Designing the warrior of 6.0.

[Pua]

With 5.4 on the PTR, it’s safe to say that the designers are going to be moving onto 6.0 in the pretty near future. We all knew that no fundamental changes were going to be made for the final patch of this expansion, so now is potentially the time when we want to start discussing how warriors could potentially look in the next expansion. This post is going to concentrate on Protection (it’s what I know the most about), but some of my thinking and/or suggestions will touch on Fury and Arms respectively, too.

For me, I think the class needs a significant overhaul in the main and nothing less than that is going to stop warriors from effectively coming apart at the seams. Every fix has brought new problems, and it’s now time to start stripping off the bandages and casts and sorting the situation out. What I would ask people to bear in mind, however, is that I’m also of the opinion that every class needs to start losing some of its ability bloat. Please try and remember that when you want to argue that “we can’t lose anything”.

So, let’s make a start and I’ll add or remove anything that is worth adding after it’s been discussed.

- Remove Berserker Stance

They’ve tried their absolute hardest to make this work, and it simply hasn’t. At this point it’s unlikely we’ll see the GCD lowering of Unholy Presence, and nobody in PvP is going to use this for rage when under attack (that’s what Defensive Stance is for). We’ve also moved away from attacks that are stance-dependent, so I reckon it’s time to retire ‘zerker once and for all.

- Remove Demoralizing Shout and Die by the Sword

This might seem like a strange move, but not when you read the next suggestion.

- Rework Disarm

Rather than having Disarm work solely in PvP and next to never in PvE, make Disarm work on everything with a flat 20% damage reduction for its duration. This means we can safely remove the spec-specific minor cooldowns with no cost to tanks and only a limited cost to damage dealers.

- Rework Demoralizing Banner

A raid cooldown that doesn’t work on environmental damage is simply very strange. Rename this banner to “Inspiring” and give everyone in range a flat 30% damage reduction for its duration. This would be an awful lot better than how it currently works, and will make the loss of the second mitigation cooldown (when we don’t need two, anyway) easier to swallow.

- Remove Rallying Cry

If our banner worked the way it does above, we can get rid of Rallying Cry as a defensive raid cooldown. Honestly? We don’t need two.

- Make Piercing Howl baseline

I’m still amazed this hasn’t happened yet. It’s frightening. We really need to see it happen, as it’ll allow us to:

- Remove Hamstring

Probably the worst snare in the game at this point, and has fallen into disuse with Piercing Howl available to everyone. We’ve moved on from it at this stage of the game, so it’s time to retire it.

- Make Second Wind baseline

This has already been discussed by Ghostcrawler himself and the talent dominates in PvP, so just do it. It’s a half decent talent for PvE warriors too, so making it our sole baseline heal makes sense. From this point, nobody is losing anything much with this change.

- Return Shockwave to Protection only

Sustained Protection warrior AoE is anaemic without Shockwave, while Arms and Fury have Whirlwind (plus talents) to cushion this blow; Protection has nothing. Even on a 40-second cooldown an AoE Kidney Shot is abnormally strong in PvP, but the nerf hit PvE tanks hard and forced them into Dragon Roar. If it’s too hard to balance, get it back where it causes the least problems – back with tanks.

- Make Storm Bolt baseline and remove Heroic Throw - OR - Remove the cooldown on Heroic Throw

Essentially, replace Heroic Throw with Storm Bolt and tune its damage accordingly or simply buff Heroic Throw and get rid of Storm Bolt. Heroic Throw hits for an embarrassingly low amount, particularly for tanks, and there’s simply no need for it to hit for so little. Another option, suggested by Akoroth, is to make Heroic Throw spammable so that when a warrior is rooted, or on fights such as Horridon heroic where you need a constant ranged attack, the class has one. At time of writing, warriors seem to be the only melee class that has such a dramatically limited ranged arsenal.

- Rework Skull Banner

Skull Banner’s AoE effect is a nice raid DPS cooldown and doesn’t need changed, but I’d also put 25% extra critical strike chance for the warrior onto Skull Banner as baseline. This allows us to:

- Remove Recklessness

With the same cooldown as Skull Banner, and with the effect already accounted for, we can save another spot on the ol’ action bar.

- Rework the talent pane

It’s relatively safe to say that too many of our talents are lacklustre, while some of my suggestions here would also prompt some necessary changes. Tier one is probably okay as it is, but Second Wind as baseline would mean the whole second tier would need reworked; more self-healing is unnecessary, but more defensive utility might be worth it.

