There are a lot of complaints about Warriors of all specs right now, and for good reason, I’ll add. Though instead of just making complaints I feel the community should be more constructive and make the changes they would like to see.
The chances of this reaching Blizzard is zero unless a CM finds it interesting enough to raise the main devs’ awareness, however, just being constructive is a lot better for mental health than us stewing in our own anger and resentment. This is just for PvE, and PvP is intentionally left out. So if you find that lacking add your own spin on it
Warrior:
The first thing I would do is to replace the phrases “class fantasy” and “spec fantasy” with “class narrative” and “spec narrative” as the word fantasy has no constraints, If I said, “I have a fantasy that I can fly,” then no one cohesion is needed in the statement. If I say “I can fly,“ then people would want to know how and a narrative would be created around it that had to be cohesive.
Class narrative:
Warriors are common people who without magical powers go out to confront their enemies for a cause or just to seek glory in combat. Most of them are proud, headstrong, and willing to go that extra mile as they know they have none of those magical powers that their foes have.*
It’s now been determined by the narrative that Warriors have no magical powers so all their abilities need to be unmagical in nature to enforce this narrative.
In order to make it like that I would:
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Scrap the concept of Storm Bolt completely and replace it with Throwdown and make that baseline. As the name suggests that would throw the target to the ground and bypass all Stun DRs
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Throwdown, melee range, 30 second cooldown: The target is thrown to the ground for X seconds.
Knockdown effects would count as a stun and be unaffected by DR.
I would also rework Charge completely.
- Charge 1-25 yard range, 10 seconds cooldown: Rapidly move towards the target and rooting them for 0,X seconds.
Charge would no longer generate any Rage; it would be purely for utility.
Further the Warrior class should have a new passive to represent their tenacious nature. This would also give Protection Warriors a real niche where they were the best tank as “best vs. physical damage by far and worst by far against anything else,” is quite useless.
- *Unstoppable (Passive) (New): Any Stun, Snare, or Immobilise effects have their duration reduced by 2%. For each 10 Rage the Warrior has. This never stacks with similar effects.
General Survivability:
The re-adding of Shield Block and Shield Slam as baseline abilities is something that looks good on paper and in reality, is cumbersome.
They both require macros for weapon swap to work, to be current the player needs a shield and a one-hander of equal ilvl to their main weapon. The utility of Challenging Shout is also severely limited due to all of these factors. All of the returning abilities also add a lot of clutter to the hot bars as they need seven slots, and a weapon swap macro is needed as well for a total of eight. That’s a lot.
I would “fix” it by returning Stances in a limited form.
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Battle Stance: Normal ability use (Arms).
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Defensive Stance: Reduce the damage that the player takes and deals by 10% and gives them a one-handed weapon and shield of the same ilvl as their main-hand with the same secondary stats. Their main attack ability is replaced by Shield Slam, Charge by Intervene and Steadfast (explained later) becomes available for use. The weapon and shield can be transmogrified and replaced with a one-handed weapon and shield with the secondary stats that the player wants.
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Berserker Stance: Normal ability use (Fury).
Going into the various stances costs no Rage, having no cooldown and never activates the CGD.
By doing it this way players are discouraged from turtling in Defensive Stance and continuing damage as there are clear drawbacks to sitting in it. There’s also a survival benefit by using it so it’s kiss/curse.
By having the MH transform into a one-hander and shield there’s no need to farm one out for the slot which makes it feel optional rather than mandatory. That they can be transmogrified gives the player some agency in how they’re going to look and with no Rage-loss or GCD activation Steadfast can be used in a pinch as well as can Intervene. And importantly, it frees up hot bar slots.
Keep Ignore Pain as a Protection Warrior only ability. By having it cost 40 Rage even highly precise and situational use is going to be devastating for any Warrior add to this that there’s also a 12 second cooldown it might as well be removed again since it has a limited use.
Arms:
*Spec Narrative:
The Arms Warrior is calculated in their approach and never let their emotions control them. They’re generally a nightmare to fight as they’re near impossible to bait into acting on emotion and do what’s appropriate for the situation instead of following a pattern.*
Gameplay
Arms is a Builder-Spender it’s also the only Builder-Spender in the game where there’s zero interactivity with the Builder-aspect of the gameplay as the spec only generates Rage from auto-attack, even Fury and Prot have abilities that they use to build Rage, Arms have none. This creates a gameplay where an Arms Warrior essentially sit and wait for the auto-attack to generate a new chunk of Rage that the spec can then Spend. Baseline the spec has no other abilities to Build and it does nothing except waiting a period equal to Auto-attack – Haste to get more. It feels unfulfilling.
The first “real” Arms change would be to change the Mastery to:
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Mastery: Rend (New): Using Heroic Strike and Overpower inflict the target with a bleed that does [MasteryX] damage over 10 period. This effect stacks. Every application has its own duration*
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Mastery: Spearhead (Passive) (New): The Arms Warrior is healed by X for each point of Momentum spent or generated.
