Feedback: Slayer Warrior

Classes Warrior
1

Please check out our new Hero Talents preview and let us know what you think in this thread.

8 Likes
2

I really like what’s going on in this tree. Focusing around Execute and Bladestorm is absolutely a hit for me. A few notes/concerns from a Fury perspective.

  1. Bladestorm needs to enrage us. We fought this battle every time Fury has had Bladestorm in the past, please just let it work. The channel time and wonkiness around enrage never felt good in the past.

  2. The cooldown reduction on Bloodthirst seems awkward/bad? It’s obvious the trees are getting some overhauls and so the place of Bloodthirst in the spec as a whole might be changing. Just remember that every time in the past you’ve implemented some random CDR on bloodthirst the only thing it has done is cause it to desync from the natural gcd flow and be awkward.

Otherwise I’m really excited for this tree and the direction it’s going. Hopefully we can see that reworked warrior tree soon.

EDIT: While I don’t disagree with some of comments about lack of flashiness, I think it’s fair to say that Bladestorm is quite the iconic visual and the frequency and impact of its use can certainly be considered part of the visual distinctiveness of this tree. With various buffs in the tree you’re talking about Bladestorm being 50% or so more damage per use, and you’ll be using it like 33-50% more often than Non-slayers.

23 Likes
3

Best Hero talent tree so far. It improves and allows for some of the best feeling abilities warriors have to be used more often.

9 Likes
4

Cool theme, and I enjoy the concept of marrying Execute’s single target focus with Bladestorm’s multitarget, though a few odd potential issues stand out.

  • Unless there are some particularly interesting visuals attached to Slayer procs, there doesn’t appear to be much cosmetic impact on Slayer, compared to Mountain Thane’s lightning effects and Colossus’ increased size and Demolish animation.
  • Constant Pressure and Slayer’s Focus both reducing the cooldown of OP/BT by 10%(this was apparently edited, and Focus now increases their damage by 10% instead - though the rest of the feedback is still valid), which doesn’t do much since reducing rotational cooldowns by a fraction of the GCD is generally benign (you need to wait for the full GCD to be up anyway).
    • The effect is also undermined by cooldown reset procs like Tactician, to the point where I don’t see a whole lot of value in these bonuses absent other major baseline changes to those abilities.
  • Frenetic Fury auto-casting Bladestorm sounds like it will not interrupt normal ability casting, which is very important to not impinging upon normal gameplay. That said, even a mid-gcd channel is potentially disruptive (can’t leap, use cooldowns, etc), so it may be better as a completely passive trigger, though I don’t really mind either way.

  • Tunnel Vision resetting on target change is a very problematic limitation. Good players will simply use mouseover macros to avoid the downsides, while less knowledgeable players will be disproportionally punished.

    • I highly recommend either removing the limitation entirely, or changing it to “attacking a new primary target,” although that is only a partial fix since it can also be undermined by mouseover macros (see: Fury’s Frenzy talent). Of course, a more simplistic option to drop the bonus after after so many seconds of not attacking would also work, but whatever the solution, the end goal should be avoiding “macro knowledge” problems.
  • I’m also not crazy about Tunnel Vision and Thrill of the Kill being a choice between basically the same thing. Presumably, Tunnel Vision is meant to be better under perfect conditions in which it doesn’t fall off, but figuring out that breakpoint becomes a weird math problem.
    • The choice between Slayer Reflexes reset proc and Constant Pressure cooldown reduction is very similar in that ultimately both are giving you more casts of Bloodthirst/Overpower.
  • Overwhelming Blades doesn’t specify that it stacks outside of Unrelenting Onslaught, though I’m sure this is just a tooltip error; considering that nothing appears to consume the buff, I imagine it is intended to be a time limited buff that can be stacked but not refreshed. I’m also curious if Imminent Demises’ +1 Bladestorm strike affects the auto-casted ones or not.
  • Unrelenting Onslaught reducing the cooldown of Bladestorm is… interesting, but I’ll have to see how it plays out alongside other spec changes before passing judgement. It sounds like it could end up quite a bit of CDR, which makes me question whether Anger Management will still reduce the cooldown of Bladestorm.
  • Relentless Pursuit and Vicious Agility are awesome. I’ve been wishlisting a movement speed increase after charge for years, and I really like the rotational symbiosis of charge and heroic leap reducing one another.
  • Curiously, Mountain Thane and Colossus both offer more lockdown/control bonuses with their emphasis on stuns, though I don’t think it’s an inherently bad thing that Slayer doesn’t. Especially if both Arms and Fury will be using Bladestorm in TWW, Slayer’s ability to interrupt and stun while Bladestorming provides its own inherent lockdown value.
  • No mention of Ravager makes it seem as though it will be removed entirely for Fury, and I’m curious how the community will react to the return of “forced channeled downtime” from hardcasted Bladestorms after an expansion of moving away from it.
    • There may be some concern that Slayer being the only spec that can stun or interrupt during Bladestorm could emphasize it too much compared to Mountain Thane in some content, though this can be compensated by having good knowledge of when interrupts and stuns are/not needed.
    • I also like Artunias’ suggestion of linking hardcast Bladestorm and Enrage, but we’ll have to wait till alpha to see how much of a problem that will be in practice.

