Midnight Alpha - Bye bye Avatar for arms

Classes Warrior
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I’m positive they stacked with personal temp speed increases like aspect of the cheetah, sprint etc maybe the groupwide ones are tagged differently to not stack with each other though but stack with single use options.

That’s definitely a concern but we’ve got what an extra 3 or 4 talent points to play around with in the class tree from leveling to the new max? So there will definitely be options for us to path through most of the offensive nodes and then pickup the relative utility we’d like to pickup.

3% AP while minor does also increase the value of AP since Warriors do gain a little more than other specs from gear strictly due to the Armour to AP conversion we also get through earlier talents so you would be remiss to pick anything else since the additional utility and increase seems helpful.

5% leech on Rallying Cry is pretty insane too, it’s already a very weak raidwide the fact that it also acts as a mini vamp embrace is neat assuming people are on target when rally is being used, the speed on it is a bit of a w/e.

I wouldn’t say the Piercing Howl area of effect isn’t that inconsequential since the WoWhead descriptions read like it’s 12y base and 24y BC improved, unless it’s 48y BC improved which would be ridiculously nice due to everyone will always be in range of it.

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Not as much as you think. While you gain 3 more points in the class tree, they also sneakily increased the talent point gates so that you must now spend 23 points to unlock the third tier of the class tree.

  • On live, you have to spend 8 points to unlock the second tier of talents and 20 points to unlock the third tier, leaving you with 11 points remaining to put into the bottom (or wherever you want, but only a max of 11 points can go in the bottom three rows).
  • On the alpha, you still have to spend 8 points to unlock the second tier, but now a total of 23 to unlock the third, leaving you with only 8 points remaining to put into the bottom at level 80. By level 90, you gain three more, bringing you back up to 11.

So tldr you’re still only getting a max of 11 points at the bottom of the tree, not 14. That might still be enough to take cmdr, but we’ll have to see how the tree evolves because I can guarantee it ain’t gonna look this way by the end of the alpha/beta.

That’s Strength, not Attack Power. AP is the result of larger formula which includes Strength. Warriors also happen to have one of the worst primary stat returns in the game, which is why Armored to the Teeth exists to try to improve it.

  • Moreover, that +3% AP is additive, not multiplicative, so it’s more like a +2.7%-ish gain, going from a 5% multiplier to a 8%.
  • On top of that, it of course does not apply to outside sources of damage, so in all likelyhood it’ll probably be diluted to 2.3-2.5ish, depending on circumstance.

And then its also gated behind the absolute trashcan that is Sidearm.

5% leech for 10 seconds is the furthest thing from insane that I can think of. Vampiric Embrace is 40%. While Rally is raid-wide, the individual value is so low as to make very little difference, especially for classes that do not predominantly deal damage anyway.

It’s 12 → 24 talented. There may be some rare conditions you feel the need for the extra range, but I’d think it would be very niche, since generally when using these kinds of effects, the entire group is stacked up.

Note also that Wind Rush is only 10 yards and Roar is 15, and we’ve never really ever had a problem using them.

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How much of an absorb is ignore pain now? From a PvP perspective, having to choose between IP & Dbts is pretty awful.

I’m assuming they’ll rework the trees a bit before it goes live, however talents like sidearm/retal choice node make me a little nervous.

Does Alpha show the new Col/Slayer hero talents?

I’m also a little concerned with all the focus on Slam… I feel like Overpower already covered the filler role outside of having nothing else to press & thunderclap for rend spread (PvP war pov).

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The absorb is about 10% of your max hp for 20 rage, so not good.

If DF/TWW is anything to go off of, there will be a whole world of iteration between now and Beta/Midnight launch. The previous expansion trees were also in very rough shape (even worse than these!) when we first saw them, and they all turned out quite nicely by the end.

They have not revealed any of the Warrior apex or new hero talents yet.

There’s not that much focus on Slam (only two individual talent nodes), but Slam was also in a dire spot, so a couple talents helping improve its role are warranted. It’s also helping differentiate heroes a bit more, since Slayer has a little more Overpower value, while Colossus does a little more for Slam.

  • There’s actually some neat synergy here too. If Slam doesn’t trigger Tactician, Brute Force causes your next Slam to auto-crit, a small reward for those unlucky proc streaks where you slam-slam-slam. On top of that, Soften them Up stacks a Mortal Strike damage buff whenever you Slam (literally Martial Prowess, lol). Combined with Colossus’ buffs to Slam and MS damage, there’s the beginnings of a build there.
  • Slayer doesn’t care about Slam damage so much, but you can instead take Efficiency, which increases Slam’s chance to trigger Tactician from 40 → 80%. Combine that with Master Tactician, which gives you a 10% damage buff for 4s whenever you trigger Tactician and you can get a really high uptime on a really powerful buff!

