5.4 Changes

[Flaks]

Warriors do not have the lowest uptime on their target. That title goes to DK's. There's a reason why Frost DK's can do higher damage over Warriors when they connect. It's because the specs damage is completely RNG based and easy prey for other classes to control. Arms however, is consistent damage dealer when it connects to a target. The damage is a flow of similar damaging attacks that can be hit almost every GCD with little to no resource cost. You can't just buff a classes sustained damage without nerfing its mobility or uptime or else it turns into another season 9 where Warriors can just sit on things and people die without cool downs.

So utterly wrong.

Rets can do FAR FAR more damage than warriors and are only second to ferals in being able to stick to their targets. Frost dks can also do far more damage than a warrior while still sticking to their target far better than warriors (nevermind getting to their targets which is the most potent "charge" ability in the game by a massive margin).

For frost dks (you have unholy too in case you're forgetting) you have ams to immune roots and spell snares allowing you to stick to a target very reliably. You also have the option for death's advance, if you don't have that you can just go ahead and pick one of the most potent stuns in the game instead which is far more reliable than shockwave for warriors (which if picked screws you out of the only ability that lets you stick to a target [bladestorm]).

Nevermind that you can passively move 15% faster like every single other melee in the game EXCEPT warriors. You have a far better slow that also allows you a better way to stick to targets. The only place in which warriors are superior to FROST dks (no comparison with uh dks) is defensively. But that doesn't matter because while you can die in a stun as a warrior through every single one of your cds to a single enemy dps, you can just completely nullify the cc and run off/counter that burst as a dk.

You couldn't have drawn a worse comparison.

[Keensteel]

^^^ I totally agree with Flaks. I'm not sure what game Ryan Cailan Ebonheart is playing but it sure isn't WoW PvP in its' current incarnation.

I personally believe that warriors have received many QoL changes in 5.4 that are helpful but we need slight buffs to defensives and damage to be competitive in 5.4.

[Rorke]

Rets can do FAR FAR more damage than warriors and are only second to ferals in being able to stick to their targets. Frost dks can also do far more damage than a warrior while still sticking to their target far better than warriors (nevermind getting to their targets which is the most potent "charge" ability in the game by a massive margin).

Ret's shouldn't have received a 15% sword of light buff. It's a different spec anyway. They should be nerfed instead of Warriors getting unneeded damage buffs.

Frost DK's cannot stick to targets better than Warriors can and actually lose a ton of damage sitting in blood presence and using their ranged slow that can be cleansed. I honestly don't even think you have played a DK.

For frost dks (you have unholy too in case you're forgetting) you have ams to immune roots and spell snares allowing you to stick to a target very reliably. You also have the option for death's advance, if you don't have that you can just go ahead and pick one of the most potent stuns in the game instead which is far more reliable than shockwave for warriors (which if picked screws you out of the only ability that lets you stick to a target [bladestorm]).

Yes I know I have Unholy. The only reason I compare Arms to Frost is because both specs are more similar than Arms to Unholy. Unholy can do almost as much damage off of a target than on one and the playstyle is a tad bit different. Arms and Frost always have to maintain a level of uptime on a target or they're useless.

You can't immune roots in Anti magic shell either unless someone is stupid enough to cast it while the dk has it up.

No high level DK uses Death's Advance because a 5 second stun is too powerful. A DK cannot reliably kill anything in arena without a 5 second stun. Asphyxiate is not much better than Shockwave other than the fact its on a shorter cool down but can't stun more than one target. The only reason DK's are viable in arena is because of Asphyxiate.

Warriors have a 12 second gap closer that can stun/interrupt followed with a 30 second leap glyphed that has the warrior move 70% faster after use. Warriors also have a 30 second snare breaker and can reflect spells or cause the enemy caster to cast nothing and wait for the debuff to fall off. Warriors can interrupt twice with one being a ranged interrupt. Remember in 5.0 - 5.1 when people would say Warriors are more anti caster than DK's. Well it still holds true today. When you compare Warrior mobility and utility now and compare it to Cataclysm, it really shows how far the class has come.

