5.4 Changes

[cFortyfive]

No thanks, we've had so many wonderful years of sh*tty shield swapping, it's a defensive cd that distinguished itself from others by being A PAIN IN THE ASS.

To be fair though it made sense till everyone and their mother got better and easier to use cooldowns.

[meathead]

changes are long long over do but sadly i dont even call them buffs,but rather fixes to our class.this shit was more or less out dated back in wrath,every x-pac after that it was even worse.warriors have lost so much in mop these changes might bring us back up to par.without top end burst/damage warriors are shit and im not seeing any buffs really in that department.

MS needs to hit harder straight up and so does OP.atm thunder clap with a the glyph might hit harder then OP -lol.bring back the silence on heroic throw "since shock-wave is now a 40 sec cd" or bring back the debuff on OP.shattering throw should be instant but keep its long cd, and maybe add some damage reduction to battle stance.if these changes took place warriors would be in a great spot.

these changes are not coming from GC and im 100% certain on that.he has said a million time he wants casters to see a warriors shield so they can see the spell reflect coming "sad right"these changes are coming from the new pvp dev blizz has.

just remember what i said- they are not buffs but rather class changes that should have happened x-pacs agao.arms still needs more sustained damage buffs to MS and OP to make it viable is pve and even top end for pvp.

[Kankipappa]

Shieldwall and spellreflect without a shield are indeed more of a fix than a buff for the class, and I'm sure most warriors agree on that part. Still, it doesn't matter much if at all - not like you can suddenly pop any of your defensives when you're cc'd after the 5.4 hits, so the same weaknesses still apply on our class when PvP balance is concerned. I can't see it getting nerfed in anyway because of that. Now you just don't need to do macro to make the spell to work.

I see SW being more of a PvE quality of life change than a "PvP adjustment" to be honest. I'm more exited on the Arms AoE fixes, but still kinda fuzzled about the current T15 4pc vs future T16 4pc and how much crit we can actually get from the next tier gear. I mean will recklessness be back to the point that hitting it doesn't really matter much in terms of damage burst output, while other classes still got their cooldowns that keep their meters way up for something like 30 seconds without much of a RNG?

If we can get more stable +50% crit with some awesome trinkets, then It doesn't matter much. But still it won't "fix the issue" with reck being nerfed on 5.2 and it being a bit weak after you drop the 4pc bonus.

[Flaks]

Our burst is mediocre at best and we have the weakest sustained damage of any melee as arms. This has directly translated to PvE as well. We need flat out buffs to OP and MS. It really sucks nuts when a csmashed ms hits for less than a crusader strike.

And we really REALLY need more grip. Blizzard needs to stop throwing a million and one charges our way. Charges and grip are not mutually exclusive as we've seen with the death knight and feral tool kits (dks can immune roots/slows with ams and can also pick death's advance + have double death grip). Ret has a FAR easier time sticking to it's targets right now than warriors.

[Deleted]

Well harmsting will be off GCD to improve the "grip". Tbh im not a fan of this, i would have liked HS extending Harmstring much more.

[mstg]

No buffs to Fury, WTF

[Damax]

Shield wall
Hamstring
Spell reflect changes are not working on the ptr atm unless its for prot only LOL

[Beefkow]

Shield wall
Hamstring
Spell reflect changes are not working on the ptr atm unless its for prot only LOL

PTR isn't updated apprently, looked at all of the tooltips and tested everything on the dummy... nothing is updated.

On another note, i agree with Flaks and Meathhead because arms warrior sustained damage is MISERABLE, spamming 22k crits and 22k hits isn't fun and the fact that its on the 1.5 gcd, even with burst we still can't do squat (obviously cc the warrior whos all huge and grey).

Both pvp and pve wise, our damage needs to be looked at.

Simple solution, just straight forward buff slam to match up somewhat to TV and obliterate and buff mortal strike and overpower w/o giving us a lambs to the slaughter kind of a deal.

[Wazooty]

They should really play with that "while colossus smash is up" number.

Ms needs a straight up buff though. It should be hitting harder than obliterate.

[Darkfriend]

They should really play with that "while colossus smash is up" number.

