Massive Exploit Alert: Warriors Dominating DPS with Deep Wounds Bug in WoW's Season of Discovery

WoW Classic Season of Discovery
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I’ve come across a game-breaking exploit in World of Warcraft’s current Season of Discovery that needs immediate attention. The Warrior talent, Deep Wounds, is behaving anomalously, leading to unprecedented DPS levels.

The Bug Explained: Traditionally, Deep Wounds was capped at one debuff per target. However, with the recent removal of the maximum debuff limit in the game, this cap on Deep Wounds has inadvertently been eliminated. The result? Warriors can now apply an unlimited number of Deep Wounds stacks on a target. This makes Deep Wounds not just overpowered but game-breakingly effective.

Additional Bug with Enrage Rune: There’s more. When Deep Wounds procs with a base damage of 100 and is combined with the Enrage Rune for a 20% damage increase, the expected bleed damage should be 120. However, due to a bug, the Enrage Rune re-applies its buff, skyrocketing the bleed damage to 144 instead.

Additional Bug with Offhand Crits Triggering Main Hand Deep Wounds: Another aspect of this exploit is that crits from offhand weapons are triggering Deep Wounds as if they were main hand crits. This behavior is inconsistent with the mechanics observed in the original Vanilla WoW.

Warrior Strategy to Maximize this Exploit: Warriors are exploiting this by stacking agility, which has become almost as effective as strength due to this bug. They dual wield with a very fast offhand weapon (like a 1.2-speed caster dagger) to maximize crits, thereby activating more Deep Wounds procs from their slower main hand weapons. Additionally, Overpower talents are utilized for extra crit chances, further amplifying the number of Deep Wounds debuffs.

Why This Is a Concern: This issue propels Warriors to the top of the DPS charts, unchallenged and unmatched. It’s a significant deviation from the intended game mechanics, as no other bleed effect stacks in this manner. Furthermore, this exploit is exclusive to the Season of Discovery, likely due to the changes in debuff limitations.

Urgent Call for Fix: I believe this to be a massive oversight and an exploit that significantly disrupts game balance. Warriors are currently in a league of their own in terms of DPS, which is clearly not intended. It’s crucial that Blizzard addresses this issue promptly to restore balance and fairness in the game.

Let’s bring this to Blizzard’s attention for a swift resolution. Together, we can help maintain the integrity and competitive balance of World of Warcraft.

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”Urgent call for fix” and yet you post it on the EU Forums where no blue ever reads.

They are more likly to read it if you post it on reddit or twitter.

Or you know… Support ticket from ingame.

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I understand the concern about the visibility of the post on the EU Forums. Unfortunately, I don’t have characters on US realms, which limits my ability to post directly on the US Forums where the issue might gain more immediate attention from Blizzard’s team.

However, I completely agree that raising awareness on platforms like Reddit, Twitter, or through an in-game support ticket could be more effective. Since my reach is limited to the EU Forums, I would greatly appreciate if anyone with access to these platforms, especially the US Forums, could help by reposting this message or sharing it on social media and Reddit. The wider we can spread this information, the higher the chances of it being acknowledged and addressed swiftly by Blizzard.

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Not just that, but bugs are reported ingame and not on the forums.

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That’s not a concern, that’s good for you raid. Easier to kill bosses = more loot to you

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thats a warrior point of view if ive ever seen one

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Streamers have been talking about it for a while now and people thought it would be fixed immediately once it got mentioned ob twitch… doesn’t seem so :face_with_diagonal_mouth:

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I’m also a wielder of the light brother!

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… who listens to them anyway? :joy:

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Correct me if I am wrong but:

if you proc Deep Wounds while Deep Wounds is up, the debuff timer is refreshed and the “missing damage” is added to the new instance of Deep Wound. It was like that in WOTLK at least.
Its still a bug, but not a gamebreaking bug since it does not add any damage

dont know about that one, could be a reapplied Deep Wound

Deep Wound always takes mainhand damage, even if you crit with offhand

Crit was always good on Warrior with a Deep Wound spec. And since you are low level, Agility gives a good amount of crit.

Warrior DPS will always be the best scaling spec in Classic. Thats the nature of the spec. Since more and more ppl get bis gear on their warrios, the reach their “potential”.

So except the double Deep Wounds (which shouldnt add damage), everything works as expected. Also, i will test the Deep Wounds claim

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Hey warriors do suck at dps , but for some reason they are top dps at raids , maybe there is something.

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Just checked it. Works as intended, only one debuff.

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maybe it does not show stacks

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It’s true that the Deep Wounds debuff doesn’t visually show the stacking of multiple instances. However, there’s a straightforward way to confirm that the debuffs are indeed stacking. Here’s how:

  1. Engage in combat and ensure you crit twice in quick succession before the first Deep Wounds debuff duration ends.
  2. Use a DPS meter addon like Recount to monitor the damage output of Deep Wounds.

What you’ll notice is that the second Deep Wounds debuff doesn’t replace the first one. Instead, it adds to it. This results in some of the damage ticks being twice as strong as they should be under normal conditions. It’s a clear indication that the debuffs are stacking, which is not the intended behavior.

I’ve played Warriors across different versions of WoW, including Season of Discovery (SoD), Classic, and Classic Hardcore. It’s only in SoD that I’ve observed this significant discrepancy in Deep Wounds behavior.

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I will just quote myself

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Correct, this is a WOTLK change, that was removed in the later Expansions because of how broken it was. Also in Classic your off-hand crits didn’t activate your Main-Hand weapon damage calculation. It does not work like that in Classic or Classic HC.

All this gives Warriors massive damage buff, and no other class can compete in damage with them. I Play Warrior and think that is not fair for Classic.

They nerfed hunters couple of times for similar issues. Just look how they nerfed Scorpion pet poison stacking, and I think Warrior Deep Wounds is much worse of a problem :smiley:

To me it makes no sense that 3 talent points can buff your DPS by more than 25%…

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Offer sources to your claims, than I will believe you

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So why there is two rogues in top100 on Aku’mai? Seems like skill issue.:eyes:
Jokes aside - you can clearly see that warriors dominating Aquantis who’s immune to bleeds. Not on same margin as Aku’mai, but still, probably more than 60/100 are warriors. So deep wounds could be an actual bug, but you overestimate it’s effectiveness.
And I sure agree on that deep wounds should be fixed. Not because they are absolutely broken, but because it’s cherry on top of overall broken classic warriors.
It’s just feels better to have 6/10 of toplogs as warriors than 98/100.

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Go to youtube and type “Deep Wounds change in Wotlk - Now extremely powerful”

This was a change that was introduced in WOTLK, we are in Classic.

Also when they made this change, they changed Deep Wounds talent in WOTLK to do 48% Weapon Damage, not 60% as it’s now.

Also they didn’t have the Consumed by Rage rune which gives the Deep Wounds additional 44% damage.

Same happened in Cataclysm with Mage Ignite, where your damage would stack, which was also removed in later expansions for the same reason.

They nerfed Hunters multiple times for much smaller problem.

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It’s looks like devs didn’t take to consideration differences between classic and wotlk talent trees/baseline abilities while adding wotlk abilities to SoD. At all.