Feedback: Warriors

[Tuköhama-kiljaeden]

Prot Warrior main forever.

“Spiked Shield” scaling with attack power instead of being a flat amount is fantastic. The entire prot tree just works and fits so well. “Never Surrender’s” rework is so synergistic it’s fantastic. I already feel like the haste/mastery or haste/crit stat choices are gonna be great. “Shield Charge” coming back and “Bitter Immunity” are 10/10.

“Battle-Scared Veteran” is what really caught my attention. Warriors getting tankier as they are dying has been something I’ve prayed for since Garrosh came out in HotS. “Spell Block” is game changing for warriors and really closes their gap in spell damage survivability without just making it a passive like Holy Shield.

For me, the prot warrior tree is a 9/10. I would change the following:

• Swap the positioning of “Fueled by Violence” and “Bolster” You have to take Last Stand to get to this side of the tree anyway and if Bolster only stays as a 10 sec CDR for LS, it’ll just feel a lot better for those who don’t want to take “Fueled by Violence.” Additionally, not taking “Bolster” and “Spiked Shield” is counter intuitive to maximize your damage.

• Remove the minimum range of “Shield Charge.” “Shield Charge” is an excellent prot alternative to “Storm Bolt” as a single target stun and aoe damage ability. Using it in packs of mobs that last a while, i.e. during Fortify weeks, “Shield Charge” is gonna have major value as a end-tree talent being able to be used without having to run/leap away then use it.

• Get rid of “Devastate” and put “Devastator” in its place. Change the wording of “Strategist” to include auto-attacks. There isn’t a warrior alive who enjoys using “Devastate” ever since Sunder Armor got removed. “Devastate” is literally an auto attack that requires a button press and a GCD.

• Have “Improved Heroic Throw” be the old Gag Order, causing it to silence for a few secs and put the Deep Wounds on “Titanic Throw.”

• Put “Side Arm” on the Class tree instead of the Fury Tree.

Questions:

• Is “Brutal Vitality” also affected by Bleeds?
• Does “Outburst” apply the ignore pain before the damage dealt, thus using the massive increased damage dealt to feed into the IP from using "Brutal Vitality?

[Wyrmslayer-icecrown]

Die By the Sword being available to all 3 specs is a bit nuts. Prot gets an extra ‘oh crap’ button, Fury becomes even tankier than it already was, and Arms gets nothing new in return for sharing with the class.

The return of Blood and Thunder is excellent, but Thunderclap itself is rather underwhelming as Arms. Even if you’re a madman and take the Avatar+TC talent node (50% more damage), it’s barely a better button to push over Whirlwind, and instead it’s relegated to being a button you press every 12 seconds to refresh Rend.
I’d like to see Rend just straight up integrated into Thunderclap if both talents are chosen, for the sake of bar compression, but it’s a minor nitpick.

The new Fury tree feels quite fun. There’s a real identity to SMF now (autoattacks galore) while TG remains familiar with the RB proc 'n spam.
Odyn’s Fury feels way more thematic as an (uncapped!!) AoE button than Bladestorm, which has always been more of an Arms thing.
It’s strange to me that Rampage doesn’t have the Enrage effect baked in, and instead you need to grab a 2nd talent to make it do so.

The new Arms tree is quite something to unpack!

The center of the Arms tree seems like it should be AoE-centric, but it has Punishment (Condemn) and Bloodsurge both locked behind Sweeping Strikes. For pure single-target fights, being able to opt out of SS would be a nice trick.

Storm of Swords feels like it should be a choice node with Fervor of Battle, as they are rather mutually exclusive. Storm of Swords itself is a really fun ability and lends to some great setups with Collateral Damage and Merciless Bonegrinder.

The bleed-centric side of the tree feels like it’s lacking interaction with multiple bleeding foes. Bloodsurge should probably be over here instead of the middle, otherwise it exists only for Dreadnaught.

Skull Banner is back! The banner being a ground-targeted ability feels like a vestige from MoP. Why not have it follow you around like the Necrolord banner?

Single target is quite fun to play with Battlelord/Exhil Blows procs on top Sudden Death+Exploiter procs, although it’s REALLY hard to not be rage capped all of the time. There’s no downtime from spamming free abilities, and a lot of rage going to waste.

The Prot tree is really good. You actually want everything, but can’t have everything, so you have to tailor it to your preferences. Extra tools to deal with spells (AoE Pummel! Super Block!) is really great, although I still miss Gag Order (Silence on Heroic Throw).
My only real feedback for Prot is that Devastator should be baseline. Devastate has always been a horrible button to push.

[Tuköhama-kiljaeden]

“My only real feedback for Prot is that Devastator should be baseline. Devastate has always been a horrible button to push.”

Preach.

[Nox-darrowmere]

Poking at the Arms Tree today first and I have been pleasantly surprised to find that I can actually make a Sword and Board DPS build. I have no idea how competitive it will be; but happy that this archetype has not been kicked to the curb.

[Warmgoat-thrall]

I only played a few dungeons today as prot and it’s damage is certainly tuned to an absurd point after looking at logs. Unsure if it’s a bug or not but the sheer output of protection was able to double or triple the damage of many dps in both AoE and Single Target.

Ignoring the tuning problems; The tree, play style, survivability, and total number of skills returned to the spec all felt amazing. I stopped playing warrior almost entirely in Shadowlands, and had stopped enjoying it much in BFA after maining it since BC, and this new iteration makes me fall in love with the spec all over again.

[Kaivax]

Now that this new talent system is being tested, we have some brief thoughts for you all.

Beyond the mid-point of the class tree, we feel that the left side of the tree is more finalized than the right. We’re working on making these feel equally appealing.

We’re also working on expanding pathing where we can. Due to the way dependencies work, it isn’t always possible to open up choices. Generally speaking, we don’t want to put players in a situation where they choose talents that affect abilities they don’t have.

We’ve seen some strong feelings – both positive and negative – regarding Signet of Ancient Kings. We’re aware of this and iterating on adjustments to it.

Our known issues include:

• The Protection specialization doesn’t suffer a penalty while using Defensive Stance. This will be updated in a future test build.
• Battle-Scared Veteran displays the wrong information. It should be: A damage reduction value of 75% and a duration of 8 seconds.
• Berserker Shout’s tooltip isn’t displaying correctly. This ability replaces Berserker Rage and mimics its functionality. It also breaks Fear for party members within 15 yards.
• Weapon Specialization Talents are damage buffs; they do not enable new functionality. For example, Dual Wield specialization should not allow Arms or Protection Warriors to dual wield. We’ll likely change some names to avoid future confusion.
• Fatality is not intended to Crit. Its damage will be balanced around this.

