Heroic Leap
I think too many of you are focusing on the Thunder Clap portion of Heroic Leap. Imagine instead the tooltip said "Leap into combat, crushing all enemies within the landing area for massive damage and slowing their attack speed for 10 sec."
[...] it will do massive damage and apply the Thunder Clap debuff. That's like saying Bladestorm is just Whirlwind with a little CC immunity thrown in, so why do we need another Whirlwind?
[...] On the topic of Heroic Leap, understand that these are not patch notes. They're previews. These abilities have not been extensively tested yet, and to be totally honest, several of them haven't even been implemented yet. We wanted to share with you the direction we're headed in while there was still plenty of time for feedback and iteration. While we like all of the new abilities we're discussing, there's certainly a chance not all of them will make it to ship.
If Heroic Leap needs to be used out of combat or in different stances or to not share a cooldown with Charge in order to be awesome, then that's certainly the kind of thing we're willing to try.
It's a struggle with previews like this to provide enough context (things like limitations and even numbers) so you get the idea of where we're going with a spell or mechanic without getting everyone over-focused on those details. (As another example, warriors dismissing Inner Rage because they think the numbers aren't tuned perfectly.)
At the moment, we're focused on making fun abilities. As the beta progresses, we'll worry more about the tuning. (
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Inner Rage
Inner Rage isn't supposed to feel kiss / curse. It's supposed to feel like a limit break or similar video game analogy. When I get to 100 rage, I go into overdrive mode and cause even more damage. Rather than hitting max rage being a problem (because I'm wasting resources I could be gaining) it's something fun instead.
We put in some of that extra explanation because we don't want warriors to feel like the right way to play is to do nothing until they have 100 rage and then start having fun. It's supposed to feel like getting a string of crits or eating a big hit or something translate into higher damage for a short time. (
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Demo Shout changes
Actually we changed it to a percent physical damage reduction instead of attack power reduction. (
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Vengeance
Vengeance is based on damage actually taken (physical and spell). This means it might take a bit to get stacked up to the max value, but it generally will get up there on longer fights and can even stay there in between pulls if you pull quickly.
Remember, the problem we're trying to solve here is sustained damage and threat. We're not as worried about mobs sticking to you initially because you have plenty of tools to handle that now (including telling the mages they need to wait for half a second). Yes, your AP might start out a little lower if you get a string of avoidance, but with lower avoidance in Cataclysm, that is probably less of a problem as well.
Protection Tree
As a tank, you don't need to worry about nerfs to Sunder Armor and Demo Shout. We'll still tune the bosses to whatever damage we think they need to do. You don't need to worry about suddenly becoming less survivable or generating less threat.
We changed Sunder Armor because the debuff was too massive, meaning realistically you couldn't raid without it. (Perhaps you still can't, but it's closer.)
We changed Demo Shout because it was confusing. Nobody knows how much attack power a creature has, and we found that many players underestimated what a massive damage reduction Demo Shout actually provided.
I can understand PvP concerns of changing these abilities. I'm less sympathetic if you're worried you'll lose your spot to another class because of them, since we're really trying to design a game where you aren't brought along just for your awesome buff.
As far as other Protection warrior concerns go, you're welcome to bring up issues you think that the talent tree has. Our general feedback from warriors is they really like the Protection tree and playstyle (with a few exceptions, like Heroic Strike and perhaps Vigilance) and it was really the tuning relative to other tanks that bothered them. We try not to offer too many changes just for the sake of change (though a few can be fun, and there will be some in your talent tree). (
Source)
Threat generation
I understand the appeal of threat management from a logical sense, and your point about it being engaging to everyone is compelling, but in application we find that it's one of those things that a lot of players just don't find fun. The UI doesn't do a great job of explaining threat, and even if we could build a UI to portray it in a more exciting way (which to be fair, we probably could) it's still a pretty intangible concept compared to damage and healing so I'm not sure it would feel great even then.
Many DPS players don't like the mechanic that there's this higher level of damage they could achieve if only they weren't constantly being throttled by this one dude up in front. It often ends up feeling not like the group is overcoming a challenge together, but that the dude in front needs to get his act together. It just makes tanks feel weak. When the raid dies because the boss hammered the tank, then that feels cooperative because it's the raid vs. the boss. When the raid wipes because the warlock got aggro, then it feels like it's the tank vs. the warlock (or maybe the raid vs. the warlock or the raid vs. the tank).
We always see a lot of negative feedback from tanks when they feel like they can't hold aggro. To be sure some of that is relative when the warrior sees the paladin generate more threat, but it's also a pretty constant source of friction for tanks when they feel like they don't have the tools they need for the job. You can write that off as casuals who just want free epics, but I think we see "we can't generate enough threat" feedback more than we see "please nerf this boss; he's too hard" feedback.
