Hey!
As always, below one is not a suggestion thread. It's mostly a what-if created for fun.
This is the continuation of the shaman and the warlock ones:
viewtopic.php?p=97125#p97125 Shaman
viewtopic.php?t=14262 Warlock
Will use the same talent-tree concept, which means tree base trees with 3 rows and 5 specializations with 4 rows each.
The rules from the earlier articles:
For the first three rows, the warrior has the classic options to choose talents from arms, fury or prot. However, rows 4-7 mean a certain specialization. You can only jump into any of the below specializations from row 3 of a related talent tree.
Let's say that you start taking talents in the prot tree. Rules are the usual, you can only start picking talents from the first row, later rows require a certain amount of learned talents in the tree. As you level up, you reach row 3 and you have the option to specialize. You either choose to be a shield-based tank and go downwards, or you choose a two-hander, parry and cleave-based tank-build and go into the arms-prot mixed specialization or you want to be a fury prot and go into the fury-prot specialization.
Specializations are mutually exclusive, having a talent in one means that no other specialization's talent can be learnt even if you are at row 3 of the related tree.
The base trees would give you the basics of the related spec. For example basic tanking support at prot, 2H weapon support at arms. Specializations would give the talents bigger bonuses, like a reworked slam.
In case of warriors design-wise we can ask two questions in my opinion:
* What do they wield?
* Do they want to DPS or tank?
Talents supporting builds should focus on rewarding a playstyle defined by what you wield and they should help you at threat management, utility or pure damage based on your preferred role.
In case of warriors I put the prot tree in the middle. All mixed specializations result in a tank, only pure arms and pure fury will be designed as a DPS.
How the specs will look like:
* Pure fury: a pure DPS with big damage.
* Fury prot: a threat based tank focused on single target tanking, improved shouts help at AoE threat.
* Pure arms: a PVP/DPS support spec; inferior damage compared to fury but bringing some essential debuffs. Receiving some essential PVP-oriented buffs.
* Arms prot: a 2H-wielder tank based on parry and bonuses which happen after a parry. Great cleave-threat, all right aoe-threat. Worse single-target threat than fury prot.
* Pure prot: best survivability; threat is somewhat lower than the other tanks but not abysmal; easily useable unless you go for a speedrun.
Disclaimer: Why should the game have a cleave-tank if it has a perfect AoE tank with prot pala? In advance, arms prot will provide a unique melee utility, making it an optimal choice for a melee-heavy setup.
Disclaimer2: Will remove slam, decisive strike and rend from the warrior talent pool. Will also disable cleave in defensive stance. Will introduce some of them later, after a rework. In exchange, will make tactical mastery a baseline, passive tool for them, so any build has the option to stance dance. I will also handle improved taunt as the base taunt, meaning that each tank spec has access to the decreased taunt CD.
Let's start with arms!
1st row
5tp - Increases your parry chance by 5%.
3tp - Reduces the cost of your heroic strike by 3 rage points.
3tp - Each of your melee strikes have a 20% chance to make the target bleed (low DoT).
2nd row
3tp - Reduces the cost of thunder clap by 4 rage points and increases damage by 60%.
2tp - Increases the rage generated by charge by 6 points.
5tp - Grants 5% additional damage via 2H weapons.
3th row
5tp - Increases melee haste of 2H weapons by n% and weapon skill of 2H weapons by 5.
1tp - Gives you n% extra crit chance against bleeding targets.
1tp - Teaches sweeping strikes (can be used in berserker stance, too).
Arms receives the basic 2H support and gets a slight 'bleed theme'. Both the DPS spec and the tank spec can work with that.
Let's continue with prot!
1st row
5tp - Increases the shield's block chance by 5% and reduces the rage cost of your next ability by 20% after a block happens.
5tp - Increases your armor by 10%.
2nd row
1tp - Allows shield block one extra block and increases the duration by 1 second.
5tp - Increases your threat in defensive stance by 15%.
2tp - Increases the rage you receive from being hit by n%.
3tp - Reduces sunder armor rage cost by 3 points.
3rd row
3tp - Gives revenge a 45% chance to stun the target for 3 sec.
1tp - Teaches concussion blow.
3tp - Increases the damage and hit chance of the one-handed main hand weapon by 3%.
Prot has a shield package, a smaller stun package and a bit of help at hitting your targets with your weapon. Some signature abilities are missing here. I want to pack those ones in one of the tank specialization trees.
About fury.
1st row
5tp - Added 5% crit chance with melee weapons.
5tp - Buffs battle shout effect by 25%.
2nd row
5tp - Gives you a 25% melee damage bonus for 12 sec or until 12 melee strikes after receiving a critical hit.
2tp - Reduces the rage cost of execute by 5 points.
3rd row
5tp - Increases the damage dealt by your offhand weapon by 25%.
5tp - Increases melee haste by 30% for 3 swings after dealing a melee critical strike.
1tp - Teaches death wish.
Fury retains most of its damaging talents besides bloodthirst and improved cleave. I want to keep fury as simple as possible - you like rage, you like damage.
The specializations
Pure arms
I mostly imagine it as a PVP spec or a '1 of' in raids, providing a very valuable but non-stackable melee buff. I want to answer some of the warrior PVP-weaknesses here, like weakness against roots or the fact that armor won't protect you from magic.
4th row
5tp - Gives you a +n% chance to resist rooting, charming and stun effects.
3tp - Gives harmstring a 30% chance to reduce the target's melee and spell haste by 20% for 10 sec. Can only happen once on the same target every minute.
5th row
3tp - Reduces retaliation CD by 25 minutes.
2tp - Increases the crit chance of overpower by 50% and allows you to use it in any stance.
6th row
3tp - Increases your magical resistances by n%. Imagine an elite warrior training his body to resist certain magic, flavor-wise.
