The second class I'd like to look at for patch 3.3.3 changes are warrior tanks. Unlike with priests, we've actually got some interesting changes over here. And no, I won't cry about the Bladestorm nerf. Enough people have done it already (with some cause imo) and besides this is about tank warriors.
There are three changes here I'd like to look at, which overall are great buffs actually.
First up;
"Thunderclap: This ability now counts as a ranged attack, granting it double damage on critical strikes instead of 150% and ranged miss chance, and still cannot be dodged or parried."
The change to "ranged attack" means it will be counted on your melee/ranged hit chance instead of your spell hit chance like before. I am unsure if ranged hit chance is affected by weapon skill, but looking at how hunters work I've gotten the feeling that you need less weapon skill to hit with a ranged weapon than a melee weapon (EDIT: Please enlighten me if you know anything about this, I am quite curious about how it really works). One of the great benefits of Thunder Clap before was that it was usable no matter what skill you had with your weapon (dks, druids and paladins all have plenty of skills that are unaffected by their weapon skill so there is nothing OP about this). Well well, in any case it now also deals double crit damage (more threat!). I am leaning towards thinking about this as a buff to the skill.
The second change is a double one to one skill - Revenge. First of all they've increased its damage by 50%.
"Revenge: Damage done by this ability (base and scaling) increased by 50%."
Which of course is just a straight up 50% buff of the skill. But there another change to it which needs some more commenting.
"Improved Revenge: This talent can no longer trigger a stun, and instead increases damage done by Revenge by 30/60% and causes Revenge to strike an additional target."
So, Revenge doesn't stun anymore. I know Blizzard has tried to move away from all kinds of RNG stuns they'd previously implented in the game, and the Revenge stun was among the few left in the game. It used to have a 50% chance to stun the target, which is quite high. It is obvious this change has come due to pvp issues. The stun was probably too good. Since I don't pvp, and especially not with my warrior I don't know much about what this will mean for pvp prot warriors. What I've heard is that they're greatly OP at the moment (or before this patch anyway), and this isn't the first nerf to them anyway.
But what does this change mean to us pve warriors? Well actually, it's a great buff. It increases our aoe damage somewhat, which is quite needed. The point damage increase of revenge is huge, so overall this means a great increase in threat for us. The loss of the stun effect is a lesser problem. Since you couldn't really control when it was going to stun or not anyway, it wasn't very usable for interrupting casts and such. It just slightly lowered your damage input, and was completely useless against bosses. I did enjoy the stun effect when solo questing, but the great increase in damage will most likely come way more handy. And we're now even more able to take on several mobs at the time. So this is a really good buff.
The last change I'd like to look at is a minimal one, but still good.
"Vitality: Now boosts Stamina by 3/6/9%, up from 2/4/6%. Strength and expertise benefits have not changed."
A slight buff to our hp is of course always welcome. Yet again a straight buff. It's funny since they actually decreased the hp of paladins slightly some patch ago, although I've always thought my paladin and warrior tank (which have about exactly the same gear) have about exactly the same hp. Small adjustments which Blizzard feel are necessary, this time for the benefit of us warrior tanks.
So people, we've got three buffs to be happy about here, of which two are really good. Enjoy your warrior tanking!
Again this will be the last post I write for some days (I might write one tonight though) since I am going away for some day to celebrate eastern! Happy eastern to ya :)
EDIT: PS, check out the time this is posted ;)
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