No issues with the damage passes, nothing regarding actual changes outside of the Master of Warfare change seemed good. In fact some of the changes seem to be net negative changes.
Losing Last Stand with a barely noticeable buff to Second Wind is a joke … Currently Second wind under 35% restores 1% every second so its being buffed to 2% per second which is still not remotely comparable to having Last Stand as an actual real impactful defensive.
Presumably this new lack luster Stance Mastery talent is replacing Last Stand:
New Talent: Stance Mastery – Your stances have additional effects.
Battle Stance: Increases the critical strike damage of your abilities by 3%.
Berserker Stance: Increases your auto-attack speed by 3%.
Defensive Stance: When an attack deals 20% or more of your maximum health in > damage, that damage is reduced by 15%.
Battle stance already increases critical strike damage of your abilities by 3% baseline. So they would be hard trolling if they are removing the baseline effects of stances and pushing them into a lack luster talent. Assuming those are additional effects to the pre-existing buffs stances provide they still are completely lackluster for a capstone (again assuming this is replacing Last Stand). If they want to enhance stances further via this new talent they have to do a lot more then what is currently defined.
Javelineer has been redesigned – Range of your thrown abilities is increased by 5 yards. Damage dealt by Champion’s Spear, Shattering Throw, and Wrecking Throw increased by 20%. Shattering Throw and Wrecking Throw silence non-players for 3 seconds.
Javelineer is an uninspired talent barely useful and simply forced to pick up Shattering or Wrecking Throw
Can we do something about warriors having negative movement speed compared to every other class in the game? Fast footwork only being 5% is not worth especially in relation to what you have to give up to spec into it.
Battlefield Commander simply being removed as a PvP talent and pushed into a new capstone feels cheap. No new PvP talent was introduced, assuming you still spec into it for PvP there is a trade-off of 3% stamina vs 3% more AP for battleshout and for PvP the extra stamina is more beneficial so that is another indirect hit to warrior survivability.
While Last Stand was cool, it had issues overlapping Protection’s Battle-Scarred Veteran. That aside, you’re misreading Stance Mastery and the original stance effects.
Stance Mastery bonuses are in addition to the normal ones. So Battle Stance now gets +3% crit damage in addition to already granting 3% crit chance, while Berserker gives +3% auto-attack speed in addition to already increasing auto-attack damage by 15%.
Offensively, those are pretty minor, but it also means Defensive Stance now gives up to 30% damage reduction on a 3-second cooldown, which is anything but lackluster!
Javelineer is in a new position in place of Shockwave. You should be able to see the new trees in game or on Wowhead, but here’s a quick screen.
I still find the additional bonuses for stance mastery being a capstone to be lackluster. For Arms getting +3% additional crit damage and fury getting +3% auto-attack speed as a capstone talent again is just sheer lackluster.
The defensive stance trigger is also contingent on getting hit with an ability >= 20% of your max HP. Generally speaking at least for PvP if a single ability is hitting for that hard it tends to be an outlier (say for example Choas Bolt) and most things don’t hit that hard. For PvE I can see value to deal with certain mechs and further reduce damage intake further. So no real issues with the added Defensive Stance bonus.
I would however easily in all cases for both PvE and PvP have taken the midnight Last Stand talent over this new Stance Mastery talent. I still stand by it being bland, un-inspired and honestly not even that strong for the offensive stances.
They’re definitely offensively weak, so I agree with you there, though I think players tend get a little to held up on the idea of “capstones” in a system that doesn’t fully support “lower = stronger.”
Interesting changes this patch, fair few good ones in making the Apex talents less awful in certain situations.
Arms no longer has obtuse requirements to fit in every OP they possibly can in the execute phase, but still has that forced slam cast on HS procs to break up the gameplay which is fine. I do wonder though since the caveat for MoW has changed to ST attacks if slams procced from FoB have the opportunity to proc heroic strike or it’s just going to have less chances to proc when we’re AoEing.
Fury’s Apex turns it from Fury of Sindragosa to Rampage goes brr. I like this, more direct rampage priority so it comes into play a little more as a higher priority attack over generators during recklessness especially with it’s reduced rage cost during it.
The class tree is still a bit of a mess.
Positives first though, Shockwave back into a better position lets goooooooo.
Now for the negatives, oh lord.
The 3rd rung of the tree is still gated by spending 23 talents points in the previous section so we’ve got only 10 points to play around with here and 13 total possible points to place into the dps options, most of which will end up being answered by sims which is kinda boring. They’ve still not gotten the hint that this section needs to have most of these throughput nodes yeeted or point allocations to be reduced heavily.
Resonant voice is practically a dead talent now as Wrecking Throw will be taken for shield breaks / on target damage in some situations to use over a filler attack or simply as a tool to use while disengaging, so buffing it’s damage by 20% when it’s already an armour ignoring 600% ap ability is too good to pass up.
Other mandatory nodes for most builds will ofc be Barbaric Training, Cruel Strikes and Anger Management. Most likely Crushing Force, Wild Strikes and Two handed spec are also going to be taken.