Really, we're talking about relative degrees though. No warrior tank should be able to Thunder Clap and then go get a beer because they're going to then maintain aggro no matter what. In the situations where that happens today I think it's because of overtuned abilities like Tricks or Misdirect (or sometimes tank abilities themselves).
Perhaps put more succinctly, a lot of tank players just seem to find the survival game more fun than the threat game. (
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Unending Fury
The kinds of talents we want to eliminate are the ones that say "You do 5% more damage." Unending Fury is pretty close to that because it buffs the attacks Fury warriors use the most. On the other hand, Flurry is a pretty unambiguous dps increase, but it does it in a way that's a little more interesting. A talent tree that didn't buff damage of a dps spec at all would feel lame. We just want to free up enough talent points that you can get more of the fun utility ones. (
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1H/2H Dual Wielding and rage generation/damage gap
Are you talking about Arms vs. Fury? That's not that hard. Arms can have a talent to let them generate more rage with a two-hander or require less rage for their attacks.
Are you talking about 2H Fury vs. 1H Fury? The Single-Minded Fury talent could literally say "Your one-handed weapons do damage as if they were two-handed weapons." The talent gives us a dial and we can tune it up or down for whatever we need.
It's much easier to make dual-wielding one-handers and dual-wielding two-handers do equitable damage than it is to make dual-wielding one-handers and using a single two-hander do equitable damage, if that makes sense. (
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Healing reduction effects in Cataclysm
"All equivalent debuffs" means if you have the debuff today, you will have it in Cataclysm, but at 20% healing received. To avoid further confusion, we are talking about Mortal Strike, Furious Strikes, Wound Poison, Aimed Shot, Permafrost and Improved Mind Blast.
We are also strongly considering having all of these effect cause the same debuff, called Mortal Wounds, which is a physical effect and therefore undispellable. This allows the behavior to be more consistent regardless of who is applying it and lets us consider things like how easy it should be to dispel poisons (since Mortal Wounds would not be affected).
Heals will be smaller and health pools will be larger in Cataclysm, so we don't expect Mortal Wounds to feel as mandatory as it does today, but this is clearly the kind of thing that will require a lot of playtesting and feedback. (
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Warrior Preview Q&A
Q: Will the rotation for a Fury Warrior just be Bloodthirst and Slam with Heroic Strike to burn off rage?
A: We think Fury is going to end up needing another attack in there for single-target fights. Furious Sundering was intended more as having to Sunder being less of a penalty, but at only 3 stacks, it may not end up being a big deal and we don’t want Fury to feel like they have to purchase a talent that they may not always use. We don’t want Whirlwind to be a good button against single targets however. It essentially gets “free” damage against groups of targets when it’s effective at using against single targets. It’s okay if warriors still do more damage in fights where they can use Cleave and similar attacks often, but right now it’s too extreme.
Q: Are one-handed Fury warriors going to be competing with rogues for one-handed weapons?
A: This is unlikely. Rogues and shaman will want one-handers with Agility, while warriors and death knights will want them with Strength. I won’t be surprised when one of these classes picks up the other’s weapon as it could be an upgrade simply based on the damage, but it won’t be optimal.
Q: Why are warriors not getting some kind of AoE tanking tool?
A: We think the newly buffed Thunder Clap plus Shockwave are sufficient abilities for AoE tanking. The design of Vengeance should make sure that threat generation doesn’t start to slip behind as the dps characters gear up. It’s not our intention that tanks face a constant struggle to generate enough threat, even in group situations, but we also don’t want threat to be totally irrelevant either. The danger for tanking too many creatures should also be tank death not threat management.
Q: Is only Sunder Armor being changed?
A: Rogue Expose Armor and other abilities that apply a similar debuff are being changed accordingly. They will all provide the same debuff at 12% armor reduction.
Q: What about rage loss when changing stances?
A: We still want the act of changing stances to require more consideration than just clicking two buttons to use the ability you want. One idea we are going to explore is that you don’t lose rage when you change stances, but you won’t gain additional rage for a short period of time after changing. This lets you say swap to do an Execute without losing your rage bar, but still keeps the idea that shifting constantly comes with inherent efficiency risks.
Q: Is the intent of Gushing Wound that warriors constantly ask for targets to be kited around?
A: No, it’s intended to be a bonus when you’re in an encounter where the target either moves around a lot (Ex. BONNNNE STORMMMM-ing Marrowgar) or just has to be moved around a lot (say Lich King). Warriors shouldn’t have the expectation of forcing every PvE opponent to move but it would be entertaining to watch this (from a third party perspective).
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Originally Posted by Rifee
