A lot of changes! We have an aoe grip!

Looks like there are quite a few changes in today’s build. I am waiting for the Talent Calc to be updated.

One thing I wanted to note.
Wrenching Impact Heroic Leap pulls 5 random enemies within 15 yds to you."

  • WARRIOR
    • Class Developer Notes

      • We’ve made some changes to stances; each specialization now only has one damage-based stance available to them. We might revisit this and their specific functionality later, but for now, we want players to have the intended experience when playing in the Beta and that is that Arms uses Battle Stance and Fury uses Berserker Stance and you can opt into defensive stance when you’re expecting heavy incoming damage.

      • There’s some under the hood changes related to auto-attack tuning that lead to the increases and reductions you’ll see.

    • Class Tree

      • Battle Stance is no longer available in the Fury class tree and Berserker Stance is no longer available in the Arms or Protection class trees.

      • Sidearm has been removed from the Fury tree and is now located in the class tree. There were too many talents in the Fury tree, and we feel this is a cool ability that all specs can make use of.

      • Fast Footwork now increases movement speed by 10% (was 5%).

      • New Talent: Uproar – Thunderous Roar’s cooldown is reduced by 30 seconds to better align it with various cooldowns.

      • Thunderous Roar’s direct damage reduced to 160% (was 175%).

      • Memory of a Tormented Warlord changed to the following – Activating Avatar or Colossus Smash casts Recklessness at reduced effectiveness.

      • Armored to the Teeth has changed position and is now 2 ranks. The Strength granted from Armor is up to 5% per rank (was 3%).

      • Shockwave and Thunderous Roar now have 110-degree cones (was 90 degrees) to allow for a little more error in targeting and to better align with visuals.

      • Ranks of Cruel Strikes for all specs should now work correctly.

      • All version of Sudden Death and Massacre have now returned to the specialization trees.

      • New Talent: Wrenching Impact – Heroic Leap pulls 5 random enemies within 15 yards to you. The cooldown of Heroic Leap will be increased in a future build to compensate for this powerful effect.

      • Berserker Stance – Auto attacks now deal 10% more damage (was 5%).

      • Reinforced Plates is now 1 rank and now increases Armor by 20% (was 15%).

      • Endurance Training is now 1 point and now grants 15% reduction to crowd-control effects.

      • Endurance Training Arms and Endurance Training Protection – Now also reduces the effectiveness of Sap, Fear and Incapacitate effects by 15%.

      • Endurance Training Fury – Now also reduces the effectiveness of movement impairing effects by 15%.

    • Arms Developer Notes

      • We’ve changed the pathing and location of various nodes so that Colossus Smash is located in the center of the tree to align with its importance to the Arms specialization.

      • Punishment - We’ve decided to remove Punishment as a talent. Execute damage can make up a very large portion of Arms specialization’s damage, which we like, want to maintain and want players to be able to choose! However, having your target in Execute range for 50% of the fight warps the original intent and identity of the ability. It also means Execute will need to be largely toned down and provide less general output than we’d like when it is intended to be used. When you press Execute, we want it to hit hard and feel good, we want you to see big numbers and even bigger crits, and some constraints here, such as removing Punishment will allow us to better deliver on that.

      • We’re feeling good about where Arms is at and we’ve seen people enjoying the playstyles throughout the Alpha and Beta, so our focus for Arms is now on tuning, bugs and minor changes.

    • Arms

      • Improved Sweeping Strikes removed.

      • Fatality was not providing enough damage output during testing, so now deals 200% damage per stack (was 100%).

      • Blunt Instruments no longer gives an additional benefit to Warbreaker as it is now part of a choice node with Warbreaker.

      • Gathering Storm renamed to Hurricane.

      • Exploiter should now be functioning correctly outside of the Shadowlands and has been reduced to 25% per stack (was 50%).

      • In for the Kill now increases your Haste by 10% and by 25% if the target is under 35% health.

      • Test of Might now grants 5% increased Strength for every 30 Rage spent (was 1% every 10 Rage).

      • Battlelord now also applies to Cleave.

      • Fatal Mark can now also be applied via Cleave.

      • Sharpened Blades now also applies to Cleave.

      • Exhilarating Blows now also applies to Cleave.

      • Rend caused by Blood and Thunder no longer increases stacks of Collateral Damage.

      • Moved Exploit the weakness to a later part of the tree where its power level is more in line with other talents.

      • Skullsplitter now generates 30 Rage.

      • With Storm of Swords talented Whirlwind’s cooldown is now reduced by your Haste.

