Annihilator had almost no effect on our gameplay loop at a core. It technically prevented you from over-spamming Whirlwind, even.
You just made a macro with the Raging Blow icon and put: /use Slam
It played a bit like Legion Fury in Nighthold.
Youâre cooked if you think what any forum vote dictates what the general playerbase enjoys.
Echo chambers on class discords donât count for the wants or enjoyments of the general player that just logs on and plays.
Keep in mind the tier set votes were based generally on âanger managementâ and cooldown CDR as opposed to S3 not being an enjoyable gameplay loop, not to mention the lengths set people went to add multiple votes to a flawed system that only a fraction of the playerbase even voted on.
10 Likes
Going to agree to disagree then.
Reddit/Forums/Discord are the only real avenues to get any feedback as to what people do/dont like. If the majority enjoys annihilator they have a sub and could have chosen to vote and completely overturn things, but they didnât.
Iâd argue the gameplay loop sucked because of annihilator, as again people enjoy the playstyle of anger management. The reason people like the CD management builds is because they didnât enjoy the gameplay loop of the current storm of swords/annihilator/odynâs fury build. The casual fury players in my guild switched off the class all together because of the current tierâs playstyle and are returning next season because season 2âs playstyle is back (Though most actually wanted season 1 for some reason).
The problem I have with annihilator being removed is more that itâs removal is happening for the sake of nothing. What are we getting in itâs place? Warriors have zero utility, are we getting any with it? No. New dps cd to use? A crappy choice node.
Again I dont care if itâs being removed, I care for WHY is it being removed. That should be the soul reason behind the complaint around itâs removal. People didnât pick the node for a âslower paced fury playstyleâ they picked it because they didnât want to sit all day managing raging blow/anger CDs. With the new talent being a choice node as well⊠Yeah⊠also not a good idea as itâs now in direct competition with one of the best passive buffs in the tree. Zero of Warriorâs issues are even being addressed, zero utility (shockwave is not fixing this), zero helpful cooldowns in raid/M+, still limited on furyâs ability to cleave without losing a ton of st and vice-versa for our M+ spec. Fury is one of, if not the worst st spec in the game and yet none of this is addressed. These are the issues I have with itâs removal, if we are having things removed why are the following not being addressed? Yet all I see are people up in arms about itâs removal, but not up in arms about WHY itâs being removed as the changes donât remotely fix what they are even stating they are trying to fix with the new node provided.
1 Like
People who go to Forums, Reddit, Discord, Fansites are just a small population of the playerbase they are not the majority of a gameâs playerbase and never have been, you can disagree but you would be wrong.
Oldmate Johnny who plays his warrior after a day of working his 9-5 isnât going to bother going to those avenues to provide feedback for what they like and what they donât like when they play the content they enjoy, theyâll just login to the talent changes on the prepatch thinking why what they enjoyed isnât available anymore.
Pretty valid overall, itâs been culled from the tree entirely and nothing was provided in itâs place. Utility albeit isnât the right thing to put at the end of a spec tree thatâs just littered with throughput increases.
As for overall lacking utility iâd say the class treeâs in a much better state now as well when picking a M+ build compared to what we lose in picking up these utilities on live as is.
After picking one of Fear/Stormbolt and Shockwave, alongside all the other talents youâd want to pickup for a dungeon which would look something like the following.
Arms as Colossus or Slayer, Fury as Mountain Thane will have 2 points of leeway, or 3 if youâre a Slayer fury warrior (no need for Crackling Thunder).
To which would go into the following options most likely the one of Fear/bolt that you did not take earlier on, berserker shout for a group fear break which is very useful for keys like Mists of Tirna Scythe which is apart of TWWâs S1 rotation, a utility that only Shamans used to bring to a group meaning youâre highly sought after in this spot which can only be taken by a Shaman, and if heroism is brought by someone else then youâre on equal footing for the spot here.
Short Shockwave could also be picked in the 2-3 talent leeway which will be potent for Colossus Warriors (arms/prot) due to their talents synergising well with this making it the shortest CD and best AoE Stun which is not to be taken lightly at all.
Piercing Howl is also not be slept in in the additional points we have access to, a 30s cd 8s duration AoE snare does wonders in helping tanks kite at opportune moments and was pretty damn good utility when weâve previously used it.
13s pummel also works wonders in solo kicking certain mob casts that are shorter cooldowns, which allow us to encroach on the niche Shamanâs have with their 12s shear while also providing 1s longer spell lockout on successful kicks.
Arms also has the ability to pickup Intervene much easier in these spare talent points allowing for an easier time to relieve a tank mid large pack with a well timed dbts intervene. Mountain Thane fury could do the same, but work moreso to cover their allies with Stormshield (this one is pending health values vs armour values and how useful this shield would actually be over the 2 random secondary stormbolts).
