Cataclysm Class Preview: Warrior

[Sorrowtank DM]

I like the idea of bringing back old school fury i really missed it, im not the biggest fan of the D2 Barbarian style dps we have atm, so im looking forward and hope it's not filtered away during beta-testing, hope i can get a key to test this talent it would bee sweet to try out ;D

otherwise its Really great previews and im looking forward for some more stuff to the tank tree also

[ketzil]

IN SOVIET RUSSIA WARRIOR KITES MAGE

[Deleted]

I'm soooo disappointed.

Fury PvE will suck. Sunders will be our duty now even more since prot warriors will likely say: fu fury warriors: you do damage now with it: go stack it! No more hard hitting abilities/combos but slow ticking DoT :/.

Imagine walking back to a boss with 2-4 adds (these are the beautifulest fights for a Fury warrior):

Wotlk: cleave queued up and WW off cool-down: BAM! some nice beautiful burst

Cata: sunder 3 times > stack gushing winds 3 times (mayb, depends on damage)> use WW (hits for a wussy)> wait for 100 rage to get the intensify buff > WW and Cleave > Stack up rage for intensify again..

I LOVE to use cleave/ww and fill up with BT and Slam and position meself for cleave while maintaining my rotation. Now it's just so lame.... oh 2 targets? Only cleave ww. 1 Target? Stack lame DoT's and spam BT/Slam/HS every cooldown.

It i'll prolly be:
single target:
Intensify buff>GW>Sunder>BT>Slam>HS
Multitarget:
Intensify buff>Sunder>WW>Cleave

but yea. Damage wil be balanced I'm sure of that. But the gameplay will be way to boring.

And I don't want 1handers. Who wanted onehanders? wielding 2 x 2handers is like one of the COOLEST talents. Please don't let warriors be this soft wussy 1handed characters. People will follow the best dps spec, and not the coolest looking one. So if 1h>2h dps-wise. It's going to be 1h only etc. We'll have less gimmick fights now afaik. Skill cap will go down by a ton afaik. afaik; these changes blow. Having to get to 100 rage with this rage normalizing will be crap I guess, waiting out while you COULD do damage just to wait to do more damage LATER on. What kind of design is that? I want to do damage now! They better implement this really really really good because my paladin looks attractive now for sure.

The only thing i like is that mastery will now increase the benifit of Deathwish/Intensify buff etc. BS, CS giving rage.. yea .. usefull outside of combat with Bloodrage on CD but yea.. NO free GCD afaik. Only to get to 100 rage quicker!

[Hyson]

Boo. My question wasn't answered, and I can't seem to find anyone asking about it in this thread. If Taste for Blood is kept in the Arms tree, do you think that Gushing Wound is going to proc it?

So far, feel like the previews have been: shaman > warrior = priest > warlock in cool/uniqueness.

[Redgoon23]

So what are fury rotations going to be like? WW is a shitty single target ability now that it got nerfed 50%. Bloodthrist, Slam, Heroic Strike, Sunder? I'm pretty worried.

[Derv]

So, warriors will prove again, that we are the Main Tanks and best looking melee DPSers in the game. Say whatever you want, but we rule. ;D

[Holyfield]

I doubt Heroic Leap will get in this time too.

It will probably go live. They've changed a few things that were reasons it got pulled in the first place:

1. It will now require you to target a mob. In the previous version, you could just target an area, which allowed warriors to engage in all sorts of crazy antics.
2. Because of the way the original version worked, warriors were using it to break through terrain in old-world content, which wasn't designed to be completely three-dimensional. Now that the old world is getting a complete overhaul, the chance of this talent leading to terrain breaks is much less.

[|eXe|]

Extremely underwhelming preview in line with previous warrior xpac previews. Lets break this down a bit.

New abilities -

Inner rage SOUNDS cool, but at 100% rage I'm fairly certain that HS HS MS will deal more damage then HS MS with 15% damage buff. Not to mention it doesn't clarify how long the duration is so after you dump your rage there's a chance you'll still be running around with 45 rage attacks and be rage starved in situations you normally wouldn't.

Gush seems to be a mostly PvP talent and it looks like fun to use in BGs. In an arena setting however, I really hope you weren't planning on CCing that target anytime soon.

Heroic Leap is gonna LOOK awesome, but as others have stated tanks can already just charge -> TC, and for arms it shares a cooldown with charge soooo... really its only purpose is to look cool. Change the TC to a stun or even add a movement slowing effect to the TC (like almost every mob in the game that TCs has) and it'll be viable for PvP, otherwise no warrior is going to use this over charge.

Changes to abilities -

I really like the HS change. It can consume more rage but it is an instant which arms could definitely use. This also means that we are always auto attacking so we'll actually generate more rage overall (As opposed to missing out on a white swings worth of damage AND burning 15 rage on top of that).

Its about time shouts finally got buffed. It only took a new class to be introduced with a superior 'shout' and now we're merely borrowing that mechanic one expansion later but hey, its here right?

