[2022] Feedback: Warriors

Please use this thread to post feedback on the Warrior class, once you’ve tested it in the Dragonflight Alpha.

Thank you!

We feel that all three Warrior specializations have excellent foundations for both their class fantasies and with regard to how fun their rotations are to play. So, our goal for the class in Dragonflight has been to evolve and enhance each specialization rather than to revolutionize or rebuild them.

We’re trying to strike a balance between existing things you know and love, exciting new talents and greatest hits from that past such as Blood and Thunder, Odyn’s Fury and Cold Steel, Hot Blood.

With this in mind, players should expect core rotations to feel comfortable and familiar but with a much wider variety of choice in terms of which elements they can enhance. In addition to this we’re also attempting to build in support to enable players to experiment with more varied playstyles if they desire, such as the Arms being able to heavily investing in damage over time abilities and Fury being able to double down on auto attacks.

We are excited for Warriors to be joining the Dragonflight Alpha look forward to hearing your feedback!

Known Issues

• Some talent overrides are not working correctly, and you are able to use both spells (E.G. Annihilator doesn’t replace Raging Blow).
• Some talent dependencies and combinations are not working correctly. (E.G. Combining Titanic Throw and Improved Heroic Throw doesn’t apply Deep Wounds to all affected targets)
• Stances are currently a work in progress and undergoing internal iteration. A large part of their goal is to guide the fantasy of each spec but mechanically, the goal for these is not to encourage frantic stance shifting. But rather switching at certain major points in an encounter, such as For DPS Warriors during a painful AOE damage phase, or for Protection Warrior that are off tanking they may temporarily switch to deal more damage.
• A handful of talents will be getting a choice-node option in a later Alpha build (E.G. Rumbling Earth and Thunderous Aftershocks).
• Fury has some issues with Execute related to the new player experience that causes you to have both the Arms and Fury versions of Execute (players should use the variant that attacks with both Weapons).
• Multi Rank nodes are not always awarding full values.
• We’re still working on the background art for the Fury talent tree, it will be added in a later build.

Now that this new talent system is being tested, we have some brief thoughts for you all.

Beyond the mid-point of the class tree, we feel that the left side of the tree is more finalized than the right. We’re working on making these feel equally appealing.

We’re also working on expanding pathing where we can. Due to the way dependencies work, it isn’t always possible to open up choices. Generally speaking, we don’t want to put players in a situation where they choose talents that affect abilities they don’t have.

We’ve seen some strong feelings – both positive and negative – regarding Signet of Ancient Kings. We’re aware of this and iterating on adjustments to it.

Our known issues include:

• The Protection specialization doesn’t suffer a penalty while using Defensive Stance. This will be updated in a future test build.
• Battle-Scared Veteran displays the wrong information. It should be: A damage reduction value of 75% and a duration of 8 seconds.
• Berserker Shout’s tooltip isn’t displaying correctly. This ability replaces Berserker Rage and mimics its functionality. It also breaks Fear for party members within 15 yards.
• Weapon Specialization Talents are damage buffs; they do not enable new functionality. For example, Dual Wield specialization should not allow Arms or Protection Warriors to dual wield. We’ll likely change some names to avoid future confusion.
• Fatality is not intended to Crit. Its damage will be balanced around this.

Thank you for the feedback!

Hello, Warriors. Here are some notes from the class developers.

The arrangement of Warrior talents in the Alpha at this time is a partial implementation towards opening up more options for each specialization. We expect to have the full version of this in the next Alpha build, and once it’s live, we’d love to hear whether you prefer the wider choices or a more streamlined tree like we had in the initial version of the revamped Warrior class tree.

Arms

• We’re happily getting close to the finish with the Arms talent tree. There’s still work to do on individual talents (including a few additions) rather than the tree structure as a whole.

Fury

• Currently the Fury tree is undergoing some iteration and what you’re seeing in the Alpha today, unfortunately, has some key missing placements, connections, and a number of requirements that are not working correctly.
• We’ll also likely make Titan’s grip baseline, as there’s no specific benefits (outside of weapon stats) for picking up this talent in comparison to others in the tree.

Protection

• We’ve been recently focused on the overall class, as we’ve been pleased with Protection and feedback that this talent tree is mostly in a good place. We’ll be looking more at Protection once the other trees are up to the same standard.

We’re feeling pretty satisfied with the class tree structure but are still experimenting with placements and the content of specific talent nodes while taking onboard internal and community feedback.

We’ve seen a new iteration of the class tree each week during the three weeks since the first release of the Warrior tree. In the version going live today there’s the most options due to more pathways and interconnectivity. We’d love to hear from you if you prefer this, or the more streamlined simple tree with obvious pathways that released initially.

We want to spend a little more time with stances to try to achieve a version where each feel useful and desirable for different reasons, but we have had a fallback plan since embarking down this path of having an offensive and defensive stance. Fury and Arms would both start at the offensive node and Protection would start at the Defensive node.

