Windfury Totem Nerf Necessary

#0 - Aug. 10, 2007, 3:09 p.m.

As a Fury Warrior, I see the Windfury Totem nerf as a necessity, similar to the nerf to Divine Shield that Paladins received.

Think about this, there is no other player buff in the game that one can keep up indefinitely with as much effect as Windfury. Windfury represented an increase of 20% or more for Melee DPS. What other buff can claim that kind of power. Heroism and Bloodlust last for 40 seconds on a 10 minute cooldown. Avenger's Wrath and Death Wish are self buff only. Simply put, Windfury has been crutch that both Shaman and Melee DPS have been standing on for too long.

This nerf is an opportunity for Blizzard to buff Enhancement Shaman, Fury Warriors, Retribution Paladins, Arms Warriors and the various rogue talent builds. Without this nerf, any significant increase in the damage dealing capabilities of these setups would have marginalized any non-melee DPS setup.

Windfury was a crutch. This is your chance to stand up and walk for yourself.

Nethaera

#68 - Aug. 10, 2007, 4:55 p.m.

I just wanted to post this here since I posted it in the General forums already and didn't want anyone to think that was the only place it was going to be posted. (Slightly modified to indicate the strangeness with the original hotfix sticky post disappearing.)

The sticky post in general is still there though for some reason it's not showing up properly on the forums. In IE, I see it listed fine. In Firefox, I can't see it unless I go directly to the link or do a search under my own posts. The text was simply edited for clarification since some were confused as to whether it affected "white" or "yellow" damage with the change.

This change was something that was intended to have been implemented when the Burning Crusade was put in along with all the other changes that came with BC. We had thought we had 'fixed' this before, but kept having an issue getting it to work as it was intended. It is now corrected so that it is working as we intended it to at the release of the Burning Crusade.

That said, this was done simply to modify the amount of dps that melee classes were able to do with it. This wasn't a spur of the moment change, but something that had been planned for awhile. This does not negate any plans or discussion that was held during BlizzCon like some seem to feel. There are positive changes for Shaman coming as we said.

Nethaera

#76 - Aug. 10, 2007, 5:03 p.m.

Here's a bit more for you all as far the reasoning why this fix wasn't in sooner and to clarify that this also is intended to affect Slam:

With the release of The Burning Crusade, we had intended Windfury Totem to only work with normal auto-attacks and “on next swing” abilities such as Heroic Strike and Cleave. We uncovered the reason this fix did not work, and it was corrected with the Windfury Totem hotfix this week. At this time, Slam is intended to not work with Windfury Totem. We have no plans to return it to working with Windfury Totem.

Nethaera

#83 - Aug. 10, 2007, 5:08 p.m.

Q u o t e:

Hey neth, I gots a quick question. Does you guys nerfin windfury hint any chance for a class buff concerning melee dps classes? I.E. like ret pallies, enh shamans, rogues / warriors? Just wondering ><

The most I can say right now is there are more changes for classes in the works for a future patch. I can't give specifics as of yet, but many of these things were talked about a little at BlizzCon. We won't be able to give specifics until we're closer to making them live however. We have said that Ret Pallies and enhance Shaman should expect some help.

Nethaera

#175 - Aug. 10, 2007, 7:52 p.m.

Q u o t e:

With all due respect, Nethaera, this goes against what I remember being said about this change before TBC. Does anyone else remember this change being tested on the PTR and people complaining about it? Does anyone else recall one of the CM posting and saying that the change was reverted because after testing it the devs felt it affected melee DPS too much? So now all of a sudden it's fine again?

Someone is clearly full of it. Either the comment above or the information we got before saying that devs didn't feel this change was appropriate.

Keep in mind that was prior to BC.