Add in a “hit” counter (like greymane) for minigame and im sold!
Its problem is really just about numbers. Overpower and quest simply grant more damage overall and scale better with his other talents. The slow bonus is nice, but not mandatory. This is why i proposed it has infinite stacks (or more stacks), so it reaches higher damage output.
All the reworks which dropped baseline functions have been failures. Tyrande and chromie first reworks are very good example of that. And in any case, baseline functions were always removed completely, not moved into talents, precisely to avoid a talent getting 90% popularity.
Not sure which people you talked to, but they don’t seem to understand varian gameplay at all, nor the differences be between his 3 specs. Twin blades is not about activating buttons, but rather about moving around a lot (hence the need for a speed buff) and always changing position. It allows to counter stuff that would otherwise destroy CS and taunt. Twin blades would also lose this speed buff, making it very much a copy of illidan but without his mobility.
As I said, Varian doesn’t need a rework. There are a few talent out liners that need fixing through simple buffs. There are tons of useless heroes out there that could use your imagination.
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That’d be ultra-busted.
Varian isn’t based on Vanilla Warrior, though - he’s based on the Modern Warrior and the Arms/Fury/Protection specs. It wouldn’t fit.
A failure by what metric?
Because they didn’t value the middling slow with a short duration on his Q?
Not real sure where this complaint came from!
Considering that Illidan’s mobility is much of what makes him so dangerous, I’m afraid I don’t see it.
He doesn’t need one in the sense that he’s overperforming/underperforming, but he desperately needs one in the design sense. You’ve done a great job of stating that you disagree with a lot of what I’ve presented, but a very poor one of justifying anything outside of your opposition to the changes to Lion’s Fang (which, congratulations, I reverted on your behalf).
Name 'em. I’ve got a to-do list that I’m always willing to expand.
I like Varian his strenght is in his levels.
Unlike someone like Ana whos base kit is just strong. Glad you agree on his banners. But do you think Vigilance is fine? I find glory to the aliance the go to talent. Then the shout.
But vigilance just feels underwhelming to me
We’re thinking the same thing…
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I think instead of completely reworking his whole build. Just rework the parts that need it.
First off, the 3 spec talents are good at level 4 because it gives you time to decide what build you want to do. You can kind of see how the enemy plays and it also prevents everyone from countering you at level 1. If they see you go taunt, they could pick level 1 talents that counter you, and I’m sure they are fun. Varian is flexible, yes, and level 10 is way too long to be able to fill your role. Level 7 is another option but I also feel like it needs to be before your first objective. You probably aren’t at level 7 before the first objective. 4 is the best level for the spec talents in my opinion.
Another thing that bothered me is that there are much less self sustain options because of the bundling. Instead Taunt comes with a 20% health regen, and an amazing damage mitigation, Smash has no self sustain, and Twin Blades/Enrage, is the only one with self sustain. Other than that, the only other option you have for self sustain is Victory Rush, which might be the go to for Smash because of the lack of self sustain which creates the same problem you want to get rid of and that’s having talents that have unbalanced pick rates because other talents just aren’t as good.
Enrage sounds dope, increasing your dps but sacrificing your health. The only problem now is your survivability suffers greatly. You have no protection, have 20 less armor, and don’t have enough self sustain to keep you alive. Yeah you get healed more often but what happens when you need to retreat? You will need to toggle it off and hope spells don’t kill you as you try to run away. I don’t know. I don’t like that aspect, even though the theory sounds awesome.
Instead, I would suggest tweaking the strong and weak talents Varian currently has. For example, changing High King’s Quest to give different rewards like basic attack damage, maybe a health increase, and a slight attack speed increase. That way you aren’t getting insane AA damage but still don’t lose talent value. And maybe make Lion’s Fang talents a bit buffier but not so much to where they make the other talents at the same level lose value.
Also the self sustain talents need to be balanced. Making Victory Rush heal for a % of health instead of just 350 can help the tank build survive better and won’t make it seem like you aren’t getting healed as much. Just balance the percentage amount and cooldown factors. Lion heart need a better heal buff. Maybe have it give you a shield based on how many heroes you hit or just increasing the healing percentage by more instead of just by 50%.
Shattering Throw needs to provide more than just stuff against shields because you need to give players a reason to choose it instead of just the enemy having shields. That I agree with. It needs work. I like what you did with that talent but its only to shields your way and without the enemy having shields, the same problem as before. Devastator isn’t going to get picked without the enemy having shields.
I’m not saying your rework is completely horrible. There are parts of it I liked like the ability to activate Victory Rush, a toggled attack speed increase, a wider Lion’s Fang. That stuff is cool and I think Victory Rush is my favorite because it means you don’t have to rely on staying in battle. It just boosts your health a bit to get you out of hot situations. I mean, Qhira has a burst heal that’s pretty good so why can’t Varian?
I think making Varian gain armor or unstoppable when taunting would help. I think the armor used to be part of Taunt but I don’t remember.