• Thunderous Roar – We are working on this and the subsequent talent node, which will be a choice node internally and we hope to update on this soon.
• Signet of Tormented Kings – As above, we’re working internally on this, and we hope to have an update soon. We have ideas but haven’t implemented them yet.
• Shockwave – There has been some feedback about wanting Shockwave to be lower down the tree and easier to obtain. We’re quite confident that if we put it before the 20 points requirement that every Warrior both DPS and Protection would have it. That isn’t our intention, an AOE stun on fairly short cooldown is a powerful ability and we feel there needs to be some opportunity cost to obtain this. We’d like Shockwave’s subsequent node to be a choice so expect a new modifier here in the future.
• Rend - Our intention with the introduction of Rend to the class talent tree was that Arms and Protection would likely often choose it and that Fury would very rarely. We’ve seen higher uptake and reliance on Rend than we’d like so for this week we’ve moved it to the Arms and Protection trees as a test. We’d like to hear your feedback on this change.

There are several very simple nodes on various talent trees, including those of other classes. These serve multiple functions, and we’ll briefly detail some of the reasoning behind their existence.

When looking at the talent trees for a class there’s a huge amount of information to absorb and learn. Beyond that, there’s also many choices for players to make. Having some talents that are simple and obvious in their effect helps to lower the overall complexity and functions as a guide for what abilities and stats are important for each specialization.

However, we’ve heard your feedback about the secondary stat nodes and have been working to make them more interesting. There are some examples of this in the Fury tree this week.

• Warrior Updates
  • Changed some pathing and node positions to encourage more flexible build choices.
  • Spear of Bastion – Should now work correctly outside of the Shadowlands.
  • Elysian Might – Should now work correctly outside of the Shadowlands.
  • Honed Reflexes – Now reduces cooldowns by 1.0 second (was 1.5 seconds) and reduces the cooldown of Raging Blow (was Bloodthirst).
  • New Talent: Menace – Intimidating Shout will knock back all nearby enemies except your primary target and cause them all to cower in fear for 15 seconds (was flee).
  • Crushing Force has been redesigned – Slam deals an additional 30% damage and it has a 10% increased critical strike chance.
  • Concussive Blows – Now reduces the cooldown of Pummel by 1.0 second (was 1.5 seconds).
  • Titanic Throw – Correctly applies deep wounds to all targets when combined with Improved Heroic Throw.
  • Impending Victory – Heals for 30% (was 40%).
  • Thunder Clap – Costs 30 Rage for Arms or Fury (still costs 0 Rage for Protection).
  • Rend – Removed from the class tree.
• Arms

We’re feeling confident in the general structure, but we will likely add some extra talents to the middle of the tree where it feels a little bit sparse.

• Sharpened Blade and Blunt Instruments – As with the simple talents mentioned earlier in this update, having some guidance from talents rather than everything being wide open can be helpful for some of our less knowledgeable players. We’re aware of the polarizing feedback here, but we want to get this in front of more players throughout the Alpha and Beta before we decide if it needs to be removed. If it doesn’t work out as we hope, we’re happy to change it.

We’re looking at changing the Bladestorm subsequent talents into choice nodes to give some more options for players to experiment with.

• Colossus Smash and Warbreaker – We’ve seen some feedback regarding why these are separate talents and require an investment of two talent points. 30% increased damage with the option to apply to multiple targets on a fairly short cooldown is a massive effect. It is worth far more than the average talent, especially for those located before the level 20 gate and we feel it is fair to be split into separate components as it currently is in the live game.

There are quite a lot of survivability options and improvements for Warriors in the class tree, but each DPS spec has historically had a major cooldown. For Arms it is Die by the Sword, so you are now purposely forced into pathing through it and one of its subsequent nodes in order to ensure you have a minimum of some survivability.

• Arms Updates
  • Changed some pathing and the position of some nodes so that players are much more likely to take some healing/utility nodes.
  • Warbreaker – No longer incorrectly replaces Execute and does not require 20 talent points to unlock.
  • Storm of Swords – No longer incorrectly requires 20 talent points to unlock.
  • Fracture – Now causes Rend, Deep Wounds and Thunderous Roar’s Bleed effects to instantly expire and deal all remaining damage over time.
  • Skullsplitter – Cooldown increased to 30 seconds (was 21 seconds).
  • Bloodletting – Also increases the critical strike chance of bleed effects by 10%.
  • Die by the Sword – Should now correctly cost a talent point.
  • Bloodborne – Now 2 ranks and each rank increases the damage of Deep Wounds, Rend and Thunderous Roar’s Bleed effects by 10%.
  • Barbaric Training – Removed from the talent tree.
  • Skull Banner – Should now correctly cost a talent point.
  • Deadly Calm – Removed from the tree for now, iterating on a better version that will be more desired by players.
  • Fueled by Violence – Increased heal amount to 50% (was 30%).
  • Reaping Swings – Lowers the cooldown of Cleave by 3 seconds (was 2 seconds).
  • New Talent: Storm Wall – Whenever you Parry, you heal for 10% of your maximum health.
  • Rend – Added to the Arms tree.
  • Exploit the Weakness now increases Tacticians’ chance to trigger by 1.6% (was 2.6%).
• Fury
  We’re doing something fairly experimental with Single-Minded Fury. We’re unsure if it will work out as intended, but we feel it there’s an important issue to try and address here. For a good deal of time there has been a consistent complaint that some players cannot continue to play Fury due to the intense nature of it. Our goal with Annihilator and the related talents is to create a sub spec that would provide a lower APM build that would still allow players to have fun, be competitive and feel like a Fury Warrior.

