Are crit reliant specs a thing of the past?

[Ryanite]

Fury and Fire have always been the crit reliant specs of WoW, making them devastatingly bad early expansion and amazing late but just because something has always been a way doesn't mean it has to stay that way or even that it's the best way.

The game has changed more than ever with WoD, the removal of reforging makes it difficult to gain crit, along with the introduction of new stats making crit even more scarce on the upcoming Highmaul gear and expansions only lasting a year with 2 raid tiers do we really want to be only able to play a spec towards mid to late of a year long expansion?

With the addition of Challenge modes (which I love) but only further redundant crit reliant specs as they are forever scaled to early expansion stats just makes me think that WoW is moving away from this type of design.

So what do you guys think? Do crit reliant specs need to change? and if so how would you fix them? Fury in particular for this one.

[FobManX]

I think they should be scrapped as well. Crits are RNG, and RNG should be a bonus. Your spec shouldn't be built around it.

To fix this for Fury, I would make it so BT always grants one stack of RB. BT crits grant two stacks, so you're still benefitting from crit in that regard.

I like the Enrage mechanic as well, so I'd make it so BT always Enrages you. A BT crit would increase the duration of the Enrage, or maybe give you another benefit, but that may be too many things tied into one ability.

[Deleted]

Re-Forging was not a part of vanilla or BC. Fury will eventually rise when more items become available.

[Ryanite]

Re-Forging was not a part of vanilla or BC. Fury will eventually rise when more items become available.

I understand this, but are you okay with this design? do you think it's a good one?

Gladiator is a nice addition to the warriors arsenal and definitely bailed us out for this first raid tier but I believe all specs should at least function correctly rotational wise from start to end of expansions.

[chooi]

Just remove the whole 'enrage via crit'-mechanic and make up something new. I don't like that since they introduced it.

only some basic ideas:
- remove TG
- bring back Flurry
- bring back a modified Deathwish for Fury only. replace it with Avatar
- gief back HS!!1
-> create something new with classic/tbc flavor but in a modern way. make it high sustained DPS, low burst.

[Deleted]

I think the spec itself is fine right now, the dmg is simply not there.

Having more ways to keep up enrage other than crit would certainly reduce the crit reliance.

Maybe bloodthirst or wild strike or whatever should extend enrage.

I wish they brought back windfury totem for shamans. This was the single-biggest warrior nerf ever.

[Valech]

I demand the following:
remove all classes and their speccs, replace with four classes: stabby, pew, aggro and holy
bring back all cooldowns every class ever had and give them to all four classes mentioned above
remove bosses from raids and replace with sandbacks, which occasionally spin if you hit them (reminds me of classic raiding)
bring back re-forging
remove all stats (some of them are rng and some of them just simply increase your damage without interaction) and replace them with a new stat: MOAR. MOAR increases damage flat for pew and stabby, healing done from holy and damagereduction for aggros.
Remove reforging again, because it is pointless now.

if my foundationsless opinions are not enforced within the next week, I will quit wow. This will ensure, that my important opinion is regarded, because blizzard employees visit the mmo classforums every few hours.

If my demands are not met and classes stay as they are, I am willing to develop a few warrior-only changes:
Remove TG
Remove SmF
Remove Arms for warriors (not the specc, stupid!)
Introduce new stance: Kicks ´n Headbutts: A remorseless battle stance, developed by Kargath when he accidently cut off his other hand
Introduce new gear: Bladed Helmets and Bladed Shoes
Remove Gauntlet slot for warriors.
Make BT grant 2 Stacks of RB. If BT crits, make RB available for the rest of the fight and reduce the rage cost by 100%. If BT crits a second time, increase the damage dealt by RB by 20% Stacks up to 50 times.


OT so I won´t get infracted for being sarcastic:
Y´all stop whining.
1) Classes can be designed around a fair amount of RNG. Developers have so many screws to turn, that the removal of a whole stat is entirely unnecessairy.
2) Don´t you weave in your personal preferences in between some half finished ideas just to make them look like they are part of a masterplan. Bring back flurry? Meh, sure, I can find reasons for that. Remove TG as second step? Now that´ll fix it.
3) If you play for enjoyment, and I find that is the soundest reason to play, and you do not find something enjoyable to play, then do not play it. If you cannot bring yourself to play Glad or find Arms too dull and Fury too gear-reliant, play something else for the first Tier and come back later. Or don´t. Perhaps Hunters are your bet, they do fine early and scale fine into end tiers.

[Bigbazz]

Fury hasn't always been crit reliant though, not like it is now. In the past the crit served to increase the rage generation but so did all other stats, since traditionally Warriors gained rage based on damage done and damage taken. It's also a point that previously it was not difficult to get high crit as it is today. The crit reliance thing is not so much a thing of the past as a thing of the present.

I enjoyed Fury most in TBC and WOTLK, both the rage management and the "pace" of the spec were covered by Heroic Strike, while Bloodthirst + Whirlwind hit like a truck and had a cooldown. In WOTLK we would get our hit/exp caps and then stack armor penetration, preferring crit as our other secondary stat but not so much that we relied on it like today, there did not exist a situation that required a Crit to enable the spec to work.

[Undies]

I demand the following:
remove all classes and their speccs, replace with four classes: stabby, pew, aggro and holy
bring back all cooldowns every class ever had and give them to all four classes mentioned above
remove bosses from raids and replace with sandbacks, which occasionally spin if you hit them (reminds me of classic raiding)
bring back re-forging
remove all stats (some of them are rng and some of them just simply increase your damage without interaction) and replace them with a new stat: MOAR. MOAR increases damage flat for pew and stabby, healing done from holy and damagereduction for aggros.
Remove reforging again, because it is pointless now.

if my foundationsless opinions are not enforced within the next week, I will quit wow. This will ensure, that my important opinion is regarded, because blizzard employees visit the mmo classforums every few hours.

