It seems that Ghostcrawler has wanted to reveal a lot information about the change to Warriors in Cataclysm and he has dedicated himself to publishing a lot of information, including a battery of Questions and Answers.
Wow !!!, A nerf to the hunters at the beginning… Good game Blizz?
"All debuffs equivalent" means that if you have the debuff today, you will have it in Cataclysm, but at 20% of the healing received. To avoid future confusion, we are talking about Mortal Strike, Furious Strikes, Wounding Poison, Aimed Shot, Permanent Frost, and Improved Mind Blast.
We are also seriously considering making all of these effects do the same debuff called Mortal Wounds, which is a physical effect and therefore cannot be dispelled. This allows the behavior to be more consistent no matter who applies it and allows us to consider things like how easy it should be to dispel poisons (since Fatal Wounds will not be affected).
The heals will be smaller and the health bars larger in Cataclysm so we don't expect Fatal Wounds to feel like a must-have as it does today, but it's clearly the kind of thing that requires a lot of testing from game and feedback.
You will see much more after the jump… I warned that it was a lot!
Instead of Gushing Wound, I wouldn't have minded that our bleeds would "crit" like other damage over time effects from other classes and have some kind of ability that allows you to spread your bleed effects, similar to the Pestilence ability. of the Death Knight.
Almost all damage over time will crit. The exception will be things like Deep Wounds and Ignition because they are already products of a critic. Tearing will do critics.
We are really striving for parity in the scaling of various branches and classes. This implies that attributes such as Haste and Critical may not be incredible for some characters and terrible for others. Most skills have to benefit from haste and critical.
Here are some questions and answers based on what has been discussed:
P: Will a warrior's rotation be Bloodthirsty fury only and Heroic Strike Slam to burn Wrath?
R: We think Fury will end up needing another attack for single-target combat. Fury Split was more intended as having to Split other than a burden, but with only 3 charges it may end up not being a big deal and we don't want Fury to feel like it has a need to buy a talent they may never use. However, we don't want Whirlwind to be a good button to push against single targets. Essentially, it deals "free" damage against groups of targets when effective against a single target. It's fine if warriors keep doing more damage in fights where they can use Slash and similar attacks more often, but right now it's too extreme.
P: Will Fury Warriors Compete with Rogues for One-Handed Weapons?
R: We do not think that will happen. Rogues and Shamans will want one-handed weapons with Agility while Warriors and Death Knights will want them with Force. I wouldn't be surprised if one of these classes chose the other's weapon as it could be a damage-based upgrade but it wouldn't be optimal.
P: Why don't the warriors receive any type of area tanking tool?
R: We think the new and improved Thunder Wave Shockwave are enough skills for area tanking. The design of Vengeance should ensure that threat generation does not start to drop as DPS equipment increases. It is not our intention for tanks to constantly be challenged to generate enough threat, even in groups, but we also do not want the threat to be totally irrelevant. The danger of tanking too many creatures should also be death, not threat management.
P: Will only Split Armor change?
R: Exposing the rogue's armor and other abilities that apply the same effect are going to be changed in a similar way. They also grant the same 12% armor reduction effect.
P: What about losing Anger when changing Attitude?
R: We still want to change the act of changing Attitude to be more than just pressing two buttons to use the skill you want. One idea we're going to explore is that you don't lose anger when changing your attitude, but you won't gain additional anger for a short period of time after changing. This allows you, for example, to switch to Execute without losing your rage bar, but you get used to the idea that continually changing Attitude has inherent risks.
P: Is the intention of Gushing Wound that warriors are always asking for targets to move around the room?
R: No, it is intended to be an incentive when you are in a match where the target moves around a lot. (For example. TOORRRMENTAA OSSEAAAA in Marrow) or you have to move a lot (as in the Lich King). Warriors shouldn't want to force every PvE opponent to move it but it will be fun to watch (from a third person view).
