Ghostcrawler in depth on warriors in Cataclysm
by Matthew Rossi 
Jun 11th 2010 at 6:00PM
Ghostcrawler on MS debuffThe problem of course is that if only you get the debuff or if only you get the best debuff then warriors are mandatory for anything PvP which might be fine for you but doesn't really feel fair to everyone else. Sometimes I wish we'd just remove the debuff because it's almost impossible to balance around both having and not having it. We can make sure Mortal Strike hits hard but we're unlikely to do anything that improves the debuff.
Honestly, I wouldn't mind their removing the MS debuff either. It doesn't really seem like it fits with the Cataclysm ideal for PvP, which is more health and less burst. Tune up the damage on MS so that the ability hits like a truck, and in general balance arms warriors to put out the same kind of DPS as other classes in PvP, rather than having to give them a debuff that makes everyone on their side's damage count for double. (Heck, you could even change the MS debuff so that it does something else, like lower movement speed or something else that would make sense for a "mortal wound.")
Let's pick over and discuss several of these answers in more detail. Most of the discussion is PvP-related; so, too, are the answers.
Ghostcrawler on next hit mechanics
Q u o t e:
1) On next swing attacks:
Who was it that determined that warriors were not fond of this mechanic ... personally I loved said mechanics as they added a fuid way to convert rage into damage without having to expend an ever so precious GCD that warriors just do not have the luxury of waisting (namely arms).
We weren't fond of the mechanic. It wasn't up to a vote. But we also know a lot of warriors didn't like it either. It takes the most visceral moments of combat -- hitting a button and seeing damage -- and turns it into an autoattack, probably the least exciting moment of combat.
Personally, my own feelings on next hit/next swing abilities depended on if I was tanking or not. I hate spamming HS to tank. I hate it like I hate playing a mage. I had to slap a macro into several of my other abilities that queued an HS for me so that I wouldn't go insane this expansion. While I do tend to agree with the idea that using abilities (pushing buttons) is fun, repeatedly hammering on a key because it lets me spam an ability faster does not match up with my idea of fun. I am not a woodpecker.
My hatred for it went down some as DPS, because I never spammed HS when DPSing unless I was just swimming in rage. I don't necessarily agree that the on-next-swing mechanic turns a button press into an auto-attack, though. I don't need to work my hands into numb surrender to get auto-attacks to work properly. If the new HS/Cleave mechanic makes these abilities less spammy, I'm all for it.
Ghostcrawler on WW and AoE in Cataclysm
Q u o t e:
2) AoE and splash damage:
Why is it that whirlwind is being treated like an AoE attack that should only be used on large pulls yet unlike all other AoE abilities in the game is bound to a cooldown ? Also how will the change to whirlwind impact the functionality of Bladestorm ?
You'll do fine on AoE, which will be more rare in Catalcysm regardless. The change to Whirlwind will not affect Bladestorm.
Q u o t e:
With cleave becoming an instant attack with rage mechanincs similar to execute and whirlwind no longer being in our single dps rotation we just lost an area of dps that we used to excel in... and that was doing well at dpsing smaller groups of pulls
That's not really a great niche though. Nobody says "we need more warriors to handle these smaller group pulls." You'll do fine on AoE fights.
First off, in the game currently there are other AoE abilities with cooldowns (Fire Nova comes to mind, just 'cause I also play a shaman; I'm sure there are others), and so it won't be the end of the world if WW becomes a true AoE with a cooldown. Secondly, these two questions really don't address the problem with the WW change at all. WW does a lot of damage on trash fights and fights with lots of adds, sure, but we all know that's junk damage. The issue is, currently WW does the job of second instant in a Bloodthirst-Bloodthirst-Whirlwind rotation, and when you hit WW on a single-target fight, it hits the target with both weapons. WW is, in essence, a really strong single-target attack that can then add its single-target damage to up to three additional targets. Balancing it out for AoE is necessary. What we need more details on is what's taking its place for our single-target rotation? Because without an ability that does a similar kind of work for us (doesn't have to do it the same way, just needs to fill that gaping, WW-shaped hole), our DPS is going to plummet. (Yes, yes, best-in-slot fury warriors do great DPS in ICC now, blah blah ... I'm talking about what will happen in Cataclysm. You can calm down now.)
By all means, tone down semi-AoE like WW and Cleave spam. But what will we be doing instead? That's where I'd like to see more focus.
