So Who is going to Train Inner Rage?

Q u o t e:
If you have to think about training it, that's not the version that's going live.

Yes. There have been almost no abilities in WoW that have ever been not worth training, unless they are very situational, utility things. This isn't one of those.

Q u o t e:
In it's current implementation as it has been previewed? Absolutely, positively not. Countless thoroughly detailed mathematical breakdowns have been given as to why this new ability fails on a grand scale.

Doing a thoroughly mathematical breakdown is pointless at this stage when you still don’t access to many of the relevant variables. Expressing concern is fine. Dismissing anything in the game as unsolvable at this stage is very premature.

Q u o t e:
Yes, I know. Jonlo is trying to pull the line that the way HS functions in WotLK is an accident. It wasn't. HS was designed to function this way.

Yes and no. The design intent for Heroic Strike has pretty much always been that you use it to bleed off excess rage and convert that into damage. We haven’t been happy for some time that warriors can hit a near-infinite rage plateau, but we knew changing that would be a major overhaul (one best saved until now, for instance). In the meantime, we have to balance around damage actually being done by warriors. We can’t say “Well, we didn’t want them to convert nearly every white swing into a Heroic Strike, so we’ll just pretend they don’t when we do the numbers.” We have to balance around actual performance, not design intent, up until the point where something violates the design intent enough for us to want to change it.

The Cataclysm design for Heroic Strike gets the ability back into the role where we want it. There is no reason to conclude warrior dps is hopeless without it. We have dozens of knobs to turn, from the damage done by Devastate and Shield Slam to stats on gear to the new passive talent tree bonuses. Imagine that we are changing every number in the game – some will get lower and some will get higher. That makes it fairly meaningless to try and do any kind of mathematical analysis on the way mechanics will work. I understand that the temptation is there though. :) Discussing the role of abilities or how they might functions is perfectly appropriate. Concocting equations that look something like X + [a bunch of stuff I can’t measure yet] > Y is a little premature.

Q u o t e:
Not +10% increased rage cost. Not +300% more damage, or any other random idea that pops into your head. Inner Rage is +50% increased rage cost of all abilities for a paltry +15% damage for a short period of time being around 6 seconds (GC mentioned that amount in another post).

It could be 10% rage and 300% damage if those are the appropriate numbers to use. We provided numbers for some abilities in the preview so that players would get a vague sense of the intent of the ability. We tried to caveat that a lot so that players wouldn't freak out about the math. Numbers are trivial for us to change -- that's not the challenging part of adding an ability. (Now figure out the right number can be quite challenging).

If the numbers scare you, imagine that we just said the goal of the ability is that when you hit max rage instead of wasting it (like you'd do today), you enter into a state where you do increased damage for increased rage cost so that the rage bar drops, but you aren't penalized for it. The trick to that design is we also don't want warriors just doing nothing until they hit 100 rage before they can start having fun. We don't want you to constantly be worried about trying to get Inner Rage to proc. But we also don't want you to worry if a string of crits or big incoming damage or something suddenly floods you with rage faster than Heroic Strike / Cleave / Execute can drain it again. It's a safety valve, but hopefully a fun one, and not something that rarely comes into play. If somehow we nail rage management so tightly that you're just never near 100 rage, then we'd have to come up with a different ability. I'm not optimistic that will happen given warrior history, but the Cataclysm rage model is pretty radical too.

Q u o t e:
One thing that would make people feel a lot better about it might be that if it were listed as a buff rather than a debuff.

If it's a buff, we can always make macros to eliminate the effect at bad times. If it's a debuff, we're stuck with it.

It can be a buff, but that may still lead warriors to thinking that they'll want to cancel it, which really isn't the goal.

Q u o t e:
It feels like your goal for the expansion is to design rage so that Inner Rage WON'T be needed, and your goal for Inner Rage is to design rage so that Inner Rage is REQUIRED on a regular basis. Buh?

