tl;dr: I think SMF will not feel very different in ST and a little confusing and clunky in aoe.
I also doubt it will make fury use less buttons per minute as desired by devs.
Blizz wrote in their last blue post that their
…goal with Annihilator and the related talents is to create a sub spec that would provide a lower APM build that would still allow players to have fun, be competitive and feel like a Fury Warrior
As I am very interested in playing fury in DF I want to theorize on what that could look like. (As I dont have alpha I cant post in alpha forum so…bear with me)
As for reference I came up with a build like that: SMF Fury
I prefer CDs that are synched so I run with 45sec and 1,5min CDs here. Could also be Siegebreaker, anger management and spear instead…but for now pretend we dont have these.
My main point is aoe rota with 6sec CD on WW because of Storm of Swords.
We will have 3 different situations going into our aoe rota:
- all CDs up
- minor CD(s) up
- no CDs
lets start with 1.:
You charge in, WW, recklessness + avatar (here you are at 100 rage and wasted some. IDK if this is the best thing to do or if you want to build and rampage without avatar), rampage, roar, odyns, (rampage)
- Problem: at 2nd rampage you could actually be below rage threshold depending on mobs hit with the roar aftershocks. Odyns will give you 40 with recklessness. aftershocks 8 per mob hit. You will be at 60 + (chance on 16 from frothing berserker) + 8*mobcount + rage from white hits. If there are 3 mobs youre golden. Only 2 and you need your white hits or wait for them. I think this will lead to some button mashing and nothing happens situation as this will work out like 95% of the time and then there is this one pull in one dungeon where its simply not working out.
This will especially be a problem when you dont take meat cleaver. If you have it you could just weave in anything and then rampage. Without you can only cleave 2 ST every 6sec. So I think you really want to get 2 rampages off here and waiting becomes your best option. Waiting is not fun.
for 2.:
Without recklessness it becomes even more likely to cause wait situations without meat cleaver. So you pool close to 100, ww, rampage, roar, odyns. You keep 20, gain 20(odyns) and then some with aftershocks(4 per mob). In big pulls with 10 mobs your golden. But you dont see this size of pulls (at least in pugs) too often. But getting some 20-30 rage out of it seems reasonable. Bringing us 10-20 rage below treshold. So do we now wait for the rage to rampage or waste WW cleave on builder? Again no problem with meat cleaver.
for 3.
You can really only WW, rampage, builder here. Or with meat cleaver rampage, builder, builder, builder.
Anyway, without CDs to weave in after WW it is leaving you with 4 seconds of non-cleaving without meat cleaver and 2 seconds with.
This makes meat cleaver a absolute MUST take for this build. You will completely gimp yourself in aoe situations if you take Storm of Swords and not meat cleaver. Maybe you want to move these closer together to make it more obvious to newer players that they should be taken together?
I know that the point was to have a spec that is not able to fill every global. But the difference in taking or not taking meat cleaver seems too huge to miss out on it.
Aoe aside I think in ST you will have enough buttons so that you will very very rarely have nothing to press. leaving the question if the goal (less APM) is achieved? You actually gain a button in slam. Which I appreciate, dont get me wrong.
You are no longer able to fill every free global with a ww. Instead you have ww and slam every 6sec with huge damage increase. But honestly how often did you ever press ww more then 2 times in 6sec in ST?