Endless Rage is not so endless
Endless Rage, Talents, patch 2.3 November 16th, 2007First two days of testing 2.3 is behind me. I specced 41/17/3 with 2/5 enrage at first and I’m testing this. I’ve some problems with getting used to new swing time (no flurry), shorter MS cooldown, rage generation and TM (I’ve a psychological barrier that makes me not want to switch stances when my rage bar is at 20rage or above). Either way, I’m trying.
My first impressions were positive. Since yesterday however, I’m one step closer to speccing back to 33/28, and the reason for that are priests and their damned shields. Now, two days at 41/17/3 (mostly spent on farming gold) doesn’t make me the master of the spec and king of pvp with it, but I find priests actually harder with ER build then with 33/28 build. First, ER does jack shit when the priest has bubble up, 25% more rage from 0 is still 0 rage. Once you get the shield down and save rage to burst it down whenever they cast it up, it’s fine, you produce enough rage to fuel whatever abilities you might need at that point. However, the second advantage of 41+ arms builds - Improved MS - is completely useless in this situation, you can’t use MS every cooldown since you have to save it for when the bubble is up, or you will go back to rage starving situation. In other words, if you don’t play your cards right, even a pve specced holy priest with buffed PW:Shield and spell damage from healing gear can be damn annoying.
With 33/28, most of those problems are mitigated. First, flurry gives you higher white dps, while 3/5 flurry doesn’t give as much dps as Imp MS should, you don’t have to wait with white swings for when the bubble is up, and higher white dps helps taking the shield down when you are rage starving a lot. Then, 33/28 gives you Slam (unless you pick Execute over Slam for some odd reason), you can slam those damn shields like there is no tomorrow, cheap almost instant yellow attack is more life saving then ER is when fighting a priest.
In it’s current form ER doesn’t fix rage starvation at all, it’s ok-ish talent, and it has it’s use, it can be powerful at times, but after two days with it I can say that, for 41p, it’s lackluster. Something like making ER generate 50% of normal rage on absorbed swings would make it much more desired, without making it game breaking or overpowered.
Terhix
November 16th, 2007 at 11:49 am
I agree. I specd back to 31/30 for the same reasons. Instead of creating something relatively equal to Flurry in the bottom of the Arms tree, they should’ve change it to some necessary utility. As it is now, it’s just equal to Flurry in terms of mechanics. The old Endless Rage on beta made all your abilities require 0 rage for XX seconds. Now that would be an amazing tool to burn down priest shields, although consistent damage would drop drastic.
I am confident that the next expansion brings a necessary PvP utility to the Arms tree, whereas Fury will continue to be PvE damage. Endless Rage is not worth it now, but if Blizzard makes the new Arms talents good, none of us will have Flurry.
November 16th, 2007 at 12:21 pm
I know it’s frustrating not to get any rage while hitting bubbled priests, but you ain’t fighting them all the time.
Any thoughts about warlocks? Are they easier to beat in 2.3, and why?
November 16th, 2007 at 12:38 pm
Easier, much easier.
First, Mortal Strike FINALLY reduce their healing from drain life and siphon life. You can now also pummel them in the face while they are drain-tanking you, closing their shadow (I guess it’s shadow?) school for 4s as it’s supposed to be. And then having full arms build without enrage, if you decided to go that way, is an overall imporvement in a fight against SL/SL lock, they crit you like once per hour making Enrage pretty much useless, and you should have Death Wish up anyway for the fear immunity.
November 16th, 2007 at 12:50 pm
When will you people learn that enrage can proc on every atack even if it’s not a crit?
Why else can you get an enrage proc off from a campfire?
This change was introduced when resilience first appeared. Since the game does not know if an attack would have been a crit without resilience they changed “on crit” procs to %procs on normal attacks.
(sry for my bad english but I’m actually swiss)
November 16th, 2007 at 12:54 pm
Warlock is killing you with dots. Dots don’t proc enrage, thus it’s useless. It can proc if he use some normal ability, but even then you should already have death wish up, making 5/5 enrage a whooping 5% damage increase.