I enjoyed reading your rework and you have good ideas. I just don’t think they’ll work together with Varian much in that way. That’s just my opinion though.
No it wouldn’t, just have a CD to moderate how often he can swap.
No he isn’t, he’s based on the 3 Warrior specs that have been around since vanilla, none of which are exclusive to the modern WoW. The only “modern” warrior ability he has is CS. It would totally fit, you just lack vision.
Unfortunately I don’t like your rework this time , I liked other reworks you made but not this one
Think Active of Enrage becomes better if it no decreases Armor , but
blocks Talent: War Machine
Basic Attacks heal Varian for 1% of his Maximum Health.
Unlike the other options, it can lead to multiple activations of Taunt in a row, leading to chain CC. It’s more of a “potential value” than “immediate value” kind of thing.
This would be a fair point if the Varian player didn’t have the entire draft phase and/or a loading screen to give thought to their place in the team.
What talents at Level 1/4 do you think counter Taunt?
I feel like you’re discounting Parry and Lion’s Fang way too much. Parry in particular gives Varian the ability to ignore Basic Attacks for up to 2.5 seconds. That’s amazing. Lion’s Fang doesn’t have stellar healing, but an accurate Smash player would be able to get it off every 3 seconds and heal off of multiple targets.
Maybe. The one I’m most concerned about is Mortal Strike, if I’m being honest - Smash Combos can put out a lot of damage and one of the few ways of surviving that is dumping healing on the target, which Mortal Strike cleanly counters.
I mean, again, I feel like you’re discounting Parry here.
I’d be alright with changing how Enrage works - either reducing the Armor or changing the cost to it - but regardless of the change, I want the core concept of trading defense for offense to remain.
A better Lion’s Maw and Lionheart would certainly help, but that doesn’t solve the underlying design issues that Varian has on the whole - hence the reason that I’m pursuing an entire rework instead of just talent rebalancing.
Honestly, there’s not much to do with the concept outside of that. It’s like Morales’ EMP Grenade Talent: it’s just there to bust up shields and nothing else. There’s nothing wrong with a talent that’s powerful but has a narrow use case.
I’m glad you liked parts of it, at least!
It gave Armor once upon a time, yes, but I’m not comfortable adding anything else to the Taunt spec. It already gets the original Shield Wall, I don’t think it needs anything more than that.
I’m glad that you enjoyed it. I believe otherwise - rather strongly, actually - but I appreciate your feedback all the same. 
Greymane is reasonably balanced because he doesn’t have any sustain or defensive skills outside of Disengage and no CC. Varian has multiple forms of all three. Unless you completely tore out everything about Varian (either the original or my rework) and redid him based on that concept, he would be ultra-busted - every fight would open with a Smash Combo and then switch to Twin Blades going ham on the weakened target.
I’m aware of that. It’s my understanding that you don’t swap freely between them these days. Is that inaccurate?
If you’re really that upset about it, make your own Rework. You are free to use my formatting and images as a template.
That’s a shame. Any particular reason why?
There’s actually a whole list of things that I’m considering changing it to. In no particular order:
- Enrage lowers Armor by 10 while active
- Enrage drains 2% Maximum Health per second while active
- Enrage inflicts 50% Healing while active
- Enrage causes Varian to lose 0.5% Maximum Health per attack while active
Tassadar, dva, illidan.
Yeah, no. They’ve already said that they’re working on him and I try to avoid dumping a bunch of work into something only to get pre-empted by the official product.
What do you feel Illidan needs?
Well for Draft it’s fine at level 1 but in QM it wouldn’t work.
I can’t think of anything actually. Good point.
But spells will destroy you. Mages will have their way with you. Protection needs to be across all builds so you can mitigate spell damage also.
Lion’s fang just needs a bit more healing I think.
It won’t cure it sure but not every hero can be perfect. At least not easily. Maybe just rebalancing is fine for now.
Again, I really think you have good ideas just I personally don’t see how it would work well. Maybe I’m wrong. I don’t know.
There’s still a loading screen to spend considering your life choices.
Having lived through release ParrySmash Varian, I am very comfortable with that. The Rework trades dive defense for the potential for ranged poke/harassment, which I feel is a very fair trade in the context of everything else Varian has going on.
I’d be more comfortable with that if it didn’t impact the healing the other two specs received.
Well, like I said in the OP:
He doesn’t need rebalancing because his issues aren’t balance-related, he needs a redesign because his issues are design-related. Even if lesser-picked and underpowered talents get buffed, that still leaves him with awkward talent tiers, unnecessary stat penalties, and the only passive Heroic in the game.
I can understand the apprehension. Despite aiming to retain the same design footprint as the original, these are really big changes and the only real way to figure out how they would impact the game is to get them implemented - and as much as I would love to see that happen, I’m also keeping a realistic outlook.
I appreciate your compliments and feedback, though. Thank you. 
