Dragonflight Beta - Warrior Feedback, Short Story - Visage Day

[Stoy]

Feedback: Warriors

Hello, Warriors.

This week we’ve mostly been fixing errors and tweaking things for the Class, Arms and Fury trees. We’re happy with where these are at and don’t intend to make any large changes moving forward. Arms and Fury and the various options within seem to be preforming well and people are enjoying them, we’ll be monitoring feedback and tuning things where needed.

We’ve focused more on the Protection tree this week and provide more details on this below.

Class Tree

• Bitter Immunity – Once again more easily available, but now no longer clears Bleeds.
• Reinforced Plates – The armor values should now be correctly calculated.
• Battle Stance – Now reduces the effects of Root and Snares by 10% (was 15%).
• Berserker Stance – Now reduced the effects of incapacitating effects by 10% (was 15%).
• Inspiring Presence – Tooltip updated to make its effect clearer.
• Spear of Bastion – Now grants 20 Rage (was 25).
• Elysian Might – Now extends the duration of Spear of Bastion by 2 seconds (was 4 seconds).
• Piercing Verdict – Damage and Rage bonus increased to 50% (was 30%).
• Endurance Training: Fury – Now increases Stamina by 5% and reduces the duration of moment impairing effects on you by 10%.
• Endurance Training: Arms and Protection – Now increases Stamina by 5% and reduces the duration of Fear, Sap and Incapacitate effects on you by 10%.
• Thunderous Roar – Now deals damage in a 12 yard radius (was a frontal cone) and also generates 10 Rage.
• Shockwave – Now generates 10 Rage.
• Avatar – Now grants 15 Rage (was 20).
• Crushing Force: Protection – Tooltip should now correctly update granting 5% increased critical damage per rank.
• Barbaric Training: Protection – Revenge damage reduced to 30% (was 40%).

Arms

• Stormwall – Now has a lockout period of 1 second.
• Dance of Death – Clarified tooltip to make it clear you are not required to get the killing blow.
• Exploiter – No longer effects Cleave, the synergy here was odd and didn’t work in practice.
• Fracture – Updated tooltip to not reference Thunderous Roar.
• Bloodborne – No longer increased the damage of Rend’s initial strike.
• Exploit the Weakness – Removed from the talent tree.
• Deft Experience – Now grants 1% Mastery and increases Tactician’s chance to trigger by 0.5% per rank.
• Rend – The initial strike of Rend’s damage has been increased to 64% damage (was 32%).
• Massacre – Updated Massacre visuals.

Fury

• Annihilator – Now generates 2 Rage per attacks.
• Dancing Blades – Now triggers from procs correctly.
• Annihilator – Can now be used with 2-handed weapons.
• Rampage – Damage reduced to 206% (was 227%).
• Hack and Slash – Was incorrectly triggering on every Rampage strike instead of casting Rampage. We like this functionality, so now Hack and Slash has a 20% chance with each Rampage strike to refund a charge of Raging Blow.
• Storm of Steel – Now causes Ravager to generate 15 Rage per hit (was 10).
• Critical Thinking – Now grants 1% critical strike chance per rank (was 1.5%) and the tooltip now correctly states that it affects Annihilator.
• Annihilator, Slam, Thunderous Roar, Shockwave, and Odyn’s Fury should now gain extra Rage benefit from Recklessness.
• Massacre – Updated Massacre visuals.
• Wrath and Fury – Now increases Raging Blow’s damage by 10% (was 5%).
• Slaugthering Strikes – Auras now display correctly for both Raging Blow and Annihilator, and it can now be triggered via Crushing Blow.
• Bloodcraze – Can now be triggered via Bloodbath.

Protection Developer Notes

• We’ve started to put more focus on the Protection tree this week and you’ll see a large update next week also.
• We’re very happy with how Protection Warriors are playing, but they have been overperforming both in terms of survivability and damage, so we’ve made some tweaks to bring them more in line with the other tanking classes.
• We don’t intend to make large structural changes to Protection Warrior’s trees, our goals for the next week are mainly around bug fixing, tuning and to make the bottom left and right sides of the tree more appealing.
• We’ve made some changes to the baseline Vanguard ability to account for the large amount of survivability bonuses available in the talent tree.

