World of Warcraft: Warriors

The warrior class brings to mind plate armor, big weapons, fierce fighters, and damaging blows. In the World of Warcraft, this holds true. The warrior class is designed to soak up damage, or to deal incredible amounts of damage.

As it stands, the warrior class has many things going for it, and many things against it. Currently, the biggest concerns are Mortal strike warriors, fury warrior agro/gear, and protection warrior solo/PvP play.

1. Speced in protection, they are the best single target tank in the game, and the type of tank raids want as their main tank.
2. They get to wear plate armor, and have a large amount of health.
3. They work off the rage system. Meaning the more they get hit, or the more they hit, the more they can hit, and use more damaging abilities.

Some down sides to the warrior

1. Easily Kited and crowd controlled. Warriors have means to break crowd control, or sap, or fear, but they are on cool downs. It can be overcome with skill, and some masterful use of trinkets and talents
2. Can be kited easy. A warrior can close the gap on an enemy with 3 means. Charge( 15 second cool down, must be out of combat, requires battle stance), intercept 30 second, 20 second with talents, must be in berserker stance) and intervene ( 30 second cool down, requires defensive stance). Intervene is more of a PvE skill, and invaluable at that. A frost mage or hunter, or warlock, or shaman can usually quite effectively kite a warrior to death.
3. Magic damage: Without a shield, or resist gear, has no defense against casters, except to get in their face and pummel, shield bash, and fear them.

So, what is the deal with warriors? Three things, PvP, PvE, and solo as protection.

PVP

Warriors excel in group PvP, are rough in solo PvP. However, the biggest complaint about them is Mortal Strike. This devastating attack (which is a 31 point talent, not every warrior has it) not only deals a large amount of damage, but applies a 50% healing debuff on the target. This appears to be the sticking point for PvP. But really let’s look at it. Healing gear allows some healers to heal large amounts for a long time. Mortal strike helps turn a fight that could drag on forever due to heals, shorten by a bit. People complain it makes a warrior needed, or it shouldn’t deal damage, or the debuff shouldn’t be as hard. If there was no debuff, then it would just be a gimped attack. If there was no damage, it would eliminate the arms warrior instant attack. It does make warriors needed, gives them a reason to be there.

PVE

Warriors who go the route of dps, with gear can put up some impressive numbers. However they have nothing to bring another pure dps class brings, nor do they have an agro reduction. This limits the space for dps warriors in a group. All other dps classes bring something to the table in forms of crowd control, major buffs, and agro reduction.

Protection

Protection warrior is the best raid tank, and single target tank. They have plate, 2^nd highest health pool, and the most damage mitigation/stay alive abilities of any class. Where they could use some help is threat scaling, and solo play. It takes a long time to farm/level as a protection warrior, and in PvP they are a novelty. Some moves need to have the threat looked at, including ways to generate more threat, and possibly give a buff to Devastate, the warrior 41 point talent.

All in all the warrior class is fairly balanced, in need of some minor tweaks, but overall pretty good.