Analysis of expansion warriors (long)

After carefully reading and much deliberation, here is my analysis of the state of our new spells and talent trees. I hope this will encourage further constructive discussion and lead to significant changes.


Spells:

Heroic Strike R10 and R11: A natural progression of the ability. The additional damage to dazed targets creates synergy with Piercing Howl and the new Shield Bash.

Victory Rush R1: Execute nullifies any effective use of this ability. However, it does fill a role as a nice filler talent if one removes the rage cost.

Commanding Shout R1: A multi-purpose spell that increases warrior utility in groups. Where I disagree with this ability is the 730 health buff that is IMO too much. Reduce it to somewhere around 200-400 health would be more reasonable.

Spell Reflection R1: While costly in rage, this new ability is simply put a godsend for all warriors. However, only the protection build is truly suited for shield use and as such this spell should be reserved in the tier 7-9 talents of the Protection tree.

Intervene R1: This ability adds more mobility to warriors which is always welcome. For a long time warriors have demanded that taunt and Challenging Shout work in PVP. This ability is probably Blizzard's way of throwing warriors a bone.

Shield Bash R4: Like Heroic strike, the damage component is a natural progression of the ability. The additional daze effect is welcome, although very few raid encounters will see it put to use.


Talents:

Arms:

Improved Rend: De-linking it from Deep Wounds does offer more variety in the tree, it does not address the issue that the talent is mediocre. Increasing the duration would be a mild incentive to spend our talent points in this talent.

Iron Will: Other classes get similar abilities but in better forms. Either better talent point vs resistance gained ratios, resistances to 3 different effects, lower in their talent tree, or any combination of the preceeding. Charm effects are few and far between. The best bet is to give us a resistance to an additional type of effect.

Improved Thunderclap: Thunderclap's slow effect was reduced in patch 1.12. Currently its primary uses are to reduce the attack speed of multiple opponents or to reduce the attack speed of a single raid boss. The talent is largely seen as the least desirable. To improve the talent, I suggest that it increase the duration of the effect thus it will not overlap on the 5/5 Conqueror set bonus and removes the pain of having to reapply it as often.

Deep Wounds: The talent offers a marginal damage increase for essentially 1 debuff per warrior. Making it a stacklable debuff based on damage dealt much like Mage's ignite would improve the talent considerably. Going beyond that idea would be to re-link it with Improved Rend and have them both stack.

Two-Handed Weapon Specialization: The 1% per talent point seems a bit weak when compared to the paladin version of this talent. I suggest increasing the talent to 2% per talent point and moving it to tier 6 and out of the hands of more conventional fury builds.

Sweeping Strikes: This talent has seen the most revisions of our class and has gradually been reduced in power. As of patch 1.12 it isn't a strong enough talent to encourage non-arms warriors to sacrifice their 31 pt talent to take sweeping strikes and most likely this will continue post-expansion with the 41 pt talents. For convenience, switch the talent to tier 6 to free up a spot for Polearms specialization or any other talent.

Polearm Specialization: While granting the same bonus as Axe specialization, there are fewer viable polearms available in game yet this talent resides in tier 6 where Axe specialization sits at tier 5. Furthermore, there are no 1h polearms. The recent polearms are relegated as hunter weapons. Blizzard needs to either introduce more viable polearms for warriors and move the talent down to tier 5 with its brethren or remove it altogether and reserve all future polearms to hunters and paladins.

Improved Hamstring: Improved Wingclip is available to hunters much sooner than this talent. Hunters have a wider range of abilities that allow them to create space between them and their targets while warriors have fewer to keep targets in melee range. Move this talent to Tier 4.

Improved Disciplines: Of our three Disciplines, Only Recklessness benefits fully from this ability. Retaliation remains limited by the number of attacks and Shield Wall already has a talent devoted to it in the protection tree. This talent does adress the complaint that we cannot rely on our disciplines and is a move in the right direction.

Mortal Strike: Long considered the premiere talent for all warriors. As the game progresses, more and more gear has become available for fury builds to outshine the venerable Mortal Strike. While I do not advocate a return to the beta days, increasing the damage of Mortal Strike to 150% weapon damage at level 70 sounds fair.

Second Wind: This anti-kite ability leaves me sitting on the fence. While being kited, we are usually being attacked at range thus generating the rage necessary to intercept to close the gap. What this talent allows is to do so sooner and potentially use some abilities once we are within melee range.

Blood Frenzy: A very nice talent that adds synergy to the Arms tree. However, the positioning of this talent is horrible as it should be linked with Improved Rend, Deep Wounds, or both.

Endless Rage: The arms tree remains thematically aimed towards 2h builds. This talent will not lead to a significant increase in dps in PvE due to cooldowns on MS and Whirlwind, the slow speed of 2-handers making heroic strike marginal and the mediocrity of slam. Excute spam with current fury talents will remain better as well. A talent only worthwhile for undergeared warriors.


Fury:

Booming Voice: This talent is largely skipped over due to the strength of the Fury tree. The nerf to Intimidating shout and the new addition of Commanding Shout does offer the opportunity to improve Booming Voice. Adding Challenging Shout, Commanding Shout and Intimidating Shout to this talent will make this talent more appealing to the warrior community.

Blood Craze: The health regeneration remains too little for it to be worthwhile in an otherwise stacked talent tree. Increasing the health regeneration is not necessarily the solution to improve this talent. I suggest either removing it entirely or converting it into something more akin to the druid bear form Frenzied Regeneration.

Improved Slam: Slam remains inneficient use of rage except as a rage dump. Increasing the speed of Slam does not tackle the problem. Reducing the rage cost however might do the trick.

Precision: A long time requested talent for warriors. It is however placed too deep in the tree to make it available to MS builds and protection builds that might not have enough +hit. This talent deserves to be moved to somewhere in the first 4 tiers of the Arms tree where it is thematically suited.

Improved Whirlwind: Another robust addition to the talent trees but at 2 talent points should reduce the cost of Whirlwind to 20 to free up a talent point from Tactical Mastery.

Improved Pummel: A fine addition but underpowered compared to Improved Shield Bash. At 2 talent points, the daze effect should be at 100% if only to make it on par with a non-talented Shield bash.

Improved Berserker Stance: Good addition, however rogues do receive an individually better talent but in an awkward tree. As it stands for warriors, it is balanced.

Rampage: At a 3 minute cooldown and 30 second duration this talent is less effective than the Crusader enchant. Reducing the cooldown would make it a more viable talent and encourage warriors to go deeper into the Fury tree.