Can you imagine if Execute was really an execution? It would be something like this: You prepare a lethal attack over 1.5 seconds that deals twice your target’s remaining health as physical damage(in PvE, it should be calculated differently).
Ignores armor, immunities, deals 1000% damage to shields, and is always a critical hit.
Sends your victim’s soul to hell, preventing them from reincarnating or using abilities after death, and is also unaffected by abilities that prevent death.
Execute leaves you incapacitated for 1 second after finishing off your target.
Requires 100 Rage Points
Can only be used on enemies with 10% health or lower, if your target is under the effects of any physical damage immunity, it can be used at 35% health or lower.
Before the paladins start crying, I’ll say that it’s just a crazy idea; I don’t think it would be feasible. It’s just that when I read ‘‘Execute’’, it sounds like that, like an execution,…
…not a cuddle with roses, which is basically what it does now.
Honestly, as much as I’m mostly fine with Execute… kinda same here.
I’m not a fan of it basically being a Slam upgrade on proc or against enemies below 20|35% health, and the whole idea of getting rewarded for it NOT killing the enemy is… quite the icing or irony on top.
That said, for Arms, I’d probably prefer it just be a normally Rage-inefficient but burstier Rage dump usable at any time but of course made contextually more efficient. For Fury… not sure.
It’d be cool if it did something different for each spec.
Prot:
Condemn: Usable on targets over 80% HP and under 20%, gives Ignore Pain for the damage dealt. (I personally really miss Condemn for tanking, and if it gave IP instead of just a shield on one target, it’d be way more useful)
Fury:
Execute – Call it something else, like Taste for blood or something: Take both weapons and barbarically make vertical chops in an effort to turn your foes into bologna mist – Effectively is Rampage + 35% damage New animation, new audio.
Rampage becomes Execute while attacking enemies under 20% HP. Does 35% more damage
Sudden Death is just a free Execute Proc.
This way Execute is still a Rage Dump… but it’s less immediate death and more DPS.
Arms:
Execute: Hold to focus your rage - Generates 33 rage per second. Automatically releases at full rage. -50% movement speed while charging (Or maybe it slows you down the more rage you have from say 20-50% or something, would need playtesting to balance it so it feels good). Does .5% of your max HP in damage per rage spent. Can crit. New Animation/Audio/Visual. Animation would be like "Holding your weapon over your head lining up the big chop. Players can walk out of range. Minimum cast time is the GCD.
Sudden Death: Allows you to use Execute on any target as if you have full rage already.
That way all 3 specs have a different feel for it.
Prot gets some durability and damage, and it’s more fun to press than Ignore Pain.
Fury just gets some extra damage out of it, and a new animation – doesn’t really change the gameplay loop much, but Execute stays a rage dump and doesn’t conflict with Rampage at all. Execute is more of a DPS phase that is just baked into the kit. Keeps it simple.
Arms gets the full monty “Guillotine” kinda experience, bit slower and more methodical – feels way chunkier, but it’s harder to land on moving targets. May need to tune the numbers so that it’s actually a sensible ability to use / risk is worth the reward. Still needs counter play in PvP imo.
Just spit ballin’ ideas. I’m mostly cool with execute as it is, but if we’re lookin’ for ideas for a rework this is where my head would be at.
Honestly, this kind of just makes me want to see Execute reworked all the more since Condemn then puts Execute in increased conflict with Mortal Strike.
Makes me wish all specs had access to a capstone (say, Shock Tactics) allowing for Execute on enemies above 80% health and yet another causing suppression from direct damage dealt above a certain threshold.
On that note, I kind of wish sometimes that Rage was a bit less plain/absolute of a builder-spender system. Needing Rage in order to swing a sword and only being able to do so on Arms to the extent we can avoid low Rage-per-GCD attacks feels lacking, to say the least. And then there’s the simple matter than Arms is usually more based around battle-focus and determination than mere rage.
It almost makes me wonder how a new resource might better fit all three specs, with something of a variable maximum and thereby variable spending (spend up to 40% of max on an Execute, etc.), with Arms thereby able to build mini-burst windows by building up its max resource over time and then bursting Rage expenditure and thereby damage, Fury able to increasingly ramp up but also risk dropping out of Enrage (a la Legion Voidform), and Protection able to build to that much stronger of defenses or counteroffensives.
