[Warrior] Consolidated List of Issues P4

There are so many suggestions here on the last couple pages that it would be hard to comment on them all. One that caught my eye is changing Sudden Death to white attacks only and increasing the percent chance. I can't think of a downside to that one and it would help improve the value of haste. We'll discuss it.

Someone made a post on EJ asking about warriors switching to SMF for Execute phases. This is a valid concern since it just requires weapon swapping now. I personally like the idea (I like abuseable stuff), but I can see it's not intended. Maybe turn SMF and TG into a out of combat toggle mode or something like that?

We are going to use the same solution we did for Frost DKs, which is that a weapon swap will prevent the passive bonus for applying for 30 sec or so. In this case, if you switched to SMF for Execute, you wouldn't benefit from the SMF bonus for a long enough time that it's probably not worth it. There are very few legitimate cases where a warrior would want to switch from TG to SMF in the middle of an encounter.

All three of those recent Execute parses have a very high crit rate. I assume you were just getting lucky (or unlucky as it were if you're trying to demonstrate that Execute does too much damage) or had popped Recklessness.

In any case, we don't think it's a problem. I haven't seen a compelling argument for why it's bad design to do a lot more damage during Execute. It's still around 10-12% of total damage even for the very lucky parses, so it's not like Execute accounts for half your damage. Even a warrior who forgot to Execute would do decent damage. Once in awhile we do a boss that stops fighting at 10% health or something, but we also do bosses that start wounded.

Warriors (some at least) want smaller executes and paladins and priests want larger ones. We like the classes being different. We think that's ultimately better for the game.

Heroic strike now competes for rage with slam, so if you're slamming with rage, many times you'll not have enough rage to hit heroic strike when TFB is about to expire. Which means if you want to guarantee that you have enough rage for the big heroic strike, you have to not slam and leave gcds open, which is boring. And you have to gamble constantly between trying to stack TFB with more overpower, or using the rage on a weaker heroic strike before the buff wears off.

I want to dive into this a little bit again, because I still think there's some sort of miscomm between us and you guys.

1) If you have 60 or more rage, you should be able to Slam and Heroic Strike. No problems there.
2) If you have less than 60 rage, you might have to choose between Slam and Heroic Strike.
3) If Taste for Blood has plenty of duration left, then go ahead and Slam. You'll probably get enough rage to Heroic Strike soon too.
4) If Taste for Blood is about to fall off, you're at the greatest risk. In this case, it may be worth not Slamming because you need to have 30 rage. Even in this case though, you shouldn't be sitting on empty GCDs. This is a great time to Storm Bolt or Dragon Roar or Battle Shout. If every one of those is on cooldown, then you might have to wait a GCD or two, but that should be pretty rare. As you get better gear (and honestly that might be part of what we're seeing here) it should be even more rare because you'll have more rage to Slam away.

So what am I missing here? I want to understand the feedback.

GC, just a quick question. Is this change trying to suggest that Fury warriors should never equip a shield to go defensive?

Swapping to a shield should not turn off the Single-Minded Fury damage bonus for an SMF warrior. It's possible a Titan's Grip warrior who swapped to a one-hander and shield will not get the Single-Minded Fury bonus. However, TG warriors can also equip a two-handed weapon and shield.

GCs arguments and justifications almost make it sound like he has some kind of personal vendetta against the warrior class and wants us to suck and not be invited to raids... never gives us a real answer to anything other than "working as intended" or "we'll see" but nothing ever changes unless its another nerf or new penalty added to an ability... if we show the slightest hint of getting better "it's a bug... here we'll fix it"

Yeah, that's probably it.

Execute may not be half of my total dps but its a huge chunk that im missing out on 80% of the fight. Ghostcrawler, I dont understand your reasoning sometimes on these issues, you wanted player feedback, its given, but you counter saying its not an issue. Why bother even continue reading our feedback if you already have a replay to shoot it down?

Think about it from my point of view. If every time players say "Please fix this" we then always go and fix it, then we're really not making the decision. We're letting players make it. The way we like to design is through informed decision making. We like to gather information and then make the call. That doesn't mean we're always going to make the call you want, but at least we'll know how you feel about it.

In this case, I wanted to see if there was something we hadn't considered about why high executes are bad. I didn't see many arguments we hadn't considered, but there was one we found potentially compelling. Essentially, if a group is stuck on phase 2 of a boss they might feel compelled to swap out a warrior, since their contribution is really going to come in phase 4. Now if phase 4 is also tough, you made a mistake, but if phase 4 is easy, then you may have made the right call.

