Question for Ciderhelm and other prot warriors

[Lucent]

I figured i would ask you since you have been a protection warrior way longer than myself.

Would it be over powered or unbalanced if the damage we absorb from blocking melee attacks could also work against spell attacks?

for instance:

Your Frostbolt hits Warrior for 2200 (300 absorbed)

I posted this in the warrior forums and well... you know how that can go.

what do you think?

[Oakfire]

I dont really see how you can absorb a spell with a shield...
And why absorb... Spell reflect!

[Rathore]

he is not saying we can, he is saying, "what if" and maybe not word it as "absorb" maybe "deflect", who knows but ya I wouldn't see this as being too overpowered but the druid/pally community might, if the ammount of melee damage we could block also applied to magical damage then that would solidify the warriors place even further as the raid tank of choice.

[Ciderhelm]

I don't think it would be overpowered or unbalanced in any way relating to PVP, but I do think it would not be very feasible in PVE. Blizzard tends to make content with very specific gear thresholds and not many ways around those gear thresholds other than adequate progression through raid content.

Vitality is a perfect example. In it's original form, it was a straight 10% increase to health (or stam, I don't recall). It was changed to 5% stam and strength, then 5% stam 10% strength.

The reason for the change downwards would be for two possible reasons. The first, Blizzard didn't want to enforce specs for raiders. With a 10% bonus to health, most guilds would require all their Warriors to be prot, even to do Heroics. This philosophy is partly seen in that 15 points in Prot will make any Warrior a functional tank. The second is that Blizzard didn't want to increase the gap between Warriors and Paladins in mitigation/health, which is already substantial.

It's about being able to put in that next big Patchwerk, where gear is simply required. With shields absorbing magic, presumably based on Block Value, you suddenly make some encounters trivial to smart Warriors, as well as enforce yet another set of gear (shield block gear, which, while every Warrior ought to have a set in MY opinion, might not be the best thing to enforce).

One of the other important parts of magic damage is that it is pretty well universal. It's the kind of damage Blizzard tends to put in encounters to put everyone in danger, including the tanks. Loatheb, for instance, with a raid-wide shadow damage burst every 30 seconds. Specific thresholds of health on Loatheb were absolutely required and certain damage rates had to be met because people by and large couldn't mitigate that damage (some classes healed better than others). Giving tanks an ability to negate all damage types means Blizzard has less flexibility (and would likely turn to more act-or-die spells like Void Zones).

Meh. There's alot to go w/ it. I think it'd be perfectly fine for PVP. I think it wouldn't necessarily be unbalancing for PVE, but Blizzard would have to put some extra effort into encounters. I personally don't think they will, because they added Spell Reflect for the precise purpose of spell damage mitigation for encounters. Just some random thoughts!

[Lucent]

thanks for the feedback.

I think with the way instances are currently, adding a small mitigation to spells wouldn't have too big of an effect because i don't see every warrior going out to pick up specific block value gear.

I just finished a month project to get my block value gear (rings, cape and necklace) and the reason it took me so long was the number of runs i had to do just to get the damn things to drop (18 mech runs for Dath'remars Ring for instance). Ive still got about 15 more heroic runs to do to get my gnomeregon blocker 2000.

The point being: you would have to figure that the average amount a warrior could block would be right around 150-200 solely due to the amount of work put in to finding high block value gear. Which on the wide spectrum of a raid, even scaling it, 150-200 spell damage absorbed wouldn't have too much of an effect from the spell damage taken.

I proposed the idea originally to smooth out some of the rough edges in pvp, not so much pve. Ease the pain of being 2-3 shotted by a mage in a BG that hangs back behind his group and assists off the other groups kills (for example >_<). Plus with this kind of option, lets say you don't have enough rage for spell reflect, you can use shield block!



Let me ask you though, if you could change one thing about your MT (or yourself) to help others in raids and in pvp get the results they want, what would you change?

[Rathore]

The prot tank is pretty well rounded right now in my opinion. The only things I would say is give us some sort of scaling threat modifier (other than shield slam cause im not gonna sacrifice avoidance stats just to see big SS numbers). That and devistate is pretty sorry in my opinion.

[Lucent]

Originally Posted by Rathore

The prot tank is pretty well rounded right now in my opinion. The only things I would say is give us some sort of scaling threat modifier (other than shield slam cause im not gonna sacrifice avoidance stats just to see big SS numbers). That and devistate is pretty sorry in my opinion.

You know its funny you mention that, oddly enough (and maybe my Tankpoints mod is off a bit) but I've got 26.9% to block, 13% dodge and 11% parry with 410 shield block value and my avoidance is 69% (485 def). I didn't think it would be that high with such low parry and dodge.

Devistate does need some work though I'll agree. I dropped it awhile back and i haven't really noticed a difference.

[Ciderhelm]

Originally Posted by Lucent

Let me ask you though, if you could change one thing about your MT (or yourself) to help others in raids and in pvp get the results they want, what would you change?

Reduction to the Warrior Global Cooldown for PVE, reduction to Shield Slam cooldown for PVP. Either of those would be huge.

Early talents are about mitigation. Anticipation, Toughness, Deflection, etc. A small number of later talents have a limited amount of mitigation (Shield Mastery, Imp Defensive). But the talent tree is -- I believe rightfully -- designed for Threat. All the gear in the world won't increase your Threat substantially without Protection talents, and talents which improve that even further are better for the raid. Ultimately, the gear is always there to increase mitigation.

[Oakfire]

Originally Posted by Ciderhelm

Reduction to the Warrior Global Cooldown for PVE, reduction to Shield Slam cooldown for PVP.

yesyesyesyesyes

That would be amazing.

[Sly]

I wish my Frostbolt hit for 2500 on a warrior in defensive.