Tactical Mastery is often a hot topic in regards to Warrior talent trees. I only play a warrior alt so I won't claim to know all the ins and outs of the warrior, but I do know that for me TM is pretty much a necessity. I'm sure some warriors can get by without, but I would love to see the statistics on how many actually have some kind of build without points in TM.

The following quote from Kalgan brought new life to my personal debate regarding TM.

(Kalgan interview, not much interesting or new there)

Do you see this ever happening to TM in some form? I personally don't really see it as being overpowered if there was still a limit to how much rage is retained when switching stances.

I still think of the whole losing rage when switching stances as a stupid design decision, but one it is probably way too late to do anything about.

It wouldn't be unthinkable, and to be honest, I think it will happen fairly soon. At least some amount of the talent will be made baseline, say 10 rage, so the warrior has enough to intercept. Since builds with prot are relatively worse in PvP anyway, it won't matter much there, and it will allow for more versatility in PvE. The only real argument against it might be that it reduces the usefulness of 11-point feral again, since all warriors will have intercept available. Many main tanks don't have that today, opting for a Prot/Fury combo instead.

That said, I don't see much if any reason to go for more than 3 and less than 31 points in Arms if TM is made baseline. The middle part of the tree is painfully average.

All I can say is don't hold your breath. Warriors, and rogues will never, ever recieve buffs. This is something I've learned from playing the game for almost 2 years. No I'm not saying warriors suck dick and are the forgotten children of WoW, but they are continuously nerfed, in an extreme manner with relation to other class balance.

Let's look at a recent example. Attack speed normalization. Hunters got their AP normalized to 2.8. A big hit for xbow of smiting, and a small nerf for the quest bow, but overall not bad since there's a lot of weapons in that range. Warriors got 3.3 for 2hr's. There's 1 2h in that range, and it wasn't even in the game (Kalimdor's), and the high end weapons are still typically ~3.5 or slower. Then let's look at rogues. 2.4 for swords/maces/fists. Where the fuck are you getting a 2.4 speed epic sword. Everything is 2.6, or slower.

How about burst damage, a huge complain against warriors. (http://wow.allakhazam.com/profile.html?498973) I have pretty good gear, and I do a lot of damage. Put me up against a mage with similar gear, and I might be able to take off 1/2 their life once a week, in 40 or 50 hrs of PvP combined (discounting chain sword procs). On the other hand any decently geared mage with AP, can easily wipe off half my life bar, and leave me with a dot that ticks for 1/10th of my life, easily, and predictably, once every 3minutes, which isn't very long in PvP.

So no, the warrior patch has passed, and as we've seen every class has seen significant improvements to the base class issues particularly in pvp, with the exception of warriors, who have seen an overall decrease in PvP power, from a character/talent standpoint, which has been softened because of gear upgrades for those playing at the extreme top end.

Xi didn't you once say that you're not actually the idiot troll who posts on the Blizzard forums and only do that for fun?

You're going to honestly stand here and tell me every other class patch except warriors wasn't a significant revamp, and an attempt to address some of the core class issues where the warrior review was lol here's 2 new MS wannabe's?

When the revamp and the accociated rage changes took the class from nearly unbearable to play in some aspects to nearly overpowered? When it made warriors probably the only class with three viable trees, each with a non-useless 31 point talent? When it was the very first revamp, dictating that warriors will be the first up for the next round of changes? Yeah that's pretty significant. We didn't get a slew of brand new talents because 95% of them aren't the worthless garbage that populated the trees of the other classes that got sweeping changes.

Dios wins

Edit: to put more substance in my post, I could go into why every single talent is worthwhile to a warrior or just plain fucking stupid (gg imp slam) but that would waste a lot of space. Warriors are still one of the most solid classes I've seen in an MMO. Dueling warriors is still not an easy chore as a Priest, especially Undead (f u moz).

In group PVP, they're even better. Have a clump of Alliance? Charge, Berserker Rage, Bloodrage, WW, blah blah yeah. Now if I could only get another warrior to duo with me in PVP :(

I won't hold my breath either. Deciding which talents are "necessities" to each class seems wholly subjective. Sure, an argument for IAE, TM, or Evocation can be made, but I'm not sure there's an analytical way to "prove" that these talents are necessary and vital to that class' core mechanics. It really depends on what Blizzard believes is game balance- And from the look of things, they seem to believe Warriors are horribly unbalanced (or at least I'm inclined to believe that).

Honestly, I wouldn't say TM is absolutely vital. Smart use of Bloodrage and Improved Berserker Rage allows Warriors to switch stances and execute a lot of abilities. Heck, it can even be argued that MTs don't necessarily need TM since Rage is usually plentiful and a stance switch for, say, Berserker Rage, and the associated Rage loss isn't very significant.

