12.1 Warrior Feedback

In Development Midnight: Curse of Ula'tek Public Test Realm
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I’ll start with Fury Warrior feedback for now.

Mountain Thane Feedback:

One of the new hero talents Mountain Thane received in Midnight is Storm Surge, previously a Protection Warrior talent by the name of Unstoppable Force. It increases the damage of Thunderclap (and Thunderblast) by 50% and reduces their cooldown by 50%.

This talent is great for Protection warriors, but for Fury warriors it causes problems.
This talent brings about a controversial playstyle in multi-target situations, wherein during our offensive cooldowns, we practically use Thunderclap every other GCD, alongside spamming Rampage, leaving little room to press Bloodthirst or Raging Blow.

I think it would be better, for Fury warrior, to remove the 50% cooldown reduction from the talent and instead make the talent increase Thunderclap’s (and Thunderblast’s) damage by 200% (effectively doubling the damage it would do during Avatar in exchange for making us use it only half as much).
This will leave players with more room to press Bloodthirst and Raging Blow.

Slayer Feedback:

One of the main issues Fury warrior has right now is that the there’s no real variance in playstyle and talent builds between the 2 hero talent trees. Right now, the only difference between an M+ Mountain Thane build and an M+ Slayer build is the Avatar/Bladestorm choice node.
A major part of it is that both builds always prioritize Bloodthirst over Raging Blow, treating Raging Blow as a semi-filler instead of as an important ability.

Which is why I’m going to propose changes to Slayer to, hopefully, help differentiate it from Mountain Thane.
Changes that will see Raging Blow take a more center stage in the Slayer rotation, while still keeping Bloodthirst an important button to press.

The first change is to buff Slayer’s Malice, currently it buffs the damage of Raging Blow and Execute by 15%. Making it buff the damage by 25% or at least 20%, will help make Raging Blow a stronger contender for which ability to use.

In addition, change how Reap the Storm works.
Instead of Rampage having a 20% chance to proc it when it hits 3 or more targets, make it so Raging Blow will apply a stacking buff (I’ll call it Reaper for now), and Bloodthirst will consume 3 stacks of the Reaper buff to trigger Reap the Storm.
This is in addition to Execute triggering the effect when consuming Sudden Death.

These changes will help elevate Raging Blow’s position in the rotation, and create some gameplay variety between the 2 hero talent trees.
Though it would mean bringing Reap the Storm back into single target situations.

Another change is to also switch the positions of the Bloodborne and Executioner’s Wrath talents, so that Slayer Raging Blow builds could access the Execute buff (as right now it is locked behind Bloodthirst focused talents).

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I had the exact same thoughts regarding Unstoppable Force / Storm Surge as I quite liked that it was initially removed from the talent trees entirely due to how ridiculously bloated competition for the GCD was for Protection Warrior and was hoping the Thane extension talents would’ve focused more in giving Thunderclap some core benefits that’s not just hit every 2nd GCD.

But now both Prot and Fury as Thane are overloaded with Thunderclap overtaking the GCD economy during Avatar’s uptime when paired with Recklessnes (It always is) we’re also wanting to spam Rampage due to our Apex leaving little to no room at all to press anything else so Raging Blow goes unused.

The troubles with Slayer come down to a few issues with Bladestorm CDR being feast or famine which can be ridiculous at times.

The base gameplay of Fury does need a little bit more adjusted to it. A massive component for Raging Blow’s nerfs going to Midnight was it’s problem with overtaking the GCD economy of fury meaning you left other abilities untouched when it kept chain resetting itself. Did the blizzard devs remove the problem which was the self resets? No. They just buffed Bloodthirst and called it a day leaving the spec in shambles with atrocious moments of trying to get rid of 2137691 different procs while not overcapping your rage.

My own personal opinion is Fury won’t be fixed until it reigns back in the self resets of Raging Blow (Hack and Slash is fine if it’s the only avenue), the excessive CDR of Storm Surge and the procs that want you to press the same button three GCDs in a row (Burst of Power).

