Rend or Colossus Smash?

[cFortyfive]

Firstly, it being parried/dodge is REALLY aggravating. There are a number of fights this tier in which bosses move and turn near randomly to cast, etc. I really wish bosses could not dodge/parry while casting (Council, Iron Qon, Twins, Lei Shen, many Durumu strats, all come to mind).

This is so overdue. It's just way too unnecessarily punishing currently in comparison to other class mechanics.

No doubt that is fun aswell, but its not the flavor of the Warrior Class, that has always been about cooldown timings

I don't know all classes time their cds and I can't remember warriors always revolving around those super exciting four gcd burst windows.
Anyways I hope they give both specs a decent rework but as usual I suppose we have to wait in line for that.

[Deleted]

This is so overdue. It's just way too unnecessarily punishing currently in comparison to other class mechanics.

I don't know all classes time their cds and I can't remember warriors always revolving around those super exciting four gcd burst windows.
Anyways I hope they give both specs a decent rework but as usual I suppose we have to wait in line for that.

With cooldown timings i mean that our basic abilities are tied to cooldowns (unlike dks, rogues etc.) and thus managing those cooldowns is a major part of our gameplay. Colossus Smash fits this aspect and probably the most "sophisticated" of the cooldown based Core Abilities.

Warriors have never been spammy (except heroic strike maybe, but that was never on the gcd) and never been about shoot and forget abilities like DKs with dots and PetCooldowns (except if you count Bladestorm as shoot and forget).

Btw. I agree, Arms definitely needs a rework. But removing the only proc thats left and replacing it with a boring dot is not the way to go...Maybe the CS debuff should just be less powerful but last longer...

[Kaljurei]

From a fury PoV the only reason why I hate CS this expansion is that you can pool two resources for it ( RB and rage) and now that rage is more tight, you barely do anything meaningful outside of CS.

I completely agree with this, however it is more true for Fury than for Arms.

Arms has a sustained damage mindset, so CS doesn't make for a major damage boost(relative to Fury).
Fury has a bursty damage mindset, so CS makes for a major damage boost.

Bringing back Rend isn't going to solve anything. Arms rotation needs to be fixed in a different way. Fury rotation is more or less fine, but it's damage outside of CS needs to be fixed slightly. The mechanic of Enrage is an excellent mechanic for Fury, however it was bad at lower Crit levels, and an excuse of "Oh just go Arms" just didn't really cut it.

I'd rather keep CS, make Arms rotation more meaningful i.e OP vs Slam with and without CS, make Fury's rotation more meaningful outside of CS and give it some kind of enrage protection for lower gear levels, and that's pretty much done there.

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An idea that I did want to pitch was to bring back the old Deep Wounds in the form of Rend and have an active damage buff whenever Rend was up, something like how Shred does more damage on bleeding targets. This is just for Arms however.

All special attack critical strikes now cause the target to bleed for 48% Weapon damage over 6 seconds. Stacks. All attacks made against a target affected with Rend now deal X% more damage.

Makes Crit a whole lot better for Arms, more scaling, and more damage through a new Bleed and a new damage buff. However, we'd have to remove the extra Crit chance on Overpower or reduce it(and increase the base damage) to compensate, else it would be up almost all the time and we would once again prioritize Overpower too much once we've fixed the rotation to make Slam more favorable inside a CS.

[Deleted]

If Colossus smashed got replace I think it should be replaced with something similar to the old Rampage. Making it work the same way as it used to (only activated after a crit) lasting 20 seconds with a 1 minute CD and crits stacking it up (increasing AP % with stacks).

This would boost haste because of increased melee swings and thus chance of crits but would slightly decrease mastery and give fury a short CD they could use for burst phases. The fact that it requires stacking wouldn't make it too powerful in PVP (when you see a rampage, you start to peel) but would give fury more control in PVE.

[Pua]

Removing CS is possibly the dumbest request i´ve ever seen

There's nothing "dumb" about it - what you mean to say is:

"I don't understand what you're trying to say, so I'll call it dumb".

It's cool, I get it.