Ghostcrawler on warrior scaling
Q u o t e:
*-By making sure warriors will no longer scale so much with gear as they have been since the conception of the game what is being done to make sure they stay competitive throughout the expansion from the begining to the end ???*
Scaling awesomely with gear as compensation for doing bad damage when undergeared is not good game design. Warrior damage with great gear is much too high right now, as it is at the end of every expansion. This isn't surprising to anyone really. The current rage model just doesn't work and we need something more consistent. Consistency is the way to make sure you stay competitive from beginning to end (rather than averaging out at competitive because you're too low at the beginning and too high at the end).
And this is the problem with the current "warrior DPS is too high" argument. Warriors suck and suck and suck and you ROFLstomp them on DPS and laugh at them and they suck and you get used to them sucking -- and then suddenly, they destroy you after getting carried for most of an expansion. I have always agreed that it is bad design. What needs to happen is simple enough: warrior DPS in end-game gear needs to come down from its current theoretical maximum which, thanks to current rage, exceeds that of each and every class in the game, pure or hybrid. As the only class that uses rage as a DPS mechanic, warriors throttle their DPS by that mechanic. As a result, once that mechanic is no longer a throttle, warrior DPS is held back only by global cooldowns, especially since there are two on-next-swing abilities that ignore GCD.
The penalty warriors have historically paid for this ability to be the theoretical maximum DPS class in full end-game gear is that they're usually near the bottom for every other situation. We've seen it in Naxx, in Ulduar, in ToC and now in ICC. Warriors perform worse than everyone until the absolute best gear, then suddenly rip ahead. What we need is a system where a warrior performs roughly as well as a paladin, a DK, a shaman, a druid or shadow priest in equivalent gear, not get pushed down into ridiculously low performance for the gearing-up process and then rocket ahead once gear is achieved, only to be nerfed as new content comes out.
If warrior DPS suffers in the absolute best gear but is competitive on the way to get to that gear, compared to how it's worked in both BC and Wrath, I can live with that. If we just end up underperforming from start to finish, that's no good. And frankly, if we just end up as overpowered gods from start to finish, that's also no good (even if ret pallies really didn't seem to mind it in Wrath). The fall from the top is terrible if you went too high.
This, to me, is a very important and long-needed change to the warrior design philosophy that we as players need not only to adapt to, but also to pay close attention to. Through the beta, through the opening months of Cataclysm, we need to be watchful and if our DPS is too high or too low, make sure to give feedback constructively. It's actively dangerous to class balance to try and hide over-the-top DPS or obfuscate it; it leads to real issues of underperformance being ignored.
There's a lot more to read in the thread and who knows, more might be posted, so it's worth taking a look now.
Filed under: Warrior, Analysis / Opinion, News items, Cataclysm
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
StGeorge78 Jun 11th 2010 6:04PM
GC for everyone else with unbalancing talents says "PVP is not balanced around individuals, it's a group balance" and then when it comes to Warriors says "Warriors have way too much PVP utility with Mortal Strike (even though they can't survive without healers), NERF IT TO THE GROUND BABY" Make up your mind.
Killik Jun 11th 2010 6:14PM
This is an issue with the 50% healing debuff, not an issue with Warriors.
Oriflame Jun 11th 2010 6:29PM
everyone gets buffed. everyone gets nerfed. It just only feels bad when it is you. It's OK.
Natsumi Jun 11th 2010 6:59PM
What other PvP utility do we have besides MS? The ability to be kited, no that's not it. The 3 minute CD Fear that breaks on damage, no that isn't very good either. How about stance dancing + weapon swap macros for Spell Reflect and Shield Bash/Pummel, no those suck too (even GC said they don't want people to succeed because they only have a "clever macro").
The only PvP utility I see from warriors is going DEEP Prot or MS/FA from the DPS trees. MS's purpose has been lost (Keep the target from healing back up before you can kill it) with the upcoming changes anyway. Add to that they have given the debuff to half the other classes in the game and the fact that MS hits like a wet noodle in a PvP environment and you get failing at PvP. Get rid of ALL the MS Debuffs and bump up the damage of MS (whos damage is low due to the 50% healing debuff it has tacked on), make it worthy of the title MORTAL Strike (currently it's worthy of Slightly Painful Strike or Mild Discomfort Strike even after spending 4 talent points and a Glyph slot on it).
timothy.stankus Jun 11th 2010 7:07PM
I guess what scares me about all these comments is the attitude Blizzard seems to take towards Warriors. Our rage mechanic has been horribly broke forever, and our class very honestly has not been given the balancing love that others have seen this expansion. Why I'm scared is Blizzard through all its dealing with the warrior class seems so damn scared of making us to op, so instead we miss necessary fixes, and received nerfs. I'm glad to see the rage mechanic finally change. I've leveled 3 warriors on different realms and its more painful than pulling teeth, the dps is woeful, your not desired in any sort of raiding scenario (until you are geared to the teeth). Its the other changes listed here that make me think blizzard is going to "fix" us to make us "fair" in the way our next swing use / aoe use occurs, bu in the end we will jus tfeel the dps shaft on both the high and the low end. At this point I'm all for them just tearing the class down and starting over because reviewing mos of the prior statements on warriors, and current cata adjustments it just looks like Blizz couldn't figure out what we were meant to be but sure as hell doesn't want us being very utility, or high dps. (Seriously MS nerf, Bladestorm, its not like Arms warriors had much going for them with those abilities).