Something that made Disarm also reduce casting speed (Violent Disarm?) might be interesting, as would something that lets Spell Reflect absorb 50% of magical damage taken over 6 seconds and apply the remaining 50% as a DoT over 12 seconds (Consume Magic?). Finally, a talent that allows the warrior to *whispers* use Shield Wall without having a shield (Blade Ward?) would be cool, but would need to also do something for Protection.

After that we’d need to look at the gaps left by Piercing Howl, Shockwave and Storm Bolt and also look to make some of the existing talents more attractive. With Shockwave and Storm Bolt as baseline, it’d maybe be simplest to have a buffed Bladestorm replace Storm Bolt on the final tier and remove Dragon Roar outright – it’s just not an interesting ability. That then gives us a whole new tier to get something more interesting out of.

Anyway, that’s my general ideas for all warrior stripes as of right now; I’ll continue with the Protection specific section shortly, but will add to this as people get involved in the debate. All I ask is that we try and keep it clean and, if we can get consensus on some things we’ll flag it up to the calamitous crab himself and see what he thinks.

Be good to each other.

[Nobleshield]

Honestly I think the game itself needs major overhauls. I'd like to see major streamlining of abilities and some more consolidation. I like your idea about Disarm basically replacing Demo Shout. I'd also like Storm Bolt to replace Heroic Throw, mass spell reflect replacing the normal one.

I'd like to see Revenge go off the GCD and become reactive only, so it can be macro'd into other abilities and fire if available. I don't think Prot Warriors should use Heroic Strike at all, so maybe something could be consolidated there (maybe HS becomes Cleave for Prot only, and Arms gets a Sweeping Strikes stance so all their attacks cleave)? Then something like Thunderclap becomes Whirlwind for Fury (no need for two AE attacks). Obviously damage buffs across the board.

Right now my issue with Prot Warriors is too many abilities, many of which are situationally useful (e.g. Disarm, Spell Reflect) but useful enough that you should keep them on keys. I like how Block and Barrier work fundamentally; Shield Slam is good, Devastate is good. Thunderclap is good. Perhaps Enraged Regen could be toned down a bit and added to the Enraged effect (kind of like the paladin's Sacred Shield, but it's a HoT) and this also makes us want crit to proc Enrages, and Berzerker Rage turns into a cooldown. Impending Victory should be baseline; I'm not sure about Second Wind.

Overall though I like a lot of your ideas

[AutomaticBadger]

Having cooldowns that aren't all linked allows you to spread them out. Recklessness and banner would result in instant CC in PvP and also in PvE while a DpS loss you would loose the ability to stagger cooldowns used for burn times.

Keep cry and make banner a raid wise 20% DR since then we have more utility outside of upping everyone's health.

Make Hamstring an imobalise that last for x seconds to reduce Warrior kiting to death.

Barring those I don't really mind the others. I would like better Warrior AoE threat skills given it amounts to TC and hope you didn't miss anything while a Paladin, Druid, Monk and DK can near on spam AoE threat skills without much hard.

[Nobleshield]

Barring those I don't really mind the others. I would like better Warrior AoE threat skills given it amounts to TC and hope you didn't miss anything while a Paladin, Druid, Monk and DK can near on spam AoE threat skills without much hard.

Not to derail the issue at hand but interesting you should mention that as I normally see the claim that Warriors have great AE threat while Paladins (in particular) struggle with it, despite having 4 abilities (HotR, Consecration, Holy Wrath, Light's Hammer assuming it's taken) versus basically 3 (heroic leap, thunderclap, shockwave/dragon roar).

I kind of don't mind the extra GROUP utility for a Warrior, but I dislike the plethora of other "This might be useful on 1-2 bosses" abilities I feel like I need to have keybound to be a good Warrior.

[Crysis]

So basically what you are saying - "make warriors OP" hmm, well, how about ... no.

There are some interesting ideas, but Second Wind and Storm Bolt as baselines? No freakin way!

[Sliske]

Zerker stance -

No, its very good for fury. It can generate close to as much rage as auto swings do on fights like Maegera. I don't want to throw away thousands of rage just because Billy the male draenei warrior can't be arsed to swap stances.

Demo Banner -

I love having this raid cooldown, however the big problem with it is that it requires a target to work on. If our entire group is getting stomped by the wind on lei shen, i can't use my banner to reduce the dmg, because the wind can't be debuffed. If it was abuff on us, say, "Hardened Skin Banner" or some shit, then it would work on everything, totems + orbs on horridon, lightning orbs on jinrokh, sandtraps on council, circles on tortos. You get the point.

