Skull banner removed in WoD

[Archimtiros]

Certain classes just have too much utility at the moment and, I'd argue, that warriors are among them. An offensive raid cooldown, two defensive raid cooldowns and a tank external is just overdoing it, in my opinion. Losing Skull Banner for all reasons stipulated is fine with me for that reason, but I'd also like to see us lose one of our defensive ones... And I'm not sure it's going to happen. If it were me, I'd keep Rallying Cry because it's different from other cooldowns and is strong under different circumstances.

A bit of variety can do the class no harm.

We are losing Demo Banner.

- - - Updated - - -

It doesn't take a lot of skill to push the "win" button at the start of a fight after a countdown. Perhaps its blizzards way of trying to bring some skill back into mastering the classes.

Blizz hasn't liked the high amounts of stacking burst, esp at the start of fights, for quite some time. Skull Banner, Stormlash, Pre-Potting all going away; they've even tried nerfing trinket procs a handful of times, to mixed results.

[spinner981]

Skull banner is being baked into recklessness. We aren't losing its effect, per se.

They already said that the only raid wide damage cooldowns will be heroism, time warp, etc. so warriors might gain a personal increase to crit damage but the raid won't.

[Archimtiros]

They already said that the only raid wide damage cooldowns will be heroism, time warp, etc. so warriors might gain a personal increase to crit damage but the raid won't.

This keeps popping up because half the people have half incomplete information.

Recklessness now increases Crit Chance and Crit Damage for the Warrior only.
Skull Banner as a raid dps cooldown is removed along with Stormlash for Shamans.
Heroism/Bloodlust and other abilities that share its cooldown remain; likely because they have a debuff and aren't subject to class stacking.

[Pua]

We are losing Demo Banner.

Is there a source for that, dude?

I'm going off:

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>.<a href="https://twitter.com/Seouless1">@Seouless1</a> Defensive cooldowns stay. May tweak them of course, but as a concept they stay. Only offensive one will be Bloodlust (etc).</p>&mdash; Celestalon (@Celestalon) <a href="https://twitter.com/Celestalon/statuses/439234751447056384">February 28, 2014</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Edit: Absolutely no fucking clue why that Tweet won't embed. The text (and link) is:

"Defensive cooldowns stay. May tweak them of course, but as a concept they stay. Only offensive one will be Bloodlust (etc)".

[Archimtiros]

Is there a source for that, dude?

I'm going off:

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>.<a href="https://twitter.com/Seouless1">@Seouless1</a> Defensive cooldowns stay. May tweak them of course, but as a concept they stay. Only offensive one will be Bloodlust (etc).</p>— Celestalon (@Celestalon) <a href="https://twitter.com/Celestalon/statuses/439234751447056384">February 28, 2014</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Edit: Absolutely no fucking clue why that Tweet won't embed. The text (and link) is:

"Defensive cooldowns stay. May tweak them of course, but as a concept they stay. Only offensive one will be Bloodlust (etc)".

It was one of the abilities removed during the leaked Beta press event videos along with these others.

Unlike Overpower missing, which was confirmed to be a bug (there was a spot for it in video, just no icon/tooltip). The rest of these abilities are not present whatsoever in the spellbook.
Seeing as the other abilities on the list were confirmed by Celestalon as removed (Disarm, Spell Reflect, Shatt Throw, Hamstring & Skull Banner) it is HIGHLY likely this is not a mistake.

Likewise, they are removing Skull Banner, removing Demo Banner, I wouldn't be surprised at all if Mocking Banner gets nixed later, but that's just my assumption.

It also matches with them wanting to remove excess buttons and utility from classes. There is really no point to us having 2 defensive abilities, when most classes have one. Especially one that is as quirky as Demo Banner.

[Teye]

Fury and Arms will lose Demo Banner, but I strongly doubt Prot will.

[Pua]

It was one of the abilities removed during the leaked Beta press event videos along with these others.

