Deep Wounds hotfixed
by Matthew Rossi 
Feb 4th 2009 at 3:30PM
If you're a raiding fury warrior and you've noticed some inconsistency in your DPS numbers of late, it might not just be your imagination: Deep Wounds has been hotfixed to remove a bug that was causing the damage from the bleed effect to gain modifiers to the base weapon's damage like Two Handed Weapon Specialization or Enrage.
In addition to lowering warrior DPS (aimed at Fury Warriors, as the devs have said they intend arms to get a buff) this also could affect a lot of prot warriors who use deep wounds to help their TPS while tanking. If you're a protection spec warrior who has noticed a recent threat decrease, check your talents and see if you have Deep Wounds, it may be the culprit.
In addition to lowering warrior DPS (aimed at Fury Warriors, as the devs have said they intend arms to get a buff) this also could affect a lot of prot warriors who use deep wounds to help their TPS while tanking. If you're a protection spec warrior who has noticed a recent threat decrease, check your talents and see if you have Deep Wounds, it may be the culprit.
Filed under: Warrior, Bugs, News items
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
10pound Feb 4th 2009 3:33PM
Finally!
Ero Feb 4th 2009 3:42PM
Well that sucks. Didn't they say they would compensate us prot warriors on this? And now is deep wounds even worth it for us?
pwkalt1 Feb 4th 2009 3:52PM
If I understand this correctly, nothing would have changed for prot warriors, cause we wouldn't have any of the talents that were buffing deep wounds for arms/fury warriors.
Matthew Rossi Feb 4th 2009 4:57PM
Actually, prot warriors have an enrage of their own.
http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=29593
Shisho2k Feb 10th 2009 7:00AM
Matt can you explain what you mean Deep Wounds is the culprit? The way you worded it sounds like Deep Wounds now causes a threat penalty.
If they lowered it's damage from enrage, that just means less threat generated from Deep Wounds then from before.
I use it and I haven't noticed anything terrible yet. It wasn't terribly necessary for single target threat as it was nice for AOE threat.
Ryan Feb 4th 2009 3:54PM
Warrior tears taste like candy.
Etcee Feb 4th 2009 3:59PM
Pardon my ignorance, but I'm a raiding Arms warrior, and I see this as nothing but an arms nerf.
Deep Wounds, the talent being discussed, is a 13 point Arms Talent, and Two-Hand Weapon specilization, one of the talents that was improperly modifying the Deep Wounds damage, is a 16 point arms talent.
Blood Frenzy and Trauma, two deep arms tree talents, are evidence that the warrior bleed mechanic is something geared towards Arms Warriors, not fury warriors.
So i dont understand why the aticle is saying this is inline with the dev vision of buffin Arms and Nerfing fury, when all i see is nerfing an already neglected Arms sepc.
Please, correct me if im missing something, if for no reason other than me understanding my class better.
BWarner Feb 4th 2009 4:16PM
Please look at my reply to xenocider further below. Your answer is there.
BWarner Feb 4th 2009 4:02PM
There is a lot of "gnashing of teeth" about this on the main forums, and discussion over at Elitist Jerks about it, and its effects on Fury/Arms/Prot in the near, and further, future.
Personally, as a die-hard Fury Warrior, I think it was kind of... odd... to see about a raw 12-15% hacked off of my numbers. Do I think it's the right move? Absolutely. It's a bug that's needed fixing, and has even been handed to the developers by the Warrior community. However, it is a nerf, be it intentional or not. And while Fury damage may have been slightly inflated compared to some other classes recently, this will have to be re-evaluated based on the new (unbugged and intended) mechanics.
One of the main points of contention right now is that this only affects fights such as Thaddius, Loatheb, and Malygos, where an external factor (charges, spores, or sparks, respectively) artifically inflated our damage dealt specifically through Deep Wounds. This is absolutely NOT the case. Over a night of fighting a wide range of bosses, pre-change Deep Wounds damage, speaking from my personal experience, was coming in at about 27%, which after talking to some other Fury Warriors, is pretty consistent across the board (an average of a wide range of fights). Of course this number varies quite a bit, from 20ish-34ish, but the key point to take from this is that our damage ON THE WHOLE (no stylizing tools, so you'll have to deal with caps) has just been taken down by about 10-15%, or 12 if you want a number to work from. This is quite a bit to be taking off the top (the amalgated total of Fury DPS), and is pertinent to keep in mind when further balancing from this point on. And again, to drive the point home - this has the appearance of affecting a wider range of fights than just the "gimmicky" fights, from Patchwerk, to Sarth, on down to KT.
A key point that is also being brought up rather frequently is that Arms DPS has taken another hit, bringing them down to, well, almost healer-DPS territory. Okay, maybe not that far, but certainly below the level that a skilled execution of a well-played and set-up character should be pulling. A number of Arms Warriors that I have spoken to are taking this news none too well, though in my personal opinion, I'm going to give Blizzard some time here, as I have no fears that they will not be compensated. They just announced that they are about to, well, announce numerous and broad-sweeping (though not comprehensive) class and spec changes with 3.1, and this just a day or so after they state rather clearly that Arms DPS (along with the leather-wearing melee DPS known as kitties and... most rogues) is indeed low, and they are working on addressing this very point.
From a Prot point of view, this will hurt threat, and certainly damage output. While the threat game really isn't too much of a deal right now, with everyone raiding in an entry-level raiding scene, I fear that, without a smidgen of compensation in Prot's direction, there could be slight threat issues. On the other hand, pending on actually experiencing this new content, it could just put Prot Warrior threat in the place it really should be - not something that can be ignored, when gearing for more avoidance (As opposed to DPS output, like the situation is currently).
