To my knowledge weapon enchants are PPM based and extra hits don't necessarily mean more procs. Also, 6 extra swings a minute doesn't strike me as all too impressive.

They are PPM based off of normal swing times. Unless the proc has a hidden cooldown, instants will increase the overall uptime of a proc.

I want to try out 0/31/30 on my alt warrior, albeit just for farming/dailies/5-mans.

It seems like the combination of expertise from the fury tree, the expertise on defiance, flurry and 1h spec should make for a high-threat, decent DW solo-grind dps hybrid.

I spent a lot of time as 0/31/30 when I just reached 70. Its fine for any normal instance, soloing and tanking the easier heroics. I definitely recommend it.

0-31-30 has zero points in Deflection. Ouch. No Imp Thunderclap either. A smaller ouch but not the best build for tanking, I'd say.

If I remember correctly TC threat is based on damage dealt which is greatly increased by the talent. So for multiple mob tanking losing imp. TC is a big loss for aggro generation. Of course I agree on missing Deflection being more than suboptimal as well.

Yeah, 5 mans are where imp TC really helps. Without that it can be pretty hard to keep stuff of your healer.

Also, shield slam is what makes protection tree the protection tree. If you're going any deeper than tier1 in protection tree, you'd better take shield slam; defiance alone is not worth spending all those points in there.

Obviously you missed the TM addition. Obviously it won't make up for not having Shield Slam, but it should make TPS for non-Shield Slam warriors better than the laughable amount it's at now.

That depends if you spend your time maintanking or not.
I would argue that it is imp shieldblock that makes the prot tree because that is the skill that makes you crush immune.

This is just something I've been kicking around, but some Fury changes to go along with 2.3

These are some ideas for changes in the Warrior Fury talent tree to go along with what is going in Patch 2.3. This is some theory crafting between two people at 5 AM…So I apologize for any misspellings/anything else that looks odd or wrong or slightly murlocish.

Your thoughts and ideas would be incredibly welcome, so check this out, read it, mull it over, work with it in your head and find any reasonable improvements or detractions you can make, ANY CONSTRUCTIVE INPUT IS WELCOME. If you think the Fury talent tree is fine as is or you think it’s over powered or you think these changes aren’t good enough, well…everyone is welcome to an opinion so I won’t complain if you tell me to STFU ZOMGZ.

(DISCLAIMER: This post was made on October 14th I will update it if anything changes in the warrior notes or not)

Here goes, starting from the tree down-

1. Improved Cleave (3 Talent points, 3rd tier down) Gives a buff, stacks up to four times, that increases the damage of your next whirlwind by 10%/20%/30% (according to how many points put into it) So it would be increasing the damage done (if fully stacked on oneself, and again, according to how many points you put in it) by 40%/80%/120%. Make the buff last 15-30 seconds, have it last that full duration so you’re not constantly cleaving; Thus letting you plan your Whirlwind’s and other actions out accordingly (say if the fight is over soon, to refresh your buff or to go for more Whirlwind’s)

2. Separate Enrage from Flurry(Enrage, 5 Talent points, 4th tier down; Flurry, 5 Talent points, 6th tier down) Make them separate talents and not linked together in any way shape or form. PvE DPS Fury Warriors have no need for 25% more damage when crit unless they’re tanking the mob and DPSing it as well. Doing this would enable Fury Warriors who choose not to spend five points in Enrage able to pick up Improved Cleave (See changes above) and get full points in Improved Whirlwind.

3. Flurry (5 Talent points, 6th tier down) Change it back to 30% weapon speed increase. The nerf previously wasn’t that huge of a deal for some people, but if you’re a dedicated Fury DPS warrior, every bit of extra damage counts. Also, the previous nerf was so small some would argue, it was of no consequence…I agree with the first half of that statement, but I view it as a slap in the face, and I for one Do NOT like being slapped.

4. Bloodthirst (1 Talent Point, 7th tier down) A few things were considered with this talent, I can’t decide really between the two listed. 1) Have it give a 10% damage buff for 5-10 seconds (to counter the Deathwish move, it would further improve Fury Warrior DPS issues some talk about) Or 2) Have it heal you for 20-30% of the damage done by your Bloodthirst over a 6 second buff (Would add something survivability for us in PvP, and also in raids that are mob AOE heavy).

5. Rampage (1 Talent Point, 9th tier) Have the Buff Timer refresh on critical strikes. This would add something much needed to this talent. Though some are inclined to disagree with this, look at it this way; You won’t have to spend 20 Precious…Delicious…Rage every 30 seconds for the whole fight (presuming you aren’t unlucky and do not crit once for 30 seconds) So what this little buff would do would effectively give you 250 AP(let’s face it, 275 AP for us fury warriors in 'zerker stance) for the whole fight, and one less timer we have to keep our eyes glued to.

Ok, that’s pretty much it. Again, any constructive input and debate is welcome.

Given how powerful Weapon Mastery seems to be (4 points = -4% miss according to Kalgan), I had an unusual thought.

Defiance is 2 expertise per talent point for a total of 6. I have read that currently it only works in Defensive Stance. If this is changed such that it works in all stances, could it become extremely powerful to a Fury spec?

The current Fury spec is 17/44 - post 2.3 how plausible would something like 3/44/14 be? Picking up Tactical Mastery and Defiance. Is 6 expertise points, ergo, virtually eliminating Dodges and Parries, worth giving up Deep Wounds, Impale and Anger Management? Neither spec can reach the new placement of Death Wish so that is irrelevant.

This would of course depend on whether they change the Expertise granted through Defiance to work in stances other than Defensive. The wording of the talent at present does not tie the Expertise to Defensive Stance.

