Warriors are in a unique position as the only class that starts out empty in every encounter. Even Death Knights, who have a similar fill-and-empty mechanic with Runic Power, can at least do something until their magic happy bar goes live. Warriors are stuck with nothing.

Normalizing rage to a standard amount based on weapon speed instead of damage isn’t bad, but… until we see more hard numbers and actual gameplay, it’s a broadcast straight from Theoryland. Anything to cut out the problems of low-gear or high-gear warriors is good, but whether or not this will actually accomplish that goal is another story. Removing Heroic Strike from constant rotation is also good, but at the same time it doesn’t sound quite like it’s going to be ridding us of the fundamental irritation of the ability.

I suppose I’ll find out on release with the rest of us. But I’m hopeful, cautiously.

We know rage is tricky to model, and one of the big questions will be how you balance rage generation for a fury warrior wielding two slow two-handers vs a cat druid which hits much more quickly. There will be a hit cap regardless, and I like the idea of haste being more useful to warriors than it is right now (ie. barely at all).

But I remember being frustrated to tears trying to tank heroics on my warrior and being teased that bears could do the same content easily. I remember working my arse off trying to gear up to tank Karazhan (and paladins had it even worse) when bears in my guild could get the stats just using crafted gear.

And even though you dismiss it, I do remember bears being absolute monsters in PvP, to the extent that their damage had to be nerfed.

It really doesn’t matter now, since it was years ago. But really I wish people would stop blaming warriors any time another tank gets nerfed. Blizzard really doesn’t nerf based on forum whines.

In the end though its the dollar vote. I will be buying Cata. I will be leveling to Cap, playing a Worgen and a Goblin to explore new leveling content. Will I be raiding and continuing on past the 2-3 months that will take me? I hope so, if its fun, and if it is Blizz get my hard earned. If its not they wont.

Actually I’m worried Paladins are going to be nerfed badly because people complained a lot about their popularity and “easiness”. Actually, Death Knight’s resource management was the most balanced, independent from taking damage or not and how much damage is he doing (he won’t get more resource for hitting harder). Paladin’s mana management isn’t the best, spiritual attunement is tied to taking damage and is even in worse state than Warrior’s rage since the “not getting rage when power word shielded” was fixed.

Death Knights have their own problems, as tanking cooldowns being tied to resources and breaking rotation or not available when you’re trying to press them. As far as I know, no other tank class has resource cost on their big tank cooldowns, the cooldown length on itself is the only limiting factor.

No, it was due to Warriors losing tank spots. It was inevitable that people would get upset, Warriors had an almost total monopoly on raid tanking and it was taken away from them.

The whole thing was a complete mess.

They opened the door to Druids and reset the gear so some veteran tanks were astonished to see “healers” soaking damage better and keeping aggro better. This mainly happened when the Druids came out of the blocks faster, working harder on gear, hitting 70 faster and so on. Regardless people who had tanked for guilds for 2 years were told “sorry dude, we’d rather heal him”.

Then a massive Druid nerf was announced, I actually ragequit at that point. Within hours of the patch (which gutted Bear tanking) threat was hotfixed back onto Bears. I imagine the developers panicked a bit as a slew of Druid players cancelled.

It was an utter mess and unfair on everyone.