.