So, I guess I should start off by saying that Blizzard made me eat my words when I claimed that Prot was here to stay. I suppose it was naive to take them at their word when they claimed they wanted more PvP specs to be viable, but I was expecting the Prot tweaks to be a lot more surgical than the hamfisted hammersmash that's currently slated.
Their plan (in addition to more shield slam nerfs) is to change Warbringer so that Charge and Intercept no longer remove snares from the Warrior. I realize this is a popular change with the people who believe the game should be a homogenized piece of **** where specs don't differentiate players within a class and all Warriors can be effectively dealt with in the same way, but people who are willing to adapt to emergent gameplay and meet the challenges presented (you know, good players) will agree that it's the worst way to change Prot.
With Warbringer reduced to little more than a stance-restriction lift (still amazing, but hardly spec defining), Prot warriors will be only slightly less reliant on dispel/freedom than their lumbering counterparts, Arms Warriors. I haven't played with a good Holy Paladin all season, despite looking for a long time (the closest we got was a Gladiator Emberstorm hero who failed miserably, and a stoner with no mic that didn't last a day). As Prot/Hunter/Druid, our greatest weakness has always been our lack of defensive dispel; with this comp, my primary role is to stop the other team from killing my guys. When I sit in CC chains, they have to pop defensive CDs/LOS/die because it's often my stuns/interrupts that are keeping them alive.
Perhaps no greater test of that comes when fighting Frost Mages. I've played two classes since the release of the game: Frost Mage and Warrior. I played both in Vanilla, and I've seen from both sides just how mismatched Frost mage vs Arms Warrior has always been and apparently always will be. Back in the MC/BWL days I could strip off all my gear and (as an undead mage) kite an Arms warrior 100-0 without ever getting hit.
Juxtapose that description with Bornakk's little gem to justify Warbringer's nerf: The problem with the PvP side of Warbringer is that when you consider prot warrior versus mage (just as an example), there was nothing a mage could do to a well versed warrior.
There's nothing an Arms warrior can do against a Frost Mage, either. That's why we have teams to support us. While writing this I've been queueing against Top Shatterplay (Frost Mage/Shadow Priest/Resto Shaman), a really great team with the same SP, Kelberotz, from last season's Top Shadowplay--a team I fought a lot with my S6 TSG. We went 4-3 against them tonight, and most of our games have taken upwards of 6 minutes. The Mage is so 'helpless' that I spend half the game intervening away and line of sighting, and the other half polymorphed. Like most good mages, he's started using DF to get polymorphs off, and virtually every DF-> poly -> poly was enough of a setup to force my Hunter to either LoS, Deterrence or die. That, of course, is when they weren't training the **** out of me and nearly killing me every DF.
MS classes are deliberately given limitations to compensate for their MS advantage; Hunters can't chase around pillars, stun or snare very well, and Rogues can do everything but they have a ~2 minute fuse before they explode in Arenas.
Prot, like most non-MS classes, has a slew of utility. This should be nothing new; our role is very distinct from an Arms warrior. We assumed the same role as a Feral Druid or a Death Knight as a support melee, and what do you know? Feral Druids have better mobility than Prot Warriors, better DPS, better burst, Cyclone,and only slightly inferior stuns. I'm not claiming parity with them, we each have different strengths, but my point remains that their mobility and immunity to Polymorph have never been a problem before. Likewise, though they don't have the mobility, Unholy DKs have possibly the highest arena DPS in the game, and their snares/grip are so potent that they almost eclipse Prot in a support role (but they don't, because Prot is OP).
Prot really is OP. I've never disputed that--but I've always maintained that gear and the damage that grants us is what makes it OP.
Warriors have always scaled amazingly well with gear, and the mathematics behind Prot abilities has upheld this truth. The spec has needed tweaking for most of the season, ever since the patch 18 weeks ago that took charge off the controlled stun DR and enabled us to charge/conc/shockwave for a 10 second lock. We had no effective stun lock rotation before that, and gear/stats hadn't inflated enough for our damage to terrify people yet. Now that that's fixed, yeah, Prot has needed changes, and I've suggested it multiple times over the last couple months.
What we didn't need, what no one single class in this ****ty expansion needs, is to have our utility or mobility nerfed and our damage left alone.
Damage in WOTLK is out of control, with numbers/scaling so high that traditionally low dps defensive specs can circumvent that talent limitation with outrageous gear. Frost Mages, Prot Warriors, Prot Paladins and whatever else has been a defensive minded spec all do amazing DPS/burst now. Nerfing damage across the board should be the top priority when any balance change is made in this game--hell, the only reason I play Prot is to stun the **** out of these ****** wizards that 4 shot everyone all day long.
That's really where the nerf cries stem from. Crying wizard kids want to obliterate Arms warriors and they hate having to deal with spell reflect/stuns interfering with their ordinarily trivial bloodlusted nuke spam. Has anyone ever watched an Ele Shaman firing a continuous stream of lightning at someone? It's outrageously static and mindless.
The fact that our spec enables us to actually stand toe to toe with that kind of turreting caster **** the way a Warrior is conceptually and traditionally supposed to does not mean that it needs to be nerfed; it means it's a good array of skills and Blizzard did a good job giving us an alternative playstyle to being dead.
That said, it needed tweaking, because some of these games are pretty easy. Khanitus and I have 2v3'd 2500 MMR PMRs after our healer dies, and while their CDs were obviously down by that point, we've done it on such a consistent basis that we've seen PMRs break up over it. I don't need to shield slam for 8k with no 2pc10 tank gear and no SBV items. The kids who actually stack it do not need to shield slam for 12k , especially when they do it in outdated gear. That's called a gimmick. Shield Block (the cooldown) was supposed to be changed 18 weeks ago to double the threat of shield slam but no longer massively increase its damage, but for some reason that change never made it live. I'm fine with my damage being reduced--I have strategies against virtually every 3v3 comp in the game where we play defensively and outlast their cooldowns. I don't need to get a string of big crits and kill them in a GCD before they can ice block/vanish whatever. That's not why I play Prot.
I play it for the control, because I like long arena games that aren't reliant on LOLBLOODLUST or LOLBLADESTORM. Those 6 minute games against Top Shatterplay tonight were fun as hell, and they're why I play Prot--6 minutes of adrenaline rushing. I don't want to lose that, and that's what will happen with a neutered Warbringer. We'll go back to being utterly clownhoused by Frost Mages, relying on dispel/freedom, and then we'll have to wonder: why play Prot over Arms?
Well, there are a lot of reasons to still play Prot. This post is not suggesting that the sky is falling, and Prot Pvp most certainly won't die because of the change to Warbringer. But playing a comp without defensive dispell will no longer be rank 1 viable; it's already an intense struggle to keep out of Polymorphs/stop fears as it is.
Either way, I'm glad the arena season is ending soon. I made plans to run Disc/Holy/Arms with the Disc Priest from my 5s weeks before these Prot changes were announced, and I'm looking forward to season 8 for that. Here's hoping a miracle comes and Blizzard decides to quadruple the effects of Resilience, so people will no longer feel the need to play Prot. Here's hoping for another miracle, and they'll realize how stupid it is to nerf utility when out of control damage has been the major problem for 2 seasons.
Good luck with your Gladiator/Rel Gladiator pushes this week everyone.