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I like the changes to Arms, seems like a step in the right direction to me. I just hope they don’t neglect how it affects PvP as Arms is mostly popular for PvP

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Blizzard, please change Storm Surge for Fury. The need to spam Thunderclap/Thunderblast leaves us with little room to press other buttons.

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I might be shooting myself in the foot a bit here, and maybe it’s the base obstacle with all Fury changes. But, the spec is fun on the ptr. It’s fun on live. It works well.

It’s just gotten really stale in my opinion. Also despite it working well I still think our talent tree is extremely boring with a vast portion of it just making RB or BT do more damage.

Fury Gameplay and 12.1 Tier

The new tier bonus seems to fairly firmly put the Raging Blow talent build ahead for Slayer at least. My testing was less clear for Mountain Thane. I think the change to Hack and Slash does help that flow better and feel more interesting/rewarding. However, there are still a few things that don’t feel great in my opinion.

  1. The Raging Blow talents are soooooooo boring. It’s all just passive damage bonuses and a little bit of reset chance. Or…even better…AUTO ATTACK DAMAGE, YEAH!
  2. Without Deft Experience and in a build that’s not hitting Bloodthirst as much it’s still too easy to drop enrage between Rampage uses.
  3. I’d really like there to be a clearer payoff point, or payoff to begin with really, with how the Raging Blow talents want you to weave in Bloodthirst. I think there’s a lot of merit to that shift in gameplay from the more static rotation the Bloodthirst builds provide - but enrage uptime and the payoff of those bloodthirsts need to be better.

The tier bonus being the catalyst that can allow the Raging Blow build to be an option I think can be enough on its own, but I would echo some other concerns in this thread that Recklessness feels extremely bloated for GCD economy. Trying to use the various cooldowns, and also still prioritize Raging Blow and Bloodthirst against Rampage and our Apex Talent + Execute + Cooldowns is a little overly messy to me.

Slayer Concerns

Personally I strongly prefer Slayer. I like Bladestorm. I like Execute. The feedback of Sudden Death + Reap is very immediately satisfying. However, there are a few items that I think are really holding this back from being as enjoyable as it could be.

BLADESTORM COOLDOWN REDUCTION

When you look at the triple layer of RNG between Sudden Death procs, Executioner Stacks, and Slayer Strikes playing into both of those items. It causes a lot of variance to the Bladestorm cooldown when the rest of the spec works together quite well in my opinion.

The Voracious Heart of Ula’tek trinket only makes this even worse. We haven’t had a good on use this expansion for Fury. While I think this trinket is great, and I appreciate finally having a good trinket that lines up with my cooldown timings it only makes the frustrations around the Bladestorm cooldown even more frustrating.

IMMINENT DEMISE

This is a somewhat minor gripe, but having zero stacks of this on the pull reduces that opening Bladestorm + Unhinged damage by honestly a kind of insane amount. I don’t think there’s any other class that has their first cooldown use of a fight be cut in half basically.

There’s additional complaints here in M+ when bad procs + downtime can cause the stacks to simply fall off. Then if you die stacks fall off. If someone dc’s stacks fall off. I don’t understand why this has to have so many drawbacks to it.

My personal solution is that Imminent Demise should always increase the Bladestorm hits by 1. Then the existing mechanic can be used to gain the other two strikes. That extra hit not only increases the Bladestorm damage obviously, but it also guarantees you always get 3 unhinged attacks. That still makes the mechanic exciting I think while limiting the downsides and helping the initial cooldown use feel better.

Oh, I forgot to mention that without the season 1 tier bonus Odyn’s Fury truly feels pathetic.

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Could you please share the new raging blow focused talent build you found?

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Bloodcraze could certainly be moved into whatever you want. Rampaging Ruin is honestly pretty strong on AoE, but it does not hit your primary target. So no single target value. So those two points can flex a bit.

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Thank you Artunias to try to fix Slayer. I strongly prefer it as well, especially Bladestorm.

