Hey Blizz! Thank you for the initial changes, I was not expecting anything so soon!
Here are my thoughts after testing;
- Bloodsurge: in larger packs this definitely is noticeable but not enough. I would love if you could tell us how much the chance has gone up rather than just “significantly.” The problem is this doesn’t help on boss fights a ton and we are never going to take both Bloodsurge and Instigate. Honestly one of these talents should just be made baseline
- Practiced Strikes: Thank you for acknowledging that Colossus needs more rage gen! Big W
- The other changes to our DPS and tankiness via Brace for Impact/Punish are nice, no complaints tehe
Overall I think this is a step in the right direction. I still am of the opinion that none of the original changes should go live but this is better than the original set.
I just want to reiterate three things. First, there currently is no issue with how protection warrior plays. We already have the choice between a faster/higher APM playstyle with Mountain Thane and a slower more deliberate one with Colossus. Yes there are some tuning issues w/numbers but that’s easy to change. The design of both accomplishes what I think you and many players wanted from hero talents which is a gameplay altering choice to keep things fresh. As I said before and many in this and other threads have echoed, you are trying to fix an issue that doesn’t exist.
Second, Strategist and Devastate must go back to a 30% to proc for both. This has nothing to do with rage generation or dps. It is entirely based off feel. The spec feels slow and there is far too much downtime in our rotation. Pressing less buttons doesn’t equal more thoughtful use of rage. It equals less player agency and fun. It feels bad, slow and just awful.
Third. With the buff to Bloodsurge and the nerf to Violent Outburst, it seems like you want our rage gen to be more consistent and less spikey. If you want to accomplish this I think redistributing rage from SS to TC is needed. Our main rotational skills are SS and TC which (excluding talents) generate 20 rage. 15 of that 20 rage (75%) is from SS. One skill generates the vast majority of our rage. That is a bigger reason why we are constantly “dumping” rage into IP when we get a Outburst proc or the Thane proc where we get 3 SS in a row. It’s not because we “generate too much rage,” it’s because one skill generates almost all of our rage via our rotation. If SS generated maybe 13 rage and TC generated 8 we would have more control over our rage generation, it would be less spikey, Outbursting a TC wouldn’t feel nearly as terrible and it would allow for less dependence on our spec relying on one skill to function. This also gives you more nobs to tune when trying to adjust the spec.
There are many other ideas in this thread that are great too. Thank you again for your quick changes and listening to us! I hope you continue to take our feedback into consideration. Again, this is a step in the right direction but ultimately none of this should be happening in the first place.