We’ve made Titan’s Grip baseline for various reasons, but primarily because it makes many things much simpler. It will be something players gain as they level up.

As with the Arms tree, you are now forced to take Enraged Regeneration to ensure you have a minimum amount of survivability. A dead Warrior deals no DPS.

Annihilator is intended to work with most of the Raging Blow modifiers (except those related to cooldown and charges), it is currently working with some, and we hope to have this fully functioning and detailed in tooltips by the next Alpha build.

We’re working on the subsequent nodes for Odyn’s Fury and Ravager, these will be choice nodes and we’ll have more to share here in the future.

• Fury Updates
  • Rearranged various talents and created new pathways and choices.
  • Titan’s Grip – Now baseline for all Fury Warriors.
  • Hack and Slash – No longer incorrectly requires 20 talent points.
  • Onslaught – Removed the Enrage requirement to use, cooldown reduced to 14 seconds (was 16 seconds) and Rage generated reduced to 20 (was 25).
  • Pulverize – Now increases Enrage by 1 second and causes Onslaught to Enrage you.
  • Odyn’s Fury – Now generates 20 Rage temporarily. We plan for this this to generate Rage based on the targets hit in a future update.
  • Crushing Blow – Removed the auto charge component.
  • Swift Strikes – Now also causes Raging Blow and Annihilator to generate 1 additional Rage per rank.
  • Critical Thinking – Now also increases the critical strike damage of Raging Blow by 5% per rank.
  • Depths of Insanity – Ranks reduced from 2 to 1 and changed to, Recklessness lasts 5 seconds longer.
  • Ravager – Cooldown increased to 90.0 seconds (was 45.0 seconds) but damage increased to 84% (was 42%) and now correctly awards 10 Rage when dealing damage.
  • Siegebreaker – Duration increased to 12 seconds (was 10 seconds), now generates 15 Rage (was 10) and damage increased to 120% (was 110%).
  • Deafening Crash – Now also increases the critical strike chance of Raging Blow and Annihilator during Siegebreaker by 10%.
  • Slaughtering Strikes – Now correctly costs a talent point and correctly improves all Rampage Strikes when caused by both Raging Blow and Annihilator.
  • Slaughtering Strikes damage bonus reduced to 8% per strike (was 10%).
  • Frenzied Flurry – Reduced to 25% (was 50%) chance to trigger Enrage per rank and auto attack damage bonus reduced to 5% per rank (was 10%).
  • Annihilator – Correctly no longer works with the chain effect of Whirlwind.
  • Raging Armaments – Now correctly costs a talent point.
  • Skull Banner – Now correctly costs a talent point.
  • Vicious Contempt – Now 2 ranks at 20% per rank.
  • Storm of Swords – Whirlwind and Slam have a 6.0 seconds cooldown but deal 100% increased damage and Slam generates 5 Rage.
  • Annihilator – Damage reduced by 15%.
  • Unbridled Ferocity – Now correctly cost a talent point.
  • Deft Experience – Partial implementation and not labeled on the tooltip is that each node is intended to also reduce the cooldown of Bloodthirst by 0.5 seconds.
• Protection
  • Shield Charge – The intention for this ability is that it would be used to charge into packs in dungeons or raids as an opener. Shield Charge isn’t competitive enough currently and we’ll be looking into this. We are toying with the idea of no minimum range so that it can be used at any time and would function more as a shield smash when you’re within a certain distance.

There are some technical complications with Devastator and Devastate that stopped us from merging them as a node for this week, we are likely to either make them a choice node or have Devastate be baseline.

We’re working on subsequent nodes for Ravager and hope to have updates here soon.

• Battle Scared Veteran - We want this to remain powerful so in terms of changes we’re hopefully going to be able to balance this ability around the lockout period. Protection Warriors are performing well in the game currently but more so than some other tanks there’s a low margin for error. Battle Scared Veteran is intended to be a fall back in case you make a mistake.
• Protection Updates
  • Moved the position of a few nodes around to create some different options and added some new pathways.
  • Improved Heroic Throw – Now also increases the damage of Heroic Throw and Titanic throw by 100%.
  • Bloodborne – Now 2 ranks and each rank increases the damage of Deep Wounds, Rend and Thunderous Roar’s Bleed effects by 15%.
  • Spiked Shield – Damage increased by 10%.
  • Rend – Added to the Protection tree.