Why is improved thunderclap still a talent? Why do we still have to take improved rend to get to impale or deep wounds? Why is polearm spec on a different level of the talent tree? Why are slam, improved slam, and blood craze absolutely terrible? Why doesn't booming voice apply to piercing howl? Unbridled wrath nerfs? What's the point of improved disarm, and why is 90% of the utility of protection in the first 20 points? Notice all these things and I haven't even touched the point of the topic which was that you have to invest 10 points in a particular talent tree not to be completely gimped in every aspect of the game.

Now like I said, warriors aren't a terrible class that no one should play, but if you read the warrior forums, when the topic of TM as a skill was broached recently basically, the devs said, fuck you we feel it makes playing a warrior skillful, or some nonsense like that. And now mages might get not only improved AE but evo as a skill. Must be nice, I'd like tact mast + piercing howl as skills.

Now add a couple of healers into the mix. So the the trinket+AP burst gets healed away, and see what happens.

Warriors are insanely hard to balance for PvP because of the gulf between group and solo dynamics. Warriors are probably a bit below mid-tier solo, but incredible in group PvP with some backup. I'm not sure what's wrong with that, personally. Rogues, for example, are very much the opposite.

I'd like Holy Nova as a skill also. All we got is Holy Fire.

No, no. Please, God, NO!

We currently only have one priest who hasn't specced in Holy Nova... and that priest is my favorite. Priests are having much too much fun with their new toy... and neglecting other aspects of their role in a group.

Maybe in a month or two when the novelty has worn off... but please, PLEASE, not yet.

Oh, I'm by no means holding my breath waiting for changes. As said I only play a warrior alt for fun, so I can live fine with my 12/39/0 spec.

I was more intrigued by IAE and Evocation being mentioned as "must have" and in consideration of being changed to non-talent skills. Sure, warriors can probably do fine without TM, but mages can sure a heck live without these skills also :)

These are all valid points. Obviously not every talent is equally viable, nor is the warrior class without its illogical flaws. But neither are paladins. Or warlocks. Or hunters. Etc. Warriors got the first class revamp, and it was a good one that helped the class a lot. The price you pay for being tweaked first is that it may be some time until the class receives attention again. You can't argue that, say, shamans, don't need a talent revamp before warriors get a second look.

I'm enjoying my mage alt, but I have to say that without IAE... Arcane Explosion is completely and utterly useless. That's the main thing that has persuaded me to pursue a 21/30/0 spec instead of the 0/30/21 that I initially wanted to play around with.

Making Evocation and IAE available to all mages would be a huge help towards helping Mage diversity.

I don't think anyone here would argue that those two changes wouldn't help mages conjure up new and different talent specs. ;)

Sure, the problem some of the other classes were balanced with 1v1 in mind. Think about death coil? In a group scenario you'd either the warlock would be under attack by multiple people, in which case death coil is basically useless, or 1 person who could be CC'd by another member of their group. Death coil was a pure 1v1 balance change.

No the shaman trees are far worse than the warrior tree's, in terms of useless talents, but, I don't think it takes a whole patch to make TM a skill, or numerous other little changes. How about fixing charge/intercept while snared? Why was intimidating shout nerfed to be "in line" with other fears? If it's supposed to be in line why does it cost 25% of your available "mana" pool, and break instantly on damage, distinctly different from any other fear in the game.

Well, I think their options are either 1 at a time, or everyone would have to wait 2 years. Personally I'd rather wait 2 years, than have to sit through the ebb and flow of the latest uber class, but I'm sure there's plenty of people who feel the opposite way.

I somewhat agree with that, as well as the fact that they're making such sweeping changes to classes in one fell swoop, without considering what they're going to do to other classes to balance that out. The hunter rebalance is a key example of that- Since the talent revamp hunters have taking slight-medium nerfs every patch.

Granted, some classes' talent trees are messed up beyond any small changes, and a full "respec granted, trees completely gone" change is the only way to go about fixing things, but, in many cases, small little number tweaks is all that would be required.

25 range is hardly analogous to "25% of a mana bar," come on.

And it was nerfed for raid content, both PvE and PvP. One warrior fearing 30 mobs in a PvE zerg event is excessive, as is one warrior charging and fearing in the middle of a 20-man front in AV. I guess you can argue that warriors should be able to do that, but then why not warlocks and priests too?

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As for the way Blizzard does class revamps, if they are doing it with some vision of balance as their ultimate aim, it's easier by far to only change one point at a time. Sit back, watch for 2-3 months, then nerf the strongest class a bit or buff the weakest. Wait another 2-3 months, and repeat. You could change them all at once, but I think that's just too many variable to properly account for in striving for some semblance of balance.

That's fine, and but you also have to look at the fact that it breaks instantly on damage. If you were allowed to apply small bits of damage to someone, maybe 500 or so, so my deep wounds didn't instantly break it, it might be alright. Or if they lowered the rage cost, or the cooldown.

I do agree with Xi in that the Int. Shout nerf was horrible and no amount of data or reasoning will make me change my mind.