DBTS -

This change would only make it so that it can DR, the current one can't DR. Therefore its better, also you seem to have forgotten the 100% parry it gives. On our first horridon HC kill i tanked the boss for 7 seconds while our only remaining tank had 9 stacks of triple puncture. With your change, that wouldn't be possible.

"Cleaning up the action bar"

My action bar with many macros has 15ish spaces left in PVE. If i PvP'd seriously i'd have about 3-4 left. The extra buttons are for targeting and other shit like intervening banners and 1-3 casts. If you cleaned up my action bar any more (in pve) i'd go back to using only the bottom left one, like in vanilla.

The rest -

Are either prot specific or stuff i can't be bothered to debate about. Second wind being baseline with the new 40% heal enraged regen would be just too much though, thats all i'll say on that, and i guess while i'm at it, i agree with the skull banner / reck part, however for a different reason. Right now a fully geared warrior (550 ilvl) has like 41% crit as TG. + 30% from reck thats 71%, + 5% from buffs, 76%, agility buffs, maybe 77-78%. Thats a 154% chance to crit blood thirst, not to mention trinkets like gaze of the twins that can increase your crit chance by like 20%. Combing that 78% crit with our current 4 set makes our crit chance over 100% during recklessness, which i feel is wasted stats.

I wouldn't be suprised if fury starts heading for mastery more than crit next tier, or blizzard lowers the coefficient for crit so that every warrior doesnt have 55% crit passively and 65% raid buffed.

PVP -

Meh screw it i'm here anyway. You mentioned PVP a few times in your post. I don't think we should discuss PVP and PVE together ever, as PVP will essentially never become balanced due to the shear amount of specs in the game right now. Also keeping in mind that for the 9ish years wow has been out PVP has not been balanced for even 1 second of that time. However i will make my 'big idea' known in this post i guess. Which is: Remove Dodge and Parry from PVP. Prior to MOP, a mage casting with low spell pen would have every 1 in 5 spells miss. This ment a lot, having a deep freeze miss sucked ass. So everyone and their mother went for the spell pen cap so that they had 100% hit, always.

For melee and hunters however (and only a melee will share this experience) this creates a world where literally if the target isn't stunned, every 3rd or 4th GCD is parried or dodged depending on str / agi class. Having your colossus smash miss 4 times in a row, having your ghoul's gnaw parried, having your stormstrike parried, having your gouge, kidney, scatter shot dodge / parried is infuriating and the very definition of RNG.

I think theres two ways to solve this: 1. make all CC and important spells unparriable and undodgeable. 2. Give flat dmg reductions from melee dmg to the dodge / parry classes. 3. Make an expertise cap for this, just like previous spell pen, or bake it into hit rating.

Spells like evasion etc - They should do what they are labeled to do. Evade. When you use evasion you should have a 50% chance to evade not dodge. Make this less or 0 for casters to make it identicle to the current evasion but without implenting dodge / parry into pvp.

The big thing we're missing, imo.

While spamming throw on a direhorn spirit on HC Horridon i came to the realization that we're the only class that doesn't have a spammable (decent) dmg out put via range.

Rogues, Shurikon Toss. Paladins, Judgement, Exorcism. Enh, Flame shock, lightning bolt etc. DKs, many. Monks and Ferals, these classes have a few of their own, however i think thier incredible mobility is the aim for these classes and not fillers while rooted.

Soooo, my proposal is... *drum roll*

Weapon Throw

Yep, weapon throw from D3. Costs 5-10 rage, hits for like 60% weapon dmg, 0 CD. Lets be real, its essentially shurikon toss. However i dont want anything from it, like rogues get combo points. I just want to be able to press buttons while rooted and not stand afk or tab out. This spell would replace heroic throw.

[Pua]

Honestly I think the game itself needs major overhauls. I'd like to see major streamlining of abilities and some more consolidation. I like your idea about Disarm basically replacing Demo Shout. I'd also like Storm Bolt to replace Heroic Throw, mass spell reflect replacing the normal one.

The game really does need major overhauls, as things are just becoming too bloated and new players are being overwhelmed by the amount of things that are going on. Hell, even experienced ones are falling under the weight of rotational abilities, cooldowns (major, minor, offensive and defensive), raid utility (offensive and defensive cooldowns) and personal utility. Add onto that the most complicated boss encounters the game’s ever seen…

It’s too much.