WW change. Unless the CD is getting reduced by 50% I don't see how this is a buff. Nerfed against single targets, only slightly buffed when dpsing over 8 targets and that happens how often?

MS Nerf. Sure ALL classes MS type moves are down to 20% but here's the deal. Warriors had MS first. Then blizz gave MS to other classes by enchancing already powerful moves and left warrior MS the same. Now MS is getting nerfed for everybody, but unless warrior MS gets buffed in some other way this is a pretty hard slap to the face. Our MS never got directly buffed, only nerfed with weapon speed normalization and now nerfed again.

Sweet, a sunder armor nerf! We totally had that coming! Don't know what else to say about this other than 'why?'

New talents/changes -

Furious sundering. This hints that sunder threat might be made completely outrageous since it only stacks 3 times, so much that fury would have to pick this talent up so they don't risk getting aggro from a tank that can't sunder. An otherwise optional talent. Never heard a fury warrior complain that their DPS became abysmal because they had to stop to sunder a few times.

Weapon specs change - "We removed any fun bonuses to what type of weapon you were using and instead replaced it with a broken sword spec proc. This 50% weapon damage proc is also your ARMS MASTERY, not a talent to spec into. Have fun."

Booming voice change. Seeing as to how every shout is probably going to be refreshed as soon as its up for the extra rage, this is actually a nice talent. Gonna miss popping super skilled stealth players out with super demo shout tho.

Single minded fury. No thanks. 1h fury was hella fun in BC but that came and went. Instead of building upon the double 2h fury spec we're just getting half and half? And this is being done because SOME fury warriors liked that more? If they wanted to keep seeing small numbers fly around they probably should have rerolled.

Rage reduction talents being converted to damage buffing. This might be the only 'hopefully' buff I've seen so far. And thats only if the extra damage outperforms the extra global you could eventually perform from saving rage here and there.

Disarming nature is COMPLETELY RANDOM but it looks like it will be fun to use. I can see how disarming and fearing a foe at the same time could be disorienting for them but it's actual usefulness will be determined by whether or not sneezing on the target will break the fear (like our other super awesome fear :)

Blitz implies that charge will passively deal damage via a new rank, and the talent will buff that damage. We'll see if the points spent are worth turning charge into intercept on steroids.

IMP PUMMEL!! Rage generating interrupts, that seems pretty rewarding. Increasing the lockout duration would have been nicer so we'd have something on par with counterspell or strangulate but its one of our few buffs so i'll take it.

Masteries -

Arms - Completely unacceptable. Buffing melee damage and arp, duh, but bonus swing? Destroying 2 weapons specs and crippling a 3rd (100% wep damage on bonus swing down to 50%) and making it a passive ability. The fun thing about weapons specs was it gave warriors tons of ways to reach the same goal. Only 2 things I can see saving this is it procs like crazy or it can possibly chain proc off itself. I've also heard rogues are getting something similar for their combat tree. Even if they only get the 50% damage out of it guess what? Poison proc. GG.

Fury - I really do like Enraged Intensity. It's a passive buff to most moves that benefit the fury spec. A mastery that mostly buffs the entire tree, as opposed to a half hearted extra swing. Hmm.

Prot - Anyone else remember that prot got the most love in the last expansions? I LOVE the new critical block. It'll be nice that our shield will actually negate so much damage, as it is a huge barrier between ourselves and our enemy, rather than negating maybe 2-3k every so often and just being an armor buff. Ive got mixed feelings about Vengeance however. Yes it is cool that we get a passive AP buff and get to deal more damage as a tank but this buff wouldn't be necessary if Blizzard hadn't allowed the damage of the other 3 tanks to get out of control in the first place. Sure the other classes get its pretty obvious this is mostly a prot warrior buff.

And yes I understand that this is a preview, but its a very lackluster preview and probably not the best way to get the warrior community pumped for Cata. If you're wondering why I'm "QQing" that not everything is a buff go read the warlock/priest previews and you'll understand.

[Nirron]

I'm sure there are a lot of people with mixed emotions just wait and see when its available to you in beta.

[Kaynot]

So far shaman received the most unique Ability. I hope rogues get something unique =*(

who cares about that? you wont be able as shaman get to priest with inner will on him, and you will get pwnd by warrior because of your low hp pool,and still undispellable bleeding debuffs.And esp. thanks to "gushing wound" ,spiritwalker grace will become useless.

[Cerabret100]

A Protection Worgen Warrior is my first planned new character for cataclysm, so i was excited to see this. seems really good, but then again i've been saving warrior solely for this, so i really don't know what is or isn't good for them.

[treston323]

So let's get this straight.

1) Whirlwind damage goes from 100% to 50%. Currently hits 4 targets, will hit unlimited in the future. This will be a massive nerf, how often is there > 8 targets?
2) Heroic Leap, currently not slated for use in combat and is just a fancy looking charge+thunderclap.
3) Sunder armor takes a huge bite from 20% to 12%.
4) Heroic Strike no longer usable on main hand swings.
5) Heroic Strike now like execute, usable during the entire fight, but likely less damage and still burns a GCD.
6) Mortal Strike goes from 50% to 20%.