Colossus Smash has been a balancing nightmare for warriors in PvP, and it's directly attributable to how bad we are and how poorly we're represented. The class managed to get through two expansions of growth without it, and numbers have dropped since its introduction. The reason Rend is the only alternative I've suggested is because you can do something with it rather than another rotational attack that replaces it outright. Your description of "depth" actually translates to unwieldy for Fury nowadays because you try to shoehorn two Raging Blow swings into your Colossus Smash window, while not knowing it said Colossus Smash is going to proc another.

Most people I speak to agree that WotLK was the most fun the class has ever been, and Rend was a part of the Arms rotation then; Colossus Smash wasn't. It's equally no surprise that warriors were far better in PvP then, well balanced and rewarding of skilful gameplay rather than burst bots that are either too good, or no good.

As for ramp up, there are other ways of managing that than a three minute cooldown. The fact you're not willing to see that means that your initial assessment of my suggestion is about as meaningful as the assertion that McDonalds make hamburgers that help you lose weight.

- - - Updated - - -

Btw. I agree, Arms definitely needs a rework. But removing the only proc thats left and replacing it with a boring dot is not the way to go...Maybe the CS debuff should just be less powerful but last longer...

It doesn't have to be a boring DoT. It can apply a snare (meaning we get both damage AND a necessary snare), can have talents developed that improve it (proccing the original Sudden Death for example, or granting rage) or see it pulled into things like Heroic Throw for better ranged DPS. The Wrath Arms queue of Mortal Strike, Overpower, Slam, Rend and Execute was far more fun or engaging than what it is now in my opinion.

An idea that I did want to pitch was to bring back the old Deep Wounds in the form of Rend and have an active damage buff whenever Rend was up, something like how Shred does more damage on bleeding targets. This is just for Arms however.

All special attack critical strikes now cause the target to bleed for 48% Weapon damage over 6 seconds. Stacks. All attacks made against a target affected with Rend now deal X% more damage.

Makes Crit a whole lot better for Arms, more scaling, and more damage through a new Bleed and a new damage buff. However, we'd have to remove the extra Crit chance on Overpower or reduce it(and increase the base damage) to compensate, else it would be up almost all the time and we would once again prioritize Overpower too much once we've fixed the rotation to make Slam more favorable inside a CS.

I could get onboard with most of that, but I wish Arms had more to do with mastery and Opportunistic Strikes - critical strike is generic and causes both DPS specs to gear almost identically.

[Mihalik]

I liked Rend. Still miss it.

I also like CS. I'm fine with it, if they would be willing to balance it properly.

And I WANT Unrelenting Assault back! 50% Spell power reduction for 6 seconds when you Overpower into a cast bar. For PvP it was awsome. It helped kill healers, helped mitigate damage, etc.

[Kaljurei]

I could get onboard with most of that, but I wish Arms had more to do with mastery and Opportunistic Strikes - critical strike is generic and causes both DPS specs to gear almost identically.

I'm quite comfortable with the fact that both have Crit as the best stat, with Haste better for Arms and Mastery better for Fury. The only problem is that while Fury Warriors have a completely logical reason why Mastery is the second best stat, Arms don't. Haste doesn't do jack, but is still better than Mastery somehow due to RPPM trinkets and a crap % number on Mastery.

[Sliske]

Neither, to be honest. They both are incredibly frustrating in PVP and in PVE you are basically doing terrible damage while waiting on Colossus. I'd prefer to have a much higher sustained and remove Colossus, which could be done by adding rend. However it will always be a massive burden in PVP. With the amount of parry and dodge players have in PVP (upwards of 30% or more total!) it can result in literally spamming rends back to back attempting to apply it. Personally i've had enough of that with Hamstring, i don't want it on another spell.

I guess the main gripe i have with it is that it can be parried, so perhaps parry is the problem. For Colossus, i just think its a terrible clunky mechanic. I think armor in this day and age is worthless in the same way they removed spell pen and resistances i believe they should remove armor.

[Kaljurei]

I guess the main gripe i have with it is that it can be parried, so perhaps parry is the problem. For Colossus, i just think its a terrible clunky mechanic. I think armor in this day and age is worthless in the same way they removed spell pen and resistances i believe they should remove armor.

Frankly speaking, every attack can be parried, but none have the disadvantage that Colossus Smash had. Apart from enforcing parry/dodge protection on Colossus Smash(a la Overpower), the only other alternative is to have

1)Either a proc, which is independent of an attack, but is dependent on a DoT that allows you to ignore all armor for 6 seconds, and prevents reapplication during the buff's duration.

