Fury Tree Rework - War Within Alpha First Impressions

Classes Warrior
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wowhead calculator: https://www.wowhead.com/beta/talent-calc/warrior/fury/slayer/DAOBVVBUFRCEVKSUFBRBUAAA

Class Tree

So while I’m not sure this has improved much it hasn’t really hurt anything either in my opinion, and we have 1-2 points to play around without losing anything we have on live? I think warrior still has a huge issue with offering something useful to the group, and this hasn’t been improved here.

  • Shockwave is fine, not great. Often just DRs more important stuns.
  • I really feel like Spear and Roar are just reskins of the same ability. Ground targeted effects and rooted aspect of using spear is certainly a topic not well liked among most warriors and I would be thrilled to see this removed in favor of something else.
  • The biggest MEH part of the tree to me is that right section past shockwave. Boring talents, super low impact, and I hate spear. This is the section to make better IMO.

Spec Tree

This doesn’t feel like an improvement to me. We just lost stuff and didn’t really get anything to replace it.

  • The left section of the bottom part of the tree is just bad. Odyn’s Fury hits like a limp noodle, the follow-up nodes are super boring and uninspired, and bloodthirst isn’t well supported
  • Between the hero talents and the base tree it seems the devs want us to use both Bloodthirst and Raging Blow, but there is terrible support for bloodthirst as a button, and the talent economy doesn’t exist to begin with to actually take talents for both BT and RB
  • While I can certainly appreciate versions of Fury before Dragonflight focused on both buttons it would take a pretty big overhaul of the current trees to support that
  • Bloodthirst needs to be better and its supporting talents need to be better
  • Odyn’s Fury needs to better and its follow-up nodes need to be better
  • The pathing in the bottom part of the tree just feels weird to me.
  • Putting the Reck Abandon/Anger Management cluster back in the middle and removing swift strikes feels like a better starting point - like you always want Reck/AM just make it work in the tree
  • Then another talent cluster needs to be made again similar to retail layout, and you can choose how to specialize. Hopefully with better pathing and options than this current layout has on Alpha.

Bladestorm

I’m a big fan of Bladestorm. As a longtime warrior Bladestorm will always hold a special place in my heart, and I like the interactions of the Slayer tree on top of that.

  • Remove Hurricane
  • Bladestorm needs to be the shining star, not just be a vehicle for buffs
  • Hurricane also causes a lot of balancing issues between Ravager and Bladestorm
  • Bake in the movement speed to base bladestorm, delete both follow-up nodes, and come up with something MUCH cooler for both.
  • I’m going to assume the reports of Fury having Arms bladestorm with no rage and long duration is a bug
  • Regardless of that please make sure, even if it’s Slayer only, that Bladestorm works seemlessly around enrage. I would strongly prefer Bladestorm just enrage you on cast.

Additionally looking at the Slayer tree and wanting you to hit Bloodthirst. But Bladestorm is locked to the opposite side of the tree. It makes the layout and flow of the tree feel extremely locked and straight conflicting with what the game is trying to make you hit.

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It fixes some M+ utility issues we have suffered with from a longtime (CC problems in our own tree, mainly, though still missing BR/BL), and the Slayer tree will hopefully push us into some kind of offensive niche that we’ve lacked for a long time.

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I mean, does it though?

We gain shockwave, which is nice, but not something I would call significant and it’s much easier to pick up Second Wind or Intim Shout or P Howl. Not all of them, I guess you could not take Armed to the Teeth and get them all. Otherwise we’ve got the same kit we have now, but even then it’s not like any of those are very important.

So shockwave + something, neither of which are really giving us something to change the game on desirability. Shockwave has some cases to be good, depending on your group comp. It’s an ok change, but again, not huge. IMO.

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Historically, taking Shockwave has been a grave damage loss, to the point of hurting more than we’ve actually gained. The current tier set enabled us to take it without getting shafted like we’ve had before, though godspeed in the next season. lol

I don’t think it “fixes” us fully, but knowing how Blizzard treats us at the design stage, all we can ever take are the bones they throw, and grin and bear the rest.

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I agree, it’s way too polarizing a talent compared to it’s sister node.

Also on the subject of ravager, please make ravager move faster and center onto targets instead of ceasing any movement once it tickles an enemy.

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Single minded fury, shockwave and bladestorm?! Be still my blood enraged heart. Looks like they pulled out all the stops!

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Continuing the discussion from Feedback: Warrior Updates:

First of all thank you so much for a post like this laying out the intentions. We’ve hardly ever had this for warriors to understand where the devs are coming from, and this is so helpful. Hopefully our feedback as players can be equally improved and helpful because of it.

I agree with this wholeheartedly. However, as mentioned in my first post I don’t feel like the layout and current talent economy supports this goal. I also think as mentioned in my first post the largest part of the culprit here is that Bloodthirst is really poorly supported.

Part of that equation is also the pitiful damage of Bloodthirst. When you look at Dragonflight we will have had 3 out of 4 seasons of the expansion with tier bonuses that significantly buffed Bloodthirst in some way. And those large buffs are the only thing that allowed the bloodthirst talents to be compelling choices.

