Warrior changes - Dalamar, any thoughts?

[Ziedrich]

The aggro management asside (yes this is broken and needs fixing) I think warrior changes were actually quite cool.

Intercept - havent trained it yet, i've heard its awesome... in combat charge + stun + dmg... whats not to like?

Retaliation - the melee class attacking you = dead

Whirlwind - havent gotten it yet, doesnt sound so hot.. but maybe usefull in large battles, and definately not a horrible useless skill

Execute - gg the last 20% of anyones hp... and its instant. The flaw of this ability is that it has the potential to do absurd amount of dmg to epic mobs (i.e. 20k+ hp) with people critting around 12k with a full rage bar (yeah, 20% of 20k is 4k... but thats still lots.. and as the hp gets higher, the problem grows), but i'll discuss this at a later date... just focusing on pvp now

So, with those in mind, I think a berserk/fury warrior is now much more deadly. In a big pvp battle, execute basically ensures a killing blow, which activates bloodthirst. This, combined with tapping recklessness right before, can result in a truly massive opening hit. I am not even counting in the effects of death wish, berserker rage, etc. Slam doesnt seem to be as good of a rage dumping skill as it used to be seeing as that 5 points gets you half a second off, dropping the cast time to one second, but it still might be worth it, havent tried. Now, the dmg taken when these abilities are active and when in zerk stance is sizeable, but the dmg output with the changes seems to have balanced it out.

The MS nerf also seems to point to a fury build for the warrior class. As far as dmg output the only things going for battle now are a marginally rage-effective MS, and overpower. Interception works beautifully though.

I dont much play defensively and thus have no basis for my views on a def pvp warrior, but the prot talent changes seem to actually give a warrior who is heavily prot specced a fighting chance in pvp. If pvping with a prot heavy build battle stance might be the way to go, but exploiting the prot talents and switching to def to disarm, revenge, concussion blow, and switching back to battle for the remainder of the fight. Many abilities that benefit from the prot tree can be used in battle stance (sunder armor, shield bash). With increased dmg, the chance to silence, increased absorbtion, interrupting spells and canceling that spell line for 6 seconds... a shield-heavy spec atleast on paper looks very convincing and a good anti-caster tool. HS could be used for dmg purposes, and execute in battle is very 1h friendly with such a large fixed addition on top of the weapon dmg.

If anyone has messed around with either of these builds let me know. My university has been keeping me quite busy, and I find it hard to justify grinding or extensively testing builds before retail with so much homework coming my way. I am curious, however, if either of these two are/seem viable to anyone else. I dont think a pure def stance pvp build will ever truly work merely because of the gimped dmg, but with the addition of the new abilities, the translation of abilities to multiple stances, and the talent revamp, it seems that switching to and from battle stance might be exactly what a prot warrior needs to be effective in pvp. My take on the fury warrior is different, but I also think stacking all those abilities and using them in conjunction could result in some VERY fast killing.

[Rahvin]

Does execute work on PCs as well? cuz if it does it seems kinda like trolls got fuxxed. i mean theyll get slaughtered everytime before they get to use their racial ability which kinda makes it worthless vs warriors

[Ejsu]

Stats on intercept? Rage cost? cooldown? Does it generate any rage?

[Ziedrich]

Yes, execute works on PCs... i dont know of any NPC only attacks in the whole game. I am not sure on the rage cost of intercept... but I think the cooldown is 30 secs... I dont think it generates rage, but again, I havent tried it.

[Ejsu]

Also takes rage to use. Arent rage potions in the game? A warrior can simply drink a rage potion and win most of his battle, if not all with intercept. Which would give them enough to charge in and hamstring.


I guess someone could use a swiftness or invul potion though to counter....

[Indalamar]

Im too pissed about the warrior changes to discuss it right now. But please show your support of getting warriors fixed by going and posting on this thread.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-general&t=548249&p=1&tmp=1#post548249

[Landogarner]

/signed

[Ziedrich]

/signed

But... Dal, if you get unpissed, I am anxious to hear your observations on pvp builds with the new skills/talent changes.

[Ejsu]

I would think that intercept is a big plus for warriors in pvp now. Maybe I am missing something.

[Landogarner]

Dal, that post you made in response to eno, classic. That one with someone calling eno an asswhipe after yours is pretty funny but not very smart.

