Warrior Cataclysm Preview
Written by Gazrella.
With Q and A blizzard announced the upcoming changes and we have the blue, here it is below!
World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will bring with it several changes to class talents and abilities. Here you will get a glimpse into some of the changes we have in store for the warrior. The information you’re about to read is not complete, and is only meant to act as a preview for some of the exciting new things to come.
New Warrior Abilities
Inner Rage (Level 81): Whenever the character reaches a full 100 Rage, he or she will gain a buff that causes attacks to consume 50% more Rage and do 15% more damage for a short amount of time. This is a passive ability so it won’t need to be activated by the player. The goal for this ability is to provide a benefit for hitting max Rage instead of it feeling like a penalty. However, we also don’t want warriors to feel like they’re supposed to pool Rage and do nothing until they hit 100, so we’ll be closely monitoring how this plays out during the beta testing, and making adjustments as needed.
Gushing Wound (Level 83): This ability will apply a bleed effect to the target. If the target moves, the bleed gains an extra stack and refreshes its duration, up to a maximum of three stacks. The ability is currently planned to have no cooldown, cost 10 Rage, and have a 9-second duration. Gushing Wound is designed to be weaker than Rend with one stack, but better with three stacks, which will be reached when fighting a moving target.
Heroic Leap (Level 85): This ability makes the character leap at their target and apply the Thunder Clap ability to all enemies in the area when they land. Heroic Leap will be usable in Battle Stance and shares a cooldown with Charge, but the Juggernaut and Warbringer talents will allow Heroic Leap to be used in any stance and possibly while in combat. The cooldown for this ability might be longer than the Charge ability, but it will also apply a stun effect so you can make sure the target will still be there when you land.
Changes to Abilities and Mechanics
In addition to learning new abilities, you’ll see changes to other abilities and mechanics with which you’re already familiar. This list and the summary of talent changes below it are by no means comprehensive, but they should give you a good sense of what we intend for each spec.
- Heroic Strike will no longer be an “on next swing” attack, as we are removing this mechanic in Cataclysm. To keep the niche of Heroic Strike as a Rage dump, it will become an instant attack, but will cost between 10 and 30 Rage. This ability will not be usable until you have 10 Rage, but if you have more than 10, it will consume up to 30, adding additional damage for each point of Rage consumed above the base 10. Other abilities, such as Cleave, Execute, and Maul (for druids) will work similarly. The goal is to provide players with an option where if you can’t afford the Rage, you don’t push the button, but if you have excess Rage, you can push it a lot.
- Battle Shout, Commanding Shout, and possibly Demoralizing Shout will work more like the death knight’s Horn of Winter ability. Specifically, these shouts will cost no resources, generate rage in addition to their current effects, and be on a short cooldown.
- Whirlwind will hit an unlimited number of targets, but only for 50% of weapon damage. The intent is for this ability to be used in multi-target scenarios and not on single targets.
- Overall, heals cast by players in Cataclysm will be a lower number relative to players’ health than the current game. So to make the Mortal Strike debuff less mandatory but still useful in PvP, Mortal Strike will reduce healing by only 20%. All equivalent debuffs, including the Shadow priest and Frost mage debuffs, will be for 20% less healing. At the moment we aren’t considering giving this debuff to anyone else, though we will certainly consider PvP utility for historically under-represented specs that use other mechanics.
- Sunder Armor will be reduced to three stacks instead of five, and still provide only a 4% reduction in armor per stack. We want to make this debuff easier to apply and less of a damage swing when it falls off.
New Talents and Talent Changes
- The Furious Sundering talent in the Fury tree will make the Sunder Armor ability cause 25/50% weapon damage and reduce the threat generated by 50/100%.
- The Mace and Poleaxe Specialization talents in the Arms tree will be removed. These provided just passive stats, which are not the kinds of talents we want to design in the future. We will keep the Sword Specialization talent, but it will be changed to a talent that applies to all types of weapons.
- As a Fury talent, Booming Voice will increase the Rage generated by shouts.
- While we like how Titan’s Grip plays, we recognize some warriors liked the Fury tree because of the really fast swings that dual-wielding one-handed weapons could provide. Therefore, we’re planning to try out a talent called Single-Minded Fury that is parallel to Titan’s Grip and will provide a large boost to the damage of a pair of one-handed weapons.
- Several talents that reduce the Rage cost of abilities will be changed to focus on increased damage for those abilities instead.