We don't think our changes to rage will make you never hit 100. I guess it's possible it will work out that way, but it seems unlikely. Changing Heroic Strike to not be a next swing attack, while good for the game and warrior fingers overall, is a pretty big change and will mean its harder to consume rage fast enough when it's coming in really fast.

We do think our changes will mean that warrior rage doesn't vary so much with gear -- starved in greens and near infinite in purples.

Q u o t e:
Heroic strike:
instant cast, not on the GCD.
Empowers your next damaging melee attack to consume up to 30 additional rage and increasing its damage delt by 1.5% per rage consumed.

We don't think that damage abilities off the GCD are a good idea. Your pitch here really just keeps HS as an on next-swing attack in any event.

Q u o t e:
Inner Rage is supposed to kick in when you literally cannot spend your rage faster than it's coming in. It's supposed to drop your rage bar quickly to make room for your rage flow, which in Cata will be much steadier.

The alternative to Inner Rage is halting your rage gen whenever some white crits pop you up to 100. So while IR is maybe a DPS gain, I'd gladly take it over a situation that is definitely a DPS loss.

I like Longwalker's explanation here.

Q u o t e:
This isn't entirely fair. It's pretty apparent that GC understand that the proposed methodology is critically flawed. However, the intent (Add damage when rage is capped) is still intact. Though if HS really is an effective rage dump, then warrior's probably don't need another ability to compete with that.

No, we don't think it's critically flawed. Your argument is either Heroic Strike is a sufficient rage dump or it isn't, but things are rarely that black and white in the game. HS can't be used whenever you want to use it in Cataclysm. It competes with other abilities on your bar. If you have a lot of rage, HS will probably be a good choice to hit. But how confident are you that no matter what, you will always hit Heroic Strike whenever it's a good idea? That you won't ever need to use any kind of offensive or defensive cooldown for example that also uses a GCD? That you won't get a string of crits (or take some big boss hits) right after reapplying Commanding Shout when the shaman pops Bloodlust? We still think there will be plenty of opportunities to accumulate rage faster than you can spend it.

Q u o t e:
I think most people don't like the ability because it is a double edged sword that you have no control over. The main problem is that there are situations where you don't want inner rage to be active

Take for example, there's a boss that has an aura that decreases attack speed by 25% (effectively nerfing rage generation by 25%).

At the start of the fight, I do a improved bloodrage, battle shout, improved charge (45+10+25) then get a crit and that puts me @ 100 rage. I blow most of that rage with a Mortal Strike + execute. Now I'm stuck with higher costs and my out going rage is going to be greater than my incoming rage. In this case, I would need to cancel my inner rage.

It's not supposed to be a double-edged sword. It's supposed to let you convert rage into damage at a faster rate when you have too much rage. In your example, you're going to be doing more damage (and therefore more threat) while its active. In other words, you are going to be doing the exact same thing (rage -> damage) you would be doing if you weren't at 100 rage. There isn't a currently a warrior strategy that encourages doing nothing and just building rage, and I don't see why there would be one in Cataclysm. Maybe if Shield Wall cost 50 rage and you always needed to save some for emergencies, but we're not going to do that. At most you might need 10 rage for Pummel or Shield Bash, and even in that case Inner Rage doesn't drain your rage. It would be different if the mechanic was "all your abilities hit harder, but your rage goes to zero for the next 30 sec." Normally, you should *want* to spend rage.

Q u o t e:
That said, on the topic of inner rage itself, I am still in favor of increasing the cap and making the bonus/extra rage cost kick in above 100, that should really be enough to hold rage generation steady, rather than constantly going from overflowing and losing rage to no rage at all. I also like the idea of reducing global cooldown by .5 for 3-4 seconds after hitting/breaking 100 rage, rather than increasing rage costs. You'll still use 50% more rage because you're using more abilities, but it makes you feel like you have more control over it, and gives it that 'limit break' feeling.

We're not liable to reduce the GCD. It's there for a reason. We can do that on rogues (and possibly hunters) because their button mashing is so limited by resource income, but we don't think warriors will be limited to the same degree. Making the bonus and cost only kick in above 100 is more along the lines of something we might consider, but realistically you'd probably only get a single attack before you dropped below 100 again, so it seems like it would constantly be turning on and off.

