You don't even hamstring that much with arms. I get the impression that non-warriors and alliance think we're hammering it constantly.

Ya, you don't really get the insane rage generation with an arms build that you get with fury.

I got to try this stuff out when I took my warrior alt (Zoltana) to Blackwing this past weekend. I was the only MS warrior there (thank goodness on eboronoc). But there were situations where I'd have extra rage and that's when I'd dump it into hamstring. I'd just mange my rage to get MS/Whirlwind off every cooldown and if I had some left hit hamstring hoping for a windfury proc.

Well, at least it appears Blizzard isn't completely retarded. I never really thought that nerf would actually go live, considering the firestorm in created on the boards and all the math against it. But I'm still waiting for some official feedback on the current faction imbalance, which I doubt we'll hear anything about until BC.

:(

I have had MS consistently for eight months!

Ya, but you were busy taunting!

Now, why did Eyonix have to add that crap? This is an exact example of what is frustrating a lot of players. Implying that this could only be discovered by the devs by putting it into the game and testing it. Yes, the test phase is to test changes and their impact on the game, but this should not have gotten this far.

If it was changed because it was perceived as a bug I could maybe, just maybe, with a whole boatload of good will, let it slide. But it was specifically announced as a nerf due to Windfury Totem being too powerful.

It's not like the developers were tracking this on the test realm gathering data and then seeing that this change had too big an impact after all. If the WoW developers are so out of touch with their game I'd love to direct them to read a couple of the many great mechanics threads here or even on the official boards.

To me it feels like they are so afraid of acknowledging faults that they just have to wrap announcements like that in some kind of stupid excuse like "we couldn't possibly know this until it hit the PTR". I can't imagine why they are so afraid of admitting a mistake like this, it's not like WoW is in immediate danger of dying as they still pull in - if I remember the numbers correct - a gazillion dollars a month in subscription fees.

The only big problem as I see it for WoW's longterm life is the population imbalance, which Blizzard incidently seem to not acknowledge, but happily goes about promoting outdoor conflicts in the expansion without revealing who exactly it is Alliance will be fighting :)

ok /rant over

Yes, hamstring is "only" good for either proccing a WF or getting a dodge for Overpower, that's about it. And it's only 2-3 times between each MS to avoid fudging up the global cooldown for MS.

I've been Arms since forever and this WF nerf would hurt my damage output to the point where I might as well spec full prot or join the Fury specced whore club (no offense! :), so I'm glad they cancelled it, since Arms is still the best tree (in my own opinion) when you also want some points in protection for the random offtanking every now at then. And now I can at least manage to pick up some +hit gear, so I can switch to Fury once they really nerf it, since that's most likely where it'll end sooner or later.

What else would you use your rage + global cooldowns on? Assuming BT every 6 seconds and whirlwind every 10, that still leaves ~3 free global cooldowns every 10 seconds. If you're not using hamstring, what are you using? Unless you're really getting that many overpower procs, hamstring seems the best thing to use.

You could spend your rage on heroic strike/cleave, but as Horde I find this isnt such a good idea.

For some background, I'm a 2h Orc fury warrior at the moment (well fury/prot 33/18) actually one of our guilds main tanks and so my dps gear isnt great apart from the weapon - Sulfuras. For me, using hamstring whilst having WF totem is the best thing I can do between bloodthirsts. Obviously the lack of imp overpower and tac mastery in my spec means I rarely, if ever use overpower when dpsing, but even in a 34/17 Fury/Arms build or similar I can't see it not being worth using hamstring, even when duel-wielding.

Am I missing something?

Yes, 5% parry... :)

I think the hamstring spamming not being so good for fury is more directly pointed at dual weild, rather than 2H'er. Spamming to get an extra attack with a big fat 2H'er is much more worhtwhile use of rage than for dual weild fury.

As a 17/34 DW fury warrior I end up spamming my hamstring button like there's no tomorrow. While I don't get as big or juciy windfuries my MH being decently slow (2.6, Claw of the Black Drake) seems to help me pump out damage a decent amount.

Honestly if my BT and WW are on cooldown I can't think of a better use of 10 rage. I'm open to suggestions however.

Any warrior with a 2hander and good DPS gear should be for 90% of the fights in this game.

There is a god.

The only problem i see is that the community will collapse on Blizzard. I play on EU servers and we notice that we don't get as much support as the US guys. People moaning about the idiotic GM's, complaining about the server stability, nagging about the support from wow-europe.com, i think that this will all contribute to the downfall of wow on a longer term. That is off course if they don't do something about it. But on the other hand there will always be whiners around. Good thing is that i'm happy with the decission on the WF proc, thank you whiners! (hah, so at least a bit on topic). :p

I'm only worried that this decision will be used as excuse for leaving whole totem mechanics problems aside.

The support in Europe is almost nonexistant, granted. But I agree with Kraag that pop imbalances will kill the game if Blizz doesn't do anything against it.

I'm certainly glad for this reversal, but if you'll allow me to be cynical for a moment, we're now back to business as usual with horde severely lagging behind alliance in many key aspects of raiding. But now all calls for anything like BoW/JoW equivalents, aggro reduction that is actually usable, and for fuck's sake, totem reworks, will only be met with a single reply: 'windfury'.

This whole event gives the perception that WF is in fact a great equalizer, a nerf was justified, but they decided to leave it in in order to 'retain balance' between factions. The reality is no such balance ever existed, but if we ask for anything 'more' we'll merely get pointed back to this decision. Maintaining status quo, in which horde loses, is postured like a gift.

I agree with you completely. I think Blizzard has real trouble communicating with the players... their method of interaction makes it seem like a very hostile relationship instead of a friendly or constructive one.

We rarely know what's going on over there because the few blue posts we see are usually off-topic, intentionally vague, or something we already know. As a result, we get changes like the Windfury nerf which of course pisses off the community to one of those twice-a-year levels of anger. Obviously the community was right in this case. Blizzard doesn't understand our views and/or they didn't think much before proposing the nerf. That would have been fine if they had just said, "We hear you guys, this was a dumb change to make. Sorry." Hell, maybe they could kick it up a notch and say, "Hey, we're going to make significant effort to improve our communication with you." But no, instead they spout off something that basically reprimands players for complaining because the almighty Blizzard is incapable of wrong and would have / could have fixed the change without our input.

Who knows? Maybe they would have. That doesn't change the problem. They should really do a better job acknowledging the opinions of the players, and then doing meaningful research and testing in-game to see how these opinions hold up. A lot of times, posting on the forums seems completely useless though. I know there are a shitton of posters on the boards and most aren't all that intellectual, but when the same issues are brought up time and time again yet never addressed, something's wrong.

What kind of relationship would you have with someone IRL if they blatantly ignored you on a regular basis? That's the kind of relationship we can expect to exist here.