Cataclysm Warrior Changes
 

With the upcoming changes being announced keep the following guidelines in mind when posting. This is the place to discuss these changes only.

Failure to do so will result in an automatic infraction.

• Do not merely link blue post information without any useful contribution of your own.
• Do not bitch, whine or moan about the changes during your discussion of them.
• Do not suggest what you think Blizzard should do. Neither we nor Blizzard care about your great idea.
• Do not post class change discussion in the current 3.3.3 threads.
• Do remember that all normal rules apply.
• Do remember that these are proposed changes and subject to fine tuning and/or complete overhaul.

[Cataclysm] Protection Warrior
 

I will focus on changes that affect Warrior tanking:

Mechanics changes

- Defense rating from gear and gems will be removed.
Source

- Block Value will be removed and a successful Block will now always reduce 30% damage. Block rating will remain and increase our block chance just like before. Talents will presumably boost the block amount and chance like before.
Source

- Dodge and Parry will be reworked. Dodge is now the only form of "real" avoidance we can gem or gear for. A dodge will still reduce damage by 100% just like it does now, wheras Parry no longer provides 100% avoidance and no longer speeds up attacks. Instead, when you parry an attack, it and the next attack will each hit for 50% damage (assuming they hit at all). It is unknown if mobs will also lose their Parry haste or even if their Parry won't still count as full avoidance for them.
Source

- Ratings will be alot steeper than in WotLK meaning that capping out stats such as Expertise or Hit should be harder, on top of lowering overall dodge, parry and block chances. I remember reading that the goal for tank avoidance was supposed to be around 30%.
Source

- Bonus armor will go down slightly across the board.
Source

- Technically not a mechanics change but still relevant: Warrior AoE threat will not be buffed. Blizzard is happy with our AoE threat and heavily implied they will just nerf the outliers that do more AoE threat instead. On top of that, they want to remedy the AoE zerg fest that WotLK trash has become by making individual mobs hit harder so tanks are at risk of dying instead losing aggro.
Source

- Tank damage is supposed to scale better with gear. Tanks are supposed to do around 50% of the DPS a real DPS spec/class does. It wasn't mentioned if that means that tanks will get more DPS stats on their gear now, but considering the rage normalization below (Haste and Crit providing bonus rage) it might be a possibility.
Source

- Healer mana will matter. It's not a tank change per se, but the ramifications should be obvious. Damage taken will matter. It also means that tanks are not supposed to die in 2 GCDs anymore but that they are supposed to remain a "wounded" state for longer (i.e. anything less than 100% health but more than dead obviously :P).

Rage normalization and generation:

- Autoattacks will generate a set amount of rage, regardless of damage done. Basically, the damage we deal with our weapons will not matter anymore. Avoided or missed attacks will not generate rage anymore, which is a small nerf. The only thing that would improve rage gain would be Haste, Hit, Expertise and Crit.
Source

- Rage from incoming damage will be calculated from our health. Avoidance (!), absorbs and similar will not affect this. The more health you have, the less rage you gain from a set amount of damage.
Source

- Battle Shout (and presumably Commanding Shout) will now generate rage instead of consuming it like Horn of Winter does for DKs. The drawback will be short CDs on either skills but that should not matter anyway. They also implied that there might be other skills to generate Rage with, but the post doesn't mention it.
Source

Ability changes:

- On next swing attacks are gone. Heroic Strike will now be an instant attack, consuming between 10 to 30 Rage (no cooldown). The more rage it burns off, the more damage it will do. Presumably the same will be true for Cleave since it is also an On next swing skill. It is not mentioned whether HS or Cleave will remain off the GCD but it could go either way. Personally I hope they stay off the GCD.
Also, GC acknowledged the fact about increased glancing blows now that HS is not spammable anymore. He didn't mention how they would deal with that though, possibly by making up the damage we lose from white attacks with our specials?
Source

The other implication is that fast tanking weapons are officially dead. The only benefit of fast weapons was the fact that we could HS more than with a slow weapon but thankfully that is gone now. Slower autoattacks also reduce parry-gib chances significantly while providing more threat/damage per GCD with Devastate (if mobs retain the ability to parry haste anyway).

I'm going to say the second part I quoted will remain up in the air until we get the nitty gritty on rage generation. Remember, as you pointed out in your post that hit and expertise will become much harder to cap, and they're already tricky to cap using tanking gear until higher gear levels. Unless they make rage intake from being hit enough to sustain you, a constant inflow of rage may depend on having a faster weapon so you can deal with missing now and then. Either that or we may see a deep prot talent that allows rage generation when you miss/parry.

It may be that fast tank weapons are dead for the warrior, but I personally won't be placing any bets without more information.

World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Cataclysm Class Preview: Warrior

For Fury, I'm wondering if Bloodthirst's cooldown won't be changed, given that we'll no longer be trying to match it with Whirlwind in our single target rotations.