Thank you for the feedback!

[Dreadsurge-sargeras]

Disclaimer: Not a Warrior main, and especially not a Prot Warrior main.

Ignoring tuning (because Prot is very overtuned at the moment), I’m just gonna come out and say it: the Prot Warrior tree is the best Talent tree we’ve ever gotten, in my opinion. It recaptures so much of what made BFA Protection such a beloved spec in M+ and accomplishes so much more, and it even provides Prot with some meaningful ways to contribute large amounts of important damage at the cost of survivability should it opt to go for a much more Execute-centric build. I’m personally a huge fan of options that allow players to forego healing/survivability for a bit more damage since it makes these roles a lot less stagnant when running M+ and raids more comfortably and at higher gear levels. Plus, a lot of the options Prot gets are returning classics, either in part or as a whole: Champion’s Bulwark plays like Reprisal without having to Intervene other players, Bolster is back and in good form, you have Spear of Bastion, Avatar+Unstoppable Force+Thunderlord ft. Anger Management is here, we have The Wall with little opportunity cost, you can take BSC+Booming Voice VERY early on… and you even have new stuff like a Cheat Death and Spell Block to patch up some of Prot’s other weaknesses.

Prot has so much amazing build diversity due to the sheer amount of freedom the amount of 1-point nodes grants players, and as such this makes the spec’s playstyle incredibly expressive. You can go for a high-ST Execute build, you can go for a Shield Slam/Thunder Clap-heavy AoE build, you can go for a much tankier build with Bolster and Ignore Pain/block talents, you can run a Ravager build… realistically, you can do almost anything and it’ll play extremely fluidly. This tree has absolutely nailed how Prot Warrior should feel to play, and having so many options is the exact kind of stuff I do want to see from a spec tree.

That said, I do wish Devastate was axed entirely and Devastator replaced it for good; Prot is extremely high APM, even while taking Devastator, and it provides very nice, very frequent variance in how the spec can play.

Overall, though? I personally believed at the time I posted some initial feedback that the Enhancement Shaman spec tree was a slightly-flawed masterpiece of a tree and that it would be the gold standard for future talent trees going forward; I still stand by this. But if that’s the gold standard, Prot’s spec tree is the diamond standard. This spec feels fantastic to play in many respects and I’m actually excited to keep playing it some more now, once a healer decides to queue up for some Heroics on Alpha. It’s just that good.

[Virilher-sargeras]

Firstly, thank you for this Protection tree! I don’t know if its strong enough for Mythic raid representation to recover, but its certainly strong enough to fend off demands to main swap.

Spear of Bastion was the best choice to carry forward from the covenant ability system, but I wonder if you could fit in the effusive anima accelerator talent from the Mikanikos Soulbind. Specifically the cd reduction per target hit (4 seconds per enemy to a maximum of 20 seconds). This is what makes spear so fun for m+.

To me, it would need to compete with/replace ravager, giving you essentially the option of spear every m+ trash pull, or spear + ravager every other pull.

Again thanks! Excited for the gameplay to come in DF!

[Ironfiend-area-52]

The most frustrating thing for me, as a player who has played fury warrior since the original Open Beta, is the complete gutting of Execution as our class DEFINING damage ability.

I don’t know in what world it made sense to take our most epic rage spender, responsible for so many “Oh man here come the Warriors” at 20% moments, and turn it into a rage builder.

Bloodthirst could’ve been given a second charge, or furious strikes could’ve been turned into the builder, but taking Execute and ignoring it’s historical significance in the very IDENTITY of what makes a Warrior a Warrior feels like the person who did it never played Warrior before.

I’d like the dev team to take a real pass at Execute, returning it to it’s former glory as the THING that made Warriors just rocket up the meters! Give every class their unique time to shine.

There are many ways to do this with execute, including retrofitting some of the options on the talent tree and replacing with Execute. Dragon Roar for example comes to mind, could be a talent that makes Execute stronger sub 20%, or makes it have a 30second cooldown for huge damage sub 20% with an AOE component.

I’d just like more creativity and understanding from the Warrior devs about the importance of Execute, and a mindset that doesn’t relegate it to being an orange colored bloodthirst on my bars.

[Fervor-stormrage]

Hello!

I 'm loving the current direction of both warrior dps specs, having played a warrior as my main in expansions past. Some of my issues with Arm’s smoothness has been resolved with some of the new talents. Being able to use Blood and Thunder on fury in conjunction with Odyn’s Fury and Thunderous Roar is really flavorable and something that feels very new with a bit more set up required than what we would usually see in the past.

The perceived need to spec into raging blow and damage cooldowns if you want to go Titans Grip, and Frenzied Flurry’s enrage on crits being exclusive to one-handed weapons, feels a little restrictive. I’ve heard some feedback from friends that they would love to be able to pick that up and still go TG instead of picking up something like Onslaught. The defined flavors do make sense though.

I would also like to use this opportunity to suggest a new ability for Arms; something I’ve wanted to see since Legion. Ever since fighting Aggramar, I’ve wanted an ability inspired by Taeshalach Technique. I imagine it would function similarly to New Moon for druids, and you could have the different phases of the ability provide things like an AoE rend, deep wounds, and a warbreaker or AoE execute finisher for example. It could work as a counter to Bladestorm as a less bursty, sustained and lower cooldown damage option. It would also allow for a bit more dynamic rotation, and function as another rage spender, as I am currently capping on rage very frequently as Arms at the moment. Aggramar is one of the few bosses that are an example of “big guy with big weapon” that Arms could really draw on to define their fantasy and flavor in the game.

I can’t wait to see how things develop, keep up the good work!

[Vontre-hyjal]

I’m just a sometimes warrior alt but my initial impression of all three specs is extremely positive. Talents have directly allowed me to fix many issues that bummed me out and pushed me off the class before:

• I can play fury warrior at much less APM before. This game already hurts my hands, so having a more auto-attack focused build without the crazy haste and button mashing is a game changer. This spec instantly went from meh to fun for me.
• Arms I was able to make a build that’s not just eternally rage-capped mashing short cooldowns all the time. I like being able to sideline overpower and instead focus on huge mortal strike and whirlwind hits. There are also some cool overpower buffing abilities in there too.
• Prot seems neat but I haven’t had opportunity to tank yet, bit harder to get a group rn. I made a build that goes all-in on shield slam generating tons of rage and block value and such.

I think the common through-line in all these trees is that I’m able to pick a few abilities that I really like and just really buff the hell out of them. I like Shield Slam, it’s my favorite, so I make a build focused on that. Mortal Strike is cool, don’t like Overpower so much, so hey. I don’t know how exactly this will hold up to balance tuning… but my initial impression is extremely positive. Most positive of any class so far.

