The Doctor's Report: Warriors

So I was sat in this chair last night thinking about all the new things that the new expansion is going to bring, and I'm so happy with the way Blizzard is taking their game. Then it dawned on me. What about what's already in-game? There's so many things that they're addressing in the new expansion like the removal of reforging, dodge/parry, hit/expertise, the addition of "fun" stats like Cleave and Lifesteal, that I'd just like to take some time and analyse something that is already in-game that still needs fixing. As my main is a Warrior, I thought I'd start there. What follows is entirely my opinion and most of the examples that will be given are going to be PvP-Orientated.

Class: Warrior

Role(s): Melee DPS/Tank

Strengths:

• High Mobility
• High Utility
• God-Tier Burst Damage
• Non-dispellable Fear.
• Almost unpeelable
• Strong AoE Damage/Pressure
• Probably the best AoE Burst of any class currently (Patch 5.4)
• Two Spell Reflects
• Two Interrupts

Weaknesses:

• Very squishy when caught off-guard.
• Damage very limited when out of melee range.
• Can't generate resources when out of Melee Range (Exception being Charge)
• Two methods of CC have to be chosen as talents at the cost of less burst damage.
• (PvP) Selfhealing requires you to be nearly at Execute-Range to be of any use.
• All of our burst is negated by Parries/Dodges
• Damage in Defensive Stance is severely limited.

Now I know I might have missed some things out, but these are the first to spring to mind. I'd like to suggest a few changes to the things that I've mentioned on this list.

1. Mobility - I would happily lose some mobility for more damage on our lesser-used spells, such as Overpower, which is currently almost useless.
2. Our Utility is too much in certain circumstances. Personally I would change Skull Banner to be a personal CD, as paired with certain classes (Destro Lock/Ele Shaman) the damage that gets done in the 8s that it's up is sometimes just too much.
3. Our burst damage is a bit RNG. Sometimes I'll hit for 50-60k Slams, other times it's for 100k+ against players with 75% resilience. This RNG needs to go.
4. Being unpeelable isn't fun for the other players. If we've got this much mobility and Blizzard is happy with it, then some of the damage, naturally needs to go. Would like to see some damage shifted away from Slam, and on to either Overpower or Execute. Make Execute feel like it's designed to kill someone, rather than Slam hitting for ~30k more.
5. Make Disrupting Shout and Mass Spell Reflect replace their weaker, baseline versions. It's not cool to be able to just straight up ruin someone's day because you can Pummel, Reflect, then Disrupt and Mass Reflect after that.
6. Second Wind, in my opinion, needs to be baseline, the fact that the only way Warriors can get healing is by killing a target is ridiculous when every other melee can heal itself WITHOUT talents. At least give us some healing that only requires us to... be alive.
7. Colossus Smash needs to always land. I.E. Impossible to dodge or parry. A lot of people might jump out of their chairs at this, but it's the same situation as a Deep Freeze or Frost Nova. To ensure decent burst goes off as a Mage, the target needs to be Frozen. To ensure decent burst goes off as a Warrior, the target needs to have CS on it. Deep Freeze can't be parried, or dodged, it' can be reflected and that's it.

I could probably keep going, but I'll probably get someone shouting at me for these anyway.

As always, if you want to leave a comment or some feedback, you can add me on skype (Veren1994), or sign up on pvp-live.com and drop a message to Exhil in our livechat (pvp-live.com/pvpchat). I'm always happy to discuss my opinions.

Thanks for reading!

Exhil MD