Noone really knows how, not even if it’s giving too much or too little rage. Blizzard noted that “Endless Rage is not granting the correct bonus to rage generation”, it’s been on since patch 2.3.3. When I first read that note, the first thing that came to my head was that my beer is just about to end and I need to grab another one, the second thing that came to my head was:
 

/care

 
Yea, that’s pretty much all I’ve to say on the topic :P.

Terhix

Europeans goes here
NA clients goes here

And tell them why Endless Rage sucks.

Update: Random quotes:

Endless Rage - This talent is lackluster to begin with.
Endless Rage. This talent needs an overhaul badly. It does not offer what the name sames.
Endless Rage: Worst 41 pt talent ever…i can’t think how to make it better, so i would just scrap it and make a new 41 pt talent in arms.
Endless Rage - completely useless 41 pt talent.
Endless Rage – Nice, but not for a top of a tree talent
Endless Rage is not worth the points for what it does.
Endless Rage, If you get this talent you are mocked and its not worth to get it over the the talents in fury.
Endless rage is not necessary. I would like to see something that increases the warrior’s susceptibility to heals, i.e. Warrior recieves 10% bonus from all healing spells.
*Endless rage: Useless, needs to be improved to be worth speccing into arms.
Endless Rage- Although it does give a small boost, it is not really enough to put points into instead of a better talent.
Endless Rage is ok but not worth our 41 points because of the points you have to sink into worth less ability’s just to get that high up the tree for a minor upgrade.
Endless rage, ugly and not juicy 41pts talent, I’m taking Flurry over it anyday
endless rage - completely useless imo
Endless Rage: completely worhless, sucks ass for a 41 talent.
Endless Rage. Useless now. Would be great to make it like a constant flurry. More rage + more damage.
Endless Rage is utter poop! Redesign it or give us Leap Attack instead HUUH!

Wake up Blizzard.

Terhix

Not so long ago I worte about Berserker Stance penalty, today I’ll stop for a while and try to summarize the state of Battle Stance and Arms overall.

What is Arms specialization, and what it’s used to be?
There are no doubts what Protection tree is about, it’s about tanking, mitigating damage, threat and overall enhancing your abilities, mainly in defensive stance. There are no doubts what Fury tree is about, it’s about dealing damage, fast and hard, it increase your performance well and do it best in Berserker Stance. With improved Berserker Stance talent Fury warriors are bound to the stance, they stay in zerk and deal tons of damage really really hard, that’s their job. Now when you ask what Arms tree is about, the answer you can hear on forums is one - it’s about PvP. What a deep answer isn’t it? Two years ago Arms was well defined, it was a blend between all 3 stances, it was an ultimate, universal tree, nothing strange since it was the tree where Tactical Mastery - a talent allowing for effective stance dancing - was. What has changed since then? Everything. Since 2.3 Arms tree is genderless mish-mash, don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to say it’s weak, it just doesn’t have that thing.

The lackluster 41-pointer
I’m a strong advocate of Endless Rage, there is nothing wrong with 25% more rage from damage done, the problem here is - it’s not enough. I’ve been watching recent patches, and the more Rogue changes I read, the more I’m in awe. Shadowstep out of stealth, shadowstep affecting all abilities, shadowstep without minimum range, shadowstep generating extra combo point, coming 2.4: shadowstep will make everyone in 100 yards automatically /dance. Now I really think these changes really does make sense, and it’s cool that Blizzard does everything to make rogues specialize for 41 sub. What did Blizzard do to make us specialize for 41 arms? They swapped Death Wish and Imp. Intercept to Arms, what a failure:

Most popular arena builds according to geekboys.org:

1. 35/23/3
2. 33/28
3. 31/30
4. 17/44 <- LOL!
5. 33/25/3

No 41 arms. Even a PvE dps build is more popular on arenas then 41 arms. I don’t know if folks at Blizzard are happy with the variety of our PvP builds, but I’m not. Seriously, Blizzard, it’s time to roll up sleeves and say: “We fucked up Arms and something has to be done about it!”. Note how I don’t really mention Arms tree but Arms as a whole, it’s not only the tree that’s defining a specialization, it’s also the set of abilities we got from trainers, and it’s not a secret that Arms tab in spell book is the least attractive one.

Where to go: blending or Battle Stance specialization?
There are two ways to make Arms tree what it’s supposed to be. One way is to bring back it’s glory from the old days, read: bring TM back to Arms. It’s a pretty cheap solution and really a required one. Moving TM to protection, while being a big step forward balance, was a huge step backwards in terms of Warrior Class design. Personally, I don’t think this is required, there is another way to get out of this, and the way to do it, is to make Battle Stance viable on it’s own for Arms Warriors. How to do that? It doesn’t take much of a research to understand why PvPing warriors prefer Berserker Stance over Battle Stance…

Battle Stance = One Button Stance
What abilities can we use in Battle Stance? Let’s take a look:

Heroic Strike - yeah, not really a two-hander thing.
Slam - yeah, useless unless talented, and talents are deep in fury tree.
Mortal Strike - our 31 pointer from arms tree.
Overpower - usable only after an enemy dodge, not reliable source of damage.

That’s it, being full arms in Battle Stance leave us with 1, literally ONE, reliable and effective damage dealing ability, and it’s coming from talents. How sad is that?

Whirlwind for everybody!
Why slam, an ability that’s useless without talents put into it (and those talents are in fury tree) is available in every stance, while Whirlwind, an ability that could benefit everybody (including tanks for aoe-tanking) is available in berserker stance only? There is nothing “berserky” about whirlwind. If I had to do my lore reference I did while analizing berserker stance penalty, in the same D&D whirlwind is a feat that’s available pretty much only for highly specialized Fighters who has at least 13 INT and DEX (read: they are smart and agile enough to rotate around fast and smash faces). Wow also have Cleave ability, which sounds more “berserky” and brutal, and it’s also, like Slam, available in all stances, while the ability that makes most sense to be available in all stances is limited to Berserker Stance.

