Thank you! That worked.
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Iâm torn on this choice node in general. I became a Warrior main in Legion and instantly loved Odynâs Fury. When they brought it back in Dragon Flight, I was stoked. Of course, they made it unusable after season 1. As Slayer, which is going to be the default raid spec probably forever, OF is never going to be taken. Ever. Up until season 3, I did all my delves and outdoor, as well as M+, mostly with Thane. Slayer is great now with the set bonus for AOE and not losing much ST. This change essentially nullifies even using OF, so why even have it on the tree? If it is going to stay on that choice node, despite it not being used as a slayer, they really need to buff OF as well, or itâs not even an impactful decision. Sure, itâll be the default for Thane, but youâre not even making a choice on either hero talent choice. BS for Slayer, OF for Thane is not a choice.
What Iâd love to see is making OF work with Slayer. Bladestorm does damage over 4 seconds. Odynâs Fury does damage over 4 seconds. An easy fix is to make the two talents interchangeable for Slayer and do similar damage. Itâs an easy change and allows for player agency. The choice node actually becomes a choice, not a default, to which hero talent spec youâre playing. There are many Warrior players out there who love Odynâs Fury, specifically due to how it truly fits into the Fury fantasy. I hope Blizzard does something about this.
P.S. It might sound stupid, but I literally returned to WoW when I was told Odynâs Fury returned to the game after I couldnât take a second more of Shadowlands.
Itâs very happy to see more bleed talents for a more bleed focused setup, but the choice node is a lil awkward. Deep Wounds being tied to execute with a 6s duration means we want consistent executes, so Slayer. But I want OF for more bleed, but if Iâm doing Slayer then I would be taking Bladestorm without question.
I get that you could probably live without OF, but it feels bad to have to specifically not take a synergizing choice in the talent tree because that choice is at odds with the hero talent tree. Hopefully apex talents will add some uses for OF into Slayer or something, but weâll see.
I wouldnât put any stock in that hope for apex talents, theyâll be passives linked to abilities both hero talent builds utilise for that spec.
The apex talents will likely be linked to rampage for fury, maybe raging blow or bloodthirst. Or be entirely passive off their auto attacks or be further augments to their enrage state.
I think thatâs the point, so that either build still gets value.
- Slayer gets increased bleed value out of more frequent Executes triggering Deep Wounds.
- Thane gets increased bleed value out of Odynâs Fury (assuming they donât take Bladestorm anyway).
That said, I agree that the choice node doesnât feel like a particularly good. Itâs fine to have an option for either spec (even if Slayer could use Odynâs Fury, it would only ever use one ability and never the other), but Thane doesnât have any inherent synergy with OF the way it did Ravager/Unhinged either⌠the thought of gambling for a crit before using OF isnât exactly my idea of compelling gameplay.
- My favored idea was keeping Ravager, but making it a passive that automatically activated when you used Avatar (or CS/Recklessness, now that Avatar has been culled) to automate the process while keeping a little more power in our cooldowns.
A lot of classes feel like they had their cooldowns gutted just for apex talents to add a little oomph back.
I wouldnât say any of them exactly scream excitement either - basically everyone just has a worse cooldown from what they have now and you have to level up just to close that gap a little.
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Yeah most Apex talents seem to have at least 1 node that links to that specâs main CD (so in warriors case it would be CS Arms / Reck Fury / Avatar Prot) and other effects as well that play passively off main attacks.
Although until we see both Apex talents and additional hero tree additions itâs kinda a waiting game for the next few weeks before they add them into a build.
As for cooldowns being gutted? Iâm not sure I entirely agree with that to a degree. The follow up on what theyâre able to build up on and enable certain specs to have flexibility Arms for instance is no longer locked to a 90s cd cadence so theyâre easily able to fit into any on use trinkets due to CS should still easily be a ~30s cd for arms from AMâs cdr contributions. Whereas while we had Avatar we were locked into itâs use as our highest damage moment.
Then we look at some other specs that had too many cooldowns for set-up which never felt fun on your opener as youâre going through a checklist of 10 steps before you even start. Overall itâs probably better for the health of the game albeit it will make things a little easier upfront learning curve wise.
I donât mind cooldowns being removed (though I still insist that Ravager could have just been made a passive that automatically drops when your major cooldown is activated), I mind that the ones left feel pretty gutted.
- Without Torments, Avatar is very mediocre.
- Recklessness lost Torments, Depths, half its rage generation, and it wasnât a particularly strong cooldown to begin with. People are excited about the idea of AM + RA, but Reck only lasts 12s now and you spend a third of that pressing Rampage, and almost another third in Bladestorm.
