Ignore Pain RedesignProtection Warriors have received major changes to their defensive toolkit! Let's start with the biggest and most important change:
has been completely redesigned. It is now a 12-second cooldown that reduces damage taken by 60% for 4 seconds and consumes Rage to do so. When testing it out in the world and in dungeons, it was surprisingly efficient, and I was easily able to remain Rage-positive while it was active. The eventual tuning of
may change, but at this point it's very good!
Rage GenerationRage generation is way down in BFA.
Colpo di Scudo generates 5 fewer Rage per cast. Rather than generating Rage proportional to damage taken, Protection Warriors now generate 3 Rage per hostile auto attack that hits you - period!
Devastatore generates 2 Rage per auto attack, down from 5. On top of this,
Scudo Saldo's Rage cost was more than doubled and its duration was reduced to 4 seconds. While this is a move to slow the class down to an extent (Legion Warrior is spammy!), it also compensates for far fewer
casts. The class feels unchanged offensively, and I never found myself Rage-starved when tanking mobs in dungeons, even when using all three Rage spenders aggressively.
Urlo Demoralizzante's cooldown was reduced by 30 seconds, which lines it up cleanly with
Avventatezza, and via
Voce Profonda makes it a more powerful Rage generation tool than it was in Legion (without
Vigore della Divinità del Tuono).
ProblemsUnfortunately, it's not all sunshine and roses in Warriorland! With the redesign to
, Warrior's defensive Rage spenders are all on moderately long cooldowns. While Rage generation is more predictable, this will result in situations in which Warriors can sit near full Rage with zero defensive uses for Rage and no AM available. It happened to me several times when running dungeons. Yikes! Between
Scudo Saldo's shortened duration and increased cost, Blizzard will need to consider reducing or totally removing its recharge time.
The change to
removed almost all of Warrior's defensive use for Strength (and Versatility, to a lesser extent). As Arielle pointed out in the
Druid Community Opinions post, Guardian Druids spent the last two expansions in this position! It's frustrating, to say the least, and will hopefully be fixed somehow.
Artifacts and LegendariesAs for the parting with the Artifact, (almost) nothing of value was lost.
Furia di Neltharion looked cool but was basically worthless, and the majority of artifact traits were just increases to damage/damage reduction/Stamina, non-interactive procs, and so on.
From Legendaries, the reduction to
Urlo Demoralizzante's base cooldown helps compensate for losing
Vigore della Divinità del Tuono. Most of the other prominent Legendaries had no significant rotational influence on the class, and mechanically they will go unnoticed.
2/22/18 Class UpdateSome damage coefficients were changed - not a big deal.
Devastatore's Rage generation was also removed from the tooltip. This is a big nerf, or rather, it would be, but
Devastatore still actually generates Rage! This feels like a setup to a redesign of Rage generation, but for now Rage generation works the same as it has all Alpha.