      • Overpower’s damage reduced to 90% (was 97%).

      • Juggernaut now has a cap of 15 stacks.

      • Execute damage reduced to 220% (was 230%).

      • Arms auto attack damage reduced by 5%.

      • Battlelord chance to trigger reduced to 25% (was 30%) but the rage reduction applied to Mortal Strike has increased to 15 (was 10).

      • Critical Thinking now provides 5% Execute Critical Strike damage per rank (was 3%).

    • Fury Developer Notes

      • Titan’s Grip Fury builds are suffering a little from having more abilities than we’d like and are feeling a little bloated in comparison to other Fury and Arms builds.

      • With the above in mind, we’ve removed Siegebreaker and its follow-on node Deafening Crash. Historically this ability has not been well liked by players and has felt like a weaker version of Colossus Smash, it can also blur the identity and playstyles of Arms and Fury a little more than we’d like and removing it will allow us to put more power into Fury’s core abilities.

      • As mentioned previously we’re looking at opening Annihilator up to two-handed weapons.

      • The choice nodes for Odyn’s Fury and Ravager may see some more iteration.

      • Outside of the above-mentioned points, we are generally happy with where Fury is at and have seen people enjoying the updates to playstyle and abilities throughout the Alpha and Beta, in turn our focus for Fury will now be mostly on tuning, bugs and minor changes.

    • Fury

      • Removed Siegebreaker and Deafening Crash talents.

      • Unbridled Ferocity now has a 20% chance to trigger Recklessness (was 10%).

      • Frenzied Flurry is now 1 Rank and increases auto attack damage by 5% and your auto attack critical strikes have a 50% chance to enrage you.

      • Haste no longer reduces the cooldown of Odyn’s Fury.

      • New Talent: Dancing Blades – Odyn’s Fury increases your auto-attack speed by 50% for 10 seconds.

      • Gathering Storm renamed to Hurricane.

      • Cruelty is now 1 rank and increases damage by 15% and chance to reset the cooldown of Raging Blow by 30%.

      • Bloodborne now increases your Bleed damage by 30%.

      • Vicious contempt now increases damage dealt by Bloodthirst by 25% per rank (was 20%).

      • Cold Steel Hot Blood now deals 30% damage (was 20%).

      • Crushing Blow damage reduced to 90% for both main hand and offhand damage (was 94%).

      • Raging Blow damage reduced to 58% for both main hand and offhand damage (was 61%).

      • Meat Cleaver is now 1 rank and has 4 charges, deals 25% increased damage for Whirlwind.

      • Annihilator should correctly generate Rage from each rank of Swift Strikes.

      • Removed Wrath and Fury and replaced it with Massacre which is no longer present on the core tree.

      • Odyn’s Fury should now add to the duration if quickly cast within succession in line with other Bleed effects.

      • Odyn’s Fury’s periodic damage should now correctly be flagged as a Bleed effect.

      • Cruel Strikes now applies to Annihilator correctly.

      • Storm of Swords – Slam’s cooldown is now 12 seconds and damage increased by 200%. It also generates 20 Rage.

      • When using Storm of Swords, Whirlwind’s cooldown is now modified by your Haste.

      • New Talent: Ashen Juggernaut – Execute increases the critical strike chance of Execute by 10% for 12 seconds, stacking up to 5 times.

      • Memory of a Tormented Titan should now trigger Odyn’s Fury without incurring its cooldown.

      • Fury should now only have 1 form of Execute in their spell book.

    • Protection Developer Notes

      • Protection will see a larger update next week and the week following.

      • We’ve made some quality-of-life changes to target cones to make them a little more forgiving and to better align with visuals.

    • Protection

      • Devastate should now be baseline at the specialization level and no longer require a talent point.

      • Removed Never Surrender and replaced it with Skull Banner.

      • Revenge has a 110-degree cone (was 90 degrees) to allow for a little more error in targeting and to better align with visuals.

      • New Talent: Storm of Steel – Ravager’s damage is reduced by 50% but it now has 2 charges.

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we better be getting a glyph for the animation
overall, the changes sound good but ill wait until the calculator updates before casting a solid judgment
a cursory glance says these look good

edit: turns out it’s a bit wonky

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Honestly, this part makes me happy because it means execute can be balance to be a real finisher skill, meaning it can hit harder. But I do hope there is a glyph. I loved the animation.

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They just nerfed the ever living crap out of execute it is now 220% down from 370% when you spend 40 rage. Also punishment going way is pure BS. They better keep the condemn animation/sound for Arms at least.

