FEEDBACK: Warrior Class Changes

#1 - April 9, 2020, 5:46 p.m.

Updated August 19

Protection Warriors will see a few updates in this week’s build. First, a number of talents have been moved around in the tree. After seeing how the layout is playing on Beta, and reading your feedback, we think this updated tree will create more competitive choices in multiple rows.

15 – War Machine, Punish, Devastator
25 – Unchanged
30 – Best Served Cold, Booming Voice , Dragon Roar
35 – Unchanged
40 – Never Surrender, Indomitable, Impending Victory
45 – Into the Fray, Unstoppable Force, Ravager
50 – Anger Management, Heavy Repercussions, Bolster

Thunder Clap and Revenge will now begin dealing reduced damage if they strike more than 5 targets, instead of when they strike more than 1 target. The initial changes to these abilities’ damage has had an outsized effect on threat gameplay for Protection, particularly in dungeons. These changes should make the task of gaining threat on a standard pack of enemies feel closer to the live game, while still making fighting large groups of enemies more of a challenge.

There are two accompanying, smaller tuning changes as well. Tuning is ongoing, but these changes were worked in alongside with the talent rearrangement.

• Devastate’s damage increased by 50%.
• Dragon Roar generates 20 Rage for Protection (was 10 Rage). It still generates 10 Rage for Fury.

Thanks for your continued playtesting and feedback!

June 17

Hello to all of the seasoned soldiers, raging barbarians, and ironclad commanders of Azeroth! The newest Shadowlands Alpha build has a number of changes for Warriors, primarily focused on talents. We’re happy with the playstyle of each spec, and our philosophy for core abilities is generally “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. That said, there are a number of talents in each tree that could use some love. Some were underutilized in Battle for Azeroth (eg., Collateral Damage for Arms, and Inner Rage for Fury) and haven’t seen changes yet, or their first set of changes in Shadowlands haven’t quite hit the mark (Frothing Berserker for Fury). We’re looking forward to hearing your thoughts and feedback on the new and updated talents!

We’d like to call out that Arms’ Mastery and Deep Wounds have been redesigned. We heard your feedback that Deep Wounds’ overwhelming contribution to the damage breakdown felt unrewarding, and we agree. The new design will be a much smaller proportion of Arms’ direct damage, and should reward skillful target selection more than the previous version.

Single-Minded Fury has returned to Fury Warriors, with an updated design. This means that Fury Warriors can now receive one-handed weapons as item drops, though that may not be implemented in this build.

For Protection, a major topic of discussion has been the status of the Unstoppable Force build that exists in Battle for Azeroth. There are a lot of individual effects contributing to the build: talents, Azerite Traits, and Essences. The core components, however, are the Anger Management and Unstoppable Force talents, which can still be taken together in Shadowlands. In Battle for Azeroth, the multiplicative nature of the other effects is so powerful that Unstoppable Force overshadows any other setup or playstyle. We’d like to leave Protection in a more conservative position until the rest of their potential toolkit is known - additional Rage generation, cooldown reduction, etc. from Conduits and/or Legendaries may quickly have an outsized impact on the strength of Unstoppable Force. We hear your feedback that the playstyle is extremely fun! The intention isn’t to remove it completely, and we’ll be keeping a close eye on how things shape up in the next few months in order to revisit and tweak things before the game launches. Thank you for your patience and ongoing feedback - it’s extremely valuable to us.

Arms Warrior

• Mastery: Deep Wounds has been redesigned. Now, Mortal Strike and Bladestorm inflict Deep Wounds, dealing Bleed damage over 12 seconds and increasing the damage the enemy takes from you.*

  • Developers’ notes: Removing Execute as a Deep Wounds applicator helps keep Mortal Strike relevant sub-20% health, without relying entirely on its damage-per-Rage in comparison to Execute.

• Mastery rating will increase the “damage the enemy takes from you” effect, rather than Deep Wounds’ damage.

