In a recent developer update, the developers for Warrior stated that they were happy with where Warrior was at as a class. They might very well think that, but if they do, I am very worried for the class.
For context, I mainly play Fury in high M+ keys and also raid at a Mythic level, so I will mainly write about Warrior from that perspective.
Flow of the Fury warrior design
Right now, Fury is not in a good state. The general flow and gameplay of the spec feels worse than ever with Rampage, Fury warriors main signature ability, not even being the main rage spender. We sit at 100% rage and press other rage generating abilities like Bloodbath and Crushing blow because they simply do more damage than Rampage. This feels awful.
Target cap
The idea of Fury warrior being target capped to five targets is awfully outdated. With M+ pulls becoming bigger and bigger for every iteration of the game mode (Not counting legion, that was the wild west), being target capped to five targets feels awful. With Fury being capped to five targets, one would be lead to believe that Fury would also be the best damage dealer in those situation, but I fail to remember when that has ever been the case. Fury warrior is simply outclassed by most other specs in this category, even though it by design should be one of the best at it.
Then what is even the point of the target cap? A spec wielding two greatswords should very easily be able to hit more targets, that is kinda the point of having two greatswords no?
The class aesthetic and the gameplay do not mash.
An easy fix to this would be to simply make improved Whirlwind deal reduced damage beyond eight targets instead of five, and let Fury warrior be relevant for the kind of big pulls that we see in M+.
This would be a very jubilant change for all of us that play this spec and one that I cant see anyone genuinely disagreeing with.
Utility
It is no secret that Warriors are regarded as the one class that brings the least utility to a M+ group. We bring two stuns, a very nerfed Rallying cry, and the Battle shout buff. That is it. Compared to other melee dps, that is not a lot, and dont even get me started compared to other ranged specs.
We need help here, this is very important. We might only bring at best mediocre damage, but with actual utility there would at least be a consideration to bing the class to m+ and even more to raid as well.
Suggestions for more and improved utility would be things like,
- Buffing Rallying cry to give 20% increased HP when it only hits five targets (instead of 10% HP) . This would not make it overpowered in a raid context, but would massively increase its and warriors value in M+
- Give Warriors a Bloodlust/Time Warp ability. This would not only be aesthetically fitting, with Warriors already having different kinds of “Shout” abilities that impact allies (and Saurfang literally bloodlusting in the BFA intro cinematic) but would also highly increase the warrior pick rate in the group finder. If by design we do not want tank roles to have access to Bloodlust, make it a talent in the Fury/Arms talent trees for example.
If paladins can have a combat res, Warriors can have a Bloodlust. - Either buff or rework Battle shout. As it is today, far to few other classes even benefit from it. If we were to rank raid buffs by their impact, Battle shout would come in dead, or close to, last. Maybe it could give strength instead of Attack power?
Fury Talents
With the removal of Titan’s torment as a capstone talent for Avatar, Odyn’s fury hits like a wet noodle, and the compensatory 15% damage buff is far from being a sufficient one. The talent that replaces it now reduces the rage cost of Rampage, but this also feels very bad seeing as we do not even press Rampage as a priority button when we are capped at rage. Rage reduction does very little to help with this, and it does not nearly compensate for the removal of the Odyn’s fury interaction.
There also needs to be something done with Onslaught. It is not being picked in any form of PVE content at this point in time. It really only feels like a somewhat bigger Crushing blow, and I am already spamming those out at rapid fire speed. Either removing it and giving us more talent points to work with, or reworking it into another kind of talent would be fitting at this point.
The big elephant in the room for talents though is, you guessed it, Single Minded Fury.
No one is picking this, it does not belong in the talent tree. Simply making this a baseline passive, and freeing up the talent point, would make the tree a lot better.
And the reason for this is that we are so very constrained for talent points right now. There is far to many “mandatory” talents in the fury tree. Removing talents that no one is using, and that frankly does not feel either very inspired or fun to play with, would help a lot with this.
Summary
Warrior, mainly Fury, currently is at its worst iteration of design flow, talents and competitiveness compared to other classes. Applying some of the fixes above would massively improve the experience of the class, and also make it way more appealing for people to pick up and play.
We that stick with this class every patch love it. We feel in love with the fluidity of the baseline rotation, the insanly cool looking and fun cooldowns, the fantasy and the aesthetic of the class, but all of that is currently being eroded.
We feel directionless without proper addressing of these concerns from the developers, and something needs to be done to save the class going forward into The War Within.
-10%/+10% nerfs and buffs is not even close to the attention that we currently need.
Do anyone else agree with the sentiment? Let me and others know!
Together we can zug zug our way to change.
Zug zug.
