Rage generation normalization in the Expansion

Gyshall · 10/04/06, 2:37 PM

Found a blue post on it in the WoW Warrior boards.

From http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...17883&pageNo=1 :

5. Yes, rage generation has been normalized somewhat (although it's difficult to notice with current gear for most players, it's more of a protection against continued scaling off into the future). It also benefits the sword & board case, allowing tanks that aren't dealing/taking a ton of damage to generate a little more rage (again, it's not a big difference compared to before, just a bit better).

Interesting, hopefully tanks will be able to use Shield Slam to a greater extent to build aggro when not tanking :)

Ubok · 10/04/06, 2:48 PM

Some clarification from the same thread:

In practical terms, it means if you have a high-end epic 2h weapon you'll generate a point or two less rage on normal hits, about 3 less on a crit in the same case.

As all of you are probably aware, warriors scale incredibly well with gear, this is intended to take a little bit of the suck out of having lesser gear (or sword/board), and a little bit of the insanity off of the effects of uber gear.

Again, it's actually very hard to notice, in fact I haven't seen our alpha testers mention it in any significance (although it's definitely working).

Kalman · 10/04/06, 2:48 PM

From later in the thread.

Originally Posted by Kalgan

In practical terms, it means if you have a high-end epic 2h weapon you'll generate a point or two less rage on normal hits, about 3 less on a crit in the same case.

As all of you are probably aware, warriors scale incredibly well with gear, this is intended to take a little bit of the suck out of having lesser gear (or sword/board), and a little bit of the insanity off of the effects of uber gear.

Again, it's actually very hard to notice, in fact I haven't seen our alpha testers mention it in any significance (although it's definitely working).

Gyshall · 10/04/06, 2:59 PM

I forgot to mention that with Spell Reflection, you can now reflect Death Coil! >=]

Xtee · 10/04/06, 3:01 PM

Originally Posted by Gyshall

I forgot to mention that with Spell Reflection, you can now reflect Death Coil! >=]

So then does the warlock still recieve the heal? Because if they got hit/healed for 500 it would have no damage effect on them.

Feorthas · 10/04/06, 3:04 PM

Originally Posted by Xtee

So then does the warlock still recieve the heal? Because if they got hit/healed for 500 it would have no damage effect on them.

I'd hope that not only would they gain 0 HP, but they'd be affected by the 3-second "Terror" debuff as well *evil grin*.

• frmorrison · 10/04/06, 3:06 PM

Normalization helps the causals/tanks, and if a death coil spell got reflected,the lock gets hit for 500, feared, and the lock then heals himself for 500.

Edited so it would be correct.

Largo · 10/04/06, 3:06 PM

Originally Posted by Xtee

Originally Posted by Gyshall

I forgot to mention that with Spell Reflection, you can now reflect Death Coil! >=]

So then does the warlock still recieve the heal? Because if they got hit/healed for 500 it would have no damage effect on them.

With Shadow Reflector activated, the DC hit the Lock and dmg/healed himself.

Feorthas · 10/04/06, 3:34 PM

Originally Posted by Largo

With Shadow Reflector activated, the DC hit the Lock and dmg/healed himself.

Not trying to derail the thread here, but what happens if you cast a shadow spell on someone and you both have shadow reflectors active? Does it pingpong back and forth until one reflection buff wears off?

Ubok · 10/04/06, 3:38 PM

Originally Posted by Feorthas

Originally Posted by Largo

With Shadow Reflector activated, the DC hit the Lock and dmg/healed himself.

Not trying to derail the thread here, but what happens if you cast a shadow spell on someone and you both have shadow reflectors active? Does it pingpong back and forth until one reflection buff wears off?

I think you canÂ´t reflect reflections, if that made any sense. Works the same with 2 warriors popping retaliation and whacking each other.

Quasar · 10/04/06, 3:46 PM

Originally Posted by Feorthas

Originally Posted by Largo

With Shadow Reflector activated, the DC hit the Lock and dmg/healed himself.

