Eight Days Out: Warriors

Eight Days Out: Warriors

Throughout WoW’s history, there have been a large number of sacred cows that Blizzard has been very hesitant to slaughter. However, as you might guess from the utterly huge talent redesign, they’ve gotten their hands on one of those pneumatic cow-guns like Anton Chigurh uses in No Country For Old Men.

One of those cows has been the way that rage works. While they’ve tried and tried to find a way to balance the mechanic so that DPS isn’t starved early in the expansion, but can ignore Rage later in the expansion (and Tanks do the opposite,) they’ve always tied Rage to auto-attacks and getting hit. The problem, of course, is that DPS is going to be critting more and hitting faster (with haste) as they get better gear, meaning that at a certain threshold, they have practically infinite Rage. Tanks, by contrast, as they get better avoidance, stop getting the steady flow of Rage they need, and thus the pantsless warrior tank was born.

So, the big change to Rage is that you now generate it only via abilities. Stuff like Mortal Strike, Shield Slam, and Blood Thirst now generates, rather than costing Rage. It’s a lot more like the Barbarian in Diablo 3, which makes sense, as it is my understanding that the Diablo 2 Barbarian is what the WoW Warrior is based on.

That’s the big change. Now let’s look at it spec-by-spec (I’ll try to do this for every class, but you might find that healing specs are a little few and far between.)

Arms: This is my main warrior’s spec. Arms feels a bit different with the loss of Rend. Also, Thirst for Blood works very differently. If you were like me, through Cataclysm you rarely had a use for Heroic Strike, as Slam was a good enough Rage-spender. Slam is still there (and instant, which is probably for the best, though I kind of liked having the only melee attack with a cast time,) but there is now a place in the rotation for Heroic Strike. Mortal Strike now automatically activates Overpower, but Overpower also sometimes reactivates itself. When it does this, it gives a stacking 100% bonus to your next HS or Cleave. At a full stack (which admittedly does not happen very often) you’ll be able to get off some freaking huge Heroic Strikes (in Hour of Twilight, I got a few crits in the 160k range.) Last but not least, we now have Whirlwind, which gives us quite a few AoE tools.

Fury: Fury largely works the same way, except with the Rage changes. However, one big change is that rather than Slam, Fury uses an ability called Wild Strike. WS is an off-hand strike that does a good amount of damage. When you get your Blood Surge proc, you now get to hit WS three times in a row for now cost and a shorter global cooldown. It does really feel like a frenzied attack, which is appropriate for the Berserker nature of the Fury Warrior. Oh, and you now want to be in Battle Stance in PVE. Also, the removal of stance requirements for abilities lets you use Charge (well, being in Battle Stance would mean this too, but it means you can use Charge and Whirlwind.)

Protection: Ah, now, here we see some of the strange new world of Active Mitigation tanking. Most of your abilities, like Devastate, or Revenge (which now only gets its cooldown reset when you dodge, block or parry, and can be used before this occurs) cost zero rage, and Shield Slam generates it. You also have two big AM buttons. The first is Shield Block, which guarantees you block the next few strikes. Shield Barrier, on the other hand, absorbs damage based on your attack power. The latter, I imagine, will be more useful for spell damage, so you’ll have to make that distinction. Rather than having cooldowns, these abilities have “recharge time,” and a couple charges. So you can’t simply use Shield Block every time you have the Rage (which, at least on a target dummy, could have allowed me to keep it up basically all the time) but if you’re going through a tough patch, you can spam it for a bit (if you get enough Rage.) Other than defensive abilities, you’ll only be using Rage for Heroic Strike or Cleave, and there is a proc that gives you a free one of these every now and again.

Warriors are in a bit of a weird place overall. Unlike Warlocks, for instance, they mostly look the same. The differences are somewhat subtle (though you’ll probably notice the Rage change,) and overall I think you’ll be able to pick up the changes without too much trouble.

(Oh, PS: The Battle of Theramore is going live today (should be eight minutes from the time I post this. Remember Theramore!)