Ms needs a straight up buff though. It should be hitting harder than obliterate.

lawlwut. Obliterate hits for like 376% Wep damage, increased by 25% with diseases. No way MS should hit that hard.

[VerasGunn]

No buffs to Fury, WTF

I wouldn't expect any. According to Ghostcrawler they find Fury warriors to be in a good place. Maybe enough warriors complaining might change that, but I would imagine we go untouched except for the Polearm addition to TG.

[Darkfriend]

I wouldn't expect any. According to Ghostcrawler they find Fury warriors to be in a good place. Maybe enough warriors complaining might change that, but I would imagine we go untouched except for the Polearm addition to TG.

The defensive CD buffs are HUGE, the change to vigilance to no longer xfer damage to use, and BS on a 60 second CD are amazing raid utility changes. BS change will be a DPS increase on certain fights. It's possible that BS becomes better than DR on 2 target+ fights for TG. Something like BB-BS-CS-RB-BT-RB-RB using b.rage if needed.

I'm not sure how warriors will scale next tier once we will be prioritizing mastery either. Mastery scales better than crit at that point (you require fewer points of mastery to gain 1% than crit, etc. Also, as enrage uptime approaches 100%, each 1% mastery is effectively a pure 1% DPS increase.

[Mataru]

What Darkfriend says is true, and there is a big unknown factor that could greatly affect dps balance: RPPM. Collision showed in an earlier thread that pre-RPPM procs, fury warriors scaled better than most specs, only fire mage edging us out. If Blizzard continues with using RPPM the way they do now then yea other classes will probably continue to out-scale us, but if they base rppm procs on let's say your highest 2ndary stat instead of haste for all specs, we would get a huge dmg and scaling boost. They could also decide to discontinue the rppm system, at least for trinkets.

I don't really think this will happen but in any case the PTR is still in the early stages, much may change yet.

[Darkfriend]

What Darkfriend says is true, and there is a big unknown factor that could greatly affect dps balance: RPPM. Collision showed in an earlier thread that pre-RPPM procs, fury warriors scaled better than most specs, only fire mage edging us out. If Blizzard continues with using RPPM the way they do now then yea other classes will probably continue to out-scale us, but if they base rppm procs on let's say your highest 2ndary stat instead of haste for all specs, we would get a huge dmg and scaling boost. They could also decide to discontinue the rppm system, at least for trinkets.

I don't really think this will happen but in any case the PTR is still in the early stages, much may change yet.

With the 608 cloak staying BiS for probably the rest of the xpac, as well as RPPM trinkets, it isn't unfeasible to think that at some point haste will edge out crit. It's already a close second to mastery for me.

That is MAJORLY going to depend on a few things. 1) RPPM trinkets in 5.4 2.) If the 2p continues to proc extra rage inside of CS off white hits, 3.) How exactly the 4p works 4.) The gear options available E.G what most people end up using 5.) whether the next part of the legendary questline reward is in any way related to RPPM.

It's a big IF but it could happen. The arguments against it are simple, though. We still need to maintain a high amount of crit, and after hitting that amount and putting the rest of everything into mastery, the chances of having a piece of gear with crit/mastery where we are reforging OUT of crit into haste seem somewhat slim.

[VerasGunn]

The defensive CD buffs are HUGE, the change to vigilance to no longer xfer damage to use, and BS on a 60 second CD are amazing raid utility changes. BS change will be a DPS increase on certain fights. It's possible that BS becomes better than DR on 2 target+ fights for TG. Something like BB-BS-CS-RB-BT-RB-RB using b.rage if needed.

I'm not sure how warriors will scale next tier once we will be prioritizing mastery either. Mastery scales better than crit at that point (you require fewer points of mastery to gain 1% than crit, etc. Also, as enrage uptime approaches 100%, each 1% mastery is effectively a pure 1% DPS increase.

Defensive CDs are probably rarely going to come into huge play in raids for Fury. It doesn't allow us to solo soak anything, and if there's a hit big enough that we need to pop a cooldown for ourselves alone typically we're doing something wrong or are about to be hit with another one before you can do it again.