[Archimtiros-sargeras]

General Feedback/Main Points

At this point I have several pages worth of feedback, but I’ll try to keep this relatively consolidated to each tree. The TL:DR version is that while the individual talents within the Class, Arms, and Fury trees are largely great additions, the layouts and pathing in particular are very linear, resulting in the majority of builds using 90% of the same talents. I really like what I can make, but I feel like I keep making the same thing every time. This may be intentional, as I don’t know how many “hard” choices there are supposed to be before the final tier, but it feels like I end up taking all the throughput talents and have nothing left for any of the defensive/utility/tertiary options. Consolidating some of those “automatic choices” (like the many “improved” rank talents) and adding additional pathing could open up new alternatives.

In general, each tree could use more cross-pathing between branches, particularly around rows 4-6 and 8-9), in order to alleviate cookie cutter build dependencies, but the biggest offenders here are the “+2% secondary stat” nodes in Row 8 of all three trees. These feel particularly uninspired, especially when the Protection tree has vastly superior versions (Cruel Strikes vs Focused Vigor). I desperately hope they just are placeholder, considering the way they wall off the signature and capstone talents below.

Another issue is that the Arms and Fury trees feature several “Improved” talents which are virtually required for the spells to function correctly, the most egregious of which include Improved Execute (both), Improved Whirlwind (Fury), Improved Rampage, and Improved Enrage (this one may be borderline insofar as “required”, but so high in value that you’ll never not take it). This severely limits early build diversity and actively works against nearby talents which don’t provide such specialization-defining effects. Highly recommend baking those listed above into their respective baseline abilities.

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Class Talent Tree Analysis

• Battle Stance and Berserker Stance both do the same thing - increase damage. Players will simply choose the stronger of the two (Battle is currently ~4x stronger for Fury and even more for Arms) without ever switching to the other. Stances may be nostalgic, but these don’t really serve a purpose or oppose one another the way Defensive Stance’s combined benefit and drawback does.

• Fast Footwork and Siphoning Strikes seem like nice to have talents that will rarely be used. You will never not talent Rally, and if you do have leftover points, they will go into Inspiring Presence, Spell Reflect, Storm Bolt, or Piercing Howl before Cacophonous Roar. In short, the number of “required” utility nodes alongside prerequisite talents for progressing deeper in the tree make it very hard to take some of these otherwise compelling choices.

• Rallying Cry is missing the rank 2 effect, similar to many other spells which did not have them turned into follow-on “improved” talents.

• Cacophonous Roar needs to be much stronger in order to justify its placement as dead end talent. Dan_War suggested replacing it with some form of Menace (if not the knockback, at least the cower in place), which would be much more useful from a PvE perspective.

• Intervene is a great mobility tool that I hate using, as the attack-interception has a very good chance of getting you killed in split second situations where you don’t have time to choose who to use it on. I would very much like a version of this without that effect, perhaps with an optional follow-on talent re-adding that effect alongside safeguard for increased value.

• Double Time, Honed Reflexes, Massacre, Die by the Sword, Furious Blows, Overwhelming Rage, and Frothing Berserker are fantastic talents that every Warrior will want… and every Warrior will have, because there is literally no other way to path down the left or right hand side of the trees without taking them. There’s zero diversity here.

• Rend, Thunderclap, Blood & Thunder, and Crushing Force are questionable inclusions for Fury (technically usable, but bloating the rotation and taking rage away from Rampage), but the only way to progress down the middle path toward Dauntless Duelist. More on this in the Fury-specific feedback, but better pathing options would solve the issue without necessitating their removal. Another option would be simply adding Rampage damage to Crushing Force.

• Thunderclap costs less rage and deals more damage than Rend, and while my intent isn’t to focus on tuning in this feedback, the addition of Blood & Thunder creates some awkward gameplay, whereby Rend is only cast one time and then continually refreshed with Thunder Clap. Although Thunder Clap has a cooldown, its less than half the duration of the bleed, making Rend a mostly one-time per-combat keybind, which just doesn’t feel good.

• Two-Handed Specialization is pointless for Protection/SMF Fury and Dual Wield Specialization is unusable by Arms/Prot, yet they railroad those specializations into the left or right hand sides of the tree for no particular reason. While this creates some semblance of forced diversity, it’s not really a choice, and there’s further concern that Titan’s Grip actually benefits from both simultaneously. Perhaps that’s an intentional balancing mechanism, but it feels like these two talents might be better served as a split-talent choice more centrally located within the tree… or replaced entirely, as currently they feel too strong to pass up - build defining, without affecting gameplay.

• Spear of Bastion is a good addition, but now that it no longer deals Arcane damage, please consider toning down the visual, as it can be nearly impossible to see ground target effects underneath the graphic.
• There’s also a very good argument to be made here for reducing Spear to a 45s cooldown in order to better align with other Warrior cooldowns (Recklessness, Warbreaker, Avatar, and the slew of new 45s CDs), or otherwise baking in Mikanikos’ CDR portion of Effusive Anima Accelerator, which was near universally used with the ability throughout Shadowlands - this could be a good follow-on talent in place of Piercing Verdict (both increasing damage, but reducing the cooldown instead of generating Rage).

• Signet of Tormented Kings is extremely divisive due to having very strong potential but significant room for failure when you get the “wrong” proc (triggering Bladestorm on single target, or not getting Bladestorm in AoE). Most players don’t enjoy that RNG, but consider it too strong not to use, so if this is carried forward out of Shadowlands, I feel like a good change would be to make it only proc spells that specialization can use (e.g. Avatar can proc Recklessness and Recklessness can proc Avatar for Fury, but not Bladestorm. Likewise, Avatar would proc Bladestorm for Arms and Bladestorm would proc Avatar, but not Recklessness). This would remove the frustrating RNG element and make it more of a tactical tool, while in turn allowing for more controllable tuning.

• Shockwave has very high opportunity cost, to the point where DPS will feel very hard pressed to take it over integral tools like Spear/EM and Avatar/Signet in M+, though that might actually be a good thing to keep AoE stuns in check.

• Thunderous Roar is virtually identical in function to Odyn’s Fury, which seems strange. Should probably continue to move further away from the unrealized dragon-theme as well.

Overall, the class tree presents a number of downright wonderful tools, though while the top portion is very flexible in terms of cross pathing for customization, the middle and bottom portions have far less, especially when certain specializations are driven toward their associated weapon-passives.

I do wish there were a little more Charge/Intervene/Heroic Leap support though. Things like double/triple leap would be a very nice inclusion.

