Warrior Tank changes in 3.1
So far it doesn’t look like we have to care much about the patch in terms of our tanking, for the changes as of now do not affect any talents of concern for a protection warrior. However, there are some pretty interesting glyph-news. Mind that these are not yet final patch notes, they are – much more – first versions to show off. Anyhow, I think it’s an interesting insight in what the developers think they should give us glyph-wise.
- Glyph of Heroic Strike – Increases the critical strike chance of Heroic Strike by 5%. (Old: You gain 10 rage when you critically strike with your Heroic Strike ability.)
- Glyph of Barbaric Insults – Your Mocking Blow ability generates 100% additional threat. (Old: Your Mocking Blow ability also taunts the target.)
- Glyph of Shockwave (new) – Reduces the cooldown on Shockwave by 3 sec.
- Glyph of Vigilance (new) – Your Vigilance ability transfers an additional 5% of your target’s threat to you.
- Glyph of Enraged Regeneration (new) – Your Enraged Regeneration ability heals for an additional 10% of your health over its duration.
- Glyph of Spell Reflection (new) – Reduces the cooldown on Spell Reflection by 1 sec.
- Glyph of Shield Wall (new) – Reduces the cooldown on Shield Wall by 3 min, but Shield Wall now only reduces damage taken by 40%.
There’s one thing pretty much obvious about those changes: The developers think we need more survivability for upcoming encounters. All the new glyphs are essentially tweaked towards increasing survivability, or granting us more room to gear for survivability by making threat management easier.
A closer look
Glyph of Shield Wall makes Shield Wall an every 60 second 40% mitigation talent. Now I’m not quite sure if I like the fact that our number one panic button is made available more as a standard long-cooldown ability. Not so much because I don’t like the extra mitigation it offers, but for the fact that it pretty much removes the panic-button-thingy from it.
Glyph of Vigilance is probably the most straightforward buff. I can’t see the need for this glyph right now (I’m still not specced into vigilance, and other than a mage’s ego that he didn’t get it cast on him no one ever recognized, or asked), but if I’m right and survivability is what they want us to strive for, we will probably rather sooner than later have to adjust our threat- and dps-loving specs and aggro management will be back in all it’s glory. In such an environment, this new glyph would totally make sense.
Glyph of Heroic Strike obviously should be more a dps-glyph, however those infinite rage constantly-spamming-hs fights would more than justify it’s use. Thinking patchwerk, this is a really sweet dps upgrade. Anyhow I’m still hoping for a significant change to tank-usage of HS.
Glyph of Barbaric Insults doesn’t get any more useful, much rather a lot less useful in fact, for it becomes a luck game that way: Are those 100% extra threat sufficient to have the taunt effect? Or just not quite enough? I’d much rather use the basic version of Mocking Blow and add a SS afterwards, you’ll have to make sure the mob stays on you anyhow.
Glyph of Shockwave is interesting, of course, but doesn’t seem to really have a huge impact. Three seconds makes it 17 instead of 20. This is better, but not much. Multi-Target situations aren’t much of a big deal as of now. I can imagine it being useful in massive-amounts-of-stunnable-adds fights, but honestly: How many of these can you think of? Especially in raids? So yep, it’s interesting, but far from spectacular.
Glyph of Enraged Regeneration seems rather pointless, it’s a 33% buff to the ability, yes, but neither in PvP nor in most PvE situations is that strong enough to justify a glyph slot. Looks like a leveling glyph, to me.
Glyph of Spell Reflection is, straightforward, useless. That one second doesn’t change the fact that most fights in which that miniscule advantage could be used to some degree are, as of now, non-existant. Most significant boss damage spells can’t be reflected anyhow. We’ll have to see if Ulduar changes that (damn would that be awesome for warrior tanks – magical avoidance + more damage sounds but too sweet).
Disclaimer
It’s the first version of the PTR. These are the first things to leak public. All of this is probably going to be changed from “a little” up to “completely”.