Vigilance is fine, but again, it's a cover for one person, which I get the feeling will rarely be a big help. At the moment I'm a bit hard pressed to actually think of a fight in the current tier where that kind of damage reduction on one person. Maybe dropping it on a tank picking up the bats on Tortos, or someone having to grab two Animus Golems, but those situations are few and far between.

Bladestorm is already situational as it is, I'm not crazy about it becoming a little better for those situational fights, and the immunities it offers seem similarly situational or are just as easily taken care of with say Safeguard.

I admit I might be out of my depth with theorycrafting gear and how we might scale, but I don't have a lot of confidence in Blizzard or their design of fury. They talked in Cata about how they took out Armor pen because they didn't like seeing classes gear all towards one stat, while I quit in Cata and I don't recall stat priorities much there because I got fed up with my guild during the first tier(I want to say that was the time we were stacking hit because of their screwed up Rage gen system, but that might have changed between 4.0 and Cata's release) we're into the third major content patch in Mists what are we doing? Stacking Crit. Our cooldowns largely enhance crit, without crit our rotation suffers and so does our DPS, we do nothing but stack it, and this is apart of their conscious design. Granted, if we start prioritizing Mastery in 5.4 with being able to keep enrage up all of the time it'll change, but that it took this long is asinine, and I find myself not very optimistic.

[Darkfriend]

Considering that a major problem with warrior V DK now is that DKs have much better overall CDs, the shieldwall change is great. The vigilance change is also really good if used right. Any mechanic like the dread thrash on heroic sha, or the triple puncture on heroic horridon at high stacks which gives both healers more wiggle room, and would otherwise kill you, is amazing. It's basically a slightly longer, slightly weaker pain sup.

[Mataru]

Defensive CDs are probably rarely going to come into huge play in raids for Fury. It doesn't allow us to solo soak anything, and if there's a hit big enough that we need to pop a cooldown for ourselves alone typically we're doing something wrong or are about to be hit with another one before you can do it again.

Vigilance is fine, but again, it's a cover for one person, which I get the feeling will rarely be a big help. At the moment I'm a bit hard pressed to actually think of a fight in the current tier where that kind of damage reduction on one person. Maybe dropping it on a tank picking up the bats on Tortos, or someone having to grab two Animus Golems, but those situations are few and far between.

Bladestorm is already situational as it is, I'm not crazy about it becoming a little better for those situational fights, and the immunities it offers seem similarly situational or are just as easily taken care of with say Safeguard.

I admit I might be out of my depth with theorycrafting gear and how we might scale, but I don't have a lot of confidence in Blizzard or their design of fury. They talked in Cata about how they took out Armor pen because they didn't like seeing classes gear all towards one stat, while I quit in Cata and I don't recall stat priorities much there because I got fed up with my guild during the first tier(I want to say that was the time we were stacking hit because of their screwed up Rage gen system, but that might have changed between 4.0 and Cata's release) we're into the third major content patch in Mists what are we doing? Stacking Crit. Our cooldowns largely enhance crit, without crit our rotation suffers and so does our DPS, we do nothing but stack it, and this is apart of their conscious design. Granted, if we start prioritizing Mastery in 5.4 with being able to keep enrage up all of the time it'll change, but that it took this long is asinine, and I find myself not very optimistic.

Well they might as well remove pain supp, ironbark and all that jazz since these single target dmg reductions are no big deal whatever. Having an extra dmg reduction cd can be very valuable, both for tanks and general failers (man would I love to have vigilance for certain ppl during lightning storm on jin rokh hc).

Being able to use Shield Wall without losing any dps is rather amazing. You can say if it's not an immune or soak healers should have it covered anyway, but for some reason I just like being able to help lighten my raids load a little bit by myself aswell.

I can see it being very helpful on Jin rokh lightning storm, horridon high dmg parts of some of the doors if dispels or healing falls behind for whatever reason. Council for nuking Kazra'jin while he is reflecting, tortos less likely to lose shield/die if you get a million rockfalls all over melee range after stomp, Megaera rampage (ye we use this for berserker stance rage spam but during the later rampages I cant empty rage out fast enough), Ji kun quills or even soaking a pool if melee range is completely covered, Durumu whatever havent done on heroic, pop it for intercepting drain life or something. I could go on but the point is, we can now get free dmg reduce to better survive TONS of situations without gimping our dps to hell. When we were progressing on Iron Qon hc I felt squishy as hell as we were trying melee soaks all tac, and I did sometimes pop shield wall just to survive but that also ends up prolonging the phase by having my dps go to crap.

