WotLK Warrior Developer Q & A

It’s posts like this that really prove to me time and time again that World of Warcraft is the greatest MMO currently on the market. Ghostcrawler recently made a massive post answering warrior concerns across the spectrum. A+ job from Ghostcrawler, I hope we see more player / developer interaction like this in the future for other class concerns. (note: these questions were posed by warriors currently playing the wotlk beta)

Why does bladestorm have a self-CC element? Why doesn’t it remove CC, stuns, snares or roots on use? Will this be reconsidered?
It does great dps. It would be too good if you could do other stuff too and too good if you could Intercept someone down. We might reconsider the CC issue, but really that’s the kind of thing to pop out of PvP testing.

Are there any plans to make the improved charge and improved heroic strike talents not bad? Less bad?
We buffed Imp Charge recently. Imp Heroic Strike might seem a little bland, but that may be because we’ve changed a lot of the old talents in various trees that used to do simple things like this. Heroic really does hit like a truck now, so I assume your issue is what the talent does to rage cost?

Why was enrage’s bonus damage reduced so severely? Would you consider allowing deathwish to stack again now that the bonus is so low?
Because we changed it from “be crit” to “be hurt.” We might consider letting it stack.

Have you looked at the math supplied by Torgal and company that demonstrates titans grip isn’t such a massive increase as you think it is? If their numbers are correct, then what is your stance?
Our numbers say differently. I haven’t looked to see where they differ. I’ll try to get to that.

You say you don’t want any single talent point giving a 10% damage increase (as for example.) On 25-man Kel’thuzad and Sapphiron last night, mortal strike amounted to approximately 17% of my total damage done. On Sapphiron, slam was approximately 40% of total damage. Will mortal strike, bloodthirst or improved slam be nerfed based on your talent budgeting?
No. That’s not a hard and fast rule. In your example though, if you had not used Mortal Strike or Slam you probably would have used the rage for something else. In the case of TG though we do have serious concerns about it being too good (sans a stiff penalty). While we might change our minds after more data, you’re not going to change our mind by pointing out logical inconsistencies in talent trees. There are plenty of them.

Do you see the glyph of resonating power (Increases the maximum targets affected by your Thunder Clap ability by 4) as being mandatory for tanking? If yes, do you feel that’s acceptable? If no, why not?
It’s not mandatory, and actually it only increases your radius. Thunder Clap will do what you want it to do, but that’s another topic.

Can you offer an approximation of the proc rate/PPM on furious attacks?
It’s a frequency-based proc. It’s a little complicated to explain but you might compare it to Omen of Clarity. I’ll try to get back to this later.

Are there any plans to make unending fury not bad? Less bad? Seriously, it’s really really bad.
Yeah, this one doesn’t feel done.

Damage shield is, according to some very basic testing, not generating threat from damage dealt. Can you confirm this? If so, is this intended?
It appears to generate threat based on the damage done. But there might be a bug.

Are there any plans to buff revenge baseline so that it’s worth injecting into rotations for protection?
Putting it into Sword and Board is something we are discussing.

Do you feel that shockwave is, or should be, our be-all answer to AoE threat generation? Is there any chance of lowering the cooldown?
No, we don’t want it to be your go-to AE ability, because then Arms and Fury can never tank a 5-player dungeon very well. We want it to be useful obviously.

Is it possible to give Disarm the same functionality as rogue’s Dismantle, or at least, the removed Shield Break skill?
I’ll have to investigate this.

Do you feel heroic throw is strong or interesting enough for a level 80 skill?
Yes.

The devs seem to have originally planned several means for warriors to interact with the new enrage mechanics. Will enraged regeneration and the rend bonus be all that we see for the expansion, or is more being considered? Specifically, enraged assault.
The problem we had with Enraged Assault was our warrior testers and designers didn’t feel like they had enough GCDs to work another attack into their rotations. It was just too much. I love the idea though (it wasn’t mine) so I wouldn’t say never.

While you’re doing numbers passes, any chance of restoring flurry to its original 30% bonus? Compare it to shamans flurry and it’s clearly underbudgeted.
It all depends at this point on whether shamans or warriors are doing too much damage.

Why was the healing component of bloodthirst nerfed?
We thought it was too good, though to be honest, there are clandestine whispers echoing through our offices in the dead of night to change it back.

Also is it intended for protection warriors to be in the 1.3 1.4k dps ballpark when prot DKs, pallies or bears do a lot more damage?
No, that is too low. We nerfed Devastate (for good reason) and haven’t given warriors anything back yet. We don’t want to just buff Revenge, because that doesn’t help dps when you aren’t the tank. Shield Slam is a good candidate.

And it *is* the intention for Arms and Fury to do damage that is very close to other dps specs. I can’t say 100%, because I feel the need to always caveat this. You may be tops on one fight, but the very next fight may work so differently that you aren’t on top. Overall it should be really hard to tell whether it’s the player or the class that is driving those numbers.

To what extent is the warrior community’s perception that the developers deliberately design warriors to be weaker than other classes at low or “casual” gear levels in exchange for being powerful at higher gear levels correct?
We worry a lot more about class balance at max level. We do try and make sure people have the tools they need to level up, but we don’t spend a lot of our time making sure rogues and warriors do similar dps at level 76. I don’t think warriors are unique here. We *have* been burned before by warriors ending up a lot more powerful with good gear than we anticipated. Warriors have a tendency to be rage-starved and do low dps and then suddenly hit some magic threshold of gear and have plenty of rage, which means more dps, which means more rage…. It may have been our referencing that phenomenon that has driven that perception. But we don’t go out of our way to compensate for that by nerfing warriors in greens or heroic blues.