Protection

• Deep Wounds – Should now trigger Bloodsurge correctly.
• Titanic Throw – Fixed an issue causing Titanic Throw to get the 100% bonus from Improved Heroic Throw twice.
• Heroic / Titanic Throw – Now has a 3 second cooldown.
• Auto-attack damage reduced by 20%.
• Brace for Impact – Aura tooltip should now correctly reference Shield Slam. Now increases Shield Slams damage by 5% per stack (was 10%), but lasts for 15 seconds (was 9 seconds).
• Spiked Shield – Now causes high threat.
• New Talent: Dance of Death – If your Ravager helps kill an enemy your next Ravager lasts 2 seconds and deals 20% increased damage.
• Champion’s Bulwark – Should now add to existing Shield Block durations.
• Juggernaut – Has a maximum of 10 stacks for Protection specialization but last 20 seconds.
• Massacre – Updated Massacre visuals.
• Enduring Alacrity – Now grants 1% Haste per rank (was 2%).
• Focused Vigor – Now grants 1% critical chance per rank (was 2%).
• Vanguard – Increases your Stamina by 30% (was 45%), increases your Strength by 70% of your armor value (was 100%), and reduces damage you take by 5% (was 15%).
• Revenge – Damage reduced to 53% (was 63%).
• Shield Slam – Damage reduced to 80% (was 85%).
• Punish – Shield Slam deals 10% increased damage (was 20%).
• Best Served Cold – Revenge damage is now 10% (was 20%) and 30% when free (was 50%).
• Unnerving Focus – Now grants 50% rage generation (was 60%).
• Show of Force – Thunder Clap damage is now 20% (was 25%).
• Booming Voice – Now generates 30 Rage (was 40).
• Rend – Initial damage reduced to 32% (was 64%) and periodic damage reduced to 17% (was 23%).
• Execute – Damage reduced by 8%.
• Shield Charge no longer has a minimum range.

Warcraft Short Story: “Visage Day”

Travel Azeroth with Chromie as she seeks wisdom from her fellow dragons in creating a visage, the mortal form dragons choose when coming of age.

“You must be Chronormu,” the dragon said with a polite bow of his head. “I am Kalecgos. It is an honor to meet you.”

The bronze bowed his head in response. “Delighted, Kalecgos! Zidormi speaks highly of you. Thank you for taking the time to see me. I can tell you’re very busy.”

Kalecgos smiled. There was something calm and gentle about him. “My master, Malygos, expects members of our flight to train relentlessly. But I can always find time to do a favor for a friend. Zidormi informed me that you seek guidance about your upcoming Visage Day?”

Chronormu gave a sober nod. “Indeed, and it is fast approaching. I find myself torn over which mortal form best represents who I am. I sought out my own master, and he suggested I try to learn from others who had already made their decision. If I may ask, Kalecgos, how did you choose a form?”

Read this charming and heartfelt fairy tale written by Lead Narrative Designer Steve Danuser, part of the short story collection Folk & Fairy Tales of Azeroth.

Read Now

[SinR]

Chromie story? Hell yeah!

"Written by Lead Narrative Designer Steve Danuser"

Aight imma head out

[Mendzia]

Danuser?
No, thanks.

[Puxycat]

We’re very happy with how Protection Warriors are playing, but they have been overperforming both in terms of survivability and damage, so we’ve made some tweaks to bring them more in line with the other tanking classes.

Gets me everytime. Why can't they just say okay that was very good now we are going to butcher it. The damage out put Tuning i understand but taking away %10 damage taken is stupid. Warrior was performing good because of wounds healing self sustain, now damage is reduced and extra damage taken increase double dips.