I'd like to see Revenge go off the GCD and become reactive only, so it can be macro'd into other abilities and fire if available.

Ghostcrawler doesn’t like abilities that can just be macro’d together and forgotten about; it’s not compelling gameplay, he believes, and I think he’s right. On that basis alone, I want to avoid doing things of this sort.

I don't think Prot Warriors should use Heroic Strike at all, so maybe something could be consolidated there (maybe HS becomes Cleave for Prot only, and Arms gets a Sweeping Strikes stance so all their attacks cleave)?

I’m torn on Heroic Strike. I accept that it’s become a balancing liability, but it’s also that little something “extra” that we’ve had for a while and contributes to that fast, furious gameplay that comes with being a warrior.

To be continued.

Then something like Thunderclap becomes Whirlwind for Fury (no need for two AE attacks). Obviously damage buffs across the board.

Again, Whirlwind is an iconic attack and does what it says on the tin; putting Shockwave back into the Protection repertoire makes sense, as does giving Blood and Thunder to Fury. I think two AoE attacks is about right, to be fair, because that means you can build an AoE rotation rather than continuing your single target one with the odd global changing.

Right now my issue with Prot Warriors is too many abilities, many of which are situationally useful (e.g. Disarm, Spell Reflect) but useful enough that you should keep them on keys. I like how Block and Barrier work fundamentally; Shield Slam is good, Devastate is good. Thunderclap is good. Perhaps Enraged Regen could be toned down a bit and added to the Enraged effect (kind of like the paladin's Sacred Shield, but it's a HoT) and this also makes us want crit to proc Enrages, and Berzerker Rage turns into a cooldown. Impending Victory should be baseline; I'm not sure about Second Wind.

Personally:

There are far too many abilities, but Protection warriors are far from the worst. Look at the hotbars of priests, warlocks and hunters and you start to see just how bad some classes and specs have gotten. I’ll get back to talking about Protection specifically, so hold onto your hat until then, but I disagree with making Impending Victory baseline because, outside of tanking which would see specific changes, Second Wind is already strong enough, IMHO.

Having cooldowns that aren't all linked allows you to spread them out. Recklessness and banner would result in instant CC in PvP and also in PvE while a DpS loss you would loose the ability to stagger cooldowns used for burn times.

You should always be stacking DPS cooldowns for best effect, even in PvP. I accept your premise about CC, but that’s part of the skill in playing competitive PvP – choosing the right time to control, the right time to defend and the right time to pressure or go for a kill.

Ultimately, there is far too much control in the game and my changes are suggested with that borne in mind. Lose some of the CC and then nobody needs to have lots of cooldowns so you have something up when you latch onto a target.

Also, don’t forget; half of the problem warriors have in PvP is that their damage is poor outside of cooldowns. Having less cooldowns means our sustained damage will have to be balanced (read buffed), which is a far better solution than finding a five second window and hoping you blow someone up in said five seconds.

Keep cry and make banner a raid wise 20% DR since then we have more utility outside of upping everyone's health.

Personally, I think two defensive raid cooldowns is too many. No spec should really have more than one, IMHO.

Make Hamstring an imobalise that last for x seconds to reduce Warrior kiting to death.

Hamstring’s problem is the GCD wasted to reapply it, especially given that it’s a melee attack that can miss or be dodged. However, we have to think balance; if Piercing Howl was baseline, having an immobilize would likely be too much considering we already have a powerful AoE snare that can’t be avoided. Perhaps a talent (or Arms passive) could see Piercing Howl reapplied automatically on a Shield Slam/Bloodthirst/Mortal Strike hit?

Barring those I don't really mind the others. I would like better Warrior AoE threat skills given it amounts to TC and hope you didn't miss anything while a Paladin, Druid, Monk and DK can near on spam AoE threat skills without much hard.

Yeah, that’s a problem. I honestly think two is enough, outside of talents, and Heroic Leap isn’t there for its damage; it’s there for mobility.

Not to derail the issue at hand but interesting you should mention that as I normally see the claim that Warriors have great AE threat while Paladins (in particular) struggle with it, despite having 4 abilities (HotR, Consecration, Holy Wrath, Light's Hammer assuming it's taken) versus basically 3 (heroic leap, thunderclap, shockwave/dragon roar).

