The Care and Feeding of Warriors: What the heck just happened?
by Matthew Rossi 
Oct 12th 2007 at 11:59AM
The Care and Feeding of Warriors is confused and irritable this morning. Matthew Rossi does not understand the purpose of the changes to warriors in 2.3 and, like all warriors, his first response to confusion is to hit things. Well, okay, that's also his first response to most situations. Hey, it works surprisingly often! Anyway, this time he has decided that today's column will be discussing them, as perhaps out of our shared discussion will come enlightenment. Or at least an idea of how he's going to have to respec.So, yeah, I am at a loss for words. Go ahead and check out the changes and then come on back.
I'm going to reprint the warrior specific changes here and then start discussing them.
Warrior
* Charge will work more often when targets are up against unpathable areas like walls and poles.
* Defiance (Protection) now also grants 2/4/6 weapon expertise.
* Devastate (Protection) now combines the effects of Sunder Armor into its effect. It is also now affected by all talents and items that affect Sunder Armor.
* Disarm is now subject to diminishing returns in PvP.
* Improved Berserker Stance (Fury) now also reduces all threat caused while in Berserker Stance by 2/4/6/8/10%
* Improved Intercept and Weapon Mastery have swapped locations in the talent trees.
* Intervene will no longer place you in combat.
* Hamstring now has a 10 second duration when used on PvP targets.
* Mace Specialization (Arms) now has a reduced chance to occur but generates 7 rage instead of 6.
* Pummel: Interrupting a channeled spell with this ability will now always properly prevent casting spells from the same spell school for 4 sec.
* Shield Bash: Interrupting a channeled spell with this ability will now always properly prevent casting spells from the same spell school for 6 sec.
* Shield Slam (Protection) now always tries to dispel one Magic effect on the target.
* Sweeping Strikes and Deathwish have swapped locations in the talent trees.
* Sweeping Strikes (Fury) now lasts 10 seconds and affects your next 10 swings.
* Tactical Mastery: This talent also now grants greatly increased threat from Mortal Strike and Bloodthirst when in Defensive Stance.
* Weapon Mastery (Arms) now reduces duration of Disarm effects against you by 25/50% rather than giving you a 50% chance to avoid or full immunity to Disarm effects.
* Whirlwind: This ability now strikes with both weapons when a Warrior is dual-wielding.
Some of these are just plain upgrades. The change to Devastate is especially welcome - when I'm tanking I'll probably never bother to hit the Sunder button again. Threat reduction in berserker? Can't see anything bad there. But the changes to the arms and fury trees leave me shaking my head in confusion. Buff or nerf? Honestly, I really can't tell you.
But of course I'm going to try, because otherwise this column is just me going huh? over and over again for a while.
Well, first off, those notes need to decide if Weapon Mastery is an arms talent or a fury talent in 2.3 because when they list the effects of the talent in 2.3 they still designate it as arms, but earlier they state that the talent has changed position in the trees with improved intercept. Quite honestly, if that's the case, then it's a slight buff for arms and a slight nerf for fury. Even though arms has long been the superior tree for PvP, I often would take my fury warriors into a BG because they had talents like Improved Intercept and could at least close the gap to the clothies more often, even though they didn't really do as much damage when they were there. (Fury can be effective, but it's much better if your target will hold still for a few seconds. Most cloth wearing players have this odd phobia about standing still next to a giant cow swinging axes at their heads. Go figure.) The loss of imp intercept for a talent that now doesn't even provide disarm immunity doesn't exactly make me stand up and cheer. Maybe if weapon mastery added some sort of damage component or bonus to hit or, really, something useful... I mean, if I'm fury, I don't even care all that much about being disarmed, as I will probably still have my off hand weapon and I can still Bloodthirst even if I'm disarmed.
Putting Death Wish in arms seems like a really massive buff to arms warrior PvP. Not for the bonus damage. It's a 30 second duration fear break/fear immunity castable every 3 minutes. Giving this to an arms warrior means that they'll now have two fear breaks up in most situations in PvP. I feel bad for priests and warlocks. Giving fury warriors a 10 second, 10 swing version of Sweeping Strikes seems like it will buff their DPS in multi-mob pulls, especially if it meshes well with flurry and rampage - the synergy could make a fury warrior like a combine harvester on trash. Is that worth the loss of a 20% damage buff with a fear breaking component? That's the magic question here. And it's one I don't have an answer for yet, as I couldn't get my characters onto the PTR last night to test it.
