Fresh Meat Warrior Rune: Constructive feedback

Disclaimer This post does not intended to address the current strength of the Fresh Meat rune. I want to address the game play experience with the current functionality and numbers, as well as provide some suggestions for improvement.


As it is currently implemented on the PTR the flaw, as I see it, stems from the large gap in probability of procing the runes effect the first time you use it on a target, compared to subsequent hits. Whilst this gap in theory can facilitate some interesting gameplay in a multi-target environment, on single target boss fights it makes for a fairly toxic experience, in my opinion.

  • With Bloodthirst being on a 6 second CD, and subsequent procs having a 10% chance to proc, and fights in classic historically being on the shorter end of the spectrum, we can expect fairly extensive variance in the effectiveness of this rune. Given a 2 minute fight, you are looking at an estimated 20, or less, uses of Bloodthirst. 20 uses simply are not enough for this probability to even out. Compare this to the Sudden Death rune, also having a 10% chance to proc, but on every melee hit, the law of large numbers will make Sudden Death considerably more reliable to play with.

  • Now however I get to the real toxic part, albeit a bit more far fetched. Seeing as the first Bloodthirst against a target entirely bypasses this low % proc chance, and Bloodthirst with our current preliminary sims making up less than 10% of our expected damage on a fight. I want to suggest it is currently a DPS gain to be pulling weaker trash mobs into encounters in order to proc Fresh Meat reliably.

  • Do also note that more min-max oriented players will also pull every boss with a mob to use Bloodthirst on last second before pulling the boss. Both this, and the above point, I admit is a choice the players themselves make, however I find the incentive to do it to be a bit too large in the case of this rune, and fear this becoming a common practice.

I am not in the habit of claiming flaws without having concrete improvements in mind, so here are a couple.

  • My first, and preferred improvement, would be to implement a combustion like stacking chance of procing the effect. Every Bloodthirst used increases the chance to proc by an additional %. Resetting down to 10% on successful proc (including guaranteed ones). This would provide a noticeable bad luck protection on the rune, and smooth out the experience of using it, and therefore disincentivize toxic practices to circumvent the problem.

  • Alternatively, one could reduce the % damage modifier on the rune in exchange for a higher baseline procchance on subsequent hits, that way smoothing out probability, and reducing the lost damage on bad luck streaks.

  • As for pre-procing the effect on trash, the only solution I can see would be to wipe the buff on encounter start. This however does not sound very classic like, and might straight up effect too few people to be worth the dev time.


Overall I think this rune has a lot of potential, and could be very fun to with, especially in a multi-target environment, but I do think some tweaking would do the rune a lot of good in single target play.