  • Developers’ notes: We feel it is important for Arms to have a Bleed in their core kit, but Deep Wounds’ direct contribution to damage dealt was overwhelming.

• Execute damage increased by 20%.

• Mortal Strike damage reduced by 5%.

• Ravager has been redesigned to give it more identity, and differentiation from Bladestorm. Ravager again replaces Bladestorm when talented, and inflicts Deep Wounds (reverting previous Shadowlands changes). Cooldown reduced to 45 seconds, and duration increased to 12 seconds (still reduced by Haste). Ravager now chases nearby enemies.

• Collateral Damage has been redesigned: When Sweeping Strikes ends, your next Whirlwind deals 25% increased damage for each ability used during Sweeping Strikes that damaged a second target.

  • Developers’ notes: Collateral Damage’s previous design turned out to be too niche. We want to support Sweeping Strikes in talents, and this new version should be more broadly applicable outside of strictly 2-target situations.

• Cleave has been redesigned: Replaces Sweeping Strikes. 20 Rage. 6 second cooldown. Strikes up to 5 enemies in front of you for Physical damage, inflicting Deep Wounds. Cleave will consume your Overpower effect to deal increased damage.

  • Developers’ notes: Cleave clashed with Sweeping Strikes at lower target counts, making it feel useful primarily while SS is not active. By having it replace Sweeping Strikes when talented, Cleave can stand on its own and more dramatically affect Arms’ AoE gameplay.

Fury Warrior

• Single-Minded Fury is back. Learned at level 14 alongside Titan’s Grip, Fury Warriors can once again use their abilities while dual-wielding one-handed weapons. While dual-wielding a pair of one-handed weapons, your damage done is increased by 8% and your movement speed is increased by 5%.
• Recklessness now generates 40 Rage.
• The following talents have been removed: Inner Rage, Furious Slash, Fervor of Battle, and Wrecking Ball.
• Frenzy is a new talent: Rampage increases your Haste by 3% for 12 seconds, stacking up to 3 times. This effect is reset if you Rampage a different primary target.
• Seethe is a new talent: Bloodthirst generates 2 more Rage, or 4 more Rage when it critically strikes your primary target.
• Cruelty is a new talent: While Enraged, Raging Blow deals 20% more damage and has a 30% chance to instantly reset its own cooldown.
• Frothing Berserker updated: Rampage has a 20% chance to immediately refund 40 Rage.
• Meat Cleaver is back: Whirlwind deals 30% more damage and now affects your next 4 single-target melee attacks, instead of the next 2.
• Onslaught now generates 15 Rage (was 10).
• Dragon Roar cooldown reduced to 30 seconds (was 35 seconds). No longer reduces enemy movement speed. Now critically strikes for 3 times normal damage.
• Bladestorm damage increased by 20% (Fury only).
• Reckless Abandon updated: Recklessness generates 20 more Rage and greatly empowers Bloodthirst and Raging Blow. Bloodthirst becomes Bloodbath, dealing 100% more damage on a 3 second cooldown. Raging Blow becomes Crushing Blow, dealing 100% more damage and charging you to your target within 10 yards.
  • Developers’ notes: We’d love to hear your thoughts on how it feels using empowered Bloodthirst and Raging Blow.

Protection Warrior

• Ravager has been updated to match the changes made to Arms’ version of the ability: 45 second cooldown, lasts 12 seconds (compressed by Haste), deals damage every 2 seconds, chases nearby enemies, and generates 10 Rage each time it deals damage.
• Dragon Roar has been updated to match the changes made to Fury’s version of the ability: 30 second cooldown, no longer reduces enemy movement speed, critically strikes for 3 times normal damage.
• Crackling Thunder now also increases the movement speed reduction of Thunder Clap by 10%.
• Ignore Pain now caps at 2x value (was a cap of 1.3x value).

April 16

• (Protection) Execute now also has a chance to reset the cooldown of Shield Slam.

.