I think the difference is between “burst” and “sustained”. Assuming Dragon Roar is up, our burst AoE is preeminent. The problem, of course, is when it’s not…

I kind of don't mind the extra GROUP utility for a Warrior, but I dislike the plethora of other "This might be useful on 1-2 bosses" abilities I feel like I need to have keybound to be a good Warrior.

Yeah – bloat, bloat and more bloat. It’s time to start trimming the fat from classes across the board, and warriors have more than most.

So basically what you are saying - "make warriors OP" hmm, well, how about ... no.

There are some interesting ideas, but Second Wind and Storm Bolt as baselines? No freakin way!

No, quite the opposite; Second Wind would be the class' only heal, while I'm basically talking about buffing Heroic Throw (not necessarily to Storm Bolt levels) because its current damage is pitiful.

I'm honestly not sure what you think is overpowered in that list.

[Alonzo33]

With 5.4 on the PTR, it’s safe to say that the designers are going to be moving onto 6.0 in the pretty near future. We all knew that no fundamental changes were going to be made for the final patch of this expansion, so now is potentially the time when we want to start discussing how warriors could potentially look in the next expansion. This post is going to concentrate on Protection (it’s what I know the most about), but some of my thinking and/or suggestions will touch on Fury and Arms respectively, too.

For me, I think the class needs a significant overhaul in the main and nothing less than that is going to stop warriors from effectively coming apart at the seams. Every fix has brought new problems, and it’s now time to start stripping off the bandages and casts and sorting the situation out. What I would ask people to bear in mind, however, is that I’m also of the opinion that every class needs to start losing some of its ability bloat. Please try and remember that when you want to argue that “we can’t lose anything”.

So, let’s make a start and I’ll add or remove anything that is worth adding after it’s been discussed.

- Remove Berserker Stance

They’ve tried their absolute hardest to make this work, and it simply hasn’t. At this point it’s unlikely we’ll see the GCD lowering of Unholy Presence, and nobody in PvP is going to use this for rage when under attack (that’s what Defensive Stance is for). We’ve also moved away from attacks that are stance-dependent, so I reckon it’s time to retire ‘zerker once and for all.

- Remove Demoralizing Shout and Die by the Sword

This might seem like a strange move, but not when you read the next suggestion.

- Rework Disarm

Rather than having Disarm work solely in PvP and next to never in PvE, make Disarm work on everything with a flat 20% damage reduction for its duration. This means we can safely remove the spec-specific minor cooldowns with no cost to tanks and only a limited cost to damage dealers.

- Rework Demoralizing Banner

A raid cooldown that doesn’t work on environmental damage is simply very strange. Rename this banner to “Inspiring” and give everyone in range a flat 30% damage reduction for its duration. This would be an awful lot better than how it currently works, and will make the loss of the second mitigation cooldown (when we don’t need two, anyway) easier to swallow.

- Remove Rallying Cry

If our banner worked the way it does above, we can get rid of Rallying Cry as a defensive raid cooldown. Honestly? We don’t need two.

- Make Piercing Howl baseline

I’m still amazed this hasn’t happened yet. It’s frightening. We really need to see it happen, as it’ll allow us to:

- Remove Hamstring

Probably the worst snare in the game at this point, and has fallen into disuse with Piercing Howl available to everyone. We’ve moved on from it at this stage of the game, so it’s time to retire it.

- Make Second Wind baseline

This has already been discussed by Ghostcrawler himself and the talent dominates in PvP, so just do it. It’s a half decent talent for PvE warriors too, so making it our sole baseline heal makes sense. From this point, nobody is losing anything much with this change.

- Return Shockwave to Protection only

Sustained Protection warrior AoE is anaemic without Shockwave, while Arms and Fury have Whirlwind (plus talents) to cushion this blow; Protection has nothing. Even on a 40-second cooldown an AoE Kidney Shot is abnormally strong in PvP, but the nerf hit PvE tanks hard and forced them into Dragon Roar. If it’s too hard to balance, get it back where it causes the least problems – back with tanks.

- Make Storm Bolt baseline

Essentially, replace Heroic Throw with Storm Bolt and tune its damage accordingly or simply buff Heroic Throw and get rid of Storm Bolt. Heroic Throw hits for an embarrassingly low amount, particularly for tanks, and there’s simply no need for it to hit for so little.

- Rework Skull Banner

Skull Banner’s AoE effect is a nice raid DPS cooldown and doesn’t need changed, but I’d also put 25% extra critical strike chance for the warrior onto Skull Banner as baseline. This allows us to:

- Remove Recklessness

With the same cooldown as Skull Banner, and with the effect already accounted for, we can save another spot on the ol’ action bar.