If we do go back to prioritizing Raging Blow as Slayer, I hope we’re not spamming it. Every time I see Raging Blow’s cd reset I get concerned about how spammy it can be. I would like to at least see the cd reset chance drastically lowered, if not removed, so that I have a chance to use other abilities regularly.

Thane is ok, but I feel like I’m pressing Thunder Clap/Thunder Strike a lot when I’d rather be using Bladestorm and a mix of other abilities.

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Yeah I feel you on Raging Blow. With the various changes that have occurred to Hack and Slash it’s pretty impossible for us to go back to what it was like in the past based on my testing.

You can hit Raging Blow a lot if you spec for it, but it’s not ALWAYS available like it had been in the past. Which is good, I don’t want it to be. Honestly the frequency of Raging Blow feels about right to me at the moment. It’s just…boring talents lol.

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CDR consistency is just something they haven’t gotten right at all, they are getting close though.

Legitimately they fix it by removing the RNG CDR for bladestorm entirely from the slayer tree, and shoving anything and everything that’s an offensive cooldown onto Anger Management and making it a class wide passive that’s not apart of any talent tree.

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Sub 100% sweeping strikes uptime is a 20 iq change and I’m not sure why whoever suggested it still has a job. It’s bad enough that it’s still on the global for no reason since bfa.

Arms also still has button bloat, dependency on shaman buff for basic resource income, cds still don’t line up for colossus so those changes are nothing burgers. bladestorm cd reduction is far too random for slayer, as well. Procs in general need to be looked at. Some pulls, you’ll get back to back sudden death/heroic strikes/slayer strikes/reap..then next pull you get absolutely nothing and just spam slam.

speaking of slam…stop tying stuff to it. It’s an objectively unfun button to press, essentially just rubbing in that none of the 19 thousand bits of rng were on your side and now you’re doing slams. you want aoe deep wounds? great, tie it to just about anything else…

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I feel like we are one of the only specs in the game that regularly goes weeks without any kind of patch notes or dev notes. And this happens essentially every single PTR cycle.

Again, the spec is not bad, but maybe we should never say that. Outrage still seems to be the driving factor of getting a dev to pay attention.

Slayer and Bladestorm having a completely separate cooldown from all other mechanics across both dps specs is beyond frustrating. The other feedback in this thread is still valid, but if I had to pick only one thing and be mad about that reality… At least fixing this ridiculous interaction would make the Slayer hero tree feel better for both Arms and Fury.

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Blizzard, please address the issue Fury warriors will have in season 2 with the new tier set while playing Mountain Thane.
We have way too many competing buttons we need to press during our CDs to effectively play the spec.
Either do my suggestion to change Storm Surge for Fury warriors so it no longer reduces the CD of Thunder Clap and instead increases its damage by 200%, or do Madox’s suggestion of adding Thunderclap/Thunderblast to the 2pc bonus, so we won’t have to press Raging Blow during the CDs.

Or you could just buff Slayer so it’s the meta build for Fury in all content in season 2.

EDIT (since Blizz won’t let me reply to the thread when the last reply was already mine) :

Looking over the datamined class changes that were posted on Wowhead, it seems Fury was once again neglected.

Thane’s multitarget rotation during offensive CDs is still a mess, while Slayer just seems too weak.

The only change Fury got is a buff to the bleed damage Bloodbath (empowered Bloodthirst) deals. Perhaps as a way to elevate it’s priority over Execute.

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Continued pain points for Fury:

  1. Bladestorm cooldown reduction misalignment/RNG
  2. Way too many talent points that are nothing more than + damage to Raging Blow or Bloodthirst
  3. Recklessness feels very bloated for GCDs with the new tier bonus - this becomes even more pronounced when maintaining whirlwind for aoe
  4. Slayer Imminent Demise ramp time/draw backs/punishments listed earlier in thread
  5. Odyn’s Fury is boring and pathetic again
  6. Bloodthirst does not have a clear payoff point with the Raging Blow talents
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Fury:

Raging blow just seems useless and does very little improve the damage of the spec overall.
Bloodthirst changing to blood bath was a neat idea but making one huge bleed is great…..but it falls off. It’s a CD in itself without being one. If you do not generate a big enough bleed, the button is more or less raging blood.