An example here would be : Your Deep Wounds ticks have an X% chance to enable <Insert fancy named buff name here>, which allows your attacks to ignore all of your target(s) armor.

As far as I know, Bleeds can't be removed that easily. This enforces parry/dodge protection passively, however we need to bring Rend back as an active ability, on no CD, and minimal Rage cost(read 5 or 10), so as to enforce parry/dodge protection actively(Means you just try to re-apply it) to get the chance to get 100% Armor pen.

This is in addition to the 30% Armor pen that you already get from some other ability, say Mortal Strike, or Overpower. I'd say Overpower because it already has parry/dodge protection.

The only problem I envision here is the proc chance. If it's too low, it's worse than Colossus Smash for PvE, where it'll almost never be dodged/parried. If it's too high, it's much better than Colossus Smash, which may very well be a much needed buff, but may be too overpowered.

2)Make CS have parry/dodge protection in addition to having a passive 30% Armor pen through the above mentioned ability, i.e Overpower.

I could get onboard with most of that, but I wish Arms had more to do with mastery and Opportunistic Strikes - critical strike is generic and causes both DPS specs to gear almost identically.

I understand this. I also understand your logic of having specs gearing identically. The reason why I WANT similar scale factors is to ensure that classes don't have to reforge for every fight. This also has to do with mechanics. Fury has great Single Target and reasonably good AOE. Arms has bad single target, and reasonably good AOE(as long as targets stay alive long enough for Deep Wounds to tick enough to do good damage). Balancing the mechanics to ensure that Arms and Fury are balanced on both situations makes stat scaling look relatively insignificant, ensuring that you'd just play the spec you like, and if you really want to min-max you would reforge differently for different fights, which is a minority of the Warrior population, and hence not a reason why you would care to not make changes that way.

I'm quite alright with :

Arms : Crit>Haste>Mastery

As long as Haste has a logical benefit to increasing DPS. An example here would be, so as to expand on my previous DW idea :

Deep Wounds has a chance to proc an additional tick proportional to your Haste.

Similar to SoB. I frankly feel that SoB is a very unique mechanism(Sanctity of Battle, for the ones who don't know what I'm talking about), and can be incorporated into specs that have either a bad scaling factor, or desire to have Haste play a bigger role. It doesn't need to be this, but I've seen better ideas made here than the devs have, no offense to the devs or devs' believers.

Fury :

Crit>Mastery>Haste

This is perfectly fine too. Crit gives Enrage, Mastery increases damage during Enrage. Both synergize with each other, and both increase damage by relatively the same amount. Haste doesn't have a quantifiable benefit due to the fact that Haste-Hit synergy is very random for autoattacks, and disregarding RPPM trinkets, it doesn't have any other effect, and perhaps does not need to.

TL;DR I don't see any of these ideas making through for the 5.4 patch. Next expansion, yes. Not this one, such ideas massively change our gameplay.

[Archimtiros]

The last few posts worth of ideas (rampage, rend proccing CSmash effect): Consider that one of the worst aspects of Warriors right now is the randomness of their damage and unsustainable dps. Now think about how to help with that.

Rampage was a terrible ability, though that was mostly because you had to activate it and couldn't refresh it while it was rolling. It was essentially what Enrage is now, minus an extra button.
The rend idea, while not terrible in itself, has some of its own problems: Spammable ability, minor damage and chance of proccing a desirable effect. Which of those three reasons do you see it being used for?
So what then? Do we just spam Rend, regardless of the dot being up or not, until we get a CSmash effect? How is that any better than just having one or both buttons? Warrior dps revolves around stacking cooldowns and maintaining rage, making CSmash effectively random would be detrimental to both of those.

I kind of like the Haste effecting Deep Wounds idea, but I fear that may lead to gearing for specific haste breakpoints like many dot classes (if the damage was even worth it, which would require a buff), and with juggling Expertise, Hit and Crit already, that seems overly complicated.
Truely, finding a new Mastery for Arms that would help scale its dps would be better, or give it a big buff. While Strikes of Opportunity is traditional Arms, it is the bad kind of bursty, weak and random, which doesn't help PVE or PVP.
Haste working like Sanctity of Battle for Mortal Strike would be pretty interesting however.

