wow Warrior Changes and Explanations in the War Within Alpha: May 2nd

[Staff 1,409]

 

Blizzard have also detailed and explained changes coming to all three Warrior specs in this week's build, with Arms' AoE rotation getting some attention.

May 2 (Source)

There are a few Warrior updates in today’s Alpha build.

After giving Arms and Fury access to both Bladestorm and Ravager, it was clear that Ravager had strong advantages in all situations. We’d like Bladestorm to be a strong pick for burst AOE, so we’re buffing its damage significantly, and reducing Ravager’s damage slightly. This should help make the choice between these abilities more meaningful and let each ability shine in different situations.

Arms
We’ve heard the feedback that the Arms AOE rotation lacks definition, so we’re making adjustments to Cleave to make it the centerpiece of Arms’ AOE rotation in The War Within. We think this will give a unique feel to Arms’ AOE rotation while bringing a classic iconic Warrior ability back to the limelight. We want Overpower to be an important part of Arms’ AOE rotation as well, but Dreadnaught was simply too strong in all situations. We’re reducing the damage from Dreadnaught and buffing Strength of Arms to put the choice between those talents on equal footing. This is not intended to be an overall reduction to Arms’ AOE damage, we simply feel that we’d rather Arms’ damage come from their direct damage abilities hitting harder and the subsequent bleeds and that will be reflected in the ongoing tuning of Arms overall.

Fury
We’ve also heard the feedback that Bloodthirst was not an exciting ability to use and that it felt disconnected from the rest of the Fury kit. To address this, we’re giving Bloodthirst a significant damage boost as well as adjusting several talents to affect Bloodthirst that did not previously, and adding new functionality with Deft Experience causing Bloodthirst to extend your current Enrage and changing Bloodcraze to introduce aa new interaction between Raging Blow and Bloodthirst. Our goal is to continue and extend Bloodthirst’s interaction with Enrage in new ways, as well as it contributing to Fury’s overall damage and survivability.

Protection
Protection Warrior has tools like Spell Reflect and Spell Block to protect it from magic, but its defensive toolkit is weak to ongoing or frequent magic damage. Fight Through the Flames is a new tool to help warriors survive that type of damage. We’ll keep an eye on its tuning. Additionally, we removed the damage penalty from Defensive Stance for Protection Warriors. Fighting defensively is what Protection specializes in, and we want to reduce the pressure on players to forego its defensive benefits for more damage.

And here are the actual changes from the development notes:

(Source)

• WARRIOR
  • Slam damage normalized across all specializations (Arms-only Slam damage bonus removed), and damage increased by 200%.
  • Slam damage increased by 130%. Arms Slam damage bonus reduced to 50% (was 75%).
  • Bladestorm damage increased by 70%.
  • Ravager damage decreased by 10%.
  • Arms
    • Cleave cooldown reduced to 3 seconds (was 6 seconds).
    • Battlelord no longer resets the cooldown of Cleave.
    • Storm of Swords now triggers from Whirlwind or Cleave and reduces the Rage cost of your next Whirlwind or Cleave.
    • Fervor of Battle now also triggers from Cleave.
    • Dreadnaught damage reduced by 58%.
    • Strength of Arms now also increases Overpower damage by 15%.
  • Fury
    • Bloodthirst damage increased by 43%
    • Bloodcraze now triggers from Raging Blow instead of Bloodthirst.
    • Deft Experience now causes Bloodthirst to extend your Enrage effect by 0.5/1.0 sec if you are Enraged.
    • Swift Strikes now also increases Bloodthirst’s Rage generated by 1.0/2.0 Rage.
    • Crushing Force now increases the damage of Bloodthirst by 10/20% and critical strike chance of Bloodthirst by 5/10%.
    • Bladestorm now generates 10 Rage per damage event for Fury (20 with Storm of Steel).
    • Slam Rage cost removed.

[Prophet001 552]

Cleave is just to apply deep wounds. I wonder how it will work rotationally?

[Q 145]

1 hour ago, Prophet001 said:

Cleave is just to apply deep wounds. I wonder how it will work rotationally?

I don't even know anymore, I haven't played arms warrior since Legion