Macawber wrote:warriors don't have to choose between commanding shout and say, focused rage or shield specialization. I'd say the mana return from sanctuary has more in common with talents like those than with battle shout.
no respectable warrior tank picks up more than 2 points in shield specialization because we simply do not have the talent points available for it. Deep wounds (15 points into arms) and Armored to the teeth (3 in fury) are ABSOLUTELY MANDATORY for threat, or else we don't stand a chance at holding aggro on a boss. That, in addition to a prot tree in desperate need of a re-vamping much like the paladin tree was recently (some 5 pointers down to 3), puts us in a situation where we can't even get close to picking up everything we need in the prot tree.
Macawber wrote:On a somewhat related note, I hear a lot of warriors complain that shout durations are too short, and I can't deny that refreshing them every two minutes could get annoying. But compared to how clunky the blessing system is, I'd say they're fine. I'd kill to have to only press one button every two minutes to buff the entire raid.
You obviously don't play a warrior. On XT hard mode 25 last night, I was DPSing and in charge of keeping commanding shout up. The range on shouts is so fucking small, I couldn't even hit the tank from where I was standing, and I wasn't even at max melee range. Not to mention, I have the talent that increases its radius by 50%, which warrior tanks cannot possibly pick up due to having so many mandatory talents as explained briefly in the above section. Shouts are HORRIBLE, period. They need to have the range increased to 30 or 40 yards, and needs to be like the DK's horn of winter, which GIVES us rage and is set at a reasonable cooldown (30s-1m). That is all assuming they maintain the 2m cooldown, of course.
Speaking from experience with a paladin as well as a warrior: paladin blessings, although annoying at times, are much easier in the long run to deal with, and is trivialized with the use of pallypower.