In this thread, we’re discussing Warrior class changes coming in World of Warcraft: Shadowlands.

Read more about initial class changes in the World of Warcraft blog.

This initial post will be updated periodically throughout the Shadowlands test. Please check back here for information about further updates to this class as they are made.

Thank you for your testing and feedback!

#16 - April 16, 2020, 11:18 p.m.

• (Protection) Execute now also has a chance to reset the cooldown of Shield Slam.

#52 - June 18, 2020, 12:10 a.m.

Updated June 17

Hello to all of the seasoned soldiers, raging barbarians, and ironclad commanders of Azeroth! The newest Shadowlands Alpha build has a number of changes for Warriors, primarily focused on talents. We’re happy with the playstyle of each spec, and our philosophy for core abilities is generally “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. That said, there are a number of talents in each tree that could use some love. Some were underutilized in Battle for Azeroth (eg., Collateral Damage for Arms, and Inner Rage for Fury) and haven’t seen changes yet, or their first set of changes in Shadowlands haven’t quite hit the mark (Frothing Berserker for Fury). We’re looking forward to hearing your thoughts and feedback on the new and updated talents!

We’d like to call out that Arms’ Mastery and Deep Wounds have been redesigned. We heard your feedback that Deep Wounds’ overwhelming contribution to the damage breakdown felt unrewarding, and we agree. The new design will be a much smaller proportion of Arms’ direct damage, and should reward skillful target selection more than the previous version.

Single-Minded Fury has returned to Fury Warriors, with an updated design. This means that Fury Warriors can now receive one-handed weapons as item drops, though that may not be implemented in this build.

For Protection, a major topic of discussion has been the status of the Unstoppable Force build that exists in Battle for Azeroth. There are a lot of individual effects contributing to the build: talents, Azerite Traits, and Essences. The core components, however, are the Anger Management and Unstoppable Force talents, which can still be taken together in Shadowlands. In Battle for Azeroth, the multiplicative nature of the other effects is so powerful that Unstoppable Force overshadows any other setup or playstyle. We’d like to leave Protection in a more conservative position until the rest of their potential toolkit is known - additional Rage generation, cooldown reduction, etc. from Conduits and/or Legendaries may quickly have an outsized impact on the strength of Unstoppable Force. We hear your feedback that the playstyle is extremely fun! The intention isn’t to remove it completely, and we’ll be keeping a close eye on how things shape up in the next few months in order to revisit and tweak things before the game launches. Thank you for your patience and ongoing feedback - it’s extremely valuable to us.

Arms Warrior

• Mastery: Deep Wounds has been redesigned. Now, Mortal Strike and Bladestorm inflict Deep Wounds, dealing Bleed damage over 12 seconds and increasing the damage the enemy takes from you.*
  • Developers’ notes: Removing Execute as a Deep Wounds applicator helps keep Mortal Strike relevant sub-20% health, without relying entirely on its damage-per-Rage in comparison to Execute.
• Mastery rating will increase the “damage the enemy takes from you” effect, rather than Deep Wounds’ damage.
  • Developers’ notes: We feel it is important for Arms to have a Bleed in their core kit, but Deep Wounds’ direct contribution to damage dealt was overwhelming.
• Execute damage increased by 20%.
• Mortal Strike damage reduced by 5%.
• Ravager has been redesigned to give it more identity, and differentiation from Bladestorm. Ravager again replaces Bladestorm when talented, and inflicts Deep Wounds (reverting previous Shadowlands changes). Cooldown reduced to 45 seconds, and duration increased to 12 seconds (still reduced by Haste). Ravager now chases nearby enemies.
• Collateral Damage has been redesigned: When Sweeping Strikes ends, your next Whirlwind deals 25% increased damage for each ability used during Sweeping Strikes that damaged a second target.
  • Developers’ notes: Collateral Damage’s previous design turned out to be too niche. We want to support Sweeping Strikes in talents, and this new version should be more broadly applicable outside of strictly 2-target situations.
• Cleave has been redesigned: Replaces Sweeping Strikes. 20 Rage. 6 second cooldown. Strikes up to 5 enemies in front of you for Physical damage, inflicting Deep Wounds. Cleave will consume your Overpower effect to deal increased damage.
  • Developers’ notes: Cleave clashed with Sweeping Strikes at lower target counts, making it feel useful primarily while SS is not active. By having it replace Sweeping Strikes when talented, Cleave can stand on its own and more dramatically affect Arms’ AoE gameplay.