Execute as it is right now gives us somewhat of a solid niche in being the highest DPS when the kitchen sink is being thrown by the raid boss, arguably one of the most important and chaotic moments of a prog kill is the final 35%, this honestly is a very solid niche to have so I wouldn’t exactly want that changed since it’s one the main reasons to even play Arms, since that’s when you become the boss fight in a sense.
The only real changes i’d like to see for it personally is on the Fury side where it is changed to only hit once and not split with a second offhand attack soley for the purpose of not splitting the damage between two intervals to lead to less people complaining about how low their execute crit as fury, even though it was the offhand component of the attack that crit and not the mainhand.
Hold to cast spells are also awful, and bugged still to this day. Evokers complain about it consistently and would not be a welcome addition to any other class or spec to have to deal with that given the awful track records Blizzard has had regarding recent patch long bugs and previous expansion long bugs regarding poorly coded abilities, Remember wild strike procs being consumed if you were out of range of your target when hitting the ability if the boss was moving or you were? Yeah that never got fixed the whole of WoD even with it being reported countless times.
Not sure I’d care about Execute coming back for the first 20% of a target’s health since it just caused awkwardness in keys where you’re conflicted in engaging in your AoE burst or Executes on M+ packs so you never got any value of it there at all, and it being one of the fastest phases of a boss fight you’re getting less and less time using it during farm too.
I see Touch of death from monks being more of an execute than ours. Its nice to get a kill with it, but damn it should deal more damage than Ms and Rampage.
Maybe a talent that increase even more its damage when the target is at 15%, 10% and 5% for a proper finish, so it would, hopefully, cut down the absorbs and definitely kill the target, or even better, ignore every shield/bubble/absorb if the target is below 10%/5%
I would rather if condemn was for all specs, that was imo, the best shadowlands power, together with the execute charge we got nice mobility
But i get the appeal of execute having one effect for each spec, it would be rly hard to balance and make it “fair” for all of then, but sure would be cool.
Honestly, this. Having to hit 16 times to finally arrive at a full-powered Execute is absurd levels of misnomer.
I wouldn’t mind if it were on a choice node opposite the likes of Executioner’s Precision and encouraged banking Rage for a triple/quadruple Execute (with each Rage spent on Execute increasing the damage of Execute by 0.2% damage for 5 seconds, with any number of applications stacking simultaneously), but otherwise a slightly revamped (more granular, more reliable) Fatality seems like what we should aim for from an Execute actually fitting its name.
Would also love to see a Deathblow (in the general sense of the term, not the Sudden Death equivalent) mechanic added, allowing Execute to deal up to, say, 50% more damage if said bonus damage would kill off the enemy.
(If your target has 1.5 mil HP left and Execute deals 1 mil damage, it will automatically deal 50% more to finish the target off, whereas if they have 1.51 mil health left, no extra damage is dealt since the extra couldn’t finish off the target anyways nor reduce them to any of the mentioned thresholds.
Potentially, this could be expanded also to other health thresholds, such as 20% and 35%. Naturally, being able to take advantage of the 20% threshold would essentially depend on Sudden Death or Massacre (since you’d be trying to precisely reduce them to 20%, which means you’d have to Execute them from above that) and the 35% threshold on Sudden Death.
Execute should be a “no you are dying right now unless you get lay on hands, or stupid huge heal in the next 2 seconds.” in concept this is what it used to be, with the added layers of sunder armors, rend, and mortal wounds. But since then the armor remover that made it that passively lethal is no longer a reality in the same way, you got colossus smash, but that only lasts a few seconds and isn’t persistent.
I recall a time where warriors were a class that the longer you fought them the less likely you were to win, ramping up into crits that would ignore a lot of armor. Now however they have been horribly gutted from this design philosophy and execute along with it have changed into something new. Not to say you cant make current warrior work, its just they act more like a glass cannon then a tug of war with 2 bulldozers and a chain about to snap.
But then again this is biased perspective from an ex warrior turned monk, so yea.
