Patch 3.2.2 changes for Warriors
Are you ready for big, exciting changes? Are you all set to be floored, destroyed, blown away even by all the tweaks and adjustments to the Warrior class in Patch 3.2.2? I hope you're ready for a tectonic shift all told. Here we go! Please, brace yourselves, I can't be responsible for your safety once you digest this critical new information.
Warriors
Talents
As I said to a friend recently, you paid for the whole seat, so I suggest scooting back there. You've got lots of room. To any with heart conditions or delicate constitutions, I apologize if you just weren't prepared for a mind altering paradigm shift like the one these patch notes provided. Such senses shattering power wasn't meant for mortals.
Should I keep going or was that enough sarcasm? I honestly can't tell. I know that these are both buffs, really I do. And the Critical Block change is nice: I mean, you're going to take the talent anyway in your prot build, so having it be twice as likely to proc is pretty sweet. Of course, even if you stack all the block value you possibly can, block's still a fairly weak tanking stat against bosses who hit for 27k.
As for Sword Spec? Well, it's better than it was. But much as dumping a mess of wax on elephant dung won't make it not smell like what it is (although it will probably be shinier, according to Mythbusters) adding twice the proc chance for Sword Spec but keeping the internal cooldown that keeps it from proccing off of itself limits how useful it actually is. You can get a flat 5% to crit and 5% increased critical hit damage all the time, 15% armor penetration all the time, or 10% chance for an attack to have an extra swing and then nothing for six seconds. Considering it takes 3 seconds at the fastest any Arms warrior would ever be swinging (that's assuming a lot more haste than I'd believe anyone would use) we're more looking at 9 seconds between procs. Meanwhile, with Poleaxe Specialization a well geared Arms warrior can be pulling 55% chance to crit in a raid, if not more.
It's just not likely to change much of anything. If you happen to only have a sword, well, it's more reason to use it, but if you can get an axe you will. It makes me sad, because frankly I like swords a lot more than axes or polearms just from an aesthetic standpoint and I'd love to feel that I could use one in an Arms spec without hurting my performance.
Basically, Patch 3.2.2 ends up being a couple of incremental changes for warriors. If they're built upon it could be excellent for the class. If not, it's fairly unremarkable. There weren't even any bug fixes for us this time around.
