Bizarre Stat Priorities in 5.0.4

There are just under 3 weeks left until Mists of Pandaria, and thus, just under 3 weeks during which your Humble Narrator must still concern herself with proper tanking form. I can’t work up the give-a-damn to completely rework my spreadsheet for less than a month of play – especially since most of the theorycrafting resources I rely upon, most notably Elitist Jerks’ rating conversions, have not updated their level 85 stat values, focusing instead on the upcoming level 90 formulae. I don’t begrudge them their focus on MoP – if I were upgrading, I’d focus on it too.

I’ll probably get the expansion eventually, once the sting of rage’s death has died down a little. Despite its increased power – I’m not so divorced from reality as to claim that the warrior changes weren’t a significant buff! – all I can see when I watch my rage bar stand, unmoved, in the face of a boss hit, is a mockery of the class I once loved.

To the point, and more importantly, on from the melodrama! Combat statistics received some major overhauls this patch, most notably with the introduction of the two-roll system for block; and of course, our own stat priorities widened to include hit and expertise.

Stances, Rage, and Uncrittable in Mists of Pandaria

Here’s the deal with my long lack of posts in this space: in addition to my own innate laziness and the real-life challenges of the past few months (overcoming my depression-induced conditioning enough to actually look for a job, running around the country for interviews, spending the majority of the rest of my time curled up in bed clutching a dolphin and freaking out), I’ve also had some major apprehensions about the changes Blizz has been making to warriors, especially protection warriors, in the name of active mitigation. I didn’t want to jump the gun by stereotypically claiming that what was going on in beta was ruining the class, especially since until a week ago I had barely played on beta due to my internet situation.

I’ve played on beta now, and found that my suspicions were, for the most part, correct.

I’d like to clarify before I get into the meat of my whining that my problems with the 5.X warrior model are a matter of personal preference and class identity. As far as I know (though I haven’t been keeping up with the theorycraft as much as I should have, see above) there’s nothing about the new warrior model that makes them unplayable; they seem to be where they’ve always been, the dependable baseline of tank acceptability. Sure, DKs will still be the kings of magical damage, and the new bear mastery is WTFoverpowered, but my objections to the new direction of the warrior class are about enjoyment, not numbers. Whether this makes them more or less relevant is your call.