2 Likes
Ah yes, the vote where the same person could vote on multiple characters, vote on specs you donât even play and where you had people over on the EU bragging that they did exactly thatâŠ
Clearly it is the best sample in the whole world and was completely free of bias. No sign of wrong doing. The influx of 2k votes in the span of a few hours (nearly doubling what EU Season 2 already had) was perfectly fine and legit.
12 Likes
They removed Annihilator as a talent option, which is likely what OP is referring to. Blizzâs stated design goal is for fury to make heavy use of both Bloodthirst AND Raging Blow, not cut one spell from the rotation entirely.
2 Likes
Anni was absolutely garbage.
Made me quit playing fury for this season.
If you want to press 2 buttons go play BM.
1 Like
BT, Slam, WW, Rampage.
Vs
BT hardly ever, Raging Blow Spam, Rampage.
The second sounds more like 2 button spam to me 
6 Likes
Raging blow is better than Anni.
I absolutely despise using Slam in any spec. If you want to play auto attack simulator you go play Classic.
Edit: thereâs a reason s2 won 
it is more fun to play <3
if I wanted to play an offbrand DH and wait for autos to give me rage, Iâd go play havoc.
RB all day every day bb
If you ran into periods of lengthy of downtime you simply were not playing properly.
Yeah Denona already addressed it.
Certain bad actors over on the EU paying bots to vote for S2?
Not to mention that Season 1âs set gives you the same playstyle as season 2âs, just without the needed tracking on when to press bloodthrist (mainly because BT was not part of the S1 rotation post Onslaught buff).
2 Likes
Pls Blizz just put Anni as a choice node with Raging blow. No capstone just a choice for those who like it
6 Likes
Ironically BM presses more buttons than warrior and has this whole expansion. Although I do enjoy the irony of someone who parses green calling other specs easy.
2 Likes
Bit of a bummer, I liked the playstyle. In general Iâve never liked Raging Blow, so it was nice to have a talent to remove it.
3 Likes
I didnât even know there was a votation going on.
1 Like
Kind of curious how the spec will play with the upcoming rage nerfs as well.
I enjoy Annihilator and am not happy about it being removed. I am not a fan of RB spam and I do like that I am using BT frequently with Annihilator.
That being said, it does make sense to avoid making every talent that impacts RB from being completely useless when Annihilator is chosen (due to the removal of RB) and BT being rarely used with RB builds.
We will see how the TWW fury changes shake out. I am curious how the devs will implement their concepts in the warrior thread in the TWW alpha forum. On paper I see where theyâre coming from and can agree with the overall concepts behind their changes (except giving arms my most hated DF warrior ability Ravager). It remains to be seen how they implement the changes.
1 Like
Annihilator was fun Season 3, but it by and large ran into the same issue SMF runs into in that if itâs not the #1 way to do damage as the spec people just arenât going to spec into it.
1 Like
After playing with the S4 tier for a little while now, Iâm beginning to appreciate Annihilator more than I did before. Odynâs Fury was an awesome ability to use, and Annihilatorâs simple rotation felt incredibly smooth.
I genuinely donât understand peopleâs complaints about slam. Slam was never a button that I pressed often playing in S3, it was a filler to help with a little extra rage generation in single target. I also dont understand people claiming that you have to auto attack to generate rage, I donât think I ever ran in to a period of downtime with Annihilator because the tier set would allow me to just press Odynâs Fury again due to the reduced CD and get the ball rolling.
For Raging Blow, Anger Management does feel very good over the course of a dungeon or a raid fight, constantly feeling like you have CDs back up. But there is that initial set up period of a few globals at the start of a fight thatâs super annoying, like popping CDs, enraging with onslaught, dropping a spear or roaring, THEN you finally get to do the actual rotation. It feels like youâre constantly in cooldowns after, but the damage feels lacking compared to Annihilator. Pressing cooldowns in S3 felt like you were SLAMMING. Pressing cooldowns with Raging Blow feels like maintenance to keep your spec functional.
Rather than removing playstyles from players that clearly enjoy having a choice, why not add a couple of talents that emulates the S3 tier set? That way players would have a choice. As it currently stands, Blizzard is pigeon holing players into a single playstyle, and I think that goes against the intent of what tier sets are supposed to be â presenting players with choice so they can create their own âbuildsâ.
What do I know though? Iâm just here to press 2 buttons.
7 Likes
I was so excited for Annihilator since it was on the SMF side of the tree, and I picked all the auto-attack talents, and then it turned out Annihilator just didnât scale very well and it turned into a waste of a talent. So instead of trying to âbalanceâ it, like they pretend they want to do in the game, they just removed it.
But at least it gives us a couple more talents to mess about with.