Unlike Overpower missing, which was confirmed to be a bug (there was a spot for it in video, just no icon/tooltip). The rest of these abilities are not present whatsoever in the spellbook.
Seeing as the other abilities on the list were confirmed by Celestalon as removed (Disarm, Spell Reflect, Shatt Throw, Hamstring & Skull Banner) it is HIGHLY likely this is not a mistake.

Likewise, they are removing Skull Banner, removing Demo Banner, I wouldn't be surprised at all if Mocking Banner gets nixed later, but that's just my assumption.

It also matches with them wanting to remove excess buttons and utility from classes. There is really no point to us having 2 defensive abilities, when most classes have one. Especially one that is as quirky as Demo Banner.

Oh, don't get me wrong, I agree with the intent; if it were up to me, we'd lose all banners and a lot more than has already been mentioned. And as I previously intimated, banners are absolutely "the wrong stuff" in my eyes, at least the way they were implemented.

It's just that that Tweet implies defensive cooldowns aren't going anywhere, and we're not even in beta yet (with regard to the spellbook).

As ever, we shall see.

[Archimtiros]

Oh, don't get me wrong, I agree with the intent; if it were up to me, we'd lose all banners and a lot more than has already been mentioned. And as I previously intimated, banners are absolutely "the wrong stuff" in my eyes, at least the way they were implemented.

It's just that that Tweet implies defensive cooldowns aren't going anywhere, and we're not even in beta yet (with regard to the spellbook).

As ever, we shall see.

The tweet implied defensive cooldowns were staying as a concept. It even suggested forthcoming changes. Reason is that defensive cooldowns play a very real role in raiding without much/any detriment to any players. Raid offensive cooldowns on the other hand have three very real disadvantages.

One: They are generally better for the person using them than anyone else, which makes them want to use them personally than situationally.
Two: They are very hard to line up with other players cooldowns, having such a wide range of cooldown timers and way different specs stack abilities.
Three: It encourages class stacking, something they try to get away from.

Anyways, they haven't gone and confirmed every last ability removal yet, likely won't for another week till a new Dev Blog comes out.
Out of the 10 (minus Overpower bug) abilities listed as removed from the video, only 5 of which have been confirmed. I would still place the other 5 as extremely high chance of removal simply through an educated assumption regarding their use.

TLDR: 99.9% chance Demo Banner is getting removed.

[Alonzo33]

The tweet implied defensive cooldowns were staying as a concept. It even suggested forthcoming changes. Reason is that defensive cooldowns play a very real role in raiding without much/any detriment to any players. Raid offensive cooldowns on the other hand have three very real disadvantages.

One: They are generally better for the person using them than anyone else, which makes them want to use them personally than situationally.
Two: They are very hard to line up with other players cooldowns, having such a wide range of cooldown timers and way different specs stack abilities.
Three: It encourages class stacking, something they try to get away from.

Anyways, they haven't gone and confirmed every last ability removal yet, likely won't for another week till a new Dev Blog comes out.
Out of the 10 (minus Overpower bug) abilities listed as removed from the video, only 5 of which have been confirmed. I would still place the other 5 as extremely high chance of removal simply through an educated assumption regarding their use.

TLDR: 99.9% chance Demo Banner is getting removed.

can u name those 9-10 abilities? other than skull banner, shat , demo banner, reflect, disarm hamstring. who are the else?

[Paulosio]

Skull Banner only reason you bring a Warrior to a raid. You all have faith they will make Warriors relevant to bring without Banners?

Even if you were right it's hardly relevant when all the classes are going through similair changes. Damage for everyone will be balanced differently and everyone else will be losing and gaining stuff too...

Also someone said above that you aren't losing it anyway. "Skull banner is being baked into recklessness. We aren't losing its effect, per se". So basically your macro for Recklessness and skull banner is being replaced by having those 2 abilities merged into 1 ability.

[Deleted]

Gotta say I'm happy if banners go away, that's one ability I wouldn't miss from Mists. I thought it was weird ever since I got them while leveling up.

