Q: Where do warriors fit into the larger scope of things currently and where do you see them going from this point forward?
A: Historically, warriors have always been one of the most dominant classes in World of Warcraft. In Molten Core and for raids afterwards, warriors were THE tank, no question. DPS warriors could also top the damage meters, and were a very potent PvP force. We think we allowed the warrior class to overshadow some other classes, which is probably to be expected given the iconic nature of the plate-wearing fighter in RPGs that long preceded World of Warcraft. We think they are in a fairer place now, in that there is room on the stage for other classes, yet they are still a very powerful and popular class to play. The warrior class has been a very tricky one to balance, largely due to the way rage converts into damage (which converts into rage, which converts into damage...), and we haven't completely nailed that design just yet.
One of the things we want to do in the future is take a hard look at the Arms and Fury trees. There are several talents which just haven't weathered the course of time well and pale in comparison to some of the newer Wrath of the Lich King talents. We're happiest with the Protection tree -- we made a conscious effort to pare down that tree and remove a lot of mandatory talents in order to give the warrior more flexibility to take some more fun or utility-oriented talents. We need to make the same pass on the dps side of things. The reason we haven't done so yet is that warrior dps is in a pretty good place and we don't want to have to nerf the class across the board just to make some talents a little sexier. We will eventually do this though. We also need to make some decisions about the difference between Arms and Fury. Traditionally, Arms was the PvP tree and Fury was the PvE tree. We understand some players prefer that model, but we don't like the way it cuts off such a big chunk of the class from players who might not have much interest in the PvP or PvE parts of the game. However, we would like to reinforce a little more the kits of Arms and Fury. Everyone (I hope) gets the difference between Frost and Fire mages. Arms is supposed to be about weapons and martial training and feel "soldierly." Fury is supposed to be about screaming barbarians in woad. You get a sense of that, but it could be stronger. With the death knight, we allowed all three trees to more or less be able to tank. There is a desire among some players and designers to see Arms tank with a two-hander while Prot tanks with a shield. We're still not sure that's the direction we'll go -- it's a ton of re-design and will never work for say the druid or paladin classes.
