End-of-the-year design mistakes compilation
Abilities, Talents December 17th, 2007So, 2007 is coming to an end, WotLK is on the way, I guess it’s good time to highlight few things that were returning lately on this blog, official forums and such:
Warriors pwn, all it takes is 31 points in Arms,
but be warned not to take more then 35 points in Arms!
Fury is the tree designed for dual wielders,
it has some good talents for two-hander users like improved Slam,
too bad Slam is useless without that talent thus making 2h-wielding warriors spec at least 23 fury for PvE (and PvP if they want it).
Arms is not bound to any stance,
it’s a tree that improves your warrior overall across all stances,
that’s why it has Tacti… oh wait…
TM was moved to protection to prevent 31/30 builds as it was more appealing then 41 arms,
people still specced for 31/30,
They made deathwish not-stacking with Enrage to gimp hybrid build more,
people still didn’t spec for 41 arms,
They moved deathwish and improved intercept to Arms,
at the same time insanely buffing Sweeping Strikes in Fury tree,
months later people still don’t spec for 41 arms.
Some people do use Rend to keep rogues from stealthing or to keep Blood Frenzy up,
no one use Rend for damage,
yet improved Rend is a talent that increase the damage…
from a bit more then level 18 curse of agony to like level 28 curse of agony.
Enrage is useless in PvE,
yet it is required to have 5/5 enrage to get Flurry,
which is pretty much required for any dual wielding dps-warrior.
Arms (Battle Stance) has less abilities then Fury (Berserker Stance),
because it can use quite a few abilities from defensive stance,
too bad they require a shield to use.
Protection tree has some pvp goodies,
like buff-dispelling Shield Slam, stun or silence on shield bash,
someone might even think you could do PvP with prot,
think about this when you are going to kill another prot noob on BG.
We have a talent that reduce our chance to be stunned,
we also have a talent that makes us regenerate health when stunned…
in the same tree…
more to come… ![]()
Terhix
December 17th, 2007 at 4:49 pm
Why has Blizzard forsaken us!?
December 17th, 2007 at 6:04 pm
And yet, with all the flaws, it’s still the most fun class to play IMHO…
December 18th, 2007 at 12:23 am
Of course, I’m really happy with the class overall, but it doesn’t change the fact that there are things that are just badly designed / make no sense.
December 18th, 2007 at 5:54 pm
The problem with endless rage, is not only the fact that it is more or less useless for the points required.
The true problem with the whole warrior talents is that it is BORING, I love to respec and try new things, but with the warrior there is nothing to try.
December 18th, 2007 at 6:50 pm
@Luomo
gtfo and reroll druid.
December 18th, 2007 at 8:33 pm
Man terhix what a good read, i couldn’t agree with you more, theres so many stupid things and they KEEP KEEP BUFFING rouge end talents, jesus, and were left with NOTHING. Endless rage is worthless, tactical mastery being moved hurts… I can’t spec out of tactical mastery..i’ve tried without tactical mastery but i hate it, i just gotta miss out on flurry : (
December 18th, 2007 at 9:28 pm
I believe that for priests, circle of healing has had a pretty similar run as endless rage - perhaps worse.
While ER has just been left the same throughout, CoH gets periodic “buffs” that basically have no effect. So blizzard can say they’ve been improving it when really they havent.
One notorious patch saw them radically improve the skill by adding a whopping +25 heal to it. WOW. 25!!!
Whenever you see a priest post on Official boards with the words L O L written in their sig with litte 25’s, that’s what it refers to.
December 18th, 2007 at 9:56 pm
That’s a very reasonable commentary, Willma. *shakes head* Just leave trash like that in the official WoW Forums, or better: Keep it to yourself!
I agree with Luomo, the warrior trees are kinda boring. What’s the big difference of Arms or Fury tree?
They’re both about dealing damage. You can’t even say “Arms if for 2h, Fury for dual wield”, ’cause there are at least several useful skills for 2h users in the fury tree. (I don’t know very much about the other way round, but I think Arms has some nice talents for fury warriors aswell)
As many have regularly stated, the trees are a mess:
They aren’t purely PvE or PvP, but then Blizz doesn’t seem to like warriors cross speccing arms/fury. But why are talents like Blood Craze or Enrage in Fury, then? PvE wise, they’re trash! Shall the warrior talent trees be pure and dedicated to one area or shall they be hybrid? It seems no one really knows, including Blizzard.
