Warrior Updates - 8/4

As I suggested recently, we have already reverted the Bloodsurge change. We don't want Slam to be that predictable.

Bloodrage and Berserker Rage are on the global cooldown because warriors were just hitting them on cooldown now that rage is something they actually have to pay attention to.

We're going to continue to iterate a lot on enrage uptime. We want Fury to be enraged a lot (say 60 to 75% of the time), but want them to have enough control so that if they run into an unlucky streak, they can use one of their buttons to become enraged. Enrage has a longer duration on our internal builds, but we still want to avoid it being up constantly.

The 3 sec Bloodthirst cooldown definitely makes us nervous, because it leaves so few opportunities to do anything else in the rotation, so we're just going to have to watch it.

It's fine for Booming Voice to be an optional talent. You can't view it strictly in terms of rage per unit time, because availability counts for a lot too. What I mean is if you had an ability that gave you 100 rage on a very long cooldown, it might not be as useful as something you could rely on more often.

The intent is that Deadly Calm will often proc Inner Rage when it has finished, However if you could use it while you were in Inner Rage then you'd just use Deadly Calm to get around the rage loss that Inner Rage is supposed to cause (and in fact, that might make the ability more limiting because you'd be dumb to use it anywhere else).

Don't worry about the relative damage increases of Titan's Grip versus Single-Minded Fury. We've made no attempt to balance those against each other and won't spend that effort until we're happy with the basic rotation, which we aren't just yet.

Increasing shout range might be the kind of thing we do as a glyph, but we're not crazy about doing that as a means to destealth someone in PvP.

Tactical Mastery remains 25 / 50 rage on top of the 25 you get from Stance Mastery. I'm not sure where the idea that it went back to 10 came from.

Q u o t e:
The concept of "Enrage is a buff that increases the Warrior's damage, therefore it cannot be active very long" and the concept of "The proc that makes Raging Blow usable should be relatively longer to allow the Warrior some freedom on where he can slot in his Raging Blow" is pulling in two different and seemingly frustrating directions.

That's not really it. As I suggested above, we don't want Enrage to be up say 60% of time, allowing your cooldowns to then push enrage time up to 100% total. But if we make Enrage on a long duration that means it needs a really small proc chance, which shifts it from being unpredictable to being slot-machine-level random. I'm not worried that there is a sweet spot in there somewhere where you often get Enrage procs to fill in the time in between say Death Wish and Bloodrage. We'd rather lower the damage on the Enrage talent, since getting to the Enraged mechanic is also valuable, especially for Fury.

Q u o t e:
Whether 4 seconds is the right number doesn't even concern me at the moment, as the change just went in. The part that I like is that they seem to be trying to balance significant enrage uptime with chopped up windows-of-opportunity. A perpetually refreshing state of being enraged just makes Raging Blow something you spam. I like the thought of looking for those 'windows'.

Yeah, the windows are what we're going for. It might be that 6-10 sec duration feels better.

It should be something like this:

No enrage: Bloodthirst, Heroic Strike, Colossus Smash, Slam procs.

Enrage: Bloodthirst, Raging Blow, Colossus Smash, Slam procs, with Heroic Strike just for excess rage.

Q u o t e:
I don't think you can really count Heroic Strike as part of the normal rotation since it's more of a rage dump now that you'll only really use when you've got a good amount of excess rage unless you've changed it again.

If you have 30 rage and Bloodthirst is on cooldown, then you'll probably hit Heroic Strike.

Q u o t e:
While you're discussing things as being on/off the gcd, can you explain why recklessness is still on the gcd? As a dps cooldown in PVE this is particularly lackluster, given if you use it in anything but a free gcd it's a potential dps loss.

There probably isn't a good reason for it to be, to be honest. We'll discuss changing it.

Q u o t e:
I was honestly surprised when I saw that change as well. I expected it to go the opposite route (increase to 4.5/6s) to allow more room in the rotation. Filler attacks are fine, but something on a cooldown that short it doesn't leave much room. I'm sure you'll find something you like if you keep itterating it.

We might try 4.5 sec too. We just want to make sure Fury has something to do within that window when they aren't enraged, and we don't want that something to be Whirlwind. We also don't want to add yet another new warrior attack just to fill that niche.

Q u o t e:
I am really starting to wonder how does 'rude interruption' relates to enrage....

It doesn't. But it relates to being that barbarian up from the hills that doesn't know how to navigate polite society. You sure can swing a big axe though.

Q u o t e:
We are hitting them on cooldown because right now we 100% NEED that rage due to the current rage system and the rage starvation going on while leveling. If the rage equation were tweaked so that we can sustain our rotations then we wouldn't need to be hitting them on cooldown.

This is going to be a tricky thing to nail, and we knew it would be. There are some warriors who interpret any limits on their ability to push their buttons as being rage starved. Yet if you literally never pay attention to the bar, then it isn't a resource at all. Your "sustain our rotations" could mean that you should always be able to hit every button when you want to. What is the role of rage in that model? We are taking a look at the ratings decay as you gain levels. Now that the talent trees have lost so much crit, haste and hit, they may be too steep. I just mention that as an example of the kind of thing that is going to affect rage generation.

Q u o t e:
Edit: And if you're worried about Bloodrage being used for activating Raging Blow, then make it not an enrage

It's not really Raging Blow. It's the fact that rage isn't unlimited any more, so now Bloodrage is attractive as a button to hit on cooldown. By contrast, Tiger's Fury is not used on cooldown because you can push it at the wrong time. The health cost isn't a serious consideration of Bloodrage, but eating up a special attack is.

Q u o t e:
overall for me damage seems much lower in beta than it does in live. i have 2k less attack power in same gear, and this is also factoring in arp gens aer now all strength, yet still nearly 2k lower in attack power. overall damage feels a lot lower too. armorred to teeth is part of the attack power loss. not sure where else it's coming from. and i know balancing hasn't really been done yet but for the leveling experience with mobs having 30-40k health, having much lower damage now is definitely noticable

No, it's relevant feedback. We have plenty of time to get the numbers adjusted to our satisfaction, but it's also hard to get a feel for rotations when combat times are significantly off. Fury did lose a lot of passive damage, and we do need to make up for it somewhere, such as the talent tree passives.

Q u o t e:
Before I botched my interpretation of a previous change to Raging Blow (underestimated the CD), I had understood RB as *the* dominant ability for Warriors during such 'windows'. With the current CD, you're basically looking at a single usage. While I don't necessarily think enrage windows should compel the Warrior to spam RB in an old school, Execute sub 20%' style, I do think it should be featured more prominently. Again, I'll need to play with it to get a good feel, but I think I viewed the shorter CD on RB (3 seconds?) with your suggested enrage duration (6 - 10 seconds) as more appropriate. This is especially true since I think you overestimate Colossus Smash's 'accessibility' as a rotational attack; given the long CD, I view it more as a mini damage-boosting ability.

As an aside, I'm really liking the direction (understanding that there is still much iteration to be done). The biggest thing I wanted out of Fury for Cata was a more engaging and rewarding method of damage delivery and I certainly see this as a big improvement over what we have today.

Yeah, I agree with that. Getting off more than one Raging Blow per enrage is going to be important for it to feel good. I do think Colossus will feel plenty rotational. Shockwave has a long cooldown but still feels pretty meaty. Finishing moves generally take 5 attacks before you get them off.