Not trying to derail the thread here, but what happens if you cast a shadow spell on someone and you both have shadow reflectors active? Does it pingpong back and forth until one reflection buff wears off?

Come on, never played FF6??? Fighting an enemy that has Reflect, so you cast Reflect on your own guys and cast spells on yourselves!

Now what we really need is an X-Zone spell for Rogues that activates after Vanish...

Malan · 10/04/06, 3:52 PM

Interesting commentary there. Endless rage will work with execute? Holy crap.
Doesn't look the rage normalization is this huge "gloom and doom" deal like a lot of warriors had been proclaiming.

SonySwarm · 10/04/06, 3:54 PM

Originally Posted by Malan

Interesting commentary there. Endless rage will work with execute? Holy crap.
Doesn't look the rage normalization is this huge "gloom and doom" deal like a lot of warriors had been proclaiming.

Just the base cost, any extra rage (which you will obviously have) will add further damage.

Xtee · 10/04/06, 4:11 PM

Originally Posted by Gyshall

Found a blue post on it in the WoW Warrior boards.

From http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...17883&pageNo=1 :

5. Yes, rage generation has been normalized somewhat (although it's difficult to notice with current gear for most players, it's more of a protection against continued scaling off into the future). It also benefits the sword & board case, allowing tanks that aren't dealing/taking a ton of damage to generate a little more rage (again, it's not a big difference compared to before, just a bit better).

Interesting, hopefully tanks will be able to use Shield Slam to a greater extent to build aggro when not tanking :)

I see that this is #5, Could sombody please paste the rest of the post here for those of us at work unable to check the retard boards?

impossible! · 10/04/06, 4:14 PM

Originally Posted by Xtee

I see that this is #5, Could sombody please paste the rest of the post here for those of us at work unable to check the retard boards?

Absolutely:

Originally Posted by Kalgan

Originally Posted by some random guy

Q u o t e:
Seeing as how you've visted the mages and answered some of thier burning questions, I got my own batch for you.

1. Regarding Tactical Mastery, many view that moving this talent into the Protection Tree was a nerf in order to prevent the MS/Flurry build. Is there any truth to this? If so why not change the talents so this won't be as overpowered as it seems to be? If it was to make it more available to Protection warriors, why not just switch it with deflection in the arms tree, as right now, a Protection warrior will still have to invest 5 points into arms, where as if it were switched with deflection, they could need to invest only 3 for TM.

2. Regarding Endless Rage and Spell Reflection, since Spell Reflection doesn't have a cooldown, that makes for Spell Reflection spam a viable tactic against casters. Is this under consideration for change or does the need for a 1h and shield and the global cooldown make this balanced? Also will this reflect the seemingly uncounterable Death Coil?

3. Will Intervene and Intercept share a cooldown? And if so, will they both be affected by the Improved Intercept talent?

4. And another Endless Rage question. How will this ability work with execute, provided the opponent is below 20%?

5. Are there any plans at the moment to normalize rage generation?

1. The change was definitely made in order to ensure that there were viable DPS alternatives to MS/Flurry for an arms warrior. I'm certain that without that change, MS/Flurry would have been the only way to go. Don't think for a second that the idea of having TM as tier 1 arms and Deflection as tier 1 prot didn't occur to us, but the reality is that all it would have done is lower all dps warrior's parry percentages by 5, but every arms warrior would still be looking at 31/30.

The other obvious ways to approach it are either to have extremely powerful talents beyond 30 for arms (but this causes huge problems the next time we raise the level cap and you can get those new overpowered talents and still get flurry), or to nerf flurry (which I'd rather not do, since I feel it's a tree-defining talent).

I very much feel that having TM at tier 1 prot opens up a ton of new possibilities, including builds that don't take all 5 points in TM, builds that use the 5 points in TM to make it worth continuing down to Last Stand (which = hotness in arena combat btw, while also keeping you pretty well balanced for raid tanking if you do that too since you probably scooped up toughness on the way). These examples, along with the possibilities for arms-heavy builds and all of the typical fury heavy builds become realistic to expect with this change.

