There are things in WoW I call ancient mechanics, it’s things that are completely broken, retarded, yet still in game for some odd reason, for example one of them is the fact that deep wounds break cowering in fear effect of intimidating shout, effectively making us unable to CC someone after we crit, it’s the fact that blood craze reset whenever we get critted without giving us a tick and few other small things.

One thing that is recently floating over forums is not as minor as deep wounds/blood craze problems - it’s the Berserker Stance penalty. It was taken to public in past, before TBC, without results. We all know how berserker stance works:

An aggressive stance. Critical hit chance is increased by 3% and all damage taken is increased by 10%.

If you are not familiar with the warrior class, you can probably already smell the bullshit. 3% crit has became so minor buff since epix started to rule the world, it’s not really all that good anymore, warriors usually have extremely high crit chance, and with resilience being in game, 3% crit is not a big dps increase. Now let’s discuss this from 3 points of view: Lore, Common Sense and WoW Balance, here we go:

1. Lore

What is berserking? It’s fighting madly without worrying about self, as such berserker stance makes sense? Not really, no. Let’s take a look at similar mechanic: Barbarian’s Rage ability in mother of all rpg mechanics - D&D (3.5 version):

A barbarian can fly into a rage a certain number of times per day. In a rage, a barbarian temporarily gains a +4 bonus to Strength, a +4 bonus to Constitution, and a +2 morale bonus on Will saves, but he takes a -2 penalty to Armor Class. The increase in Constitution increases the barbarian’s hit points by 2 points per level, but these hit points go away at the end of the rage when his Constitution score drops back to normal. (…) A barbarian may prematurely end his rage. At the end of the rage, the barbarian loses the rage modifiers and restrictions and becomes fatigued (–2 penalty to Strength, –2 penalty to Dexterity, can’t charge or run) for the duration of the current encounter (unless he is a 17th-level barbarian, at which point this limitation no longer applies; see below).

And the last “ranks” of Rage:

Tireless Rage (Ex): At 17th level and higher, a barbarian no longer becomes fatigued at the end of his rage.

Mighty Rage (Ex): At 20th level, a barbarian’s bonuses to Strength and Constitution during his rage each increase to +8, and his morale bonus on Will saves increases to +4. The penalty to AC remains at -2.

Armor Class is not what Armor in WoW is, AC increase one’s avoidance and is used for describing everything like dodge chance from Dexterity, Monk’s increased avoidance from Wisdom, Duelist’s increased avoidance from Intelligence and (of course) AC from Armor protecting body and/or shield. So, in the end how does Rage affect Barbarian in D&D? Let’s make a break down:

  • Increases his damage thanks to increased STR.
  • Temporarily increases his HP thanks to increased CON (I died once in D&D: Online when my rage ended while I had like 8 hp left).
  • Increases Will saves to help against spells that work against mind (fear, charm, paralyze etc.)
  • Reduces avoidance due to lowered AC.

Barbarian becomes stronger and uncontrollable but is unaware of attacks, you don’t care about taking a hit when in Rage, but does it says anywhere that you take more damage while in Rage? No, if anything you are tougher due to temporary hit points.

Now WoW doesn’t work same way, but we can see some similarities, while in berserker stance we can use berserker rage ability that breaks fears (Will saves from morale in D&D), we have, technically, slightly higher damage done due to 3% crit (woohoo!) and take a whooping 10% more damage then everyone else in the game. Death Wish, which (despite of being moved to Arms) is a similar category of abilities also increase damage done, and again increase damage taken by 5%. It’s worth to note that in past Death Wish used to lower our Armor and Resistances by 10%. I find it funny that original developers of WoW assumed we would have some spell resistance on our gear in endgame when implementing this ability, I mean, it would make sense for a tank class to be durable against spells back in the past, but since Kalgan is taking care of WoW PvP logic is not a strong part on Blizzard. From Lore PoV it would make sence if Berserker Stance lowered our dodge/parry chance, or even lower our armor (increase damage taken against physical attacks), being Berserk means you are going offensive, you don’t defend yourself, but there should be no penalty against things (spells) you already can’t defend against.


2. Common Sense

This one is easy. Taking look at stances as we get them:

- Battle Stance: does nothing
- Defensive Stance: decrease damage done by 10% and decrease damage taken by 10% - fair trade off.
- Berserker Stance: increase crit by 3% and increase damage taken by 10% - a rip off.

It doesn’t take much explanation, 10% damage > 3% crit, hands down. Since TBC came and resilience kicked in, 3% crit is less valuable then ever.

For some unknown reason, fury tab in my spell book has about 50% more abilities then arms or protection tabs, and I’m a FULL ARMS warrior. FULL ARMS motherfuckers, it would make FULL ARMS build warrior to be viable in PvP when using Battle Stance (aka the Stance bound to Arms tree), No?

3. WoW Balance

For the reason mentioned above, some argue that we don’t have the 10% damage penalty for 3% crit, we have them to use abilities that are in Berserker Stance, such as Whirlwind or Berserker Rage. Funny how I see this argument mostly from druids and warlocks. Guess what assholes, I’m already penalized for being in Berserker Stance by not being able to use Overpower, Spell Reflect or Disarm, and back when I was hybrid 33/28 built without TM it did hurt to see my enemy dodge and not being able to use Overpower unless loosing 80 rage to change stance. People argue that stance dancing is a core of Warrior’s play style, this is as stupid as saying that using melee weapon with windfury enchant is core of Elemental Shaman’s play style. Of course we do stance dance, we need a talent to do that effectively. When we don’t have that talent, we are pretty much forced to play in Berserker Stance, since that’s where 80% of our vital PvP abilities come from, and we are penalized for that.

Berserker Stance penalty has to go, it needs to be changed to something on similar level of 3% crit (3% higher chance to recieve crit? 3% Lower dodge and/or parry?) or affect physical effects only. We are supposed to be tough, why are we taking the most spell damage from all classes in the entire game? I understand we should be vulnerable against casters, but does that really means we need to help them by taking more damage then their spell tooltips say? Especially since every of those casters has some form of defense against us. Our class description says: The Warrior can be a defensive, shielded tank, a damage-dealing powerhouse, or a mixture of the two. Arms should be that “mixture of the two”, why the heck isn’t it working properly in that matter?

Terhix