Cataclysm Discussion - Arms Discussion

[Battousai]

This topic is now open...remember this is the place to discuss the changes to the warrior class for this tree...all others won't imply be locked...they'll be deleted.

Have fun guys.


Cataclysm Class Preview: Warrior
World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will bring with it several changes to class talents and abilities. Here you will get a glimpse into some of the changes we have in store for the warrior. The information you're about to read is not complete, and is only meant to act as a preview for some of the exciting new things to come.

New Warrior Abilities

Inner Rage (Level 81): Whenever the character reaches a full 100 Rage, he or she will gain a buff that causes attacks to consume 50% more Rage and do 15% more damage for a short amount of time. This is a passive ability so it won't need to be activated by the player. The goal for this ability is to provide a benefit for hitting max Rage instead of it feeling like a penalty. However, we also don't want warriors to feel like they're supposed to pool Rage and do nothing until they hit 100, so we'll be closely monitoring how this plays out during the beta testing, and making adjustments as needed.

Gushing Wound (Level 83): This ability will apply a bleed effect to the target. If the target moves, the bleed gains an extra stack and refreshes its duration, up to a maximum of three stacks. The ability is currently planned to have no cooldown, cost 10 Rage, and have a 9-second duration. Gushing Wound is designed to be weaker than Rend with one stack, but better with three stacks, which will be reached when fighting a moving target.

Heroic Leap (Level 85): This ability makes the character leap at their target and apply the Thunder Clap ability to all enemies in the area when they land. Heroic Leap will be usable in Battle Stance and shares a cooldown with Charge, but the Juggernaut and Warbringer talents will allow Heroic Leap to be used in any stance and possibly while in combat. The cooldown for this ability might be longer than the Charge ability, but it will also apply a stun effect so you can make sure the target will still be there when you land.

Changes to Abilities and Mechanics

In addition to learning new abilities, you'll see changes to other abilities and mechanics with which you're already familiar. This list and the summary of talent changes below it are by no means comprehensive, but they should give you a good sense of what we intend for each spec.


* Heroic Strike will no longer be an "on next swing" attack, as we are removing this mechanic in Cataclysm. To keep the niche of Heroic Strike as a Rage dump, it will become an instant attack, but will cost between 10 and 30 Rage. This ability will not be usable until you have 10 Rage, but if you have more than 10, it will consume up to 30, adding additional damage for each point of Rage consumed above the base 10. Other abilities, such as Cleave, Execute, and Maul (for druids) will work similarly. The goal is to provide players with an option where if you can't afford the Rage, you don't push the button, but if you have excess Rage, you can push it a lot.

* Battle Shout, Commanding Shout, and possibly Demoralizing Shout will work more like the death knight's Horn of Winter ability. Specifically, these shouts will cost no resources, generate rage in addition to their current effects, and be on a short cooldown.

* Whirlwind will hit an unlimited number of targets, but only for 50% of weapon damage. The intent is for this ability to be used in multi-target scenarios and not on single targets.

* Overall, heals cast by players in Cataclysm will be a lower number relative to players' health than the current game. So to make the Mortal Strike debuff less mandatory but still useful in PvP, Mortal Strike will reduce healing by only 20%. All equivalent debuffs, including the Shadow priest and Frost mage debuffs, will be for 20% less healing. At the moment we aren't considering giving this debuff to anyone else, though we will certainly consider PvP utility for historically under-represented specs that use other mechanics.

* Sunder Armor will be reduced to three stacks instead of five, and still provide only a 4% reduction in armor per stack. We want to make this debuff easier to apply and less of a damage swing when it falls off.


New Talents and Talent Changes


* The Furious Sundering talent in the Fury tree will make the Sunder Armor ability cause 25/50% weapon damage and reduce the threat generated by 50/100%.

* The Mace and Poleaxe Specialization talents in the Arms tree will be removed. These provided just passive stats, which are not the kinds of talents we want to design in the future. We will keep the Sword Specialization talent, but it will be changed to a talent that applies to all types of weapons.

* As a Fury talent, Booming Voice will increase the Rage generated by shouts.

* While we like how Titan's Grip plays, we recognize some warriors liked the Fury tree because of the really fast swings that dual-wielding one-handed weapons could provide. Therefore, we're planning to try out a talent called Single-Minded Fury that is parallel to Titan's Grip and will provide a large boost to the damage of a pair of one-handed weapons.

* Several talents that reduce the Rage cost of abilities will be changed to focus on increased damage for those abilities instead.

* The new Arms talent called Disarming Nature will make successful disarms cause the target to cower in fear for 5/10 seconds.

* Another new Arms talent called Blitz will make the Charge ability hit for extra damage. The amount will possibly vary depending on the distance travelled.

* Improved Pummel, a Fury talent, will cause a successful interrupt to generate 10/20 Rage.


Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses

Arms
Melee Damage
Armor Penetration
Bonus Swing

Fury
Melee Damage
Melee Haste
Enrage Intensity

Protection
Damage Reduction
Vengeance
Critical Block Chance

Bonus Swing: This is similar to the Sword Specialization talent that is currently in the game, but Bonus Swing will work on all attacks and with all weapons. You have a chance to proc a free, instant weapon swing that hits for 50% damage.

Enrage Intensity: Every benefit of being enraged is increased. This includes doing more damage/healing/ etc. from abilities like Bloodrage, Death Wish, Enrage, Berserker Rage, and Enraged Regeneration.

Critical Block Chance: As we mentioned in the stat changes preview, block rating is changing to a chance to block 30% of a melee swing's damage. Protection warriors have a chance that the block will be a critical block and block for 60% of a melee swing's damage instead. There will likely be talents available to push the amount blocked even higher.

Vengeance: This is a mechanic to ensure that tank damage (and therefore threat) doesn't fall behind as damage-dealing classes improve their gear during the course of the expansion. All tanking specs will have Vengeance as their second talent tree passive bonus. Whenever a tank gets hit, Vengeance will give them a stacking attack power buff equal to 5% of the damage done, up to a maximum of 10% of the character's un-buffed health. For boss encounters, we expect that tanks will always have the attack power bonus equal to 10% of their health. The 5% and 10% bonuses assume 51 talent points have been put into the Protection tree. These values will be smaller at lower levels. Remember, you only get this bonus if you have spent the most talent points in the Protection tree, so you won't see Arms or Fury warriors running around with it. Vengeance will let us continue to make tank gear more or less the way we do today – there will be some damage-dealing stats, but mostly survival-oriented stats. Druids typically have more damage-dealing stats even on their tanking gear, so their Vengeance benefit may be smaller, but overall the goal is for all four tanks do about the same damage when tanking.

We hope you enjoyed this preview, and we're looking forward to hearing your thoughts and feedback on these additions and changes. Please keep in mind that this information represents a work in progress and is subject to change as development on Cataclysm continues.


Cataclysm Stat & System Changes: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...25636414&sid=1

Mastery System Preview: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...10210871&sid=1

[Tro]

Questions at Warriors

Heroic Leap (Level 85): This ability makes the character leap at their target and apply the Thunder Clap ability to all enemies in the area when they land. Heroic Leap will be usable in Battle Stance and shares a cooldown with Charge, but the Juggernaut and Warbringer talents will allow Heroic Leap to be used in any stance and possibly while in combat. The cooldown for this ability might be longer than the Charge ability, but it will also apply a stun effect so you can make sure the target will still be there when you land.


^------
Whats the point of Charge then?

[Kysimir]

Questions at Warriors

Heroic Leap (Level 85): This ability makes the character leap at their target and apply the Thunder Clap ability to all enemies in the area when they land. Heroic Leap will be usable in Battle Stance and shares a cooldown with Charge, but the Juggernaut and Warbringer talents will allow Heroic Leap to be used in any stance and possibly while in combat. The cooldown for this ability might be longer than the Charge ability, but it will also apply a stun effect so you can make sure the target will still be there when you land.


^------
Whats the point of Charge then?

Heroic Leap will most likely cost rage, and be on a separate CD; where as charge will yield rage?

[Finangus]

My thoughts on the Arms changes :

Inner Rage : Interesting change, I really want to see how this plays out.

Gushing Wound : Smells more like a PvP ability than a PvE one to me. Seems kinda....meh.

Heroic Leap : Great PvP ability with limited use in a raid setting. Unless it is free and generates rage, I don't see many Warriors using this in a raid.

Mortal Strike : I understand their reasoning behind nerfing the debuff to 20%, but I really hope they'll increase the damage a bit.

Furious Sundering : I know they list it as a Fury talent, but I hope to God it's high enough in Fury for Arms to get it. Arms warriors have far more trouble with threat than Fury does.

Weapon Specs : Ugh. Just....ugh. I know they want to remove flat % talents, but this change just sucks. I seriously hope they'll change the 'free swing' to a yellow attack. Ugh.

Disarming Nature - Yet another PvP buff that is useless in PvE.

Blitz - Stupid talent. I really don't see anyone sinking points into a talent just to do a little damage when they charge. What's the point?

Mastery Bonuses : Melee damage and armor pen are fantastic. But a bonus swing? Considering the change to the weapon specs, this just seems redundant and idiotic. Do they want Arms to constantly be procc'ing extra swings? Do they think we'll need that many extra swings just to have enough rage? I dunno, it just seems....disappointing. Better than the Warlock bonuses but, still, not that amazing.