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After seeing the calculators now… I am less pleased than before. Some things just make no sense. The aoe grip was already nerfed, why is skull banner and 5 % damage on MS a choice node?

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On the chance a Dev Reads this:

Increasing Heroic Leap cooldown with grip talent: great idea. It should be longer since Gorefiend’s grasp is somewhere between 1 minute and a half and 2 minutes.

I also think it should be weaker as a pull than Gorefiend’s Grasp since it doubles as a mobility button. The cap makes sense.

I think though that since there is a target cap on this, fairly on the low side, it should maybe prioritize enemies farther away to pull, to limit the amount of cases it does nothing because it randomly decides to pull the enemies already next to your landing.

In which case a 1:30 second cooldown that acts unpredictably and unreliably feels bad.

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skullbanner vs imp mortal strike is a joke, right?

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To add, on the fury side, they have skullbanner vs bloodcraze… the more and more I look at this… the less I like.
We lose out on 10% stam and only get 5% now with cc dr. I don’t understand… why not just have offensive stance be the damage stance, def obviously for defensive, and zerker for cc reduction? I was super excited when hearing these changes, but after looking at the trees for fury and arms… I’m like what? 2 steps forward and 1 step back. Haven’t even looked at prot yet.

I am still in utter shock about the dev comment about the Punishment talent.

When you press Execute, we want it to hit hard and feel good, we want you to see big numbers and even bigger crits, and some constraints here, such as removing Punishment will allow us to better deliver on that.

  • Execute damage reduced to 220% (was 230%).
    It is 340% on live spending 40 Rage

WTF?
Edit: Execute damage on live is 170% *2 = 340% @ 40 rage.

I am hoping the numbers are not set in stone because that is a kick in the face.

Improved Heroic Throw should change places with Titanic Throw. Keep Improved Heroic Throw the same functionally for Arms/Prot, for Fury add instead of applying deep wounds to the target, hitting your target with it would Enrage you for 3 seconds.

I’m just salty because I really liked the exploiter / punishment combo

They Pruned Fury AGAIN.

Why are they removing anything, when Choice Nodes can be used to keep everything as an option?

Just pair Bladestorm with Ravager and Siege Breaker with Onslaught/Odyn’s Fury/Storm of Swords. I love my sub-minute CDs as they give me something to do other than the basic rotation while I wait for big burst.

Base damage on live is 240%, so hopefully this is just a 20% nerf. Still, removing punishment and the reason they provided makes absolutely zero sense with any sort of nerf to execute damage.

And a large reason for those nerfs was because of Punishment existing in the first place, now that it’s gone they can be pushed back up.

ETA: to extrapolate, they didn’t “just” nerf Execute, the damage has been gradually reduced during testing multiple times if you’ve been following the updates, for the entirety of that time Punishment has existed. From a design standpoint it’s obvious you don’t want an ability that deals nearly 400% damage spammed for half the fight in comparison to everything else, that’s bonkers.

So poor Execute got tweaked down repeatedly to where it is now.

And noooooooow Punishment has been removed, so here’s hoping it gets tweaked back up since you can only use it in the execute phase of a fight now.

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This is just my opinion, but I’m not too happy with the continuous changes they are making. Every “good” change or addition is countered with nerfs or talent changes/removals making their adjustments seem counterintuitive. Looking at the trees now, it seems like they are granting players less and less build choices or preferred playstyle by placing obvious superior talent in areas that disincentives any experimentation. This of course leads to the ever so classic “cookie-cutter” build with slight variations at best due to wanting to achieve the best results.

With that being said, I do understand that it is unrealistic to expect the majority of players to not take the opportunity to min/max, but there shouldn’t be such a great distinction between what is consider the “right” talents from the “wrong” ones, greatly punishing players for wanting to play the way that best suits them.

For example, I love Battle Lord, which has gotten nerfed a several times already, drastically weakening its overall effectiveness (which brings in to question if it’s even worth taking). In addition, you can see how far down the tree it is, with the pre requisite talent being Deft Experience. Deft Experience is really only a good talent to take if you also want to use Rend, which I don’t. So my options are to either start using Rend, waste two talent points to pick up something that I actually want, or just forget about going down that side of the tree all together. Furthermore, this all of course has an additional side effect where if I decide to spec into Rend, I would also need to take all other talents that synergizes with using Rend in order to be optimal.

In the end, I really feel like Blizzard screwed the pooch on this one, and continues to do so. Many of the current talents on offer are either taken because you’re trying to get something that you actually want or because not taking them is detrimental to your overall performance. Both scenarios are punishing to a players enjoyment.