And you're right Warriors do have a problem sticking on a target. Why? Because they do a shit ton of damage when they get on their target. Warriors cannot be allowed to have amazing uptime because of their damage. And If you gave Warriors more damage, it would just make this game less fun for everyone else who enjoys playing skilled comps/classes.

DK's have a problem with getting to a target and sticking to a target. Ice of Chains will ruin any form of death runes you want to have. All DK's can do is run at their target and Grip twice every 25 seconds while applying possibly one 60% ranged slow. You can pet stun or Asphyxiate, but those are much better to use when you get on your target and usually need to be saved for a kill anyway. So a DK is basically a Warrior with a 25 second gap closer if we're comparing the two in the mobility vacuum. The balance is that Unholy does more damage while not on a target while a Warrior does more damage while on a target. If you're going to argue that Unholy does more single target damage on a target than Arms, you're wrong.

Nevermind that you can passively move 15% faster like every single other melee in the game EXCEPT warriors. You have a far better slow that also allows you a better way to stick to targets. The only place in which warriors are superior to FROST dks (no comparison with uh dks) is defensively. But that doesn't matter because while you can die in a stun as a warrior through every single one of your cds to a single enemy dps, you can just completely nullify the cc and run off/counter that burst as a dk.

The 15% movement in Unholy Presence is nothing special when you're getting slowed all the time. And that's also considering that the DK is not in Blood Presence. And again Ice of Chains is not a better slow because it takes a good chuck of the DK's damage while Hamstring isn't even on the GCD anymore and costs little to nothing.

The anti stun mechanics DK's have access to are meant to give the class much needed defensive utility against cleave teams and are not meant for mobility. DK's do not have any big defensive cool downs that reduces damage by 40% or a big heal mechanic and Desecrated Ground and Icebound Fortitude make up for it.

[Trubo]

Well 25 man testing wasn't done yet. 10 man heroic seems to make good progress I think there have been like four bosses already tested ? Didn't participate on all of them since I didn't have too much time due to work. Anyways not sure if I remember it correctly but I think they wrapped up 25man heroic testing really fast so while I would prefer a release in September it can just as well happen this month.

Does 25 Herroic testing get reported? Don't recall seeing a news post by MMO about it; only for 10 mans.

[Warriorsarri]

The raid testing they do goes: 10Normal > 10Heroic > 25Normal > 25Heroic.
Time wise, usually the 10man N/H testing will last a little longer then the 25man version, as they will use those to fix most of the bugs and exploits.

As we currently are about 1/3 through the 10heroic testing, my best guess is that we are timewise about half way through the testing raid testing cycle.

[dabignasty]

didnt bladestorm dmg get buffed too

[Requiel]

didnt bladestorm dmg get buffed too

60% more damage for arms

[Stormcall]

The balance is that Unholy does more damage while not on a target while a Warrior does more damage while on a target..

A frost DK on a target will put out far more damage than an arms warrior while on a target, if those are the 2 specs you're comparing. I don't play Fury or Unholy so I can't comment on those, but a single Obliterate will typically hit harder than a MS->Overpower combined, even during a CS window. Tell me again how the warrior does more damage while on a target?

[Brakthir]

Copy pasting. Got tired of you guys whining about still no buffs so I asked GC and his response: https://twitter.com/Ghostcrawler/sta...52604267798528

[Beefkow]

Seriously? buff fury? i thought arms was the underdog and fury was in the middle of the pack.

[Archimtiros]

Arms is shit and will always be shit, unless they pull some massive crap like in DS (wherein they nerfed the shit out of fury and buffed the hell out of arms, not little tweaks but massive changes).
Edit: I am speaking from a PVE perspective. I honestly like Arms being the go-to PVP spec and Fury PVE, trying to balance both together always turns to shit.
Fury is on the low end of middle of the pack; that doesn't mean we can't use some buffage. Arms would need massive changes to be viable.

