I would love to play more left side of the fury tree with all the Bloodthirst talents. Especially “Vicious Contempt” that makes Bloodthirst the better version of Execute. When you pick this talent, there’s no way someone would take right side execute talents down to Massacre. When also picking Annihilator, there’s no reason to take any other right side talents than Cruelty + Whirlwind for AOE damage. Why the tier set doesn’t work with Vicious Contempt blows my mind.
There is almost no use for execute with this talent/build, and the rage bar is almost full all the time with Annihilator. Rampage empowers Bloodthirst, Annihilator buffs Rampage + Bloodthirst does +50% more damage to targets below 35%. You can make this build work for a single target 1h or 2h build, but it’s all wasted without a tier set addition. At least make Tier 2 set crit bonus work if nothing else.
It’s sad to see so massive talent tree and no one plays full left side builds because there’s no added bonus for any of those builds. There is also one more slight problem with the current talent tree. Bloodthirst “Vicious Contempt” 2h build is one point short for picking the meat cleaver when taking BT and rampage points + needed end talents: Anhilator, Dancing Blades/Titanic Rage, Unbridled Ferocity. Then it’s needed to take a useless Sudden Death talent that is wasted point, just to get Cruelty, Improved Whirlwind, and Meat Cleaver. Single-minded fury + Vicious Contempt can only work with 1 target build because of those two wasted 1h talents that makes meat cleaver impossible to pick with a good balanced build.
There is no logic for some talent points like whirlwind AOE so down on the right side. Players need the AOE… at least give them change to do that the same way as Raging Blow build. With that classic build, you can pick every Rampage, Raging Blow, Execute talents + Meat Cleaver + three end talents. It’s important to have this type of synergy with other builds.
The Whirlwind AoE talents should be in the center of the tree (Combined into 1 talent, does anybody take “Improved whirlwind” without grabbing “Meat cleaver” as well?), so pretty much any fury talent spec can grab them, they’re crucial to fury AoE (Well, they are fury AoE, talented abilities with cooldowns aside), so they should be easily accessible.
I play SMF Annihilator build, i’d have a lot more build flexibility if grabbing the all-important AoE talents didn’t force me down the right-hand side of the talent tree (Dodging “Raging blow”-talents because they’re useless in combination with “Annihilator”)
If the aforementioned combined Whirlwind-AoE talent swapped places with “Hack and slash” (And some other talent in the place of “Meat cleaver” below it), we’d roughly have the left-hand side for 1-handed/Annihilator/bloodthirst talents, the right-hand side for “Raging blow”-related talents, and the center path for general-purpose talents, seems like a more intuitive setup to me.
If the aforementioned combined Whirlwind-AoE talent swapped places with “Hack and slash” (And some other talent in the place of “Meat cleaver” below it), we’d roughly have the left-hand side for 1-handed/Annihilator/bloodthirst talents, the right-hand side for “Raging blow”-related talents, and the center path for general-purpose talents, seems like a more intuitive setup to me.
Whirlwind talent could be where the Hack and Slash is so everyone could get it. Or swap the place with Sudden Death. Sudden Death is in the wrong place anyway. There are two execute talents blocking the way to the right side. If there are builds that doesn’t use execute, then it’s just bad design to have it there.
In my opinion, the right side should look like this:
Move Sudden Death to Improved Raging Blow slot
Move Improved Raging Blow to Meat Cleaver/Improved Whirlwind slot
Move Improved Whirlwind to Sudden Death Slot
This would fix multiple things. First, WW is an option for everyone. If Blizzard wants to make it two point talent, then up you have Execute, down whirlwind. Now you can do multiple builds and choose the play style you want. Left side Bloodthirst builds allow you to take WW and not spending points to Execute. Right side Raging Blow builds still have the same options.
I would add Raging Blow points proper Annihilate buffs or counterparts if they block some points (in the future). Slaughtering Strikes with Annihilator is way under tuned at the moment. You can get +40% Rampage damage with two Raging Blow strikes superfast. With Annihilator, max buff is 10% and it even takes longer. I don’t get this at all. It’s even weirder when you have to use Rampage often to empower 2 Bloodthirsts. Makes Rampage a super low hitting ability that you have to use to get two important buffs.
I think it’s funny when you realize this build has two buttons that you spam, and one is hitting like a truck and one like wet noodles. Then look at the talents like Cruelty. It gives major hitting Raging Blow +15% buff but low overall Annihilator 10% buff. All these small things makes one build more powerful than the others (+ huge things like no tier set support).