I’m not worried. Nothing is ever perfect, but they took a lot of feedback and did really great work improving DF/TWW trees and I have full faith and confidence that they will do so again.

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Ok that’s kinda stupid then.

So it’s not 3 additional points so you have 13 points left when you hit the 3rd rung, it’s 3 additional points in the first 2 rungs and still a limit of 10 in the 3rd rung? 100% that needs to be fedback as a paintpoint as with how overloaded that backend is still looking with those 2 point offensive passive gates leaves Warriors with mostly the same gripes as retail where taking utility is coming at a decent cost of offense so they might as well not exist in the 3rd rung pathing pending as Almost every build will opt for Weapon spec, Crushing Force and Anger Management which locks 4/10 points leaving us with 6 remaining which will logically just go into all those passive gates for throughput, potentially dropping 1 for pathing through Wrecking/Shattering throw or Sidearm into Champ’s Spear.

Yeah that’s a major issue in terms of build variation that needs to be fixed.

EDIT: if anything if i was to change this myself without overhauling the talent tree as it stands on alpha is to keep those 2 point gates as a thing I would say Armoured to the Teeth and Reinforced Plates changed to 1 point nodes, and then making the 3rd rung gate open at 20 points so you’ve got 13 points to mess around with in that final section to not make it a weird transition between the expac pre leveling.

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I’m not holding my breath, PvP as Col is a lot of fun atm that being said I hop they can improve upon that design (losing Avatar kinda hurts, almost made me as sad as losing recklessness in Legion). That being said, I’m glad some modifiers are being removed (& I guess Avatar too in this case).

Demolish is def my favorite ability outside of Mortal Strike (love the bursty damage it brings).

I feel like, since Csmash is such a specific ability to Arms, that one of the capstones should enhance it. I was kinda hoping for Enduring Blow from SL to make a return or Legion’s Csmash resets instead of overpower, I have faith they’ll listen & make it a fun spec.

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It’s definitely looking interesting for Colossus atm, basically has a talent that on MS crits applies DW in the spec tree, also Execute always applies it so Colossus will be going hard on the crit rate even in PvP to get some big bleeds rolling on your target. Which let’s be real, will be hit with some -ve multipliers early on as is the Arms way for pvp :rofl:.

Early talent impressions is making me think Arms will be going mostly Crit/Mastery/Vers for stats pending how impactful haste is at it’s breakpoints for the extra GCD within CS. Which we’ll probs only want a little of to hit one breakpoint for an extra GCD within Blunt instruments.

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I’m a little concerned about that tbh, I don’t want Col to become BfA Arms in PvP where deep wounds is doing # 2-3 on your charts.

Col is fun atm because your rend/deep wounds, while they do some good consistent damage, your main damage sources are ms->op->execute with some juicy crits from ms & demolish.

If I’m honest, & keep in mind I rarely PvE atm, I’d rather them move away from bleeds doing that; I’d rather not play a plate feral lol.

I would rather them get rid of the bleed capstone & add enduring blow or a csmash enhance.

But like I said, I have faith they’ll listen & change accordingly.

Also, idk why they insist on the Merciless being brought back (again, idk if it’s super great in PvE or what) but to me it seems pretty weak as a capstone. I feel like unhinged would be a way better capstone.

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From the wording it’s tagged as 1,445 bleed dmg per application for DW and it stacks like ignite with multiple applications. For reference MS is listed to hit for 3,124 and overpower for 1,894.

If anything it’s a very good way for Colossus to gain ST to help it compete against Slayer. There will still be chunky hits we’ll just be rewarded with additional killing power for going hard into crit as a stat.

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PvP might be a slightly different environment, but note that Mortal Strike does ~5.5k base damage as Colossus, while Deep Wounds is only ~2.1k, and Execute is ~3.8k.

Obviously modifiers and such will come into play (not to mention a wealth of tuning, I’m sure), but it does not appear that Deep Wounds should ever become the primary source of damage.

It’s pretty great in PvE and affects your gameplay a little more, though I will admit I am a bit concerned about the efficacy of Bladestorm without Unhinged. We’ll see how things tune out though - could be a good excuse to make Culling Cyclone not bad.

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Ugh… this worries me too… crit arms notoriously feels meh in PvP especially with them pruning In For The Kill. Historically, not having haste feels pretty bad.

But who knows, guess we’ll see what happens.

The only thing I really want them to consider is opting for enduring blow or a csmash capstone instead of a bleed capstone. But, as long as we don’t turn into plate ferals again (BfA Arms) & have chunky Ms/Demolish, I’m happy.

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Yeah just looking at what our mastery is changing to, flat additional damage on our attacks while we use a 2h weapon so we’ve got no 1gcd penalty of having to apply deep wounds first so it’s a simple mastery that just works.