By having it like this the damage of the spec can be turned up or down without affecting the direct damage of the spec, as appropriate, by increasing or reducing the damage of Rend. By making it a dual Mastery that also increase survivability it adds something much needed to the Arms Kit.
What I would do would be:
-Rename Rage to Momentum. IMomentum functions identical to Rage, and it’s in the narrative that an Arms Warrior never surrenders to their emotions. And since the name Rage is extremely emotional, even if it’s cold rage, the name has to be changes to avoid ludo-narrative dissonance. Since it’s also in the narrative that Arms does what’s appropriate for the situation it should also avoiding falling into a predictable rotation and use a priority-system instead based on what’s important right now.
- Momentum is generated in severely lowered amounts than Rage currently is from auto-attacks now.
To compensate for this:
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Using Overpower now generates Momentum
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Heroic Strike (explained later) also generate Momentum.
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Veteran Soldier removed. Critical hits only give a basic amount of Momentum. With Momentum being generated from Overpower and HS and Overpower being a lot more stable this is an unnecessary passive.
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Tactician (Passive) (new): In addition to having a 1.40% chance pr. Momentum spent to reset the cooldown of Overpower, it also applies Reveal Weakness, which is a cumulative, stacking buff that increases the chance for Tactician to work.
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Tactician and Overpower are now a part of the Arms Warrior basic package since the spec is unable to function without either.
Due to Overpower being a part of the Builder rotation it should no longer have any interactivity with Heroic Strike, as I suggest replacing MS with. Instead, I suggest that Overpower is something like this:
- Overpower (New): Strikes the target for X damage. It’s impossible to Dodge, Block, or Parry this attack. Using Overpower generates X Momentum.
This would make Arms Warrior’ resource-generation stable and would end the exponential power gain from Haste as Haste is directly proportional to increasing DPS and also in increasing the resources gained which further increases Arms DPS. This creates an exponential scaling where Arms start out underpowered in the beginning of the expansion and ends up being overpowered near the end of it. It’s an untenable existence and satisfying to no one.
By changing the Momentum generation so that it’s both passive from auto-attacks and auxiliary from Heroic Strike and Overpower playing Arms will feel a lot more engaging as the system gives the player control over the outcome, and that feeling of control is important to how attractive the spec feels. When the player can do nothing, they’ll feel frustrated on a subconscious level and eventually just stop.
By making Tactician more reliable it prevents the situation where a full cooldown of Overpower can pass without Tactician proccing despite having used 150+ Rage cumulatively over that period. The Momentum-generation of the Arms Warrior can also be better controlled and the increase in power for arms will resemble more of a flat line than the spikes that it does now.
A reliable Overpower also means that the DPS of the Arms Warrior can be moved around so the spec retains its DPS without having Joust abilities that hits for unreasonable amounts because Rage is relatively difficult to get.
Damage for Arms
Damage is a touchy subject for Arms since it needs to be frontloaded without it being so high that it essentially deletes targets.
One of the things I would do was to remove Mortal Wounds and similar effects from everyone and instead reduce the healing of damage done by targets with WM enabled or in PvP by a similar amount. As it is right now it’s “make or break” for a lot of classes and is handed out like candy. In which case it’s no longer special, it’s just another thing.
Then I would change Mortal Strike to be its own separate ability with a longish CD.
- Mortal Strike (New): 30 Rage, 1 minute cooldown, instant, 10 seconds duration. The Warrior strike the target injuring them severely. This attack leaves a DoT on the target and for as long as the DoT last all healing received is reduced by 10%.
This would increase the skill-cap for Arms severely as MS would no longer be “point and click” in PvP as it is right now. Instead, it would have to be used at the right time to have maximum effectiveness.
Mortal Strike as a steady attack ability would be replaced with Heroic Strike
- Heroic Strike (New): Generates X Momentum, 6 seconds cooldown, instant. The Warrior strikes their target and inflict a high amount of damage and leaves a DoT on the target for 4 seconds.
With Overpower being both a Builder and reliable the spec has it being reliable and central to it instead of it being the weird mix that there is now where both Overpower, and Deep Wounds are important since Overpower is something to use that improves performance
Colossal Smash also has to be changed as it’s part of the %-modifier issue that Arms has. I would replace Colossal Smash with
- Deep Wounds (new) 45 second cooldown: The Warrior cuts the target deep making them bleed even more profusely. The damage of all Bleed effects are doubled for 10 seconds.
I would also change Blade Storm so that it does less damage and the reduces damage is changed to a stack of Rend with each tick.
I would change Slam so it costs 30 Momentum and does more damage, this would be the main Resource-burner and increasing the damage would distribute the amount of damage that can be done by various abilities while maintaining the same DPS.
Survivability and Utility for Arms
Ignore Pain should be removed as Mastery: Vanguard takes its place. IP does little else practically other than looking impressive on paper.