Some players have suggested Anger Management take the place of Dauntless Duelist, though I’m not sure this would work out too well, since it would become a mandatory pickup and only affects spells in each spec tree. Another popular request is moving the 2h/DW Spec talents there.

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Arms and Fury specific analysis to follow in separate posts.

[Archimtiros-sargeras]

Arms Talent Tree Analysis

Overall, the Arms tree has a lot of great talents, and I really like that it’s leaning into Execute more so than Fury, in order to once again distinguish how the two specs operate, rather than just doing slightly different flavors of the same thing. That said, there aren’t a lot of distinct “playstyles”, or rotation modification outside of introducing additional buttons which quickly bloat the rotation to the point of discomfort, especially in multitarget due to juggling Rend, Thunder Clap, Cleave, Storm-wind (that’s what I’m calling it now), Bladestorm/Bonegrinder, Spear/Roar, and single target abilities to stack Sweeping Strikes/Collateral Damage.

• Like Fast Footwork and Siphoning Strikes in the class tree, it’s very hard to find room to take Fueled by Violence when Barbaric Training and Fervor of Battle have obvious throughput value. As is, 9 out of 11 points in the top section are throughput focused, which leaves very little room for PvE players to customize.

• Fervor of Battle is in a strange position on the tree, in a spot where virtually every Warrior will take it. Considering it’s transformative nature in consolidating the rotation, I would expect it to be further down (it’s especially intriguing considering the talent’s conflicting design with Storm of Swords, requiring you to place Slam back on your bars anyway).

• Sweeping Strikes and Colossus Smash both appear to use their Rank 1 versions, with significantly longer cooldowns than on live. In the case of Sweeping Strikes, I would recommend baking in both the rank 2 and rank 3 effects, while replacing the very lackluster “Improved Sweeping Strikes” talent with one that increased the target count to 3 targets in order to better compete with Collateral Damage.

• Exploit the Weakness currently increases Tactician’s 1.4% proc chance to 4% per rage, which seems unintended since it results in every rage spender having an 80-160% chance to trigger the effect. The spell is clearly based on the artifact weapon trait, which instead correctly multiplies the rage cost of the ability (though that version also had three ranks + relics and no opportunity cost, so the Dragonflight talent version should probably be somewhere in the range of ~30%).

• Improved Overpower and Mortal Strike are boring fillers, especially for 2 point talents. Feels like it would be more appropriate to separate Dreadnaught’s “Overpower has two charges” in place of Improved Overpower, to break up the talent’s effects and power.

• Fracture reduces the duration alongside the tick rate, resulting in the same amount of damage in a shorter period of time, but Deep Wounds gets refreshed (overwriting the duration/tick rate), and Rend then needs to be recast early, which is something of a rage loss. As a result, the actual damage potential from this talent is fairly low in PvE.

• Collateral Damage has fantastic synergy with Storm of Swords, but feels much harder to stack while also adding Cleave and Thunder Clap (Blood & Thunder) to the multitarget toolkit. Still, it vastly outshines Improved Sweeping Strikes (see previous feedback above).

• Cleave is a great ability that feels like it contributes to crowding the multitarget rotation when added on top of Rend, Thunder Clap, Spear of Bastion, Thunderous Roar, some form of Whirlwind, and continuing to use MS/Overpower/Execute during Sweeping Strikes. Given that it already benefits from Dreadnaught, I wonder if Cleave could simply replace Mortal Strike and benefit from the rest of its interactions as well?

• Bloodsurge is great callback to the one good element of WoD. Love to see it, though there is some concern that, alongside all of the class talents, Arms’ potential rage income is outpacing its ability to spend. This is probably more the fault of War Machine and Signet proccing Recklessness, but I’m reminded of the WoD alpha version of Arms in which Execute could be cast at any health % with a high (~60) rage cost, halved below 20%. Something like this could help reign in Arms positive rage economy, though it would probably need to be a bottom row and build defining talent.

• Juggernaut should have a substantially longer duration, as dropping stacks was the main complaint with the ability throughout Legion, at least 15 seconds. An idea I personally like is making it a debuff limited to one target at a time, instead of a buff on the player, with a 1-2 minute duration - ensuring it will never fall off due to an intermission or downtime, but cannot be chained from one enemy to another.

• Warbreaker provides no single target benefit, while Skull Banner is of very limited personal value, locking Exploiter behind 4 very low performing talent points. Unless Warbreaker is actually intended to halve the cooldown of Colossus Smash, it feels like that cluster of talents has a poor economy for points.

• Fatality’s additional damage should probably not be able to crit
  (addressed in recent bluepost, thanks!)

• Unhinged is uninteresting, one of those talents that’s good when it’s strong and boring when it’s not. I would much rather see something like the datamined Dance of Death extension for Bladestorm (at a reasonable number, say +50%, capping at the original duration).
• The talent would have a use if Bladestorm’s procced from Signet of Tormented Kings triggered it, since Bladestorm procs are usually cancelled due to their lack of single target value but the two do not currently interact.

• Sharpened Blades/Blunt Instruments are surprisingly tasteful ways of implementing this kind of customization, given that there’s no significant opportunity cost when changing weapons, though I’m not sure why they need to be associated with weapon types at all. I do worry a bit about the balance, but that’s a tuning issue (for anyone still worried about Skull Banner being “required”, it should be pointed out that this talent is numerically, if not always situationally, stronger than Skull Banner buffing 5 players combined).

• Exploiter would seem to work against Juggernaut in terms of resource efficiency, despite being a potential prerequisite. This may be a matter of tuning, but it feels like anti-synergy which is at odds with its dependency.

Talent ideas I’d like to see: 3 target Sweeping Strikes, a stronger Cleave replacing Mortal Strike, and some kind of defensive option to match Enraged Regeneration. It could also be nice if Arms had some kind of bigger rage dump to help with high-rage income builds and make Deadly Calm a little stronger, since right now it only adds a few more low-priority Slam or Whirlwind casts to the rotation.

Arms should also use Condemn’s audio/visual for Execute, if not all the time, then at least when Punishment is talented.

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Fury to follow.

[Archimtiros-sargeras]

Fury Tree Talent Analysis

Fury has some of the best laid out build synergy on any tree I’ve seen thus far, making it very easy for players to understand how to path in order to create an effective build, which is great for ease of use. That said, it also feels a bit one-sided, with far more emphasis on empowering Bloodthirst than its equivalent Raging Blow affecting talents (for clarity, I love each and every one of these talents, so I don’t want them removed, just feel like Raging Blow is far outdone).