Usually it's eno owning the kiddies , looks like it's his turn to bend over today.

I hope that kids post doesn't ruin the validity of your post dal. :/

[kernel16]

You cant spam taunt now... anyone here can say it was too easy, so now you have to count on your other forms of taunt such as challengin shout, moking blow and etc and save your normal tautn for the right time also count of off tanks such as druids and maybe another war. Idk so far with my current grp, a shaman, mage, priest, me war and a druid we do prety well with the agro manegement and more fun as well.

But thats me and only a low lev on central 6 and my views on war is completly different from most.

[Indalamar]

WW, Execute and Intercept are all very nice additions. However I have some major problems with the changes to the warrior this patch. I feel that bliz needs to undo everything they did to warriors. The need to put each ability back in its specific stance, take the three new abilities and leave them as Zerker specfic and warriors would finally be complete and perfect in my eyes.

As far as talents go I am still specd almost exactly the same as before. Only small difference. I have 5 cruelty, 5 demoralizing shout, 1 piercing howl, 4 unbriddled wrath, 5 enrage. MS is still the only way to go =*(

[Jinsai]

I think the devs are missing the point here completely. After working on this way of doing things for months on end and having people praise them for it, they are at the last second turning things into the way EQ works. Sure it WORKS, but it is not what the players want, and it doesn't fit into the style of game they have already created. If leave it the way it is now they will have many players, including myself not playing warriors and if they continue to form the game this way, not playing the game itself.

[kernel16]

As far as talents go I am still specd almost exactly the same as before. Only small difference. I have 5 cruelty, 5 demoralizing shout, 1 piercing howl, 4 unbriddled wrath, 5 enrage. MS is still the only way to go =*(

Wha? MS meh ~_~, if there is one thing i hate about wars atm is the MS must... there needs to be an alternative, if not everyone will end up having prety much the same build. Whats with the uber one skill in one tree only for evry class. For this reason i refuse to play a MS spec even if im gimped towards wars... ill see how long ill last.

[Grawk]

WW, Execute and Intercept are all very nice additions. However I have some major problems with the changes to the warrior this patch. I feel that bliz needs to undo everything they did to warriors. The need to put each ability back in its specific stance, take the three new abilities and leave them as Zerker specfic and warriors would finally be complete and perfect in my eyes.

As far as talents go I am still specd almost exactly the same as before. Only small difference. I have 5 cruelty, 5 demoralizing shout, 1 piercing howl, 4 unbriddled wrath, 5 enrage. MS is still the only way to go =*(

in my eyes it seems that it could be very viable to be heavily fury specced, now without inner rage bezerker rage is the best way to gain rage, using imp. zerker rage + imp. intercept will make closing distances a lot easier.

also MS is now only about 15 damage per rage on a non crit with a high end weapon (230 dmg doomsaw) although it seemed to me when using it that it generally did roughly 160% of a regular hit not 220% and now that it is down to 200% i dont think its worth it

HS is at the high end with imp. HS is nearly 11 damage per rage, and you can use it every time you gain 12 rage, rather than having to wait for 30, in which time you could very well be dead when fighting against a hunter etc.

also specc'ing in fury allows you to get flurry and some other really useful talents, and not using MS allows you to dual wield, which with unbridled wrath really helps to generate rage which is now more precious than ever.

keep in mind this is coming from a pure pvp standpoint, pls comment.

[Imrik]

here are my thoughts... i agree with indal on this one. change the skills back to their appropriate stances. If they dont they will need to rework the talent trees as well. I also have some ideas to make skills a little better, for example bloodlust . My idea was that it should be an auto activate on kill, but instead of makeing it 100% crit chance make it like +10%ias and +25-50% to crit chance. Then you arent always getting a critical, but it is still a nice skill to have. The current bloodlust is no better than a lvl 5 remorsless attack in the rouge tree. 5 telent points vs 31? i see a flaw here.

on another note, how are you guys finding the talents? based on my testing i seem to like the tauren. all of his racial talents are geared for a good warrior in my opinion. mostly b/c i still think herbalism/alchemy is the better way to go instead of blacksmithing/mining. Unless the drastically make the higher end items better, and add new plans all the time, it seems like a dead end road, whereas alchemy has limitless posibilities. such as elixer of giants. +20 str stam and increases size. tell me it wouldnt be cool to see an oversized taurn warrior =). the gnomes/dwarves will tremble before the horde. =D