- The new Arms talent called Disarming Nature will make successful disarms cause the target to cower in fear for 5/10 seconds.
- Another new Arms talent called Blitz will make the Charge ability hit for extra damage. The amount will possibly vary depending on the distance travelled.
- Improved Pummel, a Fury talent, will cause a successful interrupt to generate 10/20 Rage.
Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses
Arms
- Melee Damage
- Armor Penetration
- Bonus Swing
Bonus Swing: This is similar to the Sword Specialization talent that is currently in the game, but Bonus Swing will work on all attacks and with all weapons. You have a chance to proc a free, instant weapon swing that hits for 50% damage.
Fury
- Melee Damage
- Melee Haste
- Enrage Intensity
Enrage Intensity: Every benefit of being enraged is increased. This includes doing more damage/healing/ etc. from abilities like Bloodrage, Death Wish, Enrage, Berserker Rage, and Enraged Regeneration.
Protection
- Damage Reduction
- Vengeance
- Critical Block Chance
Critical Block Chance: As we mentioned in the stat changes preview, block rating is changing to a chance to block 30% of a melee swing’s damage. Protection warriors have a chance that the block will be a critical block and block for 60% of a melee swing’s damage instead. There will likely be talents available to push the amount blocked even higher.
Vengeance: This is a mechanic to ensure that tank damage (and therefore threat) doesn’t fall behind as damage-dealing classes improve their gear during the course of the expansion. All tanking specs will have Vengeance as their second talent tree passive bonus. Whenever a tank gets hit, Vengeance will give them a stacking attack power buff equal to 5% of the damage done, up to a maximum of 10% of the character’s un-buffed health. For boss encounters, we expect that tanks will always have the attack power bonus equal to 10% of their health. The 5% and 10% bonuses assume 51 talent points have been put into the Protection tree. These values will be smaller at lower levels. Remember, you only get this bonus if you have spent the most talent points in the Protection tree, so you won’t see Arms or Fury warriors running around with it. Vengeance will let us continue to make tank gear more or less the way we do today – there will be some damage-dealing stats, but mostly survival-oriented stats. Druids typically have more damage-dealing stats even on their tanking gear, so their Vengeance benefit may be smaller, but overall the goal is for all four tanks do about the same damage when tanking.
We hope you enjoyed this preview, and we’re looking forward to hearing your thoughts and feedback on these additions and changes. Please keep in mind that this information represents a work in progress and is subject to change as development on Cataclysm continues.
Here are some follow ups based on what is being discussed.
Q: Will the rotation for a Fury Warrior just be Bloodthirst and Slam with Heroic Strike to burn off rage?
A: We think Fury is going to end up needing another attack in there for single-target fights. Furious Sundering was intended more as having to Sunder being less of a penalty, but at only 3 stacks, it may not end up being a big deal and we don’t want Fury to feel like they have to purchase a talent that they may not always use. We don’t want Whirlwind to be a good button against single targets however. It essentially gets “free” damage against groups of targets when it’s effective at using against single targets. It’s okay if warriors still do more damage in fights where they can use Cleave and similar attacks often, but right now it’s too extreme.
Q: Are one-handed Fury warriors going to be competing with rogues for one-handed weapons?
A: This is unlikely. Rogues and shaman will want one-handers with Agility, while warriors and death knights will want them with Strength. I won’t be surprised when one of these classes picks up the other’s weapon as it could be an upgrade simply based on the damage, but it won’t be optimal.
Q: Why are warriors not getting some kind of AoE tanking tool?
A: We think the newly buffed Thunder Clap plus Shockwave are sufficient abilities for AoE tanking. The design of Vengeance should make sure that threat generation doesn’t start to slip behind as the dps characters gear up. It’s not our intention that tanks face a constant struggle to generate enough threat, even in group situations, but we also don’t want threat to be totally irrelevant either. The danger for tanking too many creatures should also be tank death not threat management.
Q: Is only Sunder Armor being changed?
A: Rogue Expose Armor and other abilities that apply a similar debuff are being changed accordingly. They will all provide the same debuff at 12% armor reduction.
Q: What about rage loss when changing stances?
A: We still want the act of changing stances to require more consideration than just clicking two buttons to use the ability you want. One idea we are going to explore is that you don’t lose rage when you change stances, but you won’t gain additional rage for a short period of time after changing. This lets you say swap to do an Execute without losing your rage bar, but still keeps the idea that shifting constantly comes with inherent efficiency risks.