The Defiance change to include the new stat Expertise, I don't know how that's going to play out. To quote the patch notes: "Expertise: We have added a new stat and associated rating called expertise and expertise rating. Expertise rating converts to expertise at the same rate that weapon skill rating formerly converted at. Each point of expertise reduces the chance for your attacks to be dodged or parried by 0.25%." As many people have noted, this means that expertise give a better result per point than weapon skill did. But weapon skill added straight up +hit, while the new stat does not. Quite honestly, this is a really big change in general for warriors: are we going to be missing more? Are we going to see our attacks hit more now that we're dodged and parried less? Tanking warriors already know how bad it can hurt your aggro to suddenly go on a miss streak while the casters are blowing the mob up, if this negatively impacts how often we hit that will be a bad thing in capital letters dancing in a sequined leotard on top of a fifty foot tall sign that reads Say Goodbye To Your Threat set proudly atop the Hollywood hills. But if we end up hitting more due to the reduction in dodges and parries (if that's what happens) then it's such a good thing for tanking that Blizzard staffers will have to hide under their desks for fear of random wet sloppy kisses from the tanking community. In general, most all tanks and even some fury warriors who offtank have defiance, so we'll know what this is doing fairly soon I'd bet.
The change to Tactical Mastery is interesting. WIth the changes to the arms and fury trees, I find myself wondering if we're going to see a lot of 41/5/15 builds or 5/41/15 builds going for viability in soloing/grinding or PvP and tanking/offtanking as well. Giving extra threat to Mortal Strike or Bloodthirst in defensive is one way to encourage more offspec tanking, which could go a long way to alleviating the supposed 'tanking shortage' - if all an arms warrior needs to tank is to pick up defiance, she may well go for it if she doesn't think it's going to hurt her PvP options too much.
The rest of the changes either seem to be bug fixes or adjustments (Shield Slam and Shield Bash), overall adjustments to the entirely of CC/snares in PvP (Hamstring duration) or just nice candy. Yes, I'm talking about the change to Whirlwind. Whirlwind hitting with both weapons seems to confirm the idea that fury is being aimed at a more multi-mob DPS role, when combined with the threat reduction in zerk stance and the addition of a more-dynamic version of sweeping strikes, fury seems to be aimed at becoming, in effect, a melee AoE class. These changes will probably allow rogues to maintain their comfortable lead as kings of single target melee DPS. Whether they will make fury warriors more viable for multi-mob pulls or will end up with a lot of dead fury warriors, I can't really say until I manage to get through the character copy process on the PTR.
As you can see, this patch is a surprisingly varied one for warriors. Some straightforward buffs to tanking for just about all specs, some very interesting changes that buff some aspects of the talent trees while nerfing other aspects of other trees, and a big change to the very core mechanism of the class. (Expertise directly effects us classes that smack things the most.) Overall, I still don't quite know what to make of it.
Now, fly forth unto the comments and leave devastation in your wake! Discuss! What just happened to us warriors in 2.3? Good or bad? Make like Nostradamus already.
Filed under: Warrior, Patches, Analysis / Opinion, Talents, Buffs, (Warrior) The Care and Feeding of Warriors
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
killerdjmw Oct 12th 2007 12:08PM
I've got mixed feelings on this. I raid PvE fury, and I already get agro without even trying off the MT.
And most SSC/TK pulls (especially near kael) require a lot of CC, which means I'm not gonna WW or Sweeping strike them. Seems like a big fury nurf imo.
Apadwe Oct 12th 2007 12:11PM
Threat reduction in berserker is for all the Fury warriors out there.
Fearless Oct 12th 2007 12:20PM
Matt, you are forgetting that Deathwish does not stack with Enrage any more, as of a couple patches ago. So moving it to Arms makes a good deal of sense.
So Arms warriors lose the Sweeping Strikes/Whirlwind combo for demolishing bunched-up enemies, but they get a buff to single-target damage, which is in line with Arms being a more PvP spec, and Fury being more PvE-oriented.
Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but did weapon skill actually add straight-up +hit, or did they nerf if way back when so that it gave some pathetic amount of +crit rating instead? And even with capped +hit (which is impossible to achieve in tank gear unless you are in Black Temple), there was still no way to get around parries and dodges; so Expertise is an improvement, I think.
Weapon Mastery, like Improved Disarm, is just a plain awful talent that should go away.
Matthew Rossi Oct 12th 2007 12:34PM
Fearless, it's not so much that I forgot about Deathwish not stacking with Enrage and more than I think giving arms a 30 second fearbreak is the most important aspect of the change. Your average PvP warrior will have Berserker Rage AND Deathwish now. You'll have to get very lucky to fear a warrior anymore, and that to me is the biggest effect of this particular change. I doubt anyone is going to pop deathwish for the damage boost, I expect they'll hold it in reserve as a fear break.
Jeremy Oct 12th 2007 12:38PM
Expertise is ONLY useful when you are attacking a target from the front, because they can't parry or dodge when you're behind them anyway.