Raging Blow has tons of support no matter how you spec, and Bloodthirst is just…not. Not to mention that Odyn’s Fury on the “Bloodthirst side” of the tree is incredibly weak in comparison to other options.

The slimming of the tree makes it possible to pick up talents for both abilities, but it seems unlikely you wouldn’t just want all the raging blow talents. Not only because they are stronger, but they are also generally more interesting. No matter what ability you spec into you have to give up options for the other. Which…obviously? Right. But those choices don’t feel compelling or interesting at the moment because the Bloodthirst talents and that side of the tree is real bad.

I don’t feel like the Whirlwind Talents vs Execute is very compelling either. If you need AoE there is no choice - you take whirlwind. If you can’t aoe there is no choice - you take execute. It’s another layer of the talent economy and lack of compelling choices across the tree as a whole under this paradigm of using both Bloodthirst and Raging Blow as core rotational abilities regardless of build.

It takes significant investment just to make the baseline ability function with little room to truly specialize in the ability of your choosing or what your hero tree supports.

I can’t say I’m not a little sad about this. Even though annihilator obviously didn’t accomplish the original goal I don’t think it was a bad playstyle for what it became with additional rage generation and helping emphasize Bloodthirst. However, I also think the whirlwind bonus for Storm of Swords is a significant loss here. It actually made Fury Whirlwind feel like a decent button instead of being limp noodle damage. I couldn’t care less about Slam and have zero desire to press slam as Fury if Raging Blow can work for all builds instead.

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I was looking forward to playing a Annihilator Fury warrior in War Within. You were really discouraged from doing it in Dragonflight due to the 2H Legendary Axe not having a suitable replacement for 1H.

As mostly a classic player nowadays really was looking to a specific lower-APM style of play for the class. A major letdown for me really.

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You don’t need 1 handers to play annihilator, nor is smf even any better than tg with an annihilator build.

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I really don’t understand why they still haven’t made SMF baseline like they did with Frost DKs 2H talent.

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But my speed set =(

That being said, Bladestorm coming back is nice since the azerite trait for bladestorm (which is basically Hurricane) can be used again for my pre-SL speed set.

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I did say to bake the movement part into base bladestorm =p

Because I agree it’s a cool flavor thing.

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“Blizzard Logic”

Like thinking the fast-paced Fantasy of a Fury Warrior needs to be slowed down

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Something I was talking about a bit in the warrior discord this morning.

One of the big things with our current talent tree is it has a lot of the Dragonflight beta stink to it still.

You look at Whirlwind for us. We have to talent into Improved Whirlwind to be able to AoE at all. Then Meat Cleaver is our only option to enhance that. Which Meat Cleave is a fine talent, but that’s the end of the choices for Whirlwind for us.

Now I know comparing classes isn’t the best way to go about things, but then you look at WW Monk. Because holy crap their new tree is full of bangers. Their spinning crane kick and mark of the crane to enhance it’s damage is almost impossible to not pick up in the layout of the tree. Then they can go pick up procs to greatly enhance the damage of that, and they can take a talent to guarnatee you get that proc, and then they can make that proc give you another proc for the next flow of your ability.

And you see that in a lot of the reworked trees in Dragonflight and other classes here in the Alpha. While warriors are just…not? It feels bad. It’s literally the first build, I get it. But we got lots of work to do to have a talent tree that is as exciting as some other classes.

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So what specifically do you not like about this? I’m struggling to understand the pain point.

Is it that the Meat Cleaver talent doesn’t do enough?

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Meat Cleaver is fine, but it should be the first step in the tree of modifying whirlwind. Not the last.

Too much of the tree is just making baseline functionality work instead of creating exciting customizations that seem far more present among other classes. Which changed mostly over the course of Dragonflight and looking at those reworks and certainly with the WW Monk tree here in the alpha launch.

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As someone who plays SMF, the new tree made me a little happy and sad at the same time.

I love that they combined SMF with Frenzied Flurry. There was no reason we should’ve had to waste 2 talents for SMF (when TG doesn’t have to waste 1).

I am sad that Annihilator is gone (I liked the concept even if the execution was crap). But happy that with it going, they also took out Storm of Swords. Now, for those who did TG Annihilator, Storm of Swords could be great, since they are spending more of their points over on the right side of the board, so more likely to hit the Whirlwind talents. But for SMF, all it did was make our WW slow and add a cooldown. I used to spam it sometimes pre-DF. But DF I just couldn’t find huge reasons to use it since I didn’t have any of the other WW talents to make it even better.