Sure we could use more buffs but don't pretend like these changes aren't that good. As far as quality of life and utility are concerned, they are a godsend.

[VerasGunn]

Sure we could use more buffs but don't pretend like these changes aren't that good. As far as quality of life and utility are concerned, they are a godsend.

Sure they're nice, I'm glad to see them there and I'll undoubtedly use them during SoO, but I don't really imagine Blizzard will bother trying to improve Fury DPS in 5.4 at all. I'm not saying that the buffs to Arms and Prot aren't neccessary, because they most certainly are, and these changes are nice, but Blizzard's tone regarding Fury seems more like they see Fury as being painfully adequate and that's fine with them because people don't typically PVP in Fury and a Fury warrior's role in a raid isn't as vital or noninterchangeable as Prot is, and because fury is apart of a hybrid class they don't have to care.

[Slaynorth]

Anybody else try out the T16 tier bonuses yet for Arms? While CS is up, you can hit Slam and Heroic Strike over and over and not be rage starved, and combined with Execute procs making Overpower free, you have so much rage you can basically use Heroic Strike on most GCDs.

I have no idea what an ideal rotation for this would be like, but I tried something along the lines of CS>MS>Executes and Slams in CS with a heroic strike coupled with every one (every single MS/Slam/Execute), and using Overpowers outside of CS with frequent use of heroic strike to keep rage reasonably low (because currently, it seems I can enter a CS at half rage, spam Slam+HS while maintaining normal MS usage, and not even come close to being rage starved even if you have several CS proc in a row). I don't have recount or skada on the PTR, but this feels huge - on live Arms warriors don't use HS very much at all, but on the PTR it felt a bit like Fury's HS usage in ICC.

Combine that with the Sweeping Strikes and T-Clap changes, and Arms is potentially looking up for single target and AoE, at least in my early estimation.

[Kankipappa]

Anybody else try out the T16 tier bonuses yet for Arms? While CS is up, you can hit Slam and Heroic Strike over and over and not be rage starved, and combined with Execute procs making Overpower free, you have so much rage you can basically use Heroic Strike on most GCDs.

I have no idea what an ideal rotation for this would be like, but I tried something along the lines of CS>MS>Executes and Slams in CS with a heroic strike coupled with every one (every single MS/Slam/Execute), and using Overpowers outside of CS with frequent use of heroic strike to keep rage reasonably low (because currently, it seems I can enter a CS at half rage, spam Slam+HS while maintaining normal MS usage, and not even come close to being rage starved even if you have several CS proc in a row). I don't have recount or skada on the PTR, but this feels huge - on live Arms warriors don't use HS very much at all, but on the PTR it felt a bit like Fury's HS usage in ICC.

Combine that with the Sweeping Strikes and T-Clap changes, and Arms is potentially looking up for single target and AoE, at least in my early estimation.

Hmm, so just like I thought. This makes me to go on and download the PTR. I'll check my findings with skada and stuff

Edit:

So I went to test it on the dummies and indeed you can basically hit HS every global, if colossus just keeps proccing and proccing. I only replaced 4 tier slots from my current gear to the new pieces, gemmed and reforged them so basically got different tier bonuses and slightly higher stats, but same itemization (minus the shoulder and leg enchants). Without giving much of a thought on the rotation, my Arms DPS with the new 4 set increased for around 25-30k (~140k to ~170k). Hard to play with 180+ ms though, since overpower globals seem to be too fast for that latency, and sometimes I also kept missing globals for MS due to the lag too. HS damage done was competing with overpowers somewhere around 15%.

Keep in mind that this is with a normal upgraded 2-hander, since I seem to have this endless stream of bad luck when it comes to a heroic weapon drops... Now add a cleaving match with 75% sweeper to that rage output...