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.

The Warrior revamp was pretty much thrown together over lunch compared to, most notably the beautiful, sultry, seductive, enticing Priest revamp. Mmm. Priest talents. Ahh. But it was done long, long ago.

That just makes me feel that we're more likely to get a proper going over next time than it makes me bury my head in my hands and weep. I'm pretty sure we'll get at least a good proportion of our concerns answered in some fashion, and hopefully some unexpected stuff alongside.

Some time in late 2009.

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.

We wouldn't know about PVP, Gurg.

PS: Fix the unbalanced server factions before opening up new transfers thxxxxxx

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 :)