[Selah]

What was the point of that story? I don't get it, we got a few insights into Chromie's character and then Blizzard basically took an interesting concept and converted it into a thing they parade around to show how LGBT friendly they are. We get it, you're all on the LGBT train, fantastic. Now, can you please show me why Visage Day is something so important that Onyxia, Nozdormu, Alexstraza, and Kalecgos along with a massive collection of other dragons all showed up to see?

This doesn't inspire confidence for the writing of DF. Hope the rest of the game gets better treatment.

[ExtremelyCrusty]

Danuser? Hard pass.

[ONCHEhap]

Yeah well that story was on par with what we'd come to expect from Danuser.

There's very little substance, very little interesting, and it adds very little to the story or the character development. I wasted my time reading it to tell you that you shouldn't do the same

[loras]

I like how they didn't have to retcon in a diverse character for once, and while it has a sugary and overcaring overtone as well as an anthropmorphising one it is not too bad.

Plus we now know drakonids too are a constructed race, though i suppose it still leaves plenty for interpretation.

But it's mostly nice to see the different flights react and interact, even if it's in a weird and somewhat implausible situation (what would prevent them from choosing different visages? They're clearly not inherent if they were only adoptedin response to mortals; it seems to blow up the visage thing fo draw parallels with gender/identity politics for brownie points).

Could've been worse.

[Caerule]

It's important to note that this story comes from a book of Fairy Tales, many of which do not accurately portray the situation they are describing. There's no reason to assume this one is any different.

While Visage Day is a thing, which I suppose is understandable as a culturally significant thing, where a dragon picks a form other than its draconic one, that doesn't mean that all the figures mentioned in this story, were actually at Chromie's Visage Day. They could easily just be embellishments for the sake of the story. The intent of the stories in this book were to provide interesting tales, not accurate lore.

[Oneirophobia]

I like how they didn't have to retcon in a diverse character for once

AKSHULLY - they went out of their way to inform us repeatedly that Chromie was NOT an LGBT character up to and including voice lines for the character refuting it in Heroes of the Storm (and then patronizing the player for assuming we understand draconic naming conventions). This refuting was literally a direct response to people theorizing that Chromie was actually born male due to their name.

Then of course marketing teams across the west suddenly discovered that, yes indeed, we LGBT people do in fact sometimes have money and do in fact sometimes spend that money. And so, Chromie was made trans. Worry not, fans of Blizz games, representation is only a mocking-then-sudden-cheap-retcon away! Do you feel more valued as a customer? Boy, I sure do!

- - - Updated - - -

It's important to note that this story comes from a book of Fairy Tales, many of which do not accurately portray the situation they are describing. There's no reason to assume this one is any different.

While Visage Day is a thing, which I suppose is understandable as a culturally significant thing, where a dragon picks a form other than its draconic one, that doesn't mean that all the figures mentioned in this story, were actually at Chromie's Visage Day. They could easily just be embellishments for the sake of the story. The intent of the stories in this book were to provide interesting tales, not accurate lore.

Ah man, missed opportunity for a "And then Chromie did karate, and everyone clapped - Even Onyxia!"

[Plehnard]

Ouf, those prot warrior changes sting. No bleed cleanse with "Bitter Immunity" is terrible, there's a reason why ~80% of all top tanks are dwarfs..

[Niwes]

What was the point of that story? I don't get it, we got a few insights into Chromie's character and then Blizzard basically took an interesting concept and converted it into a thing they parade around to show how LGBT friendly they are. We get it, you're all on the LGBT train, fantastic. Now, can you please show me why Visage Day is something so important that Onyxia, Nozdormu, Alexstraza, and Kalecgos along with a massive collection of other dragons all showed up to see?

This doesn't inspire confidence for the writing of DF. Hope the rest of the game gets better treatment.

i can’t give you some answer (foremost because i stopped reading all of that cheap shit crap, even when still playing the game). but i can ask you instead a counter question:

Why in the hell you read a Danuser story? WHYYYYYYYY?

and WHEN you do, why expect even a slight bit more than complete stupid childish shit story crap paired wirh some [insert actual „cool company“ stuff like LGBT friendlyness] from that crap company and that idiot they pay?