Today’s Alpha update included substantial changes for Warriors:

• General Developer Notes
  • Warrior has undergone a tuning pass to bring it more in line with the other classes.
  • This week we’ve experimented a bit more with the Warrior class tree, trying to build in more flexibility and choices throughout the middle of the tree. We’d love to hear your thoughts on this comparative to previous weeks.
  • Stances – No update here, still working on some ideas on our end.
  • We’re experimenting with nodes specific to specs within the Warrior class tree. So, for example, War Machine has different values per spec, this gives us better control of balance and grants more tools to enhance what makes each specialization unique.
  • Signet of Tormented Kings - We’ve added four new nodes in place of Signet, two for Arms and two for Fury and Protection will get its own variants in a future update. These are not final but we’re feeling good about the general approach and would like to hear your feedback on these new talents.
  • Added a few placeholder nodes where there will be new choices in the future to give players an idea of what the complete tree will look like.
  • We’ve had a couple of weeks of big updates for Warriors and want to set expectations that next week’s update will be light.
• Class Tree
  • Changed some pathing and node positions to allow for more flexible choices.
  • Cruel Strikes now grants 1.5% Critical Strike chance per rank. This will be changed in a future build.
  • Quick Thinking now grants 1.5% Haste per rank. This will be changed in a future build
  • Reinforced Plates now increases your armor by 15% per rank (was 30% of your Strength).
  • Removed Dauntless Duelist from the talent tree.
  • Frothing Berserker now applies to only Rampage, Mortal Strike, Cleave and Revenge.
  • Overwhelming rage is now 2 ranks that grant 15 max rage each.
  • Crushing Force is now 2 ranks and grants 30% damage and 7.5% crit chance to Slam per rank.
  • Removed Signet of Tormented Kings.
  • New Fury Talent: Memory of a Tormented Berserker – Activating Avatar or Recklessness casts the other at reduced effectiveness. Effects lasts 4 seconds.
  • New Fury Talent: Memory of a Tormented Titan – Activating Avatar or Reckless casts Odyn’s Fury at reduced effectiveness. Effects last 4 seconds.
  • New Fury Talent: Memory of a Tormented Warlord – Activating Avatar or Thunderous Roar casts Recklessness at reduced effectiveness.
  • New Arms Talent: Memory of a Tormented Blademaster – Activating Avatar or Bladestorm the other at reduced effectiveness. Effects last 4 seconds.
  • War Machine is now split into different versions per spec to allow for different values for each.
  • Massacre now adds 5% to execute range rather than 15% for Arms and Protection to allow for more execute modifiers.
  • Massacred now reduces the cooldown of Execute for Fury by 1.5 seconds.
  • Avatar now generates 20 rage.
  • Elysian Might should now correctly work outside of the Shadowlands.
  • Shattering Throw is now a choice node so players can choose between the existing immunity break ability and a lower cooldown variant that is instant but no longer breaks immunities.
  • Honed Reflexes changed to reduce cooldowns by 0.5 seconds rather than 1 second.
  • Two-Handed Weapon Specialization now grants 5% increased damage (was 10%).
  • Dual Wield Specialization now grants 5% increased damage (was 10%).
  • One-Handed Weapon Specialization now grants 5% increased damage (was 10%).
  • Armored to the Teeth now grants Strength equal to 3.5% of your Armor.
  • Furious Blows has been redesigned to now give 5% auto attack speed.
• Arms Developer Notes
  • We did a lot of work this week on rage generation, we want this to feel a bit different that it does in the current live game, we generally don’t want you to feel rage starved but we also don’t want you to be overflowing with it. So, we’ve taken steps to ramp down how much rage you are obtaining while still trying to allow you to use your abilities when you want and need.
  • We’re still planning to put some more time into the central branch of the tree which is still a bit sparse.
  • We’ve also added some placeholder nodes to the Bladestorm choices to give players an idea of what’s to come.
• Arms
  • Mortal Strike damage reduced to 174% of attack power to allow for talents modifying it (was 194%).
  • Sharpened Blades now deals 10% increased critical damage and increases Execute’s chance to crit by 5%.
  • Sharpened Blades now only effects the critical damage of Mortal Strike and Execute.
  • Impale now grants 7.5% increased critical damage per rank instead of 10%.
  • Exploit the Weakness modifies Tactician by 1% (was 1.6%).
  • Battlelord – Rage reduction changed to 10 (was 15) and now a 30% chance to reset Mortal Strike.
  • Lowered the chance for Bloodsurge to trigger to 10% (was 25%).
  • Bloodborne now grants 7.5% increased bleed damage per rank.
  • Bloodletting now increases the duration of your bleeds by 3 seconds and increases critical strike chance of bleeds by 5%.
  • Sudden Death procs are no longer free and now cost rage.
  • Chance to trigger Sudden Death reduced slightly.
  • Overpower reduced to 97% of attack power to allow for talents modifying it (was 117%).
  • Dreadnaught damage reduced to 31% of attack power (was 46%).
  • Execute’s damage has been reduced to 132% attack power to allow for talents that improve it (was 170%).
  • Rend reduced to 115% of attack power to allow for talents that improve it (was 133%).
  • Deft Experience – Now increases Mastery by 1.5% and also increases the damage of Rend’s initial strike by 50% per rank.
  • Valor in Victory – Increases Versatility by 1.5% and now reduces the cooldown of Die by the Sword by 15 seconds per rank.
  • Critical Thinking – Now increases critical strike chance by 1.5% and now also increases the critical strike damage of Whirlwind and Cleave by 10% per rank.
• Fury Developer Notes
  • As a result of our tuning pass using two-handed and one-handed weapon builds should now have more similar damage numbers.
  • We’re not happy with Cadence of Fujieda as it is sharing a very similar space with Frenzy and we’re looking at other designs which would probably bring Frenzy back up to four stacks.
  • We’ve also added some placeholder nodes to a few places to give players an idea of what’s to come.
  • We are experimenting internally with the idea of letting the auto attack / Annihilator build not be weapon type specific.
• Fury
  • Added some pathing and moved some nodes to make for more flexible options.
  • Slaughtering Strikes now grants 10% damage per stack for Raging blow and 3% per stack from Annihilator.
  • Deft Experience now gives 1.5% Mastery per rank, and also reduces the cooldown of Bloodthirst by 0.5 seconds per rank.
  • Swift Strikes now grants 1.5% Haste per rank (was 2% per rank).
  • Critical Thinking now grants 1.5% Critical Strike Chance per rank (was 2% per rank).
  • Depths of Insanity now makes Recklessness lasts 4 seconds longer (was 5 seconds).
  • Dual Wield Specialization now grants 5% increased damage (was 10%).
  • Deafening Crash now increases the duration of Siegebreaker by 2 seconds (was 3 seconds) and increases the critical strike chance of Raging Blow by 5% (was 10%).
  • Cruelty is now 2 ranks and grants 10% increased damage and a 15% chance to reset its own cooldown during enrage, per rank.
  • Frenzy now stacks up to 3 times (was 4).
  • Unbridled Ferocity now works correctly with Reckless Abandon.
  • Odyn’s Fury is now correctly improved by various damage modifiers.
  • Ravager cooldown is now correctly 90 seconds.
  • Gushing wound damage increased to 20% of attack power (was 10%).
• Protection Developer Notes
  • We’ll be putting more focus on the Protection tree in the coming weeks, so for now there aren’t large changes in this week’s build.
  • We’re looking at doing a tuning pass for Protection in the future both in terms of survivability and DPS output.
• Protection
  • Battle-Scared Veterans are no longer scared. They are now Battle-Scarred, as it should be!
  • Ravager cooldown is now correctly 90 seconds.
  • Increased damage of Shield Charge to 275% of attack power (was 200%) and increased the area of effect damage to 110% of attack power (was 50%).
  • Fixed another issue causing Seismic Reverberation to trigger many Revenge casts.