I really toyed with the idea of removing CSmash and giving Warriors a constant 100% armor pen (obviously re-balancing damage around it), but then I realized it would be just the same as removing it entirely and simply buffing our damage to compensate. Instead perhaps, CSmash should have no cooldown what so ever. It would definitely be a quality of life improvement, and make for easier balancing but would lead to a much more boring class than it is now.

[Veyne]

In a nutshell:

Rend - Fury
Colossus Smash - Arms

Despite Arms' history of being a heavier bleed spec than Fury, I think bleeds fit with the modern Fury Warrior theme. And when I first heard they were removing rend's stance requirement, I loved it! But then, they took the ability away entirely.

I'd like Fury to have one managed bleed (like Rend), one stacking, passive bleed (think of it like Deadly Poison, but as a bleed, and not NEARLY as high of a percentage of the Warrior's overall damage) and one proc bleed that basically serves as Fury's crit damage increase (like how Deep Wounds USED to be, except function how Fire Mages' Ignite works nowadays).

I think the OMG BIG NUMBERS feel works better with Arms these days. Colossus Smash feels great for Arms, and overall, I don't think Arms is need of much work. Maybe a new mechanic to make the rotation feel a little less static (save for Colossus Smash procs). Something like Overpower increasing the damage and reducing the rage cost of the next Slam, stacking a few times, but nothing huge - just enough for Slam to be worth using over Overpower at some point, instead of just a spare rage dump.

[Kaljurei]

The last few posts worth of ideas (rampage, rend proccing CSmash effect): Consider that one of the worst aspects of Warriors right now is the randomness of their damage and unsustainable dps. Now think about how to help with that.

I would like to eliminate randomness, but Arms doesn't have a lot of randomness, and Fury randomness becomes worse with more gear i.e more crit, which at this point is high enough to not call for a change in the rotation or gameplay itself. Fury Warriors actually only want a small buff to make them even with other Melee DPS. Arms Warriors want a change in the gameplay itself i.e Overpower vs Slam usage depends on the conditions. If GC wants us to use Slam inside CS, then you'll have to make Slam much more preferable than Overpower.

One way to do it is to make Slam do a lot more damage, but that unfortunately has PvP concerns i.e burst.
The other way is to make Slam consume TFB charges and reduce its GCD and MS CD by 0.5s(Which is not my idea, it came from the US PTR Discussion thread), which doesn't promote burst although it does more damage, and also makes Arms a lot more fun to play. Yeah well people would argue that there's not much fun involved in that, but that's that. It's Arms, consistent damage is what we look for, less randomness.

The rend idea, while not terrible in itself, has some of its own problems: Spammable ability, minor damage and chance of proccing a desirable effect. Which of those three reasons do you see it being used for?
So what then? Do we just spam Rend, regardless of the dot being up or not, until we get a CSmash effect? How is that any better than just having one or both buttons? Warrior dps revolves around stacking cooldowns and maintaining rage, making CSmash effectively random would be detrimental to both of those.

Make Rend not apply the tick on the spell hit itself i.e the application of Rend, and simply extend the duration on the DoT. That should fix it.

I kind of like the Haste effecting Deep Wounds idea, but I fear that may lead to gearing for specific haste breakpoints like many dot classes (if the damage was even worth it, which would require a buff), and with juggling Expertise, Hit and Crit already, that seems overly complicated.

I don't see a problem with that. Other classes do it, why can't we?

Truely, finding a new Mastery for Arms that would help scale its dps would be better, or give it a big buff. While Strikes of Opportunity is traditional Arms, it is the bad kind of bursty, weak and random, which doesn't help PVE or PVP.
Haste working like Sanctity of Battle for Mortal Strike would be pretty interesting however.

No, that wouldn't be right. Classes shouldn't share basic gameplay mechanics. And most people have been arguing for a SoO buff for ages, ever since Beta. Yeah, it promotes burst, but bringing it to the equivalent level as that of other classes that have a similar mastery would be simply balanced.

I really toyed with the idea of removing CSmash and giving Warriors a constant 100% armor pen (obviously re-balancing damage around it), but then I realized it would be just the same as removing it entirely and simply buffing our damage to compensate. Instead perhaps, CSmash should have no cooldown what so ever. It would definitely be a quality of life improvement, and make for easier balancing but would lead to a much more boring class than it is now.