... the DK, Paladin and Druid masteries are comparable, or the talent trees themselves are tweaked to compensate for mastery differences, or a number of many other possibilities. It's really way too early to tell.

Damage ability-wise I think they're moving to a priority system much like what arms does BT if up then slam if BS up then sunder/heroic. Also note all the shouts that give you rage and the fury mastery bonus, clearly shouts and zerker rage are to become part of the rotation.

I'm not so excited on Heroic Leap, from their language it feels like it won't be usable in combat by default, so little point for fury. I can totally see this being a long-ish cooldown (like a minute) available for everyone to use in combat. It would still be a tool for arms/prot - using the AE thunderclap part instead of one of the charges (here I'm saying that using Heroic Leap would put 1 min cd on the leap and 15/20 seconds on charge), but obviously a big boon for fury.

I don't quite understand what the advantage of heroic leap over just charging in and thunderclapping is. No doubt we'll get a cool animation of us flying through the air, and we might save half-a second on the first global cooldown, maybe some rage, but what am I missing here? As it is a level 85 ability, its got to have some awesomeness that I'm missing...

Perhaps a stun for those affected by thunderclap..


I am wondering about the vengeance mechanic, theyre going to give you 10% of your TOTAL health in attack power? and make all attacks instant strikes?

Suddenly a prot warrior gets hit by a mage, he spell reflects, finds his target, intercept, Heroicstrikeheroicstrikeheroicstrike?
(or devastate)
Well something like that, if you took 10% of a current prot warriors health into attack power, at level 80, he would have +5000 ap... on top of strength, that sounds a little strong.


Even with the creative changes to the gameplay, I dont know how well they will work with the new stat scales.

To be honest, I was hoping for a selfbuff that periodically reduces snares by 5% per second? In terms of "fun" mechanics, I never enjoy being rooted/snared.

I don't quite see what they want to accomplish with that. For PvE you always have a better thunderclap debuff on your target, so I guess this should be some PvP talent, because there is no reason to use Heroic Leap when you can charge. For PvP, why should we use an ability that has a higher cooldown and applies an attack speed debuff on your target, when you want to focus a caster? Besides that, charge also stuns your target (given the global delay there are often times when the target is still out of range after the stun).

Inner Rage seems like an interesting ability. I was somewhat concerned after the Heroic Strike changes, that you just have your rotation and no way of increasing your damage with intelligent rage burns, like HS was for Arms and Fury on lower gear levels. Inner Rage could bring some interesting choices if you use your globals or wait one or two weapon swings for full rage.

Overall I feel that these changes are more of a backstep for the warrior class. Titan's Grip felt like an excellent talent why a Fury Warrior is a Fury Warrior and not a Rogue or Enhancement Shaman. Making two choices of playstyle to work for only one talent tree seems like an unreachable goal.

If Heroic Leap were a Berserker Stance ability I could see the point. It originated as a Fury talent in the BC beta for one, and Arms already has Charge/Juggernaught. Putting it in Battle Stance just makes the same as Charge+Thunderclap in one GCD.

I wonder how the Inner rage will work ingame.

If we will have to save up to 100 rage for the proc and then go BT->WW(???)->HS->HS->HS->0 rage...
And It feels like HS to be more of a dps output then what it is now and thats why the WW nerf. Sure it is nice with some good AOE but I still rather do more dps on the boss then on the trash.

It say that it will share CD with Charge but will it "cast" Thunder Clap or will it just apply the effect on the targets? aka will it not share CD with Thunder clap then ? because then it looks like its more for tanking.

Yeah, but they said that the warbringer talent would make it usable in all stances. Unless Heroic leap were a very shallow Fury talent, its hard to see how you could get both that and warbringer. Seems to me like they are just going to make it an ability trainable at lvl 85.

Shaving 1 global cooldown off of your opening move is nice, I guess, but it doesn't seem like a game changer. There's got to be more to it than just this....

Warbringer doesn't really address the issue because it also affects Charge and is out of reach for Fury Warriors. The bottom line is, anywhere/time you can use Charge you can use Heroic Leap, and the question is what purpose the latter serves. They're even on the same cooldown.

If Heroic Leap had been primarily a Berserker Stance ability it would have served as Fury's combat opener, replacing Charge -> Stance Dance. With it being based in Battle Stance, it's unclear why it's being added.

I think they're just saying it will apply the Thunder Clap effect and do the same amount of damage as Thunder Clap. I reckon any talents that boost its damage or whatnot will also apply to Leap. Could be a cool opener for AoE pulls as well as just a fun ability to mess around with.

Also sounds like it won't be a talent, but an ability everyone will get.

Ah I see, ty. I wonder if it will also trigger a TC cooldown? Being able to effectively TC twice would help with snap aggro, for sure.