- Rework the talent pane

It’s relatively safe to say that too many of our talents are lacklustre, while some of my suggestions here would also prompt some necessary changes. Tier one is probably okay as it is, but Second Wind as baseline would mean the whole second tier would need reworked; more self-healing is unnecessary, but more defensive utility might be worth it.

Something that made Disarm also reduce casting speed (Violent Disarm?) might be interesting, as would something that lets Spell Reflect absorb 50% of magical damage taken over 6 seconds and apply the remaining 50% as a DoT over 12 seconds (Consume Magic?). Finally, a talent that allows the warrior to *whispers* use Shield Wall without having a shield (Blade Ward?) would be cool, but would need to also do something for Protection.

After that we’d need to look at the gaps left by Piercing Howl, Shockwave and Storm Bolt and also look to make some of the existing talents more attractive. With Shockwave and Storm Bolt as baseline, it’d maybe be simplest to have a buffed Bladestorm replace Storm Bolt on the final tier and remove Dragon Roar outright – it’s just not an interesting ability. That then gives us a whole new tier to get something more interesting out of.

Anyway, that’s my general ideas for all warrior stripes as of right now; I’ll continue with the Protection specific section shortly, but will add to this as people get involved in the debate. All I ask is that we try and keep it clean and, if we can get consensus on some things we’ll flag it up to the calamitous crab himself and see what he thinks.

Be good to each other.

One thing: i really hope your suggestions wont take place.

[Nobleshield]

Something else I just thought of: Instead of Rallying Cry AND Last Stand, how about keep Cry as it is, maybe up it to 30%, and make Last Stand basically like Ardent Defender? Something like... lasts 20s, if you take a killing blow you instantly heal 35% health and heal an additional 15% health over 10s, something like that (losing the damage reduction component of AD in exchange for a HoT after it procs)? That's more in line with it I think, a warrior refusing to fall while his companions are still in danger. And Rallying Cry stays what it is as a group/raid cooldown; on the contrary I think Demoralizing Banner could stay as it is (maybe go to 20% instead of 10%).

I'm not that up to speed on Arms/Fury (was mostly Prot) but I don't quite like the idea of Colossus Smash being for Arms, so maybe Slam could have some kind of extra damage to compensate; CS always felt like it was more of a Fury thing.

On the subject of that, I already suggested Heroic Strike becoming 100% proc-based (possibly via crits), so Wild Strike would be the same thing for Fury (replacing heroic strike). Obviously numbers would have to be changed to avoid too much rage issues.

[Pua]

Zerker stance -

No, its very good for fury. It can generate close to as much rage as auto swings do on fights like Maegera. I don't want to throw away thousands of rage just because Billy the male draenei warrior can't be arsed to swap stances.

So… It generates almost as much rage as Battle Stance? Then why be in it? I’m not sure what you’re trying to say here.

DBTS -

This change would only make it so that it can DR, the current one can't DR. Therefore its better, also you seem to have forgotten the 100% parry it gives. On our first horridon HC kill i tanked the boss for 7 seconds while our only remaining tank had 9 stacks of triple puncture. With your change, that wouldn't be possible.

I’m not sure what you mean about diminishing returns, and it’s understood that keeping Die by the Sword is technically better than not keeping it; of course it is. I didn’t forget about the parry, I simply consider it an acceptable loss in a game where power creep is getting to, quite frankly, very silly levels.

My action bar with many macros has 15ish spaces left in PVE. If i PvP'd seriously i'd have about 3-4 left. The extra buttons are for targeting and other shit like intervening banners and 1-3 casts. If you cleaned up my action bar any more (in pve) i'd go back to using only the bottom left one, like in vanilla.

I think you’re in a minority here. Most warriors I know (and I’m talking about a lot of competitive ones) are fed up being reliant on so many abilities and so many macros, just because there are so many things that need to be on there.

Second wind being baseline with the new 40% heal enraged regen would be just too much…

I’m suggesting the removal of Enraged Regeneration.

I wouldn't be suprised if fury starts heading for mastery more than crit next tier, or blizzard lowers the coefficient for crit so that ever ywarrior doesnt have 55% crit passively and 65% raid buffed.

Either way, I think the PTR is going to herald Fury nerfs. Again.

One thing: i really hope your suggestions wont take place.

/sigh

That's it? That's all you have to add? Come on.

What don't you like? Why don't you like it?