Basically to wrap up my rant I'd like to see Blizz talk about new abilities that will cover the damage reduction from the WW change. I want to see us be competetive with dps classes through all levels. I want to know in the future if Blizz does figure out a major mechanic for any class is broken, they won't just sit around and wait till the rest of us have adapted to it to change it.
Mr.X Jun 11th 2010 6:40PM
I agree with Removing MS debuff all togher, I just dont see the point of it anymore, if dps gets balanced propperly that all or most specs are within 5-8% of each other than whats the point of a perma MS debuff on the target?
Specially since most classes are getting it which results in the other classes becoming weaker in comparison, which also results to comps where you must have a MS debuff.
If they are going to keep MS debuff I think it should be made so that it reduces healing by like 75% for like 4-6 secs and have a CD of 30 sec, this way it will only be used to control the healing temporarly at a time when the target is low or something, Similar to that ability they are planning to give DKs, that anti disc shield, where it absorbs healing instead of damage.
Also I would make the MS debuff so that a target cannot be affected by it more than once every 12 sec, so that you dont get comps that stack it one after an other and you end up with 75% less healing for 18 sec or something.
busuan Jun 11th 2010 7:14PM
I wonder if greatly improving the parry chance of a DPS warrior could make things better. Similar to DK's benefit of getting Rune Strike, a dps warrior could instead get a Haste boost when parrying (which is the opposite of a tank's parry. The idea is to
change dps warrior from the 'plated rogue' into a front-assaulting, real-warrior-like class.
Killik Jun 12th 2010 7:25AM
Isn't that exactly how a prot warrior's parry works - parrying hastes the next attack? Do you mean that warriors should dps while tanking?
Kemikalkadet Jun 12th 2010 9:42AM
Not really sure what you mean by that suggestion.. in order to parry you need the mob to be attacking you, are you suggesting for DPS warriors to tank the bosses so they can get a haste boost? Rune Strike works like a warriors Revenge, and it's only useful for tanks since they're the only ones parrying/dodging attacks.
rkaliski Jun 11th 2010 9:13PM
The first toon I rolled and the one I love is a warrior. Now, what always puzzled me was the arms/fury part of the trees. It always seemed like those soft drinks that took out the coloring and made themselves clear. Brown or Clear it is the same soda, same taste. Same thing with Fury or Arms. What you spec dpends on the way the nerfs and buffs go. Unlike Pallys who have clear choices.
Make Fury balls to the walls dps. However an arms warrior would be able to tank most everything but still produce decent dps. Prot warriors should be still the king of survival.
cidninja Jun 11th 2010 7:55PM
these arguments are tired and boring. warriors are going to be fine. it already seems like fury is gonna have victory rush and furious sundering, that's two things that we know about to take the place of whirlwind.
worst case scenario, we stay the same as always. bad with bad gear, great with good gear. best case scenario, we get fixed and actually scale properly. blizzard knows their game. just wait and see what happens.
Kit Jun 11th 2010 8:46PM
Whats with the stab at Ret Paladins? Gods from beginning to end? I don't think so. We had about 1 week tops in 3.0 where we were smoking everything then we got demolished by the nerf bat. It'd be nice if you could keep the class prejudice out of your articles. It'd make it a better read.
Merch Jun 11th 2010 9:47PM
why so serious? I may be interpretting Rossi incorrectly, but it may have been a joke. Do you remember jokes?
Lemons Jun 12th 2010 12:55AM
You ret pallies just need to man up and admit it, you've never been BAD for this entire expansion cycle, you only bounce between being good and great. Ret's only failing is in high-level arenas which only puts you in the same boat as probably 15 other specs.
Tigron Jun 11th 2010 9:21PM
Thank you for confirming once again that scaling better with gear isn't good. Now, please remember that as I say something that I've been too scared for my life to admit until now.
I have always hated TG.