You need to remember that if bosses tend to dodge 5% or so of your attacks, you won't necessarily be down to 1% after grabbing this talent. The true effectiveness of this talent is determined by:

(bosses' actual dodge rate - 4%) / (bosses' actual dodge rate)

And that will be your percentage reduction in dodges.

Does anyone know how much dodge a boss usually has? The most reliable way to find out would probably be to look at the white damage in a recount window for a main tank on a fight without randomly targeted abilities.

First off let me start out by saying i dont usually post here nor on other forums. Most of whats relevant has already been said and theres frankly no need to repeat what other people have already stated. However, after spending some time reading about peoples opinions on the 2.3 PTR notes and in particular the DW/SS swap i do feel alot of the discussions are missing a bigger picture.


Ok, so about the basics.
There's people claiming deathwish is around 3.3% increased damage over time from the simplified model that is 1/6th uptime of 20% damage increase and whirlwind hitting with both weapons alone will outweigh this. Then there's people saying bloodlust/trinkets/executerange boosts deathwish to more then 5-6% easily and whirlwind change wont be able to hold a candle vs it.

Personally, i dont think whirlwind alone will make up loosing deathwish and frankly i doubt many other experienced fury wars with enhancement shamans in group timing bloodthirsts thinks so either. On the other hand Kalgan recently posted on US forums stating Weapon Mastery will be changed to a flat -4% dodge once moved to fury tree. That and whirlwind change might very well be enough to counteract deathwish, or atleast bring damage close enough to not really matter.. or?


Looking at the state of the dps warrior before 2.3, there were 2 distinct types. The 33/28/0 BF-debuffing 2h warrior and then the 17/44/0 dw fury warrior. Depending on raid composition & boss mob at times the first was better then the second and otherway around but for the record, I do think lately the scales been tipping in favor of the 2h warrior if you wanted to theorycraft about it. Mainly due to rogue scaling and hunter 4p T6 being very good.



However, going back to 2.3 PTR and looking at other changes its pretty clear that:

1) Moving DW and imp intercept absolutely cements the arms warrior as the pvp choice. Not saying it wasnt the case before but now its just undebatable fact.

2) Since its my opinion that whirlwind buf alone wont outweigh loosing deathwish, and the BF-debuf dps warrior will still get the -4% dodge i feel 33/28/0 will get closer to 17/44/0 when it comes to personal dps after 2.3 in its current state. Considering what forum this is I should'nt have to tell you competative raiding includes 1 dps warrior.

3) Blizzard acknowledges tank's are short supply in a more general sense, being able to pickup TM for the increased threat in defensive stance might be desirable for alot of dps warriors that's not on the bleeding edge of content (and arguably desirable for the realm population aswell). Even before 2.3 the fury tree was pretty bloated, mainly due to enrage being linked to flurry, and with Weapon Mastery becoming a must have talent its only getting worse.


So, what do you get when you combine those 3?
Maybe im overly pessimistic, but to me it seems like the arms/2h warrior might very well trumph the fury warrior in all 3 of "casual" endgame, bleeding edge raiding and arenas.



Naturally there's all kinds of things that could be done to tip the scale in another direction and while the previous paragraph is the important one i'll include some for completeness.

a) You could, ofc, not swap them leaving the relative dps between dw and 2h decently intact which probably is ok until next expansion of talent trees anyway. Suppose this could cause issues with WotlK talent trees or with trying to make more warriors spec 41p into arms but frankly thats not my problem.

b) Move BF to 2nd tier in arms or some similar accessable spot from fury pov, cementing the fury warrior as the pve endgame dps choice. Not something arms warriors would appreciate i suppose, then again its pretty easy to make an argument why it'd be more balanced.

c) If neither a) or b) happends, i do feel dw fury will need a single target dps buf in one way or the other to counteract the BF-debuf spec. Could be done in many ways, tho naturally giving SS some form of single target effect similar to rogue's blade flurry has been suggested.

.. and ye, do something about enrage being linked to flurry.

A PPM just means the % chance to proc is based on the weapon speed. More instants = more procs.

Expertise is -0.25% dodge/parry per point, so WM only gives -2% dodge. It doesn't actually affect your miss rate.

Or, if you mean skill rather than expertise, 4 points is 1.6% hit.

Edit:
Huh, haven't seen Kalgan's post on this. So WM is just -4% dodge raather than expertise points now?

Yes, correct. Weapon Mastery is changed from 2/4 Expertise to -2%/-4% dodge.



The only thing Blizz should change is the reguirement of Enrage in order to get Flurry.
If they where deleting this requirement, you were able to get every single sweet fury talent :>

Enrage should have been moved but being a 5-point talent, it would cause too much havoc. It seems to me that deathwish was moved to arms in order to keep damage from scaling too well with the new threat reduction.

Are you suggesting that the majority of raiding Warriors were threat capped on the majority of fights? And I don't quite remember, but isn't threat (excluding talents) multiplicative and not additive, or was that just for haste?

So a higher threat ceiling leads you to believe the fury warrior can make use of it? Quite a strong assumption for everyone playing a fury warrior. You're basically giving a fury warrior more breathing room, then taking away half the reason why he's going to need it.

Yeah those are my thoughts.

I really dont see how they can justify this change though and I hope that they revert it.

I think threat was a major factor in limiting dps. I'm just a few weeks into DW fury and already have to manage my threat, limiting Heroic Strikes and popping deathwish. Without Salv on, threat is a very big deal. Reducing threat would give me more chances to use HS and pop DW to hopefully do more dps.

Why would there be any other reason to make such a change? Unless Blizz just wanted to bump Arms for Arena play, pve other than tanking be damned.

I'm on the PTR and just respecced Prot. The expertise granted by Defiance only appears to work in Defensive Stance.