Soooo, my proposal is... *drum roll*

Weapon Throw

Yep, weapon throw from D3. Costs 5-10 rage, hits for like 60% weapon dmg, 0 CD. Lets be real, its essentially shurikon toss. However i dont want anything from it, like rogues get combo points. I just want to be able to press buttons while rooted and not stand afk or tab out. This spell would replace heroic throw.

I'm going to add that to the OP; I like it, and it might not therefore spell the end for Storm Bolt.

That said, we might as well keep the name Heroic Throw because all this change really implies is that it's spammable.

[Deleted]

I really like your ideas. I also think that warriors have too many abilities. While it's nice to have a good warrior in your group using all the classes possibilities, it's not really rewarding. At the moment i tank as a BrM and while it's a bit tricky to get into it, it's not as hard to do a good job as for warriors.

[Pua]

Something else I just thought of: Instead of Rallying Cry AND Last Stand, how about keep Cry as it is, maybe up it to 30%, and make Last Stand basically like Ardent Defender? Something like... lasts 20s, if you take a killing blow you instantly heal 35% health and heal an additional 15% health over 10s, something like that (losing the damage reduction component of AD in exchange for a HoT after it procs)? That's more in line with it I think, a warrior refusing to fall while his companions are still in danger. And Rallying Cry stays what it is as a group/raid cooldown; on the contrary I think Demoralizing Banner could stay as it is (maybe go to 20% instead of 10%).

Last Stand is the original "SAVE ME" cooldown, and I don't want a homogenized version of Ardent Defender; they already pretty much did that with Purgatory. Again, Rallying Cry is a raid cooldown and I honestly think there are too many of them flying around - I certainly don't think warriors need two of them at baseline.

[Sliske]

So… It generates almost as much rage as Battle Stance? Then why be in it? I’m not sure what you’re trying to say here.

I mean for example on maegera, when you kill a head for 30 seconds you get a crap ton of rage, almost as much if not equivilant to 1minute of battle stance rage. I'm not saying you get the same rage over the same amount of time, im saying you get the same rage in a much shorter amount of time. This is also the case on Iron Qon. Another example would be every crush on Garalon gives a warrior a full rage bar, something i don't think enough warriors took advantage of. Its a very nice part of playing a warrior, imo. Finding where its better to go in battle or zerker and for how long, etc. Additionally if you raid with any fury warriors and you run logs / use recount. Check the rage gains for each fury warrior. I would be suprised if they both had identicle rage gains or very close (within 10%) of eachother. When i raided with another fury warrior i would always be a thousand rage ahead of him solely down to zerker stance.

I think you’re in a minority here. Most warriors I know (and I’m talking about a lot of competitive ones) are fed up being reliant on so many abilities and so many macros, just because there are so many things that need to be on there.

Its coming across as if you're taking about swapping weapons etc for shield wall and spell reflect? If not then i still don't agree. I think other classes have much worse problems with "too many buttons for only 1-2 uses" shamans are an example, ferals are a huge example

[cFortyfive]

I'd start anywhere but deciding on which abilities should be baseline and which have to go. The resource and rotation system seems to me way more in need of an overhaul than about everything else apart from small things like shieldwall and spellreflect actually still requiring a shield. Also if anything banners should just die in a fire except for mocking banner.

Another example would be every crush on Garalon gives a warrior a full rage bar, something i don't think enough warriors took advantage of.

Ye well some of us had 20983502985092 disc and paladins in the raid so without a cancelaura macro you'd get about jack and shit from switching to berserker stance.

[Nobleshield]

I'd start anywhere but deciding on which abilities should be baseline and which have to go. The resource and rotation system seems to me way more in need of an overhaul than about everything else apart from small things like shieldwall and spellreflect actually still requiring a shield. Also if anything banners should just die in a fire except for mocking banner.

Realistically though I don't think they would do a complete overhaul of the resource and rotation system. I personally would prefer "Attack Points" like Rift (it felt really smooth and very Warrior-like) and more rotations/procs, but the devs don't agree so while that might be a pipe dream, trying to be realistic I think that Rage + Priorities will remain, so the least we can do is consolidate the ability bloat.

[cFortyfive]

Realistically though I don't think they would do a complete overhaul of the resource and rotation system.

Maybe. Personally I still hope that we won't be stuck with the shittiest system ever. Ability wise I don't think there is too much to do except for getting a strong defensive anti magic cooldown.

