The fine art of getting really angry

Every expansion sees the character classes be shuffled, tweaked, rebalanced, buffed, nerfed, and what have you with every little patch. Some may argue that Wrath hasn’t been all that fair to certain classes, and I do agree… but I have to give Blizzard credit. Talent specs and options were practically non-existent in vanilla and were still pretty lackluster in BC. Of the nine classes when the game dropped, the vast majority had only one viable spec (if that!). Paladins healed or they were laughed at. Warriors pretty much had to tank, though they’d usually do that in an Arms build. It was really quite a mess.

Fast forward to BC, and more classes find themselves with options. Some fights in raids were damn near impossible without Paladin tanks, Feral tanks rose to massive prominence, Shamans… well, they weren’t liked that much, but Heroism/Bloodlust stacking was critical so there were still five in every raid. Either way, most of the classes suddenly found themselves choosing what spec to be, and while there were oft-times “better” or “best” specs, the hybrids at least had plenty of options.

Now it’s the end of Wrath, and while there’s still not a perfect balance as far as power goes, but the vast majority of class specs are more than welcome and completely viable in most situations in the game. Less so in PvP, but that’s the unfortunate nature of that aspect of WoW where group composition is king. In PvE, Blizzard has said there are only four specs they consider to have really failed come 3.3.

Sadly, one of those specs is a Warrior spec. That’s what I’m going to address today: the state of Warriors in Cataclysm, and what I hope changes.

Let’s talk Prot first, because it’s nice and simple. I never played a Prot Warrior before Wrath, so I don’t know how they used to scale or perform, but they were always the go-to guys for tanks. But two things changed for this expansion. First, Paladins were given substantial buffs to their tanking abilities. Second, Death Knights entered the scene with their ability to tank in any spec. Suddenly, Warriors aren’t the clear cut choice anymore, so Blizzard updates and redesigns the Prot tree considerably. Ultimately? They did a really damn good job.

Warrior survivability is up. We’re suddenly able to AoE tank a lot better. Our rotation isn’t just spam Sunder/Devastate to max over and over. We have an answer for just about any situation thrown at us, and while it might not be as easy and pain free a situation as a Paladin or Death Knight facing the same obstacle, we have enough versatility to match them in just about every field. We are, in my honest opinion, the most interesting tank. Not the easiest, but the most challenging and ultimately rewarding and satisfying. Prot’s redesign for Wrath was excellent, that’s all there is to it. Coming into Cataclysm, I’d be satisfied if much of the tree remained unchanged and the playstyle was left intact. Things are changing, of course, but from what I’ve seen so far Prot Warriors are still going to be a bundle of fun.

Yet despite the fact that Warriors are my favourite class, I like them for one spec and one spec only. My off spec is almost never used for anything, simply because the other trees are completely unsatisfying and because I prefer to tank whenever I’m allowed. Warrior DPS is, simply put, broken in the final stages of Wrath. The scaling curve of damage potential ends higher than any other class, sure, but it starts much much muuuuch lower.

The nature of rage is a tricky business. It was normalised in BC, and yet the normalisation left most Warriors screaming in horror because they were even worse off than before. Now that normalisation is happening again in Cataclysm, many Warriors are biting their fingernails and hoping they won’t screw it up monumentally again. I didn’t live through rage normalisation, so I’m just remaining cautiously optimistic. Blizzard, so far, appears to be doing reasonably well with balancing our rage generation in the beta.

Rage generation is critical to Warriors because without it, our DPS is crippled. We have to sit around and wait for white attacks to land before we can do anything special, since white hits generate rage based on how much damage it’s doing. And that’s why our damage curve starts so low: on the low end of gear, our white hits barely do anything, so we don’t have much rage to do our real damage, so we stagnate. But start getting some better gear, and we scale faster and higher than any other class. Reach the magic number and we’ll never run out of rage so we can just spam away our special attacks. Add high armour penetration into the mix, and then the purely physical damage of a Warrior will skyrocket even higher.

That’s why Warrior DPS is currently broken – the fickle nature of rage generation. And that’s also why one DPS spec is completely broken.