You didn't say anything about taking care of the wide variety of ways in which those with 1-handed weapons generate threat compared to those with 2 and how you will end the difference in damage between them
Are you talking about Weapons Against Fury? It is not that hard. Weapons can have a talent to allow them to generate more rage with two-handed weapons or require less rage for their attacks.
Are you talking about 2-Handed Fury vs. 1-Handed Fury? Fury's Resolute Fury talent can literally say "Your one-handed weapons deal damage like two-handed weapons." Talent gives us a switch that we can raise or lower for whatever we need.
It is much easier to make those with two one-handed weapons and two two-handed weapons do similar damage than it is to make those who carry two one-handed weapons and use a single two-handed weapon do similar damage. , if that makes sense.
In any case - weren't the damage increasing talents going to be removed? Instead, I'm looking at things like Lightning Strike, Furious Split, and "talents that reduce rage cost now increase damage."
The type of talents we want to remove are the ones that say "You do 5% more damage." Endless Fury is very close to this because it enhances the attack that fury warriors use most often. On the other hand, Flurry is a bit of an ambiguous DPS boost but in a more interesting way. A talent branch that didn't increase the damage of a DPS type at all wouldn't be good. We want to unleash enough Talent Points so that you can collect more of those that give you fun.
They should only have combined all three specs into one from the start instead of removing Asta's Maces and Weapons spec entirely. Sorry, but Blizzard, you screwed us up on this. Both the Pole Weapons and Maces specializations gave us more DPS than the extra hit from the Swords specialization and you have nerfed it to give us that.
I'm sure we'll end up saying similar things multiple times this week, but if this helps, imagine that every number in the game is Randomly Doubled or halved. In other words, you don't know how much damage or how much critical (theoretical since we're cutting it) the Asta Weapons specialization would grant you. You do not know if it is an improvement or a nerf since you do not have that information. All you can really say is whether the chance to get an extra hit is more fun than a talent that only increases your damage.
I can understand some confusion. When we make patches like 3.3 or even 3.3.3, it makes sense to see everything through the lens of the current status quo. This is not one of those patches. You will earn more levels. The attributes are changing. Many things are changing. Don't assume that the numbers we don't talk about will stay the same. In fact, you can probably assume the opposite.
The mechanics will probably stay as is unless stated otherwise. For example, you won't have to go that far to say "Who knows if warriors will even use axes in Cataclysm?" They almost certainly will. But speculating on whether ax or sword specialization will do more damage in Cataclysm is very risky.
I think too many of you are focusing on the Thunderclap portion of Heroic Leap.
Imagine the tooltip saying "Jump into combat, crunching all enemies in the landing area dealing massive damage and reducing their attack speed for 10 seconds."
To clarify, will Inner Rage only affect the Rage cost of abilities if we are at 100%? If so, I see it only as a plus. I read it as such, meaning that it will only affect the single ability that is used at 100% rage and would only activate upon reaching 100% over and over again.
Inner anger is not supposed to be a kiss / curse. It is supposed to be the breaking of a limit. When I hit 100 rage, I go into special mode and deal even more damage. Instead of maxing out being a problem (because I'm wasting resources that I could be earning) it's fun instead.
We don't want warriors to think that the right way to play is to do nothing until they have 100 rage and then start having fun. Once you chain multiple critics or eat a big hit or something, it's supposed to translate to more damage for a short period of time.
If I'm getting it correctly, the Resolute Fury talent will basically turn a 1-handed weapon into a 2-handed one. So the speed of the 1-handed weapon will be reduced and the damage range increased and perhaps the attributes will also improve. I hope this is the way it will work as otherwise you will see a lot of complaints from Furya warriors saying: I have to use two handed weapons because 1 handed weapons suck or vice versa.
No, the heart of the matter is using the faster one-handed weapons. The talent only needs to increase the damage to make it feel competitive with Titan's Grip.
Heroic Leap will deal Thunderclap damage which is very low
No, it will do massive damage and apply the Thunder Clap debuff. It's like saying Bladestorm is only a Whirlwind with a bit of Crowd Control immunity so why do we need another Whirlwind?