In my humble opinion it's the same deal as some classes being amazing on burst or multidotters. Granted, sub 20% happens in most boss fights unlike multidotting, but it could be viewed as a perk. If a fight lasts 4-5 minutes Shamans and other burst classes are ridiculously strong, on council fights multidotters shine and then warriors can have the flavor of killing you if you're close to death.

That was more or less our logic. Warriors might be great when executes matter and weaker when executes are irrelevant, but those don't happen with such regularity that it would be a major problem. Groups tend to like the dot classes even on single target fights. They just excel at group fights.

The same response came with shield wall and spell reflect, people dont like it and yet, you completely ignore the feedback and reply; "we are happy with warriors requiring a shield" well, thats fine and dandy that your happy, but wouldnt you rather have the players who are using the warrior be happy?

I've tried to explain our shield logic there several times. I'm sure you could find the responses. Now you may disagree with out logic, but that's different than our ignoring the feedback.

Of course, reading between the lines in GCs responses, it looks like they may not have fully taken CD stacking during Execute phase into account, so there's also the possibility that Warriors are competitive for 80% of the fight and just flat OP for the final 20 ;)

No, I just wanted to make sure there was a good explanation for the high crit rate.

There's nothing wrong with the idea of having your damage more backloaded. I think the concern right now is that it is too backloaded. It's just been kind of funny to hit the last 45 seconds of a beta raid encounter and have an ability go from zero to #2 in WoL while accounting for 15% of my damage, all in ~45 seconds.

Yeah, many of the responses seem to be "it feels weird" and not "it's fundamentally broken" (even when they say the latter, it looks like they often mean the former). Now feeling weird still counts, but it's not as "must fix" as a critical design flaw.

I seem to remember one of your first suggestions being a short cooldown slapped on. Intuitively, that seems the best — Execute can be powerful enough to kill in PvP without crowding damage contribution in PvE.

We don't like Execute having a cooldown. You still need to do other attacks already to make sure you have enough rage to spend. If we decide it's a problem, we're more likely just to shift some of the damage from Execute back to other attacks. (Key word is "some" - we don't want it to be weak.)

We're not changing the shield requirements of Spell Reflect and Shield Wall. You can read my previous comments on them, Die by the Sword and Mass Spell Reflect. Our stance hasn't changed.

We are going to try reducing Execute damage by about 20% and redistributing the damage to yellow attacks. I'm not sure that nerf will be significant enough to make some of you happy (what an ironic thing to say) but it might be enough of a compromise between Execute feeling awesome but not so awesome that the rest of your attacks feel weak.

You would only use HS and Slam over 60 rage if HS has a TfB stack (or stacks) already because a no stack HS is less than a slam in termsof damage. Otherwise you would have to weigh out the near term benefit against filling a future GCD which might otherwise be empty with a slam. The problem is, you can't really predict the availabillity of TfB procs in the future - will you have an empty GCD, or will you have multiple overpowers? If you hold off on the HS, perhaps those additional OP's will buff the HS you saved to a higher degree - is it more, or less DPS. There is simply too much on-the-fly calculation and gambling involved. Furthermore, you dont really have to use HS to burn off rage to prevent overcap - one slam pretty much negates 3 white swings worth of rage. Again with the unpredictabillity - how will enrages change that decision?

Why would you ever use the HS until Taste for Blood stops proc'ing? You Overpower until it stops, then you HS. If you have 60 rage (or think you will soon) then you go ahead and Slam because you'll still have enough rage to Heroic Strike as well. It's the "on-the-fly calculation and gambling" part that I'm not quite understanding. If you're choosing to HS when you don't know if the proc is done, then I guess that's gambling, but why do that? That's like bleeding off all your rage when you don't know is a CS is about to proc. If you're choosing to Slam when that means you won't be able to HS, then why do that (unless maybe the target has to die right now)?

It seems to me that the two decision points are: Should I Heroic Strike and should I Slam?

Should I Heroic Strike? Is Taste for Blood at 5 stacks? Then, absolutely HS. If not, then is Colossus Smash up? Then it's still worth it to blow the stacks with an HS. If not, then will the buff expire before I get another stack? If so, then Heroic Strike. (It's off the GCD, so you don't even have to delay another ability.)

Should I Slam? Will Slamming mean not enough rage for an upcoming Heroic Strike? Then, no.

What am I missing?

SMF warriors being able to eat is an unintended consequence of the bullet-proofing we put in to stop TG warriors from swapping to SMF for Execute. Should be an easy fix.

