Preface: I primarily play DPS warrior, so I will be centering my feedback entirely on Fury and Arms, specifically in PvE scenarios.
I’ve included headers for each main topic, but obviously the class is one cohesive unit and some things will blend, so there will be mentions of issues regarding Mountain Thane for example in the Fury or General Class section as an example.
Class Tree
I mostly want to echo here a lot of the sentiment that has been discussed in the broader warrior community regarding the general class tree. For all of dragonflight, it has felt as if warrior has had considerably less interesting options available to them than other classes. Unfortunately, this continues to be the case in the current iteration and I hope to see some changes to alleviate this, either in future builds, or more likely over the course of the War Within.
It continues to be true that in order to reach nodes like “Reinforced Plates” and the subsequent “Armored to the Teeth”, we have to path through nodes like “Shockwave” or “Thunder Clap”, which are potentially useless to us in specific builds depending on the chosen Hero Spec. It would be better to provide pathing that permits more generally useful options.
This problem occurs once again in being forced to choose between “Intervene” and “Stormbolt” in order to path to “Thunder Clap” when those talents may not be necessary for some specs that utilize “Thunder Clap”. I believe the intent here was to force a choice for Mountain Thane Warriors so that the “Storm Bolts” vs. “Storm Shield” node in the Mountain Thane tree didn’t go to waste, but unfortunately, this reasoning has neglected Arms Warriors in AoE scenarios who are interested in “Thunder Clap”, but may not necessarily be interested in “Storm Bolt” or “Intervene”. This also holds true for Protection Warriors that opt into playing Colossus.
One of the primary criticisms of the class tree has been the overabundance of damage nodes making warriors feel as if they just don’t have the points to spare for utility. While this has been alleviated so some extent, I do believe the problem still persists. It may be appropriate to reconsider whether “Overwhelming Rage” and “Crushing Force” should be brought down to 1-point to alleviate this issue and open more choice for Warriors. I think this would be a good change, but I am conscious of the fact that even if this were to be implemented, the problem of lacking interesting choices to actually put points into remains. Its not entirely an exaggeration to say that if Warrior were capable of talenting into every single node in the tree outside of the bottom level, it would not really be all that much more powerful or “utlity heavy” than it currently is now, because most of the choices are largely inconsequential and very niche in the vast majority of scenarios.
I love the change to “Intervene” now also countering spells. To further aid this change, “Intervene” could probably be turned into a choice node between two options, one that retains current funtionality and another specifically aimed towards DPS warriors in PVE that removes intercepting melee attacks to allow warriors to more easily intervene tanks to perform Taunt-Reflects without all the risk that comes with modern spell-queing often making it unclear what bosses are about to do when trying to taunt-reflect.
“Thunder Clap” should be baseline. This is not a new request, but its becoming increasingly obvious that this change is necessary given the talent point economy (Or lack thereof) of certain hero specs like Mountain Thane.
The glory days of “Rallying Cry” are unfortunately behind us and while it remains a decent raid cooldown, it has continued to be a largely “meh” cooldown in other areas of the game, particularly Mythic+. Some have suggested that it should receive the “Darkness” treatment and receive a buff to its potency in 5-man groups and while this would be a good start, I actually think the problem with Rally in 5-man content is in its frequency more than its potency. I think reducing its cooldown and increasing its potency in 5-mans would be appropriate, but I’m not sure how feasable that is. Alternatively, Rallying Cry could be a choice node with something new like a “Mass Spell-Reflect” style effect to give DR to the group and allow aoe spell reflecting to occur, acting as both a group-wide DR and a unique form of AOE stop where you kind of just let certain casts happen for a moment.
“Intimidating Shout” should be uncapped. In the modern game, target capped CC just kind of doesn’t really work out that well. Priests have essentially the same ability, uncapped and on half the cooldown. I’m not saying the cooldown needs to come down, but on a 1:30 cooldown, being target capped is pretty horrendous.
“Bitter Immunity” needs help. This spell feels pretty useless on a 3-minute cooldown and while Warrior doesn’t need much help in the defensive department, this is a point that is really difficult to justify investing into. It was less egregious when it could remove bleeds, but I understand why you guys want to avoid taking away such a defining weakness for Protection Warriors. That being said, this has made this talent extremely lackluster.
