The Care and Feeding of Warriors: The homogenization factor

The Care and Feeding of Warriors is Matthew Rossi's valentine to warriors. (Yeah, I know it was two weeks ago.)

One of the effects of the design goals for Wrath of the Lich King that should be lauded was the attempt (with varying degrees of success) to finally move hybrids into true viability in whatever roles they sought to perform within the limits of their class being intended to fulfill said roles. People who laughed at retribution paladins, boomkin, or shadow priests before Wrath would probably feel a good deal of whiplash to look at the state of the raiding game now. (This is not to imply that said classes/specs don't have issues, mind you, but I think it fair to say that said specs are all stronger now than they were in Burning Crusade.)

Ironically, for warriors the 'hybrid' label has led to a general lessening of ability. Before Wrath, warriors were designed as a class that could tank or DPS, but not specifically as a 'hybrid' class in that their DPS role was not designed to be limited by a 'hybrid tax'. Similarly, while warrior struggled with rage normalization in early BC tanking, there were a great many endgame raid encounters that were designed with a warrior tank in mind and then a general mindset of 'oh, and this guy can do it if you don't have a warrior for whatever reason'. Of course, there were some fights warriors were just plain miserable on... Zul'Aman's Jan'alai was pure, sweaty agony for a warrior to try and offtank, for instance, and if you didn't have a paladin for the Hyjal trash waves, you'd get one.)

In general, homogenization has been both a blessing (no target limit on Thunder Clap, Damage Shield) and a curse (DPS lowered to keep pace with hybrids instead of pure DPS classes, loss of 'main tank' status) to warriors, especially with the arrival of the hugely popular death knight class as well as the rise of the retribution and protection specs for paladins. DK's can do anything a warrior can do and they don't have to pick a specific tree to do it, while paladins can do anything a warrior can do as well as heal.

That being said, I'm actually here to argue that this is good for the warrior as a class. Please hold off on launching rancid fruit at me until the end of the column.