Protection Warrior DPS?
November 9th, 2008 Posted in Class DiscussionThings have been a little quiet around here. I haven’t had much time for blogging because I’m taking part in NaNoWriMo, as I do every year. However a post on Kadomi‘s site has me wondering. She says:
In my last raids, I have been number 3 in ZA several times, and was number 2 for our last Kara run
Now, far be it from me to complain about a protection warrior doing decent dps, but there’s something wrong there from my point of view. If the tank, who by definition, is wearing a set of gear which maximises survivability, is topping, or coming close to topping, the dps meters then there’s something seriously wrong somewhere.
I am of course assuming that Kadomi is geared similarly to the rest of her group, and that Daughters of the Horde are very much at the casual end of the spectrum, however to me if the DPS are struggling to out-damage the tank, there’s something not quite right somewhere, whether it’s in their rotations, their choice of spells or even how they have gemmed and enchanted their gear (if they even have).
So, my point, long winded as it is, is that yes, tanks can do reasonable dps these days, but if the players who are supposed to be doing the most damage aren’t, then everyone should work together until they are back in the right place again.
If tanks could do an equal amount of damage to the dps players, what would the point of taking the squishier people with you be?
9 Responses to “Protection Warrior DPS?”
By Talldar on Nov 9, 2008
You’re missing one point in your post: Currently everyone pretty much outgears Zul Aman and Karazhan, so what’s happening are huge, huge group pulls, like 3-4 trash groups at once.
Now with damage shield and the new thunderclap & shockwave, these are the warrior’s DPS-highs. Also the amount damage shield does on boss fights is not to be underestimated.
So the situation will normalize towards new content, when pulling two or three trash groups will not be the way to go anymore. Tank DPS did increase significantly, yet it’s very, very situational on how well we perform and there’s no guarantee for any dps-numbers at the end of a fight.
By Namthe on Nov 9, 2008
That’s a fair comment, but in such packs surely there must be some DPS with decent AoE abilities?
By Kadomi on Nov 9, 2008
Gah, your captcha code just ate a long response of mine because I keep failing at it. Will respond later.
By Kadomi on Nov 9, 2008
Okay, trying this again, now in a shorter version than earlier:
1. I’ve run ZA yesterday and today, I was 4th and 5th respectively in overall damage. My DPSers are stepping it up!
2. In heroics I am still undeniably top DPS, even in groups that are better geared than I am, from raiding guilds on my server. So far the only classes who have outDPSd me in 5-mans are ret paladins and arms warriors.
3. My single-target boss DPS is rarely top 5 in 10-mans, true DPS classes shine here, and that’s how it should be. On trash pulls, I hugely benefit from Damage Shield, Shockwave and Thunderclap boosting my numbers.
4. The point of my article was not to pretend that protection warriors are all you’ll ever need and we’re full DPS now, but to encourage other protection warriors to make the best use of our damage-dealing abilities, because we can. I’ve seen other warriors not making full use of our new arsenal of abilities, hence my posting.
I am pretty sure the DPS gap will increase towards 80 and that’s as it should be. But for now, DPSers have to push themselves harder, and there’s nothing wrong with that either.
P.S.: a bunch of our DPS aren’t the greatest, it’s a problem I am aware of. I have been able to out-DPS some of them pre-patch.
By Namthe on Nov 9, 2008
Hmm, I’ve had doubts about that captcha for a while. Been pondering turning it off but the amount of spam it saves me from looking at my logs is quite phenomenal.
” The point of my article was not to pretend that protection warriors are all you’ll ever need”
Quite! I guess my point was if a protection warrior is coming high on the dps charts, then the dps players need re-educating.
No player is necessarily bad, just possibly ill-informed or ill-advised.
By mavfin on Nov 10, 2008
As I\’ve brought up before elsewhere, current trash is not a good place to measure DPS vs the tank, as trash is dying so quickly that some DPS has trouble getting any decent damage going, but still owns on the boss fights. For instance, with my mage, trash was dying so quickly that if I tried to cast anything not instant, including flamestrike, I didn\’t do much damage.
By Yakra on Nov 10, 2008
One important note, is that only the tank on the receiving end of a boss is going to be putting out any type of damage.
Taking tanks over DPS would have you end up with the tanking-tank doing normal, high-ish DPS, and the rest sort of standing around, doing minimal dps.
By Namthe on Nov 10, 2008
“Taking tanks over DPS would have you end up with the tanking-tank doing normal, high-ish DPS, and the rest sort of standing around, doing minimal dps.”
Yes and no. It’s not often that I end up dps on a boss, rather than tanking it, but when I do, appropriate gear (142 hit, shield, strength and crit stacked as much as possible) means that I’m doing far more dps than when tanking. True enough, if you’re wearing gear with tank stats your dps will suck.
Also I’ve replaced the captcha with something a little less horrible for users. Hopefully it’ll do the trick.
By Biggie on Nov 10, 2008
As a prot warrior I’ve found that in an equally geared guild Kara/ZA run I usually end up slightly behind our DPS classes per Recount. I’m not struggling to maintain agro and following both the prioritized single target (SS > Rev > Dev) ability and “Venne approved” AOE rotation so I’m fairly certain it’s not overpowered class mechanics causing Kadomi to find herself so far up the DPS charts. Compared to Kadomi my gear is worse, mostly Kara + badge stuff, so I’d probably chalk her DPS statistics up to a combination of gear and highly optimized rotations (player skill). I would assume that any raiding guild worth their salt is giving their MT’s first crack at tanking plate gear drops so logically Kadomi should be a step or two ahead of the rest of her guild in terms of gear quality. It’s been my experience that players wearing most or all of the class appropriate drops from an instance are overgeared for that zone, which Kadomi is in ZA.
I’m feeling like prot warriors are right where they need to be compared to other classes when similarly geared AND running appropriate level content. The only class that seemed really out of whack after 3.0.2 were Ret. Pallies but that’s obviously been getting attention from Bliz these days.