First Look at Hero Talents in The War WithinWar Within Hero Talents Overview
Our Guide Writers have provided initial first impressions on the Hero Talent Trees revealed so far for the War Within. Check out all of our released opinion articles below.
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Lightsmith Paladin Hero Talents Review
Lightsmith Holy PaladinLightsmith Protection Paladin
Mountain Thane Warrior Hero Talent Tree
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Intro
You know what Hero Talents are by this point, so let’s just dive right into the Mountain Thane Hero Talent tree.
The apparent aim of the Mountain Thane Spec is a synthesis between Protection, Fury, and the Mountain King Hero from Warcraft 3. Has it been successful? Yup!
The tree puts a heavy emphasis on Thunder Clap and Avatar. Protection Warrior dominated most of BFA Mythic+ dungeons by leaning into Thunder Clap and Avatar, so revisiting that design is a great idea!
Protection + Fury + Dwarf = Mountain Thane
The Mountain Thane tree adds a lot of AoE damage through procs, so it has very little impact on your rotational load. There are no new keybinds, and the talents are mostly passive. Some talents like can affect your rotation, but it’s all in the exact way you would want as a Protection Warrior. You get to Thunder Clap harder, Shield Slam harder, and sometimes you get free Rage, cooldown reduction, or ability resets.
This doesn’t really seem like it makes Protection Warrior more like Fury Warrior, it just makes Protection Warrior more like it already is when it’s at its best (BFA Season 2). By comparison, Fury Warrior does appear to be getting a big taste of Protection Warrior’s proc-loaded, Thunder Clap-spamming, Avatar-fueled flavor.
Everyone Likes Damage!
The Mountain Thane talent tree is extremely damage-oriented, with more of an emphasis on AoE damage, but a good blend of both single-target and AoE and several sets of procs that flow smoothly between AoE and single-target damage. This bodes very well for Mountain Thane as a talent option in Mythic+. It will absolutely destroy packs of enemies. As for raids, it should be good, but whether or not it’s the best option in single-target is uncertain.
The only concern with this talent tree is the absence of direct defensive benefits. is a great talent name, but it grants a very small damage reduction buff with moderate uptime. There is zero direct interaction with Ignore Pain or Shield Block in this tree. There is no self-healing. There is no defensive cooldown interaction. There’s damage, rotational skills, and Avatar uptime.
Is this actually a problem? Not really! Getting more Shield Slams and Avatar uptime will provide more Rage and cooldown reduction due to Anger Management, Thunderlord, and Booming Voice. This all feeds into the idea that the best defense for a Protection Warrior is more offense.
Will this Hero Talent tree wind up being the best option for hard-hitting Mythic+ content? Who can say? Maybe! Bringing tons of damage output as a tank is useful in high-level Mythic+, and if the Rage generation and cooldown resets in the tree are strong enough, they can absolutely compete on a defensive level with more direct bonuses like Ignore Pain uptime or flat damage reduction. The fact that they also provide lots of damage makes them fun to use, too!
Deep Dive
Now let’s take a talent-by-talent look at the tree, starting at the top of the mountain and working our way down into the mines:
This talent is the fuel that makes everything else in the tree function. On its own, it’s just a basic damage proc, but it provides lots of other interactions, as well. Procs occur 50% more often during Avatar, which probably means the proc rate increases from 10% to 15%, not from 10% to 60%, but you never know.
It’s also not entirely clear if the proc chance is per cast that deals damage or per hit that deals damage. That is, if you Thunder Clap 5 enemies, is that a single 10% chance to proc, or five separate 10% chances at procs, or one 50% chance for a single proc? Who knows?
Thunder Clap is one of your main sources of damage in AoE, and this boosts it by a whopping 50%. It also allows a lot of your other damage from this tree to bypass armor, which can be a significant boost to damage.
Adds a small amount of AoE damage onto your single-target damage procs. Free damage is good.
+20% Shield Slam damage. This is simple, but it’s great. It‘s a perfect talent for this tree. It’s boring, but in a fun way. Everyone likes damage. It doesn’t have to be complicated. It’s damage! Damage is exciting enough on its own!