The gateway nodes into the third tier of the class tree need some serious rebalancing work. Archimtiros has talked extensively about these issues, so I won’t say much in this regard, but I will say that the position of “Endurance Training” in the tree needs to be looked at as it is simply impossible to ever take in the current iteration of the tree.
“Uproar” should be adjusted to reduce the cooldown of “Thunderous Roar” to 45 seconds to more naturally align with the rest of warrior cds.
This is not part of the class tree, but it applies to all three warrior specs now that they all have access to “Ravager”. One of the biggest complaints about “Ravager” is that we don’t really have very much control of it once its actually on the battlefield. “Ravager” follows its targets, which should address this issue, but it doesn’t actually work that way in practice. “Ravager” is satisfied with its pathing as soon as it is hitting at least one target. This often means that in AoE, if the pack is moved slightly, “Ravager” will chase until it hits one target and then just hang out at the edge of the pack, barely hitting most of it and effectively wasting a good chunk of its damage. I recommend a solution similar to Shadow Priest’s new “Entropic Rift”, which glues itself to a target at the center of its hitbox. This should largely get rid of this issue.
Finally, please, I beg and plead, either remove “Champion’s Spear” or turn it into a PvP talent. Replace it and subsequent nodes with “Blood of the Enemy” from BFA. If we’re married to the idea of this ability remaining part of the warrior kit, please do away with “Champion’s Might” as its largely where the hatred for this ability comes from. It has never made sense to me why classes like Warrior that are almost advertised on the virtues of their unique forms of mobility should be restricted in their ability to move around. Not to mention the visibility problems spear creates (though that has improved with all the blinding blue being gone).
Arms
One of the biggest complaints about current Arms has centered around button bloat, particularly in AOE situations. It has often felt like Arms design has centered around creating two variants of every ability, one for ST and one for AOE. This is obvious in “Mortal Strike” / “Cleave”, “Rend” / “Thunder Clap”, and “Slam” / “Whirlwind”. I think this is generally fine, but I don’t think it makes for interesting gameplay when this happens for what are largely filler spells or maintenence buffs/debuffs. I’m speaking specifically about “Rend” / “Thunder Clap” here where it feels like these abilities have two seperate keybinds for no particular reason. I think an appropriate solution to this would be to remove “Rend” as a talent and migrate a slightly changed (to not require Rend talented) “Blood and Thunder” into the Protection and Arms trees in its place. Essentially passively making “Thunder Clap” apply “Rend” when talented, without the need for “Rend” to exist as an independent button. In combination with making “Thunder Clap” baseline, this would resolve a lot of issues in one sweep for both the general class and Mountain Thane, which is heavily restricted in its talent economy.
Expanding on the topic of button bloat, there were a number of changes to talents to further integrate “Cleave” into the spec. I think these changes were fantastic, and while they attempt (and largely succeed) at addressing some of the bloat issues, they don’t completely remove the issue. In DF “Storm of Swords” turned “Whirlwind” into a big AoE rage dump and this was changed in conjunction with the “Cleave” changes to create a rotation where “Cleave” and “Whirlwind” were mutually exclusive. However, due to the nature of Cleave’s cooldown and talents like “Merciless Bonegrinder”, “Whirlwind” is not entirely removed from the rotation by speccing into “Cleave”, essentially necessating that Warrior’s maintain two seperate keybinds for these abilities to be optimal in the event they have to play with “Merciless Bonegrinder”. I think it may be necessary to make “Cleave” replace “Whirlwind” entirely when talented to prevent this issue.
Alternatively, “Cleave” can replace “Mortal Strike” when talented to achieve the same reduction in keybinds, but this suggestion has been made ad nauseum, so I won’t speak too much on it, but I do implore you to consider making either change for the betterment of the spec.
“Ignore Pain” could probably have its rage cost removed, shield buffed and its cooldown increased. It’s not a huge deal, because we have the rage economy to sustain it but I think between current “Ignore Pain” and “Defensive Stance”, Warrior feels like its often trading damage for defense in a weird way that I don’t think is necessary on two seperate abilities.
“Spiteful Serenity” should really not have a nerf appended to it or at the very least, this nerf should be reduced.
“Bloodborne” should be reduced to a 1-pointer. It largely changes nothing in most builds, but in a few builds, it would open up more options.