This week we have a fair number of bug fixes as we start to get to a point where the class tree is mostly complete.

We’ve customized a few talents to be more spec specific, so they are clearer and more useful in their intention, such as Honed Reflexes, Barbaric Training, and Crushing Force.

We’ve heard your feedback regarding Massacre and Sudden Death, so we’ve reverted these changes and made adjustments elsewhere to ensure DPS is still in line with intentions. Massacre is now located on the spec tree for Arms and Protection where there’s a higher opportunity cost per talent point with regards to damage throughput that in the class tree.

We have some work to do on the nodes beyond the 20-point gate still, specifically related to Shockwave, Spear of Bastion, and Thunderous Roar.

We’re also looking at customizing a few more talents based on your spec to make them clearer in their function and purpose for each spec.

• Class Tree
  • Removed the lockout period from Concussive Blows.
  • Fixed the various Tormented memories procing themselves and granting extra durations. They should all be working as intended now.
  • Weapon specialization nodes now only appear relevant to their related specialization (e.g. Two-Handed Specialization only appears on the Arms version of the class tree).
  • New Protection Talent Variant: Crushing Force – Shield Slam deals and additional 5% damage and deals 5% increased critical strike damage per rank.
  • New Talent: Barbaric Training (Arms Variant) – Slam and Whirlwind now deal 40% more damage but now cost 5 more rage.
  • New Talent: Barbaric Training (Fury Variant) – Slam and Whirlwind damage increased by 20% and their critical strike damage is also increased by 10%.
  • New Talent: Barbaric Training (Protection Variant) – Revenge deals 40% more damage but now costs 10 more rage.
  • Rumbling Earth now also increases the range of Shockwave by 6 yards.
  • New Talent: Sonic Boom – Shockwave deals 350% increased damage and will always deal critical strike damage.
  • New Arms Talent Variant: Honed Reflexes – Cooldown of Overpower reduced by 1 second and cooldown of Pummel reduced by 0.5 seconds.
  • New Fury Talent Variant: Honed Reflexes – Cooldown of Raging Blow reduced by 1 second and cooldown of Pummel reduced by 0.5 seconds.
  • New Protection Talent Variant: Honed Reflexes – Cooldown of Shield Slam and Pummel reduced by 1 second.
  • For Arms and Protection specializations Massacre and Sudden Death have switched places between the class and spec trees and increases the execute threshold up to 35% again.
  • Sudden Death procs per minute is now 1.7 (was 1.5).
  • Sudden Death should now refund rage again.
  • Quick Thinking – Now also increases your auto-attack speed by 2.5% per rank.
  • Cruel Strikes – Now also grants an 2.5% critical damage per rank for Overpower, Raging Blow, and Revenge respective to the relevant specialization.
  • Arms and Protection Execute damage reduced by 5%.
  • Spear of Bastion cooldown increased by 50% but instant damage also increased by 50%.
  • Thunderous Roar Damage no longer has a hidden undocumented crit damage bonus.
  • Thunderous Roar now ticks every 2 seconds (was 3 seconds) and has a duration of 8 seconds (was 9 seconds). It now also deals a total of 160% attack power (was 135% across its duration).
  • Thunderous Aftershocks has been redesigned and renamed: Thunderous Words – Now increases the duration of Dragon Roar’s Bleed effect by 4 seconds and increases the damage of your bleed effects by 20%.
• Arms Developer Notes
  • Generally happy with where Arms is at, moving forward changes are likely to be small and/or tuning based.
  • Fixed various bugs and triggers so more things should be working correctly in conjunction with each other.
  • We’ve added some extra nodes to try and allow Bladestorm to feel more useful in various situations.
  • The left side of the tree had too many 2-point nodes, so we’ve reduced this to allow for more choices.
• Arms
  • New Talent: Gathering Storm – While Bladestorming every 1 second you gain 5% movement speed and 5% Strength, stacking. Lasts 6 seconds.
