I’ll preface this post by stating that I’ve been maining Fury since 2004, aside from a forced stint as Prot during the great ‘Head-Hunters guild’ tank shortage of 2006. I have to say that in its current form I’m pretty disheartened for a number of reasons. All of the following are my opinions, take it or leave it, I’m merely speaking my mind.
Firstly, the class tree. It’s bloated with throughput nodes that are not compelling, most of them are ‘must takes’ given the poor performance of DPS. The ‘extras’ that ideally should be fun to take or mess around with such as, Rumbling Earth, Berserker Shout, Menace etc… are actually interesting, and I could quite see myself taking some of these for specific dungeons and situations. That is if I didn’t have to spend every damned point in the aforementioned throughput nodes. Doubly so with Thane given that we have to take Thunderclap futher limiting choice. So let me be explicit to the developers here, much of the throughput COULD BE BAKED INTO BASELINE warriors. Come on devs, this is not exactly hard to fathom. Unless the issue lies with coming up with new or interesting utility or more options for existing abilities that change up their use or reward well placed use.
Whichever way I look at it I feel that there has been a huge dearth of creativity and love for warriors over the past three expansions. This to me suggests a number of potential motivations here. Either you are entirely contemptuous of the Warrior class in so far as you genuinely don’t care, or you don’t see there are glaring and anachronistic design issues (given the constant feedback from the community I think most people would be hard pushed to believe this). Maybe you have little idea as to how to go about being creative with regard to the class. Or perhaps you’re scared of creating a monster and ending up with the conundrum of previous warrior scaling. I’d argue that since such heavy-handed rage and weapon normalisation this is a vestigial unfounded concern circa 2008.
How can it possibly stand that on one hand you have Shaman, DK’s, Mages or Paladins that seem to have a fully formed toolkit and are performing substantially, and on the other hand you have Warriors (Prot at this point notwithstanding, although given development history I’m sure this will be subject to change, and not for the better) with clunky limitations and no real iteration of the class for what seems a long old time. How does this possibly pass muster?
Much as I love some of the aspects of burstiness for Fury, after all, it’s good to have a profile that has a corner it can fight. But after a while it seems to feel very much like a one trick pony. Think carefully about where to blow burst, send it, wait 1:30 for it to come back and all the while DPS has fallen off a cliff.
Wash, wince, repeat.
Clearly any one class cannot be max Zug Zug at every moment, I don’t think anyone is asking for that. But why such stark disparity? It has never felt so weak outside of Avatar and associated cooldowns as it does now, either in M+ or Raiding.
So, I ask you, in the words of Illidan Stormrage, ‘Is this all the Fury you can muster?”
Whatever happened to the raging berserker? It feels more like the asthmatic berserker. Needing to have a bit of a rest, a breather and a puff on the old inhaler after shouting and spinning for a few seconds. The soft-cap I can live with. The lack of utility I can just about bear, but why do you feel the need to give us such a limited and ever diminishing niche of a damage profile? Whether it is the best simmed meta choice or sub-optimal, it’s the same old schtick for Fury give or take a talent or two. Outside of that, say goodbye to single target damage. Again, why? This used to be the bread and butter for Fury, a good council fight or single target fight and we were cooking on gas, now we are merely running out of gas, spluttering and wheezing our way to somewhere near the bottom (if not the very bottom) of the damage meters (Quickly dying adds on one or two fights notwithstanding).
I’ll say it again, “Is this all the Fury you can muster?”
The capstones are all basically of a similar theme, shouty AoE, exploding shouty AoE, slightly better single target but infinitely fiddly spear AoE. Generic extra ST attack that is not a significant DPS increase or do anything of merit to buff or changeup gameplay. Unless, that is, you feel that increasing APM in an already RSI inducing level of APM for a 0.5% increase is somehow meaningfully ‘changing it up’? If this is your idea of choice it feels facile at best to be honest.
