Monday, March 1, 2010

Changes to Warbringer, good or bad?

When I first read the blue post stating they wanted to change the warbringer talent I was devastated (no pun intended). Apparently it as simply too good in pvp, and something had to be done. Warbringer wasn't the only thing they wanted to change about prot-warrior-pvp goodness. Devastate and Shield Slam got an overhaul too, but I knew these changes wouldn't affect pve tanking much. I thought they'd probably just lower the dmg of those skills while still trying to keep the threat output the same, and it seems I was about right. The changes to Devastate and Shield Slam are thus nothing we as pve tanks notice much in our quest to keep that aggro.

But charge isn't about doing damage or doing aggro. It's about getting you to where the mobs are, whether or not you're already in combat or rooted somewhere. In fact it is one of the very best tank skills in a prot warriors arsenal, or to put it differently, one of the most useful. Every tank has the regular tank skills, but being able to charge around in combat is what made warriors less like a stick in glue when tanking. We don't have many ranged skill so we really need this movability instead.

"Don't remove the charge, please oh please" I wrote in a desperate forum post, trying to find some consolation among my guildies.

And now it seems the change has come, without me even noticing at first. That is of course a good sign. I first noticed it while tanking Slave Pens in Outlands. Some of the mobs there will root you in place, and in an attempt to break free I tried to charge to another mob further away. But nothing happened. My first thought was "huh, my charge doesn't work?" but didn't give it much more thought than that since I was uh... tanking stuff. But it happened again the next time on the same set of mobs. Yet again I didn't think much of it until I got out of the instance. Being able to think about something else than what mobs to keep threat on I checked the Warbringer talent in my talent tree and there it was. A sneaky change.

"Your Charge, Intercept and Intervene abilities are now usable while in combat and in any stance. In addition, your Intervene ability will remove all movement impairing effects."

See what they did there? Charge no longer removes movement impairing effects like before, but Intervene does. When reading this I drew a sigh of relief. They left the most important part intact, being able to charge in combat. In fact I like this change. Or well, at least I don't dislike it. I would've preferred it the way it was of course, I strongly dislike all the times pvp interfer with pve. But this change is the least bad they could have done. It promotes the use of Intervene, which I actually like.

Unfortunately you don't get intervene until level 70 which means lowbie tanks have to endure for another 18 levels before they can remove snares. :S Ah well, it could've been so much worse.

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