Therefore, for someone tanking a mob, Expertise does something, though we'll see if it's better overall than weapon skill was [355 weapon skill, the base skill at 70 +5, used to effectively increase your hit on a boss by 3% AND decrease the its parry, dodge and block chance].
But for a warrior or a rogue behind a mob, Expertise gives them nothing.
rmcdonough50 Oct 12th 2007 12:37PM
I just posted this in the general class change comments but it makes more sense here:
There are some minor situational nerfs to warriors here depending on your spec, but overall I think these make sense. Losing Deathwish for fury warriors will cost a little bit of single target dps on boss fights, but gaining 10% less threat and having both weapons strike on a WW will make up for that 10-fold. WW strikes multiple targets, but it's still an instant weapon damage attack that all fury warriors use against single targets as well. Having our off-hand strike that target will significantly increase our dps. Gaining Sweeping Strikes just makes us that much more useful on aoe packs (I'm assuming it can now be cast in Berserker Stance), and we don't have to mess with switching to a 2H.
On the arms side, all pvp warriors forgo Endless Rage because they've had to go deep into the fury tree to get Deathwish and Imp Intercept, and now that changes. Deathwish was useful in pve, but it's essential in pvp for the fear immunity. Now arms warriors can go all the way down the tree to get Endless Rage and have a lot more flexibility with the remainder of their points. They can do 20 in fury to get Enrage, or they can experiment with points in protection and get Last Stand, which can be a game-breaker in pvp.
As for the disarm nerf, let's try and remember that warriors are one of the few classes that can actually disarm, so start making use of it. When you get disarmed yourself just slap on a shield, refresh your shouts or throw down a Thunderclap, and move on. It'll only be a minor inconvenience.
The only downside to this (if you can call it that) is now dual-wield fury is clearly the best pve dps spec. I know a lot of warriors like doing pve dps with a 2H MS/Imp Slam build, but with buffed dual-wield WW's and 10% less threat for going all the way down the fury tree, I think that's clearly a better pve spec now. It still might be worth it to have 1 warrior in the raid use a 2H build for Blood Frenzy, but that warrior's own numbers will suffer compared to an equally geared dual-wielder.
Kintaran Oct 12th 2007 12:38PM
Moving Death Wish and Improved Intercept into Arms isn't really much of a PVP buff at all. Pretty much all good PVP Arms warriors were already 33/23-ish and already *have* Death Wish and Improved Intercept to go with Mortal Strike.
aerosaucer Oct 12th 2007 12:38PM
No warriors really go full arms: all "arms" warriors go MS + Fury, either 31/30, 33/28, or 3x/2x/3. I already had every single talent they are switching, so my spec will not change at all. This change will make very little difference in PvP builds, but may, as you mentioned, allow PvE-focused warriors to go arms/prot without losing deathwish.
I'm also pretty sure Weapon Mastery does have a damage component, namely weapon skill/expertise.
Heraclea Oct 12th 2007 12:41PM
If Blizz wants to shuffle the 21 point gateway talents, a better idea would have been to give:
Death Wish, to Arms
Sweeping Strikes, to Prot
Concussion Blow, to Fury. (Rename it "Clobber").
and make each of the abilities usable in those classes' defining stances.
Sweeping Strikes is pretty much useless to the raid and instance Fury warrior. Too much fragile crowd control, and (unlike Death Wish) not at all useful in our role as boss killers. The loss of the fear removal hurts us even more in the many encounters where we need that to off-tank.
My way adds value all around:
Arms warriors get Death Wish, giving them looser, less cookie cutter PvP build options.
Fury warriors get the PvP role they never had. They can now force their targets to stand still for six seconds while they beat on them.
Prot warriors get a valuable multi target attack. This helps warrior tanks in multi-mob tanking situations, where they are currently inferior to both paladins and druids. And Concussion Blow was useless to main tanks speccing deep enough into Prot to pick it up: all the monsters that count are immune.
The proposed changes are bad, bad, bad for dual wield fury warriors, though. What we brought to the team was buzzsaw DPS in situations where we may be one of the last players standing, and Sweeping Strikes does not help us at all.
If this goes through, all dual wield warriors will become 21/40/0 or 31/30/0 clones, foregoing either Rampage (redundant to Enrage, since they don't stack) or switching from Bloodthirst to Mortal Strike.) If you still run friends through instances, these semi-compulsory specs have yet another drawback. There isn't enough slack in them to pick up Tactical Mastery. If Death Wish and Sweeping Strikes change places, the off-spec tanking buff is out of reach.