No more IftK means no additional haste scaling buff whenever we CS which is multiplicative with our base haste.
Sudden Death is 1.7rppm+Haste so Colossus will still have that as an additional positive to haste scaling.
However we do still have more haste based RPPMs for slayer in Slayer’s Dominance being 7rppm+Haste so I don’t necessarily believe that haste will be that dead of a stat for any hero talent though but with PvP gearing options being limited on how much you’re able to build for I still reckon Colossus will go all in on the crit/mastery pieces from conq/crafted as opposed to haste.

Doesn’t seem like we’re going down the plate feral path though so you can rest easy enough numbers look like they’ll probably still be similar amounts to now just looking at values of abilities.

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Cool, I didn’t see that mastery change; that’s great!

I wish I could say I liked Slayer as much as Col but I don’t haha (ironically, I was super concerned about demolish during TWW Alpha but loved it when I tested it), however I am excited to see what other changes happen.

I am curious though, from a PvE perspective, do you guys like the bleed builds or prefer the ‘heavy swing’ builds?

Would you guys be opposed to my suggestion of enduring blow or csmash capstone over the deep wounds stack capstone (or even something else like SL’s mortal combo?)

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From a PvE pov I don’t mind either, damage profiles with some sort of DoT component allow for a lower damage loss when you’re off target and DoTs also tend to ignore target caps when it comes to AoE so having a portion of your AoE being in a DoT tends to favour you a lot more when it comes to larger pull sizes especially with the whole reduced post 5/8+ that they tag onto melee attacks.

From what I can see though there’s definitely a little more focus on allowing for players to pick between Colossus or Slayer for PvE with how they’ve set-up the new talents in the spec tree at least.

I’m personally happy when there’s a nice flow to gameplay where you’re not necessarily slamming the same key more than 1-2 times in a row. That also being said I played Colossus in keys in S1 and S2 almost exclusively because demolish was that fun of an ability build and for the start of S3 but the slayer ‘bug fix’ for fury was a bit too good to ignore the past few weeks.

Personally Enduring Blows was kinda boring in SL and CS resets were stupid (imo) and it’s a part of Legion and earlier I do not miss due to the overcentralisation there was on RNG and your throughput swings wildly pull to pull. The same issue with these passives I had the same thought process on Juggernaut when they decided to up the SD proc rate to the point where if you’re lucky you can have a lot higher potential which didn’t really reward skill.

I don’t mind Mortal combo as a mechanic and probably should replace Exhilarating Blows since it conflicts with battlelord still as just another source of MS cd resets. Which I’m not too keen on as a mechanic to begin with resetting cooldowns feels cheap to me and ruins the gameplay flow.

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Heroic strike existed since Vanilla, by your definition seems way more iconic than CM

so how are we defining when a skill is iconic and more iconic than the other?

Are you being dense on purpose or just playing dumb, cause you know for a fact that even being an aoe doesnt mean it will hit everyone especially in an envirolment where:

  • adds die too quickly, and you will not have the buff for the next pack
  • a target is too far away in an arena or bg when you use it

So you need to wait until everyone is perfectly lined up to use it?

Again, better to just use avatar

No one gonna pick that crap of serenity

We know for a fact it will be nerfed to hell especially in pvp

I dont know what you are reading, but im rading that the mastery will be the exactly the same with the exception of not adding bleed

So it already adds additional flat damage and we still need tons of haste

For you maybe

and im pretty sure anything would come out good for you

Which is funny since you said to me before it was good arms was complicated and bloated cause more skill ceiling or whatever,and now its good that is simplified like, ??? all right then

I cant understand this

TONS of skills pruned cause “they are similar”, but why the hell do we still have REND as a standlaone ability

It makes no sense, prune this crap too, or make so that it buffs deep wounds, or make so that another skill apply it, i dont care if rend is aoe now its awfull to have to press it

And now tclap and red both aoe that apply rend WHY

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It’s a ~30s CD with AM, you’ll have it for the next pack.

That’s clearly a skill issue then.

I just outlined exactly how their buffs have parity of 18% for 20s and 36% for 8s, so there’s definitely moments where you’ll opt for the longer lower vuln window vers the shorter higher window.

Did you bother reading anything past what you quoted? Crit has value in improving Deep Wounds uptime pre 35% and non reliance on SD procs.
Haste synergies have also been largely toned down too.

I mentioned many parts of Arms allowed for Nuanced gameplay which were most likely inclusive of Collateral Damage how you can set-up burst windows with planning through Colossus, which still mostly have the same elements still within the proposed rework with Demolish looking to have solid synergies with crit based priority that it seems to be leaning towards alongside areas that help bridge the gap between it and slayer.

Sure Collateral Damage won’t have as much of a wind up time but you’ll still be able to pre prep 3x stacks of it through the use of Sweeping strikes, enter a Colossus Smash → Bladestorm → Demolish → Cleave buffed via merciless bonegrinder combo to drop a nuke on a pack, even better if those cleave hits crit they’ll leave a bleed alongside it.

