The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Mastery, CC and other dispatches from the future
by Matthew Rossi 
May 14th 2010 at 3:00PM
The Care and Feeding of Warriors is about warriors, those lovable, squeezable, strokeable bundles of pure joy who seethe with a burning inner fire, a rage that can only be quenched in blood. Matthew Rossi tries quenching it in delicious caffeinated beverages. You'd be surprised how often that works.
Sometimes I get to feeling a little like Cassandra around these parts. Oh, I understand the hubris of it, but I often can't squash the feeling. This week, we're going to talk a bit about mastery and what little we know about it for warriors, but before that, a little tidbit that almost sank into obscurity.
Ghostcrawler - Re: So if cc is going to be required...Not every pull is going to require crowd control, but there will be pulls that require crowd control, which isn't really the case today. Once you overgear content you overgear it, and you can take shortcuts.
We're going to make sure warriors have reasonable crowd control. Redesigning Intimidating Shout is a likely candidate.
We're going to make sure warriors have reasonable crowd control. Redesigning Intimidating Shout is a likely candidate.
Anyone who played a DPS warrior in BC can remember what it was like to see constant "LF 2 DPS/CC" requests in trade and LFG and to absolutely know without a doubt that it wasn't even worth responding to that Shadow Labyrinth group that was forming up. It didn't matter how good your DPS was or wasn't. You weren't getting in because you couldn't sheep, sap, shackle or seduce. The change to dungeons in Wrath that did away with most CC was bemoaned by most classes with CC and some tanks (who now had to tank everything ... I myself complained about it a few times), but for DPS warriors with no CC, it was a positive boon. So when they said CC was making a comeback, I was concerned for DPS warriors, who I expected might start finding themselves vote-kicked from instances with a lot of CC needed.
Thankfully, this sounds like it will not be the case. Frankly, this is one of those sacred cows that I had no real expectation we'd see changed.
As exciting as the idea of CC for warriors is (the idea that it would be a variant on Intimidating Shout makes me wonder how it will be balanced for PvP), for me, the real interesting information this week was mastery details. Now, this is information from an extremely early alpha release; it can neither be taken as set in stone or completed.
What interests me the most about mastery is the idea of a mastery "stat" on gear, because it combines a trend we've seen previously (when we saw things like weapon skill bonuses converted to the expertise mechanic) with the idea of making a stat attractive to almost all classes. Back in Burning Crusade, we saw hit, crit, haste and other such stats converted from specific melee and caster stats to generalized ones, so that crit rating, hit rating, haste, etc., etc. counted for spells and melee attacks. It meant that a piece of caster mail could be more broadly itemized without being intended specifically for an elemental shaman over a restoration shaman (at least in theory), and mastery is the ultimate expression of this trend. With mastery, you have a stat that does 30 different things, one for each spec, and thus is always safe to put on any piece of gear. A trinket with a mastery bonus? Anyone could use it.
As for warriors and mastery, however, what we have are three different masteries to consider.
The interplay between the third mastery slot and the mastery stat is of course the most interesting aspect of how masteries will interact. We'll reproduce each spec's tentative mastery charts here (again, we're a long way off from any gameplay, so don't get too excited) and take a look.
Arms
- Physical Damage % Increased by 0.157 per talent point spent, 8.01% at 51 points spent.
- Armor Penetration % Increased by .471 per talent point spent, 24.02% armor penetration at 51 points spent
- Extra Attack Chance Increased by 0.157 per talent point spent, 8.01% at 51 points spent
- Physical Damage % Increased by 0.157 per talent point spent, 8.01% at 51 points spent
- Melee Haste % Increased by 0.157 per talent point spent, 8.01% at 51 points spent
- Enrage % Increased by 1.57 per talent point spent, 80.07% at 51 points spent
- Damage Reduction % Increased by 0.157 per talent point spent, 8.01% at 51 points spent
- Vengeance Increased by 0.098 per talent point spent, 5% at 61 talent points spent; each time you take damage, you gain a percentage of the damage taken as attack power, up to a maximum of twice your Vengeance percentage of your stamina.
- Critical Block Chance % Increased by 0.51 per talent point spent, 26.01% at 51 points spent
While the numbers themselves could very easily be tweaked up or down and the form of the bonuses changed, what we can take away from looking at these is that mastery will provide both static and scaling bonuses with gear and level as we invest more into a talent tree. Since we know there won't be any double dipping into other masteries, you won't see weird arms/fury hybrid specs trying to get the first two bonuses from each tree, thus making it fairly safe for both arms and fury to have the exact same mastery bonus as their first-tier benefit.