Overall Imperssions : Maybe it's just me, but it seems that most of the changes previewed are geared towards PvP, which Arms really doesn't need much help in; meanwhile, it looks like they haven't addressed any of our PvE issues. Yes, I know this is just a small preview and that there will be huge changes between know and release, but if these changes are an indicator of the direction they're taking Arms, then I see it once again being relegated to PvP only. Sorry to sound like the sky is falling, but that's just how it appears right now.

[Vojka]

@Finagus... as if you dont like those announcements, im loving these all atm. this seems all pvp oriented, which is sweet. fuck pve. pve is awesome (1h fury ftw) but nothing exciting will be announced, all you need in pve as dps warrior is more dmg and another attack and your sweet, make the rotation a bit more complex and done for pve. heroic leap making a return, glad blizzard didnt ditch it.

[Gunwolf]

I like everything except for the extra swings, that's enhance's specialty via windfury....them putting so much emphasis on that for arms will just end up with too much burst in pvp. Also, i think they are trying to make arms more pvp oriented and fury pve.

[Kimirik]

Really, we kinda just got screwed on additions to wars in Cata. They gave us a new version of charge, a nice new pvp dot, and changed a couple of mechanics around slightly. However, I can't wait to try out Gushing Wound in pvp against other melee classes and whatever target I'm focusing down. Gonna be a bit tougher for those rogues to go back into stealth and get a stun off on me when they refresh and increase a dot on them by moving. It's gonna be fun.

[Battousai]

All i can say is that MS is gonna need some serious tweaking in pvp if its debuff is being reduced to 20%.

And it has nothing to do with taking down healers and everything to do hitting plate and absorbs being backed by a healer. It'll be the same probelms rets face in damaging a healer...not enough burst to pressure.

Gushing wounds sounds an awful lot like a pvp only talent...there aren't many fights where bosses move every 9 seconds.

[mogulkhan]

All i can say is that MS is gonna need some serious tweaking in pvp if its debuff is being reduced to 20%.

And it has nothing to do with taking down healers and everything to do hitting plate and absorbs being backed by a healer. It'll be the same probelms rets face in damaging a healer...not enough burst to pressure.

Gushing wounds sounds an awful lot like a pvp only talent...there aren't many fights where bosses move every 9 seconds.

Ironic how we were told we'd get the ''ultimate MS''... maybe GC was pointing out ultimate in the sense of being way more garbage than what it is now... :S

[RPZip]

Questions at Warriors

Heroic Leap (Level 85): This ability makes the character leap at their target and apply the Thunder Clap ability to all enemies in the area when they land. Heroic Leap will be usable in Battle Stance and shares a cooldown with Charge, but the Juggernaut and Warbringer talents will allow Heroic Leap to be used in any stance and possibly while in combat. The cooldown for this ability might be longer than the Charge ability, but it will also apply a stun effect so you can make sure the target will still be there when you land.


^------
Whats the point of Charge then?

The better question is, "What's the point of Heroic Leap?".

[Kanes]

The better question is, "What's the point of Heroic Leap?".

sounds like it has a decent duration stun on it, dunno depending on length and rage cost could be a nice combo with bladestorm.

[skakruk]

-Bonus swing huh?... Guess it will be "good" for resilience battles (although its only a quarter of a normal crit...)

Inner rage is getting nerfed to 10% damage or 75% cost during beta - thats a certainty Unless its supposed to be our new signature ability...

As for the heroic leap - I sure hope it can get you up that bridge in blades edge...

Gushing wound? Really nice idea... it will be ignored by everyone who gets affected by it - but its nice to know someone is actually coming up with good ideas.

[Battousai]

Hey look...we got another charge that means more mobility...ya..

...oy ya, they share a CD and one might not even be usable in combat....awww.

[BLSTMASTER]

well speaking from a pvp stand point (and possibly pve as well)
w/ the HS change im guessing we will be able to land all white hits + heroic strike(since its not on the next swing skill anymore).
so a bit more rage for us to play with?

[Finangus]

@Finagus... as if you dont like those announcements, im loving these all atm. this seems all pvp oriented, which is sweet. fuck pve. pve is awesome (1h fury ftw) but nothing exciting will be announced, all you need in pve as dps warrior is more dmg and another attack and your sweet, make the rotation a bit more complex and done for pve. heroic leap making a return, glad blizzard didnt ditch it.

And I say fuck PvP. Arms doesn't need help in PvP. It's pretty much fine as is. And yet they give us another distance closer to use (Heroic Leap), a bleed that requires the target to keep moving around so it can do a little more damage than Rend, and a talent that lets Charge do a little bit of damage. Oh, and they completely gutted our weapon masteries, leaving us with the one that is abolutely horrid in PvE. Oh, and our big mastery bonus is practically the same damned thing as our weapon spec.

Believe it or not, everyone doesn't enjoy DPS'ing as Fury. Just like how not all Warlocks enjoy Demo, or all Mages enjoy Arcane.