So, where are the buffs? Warriors virtually received NOTHING and lost many previous skills. The rage "boosts" are countered by the fact we no longer get rage based on our swings, but on an arbitrary number equal for all warriors.

Also, new fury warrior rotation.

BT, HS, HS, BT, HS, HS, BT, HS, HS, BT slam?

Why would you need buffs? Cataclysm offers class changes, nothing more. Warriors are more than fine now. Pretty OP in pvp and one of the top dps specs is fury. Be happy they probably won't screw you up with the changes.

[Skoro]

im still quite sad they havent addresses prot warrior survivability issues compared to the other tank classes ( HI ARDENT DEFENDER ! )

I'll give you Ardent Defender when you give me Charge. I just hate how, currently, Paladin tanks are the only tanks without a "snap to enemy" ability. I know Judgement of Justice is "supposed" to be our gap closer, but it's doing a pretty piss-poor job in PvE. I don't even care about PvP, I just want a pulling option in PvE other than "Use (Capt. America Shield -OR- Hand of Reckoning -OR- nothing) then run forward into group."

[Annihilatex]

Do you idiots not realize that 90% of this preview equates to warrior nerfs?

Stop getting so excited over Heroic Leap, it shares CD with charge.

[Undercovercracker]

yawn...

anyone else notice that nearly EVERY new ability or spell has been for pvp...

whats the point of releasing an expansion blizz. just release a bunch of new BGs/arenas as that all you seem to care about.

tbh shammies are the only fun sounding pve class announced so far. rest are jsut basically gonna be the same.

You obviously didnt read the warlock changes...lol

[Pallydra]

At first I was like Gushing Wound, so now I can't move when you bash me, and if I do move you'll Heroic Leap me, but then I figured I'll just disarm your Bladestorm and stand still =p

[drsjohnny]

some great stuff here for us warriors also im glad the leap is back let's hope it stay's this time

[Draelan]

Cataclysm Class Preview: Warrior (Warrior Forum)
[blizzquote="Bornakk;http://blue.mmo-champion.com/t/24038612592/cataclysm-class-preview-warrior/][b]Vengeance:[/b] This is a mechanic to ensure that tank damage (and therefore threat) doesn't fall behind as damage-dealing classes improve their gear during the course of the expansion. All tanking specs will have Vengeance as their second talent tree passive bonus. Whenever a tank gets hit, Vengeance will give them a stacking attack power buff equal to 5% of the damage done, up to a maximum of 10% of the character's un-buffed health. For boss encounters, we expect that tanks will always have the attack power bonus equal to 10% of their health. The 5% and 10% bonuses assume 51 talent points have been put into the Protection tree. These values will be smaller at lower levels. Remember, you only get this bonus if you have spent the most talent points in the Protection tree, so you won't see Arms or Fury warriors running around with it. Vengeance will let us continue to make tank gear more or less the way we do today – there will be some damage-dealing stats, but mostly survival-oriented stats. Druids typically have more damage-dealing stats even on their tanking gear, so their Vengeance benefit may be smaller, but overall the goal is for all four tanks do about the same damage when tanking.[/blizzquote"]

Heh. I'm kind of amused that the reassure everyone that DPS specs won't be able to get Vengeance. It only takes a little reading comprehension to realize that Vengeance would be useless for DPS, anyway. Not getting hit = new attack power buff. Although, I suppose it could be a concern depending on how they manage the buff... if it requires being hit to maintain (i.e. refresh the duration) then it would have been useless for DPS still, but it could also be annoying for tank-switching fights. On the other hand, if they did something like, say, have the buff remain active until you leave combat, then that would be better for tank-swapping, but would indeed warrant pre-warning DPS that they're not going to get bonus attack power for the fight, so STOP TAUNTING THE BOSS OFF THE TANK ALREADY. /chuckle

Also, I was kind of baffled for a few minutes about what this does to cat druids. After all, it's already been pointed out that Vengeance = useless for DPS in PvE. However, I'm going to assume that Feral Druid mastery bonuses will be based on what form you're in. It's the only way to make it work that I've come up with.

Anyway, back to Warriors. I'm also curious if Critical Block Chance doubles your block percentage, or adds on a flat 30%?

Hm. Should be interesting. I'll finally get around to seeing how interesting the class is when I roll my Worgen Warrior.

[TZM]

By reading all that i assume the ''main'' stat will be Stamina, AND when you add up that new Vengeance thingie witch gives more as you get more stamina, this all ends up with conclusion = they will be just f**king OP in PVP

[revenant1]

I'm liking what I see so far. I'll reserve judgment on Heroic leap and to a lesser extent the priests "Life Grip" since it was pulled from the Wrath Beta last time. Hopefully it'll make it to live this time around. Vengeance is sounding interesting too, with the higher HP pools come Cata that could be a HUGE increase to AP while tanking.