As it stands, Fury is best able to capitalise on limitless rage. They don’t have many special attacks to speak of – their extremely boring rotation consists of Bloodthirst, Whirlwind, wait a few seconds, Bloodthirst, wait a bit more, Bloodthirst, Whirlwind, wait again. Save for Slam procs and Heroic Strike spam, that’s it. But that’s the catch: Heroic Strike spam with limitless rage means you can just keep it queued infinitely. With enough gear, your second weapon white hits give you enough rage to keep you afloat while your main weapon hits harder. Plus, more Heroic Strikes mean more Slam procs. Get your BiS gear, and your Fury Warrior becomes a raging ball of metal death.

Arms Warriors don’t have that.

I vastly prefer Arms to Fury, because there’s more to do. For the same reason that I got bored of Prot Paladins when I had to sit and wait and do nothing while things came off cooldown, Fury Warriors just have way too much downtime. Even Ret Paladins have more to press and a more interesting setup than Fury. Arms has a little more to do: Keep your Rend up, hit your Overpower and Execute procs, hit Mortal Strike whenever possible, and Slam if you’ve got nothing else proc’d or off cooldown. There’s more to keep an eye on, and it feels more methodical. The common analogy is that Arms is the careful, precise Warrior who steps in at the right moment with the right strike. Fury Warriors show up to a fight drunk and half naked while screaming and hitting things wildly. I don’t like that undisciplined style.

But Arms is one of the four failed DPS specs of Icecrown Citadel. You can still do decent numbers, but that’s despite – not because of – the spec. As you gear up, you’ll get more rage, but even with the Endless Rage talent you won’t get nearly as much as the two weapons of a Fury Warrior. Additionally, even if you do get to the point where you have near limitless rage, you have virtually no way to capitalise on it. You’re entirely reliant on that single weapon of yours to give you that extra rage, so you can’t queue up Heroic Strike or you’ll lose it all. All it means is that you’ll be able to use your abilities when they light up… which you’ll find you can do at a low gear level anyway. They don’t have the rampant scaling of their cousin as a result.

So that’s how Wrath looks. Prot is fine, fun, effective. Fury is boring, starts crap but then skyrockets to Grom Hellscream levels of asskicking. Arms is a fun spec, but starts crap and finishes subpar. With luck, Cataclysm will be the answer to correcting the situation of Warrior DPS.

Like I’ve said, rage is being normalised in Cataclysm to simply giving a flat number when you hit rather than based on damage, which means that there should be less of a curve in low gear levels and less overpowering insanity at high levels. Heroic Strike is no longer spammable and is simply more of a rage dump ability, so Fury won’t be able to capitalise on ludicrous rage anymore. Armour penetration is being removed too, so that brings our scaling more in line as well. Curiously enough, a stat we never really care too much about currently – haste – may in fact become one of the most sought after stats at low gear levels just so we get more white hits, and thus more rage. This is especially true since crits will no longer give extra rage. I can easily foresee a future in which a certain amount of haste is the first and foremost thing a Warrior gears for… well, after hit, of course. Single Minded Fury might actually be better to gear up with in Fury, simply because you’re hitting faster and generating more rage in a shorter time.

The next thing that I would like to see changed for Cataclysm is more to do with our rotations. Arms has a good rotation with plenty to do right now, so I hope to see that maintained with a little more power to it than it currently has. Fury… Fury needs a lot more in its rotation because right now it’s dull as hell. We’re getting a couple of new toys, to my knowledge – Whirlwind will become an AoE only ability, not something you use on single target, but we’re also getting a damaging ability that can only be used when enraged (and we have a few of those). There’s also Colossus Blow, an ability on a mid-length cooldown that increases the damage our strikes do afterwards (and also replaces Execute for Sudden Death procs in the Arms tree, something I quite like). Fury will probably still end up feeling a little minimal, so something new to fill in the blanks would probably be very nice.

Overall, though, I do approve of what Cataclysm has in store for Warriors. It’s going to be an interesting time ahead, and I really hope to see Arms make a comeback. Regardless of what happens, though, you’ll probably still be there with a sword and board, tanking away.

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