- The new Colossus Smash follow-on talents are also pretty underwhelming, particularly Press the Advantage, Blunt Instruments, Spiteful Serenity, and Crushing Combo.
- Bladestorm lost a lot of single target power in Unhinged, all of its Anger Management CDR, while the Fury version lost half its rage generation and got a +50% longer cooldown!
Iâm sure theyâll see some tuning, and I donât particularly think Warrior needs to be a high burst cooldown class with large peaks and valleys, but it is a little hard to get excited about whatâs left.
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I agree, but also torments were kinda lame, they only ever really had one viable option entirely (in Furyâs case) were split into ST / AoE (in Armsâ case) or provided degenerate CDR while also causing a monopoly of onGCD economy (in Protectionâs case).
Thereâs definitely some tuning still needed to make these more interesting. I am curious since I donât have Alpha access myself does Blunt instruments increase the 30% CS vuln window by 20% of itâs original value to 36%? Or does it add a flat +20% ontop of it making it a 50% dmg vuln window?
The first I can see being the more logical step so thereâs parity between it and spiteful, but if it is indeed the second then thatâs basically killed off any option of spiteful serenity being useful by comparison.
Honestly given how theyâre pruning other cooldowns for classes while it wouldnât help make things interesting between them for Fury they probably shouldâve just merged both Recklessness and Avatar into one ability. Players macro them together anyway almost always so itâs not like it would change much gameplay wise.
Iâm curious as to who exactly is excited about RA? cause last i checked itâs still an awful looking talent from a gameplay perspective and doesnât really do much but make BT and RB do slightly more. half the time they tune furyâs abilities anyway these are forgotten and not buffed at all leaving it to be a dead talent once a few tuning passes happen early into an xpac. Would be nice if RA turned back to itâs TWW S1 variant though that imo was much better than what itâs been changed to since.
As for ST? Honestly they just need to give it the treatment mixed ST/AoE abilities have and just have it deal 50% additional damage to your primary target. Unhinged was lame for lack of better wording, yes it propped up bladestorm in ST and had some synergies with other talents when you took ravager for colossus/thane since it enabled MS resets/Colossus stacks and Thunderblast procs for Thane.
But with the whole turning down of multiple things to track, making things more direct and less obscure in their function I can understand why they removed it.
The CDR loss from AM is definitely going to be felt for both specs, hopefully slayerâs got something up itâs sleeve in itâs next 3 nodes that will be added soon which weâll probably see bits of the current s3 2p tier set bonuses added in there which would help offset some of that CDR loss with say SD procs forcing a slayer strike.
Thatâs a sentiment across the board, weâre kinda in a weird spot since weâre missing a very large piece of the puzzle in both missing hero talents and apex talents as well so thereâs no real way to criticise the design. Iâve got a somewhat positive outlook personally as it seems playstyles are mostly kept in tact.
This isnât entirely true, Titanâs Torment was very competitive for awhile, but that also happens with practically any choice node unless theyâre very hardlined into one build or another (Slayer BS/Thane Ravager).
Theyâre multiplicative:
- CS is 30% for 10s
- Blunt is 36% for 8s
- Spiteful is 18% for 20s
The idea is that they let you customize for different encounters, but I donât think the differences are big enough to make them anything more than a math problem, and unless Blunt/Spiteful are noticeably better than default, it will be better to skip them entirely and just put that talent point somewhere else (same issue with the current Spiteful Serenity).
Unhinged was fantastic, but itâs ok to be wrong.
I donât believe this is true. I think a lot of the individual talents are interesting and have the potential to make some very compelling gameplay. They just need some refinement and we need a little better pathing in order for it to all come together.
I cannot stress enough how that is not unusual for a brand new Alpha though. Comparatively speaking, everything looks pretty similar, if not even a little better, now than they did at the start of DF and TWW Alphas.
Weâre talking pre rework right? When it was an AoE powerhouse? Not the post vet visit variant where it got changed to such an awful talent.
Yeah thatâs what I thought it would be over additive so my guess was correct on their %s and their durations in an earlier post cool.
Given that blunt loses 2s off itâs duration, which is a gcd or two haste dependant Iâm not too sure I can see it being picked very often over some other rung 2 options because itâs not gating anything as you can path around it for Bloodletting anyway from Strength of Arms.
Spiteful falls into the same boat, unless thereâs a 20s vuln window that outweights having the 18% incease for itâs full duration vs 30% for itâs half duration I donât really see how itâll be able to be justified passing through.
I understand why people liked it, since it added additional ST to bladestorm and helped force a proc or two and didnât feel any different to any other bladestorm due to no additional input from players outside of âpress bladestormâ and bam a couple of extra numbers popping up on your screen with an MS or BT icon which frankly wouldâve been easily replaced as a ST boost if they just gave Bladestorm a primary damage bonus like they do to other AoE cooldowns that they want to be used on ST.