Your Shield Slams can make your next Thunder Clap deal 5% more damage, and bypass armor. This synergizes with the talent below it: Keep Your Feet on the Ground, to grant you a small damage reduction buff. Again, it’s more AoE damage, and that’s great.
Choice Node: or
: This talent gives you a reason to take Intervene, which has seen relatively little use in Dragonflight. Intervene is a classic component of Warrior’s kit, and that utility has been missed, so a reason to use it again is very welcome! Storm Shield makes Intervene grant a magic damage shield to players worth 300% of your Armor, so around 10-15% of their health pool. This is a pretty useful external cooldown in some cases, but it’s not game-breaking, either. Intervene won’t exactly replace Blessing of Spellwarding or Blessing of Sacrifice, but it is still an improvement over Protection Warrior’s current, extremely-limited group utility.
: Your Storm Bolt now hits two extra targets. This seems pretty useful in PvP, and somewhat useful in Mythic+. There are some downsides: it only grants 2 seconds of stun, and it will put more enemies on the stun diminishing return. It’s interesting, but probably not all that great in Mythic+. In raids, it’s mostly useless.
Choice Node: or
: More damage when your procs trigger. Good, simple, can’t complain about more damage!
: Grants cooldown reduction for Ravager whenever your Lightning Strikes trigger. The amount of cooldown reduction provided is pretty low, so while this might increase the availability of Ravager, and make it be usable at opportune times throughout Mythic+ dungeons or in raid fights, you will need to trigger a lot of Lightning Strikes procs to really feel the difference on its cooldown. If you’re casting Thunder Clap and Revenge 25-30 times a minute (a high estimate), and getting ~8 Lightning Strikes per minute (a high guesstimate), this will reduce the average cooldown of Ravager by about 7 seconds. It’s a great concept, but the tuning seems like it’s low enough to not be super noticeable in most situations. This could be off if the proc chance is significantly higher or lower than estimated. We don’t know for certain. In any case, it’s a cool idea that may not actually be that strong in practice—or maybe it’s amazing! We’ll see!
Choice Node: or
: A small boost to your maximum health pool when you need healing. It’s a good bonus. It’s not consistent, and 5 seconds is pretty short. It might need a little buff to really feel like a good defensive bonus, but the idea is good.
: The classic Dwarven saying has been turned into a Hero Talent. It’s a very small defensive bonus that will probably have around 50% uptime. It’s simple, it’s okay, it’s fine. Again, the idea is good, but the tuning is a little unimpressive. It needs a buff in one direction or the other. Either it needs to be stronger or have higher uptime. ~2% DR is not great.
Choice Node: or
: Like the wording in the initial Lightning Strikes talent with respect to Avatar, a 15% increase in the proc rate could be excellent if it boosts the base chance from 10% to 25%. That would be amazing! If this talent boosts the proc rate from 10% to 11.5%, it’s not great. Tuning notwithstanding, boosting the proc rate of Lightning Strike is a great concept. So many talents in this tree scale directly with the Lightning Strike proc rate, and this has the potential to juice all of them.
: Lightning Strike procs grant 3 Rage, and Revenge and Execute both deal 15% more damage at all times. This is a really, really hard bonus to beat. It gives you Rage and damage! That’s everything you want!
This is another talent that benefits from increases to the Lightning Strike proc rate. It has a pretty strong impact on your rotation, granting you three back-to-back-to-back Shield Slams. This is reminiscent of the Antorus Protection Warrior tier set bonus, which gave you the ability to chain-cast Shield Slam during Battle Cry. That tier set was amazing, it was one of the most fun bonuses Protection Warriors have ever had. Getting an altered version of that as a random proc is pretty awesome!
This adds even more burst AoE damage onto casting Avatar, and it gives you a small chance to get a free 4-second Avatar proc whenever you trigger a Lightning Strike. The proc duration is pretty brief given the low chance (you might get less than one proc per minute, so 4 seconds is really short in comparison), but the idea is very good. More AoE damage is great, more cooldown uptime is great. This is what Protection Warriors want. The tuning may need some work once players get a chance to test this, but the design rules.
It’s a really fitting capstone to this tree, and it really ties everything together nicely.
Potential Downsides
The downsides of this tree are the amount of group utility it provides (none), and its direct defensive value (minor).