To compensate for Mastery: Vanguard, as there is no free lunch:
- The healing effect of Victory Rush is lowered.
This leaves party utility and Arms has none other than what the basic Warrior Class provides.
I would rename Berserker Rage to Methodical as the narrative of the spec is that it’s calm and collected. The phrase “Berserker Rage” implies a surrendering to the emotional.
Taking inspiration from the Necrolord banner I would introduce a new ability called Command:
- Command (Arms) (New), 30 yard range, Instant, Duration X seconds: The Warrior issues a command that has the effect of increasing Y by X. When receiving a Command the affected player is unable to get new Commands while it lasts.
- Command: Be Swift of the Coursing River, X cooldown, 30 yard range: The Warrior shouts out a command that increases the Haste percentage of all those who hear it by X.
- Command: Have the Force of a Typhoon, X cooldown, 30 yard range: The Warrior shouts out a command that increases the Critical Hit percentage of all those who hear it by X.
- Command: Strength of Fire, X cooldown, 30 yard range: The Warrior shouts out a command that increases the Mastery percentage of all those who hear it by X.
- Command: Survive! X cooldown, 30 yard range: The Warrior shouts out a command that increases the Versatility percentage of all those who hear it by X.
Command itself is a nested ability. The Y is one of the secondary stats of Critical Hit, Haste, Mastery and Versatility. There’s a Command for each of them. The “one Command at a time” debuff prevents stacking, It also fits the name since if people get multiple commands at the same time they tend to walk in circles as they can only perform one at a time.
Talents
LVL 15
- War Machine: Momentum generated by Heroic Strike and Overpower is increased by 10%.
- Sudden Death: As is
*- Relentless: The Momentum generated from auto-attack is increased by two for each time the same target is hit stacking up to X times. If another target is attacked this is reset.
LVL 25
- Impact: the root of Charge is replaced with a knockdown effect and being hit by Charge inflicts [XAP] damage.*
- Impending Victory: As is.
- Beatdown: Throwdown now does [XAP] damage and the duration of the knockdown is increased by 0.5 seconds.*
LVL 30
- Massacre: As is.
- Crushing Assault: The damage of your next Slam is increased by [APX] and the Momentum cost is reduced by 15. Can have up to two charges*
- Deep Cuts: The damage of each Rend stack is increased by [XAP].*
LVL 35
- Second Wind: When at or below 35% health the healing from Vanguard is doubled.
- Bounding Stride: As is.
- Living Wall: The damage dealt and taken while in Defensive Stance is reduced by a further 10%.
LVL 40
- Collateral Damage: Sweeping Strikes now hits an additional target.
- Dissection: Deep Wounds now hits up to eight targets within 5-yards.
- Cleave: If Whirlwind hits three or more targets Rend is applied tó all of them.
LVL 45
- Follow-up: Deep Wounds increases your Critical Hit by X when used.
*- Avatar: As is
- Analysis: The next four abilities either cost no Momentum, or double the Momentum gained from them. The abilities still count as using or generating the basic amount for Mastery: Spearhead and Tactician.
LVL 50
- Momentum: When using Overpower the cooldown of Heroic Strike is lowered by 0.X seconds and it deals [APX] damage to up to 5 targets within 5 yards.*
-Dreadnought: As is.
Insight: The cooldown of Sweeping Strikes is reduced by X seconds and the chance for Tactician to proc is increased by X%, this is cumulative for each stack of Reveal Weakness.
Fury:
I’ve no feedback on Fury. While I’ve played it for many years it’s been out of Arms being bad for PvE so I’ve no real attachment to the spec.
Protection:
For Protection the spec fantasy aligns with the gameplay since a fantasy has no need to make sense.
The spec narrative, on the other hand, has little connection with the actual gameplay. Warriors are strong and tough and just takes it on the face, yet they’re oh so fragile. Especially against magical damage.
Right now, the Protection Warrior is ridiculously good against physical damage and pathetically weak against magical damage. Which is a real problem since most of the important damage is magical. There’s weak against and then there’s this. As Protection Warrior is right now against physical damage, Blood Death Knight are against magical damage, except they’re no where as pathetic against physical damage and PW is against magical damage.
First of I would make the heal from the Indomitable talent baseline, and possibly improve upon since it’s already so good that any other talent on that row might as well be dead, and yet does little as it is.
I would replace Shield Block with Tenacious
- Tenacious, 10 seconds duration, 30 Rage, 15 seconds cooldown: When use the Warriors chance to block is increased by X, the amount blocked is increased by Y and all magical damage taken is reduced by Z%.
I would change Ignore Pain to have the old sliding Rage-cost from Legion and increase the amount it absorbed as right now it’s used and then it’s gone once difficulty increase enough.
I would add to Revenge that when using Revenge, the cooldown of Tenacious is reduced by 1 second.