“Fatality” has caught a lot of flak recently. I’ve always found this particular talent to be pretty underwhelming since it kind of changes nothing for us from a gameplay perspective for a capstone talent. I’m not as vitriolic towards it as some people may be, but I do think I would prefer if it was replaced with something a bit more exciting.
With the change to “Battlelord”, “Dreadnaught” should probably be tuned up a little bit as it represents a oddly small portion of our damage in AOE following all the changes.
Thank you for changing the pathing at the bottom of the Arms tree back to its DF equivalent. However, some problems remain, particular in regards to the “Bladestorm” / “Ravager” node. For Slayer in particular, all builds incentivize taking “Bladestorm” for obvious reasons, but this naturally restricts the ability for Arms to fully invest in Execute nodes. Given that Slayer’s identity is intended to emphasize both Execute and “Bladestorm”, it seems like an opportunity is being missed here. Archimtiros has made some suggestions regarding how this pathing could be changed to alleviate some of these issues and I encourage you to consider that feedback.
Fury
“Single-minded Fury” - Just kidding, I’m not touching this topic with a 10-foot pole.
One of the biggest issues Fury has suffered from for a very long time is the 5-target hard cap in AOE. The relationship between Fury’s ST and AOE has always been problematic and this topic has been discussed extensively, so I won’t add much, but I will state my belief that Fury should always, at least in its current design, be tuned to be the single best spec in the game at 5 targets at all times. If this isn’t consistently possible to achieve, it may be time to consider changing how fury approaches AOE, whether that be by raising the cap or other means.
I like a lot of the changes that have happened for fury regarding “Bloodthirst”, and in the course of playing it, I think Fury is feeling pretty good all around. Some minor nitpicks are that very rarely, there are moments where bad raging blow RNG occurs in pure single-target and you end up with nothing to press other than “Whirlwind” as a filler (at least as slayer, not an issue for mountain thane). I don’t think its extremely important, but with us finally moving away from the complete dominance of “Raging Blow”, I think it might be ok to integrate a third charge of “Raging Blow” baseline to alleviate this issue at least a tiny bit. In most scenarios, this changes absolutely nothing about the power of the spec, but it does address tiny roadbumps in the flow of slayer.
“Improved Whirlwind” should probably be made baseline. I doubt there are many specs in the game that lack their baseline AOE functionality unless they talent into it, but for me, this is like having to talent into “Sweeping Strikes” in early dragonflight. It just doesn’t really feel good to waste a point on something that should very obviously be part of the base kit.
I love “Fresh Meat” as a talent, but it can often be difficult to take due to its competition. I think “Improved Bloodthirst” being a 10% damage buff to BT and nothing else is fairly lackluster and I think these two talents should probably be merged into one.
“Vicious Contempt” should be reduced to a 1-pointer in order to open up more options.
“Odyn’s Fury” needs a buff. In a perfect world it should always be the go to option in AOE and “Onslaught” the go to option in ST.
“Depths of Insanity” went completely unused throughout Dragonflight and will continue to be unused for all of TWW. This talents needs desperate help in order to be viable.
“Storm of Steel” went completely unused throughout Dragonflight and will likely remain that way for TWW.
“Reckless Abandon” should probably grant one charge of “Bloodbath” and one charge of “Crushing Blow” rather than one or the other because “Anger Management” is poised to dominate for almost all of Fury’s builds once the “Bladestorm” CDR reduction bug is fixed. This change may help to bring the two talents more inline with one another.
Fury has been the same for a pretty long time and I would have preferred larger changes to its core functionality, particularly to address the ST and AOE problem I previously highlighted, but I think its probably too late for that. I hope that in future changes to the class beyond the release of TWW, these concerns are taken into consideration.
Mountain Thane
I’ve included some spec specific stuff in the Arms / Fury sections regarding the hero specs.
Atleast for Fury, “Thunder Clap” probably shouldn’t have a cooldown. It’s a little reminescent of “Storm of Swords” in Dragonflight putting a cooldown on “Whirlwind”, which a lot of people did not enjoy. I forsee this being a painpoint for a lot of players when they come to try out Mountain Thane Fury and I think it should probably be addressed now.
“Storm Shield” should probably give a larger shield for dps warriors as its pretty weak right now, but hopefully that gets addressed when tuning comes around.