[Ziedrich]

here are my thoughts... i agree with indal on this one. change the skills back to their appropriate stances. If they dont they will need to rework the talent trees as well. I also have some ideas to make skills a little better, for example bloodlust . My idea was that it should be an auto activate on kill, but instead of makeing it 100% crit chance make it like +10%ias and +25-50% to crit chance. Then you arent always getting a critical, but it is still a nice skill to have. The current bloodlust is no better than a lvl 5 remorsless attack in the rouge tree. 5 telent points vs 31? i see a flaw here.

on another note, how are you guys finding the talents? based on my testing i seem to like the tauren. all of his racial talents are geared for a good warrior in my opinion. mostly b/c i still think herbalism/alchemy is the better way to go instead of blacksmithing/mining. Unless the drastically make the higher end items better, and add new plans all the time, it seems like a dead end road, whereas alchemy has limitless posibilities. such as elixer of giants. +20 str stam and increases size. tell me it wouldnt be cool to see an oversized taurn warrior =). the gnomes/dwarves will tremble before the horde. =D

I am just curious... are you in the test at all? It doesnt seem at all like you are just based on the number of errors in your post. I am not trying to give you crap for this, but when making suggestions its probably a good idea to actually know what abilities there are, and how the talent tree is organized. There is no Bloodlust skill in the game. The skill is Bloodthirst, and currently it is +100% dmg to the next strike after you land a killing blow, with no bonus to crit. And they DID rework the talent trees. There is also flurry which activates on a crit strike and increases attack speed. I agree, bloodthirst is lame, and no where near compares to MS as a top of the tree 'uber' ability. The flaw with MS is the same flaw that has always pertained to it... its based off weapon dmg, not DPS. If they calculated it with DPS instead of weapon dmg, it would erase the slow/high weapon dmg problems.

The problem with having many abilities work in multiple stances is that it really takes away from the uniqueness of every stance. I dont think that bringing the abilities back to their initial stances, and moving the new ones to berserk would be the absolute best solution, but at 12 days til the game ships, and the limited ability to balance once the game is released... I think this is the only feasible solution given the timeframe. The MS problem still exists.. and lowering the dmg and upping the rage only makes this skill crapier for lower dmg fast weapons, and keeps it the only option for the high dmg low speed ones. Taking MS out of arms would just make arms a filler tree for fury and prot specs, so it needs to stay in, but be balanced. Recklessness should be at the top of the fury tree, instead of an ability you just... get, same wtih retaliation in the arms tree, although this would just reinforce the arms dominance with MS.

I know everyone posts the 'if i could make the changes' posts... so I might as well do the same. I feel that recklessness and execute should be high end fury abilities... giving fury the alternative to MS that could balance them. Execute as it stands is very powerful, but less so than MS. I would balance MS through dps as said earlier, and grant Execute as the highest fury ability, and with each point put into it, have it activate at a higher hp-left percentage and raise the rage cost. The percentage it should cap at is unknown to me, and the dmg would have to be looked at as it should be now, considering on huge hp mobs exec is way overpowered. I havent tested it on anything epic, but with people critting for 12k with a full rage bar, the only thing capping it is the 20% activation point. Now, with something that has 100k hp... that cap happens at 20k life... and a 12k strike is a bit much (i am not counting armor, etc.. .but it'd stillbe a lot after that)

[Imrik]

did you play in CB?... just curious, b/c if you did then you would have known i was refering to the old style of bloodthirst. my idea was to make the skill better, and i did comment on the current status of that talent by refering it to the rouge talent. I was also saying that the trees need to be reworked, b/c i still dont think they are organized well, not that they hadent changed. i thnk that you inferred a little too much about my post.... you should have just taken it for face value. Maybe you should think about what YOU are writing before you acuse or slam someones thoughts on a subject.

[Ralrra]

the limited ability to balance once the game is released...

There's virtually unlimited ability to balance once the game releases. That's the difference between subscription-based MMO's and other types of games, work continues to go on after release. Every MMO that still exists is STILL balancing/tweaking things, it goes on until the servers are finally shut-down for good.