There’s one big reason to specc Arms: Mortal Strike. It’s that way since WoW was released. Burning Crusade did not introduce any exciting new talent which gave someone the urge to say “I’ll specc arms because of *insert interesting 41-pointer of arms here*”. No, it added endless rage, which surely is not bad, but ouright boring.
And then, there’s Tactical Mastery in the Protection tree. Come on, I’m no raid player, but how often does a tank change his stance and how vital is stance dance in raids? I dare to say, it’s pretty negligible. Being unable to improve a bad design decision over the course of a whole year, which was purely caused by balancing issues with PvP warriors, and on top of that, giving proctection tanks a penalty because they’re PvP brothers are kicking ass, is really, really lame!
The warrior class alas is a rich source for bad design decisions, but nevertheless, it’s a fun class to play. It’s sad to know, it could be much more fun if blizz would invest some more effort into this class.
December 19th, 2007 at 3:38 am
Good read.
They can’t ignore ER forever.. We shall have justice!
December 19th, 2007 at 8:22 am
I agree with you kesshin (without taking any “new” abilities in the discussion):
Swap Tm and imp bloodrage for Deflection. And move that imp discipline skill to protection tree too possibly swapping it for focused rage (atleast you wont see any pvp warriors using it so it is just taking up space in the arms tree atm)
December 20th, 2007 at 1:26 am
Toyboy, I agree with you on everything except Focused Rage. No way should Blizzard take the most useful protection talent out of that tree! Have you ever tried off-tanking without it?
Also, move Enrage and Blood Craze to arms. What PvE duel-wielder in their right mind takes Blood Craze, anyway?
December 20th, 2007 at 3:04 am
http://www.war-tools.com/?p=vt&i=44699
It’s a start.
PS Focused rage stays in prot!
December 20th, 2007 at 8:27 am
..ya al im 43/18 when pve “offtank” specc, but sure focused rage is a great ability and i must say maintanking when 8/5/48 is friggin easy (2p rage revenge anyone? 9p rage devastate) i remember pre tbc when you actually had to work hard to keep aggro. Anyway sure keep focused rage but move that imp disciplines from arms
December 20th, 2007 at 8:31 am
ehh 0/43/18 in above comment…atm in pvp i use 43/15/3.
And when maintanking prince i go 8/5/48.
December 20th, 2007 at 8:53 am
Well i don’t know were all this ER bashing is comming from, sure it’s “boring” because it’s passive, and it could very well need some “candy feature” like let’s say “you get 25% of the rage when an attack get’s absorbed” BUT the Talent is not bad!
I also jumped on the “i-hate-ER” train first, but i gave it a chance and i have to say it’s really nice!
I’m doing extremly well with it (especially because I’m sword specced) and before you bash it more, give it an honest try!
December 20th, 2007 at 12:34 pm
I did give it a try, it was OKish, but not good enough for me to drop my weapon enchant (or have no disarm protection), sweeping strikes, flurry/TM, slam/execute.
I don’t hate ER, I think it’s not bad, but it’s not good either. In fact, I don’t think ER is the problem here, more like improved MS is.
Blizzard is || this close to make full arms viable spec, guess they are afraid of overdoing it.
December 20th, 2007 at 3:58 pm
Here’s the biggest problem with ER:
You cannot have ER and imp slam.
So you get more rage and do WHAT with it exactly? heroic strike?
We could argue rage gen figures for days, but the fact is even without ER I find myself using slam because MS/WW are on CD and I need to dump some rage. So give me 25% more and no rage dump?
I did ZA one night as 41/5/15 and hit cleave on bosses way more times than I MS’d. The dps increase of using cleave over a white swing is extremely marginal compared to having imp slam. Now sure, I could technically sit til I have 80+ rage with MS on CD and then chain slam until I’m out of rage, but if the boss is at all mobile or if I have to move in the fight (think the hawk boss) this becomes a non-winner.
If Imp slam was available with ER we would maybe be in business, although you’d still be missing that other glorious pvp rage dump: sweeping strikes.
December 21st, 2007 at 11:28 am
Slam is a total failure as it is. Why is there even a talent for this skill? It should have a casting time of .5sec without forcing you to spend 2 points in there, i mean the skill is absolutely USELESS unskilled and what the heck is this talent doing in the fury tree anyway?
December 23rd, 2007 at 4:45 pm
Cannot agree more with #17 and #18 about slam. ER + Slam are made for each other but you cannot get them.
BTW: If nothing change then lvl80 build = 38/30/3 or 41/30. I really hope TM will get buffed and moved to arms.