November 16th, 2007 at 1:57 pm
A high resil priest with 4 piece bonus can rage starve you bad with shields. I fought 1 holy priest for 3 minutes last night, burning death wish twice :/ Brought him to execute range earlier but didn’t crit - MS wore off and he started getting full heals, bubble for rage starvation and tada - back to full hp.
So yeah, I’m 36/25 and the same shit happens to me. Maybe flurry would make a big difference, but it IS only 1 class and most pvp priests are shadow anyways (less absorbed by their shields from +heal). Don’t think that alone makes ER crap.
November 16th, 2007 at 2:31 pm
Nope, and even then, on arenas I’m not the only dps, meaning that shield is going down much faster due to 2+ dpsers (I’m focusing on 3v3). I’m not dumping ER… yet.
One fight against a holy priest (with blessed resilience) when I played my cards perfectly ended up with him going OOM when I was at about 10% hp, I just couldn’t bring him down while he had mana.
November 16th, 2007 at 2:33 pm
I’m currently specced 41/20 having read a few of the articles here. I have to say in BG’s in finding it fun (though i do miss slam on stationary targets). I’m not finding priests any better or worse than before, while it’s true you get the shields down faster with flurry you kill them faster when the shield is down with Imp MS.
I’ve yet to try it in arena but i would have thought with focus fire that shields won’t be such a worry and then Imp MS will win out in the end
November 16th, 2007 at 3:28 pm
Terhix, I’ve been greatly enjoying the site. Your Axe vs. Sword calculator encouraged me to spec 41/20 as an improvement over my previous 33/28 in terms of pure damage potential. The new MS timer does take some getting used to and if you don’t hit it right on, your damage goes way down, especially when running around. But I’ve not had a problem keeping up MS, MS, WW rotations with the build in any BG or instance (only have done one arena game and my healer DC’d :)). I’m not sure if it’s the increase in damage, but I seem to notice that my lethality has increased against cloth and leather. I’ve noticed holy priests being more of a pain, but I don’t think that is because of the bubble that stinks just as much as it always did - moreso the +damage. However, I’ll be checking in often to gain the benefit of your analysis. Thanks for the site!
November 16th, 2007 at 4:29 pm
I’m fairly new to playing a warrior, but definitely not new to the game. So, here’s my feeling on your imp slam talent choice: In arenas, I usually don’t have the chance to use slam because of people constantly trying to kite me. I agree that using it against a shielded priest would greatly help taking the shield down, but that doesn’t happen often. Also, in regard to getting imp execute instead of imp slam; I have favored imp execute so far in playing my warrior (it’s only been about a month since I hit 70). I may not have the correct play style yet, but I often find myself without enough rage or very little rage when it comes time to execute a target in the arena. Should I be trying harding to save rage for the execute? Obviously it would be ideal to have as much rage as possible to execute, but it is hard to not use my rage when trying to burn down a shielded target (most good arena teams with a priest will shield my target). Being able to use execute with 10 rage as well as the extra 5rage converted to damage seems worth it to me instead of getting imp slam.
November 16th, 2007 at 4:51 pm
Off topic: Spankey, I just wanna let you know that you speak more fluent English than most Americans I see online. It’s sad…not that you don’t speak it perfectly but that most Americans do the whole “y r u doing .” thing when they have plenty of time in regular chat (Not mid-fight or something). No need to apologize.
November 16th, 2007 at 6:03 pm
I’ve been murking disc priests in full merciless and UA warlocks (havn’t tried SL/SL) with ER (getting through bubble isnt a problem), I kinda like the spec overall and think I’ll stick with it for a while.
November 16th, 2007 at 6:52 pm
I sometimes wonder if people have ever used imp slam in pvp. If a target is hamstrung or otherwise slowed it is next-to-impossible for him to get out of range of slam in 0.5 seconds. I slam all the time in bgs and arenas and very very rarely get an out of range error when im done casting. Usually if I do its because the target ran through me and I didn’t turn fast enough - so its actually a not facing target error, not an out of range error.
Imp execute on the other hand gives you a next-to-useless 100 more damage on your execute. Right up there w imp cleave. And don’t tell me you only get 10 rage per white hit, unless you’re using [item]crow wing reaper[/item] in which case l2p.
November 16th, 2007 at 8:07 pm
I aint pro like most here - but with a ping of 80-120ms it feels like I hit 9 out of 10 slams I try in pvp.