1. Slam is better than HS at 1 or 2 stacks, so you should never HS at that amount of stacks.

Okay, I think this is part of the problem. On our current build, Heroic Strike is at 110% weapon damage and Slam is at 220% weapon damage. That means a one stack of Heroic Strike ties with Slam and two stacks on always wins.

3. With 60 rage banked up, if you get lucky Overpower procs you'll have to HS before you reach 5 stacks or you'll waste rage due to cap. This is also RNG.

This part I am not understanding. If you have enough rage, then Slam. Otherwise, wait for the 5 stack. When are you at rage cap but unable to Slam?

4. Now say you have 60 rage, a 5 stack TfB and no filler avaiable. You have to outweigh the short term benefit of Slam + HS vs the possibility that those 30 rage you spent could turn into a 3 or higher stack in the next MS cycle.

If you're at 5 stacks, you should Heroic Strike because it can't go any higher. The only reason to delay would be if CS is about to come off cooldown. You shouldn't have to pool rage for multiple Heroic Strikes. If you use one, you should be ready for the next one by the time it stacks -- you're talking about a MS and 3 Overpowers. I'm not sure what gear you're talking about -- is this the ungemmed PvP gear at level 90?

Maybe another way to ask this is what percentage of the time are you Slamming in between buffed Heroic Strikes, and what percentage are you double Slamming?

Again, it's all probably due to low rage generation. As Arms you generate 36-45 rage during each MS depending on swing timers, which is less than you might be required to spend.

Yeah, I am starting to wonder if that's the issue. If you don't have enough rage to Slam regularly, then the rotation is going to feel empty. That will get better with more gear, but it sounds like Fury's rage feels good already.

I'm with GC on this one. The choice is merely between heroic strike and slam when you have rage. Why are you guys so steeled on 'must fill all globals!'? One of the big problems warriors had was too many globals as arms, you had no time for any utility buttons.

I understand that some players just like filling all globals, and the fact that warriors always become rage flooded in the last tier of content exacerbates how off it feels going from heroic raid gear to quest gear for the new expansion. We still want to keep some sense of progression that better gear means more rage which means more attacks, but maybe that's just too hard to deliver. On the other hand, warriors already have the highest APM of any class when you consider they can fill almost every global and have several off-the-global abilities, including a legitimate attack.

I do appreciate those of you attempting to clarify your concerns and not just venting. It is helpful.

I was curious if there was any chance of getting all of our attacks to trigger auto-attack? Not an actual swing, but putting us in a ready combat position.

Kinda sucks to hit bloodthirst and fall right back out of the attack mode.

Can you explain this in more detail? If I target something and hit BT, then I start autoattacking.

The problem involves being out of range, out of rage, facing the wrong direction, the ability being on cool down for 4.5 more seconds, or disarmed etc.

We made a change so if you are in range (on any class) you will start autoattacking even if the special attack you used didn't go off (if for example you have no rage). It also works if you are facing the wrong direction.

It will not start autoattack if you are out of range. That might be something we can fix.

I just tested this on Slam and Mangle, and it works as I described. If you can test beta and verify that this is not happening, let us know. This is a change from live.

Posted by Siguror
So — why can't Shield Wall and Spell Reflect work like that?
Because that would require effort.

Pretty much this.

Forum posters are such a small amount of subscribers that they can safely ignore them.
Same goes with warriors who would benefit from this change.

This has been a relatively good thread. Please don't jeopardize that.

With regard to Arms, my suspicion is that you guys are focused too much on the 4 and 5 stacks of Taste for Blood, which statistically are going to be fairly rare. With a stacking percentage like it has, the intent isn't that you're always waiting for that mythical 5-stack. You're going to get it sometimes, but you're also going to get twenty crits in a row sometimes. That doesn't mean you should design your entire rotation around when that happens.

Personally, I feel like the depth of the Arms rotation is in a good place, though Deadly Calm still feels like I can just macro it into HS with very little downside.

I have mixed feelings about Deadly Calm. We added it back based on the number of warriors who really liked the Dragon Soul set bonus, but rage for warriors had changed enough that it didn't have the same effect. We wanted a minor cooldown, because we felt like we were already asking warriors to adjust to a lot of changes, but it's so minor that it seems most warriors are just macroing it to Heroic Strike, which violates one of the design principles I've been railing against so much lately. We're not sure whether it makes more sense to make Deadly Calm a more prominent cooldown or just remove it.

I do want to wait to see the feedback when more warriors are back to epic gear again (and not just scaled up PvP gear) because some aspects of rage management are going to feel quite different.