Overall, a very exciting reveal, and I’m really looking forward to testing this one.

21 Likes
5

Very underwhelming tree from a Fury aspect. This hero tree feels like “Oh you play Fury? No, here’s more Arms warrior.” You guys are giving Fury Bladestorm just so this tree works out. That’s not fun.

The main thing of the tree is “you bladestorm sometimes with free procs, oh and its buffed. You execute more often. Here’s some cooldowns too”

There’s no Flavor within the Tree. What is the “Slayer” supposed to be? Its currently feeling like an extension of arms, a “calculated heavy strikes” thing, nothing close to fury’s “gotta kill gotta kill” flavor. Colossus got a size increase amongst other flavorful talents, Slayer effectively has nothing.

You guys got Colossus and Mountain Thane down very well, Thematic and flavorful to the identity of both of their respective spec pairings. A Slayer sounds like someone who’s on a rampage, bloodthirsty, high speed and hectic. Sounds like someone who’s battle hardened from a blood craze rather than withstanding hits. Sounds like someone being thrown into a fight pit, like Varian Wrynn when he became Lo’gosh.

From a gameplay standpoint, maybe the talents are strong, it sounds like the majority of people REALLY like Slayer and are excited for Fury to get Bladestorm. To me it just feels like an Extension of Arms. I play Fury so I don’t have to play arms, the Hero tree shouldn’t focus so heavily on the gameplay and flavor of one of the two specs it covers. Feels like a massive let down for Fury.

18 Likes
6

Absolutely perfect. You guys killed it on this tree and it’s now my favorite Hero Spec revealed so far!

Fury having access to Bladestorm once again is the icing on the cake!

13 Likes
7

It has a couple issues that other more skilled warriors have already mentioned, but I’m overall happy with the tree so far.

1 Like
8

PLEASE, tunnel vision is a good ideia and good for M+ or bosses you don’t execute or cleave fights, so please, PLEASE, I BEG, don’t make it reset, just cease the momentum for the Warrior player and for the character. Let us have the buff all time and decay when nothing is happening. THank YOU!

3 Likes
9

2nd this, get rid of the choice node and just rename it like Freight Train or Frenzied Strikes or something where your Auto Attack speed increases while in combat, decaying while out of combat

2 Likes
10

warriors have a build that doesn’t use bloodthirst, the only reason we used bloodthirst the past 2 seasons is because the set bonus buffed its damage in a massive way. So tying talents to bloodthirst without addressing that issue first is a bit of a miss step (aka bloodthirst isnt fun to press, make me excited to press bloodthirst)

That and make bladestorm deal damage as if enraged.

other than those two things, tree looks great.

4 Likes
11

So far, I’m pretty impressed with the Slayer talents by far compared to the other two hero talent choices: My only quirk is with the 10% reduced CD on overpower in the bottom right or bloodthirst. Just seems like a weird choice for an entire node.