So now that Annihilator is gone, it means I actually need to take Raging Blow talents that involve resetting the cooldown or adding charges. Which isn’t all that terrible, except all those Execute talents just sitting in the way soaking up talents. But even then, the Raging Blow talents seemed a bit wonky on the right side (which is even in DF)

You pick one talent to give it 2 charges (which is nice since it has a roughly 5 or 6 second cooldown) while at the same time gives a chance on hit to reset it’s own cooldown. Then another will give it 15% increased damage, but only while enraged. And another that gives it 15% more damage without enrage, BUT IF ENRAGED also increases the chance of resetting the cooldown. And then the last just throws a 3rd charge on top of it. But in the middle of the tree you can pick a talent where if you hit Rampage you got a 25% change to refund a charge of Raging Blow. It just feels a little silly all the charges and refunding of charges and resetting cooldowns on the ability whether you are enraged or maybe if you aren’t, it’s a bit over the top and convoluted. But then again I currently play Annihilator, which makes all that stuff involving charges meaningless, so will have to figure it all out when I am forced out of Annihilator.

Odyn’s Wrath, I feel the talent afterwards needs to be removed, and if anything, add Dancing Blades if you have SMF. Meaning, you choose Odyn, and if you also have SMF, you get extra text on Odyn’s Wrath talking about the added auto-attack stuff and speed boost. And without Storm of Swords, having 2 extra stacks of Whirlwind doesn’t really matter since unless it was altered in Alpha (I am not in yet), Whirlwind doesn’t have any charges to begin with.

I know that SMF will never be good. I just am saddened that even when it’s slightly less crap, it’s still crap. I saw the SMF/Frenzy being combined and got my hopes up. :sob:

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I wanted to share which talents in the Fury tree I would personally most like to see replaced/reworked to tie into my comments of too much baseline functionality being present in the tree compared to exciting customizations of your gameplay.

Sudden Death and Massacre

So all 3 specs have these two talents in their spec trees. Why? Sudden Death as a proc I could be more sold on in the spec tree, but I’d like to see Massacre for sure be put back in the class tree. I posted about this already, but the choosing to execute vs choosing to AoE that this cluster essentially comes down to in the Fury tree is not interesting at all. You either AoE or your don’t and it’s about as binary a non-choice as exists in any talent tree in my opinion.

Improved Whirlwind

This needs to be an early level-up bonus. 100%. It is the foundation for the entire way Fury AoE works. Additionally when you combine it with Meat Cleaver there is no choice here. If you need to AoE you take both of these talents, never a question, never a thought. I like Meat Cleaver as a talent but would like to see it be where Improved Whirlwind is now with some additional talent follow-up to further specialize in AoE damage if you want.

If Massacre and Imp Whirlwind are baseline (or class tree) there should be some great opportunities here with two new talents to choose how you want to specialize instead of a non-choice solely based around whether you need to AoE or not.

Hack and Slash

There’s too much Raging Blow. This is of course a prime culprit. But you have 3 Rampage talents sitting there in the middle. Two of them deal with Raging Blow and one is a haste buff. In this new world where BT is supposed to be important for all specs it feels like maybe there should be a Bloodthirst option here. Something along the lines of the season 4 dragonflight tier bonus might be a cool idea to work off of.

Bloodcraze

This talent is super boring, and essentially only exists to offer some bad luck protection for Cold Steel, Hot Blood and it’s not even very good at that while being near worthless in AoE

Vicious Contempt

I actually like this talent as an option to opt into execute damage. My only comment here is it doesn’t matter when Bloodthirst does so little damage. We’ve had tier bonuses massively increase the output of Bloodthirst for almost the entire expansion in Dragonflight and this talent still was only really taken in season 3.

Odyn’s Fury + Follow-Up

Odyn’s Fury is great…when it does damage. There is some cool interaction with Titan’s Torment, it has a great AoE range, but it needs to do damage and without the dragonflight season 3 tier bonus massively buffing it’s damage and frequency it is simply not competitive. Another part of this is the bleed damage component is pathetic. So when you have talents like Thunderous Words or Bloodborne that seem like their intent is to make Odyn’s Fury stronger they have minimal impact.

The follow-up nodes 100% need to be reworked. They are boring, they are unexciting, they layer on the mehness of this entire ability.

Hurricane & Choice Node

Hurricane is simply too strong and the choice node is horribly weak and not exciting. I also still believe Hurricane causes balancing issues between Ravager and Bladestorm in addition to taking the excitement away from those abilities to be little more than a vehicle for the Hurricane buff.

Depths of Insanity

If Reckless Abandon was made more about the Reck window maybe there is a world where this talent feels ok? But I’m not even sure I want that. The talent economy in the bottom part of the tree is pretty strained as is and Unbridled Ferocity is a big personal favorite of mine. I would say just remove this, and maybe it also helps open up some layout adjustments and pathing in that bottom part of the tree.

Thunderous Roar

I know this is in the class tree, and personally I kind of like the change here to make it burstier with the Thunderous Words node and put more emphasis on the cooldown.

However, I’m worried this will make it harder to compete with Spear for Fury, and I hate spear. Which is fine as long as Roar remains a competitive option for me. I think Roar and the follow-up node need to have some kind of more reliable interaction with Fury bleed damage in the window.

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This is more minor than the ones above, but I would like to see Frenzy and Tunnel Vision in the Slayer tree removed or changed to not penalize target swapping. It feels bad to punished for something that is generally encouraged to support your team.

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