Prot:

The one I’m most disappointed with. We havent’ really had a way to deal with magic damage besides our 20 sec cd that we must keep on cd for spell reflects if we can or use it just to mitigate the damage from the frequent use of magic damage. (We do get 3% mag dam reduction). Bleeds/poisons outside being a dwarf, we dont’ have an answer outside ignore pain. Ignore pain just gets blown through at higher levels that it really doesn’t make a huge difference. We do have a ton of cd’s, but once the cd’s are gone, you fall over even rotating them ( sometimes you can’t even do that when the damage events that are occurring are to much to tank). This iteration of prot warrior doesn’t make us viable outside the top 1% to push anything past 18’s or even 20’s ( which is probably pushing it). IF there is just physical damage. We can manage just fine, but the immovable object that prot warrior was that could take the hits just isn’t there right now. Even moving magic dr or block magical damage would be acceptable. Even if it was at half value? Anything to give us a fighting chance. Even lower damage for better survivability would be nice. Phalanx is a nice mechanic and great DR % but we can’t do much against dots or magic damage. Kinda kills m+ for us. I mean the physical damage comp revolves around warriors…..with us not even there. We are dps. We only are currently getting picked for a buff because all three specs (outside arms aoe). Are just a struggle on a buss that has no breaks.

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So what do I have to do to get a dev to fix how Bladestorm cooldown works for Slayer in this patch?

There are other disappointing things about the spec, but this one is the most annoying and frustrating.

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Honestly i think post Slaying Strike proc rate increase they’re calling it a day in terms of Slayer adjustments regarding inconsistent bladestorm CDR between feast and famine.

Which on one hand I can understand given what release candidate for the PTR build will be active after what another 1 or 2 more weeks at maximum? And there were some more pressing changes made for other specs so we just drew the short straw this time.

But still does seem like we’re in for a patch of inconsistent CDR for two out of three hero talents as Colossus will still desync for Arms even with the flat 30s CD due to effects like Heroism making CS CDR faster and desyncing it from the rip, with also Bladestorm for Slayer being either insanely low ~30s cd to something that barely CDRs itself at 70s and doesn’t even get 3 stacks of imminent demise in that process either due to awful SD RNG.

I do hope next round of Warrior focused changes syncs up cooldowns correctly by attaching them all to Anger Management or they double down on the shorter CD gameplay and remove AM entirely making CS, Demolish and shield charge 30s cooldowns while also making Demolish a follow up attack to CS and Shield Charge respectively (stun removed from shield charge obviously or greatly reduced to say 2s and placed on it’s own DR), Bladestorm, Avatar, Recklessness and Ravager (if they haven’t yeeted it by then) to 60s cooldowns default. While both are ‘boring’ everything being linked to AM is the least boring and rewards uptime however flat cooldowns do help in moments where uptime is limited so you’re not punished for stop dps moments further than is necessary.

CDR also being removed from the slayer tree itself wouldn’t be entirely a bad thing either, as a more deterministic approach to bladestorm would allow them to put more power into it as it’s volatile CDR does make it a hard ability to just flat buff if it’s going to be available so often in a lucky string of RNG.

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Another week of updates and another week of Fury’s issues being ignored.
The season 2 tier set makes a mess out of the multitarget rotation during Recklessness when playing Mountain Thane.

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If Fury also received this band-aid it would be interesting. Arms still kinda feels like a lost cause specifically from an alignment standpoint. But the increased procs for Fury might make it so at least low rolls almost never happen.

It’s still very much nothing more than a band-aid, but band-aids are better than nothing at this point.

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Just checked and oh my, they’ve actually done tuning to specific hero talent nodes that weren’t blanket for both specs??? Colour me shocked.

Makes sense they made this Arms specific only when Fury on average has more slaying strikes organically. NFI why i thought this was a blanket change though.

Point still stands somewhat of Bladestorm being better off for both specs either being on AM, or AM removed outright and cooldowns adjusted accordingly to be deterministic.

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