That isn’t necessarily a deal-breaker, but Protection Warriors are already an off-meta spec because they are massively overshadowed by other tanks’ group utility (Protection Paladin) or personal survival (Blood DK). Both of those two classes have gotten even more of the things that make them great. That’s good for them! It makes them even stronger in the ways that they are already better than Protection Warrior, and the Mountain Thane tree isn’t doing anything to fix that imbalance.
It doesn’t have to, and thematically, it probably shouldn’t. The theme of this tree is good. The design is good. Fixing Warrior’s problems elsewhere is the right approach. Whether that comes in the form of destroying the Evil Debuff Matrix entirely or making changes to the class talent tree, we’ll just have to wait and see.
Now Thane I Can Get Into!
This Hero Talent tree has a lot of great things going for it. It adds damage, which is always a crowd-pleaser!
Additionally, the tree adds more juice onto Thunder Clap and Avatar, which are fan favorites among Protection Warriors. There are a couple of uncertainties, such as proc rates and damage values, and those will need to be tested in order to determine this tree’s competitiveness in high-end play. Regardless of how that shakes out, the design is very appealing!
adds a small chunk of burst single-target damage and Rage generation, adds bursts of AoE damage, and adds more burst damage and cooldown uptime. There’s a lot of synergy between talents, and a really good flow between triggering and consuming the various procs with Shield Slam, Thunder Clap, and Revenge. It keeps Protection Warrior’s base rotation tight, compact, and reactive, which helps reinforce the best aspects of Protection Warrior’s existing playstyle.
The Mountain Thane tree has everything Protection Warriors want!
Lightning Strikes
Damaging enemies with Thunder Clap, Revenge, Raging Blow, or Execute has a 10% chance to also strike one with a lightning bolt, dealing moderate Nature damage. Lightning Strikes occur 50% more often during Avatar.Call of Thunder
The Stormstrike damage or Nature damage your abilities deal is increased by 5%. Stormstrike damage ignores Armor. Thunder Clap damage increased by 50%.Ground Current
Lightning Strikes also deal low amounts of Nature damage to enemies near their target. Damage reduced beyond 5 targets.Strength of the Mountain
Shield Slam damage increased by 20%. Bloodthirst and Rampage damage increased by 10%.Thunder Blast
Shield Slam and Bloodthirst have a 20% chance to grant you Thunder Blast, stacking up to 2 charges. Thunder Blast causes your next Thunder Clap to become a Thunder Blast that deals Stormstrike damage.Storm Bolts
Storm Bolt also hits 1 additional nearby target, stunning them for 2 seconds.Storm Shield
Intervening a target grants them a shield for 5 seconds that absorbs magic damage equal to 3 times your Armor.Flashing Skies
Chance for Lightning Strikes to critically strike is increased by 5% and their critical strike damage is increased by 10%.Valarjar Training
Lightning Strikes reduce the cooldown of Ravager by 0.5 second.Steadfast as the Peaks
Victory Rush increases your maximum health by 10% for 5 seconds.Keep Your Feet on the Ground
Thunder Blast reduces damage you take by 4% for 5 seconds.Gathering Clouds
Your attacks trigger Lightning Strikes 15% more often.Thorim’s Might
Lightning Strikes generate 3 Rage. Revenge, Raging Blow, and Execute damage increased by 15%.Burst of Power
Lightning Strikes have a 20% chance to make your next 2 Shield Slams or Bloodthirsts have no cooldown.Avatar of the Storm
Casting Avatar grants you 2 charges of Thunder Blast and resets the cooldown of Thunder Clap. While Avatar is not active, Lightning Strikes have a 10% chance to grant you Avatar for 4 seconds.
About the Author
This guide was written by Llarold! I’ve been tanking since Vanilla. During Mists of Pandaria, I saw an opportunity to begin writing guides, and I took it with the hopes of making myself a better tank and making the community into better tanks with me. I hope it’s working!
I am active in all of the tank class Discords but primarily contribute to theorycrafting discussions in Peak of Serenity and Skyhold (Monk and Warrior). I’m active on Twitter, where I mostly talk WoW (and basketball), and I’m half of the team responsible for the YouTube channel WoW at Night, which focuses primarily on tank guides and previews.