Fury Warrior

• Single-Minded Fury is back. Learned at level 14 alongside Titan’s Grip, Fury Warriors can once again use their abilities while dual-wielding one-handed weapons. While dual-wielding a pair of one-handed weapons, your damage done is increased by 8% and your movement speed is increased by 5%.
• Recklessness now generates 40 Rage.
• The following talents have been removed: Inner Rage, Furious Slash, Fervor of Battle, and Wrecking Ball.
• Frenzy is a new talent: Rampage increases your Haste by 3% for 12 seconds, stacking up to 3 times. This effect is reset if you Rampage a different primary target.
• Seethe is a new talent: Bloodthirst generates 2 more Rage, or 4 more Rage when it critically strikes your primary target.
• Cruelty is a new talent: While Enraged, Raging Blow deals 20% more damage and has a 30% chance to instantly reset its own cooldown.
• Frothing Berserker updated: Rampage has a 20% chance to immediately refund 40 Rage.
• Meat Cleaver is back: Whirlwind deals 30% more damage and now affects your next 4 single-target melee attacks, instead of the next 2.
• Onslaught now generates 15 Rage (was 10).
• Dragon Roar cooldown reduced to 30 seconds (was 35 seconds). No longer reduces enemy movement speed. Now critically strikes for 3 times normal damage.
• Bladestorm damage increased by 20% (Fury only).
• Reckless Abandon updated: Recklessness generates 20 more Rage and greatly empowers Bloodthirst and Raging Blow. Bloodthirst becomes Bloodbath, dealing 100% more damage on a 3 second cooldown. Raging Blow becomes Crushing Blow, dealing 100% more damage and charging you to your target within 10 yards.
  • Developers’ notes: We’d love to hear your thoughts on how it feels using empowered Bloodthirst and Raging Blow.

Protection Warrior

• Ravager has been updated to match the changes made to Arms’ version of the ability: 45 second cooldown, lasts 12 seconds (compressed by Haste), deals damage every 2 seconds, chases nearby enemies, and generates 10 Rage each time it deals damage.
• Dragon Roar has been updated to match the changes made to Fury’s version of the ability: 30 second cooldown, no longer reduces enemy movement speed, critically strikes for 3 times normal damage.
• Crackling Thunder now also increases the movement speed reduction of Thunder Clap by 10%.
• Ignore Pain now caps at 2x value (was a cap of 1.3x value).

#92 - Aug. 19, 2020, 8:18 p.m.

Protection Warriors will see a few updates in this week’s build. First, a number of talents have been moved around in the tree. After seeing how the layout is playing on Beta, and reading your feedback, we think this updated tree will create more competitive choices in multiple rows.

15 – War Machine, Punish, Devastator
25 – Unchanged
30 – Best Served Cold, Booming Voice , Dragon Roar
35 – Unchanged
40 – Never Surrender, Indomitable, Impending Victory
45 – Into the Fray, Unstoppable Force, Ravager
50 – Anger Management, Heavy Repercussions, Bolster

Thunder Clap and Revenge will now begin dealing reduced damage if they strike more than 5 targets, instead of when they strike more than 1 target. The initial changes to these abilities’ damage has had an outsized effect on threat gameplay for Protection, particularly in dungeons. These changes should make the task of gaining threat on a standard pack of enemies feel closer to the live game, while still making fighting large groups of enemies more of a challenge.

