Wow ranting disguised as a ramble

[sparkindarkness]

Ok, the debate rages and everyone still refuses to see that I am right :p

Let’s talk dps warriors - arms/fury or any combination of the 2. We are sadly glutted with the damn things and I say sadly because I really really don’t see the point of them. No-one has ever successfully told me why I should want a dps warrior over any other dps - they always give me 2 answers:

The first is the most pathetic: “They do good damage.”
Well duh. They’re dps. That is what they do. So do rogues, mages, warlocks, feral and balance druids, hunters, shadow priests, shamans and even Retridins (well, kinda). That is what dps classes do. I don’t notice dps warriors doing significantly more damage than the others (though threat? Threat they have in spades!) But all the others come with something else - buffs, conjured items, crowd control, interesting debuffs, back up healing - y’know, something. The dps warrior? Doesn’t. Not really.

The second false reason: “We’re tougher than other dps.”
Ok, again kinda. They are tougher and that matters... in a normal instance. Or maybe some of the easier heroics. In a raid? Honey, you can flounce away with your shiny metal armour because if you’re not a tank the mobs are going to cut through you like a hot knife through butter anyway. Saying “hey, we’re as fragile as wet cardboard” IS technically better than saying “we’re as fragile as wet newspaper” but when High king Maulgar’s trying to demonstrate his skills as an interesting new kitchen utensil on your sorry corpse it doesn’t make that much difference.


Can I also get a great big “Die in Fire” for prot warriors who respec fury AFTER we’ve dragged their useless metal arse up and down Karazhan a thousand times to get them good tanking gear?

Can I make that fire a little bigger to fit in all the other dps warriors who INSIST they’ll respec prot as soon as they get the gear, need on all the gear and are STILL waving around a damn double handed whammy sword of extra agro-doom?

Comments

[soappuppy.livejournal.com]

*laughs*

The other day, my feral druid found herself in a Serpentshrine Cavern raid with seven warriors in it (count 'em, seven! in a 25-man raid!). Both the feral druids still ended up tanking -- only TWO of the warriors were prot or willing to tank!

My feral druid is actually a feral/healing hybrid -- she's known for popping out of DPS form to throw a heal, an innervate, and a rebirth, and then duck back down for DPS. When there's an elemental in the way of melee on Prince in Kara she backs out, switches weapons, and heals. She also shifts from DPS into bear form when, for example, the offtank on Gruul is *sucking* and is not properly eating the Hurtful Strikes or Hateful Bolts or whatever it is he throws. It's really hard to be a proper hybrid when she's locked into bear form main-tanking! And what emergency heals will those pewpew warriors be throwing, I ask you?

"Useless metal arse"...I love it :)

[speaks.livejournal.com]

I honestly don't understand why a Raiding Warrior would ever be anything other than Prot.

If you want to be Melee DPS be a rogue.

[rampagingturtle.livejournal.com]

Having been stuck trying to heal Kara runs with multiple DPS warriors over the past couple of days, I and my bank balance could not agree with you more. They died at least as fast as, if not faster than, the rest of the DPS and did less damage. I'm coming perilously close to boycotting all guild runs that include more than one DPS warrior.

[rampagingturtle.livejournal.com]

And now that I think about it, I need to add "Plays an arms warrior" to my list of "Reasons to slap my annoying roommate silly."

[jerril]

DPS warriors + Windfury Totem = currently more DPS than any other melee DPS class can put out. It's terrifying. They beat out the rogues, even.

Without Windfury it's kind of debatable.

[jerril]

And to further clarify - my mage is beginning to stack on the spellhaste gear and my damage is shooting up... but I'm still out-DPSed by the two DPS warriors. They're the top of the charts in guild, beating out the rogues, hunters, warlocks, mages, everybody.

WHEN they have a windfury totem.

BTW: If you had two prot warriors show up, why were both druids tanking in Gruuls Lair?

[jerril]

Following up to my own post again, though - no argument about the DPS warriors being threat-o-matic. Rogues, Retadins, and Druids all have some threat mitigation, warriors don't.

In all seriousness, it sounds like you're cursed with warriors that don't know how to do their own jobs, and lots of them to boot. Dough is pretty much our primary DPS dude unless a fight is really melee-unfriendly. He has the mad skillz yo.

What we have excessive amounts of is tanks, much to everyones amusement.

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

Seven? Ye gods. Though I agree with the feral tanking - a feral can tank or dps in their spec, but a fury/arms warrior is just BAAAAD at tanking. In fact, with badge items and tier 4 items they're pretty good at tanking AND dps in the same gear (reason 1907 why a druid is better than a warrior :))

Hybrids rock for that reason - they heeeeelp in so many ways, buffs, emergency heals, lovely little abilities like cyclone and innervate - just random help all the way

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

AMEN preach it mah friend!

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

They're sooo fragile and they pull so much agro. And I don't know if it's a necessity for damage or just brain-deadness but they ALWAYS use whirlwind/cleave. EVERY other dps class knows when to leave the AoE at home, but not them!

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

*gives you a hammer*

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

Now, see, we've had this debate.

"With windfury and blessing of salvation I rock!"

Ummmm... so you mean you need TWO other classes present to make you viable? *the Sparky is not impressed*

I mean are you comparing that imba damage output with, say, a mage with Wrath of Air totem and a Moonkin Aura (and a warlock's curse of elements)? One of my geekiest hobbies is putting together raid groups so the most devastating buffs and auras go together.


Add in that dps warrior +windfury totem = the tank better be SPAMMING taunt in my experience.

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

But if you have a Moonkin aura (+5% crit) and a Wrath of Air Totem (+80+ spell damage) or a curse of elements on the boss how much damage do you throw out in comparison?


(I think you mixed posts - soapy said there were 2 prots for SSC not Gruul, just mentioned Gruul later). As an aside, my feral is preferred main tank for Gruul and Maulgar since both seem to favour mitigation and my 32,000 armour (gratuitously spammed armour value to annoy the prot warriors) seems to work better

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

Well that's part of the problem. Other dps have various ways of reducing agro - talents or fade or feint or cower or (if the shit hits the fan) playing dead, ice block (*taunts the frost mages because mah fire mage can ice block! MUAHAHA!*) That means they have to hold back or give us headaches

And that's another point. In TBC there are a LOT of fights that are very un-melee friendly to various degress (in Karazhan alone, Maiden, Big Bad Wolf and Prince are pretty mean to melee and Gruul is no picnic) and relatively few that are unpleasant to casters (Aran comes to mind). Heroics are notorious for screwing over melee dps. Ok that's more a Blizzard mistake than a class mistake but it counts.

Maybe our dps warriors are just lacking in skills, but we have so many and I've seen it in PUGs too - their damage is fairly equivalent to every other class and they give nothing BUT damage to the party.


Ironically we were stunned in our last 4 raids by the overabundance of healers and tanks we had ready and the dire shortage of dps. I think it's because we're all so desperate to gather tanks and healers we never stop to think "y'know, the guild needs more pwnage power!"