Rend being changed to an AoE instead of a ST attack and having Thunderclap apply rend is a good change too as it condenses it to a more spec thematic option of applying a bleed and it’s also uncapped now too in how many targets get the bleed applied to it while also giving fury an option for the same uncapped AoE bleed as a pickup in the class tree.

Keep in mind it differs from Deep Wound under the factor that it’s not RNG to apply and will provide players an option of a button they can press every 19.95s as a maintenance ability to fill in their rotation with something different which at most is ~3CPM.

It’s probably a holdover on Thunderclap being Prot Specific and Rend being for Arms/Fury so the talent tree we’re seeing on wowhead is showing the options for all specs but different specs will have some options removed.

There’s still things i’m critical of namely the additional 3 points per talent tree in class at least and maybe spec is only applicable for the first 2 rungs and not the 3rd which is definitely a weird changeup from how they’re currently structured with the gates being 8/20 on live as opposed to alpha which is 8/23.

Originally I questioned the removal of some abilities between Live and Alpha but I also realised that it’s definitely for a better health of the spec as it’s maintaining an almost identical playstyle to live which is already fun right now to play in what you press and where while also fixing a lot of the weird painpoints of contradictory abilities that just bloat the spec with needless complexity that does nothing more than require a WA to track the buff for it.

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So you havent done much PVP then.

Clearly the bonus damage will not remain at 50% if that is the CD

There will be no moments, lets stop copping

This talent was added in DF and no one ever picked that if wasnt trolling.

Which already does.

So what was the change that we got that will make us dump haste for others? also for PVP as well, knowing in for the kill was prunned?

The only reason we have rend as an aoe and tclap aplying rend as aoe is a thematic option?

Are you for real?

Which seems like a total downgrade.

Instead of having a sure MS playing Deep wounds, and you being able to ignore rend completely playing slayer, you are now forced to have rend and deep wounds becomes a RNG bleed instead

How this is a good interaction?

So your only problem with everything is the amount of points per tree? that doesnt speak anything into the gameplay/playstyle/thematic

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Read it correctly it’s most likely a 36% boost not 50%. I put that in there if it was a literal +20% which it clearly is not, it’s used as a comparison as to what the talent actually means for brutal instruments.

One is for Arms/Fury the other is for prot it’s in the patch notes. Cmon mate you can’t be that dense.

New Arms and Fury Talent: Rend – Lash out with your weapon, striking all targets within 8 yards for Physical damage and wounding them for an additional Bleed damage over 15 seconds.

Because you have one maintenance option in Rend itself in the class tree and the other has solid synergy with the Colossus hero tree enabling some build parity between it and Slayer for ST situations. It also unlinks our mastery from needing a 1GCD ramp up where your first DW applicator doesn’t get buffed from your mastery. This also works as an ability to break up AoE by adding in an additional button to your AoE combo where you’d want to open up with a rend before you start hitting your direct damage abilities.

We haven’t had any option to jump in and test the specs hands on yet for the masses, however from looking at base values assigned to abilities and the talents that are present it’s clear as day to anybody with a brain that the gameplay is going to almost be identical to how the spec plays right now with a lot less nonsensical things to track in the process.

Removal of aspects like Juggernaut and Mortal Prowess and placing more power into the abilities directly rather than adding in ridiculous amount of effects and bloat talents overloading abilities is fantastic to reduce the amount of 3rd party tools needed to parse the information on your screen so you can make the correct choices for maximum throughput.

That’s also not to mention the flexibility we’ll have in terms of trinket cooldowns with Colossus Smash being so short as our cooldown enables us to be like Ret Paladins in easily being able to slot in 90s, 120s or 180s trinkets into our bis pair. While also having a much easier time utilising double on use trinkets for fights with multiple high priority moments of damage within close proximity to each other as you just need to send the trinket desynced with the next CS window.

History says otherwise, I’ve done higher brackets than you have so don’t try and pull that card out :upside_down_face:. Solo shuffle doesn’t count.

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Exactly, so its gonna be a nothingburger, worse than it would be if we still had avatar;

WHY this is in the CLASS tree instead of the SPEC tree or not part of the base tollkit of the class then?

Arent we prunning crap because things are bloated why are you coping this? shouldnt you be advocating to remove this as well??

Should rend be auto applied by MS and Cleave just like Deep wounds was???

And how that is better maintenance than deep wounds being automatically applied by MS/cleave?

We still have to use 1gcd to manually apply rend, but it will not hit as hard as MS, so???

did you? at least your warrior shows you are an eternal rival with 2 duelists since BFA and played since Legion.

I only got to play pvp now and i also got duelist last season :dracthyr_shrug:

Why?

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