SMF vs TG is an area which makes me very apprehensive, as it presents unique issues to Fury Warriors looting both 1h and 2h weapons, yet incapable of using both together. While I understand the intent behind allowing players live their interpretation of the Fury fantasy, and the obvious balancing that requires, I’m extremely worried about the potential for one to become best in one situation, while another is better elsewhere, resulting in Fury Warriors feeling like they need to maintain four weapons across two incompatible sets (e.g. if SMF were noticeably better in ST and TG better in AoE).

The top portion of the tree, referenced in my first post, is saturated with “Improved” versions of baseline spells which are downright required for them to function correctly, specifically Improved Execute, Improved Whirlwind, Improved Rampage, and Improved Enrage (this one may be borderline insofar as “required”, but so high in value that you’ll never not take it). This severely limits early build diversity and actively works against nearby talents which don’t provide such specialization-defining effects. As such, I highly recommend baking those spells into their respective baseline abilities.

• Warpaint, Invigorating Fury, and Concussive Blows (to a slightly lesser degree) have disproportionately high opportunity cost relative to their function, largely due to the “Improved” problem outlined above.

• Improved Bloodthirst should be a one point talent in order to free up a point to take Warpaint, Invigorating Fury, or Concussive Blows. As it currently stands, every single point in the talent tree outside of Enraged Regeneration (which is required to reach Rampage) is spent on throughput, creating a disproportionate opportunity cost to take those defensive/utility options (Concussive is sort of throughput, but its main value is the reduced cooldown on Pummel).

• Rampage is downright essential to playing Fury and feels like it should be much higher in the tree, probably swapped with Enraged Regeneration (in retrospect, this creates a new problem with Invigorating Fury placement, so leaving Rampage where it is may be the lesser of two evils, but Enraged Regen may need to change regardless in order to address the issue of Arms having one less CD than Fury). However, Improved Rampage should be baked into the baseline effect, as Rampage does not properly function without it and players should not be led to a situation where it is skipped. It also makes Frenzy harder to take, and there’s plenty of “improved” talent tax in the tree already.

• Interestingly, it is possible to create a Rampage-less build which uses Rend and Slam as spenders while relying on Frenzied Flurry for Enrage, and its DPR is surprisingly high, but the gameplay is pretty awful due to endlessly alternating BT and Slam without much room for any of the (several) other buttons. I don’t mind that this potential exists, but I think it should be more obvious that players are generally intended to use Rampage in normal gameplay and a higher position on the tree would lead players toward that conclusion, without completely requiring it for those who wish to experiment.

• If a radically alternative playstyle were to be encouraged, I would suggest putting Rampage on a split-talent choice alongside a new talent that removes Slam from the global cooldown with a hasted 1.5s cooldown. This would mirror Fury’s much beloved Heroic Strike gameplay from Mists of Pandaria (or Arms’ Focused Rage build in Legion), and actually allow Slam to be used as an effective rage dump without getting in the way of pressing Bloodthirst, Raging Blow, Whirlwind, Execute, or any of the several talented cooldowns (up to 7 across the two trees).

• Recklessness and its sub-talents face new issues due to the influx of new 45s cooldown talents. Namely, several cooldowns don’t line up naturally anymore, an issue which was previously the subject of major criticism during Legion.

• Specifically: Reck (1.5m) aligns with Avatar (1.5m) and every other Odyn’s Fury, Ravager, and Thunderous Roar (45s), or every third Siegebreaker (30s), but not Spear of Bastion (1m). Anger Management reduces that to ~1m though, which aligns with Spear and every other Siegebreaker, but no longer aligns with Avatar, Odyn’s Fury, Ravager, or Thunderous Roar. I previously suggested that Mikanikos’ Effusive Anima Accelerator should replace Piercing Verdict as a sub talent for Spear of Bastion, as that would reduce Spear to 45s and compete much better with Elysian Might - this would correct Spear lining up with Reck on a 1.5m or 45s CD, but Anger Management still needs to be addressed.

• Anger Management could be adjusted to an average 45s cooldown, or just take on a more reliable solution of reducing the cooldown by 50%, since the conversion can fall short due to downtime.

• Reckless Abandon is a lackluster without frequent Recklessness procs, while the Bloodthirst replacement ability combined with Honed Reflexes results in spamming Bloodthirst every GCD, and the auto-charge on Raging Blow’s replacement has been historically problematic and near universally disliked. It also does very little in AoE, where those override abilities have much lower priority.

• A talent idea I like is reintroducing the MoP version of Bloodbath, as a modifier to Recklessness, causing a % of damage done during the cooldown to be repeated as additional bleed damage. It would work similar in ST and AoE, while also playing into the new bleed theme of other talents, and could compete very well with an adjusted Anger Management.

• Focus in Chaos is a fantastic readdition to the game, Fresh Meat is indispensable in Mythic+/open world content, and Cold Steel, Hot Blood is a fan favorite (even if it should not become as strong as it was in BfA). This feedback is mostly focusing on problem areas, but these are all great inclusions that I’m really pleased to have and want to protect at all costs!

• Frenzied Flurry passively maintains Enrage at a very high uptime on its own, and could probably be lowered to ~30% chance on crit, but should also split its chance to proc between the two ranks. Currently you get most of the value out of the first point, while still pathing lower on the tree thanks to points elsewhere (maybe this is a good thing? I kind of wish multi-point talents didn’t require full points to continue pathing).

• Annihilator is a separate source of damage which does not actually benefit from Berserker Stance, despite leaning into the concept of a more passive auto-attack build. Some question over whether this talent is intended to change, given the initial bluepost suggesting it replace Raging Blow (though I love transformative and replacement talents that allow players to customize their rotation, so I’m not against this).

• Wrath and Fury feels strange as a follow-on from Titan’s Grip, but it could be fine if it were more impactful. Currently, the “Raging Blow talent build” is very much outweighed by the Bloodthirst one, so some kind of buff or new effect could be warranted.

• Pulverize doesn’t play well with other Enrage effects, as Enrage is almost guaranteed to be refreshed early due to the extra 35-70 rage generated from Onslaught, overwriting the 8 second Enrage with a standard 4 second one. I wonder if a better follow-on talent might simply increase the default duration of Enrage to 5 seconds instead, to better compete with Frenzied Flurry?

• Odyn’s Fury should probably generate Rage, like virtually every other offensive ability in Fury’s toolkit. 15-20 would put it in line with other attacks and the Odyn proc from Patch 7.2 Death and Glory version of the spell. It would also be a good excuse to use the updated visual, since the base version is nearly identical to Whirlwind.