WHYYYYYY?

- - - Updated - - -

Danuser? Hard pass.

look at this guy. he learned it already.

it’s that easy: if you read „Danuser“ -> just close browser. That’s it. At least if you want to protect your brain. it’s really easy.

- - - Updated - - -

Yeah well that story was on par with what we'd come to expect from Danuser.

There's very little substance, very little interesting, and it adds very little to the story or the character development. I wasted my time reading it to tell you that you shouldn't do the same

you died for our sins!

[misterpie]

Tell them only that the Lich King is dead, and that Warcraft died with him.

[Syegfryed]

Another lame work from our dearest clown Danuser

Visage day is so important from dragons and they can't let our dracthyr indentify with other race but male blood elf and female human, such joke this lore has become

[Trumpcat]

Stopped reading at Danuser.

[loras]

AKSHULLY - they went out of their way to inform us repeatedly that Chromie was NOT an LGBT character up to and including voice lines for the character refuting it in Heroes of the Storm (and then patronizing the player for assuming we understand draconic naming conventions). This refuting was literally a direct response to people theorizing that Chromie was actually born male due to their name.

Then of course marketing teams across the west suddenly discovered that, yes indeed, we LGBT people do in fact sometimes have money and do in fact sometimes spend that money. And so, Chromie was made trans. Worry not, fans of Blizz games, representation is only a mocking-then-sudden-cheap-retcon away! Do you feel more valued as a customer? Boy, I sure do!

- - - Updated - - -



Ah man, missed opportunity for a "And then Chromie did karate, and everyone clapped - Even Onyxia!"

Ah, sadly they never cease to disappoint me nowadays.
Though isn't Chromie still technically not trans due to the absence of sexuality and the persistence of his true gender in dragon form?
It's more like a drag-show thing in my eyes, weird as balls too but kinda making sense in the comtext of a dragon choosing a semi arbitrary mortal guise for interaction with mortals.

[Ragu4]

There's clear leftist fatigue here, and I understand. Could have been a cute little story, but no, need to shoehorn in enough data points that fits that King Diversity Chart we all saw while back.

It's all so tiresome.

Also, like clockwork, class is fun and does things, let's remove damage and features so it's more of a chore than an enjoyable experience.

[Selah]

i can’t give you some answer (foremost because i stopped reading all of that cheap shit crap, even when still playing the game). but i can ask you instead a counter question:

Why in the hell you read a Danuser story? WHYYYYYYYY?

and WHEN you do, why expect even a slight bit more than complete stupid childish shit story crap paired wirh some [insert actual „cool company“ stuff like LGBT friendlyness] from that crap company and that idiot they pay?

WHYYYYYY?

Lol! Fair point! What was I expecting hoping that an extremely profitable company would be able to hire people who actually know how to tell stories? I'm such a fool!

[Niwes]

Lol! Fair point! What was I expecting hoping that an extremely profitable company would be able to hire people who actually know how to tell stories? I'm such a fool!

Shame on you!

But at least it answers you 1 question: How became those greedy bastards (especially Bobby Kotick) THAT rich?
A: By employing Lead Narrative Designers, being that shit, they never will cost more than 1500$ per month.

[Tiev]

"Read this charming and heartfelt fairy tale" - And that's why it doesn't feel like Warcraft anymore.

Who would describe the Lich King's story as charming or heartfelt?

Gul'dan's thirst for power.

Illidan, Kael'thas and Vashj as servants to a horde of demons.

The Orcish clans making trails of devastation as they invade the world of Azeroth

Warcraft was never about hearfelt or charming conclusions, it's about war, tragedy and struggle and sometimes you get your cathartic moments BECAUSE of that strife (Wrathgate).

The World of Warcraft used to be more like Westeros and at least in-game it's been feeling more like Narnia.