  • New Talent: Dance of Death – If your Bladestorm kills an enemy your next Bladestorm lasts 3 seconds longer.
  • Unhinged now correctly triggers outside of the Shadowlands.
  • Unhinged, Gathering Storm, and Merciless Bonegrinder now trigger correctly from various Whirlwind sources.
  • Impale is now 1 point and grants 10% increased critical damage (was 7.5% per point).
  • Critical Thinking now grants 2.5% Execute critical damage per rank instead of Cleave and Whirlwind.
  • Juggernaut now lasts 12 seconds (was 8 seconds).
  • Fatality should now always hit unless the target is immune or due to specific encounter mechanics.
  • Bloodsurge chance to trigger increased to 20% (was 10%).
  • Bloodletting now causes your Bleed effects to last for 6 seconds long.
  • Removed Weapon requirements from Sharpened Blades and Concussive Blows.
  • Concussive Blows now correctly effects the damage dealt by Warbreaker.
  • Concussive Blows now correctly increases the duration of the Colossus Smash effect by 3 seconds, and Warbreaker gain and additional 20% damage.
• Fury Developer Notes
  • Generally happy with where Fury is and do not expect to make large scale changes in the future. As with Arms, changes are likely to be small/or tuning based.
  • As stated previously, we’re looking at if Annihilator can work for multiple weapon types and if we can open this playstyle up for everyone.
  • Working internally on Odyn’s Fury subsequent nodes and expect to have them functioning shortly.
• Fury
  • Maximum Frenzy stacks increased to 4 (was 3).
  • Cadence of Fujieda has been redesigned – Now increases your auto attack speed by 5% per stack instead of your Haste and stacks up to four times.
  • As a Fury Warrior if you do not have improved Whirlwind, Whirlwind should now correctly cost 30 Rage.
  • New Talent: Gathering Storm – While Ravager is active, every 1 second you gain 5% movement speed and 5% Strength, stacking. Lasts 6 seconds.
  • Deft Experience decreases the cooldown of Bloodthirst by 0.75 seconds per rank (was 0.5 seconds).
• Protection Developer Notes
  • As we wind down attention and focus on Arms and Fury, we’re now putting more focus on Protection internally. Protection will undergo a tuning pass similar to Arms and Fury soon.
• Protection
  • Fixed another issue with Seismic Reverberation and Revenge, hopefully the last one!
  • Bloodsurge chance to trigger increased to 20% (was 10%).

Hello, Warriors.

This week we’ve mostly been fixing errors and tweaking things for the Class, Arms and Fury trees. We’re happy with where these are at and don’t intend to make any large changes moving forward. Arms and Fury and the various options within seem to be preforming well and people are enjoying them, we’ll be monitoring feedback and tuning things where needed.

We’ve focused more on the Protection tree this week and provide more details on this below.

Class Tree

• Bitter Immunity – Once again more easily available, but now no longer clears Bleeds.
• Reinforced Plates – The armor values should now be correctly calculated.
• Battle Stance – Now reduces the effects of Root and Snares by 10% (was 15%).
• Berserker Stance – Now reduced the effects of incapacitating effects by 10% (was 15%).
• Inspiring Presence – Tooltip updated to make its effect clearer.
• Spear of Bastion – Now grants 20 Rage (was 25).
• Elysian Might – Now extends the duration of Spear of Bastion by 2 seconds (was 4 seconds).
• Piercing Verdict – Damage and Rage bonus increased to 50% (was 30%).
• Endurance Training: Fury – Now increases Stamina by 5% and reduces the duration of moment impairing effects on you by 10%.
• Endurance Training: Arms and Protection – Now increases Stamina by 5% and reduces the duration of Fear, Sap and Incapacitate effects on you by 10%.
• Thunderous Roar – Now deals damage in a 12 yard radius (was a frontal cone) and also generates 10 Rage.
• Shockwave – Now generates 10 Rage.
• Avatar – Now grants 15 Rage (was 20).
• Crushing Force: Protection – Tooltip should now correctly update granting 5% increased critical damage per rank.
• Barbaric Training: Protection – Revenge damage reduced to 30% (was 40%).