• Siegebreaker isn’t particularly well beloved by the community, since it’s seen as a slightly reflavored Colossus Smash, but I can live with it. Deafening Crash on the other hand feels underwhelming, and I think a better version could either reduce the cooldown (to help Siegebreaker align with the various new 45s CDs, which you really want it to buff) or simply reintroduce Deathmaker from Shadowlands.

• Ravager seems like an odd inclusion for Fury, though it makes sense given some players’ dislike of Bladestorm loss of control. There’s some question of whether it’s supposed to trigger Signet of Tormented Kings, though it’s probably better that it doesn’t or Fury would have three ways of triggering it vs only two for Arms. Storm of Steel does feel kind of weak for a last-point talent compared to Depths of Insanity though, and I wonder if it couldn’t also be a minor form of the datamined Dance of Death, capped at a reasonable value.

Talents I’d like to see included: Fan of Longswords in place of Improved Rampage, Bloodbath modifier for Recklessness, ability replacements to majorly modify the rotation, and my most unlikely suggestion: an optional spammy off-GCD alternative to Rampage.

I’ve also been brainstorming the idea of rearranging the Titan’s Grip side of the tree; moving Wrath and Fury where Onslaught is and putting Onslaught where Pulverize is. Titan’s Grip would then be followed by a new talent which increases the default duration of Enrage to 5-6 seconds in order to better compete with the higher Enrage uptime from Frenzied Flurry on the other side of the tree (VISUAL REFERENCE).

The increased Enrage uptime would be more consistent than the current version of Pulverize, which is almost always immediately overwritten by a fresh Enrage, while giving both SMF and TG different flavors of “increased Enrage uptime”.

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Bug Listing Addendum

• Cold Steel, Hot Blood currently generates 8 rage per proc, rather than the intended 1.
• Annihilator cleaves multiple targets via Whirlwind, but does not consume stacks.
• Seismic Reverberation causes Revenge to chain-proc itself several thousand times.
• Fracture causes the primary target’s bleeds to tick out in 1 second rather than 3x faster. Targets cleaved via Sweeping Strikes tick out correctly.
• Changing specializations between Arms and Fury unlearns Execute until relogging, sometimes causes other talent replacements (Warbreaker) to break.
• Warbreaker (sometimes?) isn’t reduced by Anger Management, and has a 1.5m cooldown despite being listed at 45s (presumably missing the Rank 2 spell hookup).
• Recklessness, Rallying Cry, and Sweeping Strikes are also all missing their rank 2s, without any associated talent to add them back.
• Rend can’t be cleaved with Whirlwind as Fury, which seems inconsistent, though it would undermine Thunder Clap/Blood & Thunder (frankly I think this all needs to be redesigned though, as it doesn’t feel like Rend is really meant to be a part of Fury’s rotation).
• Fury’s version of Whirlwind has no rage cost even when Improved Whirlwind is not talented, the Improved version simply adds the rage generation and cleave effect.
• Elysian Might does not currently work at all.
• Fury Execute is unlearned upon changing specs, until log out. Some class talents (at least Double Time and Bounding Stride) can also break this way.
• War Machine in the class tree uses the Protection version for every spec, which is probably fine for Fury due to not generating a large percentage of their rage from auto attacks, but is incredibly impactful for Arms. Not sure what the goal is for rage economy, but it may need a spec-specific adjustment.
• Massacre in the class tree appears to use the Arms version, which does not reduce the cooldown of Fury’s Execute. Not entirely sure how I feel about this alongside all the other changes adding to the rotation, but I do think the every 3rd GCD tempo flowed better (at least before Honed Reflexes threw everything off).

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I won’t be covering Prot, since that’s not my forte and there are others better suited to give that feedback, but initial impressions have come across as very positive. My only contribution is that while I don’t believe Skull Banner is strong enough to be a “must bring Arms Warrior” talent, rather than give it to Fury, I feel like if it has to exist at all, it might be good as a Protection-only option. That would give Warrior tanks something akin to Mass Grip/Stampeding Roar/Ring of Peace, while making it far more difficult to stack several banners within in one raid.

Thanks for coming to my TedTalk.

[Zomav-bleeding-hollow]

Some general thoughts for Fury here.

Warrior tree:

Berserker stance is currently super weak compared to battle stance. Would never use in its current iteration. Other than that I actually really like the top part of this tree to be honest. A lot of actual choices that can be changed depending on content and playstyle. Leech and move speed seem like the more useless ones here, but could have a place in PvP.

Middle section is where I start to have huge issues. Putting Rend in here feels awful for Fury. Having to maintain a dot is just not the playstyle people want for this spec. Having it on a choice node makes it even worse because for a dps class you ALWAYS take the option that gives you more throughput so it feels completely mandatory. Couple that with the issue of then having to take Thunderclap and Blood and Thunder in order to spread Rend in aoe and you just had to pick up three talents you didn’t want to play because that’s how you deal the most damage in this tree. As Fury (and probably Arms, but I don’t play that), why would I ever want to put Thunderclap on my bar. If you’re forcing me to play Rend already, just let me spread that through Whirlwind instead. It’s already our aoe spreader, why add a second one.
Cacophonous Roar I don’t really care about but nobody is ever taking this. Crushing Force is a worthless node for Fury, and yet it connects from War Machine which you’ll really only pick up from a Single Minded Fury build. I just don’t follow the logic here. I don’t really get Overwhelming Rage either, honestly. You spend rage as you get it in almost every situation, why would I need more? It seems unnecessary, but you have to take it going down that side. Everything else is what it is, but please tell me why every choice node in this section is a choice between throughput or utility. Again, if you’re playing dps there is no choice. You always pick the throughput talent. Nobody is picking Pain and Gain over Rend. Nobody is picking One-handed Weapon Specialization over Dauntless Duelist, etc. If the intention here is that one choice is for Prot and one is for dps, I guess it sort of makes sense but it still FEELS BAD to have false choices.

Final section is mostly fine. Percent stat nodes are pretty boring when you have to take them and feel bad when you can’t take them, but a lot of classes have them and I don’t see this changing. Avatar feels mandatory for every spec here, honestly. It’s such a big increase comparatively to things like Spear of Bastion or Thunderous Roar (WIP, I know). Signet is a whole other conversation, but I’ll throw my two cents in here and say I extremely dislike the random nature of it. Getting Bladestorm in aoe is great. Getting it in single-target is awful. Same the opposite way.

[Zomav-bleeding-hollow]

Fury tree:

I like a lot of the ideas here, but the implementation is ROUGH. Improved Rampage? Improved Enrage? Improved Execute? Improved Whirlwind? These are ALL things Fury essentially HAS TO HAVE in order to play in any kind of fluid playstyle. Archimtiros is right, having these as talents feels absolutely terrible. Alright, I’ve said my piece about those and won’t mention them again.