Oh, and in case you didn't notice, Fury was just pimp slapped with the nerf bat. Decreasing the damage of WW (you know, one of Fury's two main attacks) by 50% and relegating it to an AoE only role is pretty huge nerf to a spec that already had too few buttons to press. They MUST give Fury another attack, else it will be perhaps the most boring DPS spec in game. And before you say it, Heroic Strike will not replace WW in the Fury rotation. It's a rage dump, and I highly doubt Blizz intends or will let warriors make it a standard part of their rotation.

I'm not saying the sky is falling, and the unannounced changes they are working on could very well make all warriors so happy that we join hands and sing "Kumbaya." But people are so enamored with Heroic Leap that they're completely ignoring the hefty nerfs we were hit with. At best, these changes are mediocre. I'll be praying as hard as I can for these changes to be drastically improved before release.

[vkei]

with more HP for everyone , 20% MS will be there for ooming healers faster , not for brusting someone down with unhealable damage ,as all the informations we have , seems to me healers is cata need to use thier mana much more casrful than now or they will oom very fast ,i think 20% MS is still very powerfull in cata with the healing changes , just a different usage

[BLSTMASTER]

And I say fuck PvP. Arms doesn't need help in PvP. It's pretty much fine as is. And yet they give us another distance closer to use (Heroic Leap), a bleed that requires the target to keep moving around so it can do a little more damage than Rend, and a talent that lets Charge do a little bit of damage. Oh, and they completely gutted our weapon masteries, leaving us with the one that is abolutely horrid in PvE. Oh, and our big mastery bonus is practically the same damned thing as our weapon spec.

Believe it or not, everyone doesn't enjoy DPS'ing as Fury. Just like how not all Warlocks enjoy Demo, or all Mages enjoy Arcane.

Oh, and in case you didn't notice, Fury was just pimp slapped with the nerf bat. Decreasing the damage of WW (you know, one of Fury's two main attacks) by 50% and relegating it to an AoE only role is pretty huge nerf to a spec that already had too few buttons to press. They MUST give Fury another attack, else it will be perhaps the most boring DPS spec in game. And before you say it, Heroic Strike will not replace WW in the Fury rotation. It's a rage dump, and I highly doubt Blizz intends or will let warriors make it a standard part of their rotation.

I'm not saying the sky is falling, and the unannounced changes they are working on could very well make all warriors so happy that we join hands and sing "Kumbaya." But people are so enamored with Heroic Leap that they're completely ignoring the hefty nerfs we were hit with. At best, these changes are mediocre. I'll be praying as hard as I can for these changes to be drastically improved before release.

Like they've said for the Q/A they will prolly add a new ability in place of WW or compensate it in another way. thats what beta tests are for (yeah i know sruff that hit live aren't always perfect... or rather there is always something wrong..)
but i'm sure blizzard will want they're players to be happy when cata launches

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

* Whirlwind will hit an unlimited number of targets, but only for 50% of weapon damage. The intent is for this ability to be used in multi-target scenarios and not on single targets.

tooltip of bladestorm:
Bladestorm: Instantly Whirlwind up to 4 nearby targets and for the next 6 sec you will perform a whirlwind attack every 1 sec. While under the effects of Bladestorm, you can move but cannot perform any other abilities but you do not feel pity or remorse or fear and you cannot be stopped unless killed.

so bladestorms single target damage will be halfed? while i welcome this as a arms pvp warrior myself because it is just as bad as killingspree, i fail to see anyone else whining or rejoicing. is it that people have not read the bladestorm tooltip and the whirlwind changes properly or just too thick, or is bladestorm staying the same?

[Xall]

I'm not sure if they mean to affect only the actual skill Whirlwind, or indeed reduce the damage that Bladestorm does. I sure hope Bladestorm remains (sorta) unaffected.

The way I am interpreting Heroic Leap is that it acts similar to Shadowfury. I imagine it you would aim it like you could DnD, with a big green circle, and then leap to that location. Since it applies Thunderclap when you land and stuns your target, I would imagine it would stun all targets within the circle. Or if it just applied an AoE stun after the Leap to a target, that would be just as effective. It would be a great Arms tanking tool, sort of a substitute for Shockwave.

[danawhitaker]

I'm not sure if they mean to affect only the actual skill Whirlwind, or indeed reduce the damage that Bladestorm does. I sure hope Bladestorm remains (sorta) unaffected.

The way I am interpreting Heroic Leap is that it acts similar to Shadowfury. I imagine it you would aim it like you could DnD, with a big green circle, and then leap to that location. Since it applies Thunderclap when you land and stuns your target, I would imagine it would stun all targets within the circle. Or if it just applied an AoE stun after the Leap to a target, that would be just as effective. It would be a great Arms tanking tool, sort of a substitute for Shockwave.

Pity I have no interest in being an arms tank. Give me something more useful for PVE raiding.