I've hated it ever since the Wrath alpha leaks. When I first read about it, I said to myself, "That'll never make it to launch." What this talent did was bring the class balance tightrope act into forbidden territory. If we want classes to ever be truly balanced, we need to hold on to as many constant values as possible. Stat budgets used to be one of those constant values; you could count on the fact that everyone on the same tier had the same total stats, and you could safely tune abilities and talents around that assumption. With TG, however, you have to add yet another variable to an already overburdened equation. I for one think that's just not acceptable.
Now, I myself have been a warrior since the beginning, and so I understand everything you've said in the past about how we are undertuned and suffering. However, you yourself just agreed that letting us benefit more from gear is the wrong way to compensate for anything we may lack. Not only does this exacerbate the problems that the rage mechanic gave us, but it's causing the Arms spec to lag behind Fury in terms of performance. Regardless of anyone's personal fondness for the barbarian fantasy, we need to bite the bullet and attack the extra stats portion of TG directly. We can do this either by halving stats on equipped weapons or ignoring the offhander's stats. After this, we would still have the higher DPS of 2-handers. No more of this damage tax or extra miss chance or any other attempt to counterbalance the issue.
The bottom line here is that I want us to stop clinging to unrelated buffs in compensation for long standing deficiencies. Address the root of the problem, don't try to work around it. When someone is sick, you give him medicine, not tell him to lose weight.
And most of all, don't get so focused on leveling the playing field as a whole that you disturb the areas that were already level to begin with. That, by definition, is the opposite of progress.
Killik Jun 12th 2010 7:28AM
That's a really good point. They gave a talent that insanely benefits from gear to the class that already scales best.
Me, I dislike Titan's Grip because auto-attacks are just so damn slow.
Lemons Jun 12th 2010 12:46AM
What worrys me about the MS is that if we're all going down to 20% what's happening to the mini-MS that was given to mages and spriests? Is it simply going to stay the same? I for one think theirs should be taken away or other drastic measures are going to have to be taken to balance those classes.
Think of an spriest now, how much damage they do, and now imagine THAT but with a full blown 50% MS. That's what it's going to be like in Cataclysm when 20% is considered a full blown MS.
There's three things a dps class can bring to a fight...damage, control, and MS. If you bring all three then welcome to overpoweredville.
Killik Jun 12th 2010 7:32AM
Well they are going to be rebalancing all classes' damage, so I doubt we're going to have to worry about "all the dps spriests currently do, plus a relatively more effective MS".
timmins Jun 12th 2010 3:17AM
Reading these blue posts makes me stop wanting to play my warrior. I started leveling one a couple days ago, and was having great fun.
But I like that gear is really important, and that you get rewarded for paying attention to the details of your character, and you actually have an incentive to pick up minor buffs like food, even while leveling. I like that they are really good while questing, because questing generally involves dpsing small pulls of mobs, which cleave/rend is great against.
And I LOVE stance dancing. I actually have the tactical mastery talent just so that I can do it (and tank better before level 40, without a prot spec), and I have clever macros to do it. Okay, not clever macros: my action bars are unique to the stance I am in, and I have an equipment manager/stance change macro to automatically put my shield on when I go to defensive mode. Which I assumed blizzard wanted, as they put half the functionality directly into the game, where you used to need an add on to do. It's not a tough macro. At all.
Finally, I really really like that they are a class which isn't so reliant on how fast you can use ablities, and is more reliant on managing limited resources. By having lots of global cooldowns relative to the rage to spend them on, I find it works well, at least at low levels, to really have to decide "do I spend my rage on that cleave, or should I save some for a thunder clap".
Really, between taunting, managing rage, which is far more scarce than mana, positioning, watching for adds, and keeping an eye on my health and line of sight to the healer, I don't really feel like being global cooldown starved would make any part of the game more fun.
Mothr Jun 12th 2010 5:01AM
This: "And frankly, if we just end up as overpowered gods from start to finish, that's also no good (even if ret pallies really didn't seem to mind it in Wrath)".
Just turned a mediocre artcile with some good points into another whiny warrior response!
Ret pallies are the exact opposite of warriors, we rule at the begining in lesser gear, and when resilience is of non existance to matter we destroy in 1vs1 pvp. But then comes the hammer after 3 months into the game and we get nerfed for countless times over the next year. Untill we are mediocre, and then when resilience enters the game in high enough numbers to actually matter, we end up as useless for a year, untill the next expansion hits the shelves.
Instead of posting the same inane "Omg i play a warrior and I envy the pallies so much!", post about how Blizzard fails for both classes to make them valuable (talking about Ret + Arms or Fury here) from start to finish on boss fights.