[Ziedrich]

the limited ability to balance once the game is released...

There's virtually unlimited ability to balance once the game releases. That's the difference between subscription-based MMO's and other types of games, work continues to go on after release. Every MMO that still exists is STILL balancing/tweaking things, it goes on until the servers are finally shut-down for good.

But i am saying they cant make large changes like they have been in beta. Imagine the uproar caused by the latest patch changes to the warrior if people had been playing for 6 months and paying for their characters. All of a sudden their world is turned upside-down and they have to rework their chars... thats what beta is for. This is how you lose subscribers. Adding things to the game is one thing, but completely reorganizing a class is another. Come Nov 23rd, we pay $50-80 upfront and then begin the subscription fee soon after. If they are still reorganizing stuff at that point... I am paying to play a beta, not a finished product, which as a consumer is what I expect. But I agree, they can tweak little things, and I think they made respeccing easy to compensate for this, instead of the long arduous task that they originally described respeccing to be.

Imrik - As I said in my post, I didnt mean my post to be accusatory at all. I was just trying to let you know the current status of things if you WERENT a CB tester, which is what I supposed from the many errors in your post regarding naming, etc. I wasnt demeaning you, just letting you know how things are working, because I know I followed along in the forums, websites, trying to figure things out prior to getting into CB, and assumed you were doing the same, no offense intented.

[Ralrra]

But i am saying they cant make large changes like they have been in beta. Imagine the uproar caused by the latest patch changes to the warrior if people had been playing for 6 months and paying for their characters. All of a sudden their world is turned upside-down and they have to rework their chars... thats what beta is for. This is how you lose subscribers. Adding things to the game is one thing, but completely reorganizing a class is another.

Just out of curiosity, have you ever played an MMO before? Because what you're describing is the exact thing that happens in MMOs. There are still going to wide-sweeping game-altering changes after release. Classes continue to be re-defined, it's an on-going process that's never exactly "finished." Take the druid for example, I wouldn't be suprised if there were some extreme changes to re-org that class after release.

In a way with an MMO you are paying to play a Beta test, because things are continually added/changed. Work is constantly being done, and after every patch, you're essentially beta-testing that content. Yes you'll be a paying subscriber, but you're still doing additional testing on top of what Blizzard's internal team does.

[Imrik]

ok i am cutting you guys off here... too much arguing on stupid things like "shut up foo you didnt even play" accusations. lets get back on topic...... any comments on my tauren herbalism idea?

"on another note, how are you guys finding the talents? based on my testing i seem to like the tauren. all of his racial talents are geared for a good warrior in my opinion. mostly b/c i still think herbalism/alchemy is the better way to go instead of blacksmithing/mining. Unless the drastically make the higher end items better, and add new plans all the time, it seems like a dead end road, whereas alchemy has limitless posibilities. such as elixer of giants. +20 str stam and increases size. tell me it wouldnt be cool to see an oversized taurn warrior =). the gnomes/dwarves will tremble before the horde. =D"

[Ziedrich]

"on another note, how are you guys finding the talents? based on my testing i seem to like the tauren. all of his racial talents are geared for a good warrior in my opinion. mostly b/c i still think herbalism/alchemy is the better way to go instead of blacksmithing/mining. Unless the drastically make the higher end items better, and add new plans all the time, it seems like a dead end road, whereas alchemy has limitless posibilities. such as elixer of giants. +20 str stam and increases size. tell me it wouldnt be cool to see an oversized taurn warrior =). the gnomes/dwarves will tremble before the horde. =D"

Tauren herbalism is a good thought... I dont know if its necessarilly 'superior' to smithing considering I'll be pounding the same potions you will... I'll just be paying for them. Weaponsmithing basically gives you the best weapon (thus far)... which is a good perk. If you plan to play alone without a guild or friends to help out, herbalism is definately viable and will help tons soloing, much more so than smithing/mining. I usually play with the same group of friends, and each of us are planning on doing a different tradeskill to round out the group. So ultimately, I dont think you will end up winning any fights purely based on the fact that you make your potions over someone who keeps themselves well stocked with someone elses potions. Also... really big tauren...though cool looking = really easy to target = really dead. I see a huge guy amidst a bunch of normal size guys... thats the first one i'd target if i was a mage and needed something to nuke.