Warrior Changes - 12759

The numbers on Inner Rage are very easy to adjust. I wouldn't obsess over the current ones too much.

We don't want warriors to sit around autoattacking until they proc Inner Rage all of the time. We also don't want them to be bummed when they slip into it. It's there so that if you get 100 rage and can't spend it fast enough that you aren't overly penalized. I realize some of you think that can't ever, ever happen with the new numbers, but we haven't seen enough high-end PvP or raiding to be convinced yet.

The numbers just need to be such that you play normally until you get Inner Rage and continue to play normally if it happens. Changing your behavior to try and hit it ASAP or avoid it isn't what we're going for.

Q u o t e:
I have some bad news for you: any meaningful rage cost increase is always going to change our behavior. It means we have to reset our priorities, consider what needs cutting from our rotation, etc... We have to remove the buff when we expect rage income to be low (and no, the passive fall off you build in is not going to cut it). Oh, and it always procs too late: a rage dump that is automatically used after the rage spike is a bad design. We want to be using rage dumps before we cap rage, and capping rage is no guarantee that we'll continue to have high rage generation.

Say you're at 75 rage and the rage still seems to be coming in fast. You start using Heroic Strike on cooldown. One of two things is going to happen. Either you can bleed off the excess rage, or you can't. If you can't bleed it off with Heroic Strike, then there is nothing else you can do. Your rage is going to hit 100 and everything else will be wasted. If that happens, then things can go one of two ways: you can just waste all that rage and be sad, or you can convert some of that rage into extra damage (since it would have been wasted anyway).

You can see what that is like today by just hitting Rend, or some other cheap attack and nothing else. Your rage climbs to 100 and stays there. In fact, we had to slow down rage generation for levels 1-10 because the new basic "Strike" attack doesn't consume rage faster than you generate it, especially once you start using Charge.

The world where Inner Rage somehow steals your rage can't really exist because you already had more rage than you could possibly spend. If you got there because you forgot to hit Heroic Strike, then you were just playing badly -- that's not Inner Rage's fault. The best you can argue is that you were in a strange fluke where you suddenly went to 100 rage very quickly, but after a couple of Heroic Strikes, you were going to be fine again so Inner Rage stole that rage. But even in that case, the ability turns off after some minimal threshold, so you can get back to normal quickly.

A lot of you seem to basing your opinions around crits, but that was never the issue in our minds. Inner Rage was designed for situations where you couldn't spend rage fast enough. Examples might include being stunned (which turns on Second Wind), using Raging Calm (which pools your ragE), having to run away from the boss while taking damage (say an encounter like Gruul), or getting Heroism / Lust right when you also take a lot of damage (maybe after running a little bit).

Believe me, if we hit a situation where Inner Rage never procs for anyone, then we'll happily remove it or redesign it. We're just not going to be convinced that will be the case by vague hunches or back of the envelope theorycrafting. We want to see it in action.

Q u o t e:
So in PVP when I am being focused and hit rage cap because I am unable to bleed it off I am supposed to suffer the consequence of 50% MORE RAGE COST ON MY ABILITIES??? 45 rage for my MS and then crippling my ability to use anything else???

Again, you're just looking at the ability as "sometimes, your abilities cost more," which of course makes it sound terrible. In your hypothetical situation though, you are taking so much damage that you can't spend your rage fast enough. You hit 100 and then theoretically got to 120 or 150 or possibly 200 rage. Except all of the rage beyond 100 is just gone into vapor. Inner Rage lets your convert some of that excess rage into damage and gets you down below 100 rage again so that you aren't wasting it. If for example we let the rage bar go to 500, then we wouldn't need the ability because you'd never waste anything. So you are comparing 45 rage Mortal Strikes that hit harder to 45 rage Mortal Strikes (the normal cost, plus all the rage you wasted) that hit for the normal amount.

And as I said above, maybe 50% isn't the right number. However if for example the numbers were 10% more rage for 50% more damage, every warrior strategy guide would say "Don't hit ANY buttons until you get to 100 rage," which we don't think would be very fun.

Also, CAPS and MULTIPUNCTUATION make my arguments STRONGER!!! :)

Q u o t e:
Well... you might see warriors doing this with inner rage. OR, you might see them "standing in the fire" in order to proc it, or in order to max out their DPS. If a few ticks of fire damage, mean we can fill a rage bar and use all our abilities on cooldown, and use heroic strike where we want to, you can bet you'll see warriors running into the fire.

That's an issue with rage though not with Inner Rage per se. If you aren't getting enough rage and figure you can max your dps by standing in fires, then that might be attractive. I'm just pointing this out because I think the "we'll stand in fires" argument is being used as justification for removing Inner Rage, but if standing in fires gave you more Heroic Strikes, then removing Inner Rage won't fix that.