2. Actually, we're in the process of trying out spell reflection with a 10s cooldown. Generally speaking, we try to avoid cooldowns whenever we can, and honestly this is a case where the cooldown is pretty important to have in PvE rather than PvP (smart players can react to spell reflection by casting a relatively meaningless spell to knock it down, but the mobs aren't quite so clever). It's still super-cool in pvp even with the cooldown, and has a lot of potential to distinguish skilled players from unskilled (if you time it well, spell reflect can win a fight for you). Yes, it can also reflect Death Coil.

3. No, they're on seperate cooldowns.

4. It reduces the base rage cost to 0. It'll stil consume any rage you have to deal extra damage, but the base cost is reduced to zero.

5. Yes, rage generation has been normalized somewhat (although it's difficult to notice with current gear for most players, it's more of a protection against continued scaling off into the future). It also benefits the sword & board case, allowing tanks that aren't dealing/taking a ton of damage to generate a little more rage (again, it's not a big difference compared to before, just a bit better).

Ubok · 10/04/06, 4:15 PM

Deleted because GyshallÂ´s post is better.

Gyshall · 10/04/06, 4:15 PM

Quite a lot of Blue from one post, here goes.

Original poster:

1. Regarding Tactical Mastery, many view that moving this talent into the Protection Tree was a nerf in order to prevent the MS/Flurry build. Is there any truth to this? If so why not change the talents so this won't be as overpowered as it seems to be? If it was to make it more available to Protection warriors, why not just switch it with deflection in the arms tree, as right now, a Protection warrior will still have to invest 5 points into arms, where as if it were switched with deflection, they could need to invest only 3 for TM.

2. Regarding Endless Rage and Spell Reflection, since Spell Reflection doesn't have a cooldown, that makes for Spell Reflection spam a viable tactic against casters. Is this under consideration for change or does the need for a 1h and shield and the global cooldown make this balanced? Also will this reflect the seemingly uncounterable Death Coil?

3. Will Intervene and Intercept share a cooldown? And if so, will they both be affected by the Improved Intercept talent?

4. And another Endless Rage question. How will this ability work with execute, provided the opponent is below 20%?

5. Are there any plans at the moment to normalize rage generation?

Kalgan:

1. The change was definitely made in order to ensure that there were viable DPS alternatives to MS/Flurry for an arms warrior. I'm certain that without that change, MS/Flurry would have been the only way to go. Don't think for a second that the idea of having TM as tier 1 arms and Deflection as tier 1 prot didn't occur to us, but the reality is that all it would have done is lower all dps warrior's parry percentages by 5, but every arms warrior would still be looking at 31/30.

The other obvious ways to approach it are either to have extremely powerful talents beyond 30 for arms (but this causes huge problems the next time we raise the level cap and you can get those new overpowered talents and still get flurry), or to nerf flurry (which I'd rather not do, since I feel it's a tree-defining talent).

I very much feel that having TM at tier 1 prot opens up a ton of new possibilities, including builds that don't take all 5 points in TM, builds that use the 5 points in TM to make it worth continuing down to Last Stand (which = hotness in arena combat btw, while also keeping you pretty well balanced for raid tanking if you do that too since you probably scooped up toughness on the way). These examples, along with the possibilities for arms-heavy builds and all of the typical fury heavy builds become realistic to expect with this change.

2. Actually, we're in the process of trying out spell reflection with a 10s cooldown. Generally speaking, we try to avoid cooldowns whenever we can, and honestly this is a case where the cooldown is pretty important to have in PvE rather than PvP (smart players can react to spell reflection by casting a relatively meaningless spell to knock it down, but the mobs aren't quite so clever). It's still super-cool in pvp even with the cooldown, and has a lot of potential to distinguish skilled players from unskilled (if you time it well, spell reflect can win a fight for you). Yes, it can also reflect Death Coil.

3. No, they're on seperate cooldowns.

4. It reduces the base rage cost to 0. It'll stil consume any rage you have to deal extra damage, but the base cost is reduced to zero.