Q: Is the intent of Gushing Wound that warriors constantly ask for targets to be kited around?
A: No, it’s intended to be a bonus when you’re in an encounter where the target either moves around a lot (Ex. BONNNNE STORMMMM-ing Marrowgar) or just has to be moved around a lot (say Lich King). Warriors shouldn’t have the expectation of forcing every PvE opponent to move but it would be entertaining to watch this (from a third party perspective).
24 Comments so far
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The only prob with a warriors aoe threat gen is that shockwave stunning targets means the warrior isnt getting attacked and so isnt generating rage for those super expensive cleaves ,if they put an imp cleave into the prot tree to reduce the rage requirement more instead of adding to its crit and make it hit all targets in a certain range like a druids swipe and a pallies consecrate that alone would fix a warriors ability to keep and hold multiple mobs this cleave talent would have to be deep in the talent tree like maybe 45-50 points to avoid fury and arms warriors min-maxing to get it so they could benefit their cleaves also and making it reducing the rage cost per talent point put into it thus reducing it to a 12 rage attack. , but it is possible and rather easy to do IMHO
I think the warrior tank aoe really needs some improvement. For instance having the thunder clap create a dot (damage over time effect) it does not have to create a high amount of damage although it would be helpful if the dot created high threat. It should do enough to hold aggro while rotating though large mobs. It could even be changed out for the weapons speed debuff that thunderclap currently gives. This would make tanking creatures that don’t work of los such as in Halls of reflection much easier for a warrior tank. And also make them a little more comparable to Paly and DK tanks. This is my ideal, maybe I am way off on this. Tell me what you think
i think what blizz does to warriors is bullshit they nerf warrs way too much, last exp we had great abilities come out and then they go and nerf us to the ground, for example take a dk, hes an improved warrior, but he can heal himself, hit twice as hard, and has a fuckin minion, so yea when will blizz stop being fools and let us warrs do what we supposed to? hurt people and pvp hardcore!
Protection- I like what Max Tank said but my idea is a little different. I don’t think the warriors need another aoe ability, but increasing threat dramaticly from thunderclap would do just fine. Thunderclap slows attack speed by 10%, it should be bumped with a talent to 15 or 20 and increased threat because naturaly a slowed target will be very angry, it just makes more sense and would fix the problem. It would also help greatly with multiple targets because they will all be slowed. Warriors can then spam thunderclap because for one, they want to keep there targets attack speed slowed which will also become a mandatory ability to use in boss fights and two, for the amount of threat it will cause.
Fury- I love how my warrior plays out right now but I agree with Omar Zabani on his statement, also that warriors need a 1h weapon dw specialty. With the new changes and the fact other classes do get some advantages i think reducing titans grip to 5% damage reduction might be better. And for a 1h weapon specialty ability increasing haste by a perminent 10 to 15% should be the big ability. It will give warriors a real choice and competition between dps from dw 1 or 2 handed weapons for pve once again. Also I think with the rage changes and rage cost increased, and with no rage dump anymore, warriors dps will be decreased dramaticly and this will help them to build more rage for single target abilities. I forsee a problem with how they’ve been changed for cata so far as for dps goes.
Wow…. Warrior….
Worst class to pick!
So boring and s**t.
Forgotten WARRIOR!
Ily <3 xoxo
Im so wet!
Guild ; Dath’remar best in aus.
its bullshit how they want to nerf warriors but they buff up the most cheap pussy class in the game PALADINS i mean wtf man heals? hits like a warrior? holy damage spells? what the fuck were they thinking NERF THEM and warriors deserve some better abilities that do some more aoe and also some more abilites that get the jump on fucking paladins so they arent the end all of pvp class
Paladins are easily the most op non skill needing class out there blizz must be retarded or they all play paladins
this isnt fair… look at all the melee classes. a dk can heal, dps harder and got a minion. pally can heal,bubble and dps. but a warrior has no healing ability…. warriors deserve to get more damaging attacks and a change. Blizz doesnt really care bout warrior. wtf!!!
So i read saw the tree and they say single-minded fury for dual wielding 1 handed will have 20% damage increase and cleave and slam can hit with both weapons?So what the hell will be so great about dual wielding 2-handed ones.Thats one reason i chose the warrior.You mite as well take titans grip off and i might as well quite playing the warrior when cataclysm comes out.THE WHOLE POINT OF A FURY WARRIOR IS THAT YOU CAN DUAL WIELD 2-HANDED WEAPONS.How gay.
