Block/Boss changes, OP Warriors, and Rage starvation GO!

Listen up raid leaders and shield using tanks alike. I’ve been concerned about the way raids have been going in that pretty much every T8 encounter in Ulduar (keepers and onward) as well as all the hardmodes, pretty much demand without question or hesitation, blowing cooldowns like a motherfucker or the raid is wiped. It’s obviously doable, but the RNG involved is pretty demoralizing in some cases. That’s why I’m very excited about the next raid encounter coming up in Patch 3.2 if this information is any indicator of what we’re looking at.

Block is a systemic problem. We’re not sure we can make it a very compelling mitigation stat in a world where tank avoidance is so high and bosses hit so hard. However I will say that the Coliseum fights should focus less on the blow-your-cooldowns-or-die style of encounter.

Now about warrior tanks, they’re not OP per say, but they’re not the sob story that most warriors would have you believe. Honestly, warriors have been in a fucking glorious place for a long time. Sure we’ve had our crappy times but looking at the big picture we’ve been a popular class with a lot of viability in PvE DPS, tanking, and PvP pretty much since 2004. Warriors that seem to love trashing their class and crying about how horrible they are aren’t talking about the class, they’re talking about themselves.

I’m not sure that statement is accurate, but here is the problem. There are A LOT of warrior tanks. They are tanking every fight in Ulduar. If warriors were too low and if we buffed them, I don’t see how that would increase the numbers on the other tanks. I don’t think the conclusion to be drawn is that warriors are overpowered. I think the conclusion to be drawn is that warriors were the traditional tank and lot of established guilds have established MTs who see no reason to reroll the FotM. It’s not actually a goal to have 25% of each tank in Ulduar, but is also seems strange to buff the most popular tank. Won’t that just make them more popular? Again, don’t misinterpret that as GC sez suck it up warriors. It is something we have to keep in mind, however.

Rage starvation is a problem. Frankly, we’re not sure a model where you have to get hit in order to tank is that compelling anymore. Something that has come up a lot is changing rage (even for Prot) to damage done. This is a slight nerf to the PvP mechanic of being punished when you hit the warrior, but there are other ways to solve that as well. Again, we’re talking a big change here. I’m not sure we’re comfortable jacking with such a core mechanic before 3.2.