Top section once again has us choosing between throughput and utility. Why, ever, as a dps player would I take Invigorating Fury over Sudden Death? Never gonna happen. Warpaint over Improved Bloodthirst or Improved Raging Blow? Even in PvP I don’t think you take those, but that’s not really my area. Also, Improved Bloodthirst being a 2-point node and Improved Raging Blow being a 1-point node isn’t great. Just make them both 1-pointers. Also, Rampage needs to be where Enraged Regeneration is. You need this much earlier in the tree to make Fury actually work and feel good to play.

Middle section I ALMOST love with a few exceptions. The playstyle difference between left and right sides is great, in theory. As long as Single-Minded Fury can actually compete with Titan’s Grip this expansion, I’m glad there can be an actual choice. With that in mind, PLEASE make Fury loot spec only loot one-handers then. We can go Arms loot spec to get two-handers but having both in our loot pool is bad and without that there’s no way we can target one-handed weapons exclusively. Outlaw has this where they can equip daggers but in order to get them to drop they have to change loot specs. Just give that to us as well.
As for the abilities themselves, they look good (Improved Rampage and Improved Whirlwind not withstanding since you have to take them in every situation so just make them baseline). I don’t love Frenzy’s restriction and feel that it has a negative impact on a player’s enjoyment. Having to change targets is often essential (bolstering, bursting, enemies that have to be taken down close together). It doesn’t add anything fun or interesting and at the end of the day that’s why we play. Nerf it if you need to, 1% for 5 stacks or something. Just get rid of the restriction. I’d like to see Meat Cleaver in the middle of the tree as well. We all need aoe, make it more accessible.

Bottom section looks great, in all honesty. Needs some tuning to things like Odyn’s Fury (and the subsequent capstone is underwhelming), but overall I like it. I would say that I would switch Odyn’s Fury with Cadence of Fujieda. Having access to both big aoes if you go down the right side but not if you go down the left side seems weird. This way either side gets one semi-capstone aoe and the option of going into Siegebreaker or Cadence. Hack and Slash feels weird as a capstone and never worth it. It was a good conduit in Shadowlands only because of tier and doesn’t make sense here. Likewise Depths of Insanity feels like a heavy investment at two points just for more uptime on Recklessness which has never been that strong of a major cooldown. Maybe at one point for 6 seconds it would be better.

[Archimtiros-sargeras]

The Problem

Honed Reflexes is a very good talent, but its benefits aren’t consistent across specializations. It reduces the cooldown of Bloodthirst (4.5s CD), Pummel (15s), Shield Slam (9s), and Overpower (12s) all by 1.5 seconds. So the impact on Bloodthirst is way higher than all of the other spells.

• This results in Fury casting Bloodthirst every other GCD instead of every third, significantly altering a rotation that’s been in place since Patch 5.0.4. While this sounds better, it actually makes it harder to fit all of the other buttons the new talent trees introduce into the rotation and can even make it a little more bland in some ways. When combined with Reckless Abandon, Bloodthirst’s cooldown is equal to the GCD, allowing it to be literally spammed without stopping.

Worst of all, it’s not a choice - you can’t path down the left-hand side of the class tree without taking it, so even if you wanted to skip this talent for whatever reason, you simply can’t without giving up a whole lot more.

The Suggestion

Make Honed Reflexes reduce the cooldown of Raging Blow instead of Bloodthirst. The talent will still benefit the rotation and reduce “dry spells” from running out of RB charges, without fundamentally altering the baseline rotation, and would be more consistent with reducing Overpower and Shield Slam - since all three abilities have moderate length cooldowns supported by reset mechanics.

I still like the potential for a “Bloodthirst spam” build however, so I would suggest re-adding the reduced cooldown of Bloodthirst to the lower-left of the Fury tree instead, probably a Row 9 or 10 talent replacing Cadence of Fujieda (which is relatively weak, requires time to stack, and easily falls off).

• An easy way to do this would be to make Bloodbath a standalone talent, permanently overriding Bloodthirst with higher damage and a lower cooldown version. This would allow players to build into a Bloodthirst-centric rotation competing with Hack and Slash, rather than making Bloodthirst spam the new baseline version of Fury.

TL;DR

• Replace Bloodthirst with Raging Blow in Honed Reflexes.
• Replace Cadence of Fujieda with Bloodbath (or something simliar that once agan reduces the cooldown of Bloodthirst to a 2-GCD rotation).
• This makes Raging Blow a little better, Honed Reflexes a little better balanced, and allows players to fully commit to a Bloodthirst-spamming build if they want to.

[Vapyr-moon-guard]

@Vontre-hyjal

• I can play fury warrior at much less APM before. This game already hurts my hands, so having a more auto-attack focused build without the crazy haste and button mashing is a game changer. This spec instantly went from meh to fun for me.

Just want to chime in and say this is actually huge for me, personally;
I’ve always loved Fury’s high APM and class fantasy, but I’ve been slowing down due to illness over the years, and I am starting to miss GCD’s from time to time. I was debating dropping fury as my main progression spec, and going to something like shadow priest, but these changes actually may allow me to continue to main my main class.

Having multiple playstyles like this baked into a single spec allows people to continue to play their favourite specs, even if the normal playstyle may be inaccessible or not fully viable for them for various reasons.

This does lead to a concern that x and y build may be wholly nonviable for certain types of content, PvP mainly - mostly due to the CR based rewards - but this is a very good step in the right direction for accessibility.

I’m going to be toying around with some of these slower specs to see how they feel in the coming days/ (Along ide my dream leech / self heal fury build for PvP; I have some concerns about how dampening may make this unplayable, but… that’s sort of been the norm until very recently in PvP. Keep us in mind! It’s been great being able to play my main spec in PvP for the first time in forever.)

[Archimtiros-sargeras]

Having spent more time experimenting and brainstorming, I’ve distilled my previous feedback down to a handful of main changes I’d like see applied to the Fury tree and created a handy visual reference to get a better sense of the changes.

It looks like a lot, but draws from existing spell effects rather than brand new fever dreams. The result is much better balance between the left and right sides of the tree, better alignment of CDs, and more playstyle customization. The reasoning for each change is explained in further detail below.

Swap Warpaint and Sudden Death.

• Currently, there’s no way to take defensive talents (Warpaint/Invigorating) without giving up throughput, which means they’re probably never going to be taken. This swap would require players to take one defensive choice in order to path deeper down the middle branch.

Reduced Improved Bloodthirst to 1 point.