Arms

• Stormwall – Now has a lockout period of 1 second.
• Dance of Death – Clarified tooltip to make it clear you are not required to get the killing blow.
• Exploiter – No longer effects Cleave, the synergy here was odd and didn’t work in practice.
• Fracture – Updated tooltip to not reference Thunderous Roar.
• Bloodborne – No longer increased the damage of Rend’s initial strike.
• Exploit the Weakness – Removed from the talent tree.
• Deft Experience – Now grants 1% Mastery and increases Tactician’s chance to trigger by 0.5% per rank.
• Rend – The initial strike of Rend’s damage has been increased to 64% damage (was 32%).
• Massacre – Updated Massacre visuals.

Fury

• Annihilator – Now generates 2 Rage per attacks.
• Dancing Blades – Now triggers from procs correctly.
• Annihilator – Can now be used with 2-handed weapons.
• Rampage – Damage reduced to 206% (was 227%).
• Hack and Slash – Was incorrectly triggering on every Rampage strike instead of casting Rampage. We like this functionality, so now Hack and Slash has a 20% chance with each Rampage strike to refund a charge of Raging Blow.
• Storm of Steel – Now causes Ravager to generate 15 Rage per hit (was 10).
• Critical Thinking – Now grants 1% critical strike chance per rank (was 1.5%) and the tooltip now correctly states that it affects Annihilator.
• Annihilator, Slam, Thunderous Roar, Shockwave, and Odyn’s Fury should now gain extra Rage benefit from Recklessness.
• Massacre – Updated Massacre visuals.
• Wrath and Fury – Now increases Raging Blow’s damage by 10% (was 5%).
• Slaugthering Strikes – Auras now display correctly for both Raging Blow and Annihilator, and it can now be triggered via Crushing Blow.
• Bloodcraze – Can now be triggered via Bloodbath.

Protection Developer Notes

• We’ve started to put more focus on the Protection tree this week and you’ll see a large update next week also.
• We’re very happy with how Protection Warriors are playing, but they have been overperforming both in terms of survivability and damage, so we’ve made some tweaks to bring them more in line with the other tanking classes.
• We don’t intend to make large structural changes to Protection Warrior’s trees, our goals for the next week are mainly around bug fixing, tuning and to make the bottom left and right sides of the tree more appealing.
• We’ve made some changes to the baseline Vanguard ability to account for the large amount of survivability bonuses available in the talent tree.

Protection

• Deep Wounds – Should now trigger Bloodsurge correctly.
• Titanic Throw – Fixed an issue causing Titanic Throw to get the 100% bonus from Improved Heroic Throw twice.
• Heroic / Titanic Throw – Now has a 3 second cooldown.
• Auto-attack damage reduced by 20%.
• Brace for Impact – Aura tooltip should now correctly reference Shield Slam. Now increases Shield Slams damage by 5% per stack (was 10%), but lasts for 15 seconds (was 9 seconds).
• Spiked Shield – Now causes high threat.
• New Talent: Dance of Death – If your Ravager helps kill an enemy your next Ravager lasts 2 seconds and deals 20% increased damage.
• Champion’s Bulwark – Should now add to existing Shield Block durations.
• Juggernaut – Has a maximum of 10 stacks for Protection specialization but last 20 seconds.
• Massacre – Updated Massacre visuals.
• Enduring Alacrity – Now grants 1% Haste per rank (was 2%).
• Focused Vigor – Now grants 1% critical chance per rank (was 2%).
• Vanguard – Increases your Stamina by 30% (was 45%), increases your Strength by 70% of your armor value (was 100%), and reduces damage you take by 5% (was 15%).
• Revenge – Damage reduced to 53% (was 63%).
• Shield Slam – Damage reduced to 80% (was 85%).
• Punish – Shield Slam deals 10% increased damage (was 20%).
• Best Served Cold – Revenge damage is now 10% (was 20%) and 30% when free (was 50%).
• Unnerving Focus – Now grants 50% rage generation (was 60%).
• Show of Force – Thunder Clap damage is now 20% (was 25%).
• Booming Voice – Now generates 30 Rage (was 40).
• Rend – Initial damage reduced to 32% (was 64%) and periodic damage reduced to 17% (was 23%).
• Execute – Damage reduced by 8%.
• Shield Charge no longer has a minimum range.

In this thread, we’ll be testing and talking about Warriors in The War Within. Look here for posts from the development team as adjustments and bugfixes are made throughout the testing period.

Please note that off-topic or inappropriate posts will be strictly removed.