[Beefkow]

Arms is shit and will always be shit, unless they pull some massive crap like in DS (wherein they nerfed the shit out of fury and buffed the hell out of arms, not little tweaks but massive changes).
Edit: I am speaking from a PVE perspective. I honestly like Arms being the go-to PVP spec and Fury PVE, trying to balance both together always turns to shit.
Fury is on the low end of middle of the pack; that doesn't mean we can't use some buffage. Arms would need massive changes to be viable.

I am kinda speaking from a pvp prospective as well.... so yeah.

Arms needs damage buffs for both pve and pvp.

[Brakthir]

Gurth was also a huge reason why Arms was so good in DS.

[Darkfriend]

Gurth was also a huge reason why Arms was so good in DS.

That and the fights themselves often favored arms, due to arms being the spec w/ BS.

[Requiel]

Just some general stuff, they seem to have gone and nerfed the stats/duration of the RPPM trinkets but buffed the proc chance. So feathers are now only last 10 seconds but its proc rate when from 0.62 RPPM to 1.21 RPPM. (this is from unlisted patch notes from wow head so could be totally wrong)

[Spectral]

Seriously? buff fury? i thought arms was the underdog and fury was in the middle of the pack.

There's nothing in that tweet about numbers passes that's linked above that says arms isn't getting buffed as well. It's kind of hard to imagine it'd be big buffs, due to PvP balance.

- - - Updated - - -

Arms would need massive changes to be viable.

Realistically, it'd probably need a mechanic that makes something hurt much more in PvE than in PvP unless it's getting a complete overhaul.

[Deleted]

Realistically, it'd probably need a mechanic that makes something hurt much more in PvE than in PvP unless it's getting a complete overhaul.

I've got a brilliant solution for that:

Colossus Smash
Smashes a target for 175% weapon damage plus 2218 and weakens their defenses, allowing your attacks to bypass 100% of their armor for 6 sec, and causes the Physical Vulnerability effect on the target. Bypasses less armor on players.


... oh, wait.

Arms and both DK specc aren't that scary in 522 gear as they were in S12 & S13 gear due to their really bad scaling, so Blizz can safely buff the whole package without worrying to much about creating a new pvp monster. What they're most likely going to do: increase slams rage cost back to 30 but let it hit really hard (+50% flat damage increase or something like that) and also buff overpower to a reasonable level. It's a 105% weapon damage style currently, scaling with neither haste, mastery nor attackpower on your gear - that's a shame.

[sjsctt]

I've got a brilliant solution for that:

Colossus Smash
Smashes a target for 175% weapon damage plus 2218 and weakens their defenses, allowing your attacks to bypass 100% of their armor for 6 sec, and causes the Physical Vulnerability effect on the target. Bypasses less armor on players.


... oh, wait.

Arms and both DK specc aren't that scary in 522 gear as they were in S12 & S13 gear due to their really bad scaling, so Blizz can safely buff the whole package without worrying to much about creating a new pvp monster. What they're most likely going to do: increase slams rage cost back to 30 but let it hit really hard (+50% flat damage increase or something like that) and also buff overpower to a reasonable level. It's a 105% weapon damage style currently, scaling with neither haste, mastery nor attackpower on your gear - that's a shame.

WHAT?!?! Arms and Frost scales terribly? GC denies scaling problems exist!

[Deleted]

Oh GC, he also rejects all my flirtous advances via twitter Honestly even they should've realised that the one-for-everything system doesn't fit. They need to scale down certain abilities for pvp to keep an enjoyable situation for everyone

Ie changing this

Obliterate
A brutal instant attack that deals 230% weapon damage. Total damage is increased by 12.5% for each of your diseases on the target.

into

Obliterate
A brutal instant attack that deals 460% weapon damage. Total damage is increased by 12.5% for each of your diseases on the target. Deals half damage to players.

I just pushed frost DKs from dealing 200k dps to 250k dps without even touching their pvp potential. And yes, i used an overstatement to make my point.

[Mihalik]

Easy as hell to buff Arms DPS by tons, without breaking pvp. Deep wounds does % more damage. See...no game breaking burst, but nice sustained damage.

Fury, lower the cost of Heroic Strike, and bring back Deadly Calm for fury only.