• With Improved Bloodthirst now competing with Sudden Death, it’s better that they are both one point talents so that players can’t simply pick the cheaper pathing while still gaining throughput. This point will be made up deeper in the tree by increasing Vicious Contempt to 2 points, which also makes point expenditures between the left and right sides of the tree more equitable.

Increase Vicious Contempt to 2 points.

• This makes up for the point taken out of Improved Bloodthirst, so the left-hand side of the tree still spends the same number of points as the right. This is also a fairly strong talent in general, so it could afford to have its value broken up a bit.

Replace Cadence of Fujieda with Bloodbath (Shadowlands version).

• This works in tandem with my suggestion of adjusting Honed Reflexes, allowing players to opt into a high frequency Bloodthirst playstyle, without requiring it for everyone. Losing Cadence is fine - it wasn’t highly valued in Legion or Shadowlands, is too subject to falling off during downtime, and the increased haste doesn’t resonate with the idea of a more simplified/passive playstyle that has been drawing players toward SMF.
• If Annihilator replaces Raging Blow ala Devastator, then this would also provide natural build synergy - with more Bloodthirst casts to fill the gaps caused by the loss of Raging Blow.

Add 15-20 Rage generation to Odyn’s Fury.

• Odyn’s Fury is currently the only offensive GCD in Fury’s toolkit that does not generate or spend rage. This would effectively bake in the Odyn proc of Death & Glory from Patch 7.2.

Fan of Longswords in place of Improved Rampage.

• This provides ST value, so perhaps it needs a noticeable damage nerf (50% damage penalty to Whirlwind?), but it’s a really well liked ability and probably the number 1 community request to come forward out of Shadowlands. Taking Improved Rampage’s spot on the tree would oppose the ST nature of Frenzy, and synergize well with Meat Cleaver, though hard casting Whirlwind would still have a place, since you’re probably not casting Rampage enough to permanently maintain the WW buff outside of Reck/Ravager.

Rotate Wrath & Fury, Onslaught, & Pulverize.

• Wrath & Fury doesn’t make sense under TG, since SMF also uses Raging Blow (or benefits from the damage bonus via Annihilator), while the current form of Pulverize simply doesn’t work (it always gets overwritten by a fresh 4s Enrage).
• By rotating the three talents, Wrath and Fury is in a more accessible location to non-TG builds, Onslaught remains a standalone ability, and a new version of Pulverize increasing the default duration of Enrage mirrors the benefits of Frenzied Flurry, allowing TG builds to better compete with SMF ones.

Buff Anger Management to 45 seconds of cooldown reduction.

• Anger Management currently reduces Recklessness by an average of 30 seconds, resulting in the now 1 minute cooldown not lining up with Avatar, Thunderous Roar, Odyn’s Fury, or Ravager. Slightly buffing the rate of return (or simply making it a static -50% cooldown to work better in encounters with downtime) would fix this issue nicely.

Replace Reckless Abandon with Bloodbath (MoP/Legion version).

• Reckless Abandon has priority issues, whereby the replacement abilities are still generally lower priority than many of Fury’s other spells, greatly limiting their use in single target and especially in multitarget content when you don’t have very high Reck uptime (such as through the Sepulcher 4p bonus). The auto-charge on Crushing Blow has also been a major source of complaint throughout Shadowlands, and I’m not sure how that would work with Annihilator replacing Raging Blow anyway.
• Bloodbath (MoP) version as a modifier to Recklessness rather than a standalone cooldown would provide a passive damage boost applicable to ST and AoE, well opposed to Anger Management lowering the cooldown. It would also help play into the bleed theme established by Gushing Wound, Odyn’s Fury, and Bloodborne.

Replace Storm of Steel with Dance of Death.

• This is kind of wishlisty, but one extra tick of Ravager just feels underwhelming and a bit too of universal - the kind of choice that’s either strong enough you always take it or weak enough that you never do. I feel like Dance would be a more situational talent with strong potential that doesn’t feel like a required boost every time you talent into Ravager, resulting in a little more build variety based on circumstance. Of course, it would need a reasonable cap to keep from becoming a runaway gun.

I really like Fury’s tree overall, especially the duality of Bloodthirst vs Raging Blow, but right now the defining gameplay aspect (Bloodthirst’s reduced cooldown) is in the class tree, so it affects every build rather than a playstyle that’s built into. Adjusting this, while also creating something to compete with Frenzied Flurry would result in a better feeling of creating your own playstyle, rather than just buffing baseline capabilities.

In short, these suggestions would create two basic builds, with a lot of customization between them:

• A Titan’s Grip build which plays similar to live, using Bloodthirst every third GCD, while relying on Raging Blow resets, Rampage, and Whirlwind to fill globals in between.
• A Single-Minded Fury build, which drops Raging Blow for Annihilator and uses Bloodthirst more frequently (every other GCD) to compensate.

[Ironlung-malganis]

Wanted to touch on SMF specifically, and what draws me to the spec, and others have mirrored.

There’s a character in the Dungeons and Dragons world named Thibbledorf Pwent. He is a Dwarf covered in razor sharp plate armor with a giant spike on his head, and his entire gimmick is that he runs at people, tackles them, and grinds them to a pulp.

To me, the plate blender, the warrior wood chipper, is what SMF is all about. There is this hulking metal beast in front of you, and his small weapons are able to whirl, and knick, and stab, and slash at you until the overwhelming amount of damage you take is just too much to overcome as you die by a literal thousand cuts.

In the earliest days of fury, my heroic strike key bound to the #2 button had been pressed so many times on my G15 keyboard that the key feedback died. Fury effectively killed the button because I would be furiously mashing it to spend the overwhelming amount of rage that my fast auto attacks were dealing.

I’d like you to consider this playstyle when making adjustments to SMF. I think bleed is absolutely the thing you attach to SMF as one of it’s defining damage sources, and this thematically lines up due to all the small hits and slashes that the target is taking. I think it would be cool to experiment with this bleed effect ramping up as the target’s health drops. This idea works with the old idea that Execute is when Warriors turn it on, and makes sense from a “more holes = more blood” perspective.

I think another thing to play around with is a concept of “glory”. A ramping buff that takes a long time to build. What I mean is instead of something that stacks to 5 on 5 gcds, how about something that stacks every minute, providing a sizeable jump to damage the farther into a fight a SMF Warrior goes. Thematically this makes sense, think a barbarian reveling in the battle and gore and going deeper and deeper into his beserker rage.

I’d like talents to make fury hit faster, apply bleeds faster, and just be this ramping snowball that starts like you’d expect, but ends with you just being this overwhelming grinder of plate and damage.

Thanks for your consideration, I hope this provides some build inspiration that can define SMF away from Titan’s Grip and make the choices a bit more interesting.