It’s only been a day since 2.3 went live, but it’s pretty much confirmed what I expected for warriors. I was 36/25 before the patch. I am 36/25 after the patch.

Like many of you I considered doing some kind of tri-spec with endless rage, cruelty, and tactical mastery as the base. I thought about grabbing last stand or piercing howl and dumping more points into arms to finally get that 5/5 2h wep mastery that I always wanted.

But in the end, what 2.3 has done for warriors is made it less painful to be a pvp and pve player with the same spec. If you really want to excel in one or the other, you’re still going to do what you did before. 17/44 pve fury builds, and 3x/2x/x builds for pvp.

The move of improved intercept over to arms makes it possible to pvp without going deep into fury. This is unfortunately (or fortunately depending on your preference I suppose) counterbalanced by the new sweeping strikes. Unless all you’re pvping in are 2v2 arenas, you will want this ability. One night of playing with the new SS and I am 100% sold.

Make no mistake about it; sweeping strikes in berserker stance is an absolute godsend. You can much more easily spot the opportunity to burn it now, and do so with a lot more rage on hand. You’ll almost always get MS, WW, and a white hit off while SS is up, and unless you’re a Gump it will hit multiple targets. You’ll probably land 1-2 white hits along the way, and maybe toss a slam in there too. The only real downside to the new version is if you burn it and then get stunned. With a 10s duration, sitting in kidney shot or HoJ will basically make it a waste.

Warriors who take the 4x/x/x route will have an easier time pve tanking with the new TM, last stand, and possibly defiance. Even imp MS and Endless rage will be useful to a pve warrior in ways that enrage and sweeping strikes obviously won’t be. But on the pure pvp side of things, taking that suite of talents over imp slam, wep mastery, SS, and enrage (and possibly piercing howl depending on your spec) is the wrong thing to do.

The warrior has always had this issue, in fact most classes do. There is always some combination of talents that will let you be “good” at both pve and pvp, although not as good at either as another “purer” spec. For warriors this utility spec was always 41/5/15 - but the lack of piercing howl, enrage, and imp intercept was devastating in pvp. What 2.3 has done is significantly closed the gap between the utility spec and the pure (3x/2x/x) pvp spec, through the changes to TM, defiance, and imp intercept (to some degree, the changes to weapon mastery as well).

I think the biggest test of this patch will be to see how much better the 4x/x/x warriors can tank than the 3x/2x/x warriors. I’m mostly curious to see if the new utility spec is enough to tank prince/nightbane in kara, or any bosses in ZA. Because being able to MT 10-man instances with a pvp-viable spec would certainly be appealing, but if it just means you can OT a little better, then it’s probably not worth the loss in pvp power.

 

Bottom line: 2.3 should not result in a spec change for you. All it’s done is made life better for the warriors who try to straddle the pvp and pve worlds with the same spec. If you’re a pvper or a pve’r at heart, stick with your traditional spec.

Veritas