7th row
1tp - When you apply a bleed effect on a target, it also receives a '+n% melee damage received' effect as long as the bleed remains.
1tp - Teaches mortal strike.
Arms-prot
This is the squishiest warrior tank tree by default since fury prots can put up a shield whenever needed. Arms-prots will alleviate this disadvantage by added parry chance, the addition of last stand and a damage reduction talent based on parry.
The tree focuses mainly on two things: cleave/aoe threat and survival.
Optimally you need some talents both from arms and prot base tree. Arms gives the basics but added armor or added rage generation from being hit both helps for arms-prot.
They can in theory get 30% threat bonus from 2 talents but defensive stance turns down most of the abilities they want to use.
The version of slam I introduce will be a high-threat version of piercing howl in a way. Piercing howl itself will not exist.
4th row
3tp - Decreases whirlwind CD by 3 sec and adds an n% threat modifier to thunderclap.
5tp - Increases the threat you deal with a 2H weapon by 15%.
1tp - Teaches last stand.
5th row
5tp - Sweeping strikes, cleaves, and whirlwinds have a 100% chance to apply a sunder armor (with the added threat) on each of the targets.
1tp - You receive n% more healing when last stand is active.
6th row
1tp - After receiving a melee critical strike, your parry increases by 20% for 5 seconds. Can only happen once every 20 seconds.
7th row
1tp - Teaches slam (reworked). Slam changes your next auto-attack which you slam into the ground instead. It deals no damage but applies harmstring on all enemies within 5 yards and has a high amount of threat on each of them. 10 second CD.
1tp - A successful parry decreases the damage you take by n% for n seconds. Stackable n times.
Pure prot
This will be the shield-based warrior tank version. It has decent threat and an almost unmatched survivability. Its AoE-threat generation is mostly passive, coming from blocks. Honestly, most of the tree combos around having a shield. Since you generate a big chunk of your threat via blocks and blocks can't happen if a mob attacks you from behind, this build expects you to turn around like beyblade every time you pull a big pack.
Also, revenge becomes quite good with all these blocks.
4th row
5tp - Increases defense by 15 (I think that the original talent was highly underwhelming).
3tp - Gives your successful blocks n threat. The mob wanted to hit you but failed. Mob is angry, focuses on you.
5th row
1tp - Your shield block ability costs no rage after a successful block. Can only activate once in every 10 seconds.
3tp - Reduces shield wall CD by 25 minutes.
3tp - Increases the threat done by shield bash by n and adds n% chance to knock the target down.
6th row
1tp - Your projectiles explode, creating a 5 yards radius, low-damage aoe. This has a high threat on each affected mobs (helps at range-pull threat management).
7th row
1tp - Teaches shield slam. Shield slam is a high threat, high damage shield attack on a 6 second CD which also increases your block chance by 10% for 2 seconds (in this iteration).
1tp - Each parry and block gives you n rage.
Fury-prot
It will be different from the fury-prot we know in the game. Firstly, baseline tactical mastery allows stance-dance for each warrior build. This iteration of fury-prot will dance much more. If it goes for more damage and gives up defensive stance, it loses the +15% threat if the talent was taken in the prot tree. This iteration of fury-prot always has to be aware of his current threat to know when it is allowed to step out of defensive stance for the added damage.
Contrary to the current iteration, shouts will play a very important role in keeping threat.
In short, you charge in, you shout as much as humanly possible and you hit big. Also has some utility with commanding shout.
4th row
5tp - Increases the threat of your shouts by n%.
2tp - Decreases the CD of intimidating shout by 2 minutes and the CD of challenging shout by 6 minutes.
3tp - Regenerates 10% of your total health over 3 sec after being hit with a crit. Can activate once every 10 seconds.
5th row
2tp - Raises the amount of rage bloodrage gives by 5.
3tp - Raises your damage against opponents with demoralizing shout by n%.
6th row
1tp - Teaches decisive strike (reworked). This iteration turns your next auto-attack to a big-damage hit which applies a debuff on the target. Threat done by you on this target is increased by 5%. Has 1 minute CD.
7th row
1tp - Teaches commanding shout (increases max health by n for 2 minutes). Has a 10 min CD but can be used alongside battle shout.
1tp - Whenever your health drops below 50%, the GCD of your warrior abilities changes to 1 second.
Fury
Will mostly skew it towards DPS. If you play as a fury, you want big numbers. This is the place where big numbers happen. Offhand becomes really fast, heroic strike becomes even better, execute starts sooner and berserker stance won't kill you that easily.
4th row
3tp - Increases the bonus damage done by cleave by 120%.
5tp - Increases the damage done by heroic strike by n% (low) and reduces the added threat it does by n%.
2tp - Reduces intercept CD by 10 seconds.
5th row
5tp - Reduces the swing time of your offhand weapon by 0,5 seconds. Can't go under 1 second.
6th row
1tp - Execute activates when the target has 25% or less HP.
7th row
1tp - Teaches bloodthirst.
1tp - Removes the damage increase debuff from berserker stance.
Last words
We have 3 tank builds here but all 3 are different. Pure prot has low damage, extreme survivability and a good way to keep threat - however, threat is mostly based on a passive ability (block). What pure prot can do is to increase block chance as much as possible. Fury-prot has a very high damage and decent survivability but it somewhat struggles against bigger packs (shouts help but as I imagined it even improved shouts would not be enough for consequent trash-keeping - sometimes some mob will run away). In exchange they have some utility and can deal a disgusting amount of damage, compared to tanks. Arms-prot is somewhat similar to prot pala. Both shine in case of big packs. Arms-prot is less consequent than prot pala regarding AoE threat but helps the melee by applying a LOT of sunder armors to each mobs of the pack.