You'd have to give Colossus Smash a rage cost then, and reduce the Armor pen effectively. I'd rather just have a 10s CD on CS, or get the new SD mechanic which I proposed, or keep current SD and 20s CD.

In a nutshell:

Rend - Fury
Colossus Smash - Arms

Despite Arms' history of being a heavier bleed spec than Fury, I think bleeds fit with the modern Fury Warrior theme. And when I first heard they were removing rend's stance requirement, I loved it! But then, they took the ability away entirely.

Funny, most people think Fury is a bursty spec, and then you're like, let's give some consistent damage through a bleed.

I'd like Fury to have one managed bleed (like Rend), one stacking, passive bleed (think of it like Deadly Poison, but as a bleed, and not NEARLY as high of a percentage of the Warrior's overall damage) and one proc bleed that basically serves as Fury's crit damage increase (like how Deep Wounds USED to be, except function how Fire Mages' Ignite works nowadays).

Which brings us back to the question : Why was Deep Wounds removed anyway?

I think the OMG BIG NUMBERS feel works better with Arms these days. Colossus Smash feels great for Arms, and overall, I don't think Arms is need of much work. Maybe a new mechanic to make the rotation feel a little less static (save for Colossus Smash procs). Something like Overpower increasing the damage and reducing the rage cost of the next Slam, stacking a few times, but nothing huge - just enough for Slam to be worth using over Overpower at some point, instead of just a spare rage dump.

There are better ideas than a rage reduction, merely due to the fact that Overpower reduces MS's CD.

[Opeth69]

Rend becomes a powerful bleed that slam applies during Csmash debuff, tfb stacks increase the dmg of rend to make it better to use slam than op during cs giving arms a way to dump tfb and use slam, and have a powerful bleed so if we get kited to crap during cs at least we can do some dmg, it could even slow the target for 6 seconds

[DeathOfRa]

I like them both. And warriors losing their burst in PvP is extremely bad. Dots in general don't apply pressure on melee characters (Rogues, DKs excluded), and it's very easy to heal through something like that.
Rend could just be baked into Hamstring, since I don't see how getting hamstringed doesn't​ hurt and cause bleeding.

[Archimtiros]

The main issue is they do not want to re-introduce a spammable damage ability. It's another issue of balancing PVE and PVP simultaneously.
Because even as a minor amount of damage, it now becomes another move we have to use in PVE during one of our Filler GCDs.

To make Hamstring deal damage it would either 1) Have a decent rage cost of 10-20, or 2) Have a cooldown, or 3) both.
Either way, the PVP community would then rise up in revolt.

I really do not understand what peoples obsession with fire and forget bleeds are. They removed Rend because the damage sucked, and it was just... there. An extra button that honestly didn't even matter if you used it or not. One day people are complaining about ability bloat and the next its all "QQ give us a worthless ability back".

[WarTV]

not a fan of dots. so that is a No for rend
colossus smash should apply a buff to the warrior rather than debuff the target.

[Xeley]

From a PvE perspective CS is a boring ability.

As Arms you feel gimped when it's not upped, it pretty much works like a dot that needs to be reapplied every 6th second, if possible.

As Fury you just sit there doing nothing making sure you don't rage cap then slam your head against all keys you can.

[Archimtiros]

As Fury you just sit there doing nothing making sure you don't rage cap then slam your head against all keys you can.

This is true to an extent, although it becomes much better and more engaging as your gear improves. Not only are you able to use more GCDs, but you are also able to plan ahead RB usage for maximum efficiency during CS. I find it pretty engaging.
It's a heck of a lot better than Meat Cleaver. Our Cleave rotation is incredibly clunky.

[Kankipappa]

Although I kinda miss Rend pre 4.1 for Arms, My only gripe on Colossus Smash in PvE is indeed that it can be parried (Like many have pointed it out already).

I would fix it by either making sure that the debuff applies even if parried, or that the attack cannot be parried at all. OR if the parry has to work like it is now, then it shouldn't trigger the 20s cooldown and only make us waste the global, since it's essential to our dps anyhow.

I'd prefer it to be immune to parry though for convenience.

[Mormolyce]

I could honestly see them removing boss parries etc and all positional requirements in the game. It's just a nuisance as is.