I'm also interested in that enrage mastery for fury. The wording as it stands is "Increases the benefit of abilities that cause you to be enraged or consume an enrage effect by a percentage." This makes me think that it will be of use with Enraged Regeneration, but at 80% benefit with 51 points in fury, how much higher will the mastery stat on gear make this go? Can masteries break the 100% boundary? (It's also possible that's a typo or a mistake of some kind, so don't get too excited about the prospect of 150% enrages.) While it's stated already that the developers do in fact like tank gear and want to keep making tank gear, with the removal of defense, the introduction of mastery and the ability to reforge gear (which we need more details on), combined with the stated goal of increasing everyone's health pools, it becomes possible to imagine hit or expertise/mastery gear being equally valued between all warriors, tanking or DPS. I'm very interested in seeing how masteries scale with gear.
The idea of a variably scaling stat (the first two mastery tiers don't scale at all; the third tier does), meanwhile, has the effect of providing a near constantly upgradeable ability, which we're also seeing with hit and expertise in Cataclysm but in a much less organic way. Hit and expertise will be inflated in value as we enter each new tier of content, as each new tier will require more of those stats to keep misses and dodge/parry off of the table. But we will still plateau until each new tier of content is released and eventually have more than enough hit/expertise to ensure we can hit and not be dodged or parried.
This won't happen with masteries as they are currently structured. Without the addition of some mechanic that caps mastery (which we may see) there's no upper limit to how good mastery will be for you. Certain mastery bonuses may be stronger than others. The arms and protection third-tier masteries look more potent than the fury one unless fury gets more baseline enrage conditions, although that enrage bonus could be very potent if it also works with Bloodrage in Cataclysm -- 80% more rage generation would be 16 more rage immediately and another 8 rage over 10 seconds. But with no cap as to how good they can be, you'll never look at mastery on gear and reject it out of hand the way we do now with certain stats.
Mastery by itself could be the smoothing out of warrior rage concerns with rage normalization.
Next week, we'll go back to basics. You're a newly minted level 80 warrior. What now?
Filed under: Warrior, (Warrior) The Care and Feeding of Warriors, Cataclysm
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
busuan May 14th 2010 3:27PM
The stat system I want is one that defies theorycrafting.
People talked about how little interesting it was to use a spreadsheet to figure out a game and Blizz had acknowledged that. In a raid nowadays, same class if same role, mostly are of same build and same rotation. I never want to be the same as others. But even if I stray away a few talent points, my performance drops like DJ index on the other day.
It's a game engine issue or formulation issue? I don't know.
Az May 14th 2010 3:45PM
While I appreciate your concern, it's very very very difficult to design a system in which one method of doing something is not better than all other solutions. Given the min/max scene of the medium to hardcore raiding guilds, the build/glyph/gearing combination that returns the highest DPS/HPS/EHP is going to win out consistently. If you can figure out a design strategy that offers multiple solutions that play differently while having the same effectiveness, you should forward Blizzard your resume.
theRaptor May 14th 2010 4:22PM
Even if there where multiple talent/rotation options that had the same output the one that was easiest to pull off or had the most utility would still be The One. With a game as complex as WoW it is hard to make multiple builds do the exact same DPS so even if they got close to perfection what was best would just fluctuate with gear and content.
In the past if you didn't just want to be another copy cat DPSer you could play one of the utility classes* (like BC Shadow Priests) but with class casualisation *cough* I mean "bring the player not the class" Blizz are attempting to remove any niche.
* Or for example as I did back in Classic be a support build DPS like the old Mage scorch bitch (to keep those rolling ignites going for over 9,000 damage).
Butts May 14th 2010 3:54PM
From the original blue post regarding the Warrior class change:
"Enrage Intensity: Every benefit of being enraged is increased. This includes doing more damage/healing/ etc. from abilities like Bloodrage, Death Wish, Enrage, Berserker Rage, and Enraged Regeneration. "
So it will increase Bloodrage/Berserker rage for the rage regeneration, which is useful, but has a huge down time... Death wish damage bonus increase is nice too. Enrage/Enraged Regeneration are pretty useless. So basically it would help for very short duration and then be useless.
Kao May 14th 2010 4:03PM
Cool! My Prot Warrior is hitting 80 this week! Looking forward to next week's article. :D
Hakkai-Lethon May 14th 2010 4:11PM
imo mastery is just going to be a nob blizzard is going to use to toon classes. my big worry, other then the new rage system, is that we may get another ArP situation. where its not that great in the beginning and gets buffed then in later content since the gear is available you try to cap out at 100%. Alot of people are rather annoyed with ArP so much that its getting taken out of the game except thru mastery. can we cap out ArP once more? 51 talent points will get us 24% how many more on gear to get 50% 100%? will they nerf it back down with this nob? will that make mastery lack luster for warrior due to the new rage system.
Mr. Rossi I do hope that they decide to give you a golden ticket to the beta. I may not be a good typer or poor at my ideas across but you are not :P you also have a firm grasp of the mech of warriors
theRaptor May 14th 2010 4:30PM
No ArP is getting removed because it is so complex and non-linear that even Blizzard didn't understand it properly. IIRC ArP was the only game mechanic that was explicitly defined by Blizz because the EJ-types couldn't figure out the formula.
