Greetings. Last night as I was scrolling down my “X” feed , I stumbled upon wowhead news about class changes on Alpha . Here is the wowhead link : Warrior Class Changes and Developer Feedback for The War Within - Talent Tree Rearrangement & Rage Economy Changed - Wowhead News .
Usually reworks occur to offer some quality of life improvements at class on a certain issues that impacts negatively the performance on an aspect of the game without at least not interfering with the rest or in most cases benefit the whole performance of the class and spec. Here are my thoughts about the developer notes. I will try to analyze them step by step.
Its appreciated the fact that Berserker’s Rage with be baseline but problems arise in the class tree structure with making shockwave more accessible .The current class tree seems to be more organized on choosing what are best builds for any content. For example: In my opinion there is no problem picking Endurance Training to advance to Shockwave. The Wild Strike talent node should advance to Thunderous Roar and not the " Cruel Strikes . Currently at PvE u can still pick both so this should happen on the upcoming tree. With the new tree speaking for PvP it is forced to pick critical strike talent which the value of critical is 50% less thus making the critical strike the last priority of stat picking. I will not write down the conveniences the current tree offers but I mention the downsides of the upcoming . There is no clear path of choices. Everything seems to mixed while offering less than the current tree. It’s paradoxical the fact that with more connections some nodes are forced which are not suitable for all content. Also Furious Blows are missing , intentionally thought . It is noticed that Reinforced Plates are nerfed granting 50% less armor which makes warrior more squishy against physical damage without getting anything for compensation . It is said that this talent doesn’t affect the performance on dungeons and raids but in PvP its a nerf . Plate armor value is already reduced by 30% in PvP combat and with the nerf ,mail and plate armor will be homogenized .
About the Rage Arms Economy. I read forums on a nearly daily basis looking the topics I am interested in including the Warrior Class section. I have never seen any post about ovecapping the rage or issues with excessive source management, so no one asked for it on official site. You the developers are not happy with how high is the current Rage Generation but what do players say? . Personally I think the rage amounts generated feel spiky leading to fast dump and then leads to rage starvation that leads to downtime so less DPS otherwise u still stay overcapped . I think the Rage Generation should be refurbished like more consistent rage generation. I don’t agree on removing the rage generation on Thunderous Roar and Bladestorm. War Machine talent could passively generate Rage while in combat like 1 Rage generated per second . We don’t have a clear rotational baseline rage builder ability . It could be Overpower generating 10 Rage. As for auto-attacks being the only resource of Rage Generation , they could generate 20 rage per swing but Arms could have increased attack speed baseline like 10% removing the critical ones generating more Rage. The changes you showed us affect heavily the PvP performance. At PvP combat the excessive amount of rage is spent on Ignore Pain and with less rage generated means less abilities casted leading to overall less damage output and less survivability cause the ability costs of Mortal Strike , Execute are still the same.
For the Warlord’s Torment talent: I think it should stay as it meaning Colossus Smash should proc Recklessness with the reduced effectiveness should be on Rage generation being 50% but full duration and when hitting target below 35% rage generation would go up to 100% so Arms will stay strong at execute phases and not rage starving.
All the rage cost reductions lead to another problem , Tactician procs. With less rage costs , overpower will reset less frequently resulting in less Mortal Strike and Cleave resets and less damage boosts thus meaning less dmg output. It affects more the PvP the main Tactician procs on PvP are Mortal Strike ,Execute and Rend. At PvP Slam is not used as the above abilities mentioned . Arms would have hard time maintaining and spreading the Mortal wounds debuff so less utility in arena. The mind-blowing changes don’t buff Tactician passive or increase the Tactician proc from Deft Experience talent to counter weight the less frequency on procs but instead the chances on both are reduced!
As we procced to the Arms tree the only good parts are the increase in Versatility bonus from 1% to 2% on Valor In Victory talent and the return of Ravager but being a choice node with Bladestorm and In For The Kill duration matches the Colussus Smash duration . The rest tree is straight downgrade of the current one. The key points are the fragmentation of the overpower modifiers .The extra AoE damage from Dreadnaught talent helps on both single and multiple target damage . I see no point on making it a choice node with Strength Of Arms , a modifier that makes overpower more rewarding pressing it. On top of that the extra Rage Generation provided by Strength Of Arms is now a standalone talent with no extra effects. This is a decrease on damage output. . Filling the Arms tree I noticed less connections on the last section. The connection of Valor In Victory with Sharpened Blades and Bloodletting is removed. In order to get Executioner’s Precision and Sharpened Blades in order to try maintaining the number of capstones as Arms has now I must drop Bloodletting or Battlelord and pick Critical Thinking a critical strike talent . Maybe this is neutral for PvE but as I mentioned above critical strike is the least desired stat for Arms at PvP. Deft Experience is always chosen and with the upcoming changes it will be mandatory.
Concluding this is not a rework . Its named rework but in reality is a big nerf on Warrior class . For the first time I say that I lose my immersion as a Warrior . Tactical gameplay is highly rewarding something It isn’t noticed on the upcoming changes. The tactical gameplay on Arms belong at PvP and it is choosing the exact time and the most successful way to strike the right opponent and not managing the poor resources it is going to have. Leave the current Warrior tree and the current Arms tree as they are . Renovate the Rage generation and leave anything else as they are . The Dragonflight tree was the best I have ever played.
Yooo just hopping in here to touch on some of your points.
I would 100% say that rage generation on arms has been a major problem this expac. Especially since they removed the offensive capabilities of ignore pain, which is good, but at the moment it is virtually impossible to dump your rage in cooldowns. I think alot of people who are invested in arms would agree. I also don’t agree that the changes to the arms tree are bad or give less options. Having dreadnaught in there before was just useless at it was mandatory in all content. Now we get our “free” two charges of overpower early in the tree and can after that pick and choose between what role we need overpower to fill.
It seems like you are very much in the PVP side of things but as someone who does more PVE I can tell you that the new class tree is also 100 times better. For pvp maybe it was worth it to pick up endurance training for shockwave but for any pve it felt incredibly bad. Shockwaves placement has been the worst thing about warrior this expac and now with Mountain Thane it had to be moved for sure.
Just some thoughts
Peace
Oh and what does “We don’t have a clear rotational baseline rage builder ability . It could be Overpower generating 10 Rage.”
Overpower is the very clear rotational baseline rage builder? Kind of the only one. Not sure what you meant here…