It really makes no sense at all how I can grind mobs for hours in Battle Stance when specced for 33/28 with Improved Slam (fury ability), while I was forced to grind in Berserker Stance with 41/17/3 since being in Battle Stance meant generating a lot of rage and having no button to release it.

The curse of Berserker Rage
You know this little icon, you have used it millions of times. If you ask any warlock or priest what’s so special about Warriors the answer will be one: “they are immune to fear”. That’s it, it’s what define the Warrior class - we are fearless. There is however a price we have to pay for that, that price is staying in Berserker Stance. Why? Because Berserker Rage is the only ability you can’t stance dance for. You can stance dance for overpower, you can stance dance for disarm, you can stance dance for whirlwind, but you CAN’T stance dance for Berserker Rage. Why? Because you can’t change stance when being feared, stupid!

Endless Berserker Rage
Ok, so here is the deal: Endless Rage is lacking, it’s not bad, but it’s not good, not good enough for a 41 pointer. To make warriors able to PvP in battle stance without worrying about stance dancing, we need an alternative for Berserker Rage… or, an ability to use Berserker Rage in Battle Stance. So how about give ER an additional perk allowing Berserker Rage to be usable in Battle Stance? First, Berserker Rage is an ability that increase rage generated from damage taken, so it’s a nice synergy with ER which increase rage on damage done, secondly it would allow high Arms specced warriors to fight in Battle Stance against opponents that normally require you to stick in zerk 95% of the time (lock/priest), and since Tactical Mastery no longer belongs to Arms, Arms should no longer be blend between stances, but should be rather bound to battle stance. We would still have to dance to zerk for intercept, but that’s about it.

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

Let’s face it, patch 2.3 is coming, and as always we have to adapt. There is of course a chance that nothing will really happen and builds that rule now will continue to rule in 2.3, but nothing is set in stone. Average 5v5 warrior is using either 35/23/3 (33/25/3) balanced build or 33/28 - 31/30 flurry build for better rage generation and dps. During the old days the bread and butter of every warrior was 31/20 build, it gave us the best of two worlds - Mortal Strike - for awesome burst damage and healing debuff, and Enrage for massive powerup when someone was foolish enough to attack us. Why I’m mentioning this is because of Enrage, it was always there, always at 20 points in fury, always ready to be picked up, and neither nerfing it to 25% from original 40%, nor moving Tactical Mastery, not even making it not stack with Death Wish has ever made us spec out of it (well, OK, I did not have enrage at level 60 after patch 2.0 arrived, but I knew I’ll get it again few levels later when TBC shipped), it seems however that patch 2.3, with imp. Intercept and Death Wish in Arms can make us leave Enrage to fury warriors (who have to get it in order to get flurry, even tho it’s useless in PvE).

Why 45/5/11? After all, Endless Rage and imp. MS is crap, right? In high end 5v5, life of a warrior usually have two scenarios:

1. You are ignored for the whole fight, no one will hit you not to fuel your rage and not to trigger Enrage, at which point Enrage is useless. In this part, you can find yourself rage-starving, I don’t care how awesome you are, how good gear you have and how skilled you are, you don’t have enough rage when ignored in PvP unless you are 31/30 and don’t have survivability. This is where Endless Rage comes to rescue, giving you the extra rage, while imp. MS and Blood Frenzy gives a boost in dps. Groundbreaking? No? Viable? My bet is - yes - not saying anything for sure before I test it on my skin.
2. You are attacked, being attacked in 5v5 usually doesn’t mean you are going to fight back happily while your rage bar pops to 100, being attacked in 5v5 means the opposite team wants to nuke the hell out off you, at which point you pop def stance, spam spell reflect macro and move the hell out of LoS. Enrage useless again. One of the biggest problems with warrior class on the arena is lack of ‘OH SHIT’ button, we have it in world pvp or BGs (how many times did shieldwall helped you to bring a flag to the base on WSG?), and this is where Last Stand comes to rescue. Sure it’s not Ice Block, but 30% more hp can buy your healer’s time to heal you up, especially when he was just silenced and is praying “come on, stay alive just a bit longer, just a bit…”.

The baseline of this build is obviously 41/5/11 which leaves you with 4 points free to spend. You can get defiance if you are PvE carebear and want to kill those nasty bosses in heroics or even raids, you can invest them in fury to get some extra rage from UW or better shouts thanks to booming voice (or even demo shout if you are up to this kind of stuff). 45 in arms lets you grab everything important, max 2h spec, max weapon spec, intercept and imp. hamstring are all yours, no compromise, and I like that to be honest, always missed those few points in mid-arms.

There can be problems with this build tho, while it can turn out to be terrific 5v5 build, it can be really bad in 2v2 (where Enrage does have a use, and is pretty darn good). Also you will be missing Piercing Howl, which is one of best talents warrior have, the ultimate ranged-aoe-hamstring that can’t be dodged. Having said that, imp. Blood Rage and Tactical Mastery makes you sleep well knowing you can use Spell Reflect, or Disarm (!!!) anytime you will need them… well… almost. The lack of Weapon Mastery can be easily compensated with adamantite weapon chain (damn rogues and their dual wielding, damn those offhand weapon chains). Sweeping Strikes are now going to be really good as well, even with shorter duration, being able to use them in zerker stance and having whole 10 charges is overall a buff, and then there is Slam (read below), all in all it gives enough reasons to stay hybrid specced for me, maybe not in 5v5, but in 3v3 or 2v2?

Terhix