The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Are we barbarians?

The Care and Feeding of Warriors is written by a human being. That human being is weak, and flawed, and does things like read forbidden patch notes from leaked alpha clients. That human being (old Matthew Rossi, you all know, lives in that crazy haunted mansion atop Death Hill... which, by the way, is a perfectly pleasant little town, it's just unfortunately named) knows it is verboten to host any files or take screenshots from said alpha, but he still wants to talk about the future.

The future, Conan?

Now, if I knew how the Azerothian calendar worked, I'd have a joke here. But since I don't, let's talk about talents and abilities that may or may not actually come to pass. (Fear not, Shaman enthusiasts, your regularly scheduled Shaman column will be coming to you tomorrow) You know how alphas are, they tease you with abilities that later are removed, changed or totally revamped due to feedback, but there's still lots to talk about. For instance, the image that heads up today's picture might well be waiting for you to meet... or even to be... in Northrend. Man, that's so awesome it makes my brain hurt. I really hope these talents aren't just a lot of hoaxish blue sky, but please make sure you keep your grains of salt handy in case you have to take a few.

Protection Goodness

The first thing that leaped out at me when warily perusing the notes was, of course, the possibility for Fury Warriors to dual wield 2h weapons. I've long wished for this. I am a little surprised that it's going to be a Fury talent, but not amazingly so, as you'd hear a lot of complaining about Mortal Strike were it possible to dual wield Stormheralds and MS the heck out of people.

However, after my initial glee, I saw some really rather amazing Protection goodies in there. Shockwave by itself could be a positive boon to warriors trying to tank multiple mobs, combining damage based on attack power, a cone AoE that hits all targets in front of the warrior for 10 yards, stunning for four seconds and causing high threat. This could be an astonishing ability with that 45 second cooldown (long, but not cripplingly so... you probably will have to get a feel for if this should be a rotation ability or a quick save the healer ability) and a fairly low 20 rage cost. I could see using this just after a pull... bow pull, Shockwave as they come into range, follow that up with a Thunder Clap as they are stunned, and then let the CC go to work while I have big threat on them all so that any broken CC comes to me instead of the mage, priest or other controller. Meanwhile, the ability Sword and Board, which will not only reset the cooldown on your Shield Slam ability but reduce its rage cost by 100%?

Oh sweet merciful heavens what is this feeling I feel? Is it joy? Is this what joy feels like?

Welcome to massive threat country, population you. Not only will you be slamming away more and more often, but it won't cost you any rage! Devasate and Shield Slam are the bread and butter of any tanking warrior's rotation as it is, with Shield Block/Revenge just behind them hanging out with Heroic Strike. Sword and Board will basically make those abilities pay for themselves in terms of rage cost. Heck, just making your next Shield Slam free would probably have been awesome all by itself, but resetting the cooldown so you can instantly pop it? Priceless. This is a genius ability. I love it so much.

Safeguard (reduces damage that anyone you Intervene to takes, as well as increasing the chance that Charge, Intercept and Intervene will clear movement impairing effects), Critical Block (a 10/20/30% change that you'll block double your normal block amount... if this acts as some kind of direct Shield Block Value modifier, imagine the Shield Slam threat! This is why I suspect it won't do that.) and Stalwart Protector (giving you rage when you parry or dodge, which is very nice as total avoidance starves a Warrior of Rage at present) round out the awesomeness for new Prot talents.

Fury Talents

I was so caught up in the glee that it took me a while to look at what Arms and Fury are getting. Fury is, as I already mentioned, getting to be totally awesome and DW 2h weapons. However, that's not all. Furious Resolve will not only reduce your threat in Battle and Berserker stances by up to 10% at max, it will also increase your Stamina by up to 5%, which to my eyes is nice because fully geared Fury warriors in my raids tend to lag behind on health by up to 7 or 8k less than me. Emergency Fury Warrior tanking will maybe last a few seconds now, and it could also be seen as an attempt to increase PvP viability for Fury. Bloodsurge, the ability that causes your Bloodthirst crits to reduce your casting time on Slam by 100% means that if you crit with a Bloodthirst, you get an instant cast Slam right after it. So you're going to need that threat reduction, methinks. I get a little giddy thinking about someone who is dual wielding big slow 2h weapons getting an instant cast slam right after a Bloodthirst crit.

