[Warrior]: Thunder Clap Concerns

#1 - March 30, 2012, 9:12 a.m.

Very happy to be in beta, much as I was in Cataclysm. Naturally my first impulse was to copy my Fury/Protection Warrior over. I enjoy this class like no other and so I've been very excited (and a tad worried) over the degree (and number) of warrior updates. Obviously we are very very early in beta and so things can change, things will change. So, please don't take this as a 'QQ U BROKE MY CLASS' type post. Its more of a heads up, more of a 'is this right?' kind of post.

Thunder Clap has been changed, and no longer scales from a percentage of attack power, instead dealing a static amount of damage. While I immediately worried when I read about this change to TC it surprised me nonetheless how utterly neutered the spell is currently in beta.

As Fury and Protection, I took my warrior on a pair of rampages through Halls of Lightning - TC's damage barely compared to what it did in the T8-T9 raids of Wrath. And that's with the significant 'power' advantage of an 85 raid-geared warrior in a level 80 dungeon. In short, we basically have Thunderstomp (the pet version of TC that didn't scale at all from 80 to 85 and was basically a waste of a pet talent point) aside from the fact that it applies Deep Wounds.

I understand that there are small adjustments to Cleave and Revenge that allow them to hit a slightly higher number of targets (3 for Rev, up to 5 for Cleave if enraged) but this doesn't allow either to serve the core role of Thunder Clap, which is cementing initial aggro on a pack of adds or an unexpected/swarm-type group of adds. TC is our go-to tool for that and has been for some time. With its damage so incredibly low (currently 1700-1800 damage for prot which barely got the job done at 80, hence the constant requests to have TC buffed/adjusted) Thunder Clap risks losing its ability to perform that role. Even at a 5x threat multiplier, that wouldn't suffice against anything other than the most moderate of heals and certainly not against any kind of worthwhile dps.

Thunder Clap is a core warrior spell with a legacy and an important/consistent role: it concerns me to see it so utterly wrecked in the very first pass of beta. Even if the damage has to come out of something else - like when Revenge and Deva got buffed at the expense of the far-too powerful Shield Slam we had in Catac. beta - please adjust TC so that it continues to scale meaningfully with warriors. Either through attack power or weapon damage. The current damage/lack of scaling, or anything close to it, will simply not suffice at 85+.

Again, not meant to be a QQ post. Just really shocked to see TC back to to this kind of state. And I figure better to speak up now than to wait until Mists goes gold and is being manufactured.

#7 - March 30, 2012, 9:03 p.m.

TC's attack power scaling was removed. It is gone. Quoted from Blizzard themselves:

Thunder Clap: No longer has a stance requirement. Now reduces target's physical damage done by 10%, down from 20%. Damage no longer increased by attack power.

That doesn't sound like something we would document. Do you remember where you saw it?

In any case, it isn't accurate. Thunder Clap has a 0.456 attack power coefficient. We cleaned up a lot of melee tooltips to remove "scales with attack power" because it is pretty much always true. We don't say for Flash Heal "scales with spell power." It's just superfluous.

There is a general problem where Protection warrior damage is much too low across the board. That is something we are working on.