This leads to then our final point being between Stance Mastery, Battlefield Commander and Champion’s Spear. Both Stance Mastery and BfC have defensive/utility components to them while Champ’s spear is mostly damage based with minor utility in it’s ursol’s vortex style mechanic. This will fall down to sims and provide no build variability at all.
Potential fixes I’d hope for?
Change two handed spec to a 1 point investment which then allows us to take at least two of SM, BfC and ChSp.
Removal of at least half of these dps nodes ideally keeping the more interesting ones in Anger Management, Wild Strikes, Two Handed Spec and Stance Mastery. Battlefield commander retuned to purely utility.
The rest are just flat modifiers to damage/crit damage that could be baked into the abilities themselves to compensate but this does lead towards blizzard then needing to think up 3-4 new nodes so realistically I think only the first option of a fix will happen potentially before midnight.
As a general rule of thumb cap stones tend to be spec or class defining talents they don’t necessarily always have to equate to stronger throughput but they have clear design intent and impact. In which the intent isn’t always just damage (could be utility, survival etc). Also yes sometimes even damage centric capstones don’t necessary always have to equate to higher defacto throughput than other talents but the key aspect I am trying to stress is they do tend to be more “impactful”
If they really wanted to play around with this idea of “stance mastery” they could of pushed a lot more dynamic elements giving clear class defining impact to swapping stances. Though that would entail forcing stance dancing into the rotational loop which we are long past those days. Also is counter-intuitive to their goal of simplification. So I know why they went this route.
I guess it just somewhat bothers me because it just comes across as rushed, a band-aid and a quick fast replacement because they deemed for whatever reason Last Stand was too strong of a defensive for Warriors. No1 is going to notice 3% increased crit damage or 3% increased auto attack speed (i.e no functional “impact”)
The 100% buff to second wind pushing it from 1% to 2% heal a second is also honestly lack luster. I think it is fitting for warriors to fit the niche that they become harder to kill at lower HP I would like to see them drive this a bit further with second wind in light of them removing Last Stand.
Something along the lines of sub 35%, one of the following:
Take X% less damage for Y seconds
Reduce the duration of movement impairment effects by X% for Y Seconds
Can’t be slowed under 80% speed when under 35% hp
Take X% less damage for Y seconds after being CCed under 35% hp
etc just some rando ideas.
(Strictly for PvP) Replacing Battlefield Commander PvP talent that is now a PvE talent:
While under 35% hp in addition to what second wind does it adds a stacking damage buff
Or drastically empowers your next MS
Or gives you access to an empowered Execute
Basically to fill the niche of “Kill or be Killed”
I also agree with what Greil wrote about the talent budget and allocation issues.
I understand what capstones are, I’m saying that the modern talent trees being less rigidly structured do not lend to the idea of capstones the way traditional (classic) trees did, and hence just because a talent is at the bottom of the tree does not necessarily mean that it is going to have the transformative value that a traditional capstone would have.
This is an entirely mental thing. Players are very conditioned to see the “end” of a talent tree as the most powerful aspect, but the modern trees are a lot more like PoE in the sense that power-per-point is interspersed rather than continually increasing with point investment.
In fairness, that’s 1-2% base, which means up to 2-4% ramped. It’s still a bad talent though, offset by rarely being completely bonkers broken.
That said, the biggest part yall have overlooked is they’ve reversed their designs by making the 3rd tier almost entirely damage focused rather than a mix-and-match of damage, defense, and utility. That solves most of the issues we had before, and even if it does retain the “just take whatever performs best” problem… that’s a problem that never really goes away for performative players.
All of this is by way of saying no it’s not perfect, but its a lot better than it was and not really presenting any major problems anymore.
I don’t overly agree with this even with the advent of the new “modern” talent trees years ago, capstone talents in general always tend be “impactful” or “transformative”. This still holds in TWW and moving into midnight. Across the board for every class for every spec the capstone talents still retain their design intent of being extremely high value. Which is why in fact usually the greatest decision points end up being which capstone talents you take (though even that tends just boil down to which one numerically performs better or distinctly opting into utility oriented capstones for PvP vs PvE loadouts). So its not some mental thing this is an objective reality of how the talent trees are still designed to this day.
Yes cause your opinion is some how factual substantiated by your feelings Where I could easily list for ever spec in the game how specific capstones are class/spec defining.
Yes, it is my opinion backed by two decades of theorycrafting, having an intimate familiarity with the game’s systems, and literally writing the program players use to simulate its combat.
You are correct in that some of the lower down talents are highly impactful and/or transformative. However, so are many of the upper/middle tier talents, and many of the lower down ones are very much not. The concept of “bottom of tree” capstones has become a major red herring in the modern talent trees that has no real bearing on anything. Several specs/builds routinely forgo spending all 10/11 points down there.
Typo meant to write 11 instead of 10 . Since 10 is for the spec tree anyway. Always get the two mixed up on feedback when discussion points.
I think that’s part of the problem, some 3rd rung class trees are very well set-up with freedom if picking up some stronger utility options with maybe at most 4-5 points of offensive nodes littered throughout. The fact that we’ve got 13 offensive nodes and only 11 possible talent points to allocate in this section?