The War Within Beta

All classes’ Hero Talent trees are available for testing. Please keep in mind that this is a Beta environment:

• There may be UI elements on the talent panel that are placeholder, including things like talent icons, text, or final UI art.
• Some talents may not be functioning yet, or may be marked as not yet implemented (NYI).
• Some new spell visuals and audio may still be a work in progress.
• There are some talents that are not fully tuned yet. This is expected, and we will implement tuning adjustments throughout testing.

The combat design team has two big areas of focus at this time:

• Finish work on changes to talents, especially wherever Hero Talents still need adjustments.
• Fix bugs that are blocking testing of new talents.

Working from Feedback

Alpha feedback thus far has been of great benefit to us.

Now that we are entering Beta, our focus on Hero Talent trees is shifting away from reworks and design changes and towards tuning and refining. We want to thank you so much for all the forum posts, videos, and discussions all over the internet. Your feedback and impressions have been invaluable for bringing their identities to life and making them fit into what you love about the classes you play.

We are looking forward to hearing from more of you as you get a chance to try Hero Talents for yourself. We are specifically interested in feedback or impressions on these topics:

• Hero Talents that you feel are “required” for your spec in a type of content, such as raiding or Mythic+, or that push you towards picking a specific tree. This could be due to damage profile, utility, defensives, or something else.
• Hero Talent trees that you feel are either too strong or too weak in power level compared to other options.
• Hero Talents whose functionality is confusing, unclear, or difficult to track during gameplay.
• Hero Talent choice nodes that you feel could offer more meaningful choices.

Again, Thank You

Feedback throughout the Alpha test was highly impactful on our design of the game, and we look forward to refining every class with you in the Beta. Thank you!

– The World of Warcraft Combat Design Team

We have a significant update for Protection Warriors coming in today’s new Beta build.

Please read all about our overall philosophy here:

Protection Warrior

Warriors are the strongest tank against physical damage, though they can be vulnerable to magic or periodic damage. In this round of changes, we’re increasing their damage taken across the board by reducing the power of Defensive Stance. Warriors also have some strong heals that scale with their maximum health, like Indomitable and Impending Victory, so we are reducing the power of those abilities to compensate for the 60% increase to Stamina.

• Pain and Gain now heals for 2% of your max health (was 3.5%).
• Impending Victory heals you for 20% of your maximum health (was 30%).
• Defensive Stance reduces damage taken by 16% (was 20%).
• Fight Through the Flames causes Defensive Stance to reduce magic damage you take by 6% (was 5%).
• Into the Fray increases haste up to 8% (was 10%).
• Punish reduces damage enemies deal to you by 2% (was 3%).
• Enduring Alacrity increases Stamina and Armor by 8% (was 10%).
• Indomitable increases your maximum health by 6% (was 10%) and heals you for 1% of your maximum health per 20 Rage spent (was 10 rage).
• Defender’s Aegis reduces Shield Wall’s cooldown by 60 seconds (was 30 seconds).
• Impenetrable Wall causes Shield Slam to generate an additional 4 Rage (was 3) and reduces the remaining cooldown of Shield Wall by 6 seconds (was 5 seconds).
• Disrupting Shout cooldown increased to 90 seconds (was 75 seconds).

We’d like to call your attention to adjustments we’re making in the next Beta build.

• WARRIOR
  • Shield Slam damage increased by 8%.
  • Hero Talents
    • Colossus (Protection/Arms)
      • Tide of Battle increases the damage of Revenge by 10% per stack (was 5%).
      • Practiced Strikes increases damage done by Mortal Strike by 15% (was 20%).
      • Mountain of Muscle and Scars increases all damage done by 4% (was 5%).
      • Protection
        • Dominance of the Colossus increases damage dealt to targets by up to 20% (was 10%).
    • Mountain Thane (Protection/Fury)
      • Thunder Blast damage reduced by 5%.
      • Lightning Strike damage increased by 30%.
      • Ground Current damage reduced by 25%.
    • Slayer (Fury/Arms)
      • Slayer’s Strike damage increased by 100%
      • Marked for Execution increases Execute damage by 15% per stack (was 10%).
      • Show No Mercy increases Execute critical strike chance and critical strike damage by 15% (was 10%).
      • Overwhelming Blades’ Overwhelmed now stacks up to 12 times (was 10).
      • Fierce Followthrough increases next Mortal Strike and Bloodthirst damage by 20% (was 10%).
      • Opportunist increases the critical strike chance and critical strike damage of Overpower and Raging Blow by 30% (was 10% and 15% respectively).
      • Slayer’s Malice increases the damage dealt by Overpower and Raging Blow by 30% (was 20%).
  • Arms
    • Mortal Strike damage decreased by 15%.
    • Overpower damage decreased by 20%.
  • Protection
    • Melee attack and all ability damage increased by 30%.
    • Revenge damage increased by 25%.
    • Execute damage increased by 50%.
    • Devastator damage increased by 25%.
    • Shield Charge primary target damage increased by 25%.
    • Ravager damage increased by 25%.