2.3 PTR patch notes

[Kevin]

Warrior

* Charge will work more often when targets are up against unpathable areas like walls and poles.
* Defiance (Protection) now also grants 2/4/6 weapon expertise.
* Devastate (Protection) now combines the effects of Sunder Armor into its effect. It is also now affected by all talents and items that affect Sunder Armor.
* Disarm is now subject to diminishing returns in PvP.
* Improved Berserker Stance (Fury) now also reduces all threat caused while in Berserker Stance by 2/4/6/8/10%
* Improved Intercept and Weapon Mastery have swapped locations in the talent trees.
* Intervene will no longer place you in combat.
* Hamstring now has a 10 second duration when used on PvP targets.
* Mace Specialization (Arms) now has a reduced chance to occur but generates 7 rage instead of 6.
* Pummel: Interrupting a channeled spell with this ability will now always properly prevent casting spells from the same spell school for 4 sec.
* Shield Bash: Interrupting a channeled spell with this ability will now always properly prevent casting spells from the same spell school for 6 sec.
* Shield Slam (Protection) now always tries to dispel one Magic effect on the target.
* Sweeping Strikes and Deathwish have swapped locations in the talent trees.
* Sweeping Strikes (Fury) now lasts 10 seconds and affects your next 10 swings.
* Tactical Mastery: This talent also now grants greatly increased threat from Mortal Strike and Bloodthirst when in Defensive Stance.
* Weapon Mastery (Arms) now reduces duration of Disarm effects against you by 25/50% rather than giving you a 50% chance to avoid or full immunity to Disarm effects.
* Whirlwind: This ability now strikes with both weapons when a Warrior is dual-wielding.

OK so I'm looking at this in terms of prot.

6 weapon expertise on defiance is 1.5% reduction in parry and dodge from the mob you are tanking. That looks like a nice threat buff.

Devastate merged with sunder. 1 less hotkey for me, a bit more threat while putting up the sunder stack (from the extra damage from devastate). The other question is does this mean a single devestate is now the threat of a sunder + damage + extra threat from base devestate? If that is the case this is a pretty big threat increase since I think it was 200 damage from a devestate to have it doing more threat than a sunder. Then you add in that you can do a devastate for 9 rage and this is also a slight DPS increase for prot warriors when not tanking.

Shield Slam now always has a chance to remove a debuff. Not sure how valuable that really is for PvP, I guess your dispellers will just get a nothing to dispell a bit more now. The threat on shield slam is too good to try and "save" it as a dispell you smack it every time you can.

Whirlwind hitting with both weapons. Does that put WW as something a prot warrior wants to use when they are doing DPS? Devastate is still going to be very good damage per rage and prot warriors still probably don't have slow offhands (I actually do have a 2.6 speed 71 DPS offhand blue right now). I haven't done the math but I wonder.

So it looks like prot warriors have less hotkey management, more threat and a bit more DPS. I like that.


The other thing I wonder about in general though is:

* Weapon Mastery (Arms) now reduces duration of Disarm effects against you by 25/50% rather than giving you a 50% chance to avoid or full immunity to Disarm effects.
* A new world drop recipe for an Adamantite Weapon Chain has been added. This new weapon chain both reduces disarm duration and increases parry rating.

I haven't really dug in the WoW forums but those two together along with the diminishing returns on disarm in PvP has me thinking that the entire disarm mechanic has changed a bit. Like when they changed everything that used to give a chance to prevent interrupt to cutting the time. I'm betting that the old steel weapon chain and the various gloves the prevent disarm are all changed to cut the duration of disarm now. That you can no longer be immune to disarm at all.

I'm wondering about the impacts of this assuming it's a bit more sweeping than just the listed changes.