Q u o t e:
Wouldn't the simpler way to regulate the ability to not risk leaving a player rage starved be setting a rage threshold rather than a duration benefit? Inner rage fading once rage has dropped below 50 seems like a relatively safe design. If that's still too risky, perhaps Inner Rage should be charge based for the next 1 or 2 attacks to bleed off the excess rage.

Yeah, something like that might work too. The risk of tying it to attacks instead of time is it then encourages you to use your biggest possible attacks rather than just doing whatever you'd normally want to do. You wouldn't want to waste those attacks on Rend.

Q u o t e:
Any possibility of similar mechanics for other classes that can semi-easily cap out on a resource (rogues, soon to be hunters)?

Like Prinsesa said, rogue energy generation is more under the rogue's control than rage is (even in the new model). Rogues and cats also already have a similar mechanic because they can use excess resources to power buffs or dots with a duration. If you're going to lose the energy, you might as well pump up Slice and Dice again. You're essentially spending the resource now (when it's in excess) so that you don't have to make that investment in the future when things might be leaner. The warrior version is just to do more damage during that time -- it's like shifting into second gear.

Q u o t e:
The downsides of this are potenially so huge they could cause a wipe or cause you to lose a fight in a bg or an arena match.

How? You'll have to explain this more. It's not going to leave you without rage for long periods of time, and even if it did, you're coming off a period of really high damage and threat. Your interrupt costs 10 rage. Inner Rage won't steal that. You can still choose not to hit any buttons.

Q u o t e:
The first problem is related to this as well. Inner Rage does not know how badly you're rage capping, and Inner Rage does not know how much rage you can afford to lose as a dump.

It shouldn't matter how badly you're rage capping. It doesn't steal your rage. You still choose how to spend it. If you need to save up for some specific event (though I can't imagine why), you still could. It also knows how much rage you can afford to lose -- up to 30 with the current numbers. Then it turns off. It's still possible for rage to increase while Inner Rage is up you know.

Q u o t e:
Just curious, would you ever consider simply removing the rage cost penalty altogether, and just make it a 10 seconds, once per minute buff when you get 100 rage?

It might not help us dump rage in that scenario, but it still gives us a "bonus" when we're overflowing with rage we can't spend, and it's not like being rage capped is hurting us in any way.

Yeah, that's a possible implementation. It might risk warriors feeling the correct way to play is to get up to 100 rage before they can start having fun.

Q u o t e:
Rage feels - right now - very much RNG, and you're giving us something that gives us a little extra damage and a pretty hefty penalty when we get lucky. Yes, I know the numbers are up in the air, but that's the cause of the complaint imo. Hitting the right "feel" with crit thrown into the mix is going to be fun.

It's going to feel a lot less RNG when rage generation is tied to hitting and not to doing damage. We think we need to keep a little of the random element though. If it becomes very predictable, then it feels too much like energy and we might as well just call it that.

Q u o t e:
The problem with this is, as others have pointed out, it doesn't take into account how much rage you're actually overflowing.

I understand that's a concern, but you're going to have to walk me through why it's a concern. What is the scenario in which doing a lot of damage now but potentially less damage later is a lot worse than doing average damage constantly? That is also assuming you will be doing less damage later, but the reality of encounters is you can't really plan around your "rage budget" for the fight. Sometimes you have a lot and sometimes you have less and you work around that. I can't really imagine the scenario in which you tell yourself "Well, I'm going to be coming up on a dry spell so I need to keep some rage in reserve." Even when those cases do exist (you have to move a lot maybe?) it seems like Inner Rage going over 100 still only helps you then because you are maximizing your damage per rage conversion to the time at which you are actually dealing damage.