HOWEVER my big concern now comes to this, Slayer sounds dramatically better on paper at least then Colossus, and there in lies the problem at least from an Arms perspective. The utility, damage increase, self healing, and bladestorm uptime sounds amazing and great. But Colossus by comparrison now seems… why would you pick it? (at least on paper) Obv this opinion might change based on testing in beta and stuff when most of us get a chance to play around with it but, i’m concerned about the balancing between the two. Colossus feels like it needs a lo t of it’s nodes reworked or flavored up to feel more impactful and more into the fantasy, or at least hit very hard with the active ability to ever be considered over Slayer for any form of content (As it is now on paper.)

I DO NOT want to see Slayer changed very much though personally. I think it sounds really fun to play around with and I cannot wait to test it out for myself. However I hope you all see this large difference between the two for arms and buff the weaker one (or hope that some of the passives are placeholders for colossus)

Overall for Slayer though? 9/10 Rating for me, pretty heccing good sounding! Sounds like it has pretty fun synergy feeding back and forth into itself between execute and bladestorm.

2 Likes
12

The developers already confirmed that Fury would be reworked to address the Bloodthirst vs Raging Blow competition during the Mountain Thane talent Q&A, so Slayer not having any mention of Raging Blow implies that Bloodthirst will probably be the basis of Fury rotations going forward in TWW.

Of course, we’ll have to see exactly how those changes manifest once we get into alpha testing, but this issue has likely already been resolved.

6 Likes
13

This how I felt looking at it. It seems tailored to Arms with an “Oh right, we need to make this work for Fury too” as an afterthought. Especially after Mountain Thane is also pushing Fury into Prot’s thunderclap. Feels like Fury has to choose between getting shoehorned into Arm’s abilities or Prot’s abilities.

The main talent of Mountain Thane does trigger from Raging Blow, not Bloodthirst. Obviously everything is subject to change but that implies that Raging Blow will still be a core part of the rotation. Who knows what sort of talent tree choices will change though.

3 Likes
14

This was kinda my thought as well. I had hoped for something involving maybe bleeds (lots of bloodshed when you’re SLAYING). Connecting execute and Bladestorm is cool, but I kinda liked not having a channel as Fury

1 Like
15

My only real feedback is that I hope Bladestorm is actually a good button in War Within, because it…isn’t right now.

Oh, and here’s my obligatory “I hate Test of Might, please remove it” comment.

5 Likes
16

Slayer’s Focus and Constant Pressure serve next to no purpose for Arms when OP CD resets via rage spend anyway. Rarely am I in the situation that OP is just not available and even then you want to spend rage anyway given that Test of Might and Anger Management feel like they have no competition from the 2nd choice.
In addition: Marked for Execution is yet another debuff to look at making it possible for Arms to have

  • Mortal Wounds
  • Deep Wounds
  • Rend
  • Thunderous Roar
  • Fatality
  • Marked for Execution
  • Executioner’s Precision

on the target at the same time.

When will we get consolidation for some of these Debuffs? Do we really need 3 distinct bleeds? Why not just modifiers for the one bleed debuff (Deep Wounds) that alone would just work.

5 Likes
17

So both of the arms hero trees focus on channeled abilities that make you lose control of your character for the duration.

My favourite spec has been arms since vanilla, and I absolutely hate Bladestorm and Demolish. You have to give arms at least one tree that doesnt rely on these.

IF I WANTED TO CHANNEL SPELLS I WOULD PLAY A CASTER

4 Likes
18

Turn Bladestorm into Ravager. Change Constant Pressure into Ravager move speed boost/pickup and follow boost. Frenetic Fury can just be an empowered Whirlwind. Allow Tunnel Vision to build stacks regardless of target and fade out of combat. There, I fixed it for you.

6 Likes
19

Bladestorm changed to Ravager would be an excellent fix.

20

Im gonna be a debbie downer and say what’s the class fantasy here? Arms+Fury = bladstorming warrior which we had before talent trees. Where’s blademaster or barbarian or gladiator type warrior? Where’s the utility? Maybe while bladestorming, we enrage others buffing party damage or while in execute phase we inspire orhers to kill…Looks uninspiring…

6 Likes