[Soopa]

They really need to make melee more flashy or there won't be a real reason to play them anymore.

If you believe this, I don't believe you REALLY want to play melee.

OT: I'm fine with this, gets rid of some of the ridiculous clutter that would've been macro'd anyways.

[Archimtiros]

can u name those 9-10 abilities? other than skull banner, shat , demo banner, reflect, disarm hamstring. who are the else?

I linked it two posts ago.
I'll just quote:

Arms Warriors - Abilities Removed

- Cleave
- Disarm
- Spell Reflect
- Shattering Throw
- Throw
- Hamstring (As an ability, however it is now a Passive in WoD)
- Skull Banner (Recklessness in WoD uses the current live Skull Banner icon. So it is likely Skull Banner & Recklessness were combined.)
- Overpower (Shows an empty icon slot where Overpower used to be. Could be a bug but the ability is not in the Spellbook.)
- Sunder Armor
- Whirlwind
- Demoralizing Banner

New Passives

Readiness: Arms (New) Passive.

Keep in mind, Overpower missing was confirmed to be a bug, which makes sense, because it was still "there" just missing data.

- - - Updated - - -

Even if you were right it's hardly relevant when all the classes are going through similair changes. Damage for everyone will be balanced differently and everyone else will be losing and gaining stuff too...

Also someone said above that you aren't losing it anyway. "Skull banner is being baked into recklessness. We aren't losing its effect, per se". So basically your macro for Recklessness and skull banner is being replaced by having those 2 abilities merged into 1 ability.

Pretty much this. And if Skull Banner was the only reason he was getting invited to a raid, he must have been a terrible Warrior. We started out as the strongest class in SoO and we are still extremely competitive for the top spots.

[Asiel]

Deleted for stupidity

[Grimothy]

Pre-Potting all going away;.

Was this in the notes somewhere because I can't find it? or is this just what you think will happen?

[Archimtiros]

Was this in the notes somewhere because I can't find it? or is this just what you think will happen?

Well it's all speculation, since there are no patch notes for anything yet! It has been referred to plenty of times over the last few months (as far back as ToT actually) in tweets and has come up again recently, but this is not the type of change you make mid expansion.
They have complained about on-pull burst/cd stacking for a long time, and pre-potting is a big portion of that; trinkets being the other, which have been worked on a few times now. It's high on the list for removal and would be as easy as setting the buff to remove on (boss) combat start.

I try to remember to tag portions of my posts appropriately, since we've had such a large number of newer people joining the discussion as of late.

[FobManX]

I'd be fine with removing pre potting. It's just one less button to push before the pull, and it affects everyone not just us, so it'd be fine. Would probably hurt the pot specced Alchemists money making though, since pots wouldn't be used as often and as such not in as high a demand.

[Juni]

It's trash bro, when compared to other raid CD's. Same reason shield wall is 1000X better than Last Stand. Damage Reduction/ More Raid healing > More HP


Edit- And what wrong info? Rogue > Warrior for SoO? Rogue is better for Garrosh, Paragons and Seige. The only real fights that matter.

What...? That's kinda funny. We have 3-4 rogues in my guild. I beat em all on every fight u mentioned there unless I get terribad RNG (2-3 non-crit bts) at any point during the fight.

What you're saying simply does not make sense. The amount of times I've saved my raid during Garrosh HC progress with RC is a staggering number. You clearly do not know how to effectively use it.

[Deleted]

Yes, removing a skill they added an expansion go makes sense. Let's make warriors like WoTLK too! SPAMMM Heroic Strike BT > WW. Hardest rotation

[Ogren]

I'll miss it, but only because I thought it looked cool.

Would love to see them make a minor glyph where if you used Reck you'd drop down a Skull Banner for aesthetic purposes. Hell, I'd love to see the Death Wish graphic come back when you pop reck as well. Little floaty orange skulls on the hands was beastly looking.