Due to the fact that even Blizz didn't understand ArP properly it got out of hand. But it getting out of hand isn't the reason it is getting removed. Blizz wants the average player to be able to understand their class without resorting to 3rd party sites. The decision won't be between a higher tier piece of gear with no ArP and a low tier piece stacked with ArP (which currently might be a better choice) it will straight up be based on what basic stats your class/spec needs and mastery points.
Boobah May 14th 2010 10:20PM
There's no way to stack armor penetration, aside from the first 51 points you put in a tree that has that as a secondary mastery. No tree has armor pen as their primary mastery, which is the only one the mastery stat on gear can affect. While it seems not unlikely to vary up and down from one patch to the next as balance issues become more clear to the devs (and players), without the ability to stack it unbalancing amounts aren't really possible.
Minos May 14th 2010 4:29PM
Wasn't there talk of changing Intimidating Shout for PvP so that it didn't cause the target to flee out of melee range, away from the warrior? If the target were to cower in fear instead, just crank up the duration in PvE and you've got a fair CC ability.
theRaptor May 14th 2010 4:36PM
That is what Intimidating Shout already does except the target's "cower" (stun) breaks on damage* ....
If you meant ALL the targets within the radius that would make Intimidating Shout the ultimate CC.
* I suspect someone has been using Intimidating Shout wrong. You use it in PVP to disrupt formations and shutdown an important target (like a healer, which is normally me).
Hih May 14th 2010 6:07PM
If they made the target of Intimidating Shout stand and cower for say, a minute in PvE/8 seconds in PvP, it wouldn't be a change at all and give Warriors the nearly the same CC as Ret Paladins. Hell, they could probably even do something like "If used on a monster the cooldown is 1 minute. If used on a player the cooldown is 2 minutes." And increase the range on the targeted part of Intimating Shout and bam, warriors have a repentance-like CC.
icepyro May 14th 2010 6:03PM
"Since we know there won't be any double dipping into other masteries, you won't see weird arms/fury hybrid specs trying to get the first two bonuses from each tree, thus making it fairly safe for both arms and fury to have the exact same mastery bonus as their first-tier benefit."
Erm, except that it is the same constant. So if you could combine them then 30 pts in one and 21 pts in the other would result in the same benefit as 51 points in either. So it is still fairly safe. That's what I hate about this. The bonuses are all quite safe because they are a constant increase based on talent points and not the mastery stat. As long as the third one isn't shared and goes by what has the most so that the mastery stat knows what to buff, I see no problem in having an arms/fury warrior receive bonuses from each tree.
I understand this is supposed to be something that keeps balance between pure and hybrid classes, but honestly I don't see the point. Even without masteries, there isn't really any hybrid tree builds out there except for PvP purposes and hybrid classes will not want to mix things up too much because their tree defines their role and not just play-style. How is weakening yourself by not getting the most out of your tree being the same as OP with mastery? A little arp for the fury warrior is nice, but haste probably trumps it anyways and vice versa.
Right now, some trees are built around the idea the better players will branch into other trees. See Deep Wounds, or for magi: Torment of the Weak. Both result in lots of wasted talents because they don't benefit your chosen build and you are simply trying to get to something that more than makes up for the waste. As they shed this ideal, I can't help but feel the person with all their talent points in one tree may no longer be the noob as then not only do you get all the best talents, but the mediocre + mastery could be better than branching into a different tree without mastery.
Bah. We still simply don't have enough information to judge. /rant
BB Crisp May 14th 2010 6:27PM
You only get the mastery bonus from the tree in which you have the most points. Going 30/21 would only yield you a 30-point mastery. You can still go hybrid, but its utility drops heavily with the mastery system.
jbodar May 15th 2010 5:42AM
"As they shed this ideal, I can't help but feel the person with all their talent points in one tree may no longer be the noob as then not only do you get all the best talents, but the mediocre + mastery could be better than branching into a different tree without mastery."
You have to remember that Mastery points cap at 51, so there is no advantage there to sinking all points into one tree. Where Mastery is concerned, it's still likely we'll be better served going something like 51/25/0 or 51/15/10 or whatever. You are right in that we can't say without seeing the new talent tree landscape, however.
http://www.wow.com/2010/05/13/cataclysm-leak-mastery-formulas/
Aerodaas May 19th 2010 6:52PM
hey guys guess what, i'm using arms to pve and i'm jus loving it, though fury does more dps, i can't play with fury's playstyle, jus so boring!
Mayhew May 17th 2010 6:48PM
I would respectfully disagree with you, here. Try tanking in a crit-immune set that stacks armor penetration, and you will probably have a bit more fun on your warrior. I use some relentless and wrathful pvp pieces to reach 5.6% crit reduction, and the rest of my gear is dps (except for the shield). I currently have a little over 67% armor pen in this set, and on random heroics I will routinely do almost 50% of the total group's damage. It almost feels like cheating, and it is incredibly fun. Also, when you put out that kind of damage in defensive stance, you almost never have threat issues, ever. It has given me a new love for running random heroics.