Why Shattering Throw? Why these changes?

#0 - March 6, 2009, 9 p.m.

I can inference on the reasons behind it's specific implementation:

It gives us a chance against Paladins by breaking Divine Shield.
It has a cast time so it can be interrupted/stunned and we lose a cooldown.
It has a 5 minute cooldown so it isn't up every time a paladin uses Divine Shield.
It costs rage as we shouldn't be able to open with such a strong ability.

But what I don't understand is why this isn't simply in as a change to Heroic Throw?
I know Heroic Throw had a specific tanking purpose, but why not work that into Defensive Stance and throwing weapons just getting more threat as part of the stance, and making Heroic throw a half-way point?

Was the cooldown being seperate from Heroic Throw that important?
Having two decent damage range abilities on such long cooldowns isn't something I see as a large buff to Arms warriors.

As for the Stance changes, thank you, but I think warriors were hoping for stances to be overall far more dramatic than they are. As in, if we change stances, being in that stance alone is something that forces the opponent to change tactics.

I'm aware that this is a first glance, and I'm aware there are more changes coming, but I just thought
it would be nice to know the thought process a little is all.

And a quick personal request: If Fury damage is going down, please help their survivability to a degree, especially with Damage shields.

Ghostcrawler

#2 - March 6, 2009, 9:20 p.m.

Heroic Throw is an important tool for tanks who are pulling. We couldn't pull it out of Defensive Stance, yet part of what we wanted to do with Shattering Throw was give you another situational reason to shift to Battle Stance.

We also want to give ourselves plenty of room to adjust the cooldown and cast time of Shattering Throw, which again mucks up Heroic Throw's role as a pulling tool.

We would still like to add some additional functionality to Heroic Throw for dps warriors. The problem is all of the obvious choices, say a Disarm or Interrupt, are either useless or overpowered. We don't really think we need more caster hate in the game right now.

Ghostcrawler

#52 - March 6, 2009, 9:44 p.m.

Q u o t e:
So can you please explain why you want another ability that blows up Bubble? Is it so you can buff Paladins in other ways? Please explain the balance of this.

Paladins are extremely powerful in PvP right now.
Priests are the only class that can break bubbles. We felt another class needed the ability.
Warriors are weak in PvP right now.
Warriors needed another reason to want to go to Battle Stance.
Going to Battle Stance helps to telegraph what the warrior is about to do.
It just all fit.

Q u o t e:
Caster hate

I meant that we have given melee classes plenty of ways to deal with casters. We don't think warriors need a ranged interrupt on a 60 sec cooldown usable in any stance, so that would be a bad role for Heroic Throw. We would like to have HT do something else though.