Hey everyone, I’ve spent quite some time on the PTR/live and wanted to share some thoughts about the current state of warriors.
Warrior AoE Damage
Warrior AoE damage is in a really bad spot. It’s so poor that as a DPS warrior, I’ve been declined from dungeon groups at times. I can understand why—our AoE damage in dungeons is significantly lower compared to other classes. It’s crazy to think that we can top the meters in raids, yet struggle so much in 5-man content.
Warrior Tank AoE Threat
Warrior tanks also have issues with AoE threat generation. We can still get groups because we’re tanks, but the general attitude is: “Oh, a warrior tank, I guess we can’t AoE.” Personally, I’ve tanked many dungeons without problems, but this negative perception exists. To clarify, I don’t want warriors to get buffed here. Our threat is solid. The real issue is that the other tanks’ AoE threat is ridiculously overpowered and needs a serious nerf.
DPS Warrior Issues
One of the main problems with warrior damage is that we often “need” external support to perform well, such as:
- World Buffs (Valor of Azeroth isn’t enough)
- Windfury Totem/Wild Strikes
- Better baseline AoE damage (e.g., Whirlwind)
T2 Set Feedback
Initially, you had Improved Whirlwind as the 4-piece bonus on the T2 set, which I thought was a great step in the right direction. Now, you’ve replaced it with a better Heroic Strike, which likely boosts single-target damage for better parses. However, there’s more to the game than just parsing.
Before the changes, we could use the DPS set’s 4-piece bonus as a tank for a stronger Whirlwind in Defensive Stance, which would have been helpful for tanks. Since this is no longer part of the tier set, I hope you’ll consider buffing Whirlwind baseline and maybe even increasing its target cap to 8. This wouldn’t make warriors overpowered in AoE, but it would pull us out of the gutter and make us less weak in AoE situations.
T1 Set Feedback
The 6-set bonus on T1 is an insanely good damage buff, but it requires so much maintenance and feels awful to play with (personal opinion).
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First, stance dancing has always been an important part of playing a warrior, and it should be a sacrifice—you lose rage and a global cooldown to access abilities only usable in a different stance. This way, you give up some damage to gain utility.
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Second, constantly watching buffs and keeping them up takes too much of your focus, making the game less enjoyable. I want to play the game, not a mini-game where I’m staring at WeakAuras.
Windfury Thoughts
Playing without Wild Strikes feels dull, but we’ve always been a class that requires support to shine, so we can live with it. That said, I wish Windfury had been given to Paladins instead of Druids. An Aura of Command would have made more sense for faction balance and lore reasons. But it’s too late for that now. For the next Classic+ season, you should reconsider giving Alliance dwarf shamans and Horde undead paladins.
Valor of Azeroth Buffs?
The Valor of Azeroth is a bandaid to address our scaling issues with world buffs. Personally, I’d love to see all world buffs removed, but I know many players enjoy them. So, it seems necessary to keep buffing Valor of Azeroth as the game progresses, even though it’s a poor design. It’s the best option we have as long as world buffs exist and warriors are difficult to balance.
Warriors and Two-Handed Weapons
It looks like 2H Fury is finally being brought up to speed in the next phase—big thanks for that! It’s great to have more weapon options. However, Arms spec is still lagging in raids. To make Arms truly viable, I believe Mortal Strike should be given the Bonereaver’s Edge armor-reduction effect as a built-in chance on hit. Additionally, bosses should have higher armor so this effect can actually matter. Without enough armor on bosses, Mortal Strike won’t benefit from the debuff.
Warrior in PvP
For PvP improvements, I think a few changes would make a big difference (though I’m certainly not a big PvP player, so others probably have better ideas):
- Orc Hardiness should be available to all races. But don’t stop there—make all racials available as runes that anyone can use.
- Add baseline 100-150 Chromatic Resistance in PvP to help mitigate spell damage.
Next Season
One thing I’d really like to see from the runes in the next season is Thunder Clap being usable in Defensive Stance.
Sudden Death and Bloodsurge are also quite fun, and I wouldn’t mind seeing them become Arms or Fury talents. One key change I’d love to see: make it impossible to hardcast Slam when Bloodsurge isn’t procced. It’s frustrating to misclick Slam when the proc isn’t up and see that cast bar appear.
Warbringer would be fine too, but it could just replace Charge/Intercept.
The rest of the runes are just meh, not particularly fun.