Greymane is also balanced cuz he can’t just hop in and out of Worgen form whenever he pleases and is incredibly limited in terms of survivability and escapes.
Most of which comes through talents that can be balanced accordingly.
I mean, that’s essentially what Greymane does but in reverse.
While Greymane opens a fight with sustained damage leading into a burst to finish off opponents, Varian would open with burst leading into finishing the opponents off with sustained damage.
I mean, technically you still could as an Arms warrior if you pick the Defensive Stance talent at lvl60. It doesn’t have any different properties though like in vanilla, it just reduces damage taken and dealt.
Well, I’m not that upset about it. There’s only ever been one hero I’ve been upset enough to pitch a rework for and that’s the one who’s avatar I bear.
The overall amount of work put into this is certainly siginficant, but I can’t say I like the rework.
First of all, you stated the you wanted to improve the talent diversity but it seems to me that the opposite would be the case because CS would pretty much force Lion fang talent, Enrage Charge talents to compensate lost of movement speed and Taunt Parry talents to protect yourself and allies.
Second, unless I missed something then Varian lost most of his sustain with only useless Victory rush at level 10!!
Third, this rework seems to generaly cut down on his bruiser side and push him into the melee assasin role, not a good change IMO.
Last but not least, I think that weakness of Taunt remains unchnged thus limiting his ability to play serve as tank.
A lot of people were complaining that the Taunt build sucked and he’s a sucky tank. If they found out a way to make the Taunt build more “tank” like, I think that would help. Perhaps your ideas would work but maybe not. All I know is I see a lot of people complain about it and maybe they could just give him more utility. I think that’s all he needs.
Twin Blades is a unique build and I feel like its always been a build you go for in certain situations. You won’t be effective if you get focused stunned, or blinded or things like that so that pick has always been a bit niche in my eyes.
Smash is good though, but like all of varian’s specs, it depends on the match. I think if they just found a way to make every build a good solid choice, that will help him even though he has flaws.
Its going to be difficult to do becasue he has to fit 3 roles and each talent has to have some value in each role, while not making the talents so cookie cutter. You should be able to have at least some talents work well with all 3 builds even if one or two feel a bit cookie cutter.
That’s a single aspect of his balance, yes. The rest is reliant on the fact that he doesn’t have anything outside of his capacity to deal damage.
“Most” comes baseline:
- The healing from Lion’s Fang does not require a talent.
- The slow from Lion’s Fang does not require a talent.
- Parry does not require a talent.
- The slow from Charge does not require a talent.
Granted, Second Wind is typically a better form of sustain than the healing from Lion’s Fang, but that still doesn’t change that you’re outright wrong.
Greymane also does it without all of the defensive/sustain/CC advantages that Varian has, which is why it’s balanced.
So, like I said: he’s based on the Modern Warrior and their three specs, not the Classic Warrior and the stance dance. It’s not about lacking vision, it’s about understanding the source material and the goal of the design.
Or, in short: it wouldn’t fit.
That’s okay.
It might seem that way at a glance, but there are use cases for all Talents on all Specs - the largest amount of effort went into making them that way.
Yes and no.
- Tank Varian got Shield Wall, preventing his damage taken. Lion’s Fang also had its healing changed to a % of Maximum Health, meaning that the increased Maximum Health from Taunt increases the healing earned from Lion’s Fang.
- Burst Varian got Dauntless, which can reduce the cooldown of Lion’s Fang to 3 seconds if he hits a Hero with it. While the healing of Lion’s Fang itself has not increased, its rate of use can increase over twice as much.
- DPS Varian got the remnants of Second Wind in the form of War Machine.
While each Spec no longer has access to Second Wind, each has their own way of sustaining themselves or avoiding damage altogether.
Why do you say that?
I’ve been hesitant to do anything to Taunt because everyone I’ve spoken to felt it was so strong - and for that matter, such a sharp counter to certain characters. Why do you think it’s weak?
I actually feel like I gave Tank Varian some very powerful key talents that would make him more “tank-like”. For example, Intercept provides an unconventional source of peel, and Shockwave gives his ranged CC significantly more impact.
Believe me, you don’t have to tell me that making all Talents work with all 3 builds is difficult. The notes for this rework have been floating around since Varian’s release.
Yes, you did. And I like that about it.
But, I think Intercept kinda feels like a support/healer talent. I don’t think it would fit with his character style. That’s just me though. Its a great talent but I don’t think it fits with Varian.
Shockwave kinda just feels underwhelming. Varian already has an increase on his slow and increasing the duration or range could help a bit but I think Varian lacks other forms of CC like a quick stun or a push back or something. I’m not saying his slow in any way is useless because he also has a silence which is really good. Maybe change his slow on charge to a quick stun. That way he has an ability to stop a channeled ability without using his ult. Just my thoughts. You have every right to disagree.
Also I don’t mean to be bagging on you so hard I’m just sharing my opinions on things. I really liked your rework ideas I would just change a couple things personally.