My opinion is they want to force warriors to tanking. Each patch and expansion they buff up warrior tanks. nerf dps warriors and increase the other classes’s dps! The class should be renamed to TANKS! since we either dps as a rogue without stealth or we BEG for a 2h weapon since they are damn rare!
Guys blood will become Tank for DK so DPS DK wont be able to heal himself as much he does now in WOTLK
Im fairly new compared to some, I hit 70 at the time Lich king was coming out, but what ive noticed was, with others jobs, I can put all my moves into 1 macro, as with warrior, an 11 button mouse is called for while i use 3 buttons for my pally. I notice the camoflouge that hunters are getting, warriors get leap…which shares a cooldown with charge, still lookin for a decent difference there…warbringer was nerfed, arms most powerful ability was nerfed @ disarm, I kinda like the new rend type ability but..i still feel its not enough when you are in a burst contest @pvp. I would like to see “warrior’s being warriors”…feared…not just the lil brother of a dk and pally, thunderclap should add a small rend type move to all enemies for a short time, you can call it shell shock (ninja turtles). I just dont feel like Warrior is receiving any cool boosts in abilities compared to others. Also since hunters are basically rogues now, and rogues use shaman weps, why not have warrior’s bow abilitys pumped up a bit..shouldnt a warrior have knowledge over all weapons?
Also, a warrior should have unparalleled strength…dk’s use that rune stuff for power, pallys use their divine/holy for power..warriors use pure muscle, shouldnt they run faster then the average gnome? (thinking Conan the Barbarian), I dont think he would let a pets spider web ground him, or a lil piece of ice slow him, having some kinda inner rage(maybe when he hits 100% rage…) that awakens allowing him to do more damage, or not be slowed…something
Another thing, disarming someone which also fears for 5-10 sec is cool, specially against a non 2hander class, but…what happens when you do run into a 2hander class and disarm..they already run faster then you, now you gotta chase down someone who is already defenseless knowing you cant catch them, hamstring might help, just saying theres goods and bads with that move, I like it still.
Thunder clap could have a talent that allows all movement impairing things for you and your team mates in range to go away…increase the cooldown within the talent…warrior should just be a juggernaught.
i think they nerf to much the class of wars . and i think war can pwn all classes just we need to be perfect at every sigle move .. warrior rulez its the most enjoing char at this game … BLIZZ:U CAN NERF WARRIORS BUT U CANT NERF US WARRIOR RULEZ!!!
Warriors always get the shit end of the stick too, only 1 HoT every 3 mins. less dps than other melee classes. and when a 2-hander drops, we roll against 3 other classes. I play prot but cmon, wtf, warriors shud be the BEST melee class.
Im unsure of anyone elses opinions, but out of all the tanks warriors arent specialised in any sort of stat, like Druids get armor and stam (agility too), Pallys are like “i spam blocking now! get more diff mitigation!, and dks jsut dodge, parry, stam. (btw i know you still ned the hit / expertise so yeah w/e)
Blizzard does not care about warrior-people!
i hate the nerfs on warriors they always nerf warriors but never paladins.
paladins are getting more damage that is so unfear
the nerfs on the passive abilitys with arms are so much that nobody is gonna take an arms warrior, the most part of warriors are goin to take prot.
maybe some good geared takes fury.
I don’t like this at all.
In the past expansions, warriors have been greatly buffed, and then nerfed like no other class. Now, Blizzard are afraid to do the same mistake again. But WTF is this!? We get NOTHING compared to the other classes. I mainly speaking for me and my fellow PvP’ers. STOP THIS NONSENSE and buff us as much as you buff the other classes!
as a warrior for many years now i feel like the meaning of a warrior is beeing laughed at by all other classes. what is a pally a god? because only gods killed warriors blizz u have for many years now belitled warriors and made us look like goblins. as for pvp a warrior alone 1on1 with nearly evry class is defeated we have no chance, in a nut shell id like to see warriors feared again not laughed at.
What happened to Dual Weild? Had it one day, no explanation – gone the next w/Cataclysm Patch 10/12/2010. NOT COOL!
I agree with you kanyeW. Warriors (although fun) always seem to take a back seat.