I agree 100% the choice node of OF/BS sucks. I always liked slayer more so with these changes it means we will never use OF which sucks. Its iconic for fury since Legion. Also a 45 sec CD vs a 90s CD just dont feel like they are on the same power level at all. The worst part really is the inability to have both. If you play slayer you will never use OF, however if you are Mtn Thane I dont see a reason you would take OF anyways. The choice node just doesnt make any sense.
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Iâm usually an Arms diehard through and through, but⌠the more I play of this season, the more I actually kinda like that Rage waste is now more viable, allowing me to delay a Bladestorm / Recklessness slightly (or prioritize Rage expenditure to comparatively ârushâ them), actually. Perhaps most of all I like that Enrage generators actually can be used as Rage generators even among high Rage generation instead of just as mere hit-on-CDs (BT when strong) or Rage-churners (Rampage).
To be clear, the final result still doesnât quite resonate with me; itâs just that Iâve increasingly found that RB isnât the reason for that shortfall and in some cases the more sparing uses of non-filler âeven as bad as it feels for CPMâ may actually allow more control rather than less, at least compared to previous iterations.
Or, put otherwise, unless there are distinct use cases and priorities across the non-fillers per their unique features, I guess they quickly start to feel almost as filler-ish to me.
- Iâd ideally like this for Arms as well (with branching granular decision-making to partake in via skills each with a degree of unique features), but certain interactions atop the visual theming make it an easier sell for me.
This much Iâll agree with, though, especially since some things like having a pseudo-filler buff the spender for which itâs already the only way to rush out (by skipping BT or WW) are purely redundant.
Is that really due to RB, though, or just due to the overall featural weakness of a skill whose specific benefits rely on RNG and timing (avoiding early replacements of Enrage), both?
I donât think thatâs necessarily a matter of their being too âsimpleâ so much as perhaps playing Chicken with getting out one more GCD before having to refresh Enrage via Rampage, etc.
Nor do I see why hitting BT on CD would be any more challenging than that game of Chicken, even if Iâd like to see that option exist alongside RB focus or general Rampage focus. (And honestly, I had assumed that all would be meant to deliberately ânot just passivelyâ buff Execute on Slayer when we first heard thatâd be a hero spec, rather than any among BT, RB, or Ramp.)
I honestly would have expected to see Blunt and Serenity both tuned higher, as Serenity only adds 20% more effective-seconds and, unless Bladestorm is skipped or minor, AoE damage, there will be a fair bit less than that theoretical value in practice even if one can take the perfect Haste threshold for MS/Cleave for that 20s duration.
Iâm going to be completely honest⌠they both kind of suck.
As much as I like the idea of tailoring your cooldown to the situation, there are several factors limiting the practicality of that concept:
- Performance aside, on a strict gameplay level, thereâs not really enough distinction between -2 second duration and +6% value to really notice or care about the effect. Youâre still pressing CS the same way you always press CS, so the talents lack any true âmoment value.â
- Few players really want to go through the effort of figuring out that timing on an encounter-by-encounter basis anyway (especially with CS already having somewhat unpredictable cooldown due to Anger Management), much less remember to switch back and forth between every other encounter.
- So for everyone else aside from a handful of RWF or âgive me PIâ parse tryhards, itâs just a math problem of which one offers the best average throughput without having to think too hard about it. Breakpoint math isnât fun, and nobody wants to constantly reevaluate how many GCDs their current amount of haste translates into during each version of CS every time they change a piece of gear.
- Most talents donât come with downsides because opportunity cost exists. Spiteful Serenity is a gain over normal Colossus Smash in The War Within, but not as much as just putting the talent point into anything else, so at least one of these two new talents needs to be demonstrably better than base Colossus Smash and whatever other talent we could take, or we just skip both of them.
If they do stick around, the effects should probably change to be more noticeable, but thatâs difficult to do while still keeping it within the expected power level of a mid-tier talent, so a much more straightforward design would skip the tradeoff altogether and just make it a choice between Blunt increasing Colossus Smash value or Spiteful increasing its duration, without the secondary negative multiplier.
That said, I would personally prefer they go away altogether, in no small part because and I really want Dominance of the Colossusâ unique debuff to change to applying Colossus Shout/Demo Shout in order to streamline Demolish cooldown alignment, and Iâm afraid these talents would play hell with that idea.
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Yeah, thatâs my main feasibility concern right there.
âŚwhile my overall core concern isâŚ
âŚyeah, theyâre just rather boring, while taking up a whole path down.