SMF? Why is this even a thing? Clearly you don’t want it to be competitive, either make it so, or get shot of it. Why purposely hobble yourself by choosing a talent that (given the mediocre other options you would miss out on) lowers your DPS. Doubly frustrating and counterintuitive for anyone new to the class. You were concerned that Reckless Abandon was getting chosen over anger management so did something to incentivise balance, so why not follow the same logic here? Spoiler alert: it is designed this way. Which again smacks of contempt. Either make this functional or moggable, both the former and the latter are a minefield, but at least make a decision as opposed to a conspicuous scornful silence.
So, I’ll ask again, “Is this all the Single-Minded Fury you can muster?”
Why do we have Shield Slam and Slam? Even during the ‘making the class fantasy real again’ phase you went through during the newly designed talent trees at the start of Dragonflight, these were pointless. Totally vestigial, either make them have a purpose or get rid of them. Fury hasn’t tanked since classic era, and we certainly cannot do that in the age of active mitigation. Besides the WotLK Blood Surge hasn’t been around since, well… WotLK please get rid of it or make use of it (Assuming that is you can find a spare nanosecond within the current APM to make use of it). It’s almost as if you just can’t be bothered to address this in a meaningful way. “As Warriors we wanted to put on a shield and save the team from a wipe” they cried! Does it do anything? “No! Of course not” you replied. So why not just leave talents and abilities hanging around to wither and crumble like an old flan in a cupboard because somehow you think it adds ‘flavour’. It does not, it just makes it feel like you don’t really want to make an effort. A glib gesture with no substance or meaning. But I have to be fair to you, I guess it might be tough to really get to grips with a proper updated design given that Shamans and Paladins haven’t had a rework since about a month ago and Mages might need another buff quite soon.
Again, I ask you “Is this all the Fury you can muster?”
Oh, and while I’m at it, if a redesign isn’t in the works I’ve a few suggestions for name changes of talents.
Unbridled Ferocity has, without doubt, been Bridled it would seem.
Faint Circular Breeze would seem more apt for whirlwind. Also, why do we have to spend two talents to improve it to make it functionally usable? To the casual observer it is almost as if you can’t think of anything else to do in a tree full of talents which resembles butter too thinly spread.
Depths of Insanity changed to “Award for the Most Uninspired Talent” or AMUT for sake of brevity (unlike this critique). The tool tip should be updated to read “clearly a description of the state of mind someone would have to be in to pick this node.” Seriously, why has this not changed? It was uninspired during shadowland. Again I ask, how it is you are worried that people are picking up Reckless Abandon over Anger management in literally every case, but you don’t stop to acknowledge or wonder how long has it been since ANYONE EVER picked depths of insanity with REAL purpose? Could it be you really just don’t care, because it sure seems like it?
Execute changed to Exfoliate. Seriously, why is Execute so utterly terrible now? It used to be a defining ability for Warriors, something to look forward to at the end of an encounter, a button eagerly anticipated. Again, almost totally redundant unless you happen to be starving for rage.
Sudden Death? Sullen Dearth more like it.
Condemn? Seriously, it should be called Condemned. Why hasn’t it been torn down and rebuilt already? Basically, a talent that screams “don’t press execute for an extra 15% of a targets low health.”
Furious OR Powerful Enrage? Clearly mere mortal bodies cannot manage both any longer. Maybe the dragons getting their powers back weakened Warriors or something?
Deft Experience, Swift Strikes and Critical thinking. At least one of these ‘inspired talent choices’ names holds a great deal of irony for the current iteration of warrior design. Maybe I could be a little more charitable if I felt these were gatekeeping real choice that was on offer, not some pound shop version of pretty much any other talent tree.
Titanic rage and Dancing Blades. Seriously is this the best ideas that could be thought of? One less press of Whirlwind vs more auto attack damage. Could we change them to “Moar Spinney!” and “Unnoticeable DPS Increase?”
Storm of Steel and Unhinged, at least one of these is actually tremendous. Seriously, good effort, this is the kind of thing that makes a Warriors blood pump faster.
So, TLDR; from the visceral rage machine we used to be in Legion (and before), to the burst only, sanitised, metronomic red energy bar we are now. With a constant patch cycle cadence of minor buffs and nerfs to a tree so thinly spread and that lacks creativity and choice that it epitomises the phrase “rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.”
So, I ask you one last time “is this all the Fury you can muster?”
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