[Deleted]

if your gonna make the disarm our new demo shout let it also be usefull on aoe please so lets say you use you get the buff called like `Brutal attacks` <when you use disarm your attacks become so brutal that everyone around you in like what? 20 yards gets disarmed and thus do 20% less dmg"

[Pua]

I mean for example on maegera, when you kill a head for 30 seconds you get a crap ton of rage, almost as much if not equivilant to 1minute of battle stance rage. I'm not saying you get the same rage over the same amount of time, im saying you get the same rage in a much shorter amount of time. This is also the case on Iron Qon. Another example would be every crush on Garalon gives a warrior a full rage bar, something i don't think enough warriors took advantage of. Its a very nice part of playing a warrior, imo. Finding where its better to go in battle or zerker and for how long, etc. Additionally if you raid with any fury warriors and you run logs / use recount. Check the rage gains for each fury warrior. I would be suprised if they both had identicle rage gains or very close (within 10%) of eachother. When i raided with another fury warrior i would always be a thousand rage ahead of him solely down to zerker stance.

Ah, okay, I understand. Having only progressed as Protection, I had no idea the difference could be so large; it's a fair cop. All told, I think it's reasonable to assume that the stance bar isn't where the bloat is to be found.

Its coming across as if you're taking about swapping weapons etc for shield wall and spell reflect? If not then i still don't agree. I think other classes have much worse problems with "too many buttons for only 1-2 uses" shamans are an example, ferals are a huge example

I agree with you, and I mentioned hunters, priests and warlocks earlier. I think the game, all told, needs to cut back on this power creep dramatically because it's getting out of hand.

I'd start anywhere but deciding on which abilities should be baseline and which have to go. The resource and rotation system seems to me way more in need of an overhaul than about everything else apart from small things like shieldwall and spellreflect actually still requiring a shield. Also if anything banners should just die in a fire except for mocking banner.

I agree with your general point here, but that's also the hardest place to start and is entirely spec dependent.

if your gonna make the disarm our new demo shout let it also be usefull on aoe please so lets say you use you get the buff called like `Brutal attacks` <when you use disarm your attacks become so brutal that everyone around you in like what? 20 yards gets disarmed and thus do 20% less dmg"

That's what Inspiring (Demoralizing) Banner would be for.

[Calamari]

- Remove Berserker Stance

They’ve tried their absolute hardest to make this work, and it simply hasn’t. At this point it’s unlikely we’ll see the GCD lowering of Unholy Presence, and nobody in PvP is going to use this for rage when under attack (that’s what Defensive Stance is for). We’ve also moved away from attacks that are stance-dependent, so I reckon it’s time to retire ‘zerker once and for all.

I think putting yet another set of abilities on the chopping block is not a solution at all, we've had plenty of that already. Some abilities simply need a little tweaking that's all.

Berserker stance for instance is one of those few things LEFT that sets apart a good from a great dps warrior, paying close attention to incoming raid damage spikes and switching to berserker for bonus rage, it feels very rewarding when you see your rage bar suddenly leap up.

As a dps warrior the things I'd love to see next expansion:

1. The option to sacrifice rage/dps for self-heals and defenses. Pretty much the same thing ALL other melee have. The buffed healing talents on PTR are nice, but just can't compare to what DKs/Monks/Enhancement/Ferals/Rets can do to stay alive (Rogues have absurdly powerful survival cooldowns to compensate, and receive a buff to Recup next patch..). Something at a ratio of 20% health for 50 rage or so, something that really hurts your dps but keeps you alive when it matters most.

2. A reliable Throw attack that hits hard enough to be comparable to Shuriken Toss, the current Throw attack is an atrocity, a lvl 60 wouldn't get hurt by that s**t. Basically just 1 reliable ranged attack that is not Heroic Throw or Stormbolt (long cd).

3. The good old classic - Shieldless Shieldwall (major glyph it if you absolutely have to)

4. Dps gear being as good for Prot Warriors as it is for Brewmasters

5. A glyph or talent that allows a Fury or Arms warrior to do about 70-80% of DW/2H dps while a shield is equipped (so shieldwall doesn't cripple us anymore).

[Sliske]

Ye well some of us had 20983502985092 disc and paladins in the raid so without a cancelaura macro you'd get about jack and shit from switching to berserker stance.

The guild i was in at the time had a 2 monks (my gf and my friend) doing about 40-50k hps more than the disc priests, shamans and druids. Yeah, our healers were fucking shit. We were stuck on blade lord normal because of how shit they actually were.