If my demands are not met and classes stay as they are, I am willing to develop a few warrior-only changes:
Remove TG
Remove SmF
Remove Arms for warriors (not the specc, stupid!)
Introduce new stance: Kicks ´n Headbutts: A remorseless battle stance, developed by Kargath when he accidently cut off his other hand
Introduce new gear: Bladed Helmets and Bladed Shoes
Remove Gauntlet slot for warriors.
Make BT grant 2 Stacks of RB. If BT crits, make RB available for the rest of the fight and reduce the rage cost by 100%. If BT crits a second time, increase the damage dealt by RB by 20% Stacks up to 50 times.


OT so I won´t get infracted for being sarcastic:
Y´all stop whining.
1) Classes can be designed around a fair amount of RNG. Developers have so many screws to turn, that the removal of a whole stat is entirely unnecessairy.
2) Don´t you weave in your personal preferences in between some half finished ideas just to make them look like they are part of a masterplan. Bring back flurry? Meh, sure, I can find reasons for that. Remove TG as second step? Now that´ll fix it.
3) If you play for enjoyment, and I find that is the soundest reason to play, and you do not find something enjoyable to play, then do not play it. If you cannot bring yourself to play Glad or find Arms too dull and Fury too gear-reliant, play something else for the first Tier and come back later. Or don´t. Perhaps Hunters are your bet, they do fine early and scale fine into end tiers.

LOL!!!!!!!!

Thanks for the early morning chuckle... well played sir... well played

[mysticx]

Crit-reliant specs are a huge pain in the nards IMO, i tried fury spec for a while, and with low crit several class mechanics just plain don't kick in (No enrage, raging blow procs are rare as hen's teeth), it's not even only about the DPS, but sitting there hoping for a crit so you can use one of your supposedly rotational attacks is very aggravating...

[Earthbound]

Specs shouldn't "rely" on any stat. All stats should be fairly balanced for all specs, and lack of a specific one shouldn't cripple the spec's performance or output potential.

Just my two cents.

[Valech]

Specs shouldn't "rely" on any stat. All stats should be fairly balanced for all specs, and lack of a specific one shouldn't cripple the spec's performance or output potential.

Just my two cents.

Then again, why have so many diffrent stats? If they would manage to balance all stats perfectly I wouldn´t see why you need 5 stats to pick from. Also, I do get playstyle wise, why some classes should profit from certain stats more the others.

[Karnudge]

Imagine if multiple stats all had darn near the exact same weight, and we still had reforging, and could gear up for the stat we liked to use. Great times.

[mysticx]

Then again, why have so many diffrent stats? If they would manage to balance all stats perfectly I wouldn´t see why you need 5 stats to pick from. Also, I do get playstyle wise, why some classes should profit from certain stats more the others.

But fury-spec in particular rolls like a square wheel without sufficient crit, there's benefiting from a stat and being crap until you have X of that stat, the first is fine, the second isn't, and that is the issue here, that certain specs just don't work without crit

[chooi]

I demand the following:
...

Congrats to the most entertaining yet most redundant post in this thread so far!

You could have written it down in one sentence:
'stop whining and reroll'

[tru]

Re-Forging was not a part of vanilla or BC. Fury will eventually rise when more items become available.

with a rumored 2 tier xpac can you really say we will be back to where we were in that short amount of time?

[Ryanite]

Congrats to the most entertaining yet most redundant post in this thread so far!

You could have written it down in one sentence:
'stop whining and reroll'

Stop whining and reroll? Fury does not work and just because at the start of an expansion it never has does not mean that it's a good design and the fact that hardly no one is playing it furthers my point, it may have worked for previous expansions but it's not working for this one.

Also that's not what we was saying at all, he was pointing out the flaws to some of Chooi's points. Fury can be fixed without an overhaul.

[Firebert]

Imagine if multiple stats all had darn near the exact same weight

Pretty sure that was the game plan for this expansion to additionally warrant the removal of reforging.

- - - Updated - - -

Do crit reliant specs need to change? and if so how would you fix them? Fury in particular for this one.

The best way to lower Fury's reliance on crit is to bake more in, such that it devalues itself under high gear levels (and hence the sims devalue crit, and hence the trickle-down will put a different stat on top). This was particularly prevalent with Rogues with Cold Blood.

To counteract the increased damage from baking in more crit, we could either lower the damage of the abilities or reduce our crit multiplier, depending on how well a lower-valued crit class would scale.

[Gestopft]

There are 23 different DPS specs in the game. Having a couple based around crits is perfectly acceptable in the grand scheme of things to keep different specs different. They can be frustrating to start, but I like that gearing up can have such a noticeable effect on your rotation and your performance.

The developers have also listened. Fire got Inferno Blast recently and crit perk more recently to make things smoother than they were. I'm having a load of fun with UQT on my Fury Warrior.

[Anbokr]

There are 23 different DPS specs in the game. Having a couple based around crits is perfectly acceptable in the grand scheme of things to keep different specs different. They can be frustrating to start, but I like that gearing up can have such a noticeable effect on your rotation and your performance.

I'm perfectly fine with playing glad/arms the first tier and going fury later if it's ownage and scales significantly. This is what will happen with fire. But if damage and numbers remain as they are, fury will scale at a much slower pace compared to pretty much every single spec in the game right now, just look at sims with bis gear. So provided things stay this way, fury starts off as garbage and ends as garbage. There's no payoff. Hopefully the tuning hotfixes come soon and fury gets some fairly large buffs.