The Care and Feeding of Warriors: When tanks aren't tanking

The Care and Feeding of Warriors comes to you again on the horns of a dilemma. Matthew Rossi has found himself playing his human warrior more often when he plays, and being sucked back into raiding again. This has led to him strapping on his DPS gear and dual wielding while still prot spec, and other anomalies he wants to talk to you about.

It's one of the ironies of my time playing warriors in World of Warcraft that I often find myself doing exactly the opposite thing I expected. Recently, due to time constraints and personal issues I haven't been able to play as much at night, and have found myself online at a whole different time of day. As a result I've tended to play Alliance again because there's more people online on my Ally server, and my poorly geared human protection spec warrior has found himself somehow raiding again. It began with a few heroics that impressed some people, a guild tryout I didn't really think much about that consisted of tanking Black Morass over and over again, and now I find myself in Kara, ZA and even Gruul's or Mags as a pure prot spec warrior.

I'm starting to remember it all again, how it feels to hold aggro against well geared DPS, the thrill of using your abilities to keep a mob stuck to you while properly keeping those crushing blows off of the table so that your healer whispers you after the fight and tells you he barely had to break a sweat keeping you up despite your horribly awful blues. Seriously, I'm still wearing a green ring here.

To be honest, it makes DPSing seem somewhat boring in comparison, at least to me. Tanking is so frenetic: I'd forgotten it to some degree tanking the five mans... even heroics... because they just don't have the kind of excitement walking into a run with 9 or 24 other people. And when I play Horde I end up DPSing in raids which has its charms but lacks in one key area. The feeling of power that being a tank brings. It's not the power of direct death dealing, it's the power of taking a mob that would otherwise rip everyone's heads off and making it yours, directing where it goes, what it does, who it can attack, and making those attacks impotent. Good DPSers and good healers are like gold, always needed, always to be treasured. A good tank is like iron - you may never know just how much you depend on him, may never treasure her highly, but he or she won't bend and he won't break under the pounding.

Still, I haven't gotten to MT the big fights yet. My gear's still too spotty to risk it. So a lot of the time, I'm OT. We haven't had any pally or druid tanks on these runs, which I actually think is kind of a pity but hey, it gives me something to do. Two warriors tanking together, if they're in synch, can be a hell of an efficient combo as we tend to know all of each other's tricks and when I'm tanking, I don't feel awkward or silly at all.

But sometimes there's no need for a second tank. Which means I DPS. And man, as prot I feel silly as hell DPSing. I have fairly decent blues (in fact, my DPS gear is better than my tank gear) and some DPS epics (some of which I crafted myself) but it still seems silly to be running around in my DPS gear hitting the Maiden in the knees. In yesterday's post about fake patch notes there was a bit about making it so Devastate hit with two weapons. Honestly, if they did this, prot DPS would go through the freaking roof. I can do decent damage in my DPS gear now, nothing like a rogue, fury or arms warrior, or feral cat druid. Heck, I don't think I match up to a feral bear druid. But if devastate hit with both weapons? A spammable, low rage instant that does half weapon damage? Combine that with whirlwind also hitting with both weapons and I'd see DPS numbers on par with fury, and I'd still be a mainly prot warrior who could wear full tanking gear as well. That would not be a good thing.

Sure, I'd love it. And raids that brought two prot warriors along would love it, too. You'd have a dedicated MT and an OT who could tank at that same level when necessary, and when a boss who only needs one tank comes along, just have the OT switch gear and provide DPS. No more having to have warriors respec to tank or having to weigh the pros and cons of bringing more than one prot warrior along on boss fights when more than one tank is needed. So no more fury for raids, basically. Why would you bring them? If you want melee DPS, you have lots of options already. Rogues as #1 due to their high damage, then enhancement shamans, ret paladins and feral druids for their buffs, group enhancements (sanctity aura, leader of the pack, and unleashed rage) and then fury warriors... for their high DPS which isn't as good as a rogue, their group enhancements and buffs which aren't as good as those other guys, and a touch more survivability than some of the others due to plate (which ret pallies have) and high health (which ferals can exceed by going bear and using frenzied regeneration to heal themselves). I'm not saying there's no reason to take a fury warrior, not at all. They can put out significant DPS and have a lot of abilities that make them, effectively, the AoE melee class. They can survive chain cleaves well, and can offtank trash if necessary.

But make a prot warrior their DPS equal, or even to within 90% of it (and believe me, a spammable instant attack that does half weapon damage and hits with two weapons for about 9 rage a shot will do a lot more than make them DPS equals with fury) and you're going to see changes in what melee DPSers get to go to raids. If you can have a warrior who can DPS and tank bosses, you'll bring that guy over one who can DPS and tank trash. You won't cut out the group buffing guys, and you won't cut out rogues, you'll cut out fury. Depending on just how high the DPS on a two weapon devastate ended up being, of course. If it was crazy high, like feral druid tanks before 2.0.10 high, then all bets are off. In fact, from my own experience on the PTR, I'll tell you now that it would be that high in full prot gear. I was devastating mobs to death in my tank set because I could just spam the crap out of it - the gronn elites in Nagrand went down like butter before dual weapon devastates on test back before 2.1 went live. Meanwhile, I still had 90% of the armor, health and other surviability of a prot warrior because all I was lacking was my shield. Imagine how much damage I could have done in good DPS gear?

So I'm saying now that I don't think dual weapon devastates are going to happen unless Blizzard has figured out some way to balance the DPS. We've heard about soloing improvements for prot warriors (granted, we haven't heard what they are) and to some degree anything that improves a sololing prot warrior would improve a prot warrior who is not currently tanking unless it was something like a paladin's retribution aura. since that depends on being hit and a non-tanking warrior doesn't want to be hit. I admit this is a selfish thought on my part, to want some sort of enhancement for prot warriors who come along on raids and then find themselves not tanking for half the run, but it would also be a benefit for guilds who end up with more tanks than they need for some fights, but not enough for others. What kind of enhancements should they be?

One possibility would be along the lines of what all those off spec DPSers bring, but somewhat inverted. Perhaps a shout that lowers the threat of a DPS group, or a limited use ability similar to rampage that increases the healing taken by everyone in his or her party. The difficulty is in ensuring that not only does prot remain balanced against arms and fury so that no one spec dominates the way a 31/5/15 or 31/20 build did before TBC, but that prot remains balanced against other classes as well. Right now, I am of the opinion that prot needs a small amount of love to make it truly competitive in 5 mans and heroics, but as far as raiding is concerned it seems my most recent experiences argue that as a tanking spec it's still very, very good. I know that I'm enjoying it again. And others may feel that the benefit to raids in having more than one prot warrior for when tanking is really necessary outweighs the drawback of having prot warriors hitting Gruul in the butt when you don't need more than one tank. I know having two prot warriors made Curator almost trivial - just sit in defensive and spam your threat moves and you're easily number two on threat, and with 15 - 17k health the Hatefuls are no big thing.

Of course, several other classes could do as well, and provide more DPS while doing it. So we're back to the dilemma, I guess. What are your thoughts? Does prot need better non-tanking viability, not just for soloing, but for raiding? Or am I just worrying about nothing? Would dual wield devastates be a good thing or a wildly unbalancing thing?