I read somewhere that if you slam and the guy yer slammin’ is in range of slam when 50 percent of the “spell” is cast - he will get hit even if he is outta range when the casting time executes the actual slam.
It feels like it’s true, please do not proove me wrong then I might start missin my slams all over the place
I don’t have the best gear, Sword Orc (I know, AXE is the way, workin on it) and slam feels like the only way to put some kinda pressure on a pala if timed right after a white swing. (This is all before 2.3)
Anyways, Good read all over this site - Keep up the good work!
November 17th, 2007 at 7:09 pm
Offtopic but: “(unless you pick Execute over Slam for some odd reason)”.
Assuming you are talking about pure pvp build i find this statement weird. After all slam is a rage dumb ability which works best in pve and usually u dont have too much rage in arena pvp.
November 17th, 2007 at 7:37 pm
You don’t use Slam as rage dump in PvP (you can tho), you use it as a cheap almost instant attack in various situations (in combo with MS and WW, to burn down PW:Shield etc). I’m not going to convince you to Slam, there are people who don’t take it, and there are people who love it.
November 18th, 2007 at 1:43 am
When you say ER is not so endless, you mean ER plus what you take in fury tree? Have you tryed ER + UW, is it worth taking?
Also I can say, from personal expirience, that DW and enrage stacked again - on PTR few weeks ago. Anyone tested it now, when patch came out?
November 18th, 2007 at 5:35 am
I believe the improved execute isnt for that extra damage, it’s for the times when you’re super low on rage and because of imp exc. you pull it off.
i’m still using slam, i use it ALL the time. i’m considering switching to 41 arms if more evidence shows its effectiveness.
November 19th, 2007 at 1:41 pm
Regarding imp execute.
It should be one in a billion that you get less than 15 rage on a white hit. Maybe vs uber-armor druid or pally, and even then I know it’s been very rare that I’ve hit execute after a white swing and got “not enough rage”
Imp execute is just +100 damage UNLESS you’re at 0 rage and your white hit generates at least 10 but less than 15 rage. That’s a 5 rage gen margin to be useful, and thus a waste of 2 talent points.
November 19th, 2007 at 2:34 pm
I definitely see the use of Improved Execute in PvP, but I’d never get it over Slam. Ever.
November 19th, 2007 at 10:00 pm
I spec’d 41/5/14 with 2.3. Endless rage was great in pvp, especially BGs, even better than my previous 35/23/3 (dw, imp int, no imp slam) spec. I switched back to 35/23/3 to 2h tank normal 70 instances for some guildies that were leveling (ss-ww through them with another warrior) and I got imp slam (ss but no wm). I have been disarming and imp slamming everything I encounter. If I’m not the focus of an assist train, then I can imp slam hunters, healers and rogues repeatedly. Very nice when coupled with SS and WW and rage of course.
On another note, prior to 2.3, a full S2 warrior usually with a mace would tear through me as I only have HWL gear right now and I really wouldn’t have a chance against them. Getting my disarm in first certainly gives me a chance to kill them and I did many times yesterday. Since the patch, I’ve disarmed other warriors, pallies, rogues, dual-wield shamans about 100 times and only been disarmed once myself. Guess most people don’t bother to change stances.
November 20th, 2007 at 2:12 pm
People didn’t bother to disarm that much at 60 where there was no disarm immunity talent and 90% of warriors had crusader enchant anyway. In fact, disarming another warrior in duel usually ended in you being called a noob for disarming, like if there was some secret codex saying “you can’t use disarm in duels”. Hopefully people will eventually learn to disarm due to the pressure on the arena, being able to use disarm effectively will make a difference between a good warrior and a noob warrior.
November 20th, 2007 at 4:46 pm
I usually start off with disarm. But in a so called 1vs1 i get disarmed too afterward… so it’s like refreshing their mind that they can aslo disarm
Anyway, I am truly enjoying my 47/11/3.
I guess I will keep rage starving versus priests shields but who cares. My rosik gets compensated by rooting down mages and locks with imp hamstring. And as far as damage is concerned I am defenetly happy with it. I can say that imp MS is a must and that enrage is a waste of points when nuked…