WoW Dragonflight Warriors are set for some fairly significant alterations according to a new blog post by Blizzard. In the post, the WoW devs explained that they are comfortable with where the class is at right now in the popular MMORPG, but that changes are still needed for balancing purposes.
The Protection tank spec was in need of some nerfs before launch, and Blizzard has adjusted many of the talent tree spells and offered an explanation as to why the changes were made.
Blizzard writes that they are happy with how Protection Warriors are playing, but claim they’ve been “overperforming” which has led to some changes. “We don’t intend to make large structural changes to Protection Warrior’s trees, our goals for the next week are mainly around bug fixing, tuning and to make the bottom left and right sides of the tree more appealing.”
The blog post showed off some nerfs to the popular tank spec. Here are some of the most important changes that were revealed:
- Revenge – Damage reduced to 53 percent (was 63 percent)
- Shield Slam – Damage reduced to 80 percent (was 85 percent)
- Punish – Shield Slam deals 10 percent increased damage (was 20 percent)
- Rend – Initial damage reduced to 32 percent (was 64 percent) and periodic damage reduced to 17 percent (was 23 percent)
- Enduring Alacrity – Now grants 1 percent Haste per rank (was 2 percent)
- Focused Vigor – Now grants 1 percent critical chance per rank (was 2 percent)
- Vanguard – Increases your Stamina by 30 percent (was 45 percent), increases your Strength by 70 percent of your armor value (was 100 percent), and reduces damage you take by 5 percent (was 15 percent)
Blizzard’s attempt to nerf Protection, which rapidly became the most effective tank spec in all of Dragonflight, seems to hit the mark hard with nerfs across a wide range of abilities.
Protection became the favored class due to the spec’s dynamic range of abilities in its class tree, which in turn gave them tons of damage spells, on top of Protection’s ability to soak up huge damage numbers.
If you are looking to dig into WoW Dragonflight upon release, check out the best WoW addons.