Between talents like “Snap Induction” and Avatar granting two stacks of “Thunder Blast”, I’m concerned that in the event Bloodthirst is a higher rotational priority than “Thunder Blast”, it will be the norm to willingly choose to overcap on “Thunder Blast” charges. Not to mention that “Snap Induction” on openers, guarantees overcapping. I’m not sure how this should be addressed, but I find it to be clunky. Maybe “Thunder Blast” charges should cap at a higher amount or special care needs to be taken to ensure “Thunder Blast” is always the highest priority rotational button. Furthermore, with the addition of “Unhinged” to Fury, using “Ravager” now basically gurantees overcapping on “Thunder Blast” charges (especially true in the opener) as “Ravager” spams out “Bloodthirst”.
“Keep Your Feet on the Ground” grants armor. Since armor is technically a Strength boost through “Armored to the Teeth”, this makes this talent a potential hard-lock over its counterpart in the choice node for both Arms and Prot.
Colossus
I’ve included some spec specific stuff in the Arms / Fury sections regarding the hero specs.
Honestly, this Hero spec owns. This is the one I’ve run into the least issues with. I do think with the addition of “Demolish”, the Arms button bloat problem in AOE continues to grow and I’ve discussed that extensively in prior sections. Addressing those bloat issues would pretty much close any potential complaint I have about this particular Hero spec. Some people have also suggested potentially making “Demolish” replace “Colossus Smash” / “Warbreaker” in the same way “Hammer of Light” replaces “Wake of Ashes” for Templar Retribution Paladins. That might require some re-thinking of some parts of the Colossus tree and also would require an equivalent ability to Colossus Smash for Protection. But I leave that to you, with a reminder to please consider dealing with the AOE button bloat issue.
Slayer
I’ve included some spec specific stuff in the Arms / Fury sections regarding the hero specs.
Archimtiros has spoken extensively above about the issue with Sudden Death proc rate not syncing well with “Marked for Execution”, and I want to reiterate that feedback.
“Reap the Storm” currently only procs off “Mortal Strike”, which is going to create issues in AOE builds. It should be made to proc off “Cleave” as well, similar to the treatment that was done for Colossus’s “Colossal Might”.
“Death Drive” is extremely lackluster and pretty weak, it also potentially does little if the user is already at full health. This is exasperated a bit by the relative lack of sudden death procs. It’s been suggested in a few places, but in Shadowlands, “Condemn” applied a shield to the user any time it was used. This should be brought back either as a replacement for “Death Drive” or as a choice node alongside it.
Bonus: General Wish Fullfillment
I wanted to include this section, because if I’m being honest, over the course of a lot of the alpha builds and dragonflight, my general reaction to most of the Warrior changes was largely apathy and to some extent disappointment that more sweeping changes weren’t occuring. A lot of warriors and I feel that Warrior has been in a largely stale spot for a very long time now. The most recent removal of “Hurricane” and change to “Unhinged” was unironically the first time I was genuinely excited about the changes Warriors were receiving as these changes addressed a painpoint (Removing “Hurricane”) that many Warriors had frequently asked for. I think changes in line with these long-term gripes with the class are the easiest ways to foster excitement about the direction of the class, because it demonstrates unequivocally that our feedback is being heard.
Stances could probably be consolidated into a single toggle button if technology permits. Most warriors these days are just using macros to achieve this exact functionality and it would be nice if this was just baseline.
“Anger Management” should reduce the cooldowns of all offensive CDs. It used to work this way in the past and it was amazing. I don’t like how modern warrior design has shifted towards some amount of desync just being the normal state of things. I have always believed it to be rather unfun when CDs don’t naturally align.
“Second Wind” and “Leeching Strikes” could honestly probably be merged into one node, as the new change to “Second Wind”, is still not massively powerful. This change wouldn’t make it more powerful, but it would make “Second Wind” less of a node to consider skipping, which I think is appealing. Largely not important, but something to consider if there are plans to add more interesting choices later down the line.
Bring back Legion’s passive “Sweeping Strikes”. Please and thank you.
“Reckless Abandon” and “Anger Management” at the same time. Just think about it, please. 
Final Note
I’m sure there’s a bunch of stuff I’ve forgotten to mention and I’ll be sure to write about it as it comes back to me or as I discover new problems.
Thanks for all the changes so far. I look forward to further improvements being made.