Arms Lovin'

Arms gets love with the addition of Bladestorm. At 25 rage and a 90 second cooldown, this 4.5 second ability basically renders you immune to fear. You Whirlwind everything in range three times while being possibly immune to all CC. This could be a very, very powerful ability in PvP, although we'll need to see exactly what it renders you immune to before we can really decide that. Strength of Arms will be increasing, well, your strength and stamina, both useful for PvP. It seems pretty similar to Vitality, actually. Trauma seems like an extension of Deep Wounds, increasing the effectiveness of Bleed effects, while Bull Rush increases the stun duration of Charge and Intercept. Finally, there's Unrelenting Assault, which will reduce the cooldown of your Overpower and Revenge abilities by up to 3 seconds. This talent doesn't really move me, but it could be pretty awesome for use against rogues who like to pop evasion.

Current Talent Upgrades

With all of these new talents, it's easy to lose sight of changes to existing talents that are currently listed in the alpha. One of the big changes is that several abilities are now scaling with Attack Power: Shield Bash deals damage based on 20% of your AP, Sunder Armor's threat now scales with AP (and one assumes the Sunder effect of Devastate similarly scales, although that's not expressly stated), Thunder Clap's damage increases with attack power, and Concussion Blow now deals damage based on 25% of Attack Power, has a reduced cooldown of 30 seconds, and deals high threat in addition. This is interesting because at present the only real ways a Warrior tank has to increase his or her threat is to increase the damage dealt with Devastate and to stack Shield Block value for Shield Slams. (One could also say that +hit and +expertise are threat generation as well, and can be stacked to benefit the consistency of your threat per second.) Now, however, with several abilities scaling their damage based on your Attack Power, strength will be much more valuable as a tanking stat. We'll see just how valuable, because without real numbers to go on here all we can do is note the trend. Meanwhile, Challenging Shout gets its cooldown reduced to 3 minutes! Yet another boost to warrior AoE tanking options. Between Shockwave, increased TC threat from AP scaling, and this change you could see warriors being second only to Paladins in multi-mob pulls.

However, it's not all gravy. Anticipation is being changed to give 1% to dodge per point, rather than increasing defense skill. At first glance this looks nerfish to me, but with the talent to give you rage when you dodge, maybe I'm being pessimistic. I know it can be hard for tanks who hit endgame to get to the defense cap and this ability often serves them well, only to be abandoned as gear increases, so it's possible Blizz wants to extend its viability. I'm on the fence about it. I believe the shaman version of the talent does this at present. Dodge is certainly not a bad tanking stat, although it's not one I personally worry as much about stacking: usually I can assemble all the dodge I like just from gear. This could be a sign of where tanking is going in the future, with less big crits and more consistent damage. Improved Shield Bash will buff Shield Slam damage, however, and that's just plain awesome, and Improved Revenge will do the same for Revenge's damage. More threat is always good.

Sweeping Strikes gets nerfed heavily, going down to 3 charges from its current ten. Death Wish loses its fear immunity, probably due to the presence of Bladestorm in the same tree. Spell Reflect is now much more reasonably priced at 15 rage. Cleave and Heroic Strike are doing more damage, Rend is ticking for less time but doing the same damage overall, and mace spec stun will have a six second cooldown. Poleaxe specialization, meanwhile, sees a slight buff (increased critical damage in addition to increased critical chance) to try and make it more attractive for PvP, one assumes. It might also buff it for PvE as well.

As you can see, there's lots to take in here. Warrior tanking could be on the verge of some huge changes: the increased potential group threat, the way attack power will scale several bread and butter threat abilities and the possible benefits to direct threat from abilities like Sword and Board make me very, very eager to get in there and start playing with these abilities. Arms and fury get some nice new toys as well... fury will have the potential for some incredible damage with Bloodsurge and Titan's Grip. And Arms warriors are going to be wandering around like Kargath Bladestorming everyone. I don't know about you, gentle reader, but I'm very excited and a little scared that all my hopes will be dashed.

Tomorrow the shaman column will be in this column's usual place, and it won't be talking about the alpha because, well, go ahead and try and find some shaman news in there.

Check out more strategies, tips and leveling guides for Warriors in Matthew Rossi's weekly class column: The Care and Feeding of Warriors.