I don't see how people are putting 'too much' emphasis on the coveted 5 stack, because this priority will always dump stacks, regardless of how many you have.

Yeah, I wasn't referring specifically to the discussion of the last couple of pages, but more to the trend I have noticed (and not just here -- this was just a convenient place to post it) where warrior rotations seems to be fixated on how to get Taste for Blood to stack up like Maelstrom Weapon. Much of the time it's not going to stack up.

Right now for pvp, I'm going to be running with hindering strikes glyphed and this macro

I think the calculus is really different for PvP, especially with Hindering Strikes for Arms. You're going to have to decide if frequent use of the snare offsets reduced chance for big hits. Both are valuable.

It's a problem that GC knows about yet is refusing to address. As a paying customer, we have the right to voice our opinions until they are heard.

I addressed it in another thread, since this one has been more about warrior rotations of late.

Be careful about claiming what rights you have on our forums. We welcome feedback, but you don't for example have the right to start as many threads as you want to on the same topic. We still have rules and guidelines.

We felt like the uptime that a warrior had on a target in PvP was high enough without changing Heroic Leap to be a snare breaker.

We considered a variety of ways we could lower uptime, but ultimately settled on the PvP set bonus. One reason was because nobody actually had it yet, so it would feel like less of a nerf than changing something like the Charge talents. The other reason had to do with clarity. As I have said recently, one of my biggest concerns about the talent changes effect on PvP is that it makes it so much harder, perhaps even unreasonable, to learn the toolbox of every potential opponent. As a caster, a warrior that is at range and immobilized should be the visual trigger that it's okay to start casting, but you already have to mentally account for so many things, from trinkets to Spell Reflect, possibly Storm Bolt and perhaps even Disrupting Shout depending on range. Having to also mentally keep track of the warrior's Heroic Leap cooldown erodes clarity even further.

We don't find the argument that you need a dispeller to handle roots and snares to be compelling. You're not supposed to be a one man army. You're supposed to be glad that you have teammates to help you out. We don't think this one change is going to mean warriors don't have sufficient time to perform melee attacks (even sans dispeller).

I'll admit it was a very cool bonus and one I was looking forward to on my warrior, but on top of the overall package that warriors have, it looked like it was going to become a problem.

I don't expect many warriors to agree with our logic, because that would ultimately mean admitting that you were too powerful in PvP, but you asked for it, so there it is.

That said, I DO think what GC said about Stormbolt is silly because of course you'd want to use it in your rotation as a PVE DPS Warrior if you spec'ed into it. Otherwise it'd be nearly useless in PVE situations.

Yeah my comment was unclear. Storm Bolt doesn't reset the swing timer because we don't want warriors to have to worry about when it's okay to use or not. Use it. We let Heroic Throw not reset the swing timer because it's a small source of damage you can use when nothing else is available if you hate having empty GCDs. It will be a very small percent of total damage.

You honestly think Warrior mobility was higher than other Classes ? I think you should go look at Druids then because ours is about half as good as their is right now.

That's not the issue. The issue we were concerned about was warriors being too good in PvP, and that the leading contribution to that was that they were almost impossible to control. Warriors have a lot of mobility and a lot of answers to being controlled. Nerfing a set bonus that nobody actually has on live and few players have gotten used to seemed like the appropriate place to address that.

If we conclude that druids are too dominant in PvP, then we can look at whether their mobility is the main contributing factor, or whether it's something else like crowd control or healing.

If you think that warriors are weak in PvP or that other classes are too powerful, then that's an appropriate thing to bring up, but I don't expect to see a very diverse set of opinions in a thread that has been about warrior issues for 46 pages. I know it's not fun to be nerfed, and I don't honestly expect many players to say "Yeah, it's true, we were probably too good." That happens, but it's very rare. It's easy to look at a toy you almost had that slipped away and be disappointed. I get that.

We applied a healing nerf to Arenas and BGs because it was getting impossible to kill anyone. We hope this is just a temporary 85 measure.

Based on some of these reports, it sounds like percentage heals like Second Wind were affected. They probably shouldn't be. Percentage heals aren't boosted by PvP Power, so they shouldn't be nerfed by the blanket PvP healing debuff. We'll discuss and likely fix it.

Our stance on Second Wind hasn't changed. Under some circumstances, especially duels, it can account for a tremendous percentage of your health healed, but usually in group PvP (where we spend far more balance emphasis) you're unlikely to stay below 30% health for very long -- you'll either be healed up or killed.