Q u o t e:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but we all thought IR was a temporal buff that multiplied rage costs for X number of seconds. Which kind of blows, honestly. However, if IR is not based on time and instead stays active until it consumes 30 extra rage, that's pretty awesome. It's basically a 15% damage cooldown that costs 30 rage, which is a non-issue if you're riding 100 to begin with, which is I think what you're saying and is where the confusion lies.

It has no duration, at least currently. It shuts itself off when your rage is "too low." At the moment, that too low number is 30. If you still generate a lot of rage while it is active, then it could consume far more than 70 rage.

Q u o t e:
If the intent of IR is to give warriors a sense of a "limit breaker" or anything like that, leaving the warrior without rage at all is flawed.

If your rage is gone, it's because you spent it. If you want to conserve rage for some reason, stop pushing buttons. If you want to hit weaker for some reason, I suppose you could turn Inner Rage off, but I think you'd be better off just not pushing attacks.

Q u o t e:
My argument is less granular than that. It's that: You have abilities that you can control that convert rage-damage (HS). So why risk a situation where IR might starve you and you have virtually no control.

Because we don't think HS is sufficient for every situation. But what confuses me is on the one hand you're saying HS gives you control over rage because you decide when to use it, but Inner Rage doesn't give you control because you can't decide when to use it. If you don't want to spend rage, don't push buttons when it procs. If you want to spend rage but leave some reserves, push only some buttons when it procs. It's not that different from how you decide when to use Heroic Strike.

Q u o t e:
So yes, there are “regularly” situations where you need to store as much as 75 rage (and even more in certain circumstances, Shield bash a caster add pushes this to 85).

Then push only 2 yellow attacks once Inner Rage procs instead of 3. It's totally in your control whether you leave a reserve of 75 rage or not.

Q u o t e:
I sincerely hope im wrong, but i have no faith in changes like this.

Okay, but then your contribution to discussions like this is going to be limited, because we can assume your response to anything is going to be "change is scary." That's a valid way to feel, but it's an expansion and we're going to make changes. Being too scared of failure to leave a broken system like rage generation in place as is isn't a responsible way for us to manage the game.

Q u o t e:
Rage starvation while tanking something is a global concern. Failing to to think ahead to your next task and store some rage to perform it is a single player's concern.

Right, and rage starvation while tanking is almost entirely a problem with avoiding too much damage or not generating enough rage while off-tanking.

Q u o t e:
I do have questions for GC though: how will Inner Rage affect Heroic Strike and Execute? Will it be +50% to the total rage cost (45) or will it be +50% to the base cost with +15 rage added afterward (37)? How will the extra rage burn factor into the bonus damage?

Probably the former. We'd calculate the Heroic Strike damage as an ability and then apply the Inner Rage bonus. That's the kind of thing upon which we could iterate though.

Q u o t e:
Not that there is anything wrong with using IS during Shattered halls, but it's hardly an aoe tanking ability.

This again? The context wasn't "What are the warrior tanking abilities?" It was a fairly contrived situation where the warrior said TC and everything else was on cooldown and adds were streaming in so there was nothing that could conceivably be done except wipe. If you aren't willing to use all your tools before wiping, then I'm not sure I'd want you to tank for me. :)

Q u o t e:
1) It's tuned such that its so nice to have, they warriors will want to regularly cap their rage. No one likes a mechanic that encourages them to do nothing.

2) It's tuned such that its not nice enough to want to cap your rage, thus, it will suck. When one does accidently cap the rage, they'll be kicked in the shins because now all their abilities cost more.

I still don't think many see this as possibly:

3) Capping rage is not something you will want to do on purpose, but if you do, instead of getting nothing for it, you get a little something.

Yeah. Our hope is that the damage bonus doesn't encourage #1. Think of it like Primal Precision or Quick Recovery. Druids and rogues don't manage their rotations around trying to use that talent, but they're glad when it works for them. Similarly if warriors hit a point where rage comes in faster than they can spend it, then they can do extra damage for more rage until they come back down to Earth again.

As I said earlier in this thread, it's possible that HS alone will be enough of a raid dump that you'll never see Inner Rage going off (in which case we could probably do away with the ability). We don't think that's likely though.