5. Yes, rage generation has been normalized somewhat (although it's difficult to notice with current gear for most players, it's more of a protection against continued scaling off into the future). It also benefits the sword & board case, allowing tanks that aren't dealing/taking a ton of damage to generate a little more rage (again, it's not a big difference compared to before, just a bit better).

Another poster:

The rage normalization thing has been a pretty big concern for warriors for a while, and it would be nice to hear exactly what "somewhat" means.

Kalgan again:

In practical terms, it means if you have a high-end epic 2h weapon you'll generate a point or two less rage on normal hits, about 3 less on a crit in the same case.

As all of you are probably aware, warriors scale incredibly well with gear, this is intended to take a little bit of the suck out of having lesser gear (or sword/board), and a little bit of the insanity off of the effects of uber gear.

Again, it's actually very hard to notice, in fact I haven't seen our alpha testers mention it in any significance (although it's definitely working).

Kalgan again:

If by "less than epic" you mean "blue", I'd say you won't notice the difference at all. If you mean green gear, you'll probably do very slightly better.

As far as how it affects DW fury warriors, it's pretty much the same effect overall (not as much rage difference on a per hit basis, but since they're hitting more often it adds up to the same change over time).

One last post before the nubs start nubbing it up:

Q u o t e:
Kalgan this probably isnt a shock to you but warriors have some questions that they would like answered and most of us are 'ZOMG A BLUE POST YOU SUCKLOL GIMME MS+FLURRY'

But relevant questions i would like answered for perhaps my own sanity

1) With reduced raid sizes and introduction of shaman to alliance and paladins to the horde is the role of dps warrior now going to be diminished?

2)With the role of dps warrior possibly diminishing is blizzard trying to pigeon hole warriors into tanking?

3) why (even before the rage cost) is rampage so weak and does not scale?

4) why is weapon mastery so low in the arms tree? Its highly regarded as the best PVE damage talent but yet to aquire it to be top damage dealers warriors would have to ditch everything in the fury tree below bloodthirst (which most of it is very lackluster anyways)?

5) Is blizzard trying to buy warriors with new uber gear so we dont care about our talents as much?

6) why is deep wounds possibly better for a damage increase then rampage?

7) why a 5 minute cooldown on endless rage?

Kalgan:

1. I think that the sheer effectiveness of dps warriors (even if the gap closes somewhat in BC) will make it unlikely that their role will be diminished too much. At the same time, raids will be a bit more sensitive to slight variations in group composition, so if there happen to only be a few tanks in your raid (which should be unlikely with the potential for paladin tanks being thrown into the mix)... prepare to do a little tanking too?

2. We're definitely not trying to pidgeon-hole warriors into tanking, we view them as a tanking/dps hybrid, both parts valid.

3. Contrary to popular belief, I don't believe that everything has to scale when it itself is a value that scales other things (ie: rampage itself doesn't scale, but it helps your bloodthirst, victory rush, etc) scale. Scaling abilities that scale other abilities tend to be very dangerous to balance.

4. You just can't have it all, can ya. =]

5. ...

6. We're still in the process of tuning. Right now Rampage feels pretty mechanically solid in testing (the latest changes made a huge difference), but we'll keep evaluating the numbers.

7. In testing, this ability feels 'ok'. Not amazing, but also not bad (certainly not as bad as some here imagine). We're evaluating options on this one, which could lead to either design changes or a cooldown reduction. At the same time, we don't necessarily want 41 point talents to be absolute must-haves.

Kasi · 10/04/06, 4:17 PM

God reading that thread hurt my brain at times. Random Warrior: WAAAAAH! Don't nerf me! Sigh. The blue posts were quitie constructive though, and are a good change for warriors. (and hopefull brings them back in line with other dps classes)

Deathwing · 10/04/06, 4:20 PM

Hey, if it's very hard to notice the change, why make the fucking change in the first place? Sick of this shit...lack-luster TBC talents and spells, windfury generates yellow hits, ambiguous rage normalization that you MIGHT not notice. Stop dancing around the issue, if you(blizzard) have a problem with warrior dps, say it, and then follow through. No more of this indirect shit. I want to know now if I should reroll for the expansion.