I know you're writing, Matt. I've followed it for a while. I've come to expect more insight than "Deep Wounds bug was fixed" from you. Hopefully another article is forthcoming explaining some of the more in-depth ramifications of this presently ubiquitous talent in Warrior builds. Just Sayin'.(tm)
BWarner Feb 4th 2009 4:10PM
Forgot to include the links to the discussions at the two places that I mentioned.
Elitist Jerks: http://elitistjerks.com/f81/t37680-depth_fury_dps_discussion/p32/
Official Forums (through the MMO-Champion Blue Tracker - click the post title to bring up official forum post): http://blue.mmo-champion.com/28/14910061281-attn-bluedeep-wounds-hotfix.html
In the official forums, Ghostcrawler initially said that some changes may have been pushed, as they have been making some internal changes, and then further on clarifies the exact change that is currently live.
Matthew Rossi Feb 4th 2009 5:03PM
There's a large difference between the columns and a quick post, which this is. Believe me, I'll have more to say about the Deep Wounds changes this week, but the purpose of a short post like this one is merely to break the news of the hotfix, not to analyze it for 1000+ words. I get in trouble for being too long winded as it is.
BWarner Feb 4th 2009 7:58PM
Totally understandable. And, sorry if it sounded like I was being... aggressive with my words. Thought I threw an emoticon (smiley) or something in there at the end, must not have. Whoops!
And who says that you're long-winded? Okay, maybe, but at least there's good content in there. Like convincing me that Bloodsurge wasn't a waste of 3 perfectly good talent points back in beta when I was on the outside looking in? Until you wrote about how much you "LOVED Bloodsurge", I just didn't see any point whatsoever in it. (Speaking of which, the change to the new Bloodsurge would be another great topic to cover. ;D)
Already looking forward to the post!
xenocider Feb 4th 2009 4:06PM
I don't see how nerfing deep wounds is going to "buff" arms at all. That just nerfs fury and arms. Arms to a lesser degree because an Arms warrior wont stack the bleed effect as much as a fury warrior, but a nerf nonetheless.
BWarner Feb 4th 2009 4:15PM
This is not a buff to Arms, nor a really explicit nerf. This is a bugfix that happens to nerf any Warrior who picks up Deep Wounds. Let me repeat that for effect: This is a bugfix.
There are promises of Arms buffs in the works. This is not it. This is not even classified as class balancing, though it does have this effect. This is a bugfix. The Arms buffs will be announced pretty soon, and will be really clear, of that I can be sure.
Etcee Feb 4th 2009 4:58PM
@BWarner
I understand that it's a bug fix, and dont at all mind the implementation of the hotfix, i was just trying to figure out why the article (and now other commenters) are referring this as a mainly Fury issue, when the bleed mechanic and all talents that affect it are arms talents.
BWarner Feb 4th 2009 8:10PM
While Arms does make more use of the Bleed effects, like Deep Wounds, Fury was getting much more use out of Deep Wounds in particular, due to Fury applying many more Deep Wound effects, stacking them up nice and high, and having so many damage modifiers affect the application of this bleed blew this way out of proportion for Fury, more so than Arms.
Yes, Deep Wounds is a standby mechanic for Arms. But does it make up 27% (the number I've come to use for it) of your total DPS, through the entire night? It does for Fury.
Another reason that everyone and their mother-in-law is portraying this as a Fury nerf is, well, they've been saying Fury damage is too high, and, well, they're expecting it. So when something like this happens, people assign that "Fury nerf" tag on it, and discuss that aspect.
And dropping 12% off of my total damage dealt is indeed a nerf, in addition to a bugfix, if it's whacking that same 10-15% off of all the other Fury Warriors out there. Or, at the very least, a shifting in the class. Which, I personally accept happily; as cool as Deep Wounds was (and is), making up a quarter of my damage output is kind of... boring, to say the least.
Battler Feb 4th 2009 4:16PM
A good number of tankspot.com readers (including myself) spec into deep wounds for dps help (thereby, threat). By speccing deep wounds, my dps increased 100+.
But in my experience, I've noticed similarly geared pallies have 200+ more dps compared to my dps even when I spec deep wounds. Granted, consecration is doing some AoE damage on trash and dps may go down when the pally is tanking a boss.
I don't have any experience with DK and druid tanks, so can't speak for their gear-comprable dps.
What annoys me, and other prot warriors, is that this hotfix is going through without compensating for the lost dps. This inherently hurts the raid since they have to hold back their dps for our lack threat/dps.
To compensate, maybe they could apply a rend on a crit or maybe bring back the dps aspect of devastate...something would be better than nothing.
BWarner Feb 4th 2009 4:20PM
Speaking of Tankspot, here's a good discussion from the News item on the subject: http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f64/45028-deep-wounds-being-hotfixed.html
I'm sure that this discussion will go somewhere, and have that tank flavor you're looking for. Y'know, not to continually try and drive everyone from the WoWInsider. =D
Lemons Feb 4th 2009 5:20PM
Wait...is maintaining threat really a problem for tanks in wotlk? You guys must be generating a crapton of threat otherwise we couldn't aoe down trash pulls.
Also with tricks and misdirect (I'll assume you have at least one rogue or hunter in your 10 man, or if not, in your 25 man), you should have a hell of a lot more threat than anyone else in the raid. Period.
Last time I was able to pull threat off a decently geared tank was...never.
Lemons Feb 4th 2009 5:14PM
Well time to finally outdps all those warriors that have been barely beating me on the meters. Hazzah!