There are two accompanying, smaller tuning changes as well. Tuning is ongoing, but these changes were worked in alongside with the talent rearrangement.

• Devastate’s damage increased by 50%.
• Dragon Roar generates 20 Rage for Protection (was 10 Rage). It still generates 10 Rage for Fury.

Thanks for your continued playtesting and feedback!

#104 - Aug. 26, 2020, 8:41 p.m.

Hello! This week’s build includes updates to many of the Warrior covenant abilities.

The Kyrian ability Spear of Bastion has had its damage decreased by about 45%, and now begins to deal reduced damage when striking more than 5 targets. This is similar to changes made to Thunder Clap and Revenge last week. Rather than a strict target cap and full damage, we felt it was important to retain Spear’s capabilities as a utility spell, while reigning in its damage contribution in high target-count scenarios.

The Night Fae ability Ancient Aftershock no longer applies a damage over time effect to enemies it hits. Instead:

• The ground will continue to expel anima, dealing Nature damage to up to 5 enemies and generating Rage per enemy over 12 seconds. Every 3 seconds, targets are briefly knocked down.

These additional knockdowns are short, 0.5 second stuns that are not subject to diminishing returns. This change should give Ancient Aftershock a clearer identity as a long-duration disruption ability.

The Necrolord ability Conqueror’s Banner has been redesigned to address concerns about the amount of ramp-up required, and to make the group effect more broadly appealing.

• Conqueror’s Banner – Instant, 3 minute cooldown: Plant the Conqueror’s Banner in the ground, granting 20% maximum health and 10% critical strike chance to you and 2 allies within 15 yards of the banner for 20 seconds. While active, spending 20 Rage (Arms, Protection) / 30 Rage (Fury) and killing enemies grants you Glory. Glory increases your critical strike damage by 1% per stack, up to 30%, for 30 seconds.

When the Warrior plants the banner, it will prefer to buff the two nearest players. This should make it easier for the Warrior to intentionally buff certain allies. As long as those players remain in the area, they’ll keep the buff, even if they don’t stay next to the banner. If one leaves, however, a new player near the banner will gain the buff.

• The duration of the Glory effect refreshes whenever a new stack is earned, meaning it can last a total of 50 seconds from the time the banner is planted.

Additionally, Necrolord Warriors will learn a separate ability, Raise Banner, that allows them to wear the Conqueror’s Banner on their back at all times, similar to the version of the ability currently on Beta.

We’re looking forward to seeing how these changes play out once the new build is available, and hearing your feedback on them. Thank you!

#106 - Aug. 26, 2020, 10:26 p.m.

To increase the impact of “Mortal Wounds” and similar healing reduction effects in PvE situations, we’re doubling the magnitude of these effects against non-player enemies. The value of these effects will remain the same against players.

Warrior, Hunter, Monk

• Mortal Wounds now reduces healing taken by 50% (25% against players).

Rogue

• Wound Poison now reduces healing taken by 8% per stack (4% against players).

Warlock

• Mortal Cleave/Legion Strike now reduces healing taken by 20% (10% against players).

#241 - Sept. 23, 2020, 6:21 p.m.

Hello.

In our latest updates to Shadowlands, Colossus Smash and Warbreaker (if talented) will apply Deep Wounds from Arms Warrior’s Mastery. This change is aimed primarily at giving Arms an additional option for applying Deep Wounds in multi-target scenarios via Warbreaker, without having to rely solely on Bladestorm and Cleave (if talented), and to have Deep Wounds be reliably applied to both Colossus Smash targets when Sweeping Strikes is active.

This change should be testable, but will not yet be reflected in the Deep Wounds tooltip.

#293 - Sept. 30, 2020, 11:34 p.m.

Hello.

In this week’s build of the Shadowlands Beta, the Misshapen Mirror legendary has been changed. It now increases Spell Reflect duration by 60% and only affects your nearest ally.

Previously, this legendary was proving to be stronger than intended.

Thank you very much for your feedback.