Xtee · 10/04/06, 4:23 PM

Deathwing your a great theorycrafter, do you know if its possible for windfury to be "glancing" in its current state vs bosses? and if so, with the change to windfury being "yellow" damage how much can a say a 2h fury warrior expect his damage to go up with the -glancing, but also with the -rage from windfury hits. Would it be about the same as now? or would we be negitivly affected? I do agree though, the cloak and dagger stuff is pretty lame. I'm just thankful we got some sort of update from a blue. Now we can only hope for more Information as time passes.

Kasi · 10/04/06, 4:24 PM

Deathwing, despite all the non stop warrior nerfs since what, 10 patches ago, warriors are still on top of the DPS meters because they still scale better than everyone else. Warriors complain about being nerfed, yet top geared warriors are still on top. This just falls in line with the other changes blizzard has made to warriors. Slight nerfs to balance the effect that gear progression has on their dps. Not like it honestly matters. Warriors at top end right now are threat and cooldown constrained far more than they are rage constrained.

Tower · 10/04/06, 4:32 PM

So I'm guessing a 5% dps nerf once you install the expansion? Probably plan on making that number larger by the time you get to 70, in comparison to other dps classes.

I think most wouldn't notice it because who the hell can keep track of rage generation on a very well-geared fury warrior right now anyway? "Windfury! Oops, full rage bar... mob at 63%...what to do!" If you're not slapping the shit out of your abilities and cleaving or heroic striking or spamming windfury to gain dps as your abilities cooldown, your gear isn;t all that great.

TL-Seria · 10/04/06, 4:33 PM

Originally Posted by Ubok

Originally Posted by Feorthas

Originally Posted by Largo

With Shadow Reflector activated, the DC hit the Lock and dmg/healed himself.

Not trying to derail the thread here, but what happens if you cast a shadow spell on someone and you both have shadow reflectors active? Does it pingpong back and forth until one reflection buff wears off?

I think you canÂ´t reflect reflections, if that made any sense. Works the same with 2 warriors popping retaliation and whacking each other.

Retaliation isn't a reflect, though. it just pops hits when you get hit. What you're thinking of is EQ's /disciple furious

Deathwing · 10/04/06, 4:36 PM

Originally Posted by Kasi

Deathwing, despite all the non stop warrior nerfs since what, 10 patches ago, warriors are still on top of the DPS meters because they still scale better than everyone else. Warriors complain about being nerfed, yet top geared warriors are still on top. This just falls in line with the other changes blizzard has made to warriors. Slight nerfs to balance the effect that gear progression has on their dps. Not like it honestly matters. Warriors at top end right now are threat and cooldown constrained far more than they are rage constrained.

That's not the point Kasi. I'm not going to argue where warriors should be on the dps meters, though I find your masochistic obsession to get your own class nerfed quite odd. I want in clear, blue lettering what blizzard intends for warriors dps wise, so I can make a decision on what I like to do on raids.

As for the question about windfury, yes, currently, they can glance, just like any other white hit. I very much doubt the damage gained from being unglancable will make up for the extra rage you won't be generating.

Kasi · 10/04/06, 4:37 PM

Yeah but if you're spamming heroic strike or cleave constantly, you'll start running into more of a threat issue. Well at least on fights where threat does matter, and with same threat mechanics available to both sides I assume there will be a few of those.

Edit: Deathwing, I feel warriors right now are a broken class, both having the monopoly on main tanking and being a top dps classes. They are really the only working hybrid in this game. Funny enough it pretty much seems it is only warriors who don't think this is an issue. As a hybrid class I feel they should make sacrifices to classes who are pure, for example rogues. It is not so much nerfed but that I want to see hunter and warlock damage brought up closer to warriors, and for rogues to be the superior melee dps class.