Greengreen Oct 12th 2007 12:42PM
The talent movements were all from arms and fury. Not a single talent from prot was moved. I see this as an effort from kalgan (the lead WoW designer who's main is an active arena warrior and played a warrior in EQ)to give -PVP- warriors "choices". Pretty much everyone has the same cookie cutter arena build. Some people skip tactical mastery to get 3/5 flurry. Some people get 3/3 imp hamstring. But nobody gets imp MS or endless rage. Nobody gets last stand or concussion blow. Now that imp intercept and deathwish are in the arms tree you'll be tempted to only put 5 points in the fury tree now. Now you can get endless rage or last stand and concussion blow. Some high end warriors may even do this because there's a been a trend for teh last few months to instant gib the warrior in arena. Especially with 4 dps teams they just rush down the warrior forcing him to go into survival mode instead of attacking other players. SO some warriors may get last stand to ward off focus fire. ANd it can be useful in 2v2 against 2 dps teams that cc your healer and burn you down. Now you might be able to survive a blind or counterspell on your healer. But you'll be missing important talents like piercing howl, weapon mastery and enrage. Me personally I'd rather have those talents instead of endless rage and last stand. I might change my mind if warriors start having sucess with last stand though. That's the point. He wanted to open up talent builds and give us more choices. We'll see if it worked or not. I'll test it out but I'm sticking with what's worked for me and keeping my talent build pretty much intact.
They're blowing the deathwish nerf way out of proportion. It never was a strong fury dps talent. I'll miss the fear break though. I can't wait for the change to whirlwind. I'm already using a nice slow offhand weapon. And being able to use sweeping strikes in berserker stance is NICE. I'm gonna enjoy using that in arena for sure.
Jeremy Oct 12th 2007 12:53PM
@7, I made a mistake. mobs do dodge when you are behind them. Got confused with block in my mind.
Heraclea Oct 12th 2007 1:03PM
They give PvP arms warriors choices. They take choices away from fury warriors, and force us to become clones.
On the other hand, with the changes, a build like this may turn into a Warrior instance tank that's actually playable outside of tanking:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=LZVVzmxxoVuVZfxtzh0z
You get Defiance for one threat bonus, Tactical Mastery for bonus threat from Bloodthirst, and you get Sweeping Strikes for the multiple mobs where warrior tanking fares badly. And you're still a Fury spec, playable outside of instances.
rmcdonough50 Oct 12th 2007 1:36PM
@10/12 Stuff like that is why I think this is a good change. The flexibility is great. What about something like this:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=LV0xdNbqM0dbZVZf0tchhz
You could be a survival based pvp warrior using a 2H in Defensive Stance, switching stances as needed. That build would be very annoying in an arena. It's probably not as good as the cookie-cutter due to lack of rage, but still interesting to try. You could also tank an instance with that build in the right gear.
I don't know how it will all shake out, but I'm excited to experiment a little.
brucimus Oct 12th 2007 1:36PM
The above build is not tank worthy with out deflection ...
Trudie Oct 12th 2007 1:40PM
What bothers me is, they didn't actually mention that you could use sweeping strikes in berserker. Am I correct that currently it is a battle stance only ability?
blitzkrieg999 Oct 12th 2007 1:54PM
I'm also curious if they will remove Deathwish as a requirement for Bloodthirst, or will you still need the 1 point in Sweeping Strikes to pick up Bloodthirst?
howellgerald Oct 12th 2007 2:05PM
@15: You can now use it in both zerker stance and battle stance.
Rich Oct 12th 2007 2:17PM
"Maybe if weapon mastery added some sort of damage component or bonus to hit or, really, something useful"
Are you serious? Um, HELLO? It gives weapon skill (expertise rating now I guess). That is effective +hit.
"Putting Death Wish in arms seems like a really massive buff to arms warrior PvP."
WRONG. Every Arms Warrior with a brain already has Death Wish, and will spec just as deep into Fury after 2.3, so it makes no difference to Arms. It's just a Fury nerf. SS is totally useless for raid DPS.
Rich Oct 12th 2007 2:19PM
"Whirlwind hitting with both weapons seems to confirm the idea that fury is being aimed at a more multi-mob DPS role"
OMG, do you even play a Warrior? This is a Fury buff because guess what, one of a dual-wielding Warrior's instants now does (roughly) double damage, either improving a current rotation or making WW a viable addition to a new rotation.
Tchernobyl Oct 12th 2007 3:12PM
Expertise is a godsend to tanks. Very often, when tanking/building threat, you won't only get misses (which is reduced by +hit)... but also parries and dodges. Weapon skill, now called experties, reduces the rate at which mobs do that vs YOUR attacks.
Less dodges and parries by the mob = more threat generating hits going in = more threat.
For that matter, with less mob parries, there's less chance for a sped up attack (any attack that is parried causes an up to 50% speed increase on the next attack as a "counterattack") which has often gibbed tanking warriors, or reduced their shield block charges far faster than normal. With this, that reduces that risk hopefully a great deal.