A Tauren Warrior protecting his land with a mace in hand.

Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Bloated Warrior (Buttons)

Let me preface this by saying I could cut a lot of my button bloat by bundling abilities together in macros, however if Blizzards goal is to make the game more playable for everyone we should not need to use macros just make the game playable in a manner that doesn't require 10 inch long fingers or $150 peripherals. I personally use a shift modifier with the G keys on my Logitech G15 or my Razer Naga. Even after 3 years with the Naga I still can't ditch the G15.



For a list of all abilities check this out over at wowpedia.

For my thoughts on removing some of Warrior's button bloat, take the jump.



Core Abilities:


  • Sunder Armor - forget the the Glyph of Colossus Smash, this ability needs to be baked into Colossus Smash for Fury and Arms like it is for Protection with Devastate. Which would also free up a glyph slot.
  • Battle Shout, Commanding Shout and Beserker Rage - need to all be combined, I don't care if they leave it at 1 min cool down I am sure they can make up for the DPS loss to having Beserker Rage every 30 sec some other way.
  • Charge and Intervene - Put them together as one button just make a bigger tool tip and keep the names for what they do, could even change the main name for spell to something that covers them both. Also Safeguard would still replace Intervene.
  • War Banner - Remove it from the spell book and just have the individual banners, I do this through macros anyway and probably most other warriors do as well. I know this doesn't reduce button bloat but it is annoying.
Talents (that add buttons):
Now I realize this would only help to remove 7 buttons from my bars moving from 35 to 28, but it is a good start and aside from losing Sunder and Heroic Strike (for DPS) it is not really removing any Iconic abilities from the game. Sunder would still be a debuff and Heroic Strike would be Protection only.

5 comments:

  1. I agree with every point you made. You should write for WowInsider. I think warrior is a very easy class to clean up in terms of bloat. Wish blizz would address this now.

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  2. Thank you James for your comment. It would be awesome to write for WoW Insider, however if you look at my post dates I am never consistent. Although I do plan to start blogging on these community blog topics more often.

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  3. Generally, well thought-out ideas, but as a seasoned warrior I do not fully agree.

    Especially PvPers won't appreciate taking away the "2 interrupts in a row" - although for PvE, your idea would be acceptable. The same applies to spell reflection.

    As for war banner, I honestly do not understand your problem. It is true you have a ribbon spell in the book, but if you drag it out and unfold, you can drag individual banners out of the ribbon and place it separately on the bars if you please. As a matter of fact, I do, and then get rid of the "3 in one" ribbon...

    For me, tha much bigger problem is the lack of any way to automate banner usage - other than the DPS banner, they have a reticle and you need to target and place them, which is clumsy and in most situations when banners could be of use, I may hesitate to use them - look at this scenario:

    You have an overpull situation. As tank, you need to pick up a diverse assortment of scattered caster and melee mobs, aggroing on your party members. Party is taking increased damage. WAT DO?

    1) DK Answer: I got diseases running on whatever i am hitting anyway, so I just move to roughly middle of the mob scatter, gorfiend grasp all mobs together, bloodboil to take aggro over and spread diseases, pop personal survival cooldowns if needed (move plus 2 buttons, 2 more if needed)

    2) Warrior Answer: Move roughly to middle. Disrupting shout to silence casters and pray this is enough to get them after me. TC has low reach, will need more than one. Can try shockwave some mobs, though dragon roar is still a better attention grabber tbh. If these don't get aggro, might have to intervene to whoever is still in trouble. Eventually, mass spell reflect to help mitigate group damage... we're at 4 buttons already, 3 if players are sane and run TOWARDS the tank and not away from him, before we even get to the mitigation part... and once here, there is noted bloat: spell reflection, then banner, then warrior's own cooldowns like shield wall.

    There is anothe point of note: warriors have an exceptional toolbox for party protection, something that other tanks accomplish through self-heals and snappier aggro... but that design choice contributes to button bloat! Especially in situations like described, the priority will always be on aggro, and since I have to fight tooth and nail for it (sometimes need to add several TCs and cleaves...), I find myself relying on healer's throughput (or to be blunt, sacrifice the DPSers) more instead of trying to use the tools like mass spell reflection or demobanner.

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    Replies
    1. I disagree with the hardships of Prot that you mentioned pretty much because of the fact that you can place the flag anywhere you want doesn't require you to move, and lose DPS for threat gen. Also after tanking for 3 months at least for me agro wasn't a problem as it was survivability.

      As for your argument on how losing the 2nd interrupt and reflect would effect PvP, I cannot count the times the PvP changes have effected PvE Warriors. But they could change this to make it like charge where you have 2 uses with CDs.

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    2. Also I have played a Warrior for 6 years so I have seen a lot of ups and down throughout that time and one thing for certain is that when Blizzard nerfs the Warrior some how we still are able to not sink to the bottom.

      I admit I do not competitively PvP (Arenas or RBGs)much anymore but I do understand the concern of losing an extra interrupt or reflect (which are relatively new) especially in terms of Frost Mages (grrr).

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