It’s just silly in my opinion as it’s really only a warrior specific problem where this section is overloaded with offensive nodes and other classes have freedom of picking up utility offered in this section of their tree or earlier.
It’s not just one of those grass is greener moments, it’s that we’ve got a barren salted earth with no freedom compared to others which makes interacting with this section of the talent trees awful.
That’s just me though I’d much rather have 5-6 free points that I can spend on the tools I need, than to have pointless throughput nodes dictating what i must take and making me lose out on crucial utility in the process.
Rogues too last time I checked, though ultimately being all of one thing (all damage vs all defense or all utility) does make for a more balanced choice than our previous choice between giving up damage for defense or utility.
Some of the lower down talents are highly impactful and/or transformative. Many of them are very much not
The ones that aren’t are arguably as a result of poor design implementation. The general rule still holds that the capstone talents by virtue have always had a design intent of being impactful/transformative. If this was not the case you would see these capstones simply scattered anywhere in the tree. If you can’t see the simple design correlation and intent of things like Avatar, Mortal Wounds, Champion’s spear specifically being pushed into capstones by virtue of their impact and correlate them to being class/spec defining then you are just delusional. Certain capstones being less impactful does not retract from this intrinsic design philosophy. I will re-iterate the ones that fall short are arguably poorly implemented (cough Stance Mastery).
An immediate flaw in your argument, the bias, and the myopic viewpoint and how you intrinsically concede your stance because you based everything you wrote strictly on numerical damage throughput variance.
When we have already clearly established that capstones can be class/spec defining by virtue of the utility they provide altering or adding value to the class/spec in a tangible, impactful, transformative way. Your viewpoint is always limited to PvE but you fail to realize that certain capstones are transformative for PvP something your Sims don’t account for. So ofc for PvE you just blindly take talents which net the highest throughput.
Something like “Without a trace” > “Vanish has an additional charge” is a prime example of something that would sim poorly compared to its counter parts however is extremely impactful and class defining for PvP.
I am not trying to take away from your understanding of the game but its quite comical to assume that the counterpart you are talking to isn’t equally versed. To substantiate my “IRL creds” over a game or articulate an opinion as a finality or truth without actually substantiating it with empirical evidence is also comical tbh. Just know both the hardware and software you even use in the first place are cause of people like me. Literally coding simulationcraft is something that can be done in elementary/middle school its really not as impressive as you think it is
I could get behind everything in the final rung of the Class tree being purely offensive nodes if they wanted to push all of our utility/defensive talents back to the first two rungs.
Having talents be a mix of Offensive while also providing defensive/utility aspects in Stance Mastery and Battlefield Commander put a wrench in the works to be quite honest as which you take ends up being a sim question for PvE and the utility you get out of it is decided for you and if there is large enough of a difference between the two offensively you’ll never have the option to play the other which is all tuning pending.
Random example, the crit dmg component for Arms could most definitely outweigh the 3% flat AP from BfC S2 onwards (if it doesn’t already in S1) of Midnight.
This means that from that point onward you’ll never have those other options if this ends up being the two talents you pick from so you’ll have a weaker rallying cry as Arms in PvE.
Then we look at fury which only gets 3% AA speed from SM, comparing that to BfC which is 3% AP extra effecting all our damage bar trinkets there’s almost no situation where you pickup SM for fury and thus it loses a nice defensive tool in the defensive stance component.
The worst part is due to how these are set-up there’s almost no variation to be had at all between Arms, Fury and Prot within their respective builds or between each spec as a whole as to which talents they’ll take in this section as they’ll most likely just go down the exact same routes which is even more boring.
At least for rogues they took different talents based on the spec they were during TWW, idk about Midnight haven’t really followed any of their changes but they look mostly the same on the tailend from a glance at their wowhead talent calcs.
The only way an all offensive node final rung works for warriors is if it’s pathing takes more of a rogue final rung option with key mandatory kit elements for each spec within each path so they take different nodes from each other. But the problem with how the warrior class tree is set-up right now is every single offensive node of ours is generic in the class tree and nothing really leans towards one spec more than another.
This is definitely a larger undertaking than fixing the tree correctly with the little nudge that it needs in it’s current format though imo.
Battlefield Commander’s defensive benefits are negligible outside of very specific situations where you want to overlap the effect for a few more seconds… which arguably is a good thing (making it a more situational benefit within a sea of universal ones).
Stance Mastery is very on the fence at the moment, since it only works on direct attacks (read: tanks). Its unclear whether that’s intentional or not though, so TBD. On the other hand, its offensive benefits are also basically negligible.
Hmm, Stance Mastery only working on direct damage taken sounds like it’s coded or worded extremely poorly then.
Although not surprised if that’s the way Blizzard intended to implement it. Not too big of a problem for PvP, but definitely impacts it’s value heavily then from a PvE aspect.
Where I could easily list for ever spec in the game how specific capstones are class/spec defining.
. Since 10 is for the spec tree anyway. Always get the two mixed up on feedback when discussion points.