You probably saw it coming. With patch 2.3 changes done to weapon mastery, sweeping strikes, along with new imba enchant 33/28 got stronger then before. Weapon Mastery is what really made me respec, I wasn’t taking it into account, but if I consider it as a -2% dodge and the ability to have an enchant (I would be pretty much forced to use weapon chain without it) it’s one of the best if not the best two-point talents we have atm.

41 arms is nice, but it doesn’t have an edge over any, hybrid or not, common PvP build. Seeing they are fixing defiance to give 6 expertise outside of def stance in 2.3.2 I’m 100% positive that Blizzard moved DW and Intercept to arms to make 41/5/15 - 42/5/14 viable. It makes sense as on BlizzCON class discussion they noted how warrior could perform extremely well in many aspects of the game (PvP / PvE dps / Tanking) but couldn’t do so without respeccing. Now with changes to defiance, TM and after talents swapping it’s possible to make a build viable in all aspects of the game, not the best in any of them, but good enough for a casual player who wants to do some heroics, BGs and arenas, which should be the majority of players. I’d also bet my money that Kalgan is using 41/5/15 or 42/5/14 by now on his supposed to be rocking with S3 weapon within first week of S3 warrior.

I need to practice Sweeping Strikes now, since I respecced 33/28 from 35/23/3 long time ago I didn’t use it that much as I found it really not-handy to stance dance for SS without TM. It’s extremely potent talent, and when grouped with druid/pala in 2v2 where there is no risk of breaking CC like poly, you can give your enemies a big surprise and make them think “WTF did just happen?”.

Update: OK, I didn’t think about Intercept when talking about WM, imp. Intercept is our best 2 pointer hands down ;).

Terhix

A thought occurred to me the other day in battlegrounds.

In 2.3 hunters were given Mortal Strike and Purge on their arrows, and their “dead zone” was eliminated so that they can use their bows practically in melee range.

I must have missed the memo about hunters being 100% completely and utterly useless prior to 2.3

Imagine if blizzard had given warriors beast within as an 11 pt talent (tacked on to anger management perhaps?), made slam remove buffs, and gave us the ability to melee from up to 30 yards away.

That’s what hunters got in 2.3. Pretty freakin ridiculous.

Oh and as an aside, I’m feeling the indirect warrior nerf as a dwarf. Not only does stoneform not break blind anymore (its #1 use by FAR), blind now happens a lot more often with the shorter CD. Perception, shadowmeld, or escape artist would be a LOT more useful than stoneform now

I guess I can always go hunt for treasure… sigh.

Veritas

To anwser doubts in this topic:

You will notice that the only skills he models are autoattack, ms, and whirlwind. ($whiteDPS, $MSDPS, and $WWDPS)

Obviously, there are a lot of other things he didn’t account for, like armor, global cooldown conflicts, etc, but only the factors that affect axe and sword differently are relevant. One such factor that would be interesting to see modeled would be rage, because right now he is assuming you have enough rage to cast ww+ms every time they are up. Axe and Sword spec will have different rates of rage generation, and the more rage you generate, the more you can dump it into other things, like sunders, heroic strikes, etc, which is huge. I could see how all this would be very difficult to model though.

You are right, and you are wrong at the same time :). There is no point in modeling hamstring or pummel for axe spec. In sword formula there is a magic variable $hitspersecond which is an estimation (there are way too many things that affect that number to make it constant) which includes auto attacks (with flurry if you have it, and flurry uptime is ruled by simulator for that case), MS and WW every GCD but also Hamstring. The number I put on hamstring is once every 20 seconds, which is LOW, and I know it. Calculator is not accurate, because it’s not possible to make one that’s accurate. Somewhere in comments someone asked me if I can do same thing for hamstring every 8 or 10 seconds and pummel every 20 (don’t remember exactly) and in that test axe went a bit below swords for targets that can’t parry (difference was negligible), and above swords for targets that can parry, so even if axe is not going to be uber superior for some encounters even for an orc warrior, it’s still not worse then Sword. There will be situations where axe is clearly superior, there will be situations where sword is clearly superior, no matter what. In other words: 5% crit + 2.5% avoidance reduction > 5% extra attack, 5% crit + 1.25% avoidance reduction = or > 5% extra attack.

Terhix

First 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

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