Wrath of the Lich King Warrior Changes

It was only a matter of time before warriors finally started to get their turn along the buff table. Blizzard poster Gamnin made a massive post regarding some of these changes that are expected to be introduced in the next beta build.

Overall most of these changes are very reasonable. The very nature of the warrior class always seems to lead down the same road though…without gear it’s pretty miserable, but with proper weapons, itemization, and ideally a good healer the class becomes one of the highest pvp damage dealers in the game.

Finding a way to balance this is no easy task, but I’m hopeful Blizzard will find a happy medium. My only major concern with the class at this point is titan grip. While this talent makes fury a great substitute to traditional mortal strike builds I think it’d be difficult to find the gray area where it could be good enough to convince some warriors to change from arms without making it insanely overpowered.

But this point has been the underlying problem with WoW talent builds from the beginning. There is always going to be “the” spec you have to be if you want to participate in X, be it PvP, Raiding, etc. This type of min / max theorcrafting has certainly helped players achieve their goals much quicker, but it’s very sad to see so many talents, skills, play styles and hybrid builds go unused for the greater part of WoW existence.

Hello Warriors,

I’ve got a sneak preview of things coming up in the beta for you to discuss. We still have lots of polish and bug fixing to do and we’re still wrestling with a few elements of the warrior abilities and talents so do not consider this an exhaustive list. As always, post any concerns or suggestions you have.

General

• Enraged Assault redesigned, now Enraged Regeneration: You regenerate 30% of your total health over 10 sec. This ability consumes all Enrage effects and prevents any from affecting you for the full duration. Must be enraged to use. Cost 15 rage, 3 min cooldown.
• Slam – We’re working to change this ability to suspend the swing timer when you are using the ability. In other words, if you’re .5 sec away from swinging your weapon when you start using Slam you’ll be .5 sec from swinging your weapon after Slam goes off.

Arms

• Improved Charge now generates 5/10 rage.
• Mace Specialization now ignores 3/6/9/12/15% of target’s armor.
• Sudden Death and Trauma swapped locations.
• Bladestorm now lasts 6 seconds, causing a whirlwind every second.

Protection

• Toughness now also reduces duration of movement slowing effects by 10/20/30/40/50%.
• Improved Sunder Armor renamed Puncture, reduced to 2 ranks for 1/2 rage cost reduction.
• Improved Disarm reduced to 2 ranks, now reduces the cooldown of Disarm by 10/20 sec and increases damage taken by disarmed targets by 5/10%.
• Improved Defensive Stance reduced to 2 ranks, now reduces spell damage taken by 3/6% and any block/parry/dodge has a 50/100% chance to enrage the warrior causing 5/10% more damage for 12 sec.
• Vigilance will soon transfer the 10% threat lost to the warrior. It will also have 3 charges to curb using it on targets that are being hit constantly. We’re still polishing this element to get it to feel right.
• (NEW) Warbringer is a new one point talent on Tier 9 that allows Charge to be used in combat. Did I mention the change to Improved Charge?
• Critical Block now also increases your chance to critically hit with your Shield Slam by 5/10/15%.
• Sword and Board no longer triggers when Shield Slam is used, but the chance to trigger has increased to 3/6/9/12/15%. Note these are not final numbers.

Fury

• Intensify Rage and Precision swapped locations.
• Enrage now increases damage done by 3/6/9/12/15%, limitation on number of attacks removed.
• Improved Whirlwind now increases damage of Whirlwind by 10/20%, no longer reduces cooldown.
• Focused Attacks changed to use PPM (procs per minute) to make it trigger at the same rate regardless of weapon speed. Note that dual-wielding and haste still improve your chances.
• Titan’s Grip still needs a counterbalancing element, but what it will entail and how severe it will be is still being evaluated.

Thanks for reading!
To answer a few questions:

- Yes, I meant Furious Attacks, not Focused Attacks.
- Some notes are already in the beta, some are not updated yet on the calculator so wanted to give additional visibility to anyone else reading the forums.
- Warbringer: What we don’t want to see is Charge becoming part of a tanking rotation. At the moment it will remain usable only in Battle Stance. An experimental idea to be sure.
- Stance Dancing: The short answer here is we want just the right amount of it. :)
- Final numbers are not in yet for the various talent trees. We want all trees to be viable in PvP and PvE so expect further number tuning across all classes/specs.
- The important upcoming change to Vigilance is the threat transfer. 10% of the target’s generated threat will go to your threat total.
- Bladestorm consuming rage every second is a bug that’s been fixed.

Warrior Guide

This warrior guide is intended to be a compilation of all warrior arena strategies, warrior pvp guides, warrior tips, warrior talent builds, warrior raiding guides and any other resources that may be useful to improving your game as a warrior in World of Warcraft.

This central guide will be updated as often as possible to reflect new changes to the class as well as updated information. If you would like to suggest a guide to appear on this warrior guide please post a comment below or post a note on the Zug Gaming forums.

Warrior PvP Guides

This section on warrior arena guides will incorporate as many arena team specific strategies in addition to other PvP guides related to the warrior class.

• Warrior / Druid 2v2 Strategy
• Warrior / Rogue / Druid 3v3 Strategy

Warrior Talent Builds

• Warrior Arena Talent Builds

Warrior Macros

• Warrior Arena Macros Guide
• Focus Macros Guide - How To Use / Build

Other Guides

• Hotkeys Guides - Building For Speed