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Q u o t e:
i'd like to see battle stance have more anti-defensive attacks

maybe armor ignore strike, or chaos strike (something unavoidable like chaos bolt)

EDIT: im not creative with names

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i appreciate the simplicity of "armor ignore strike".

:D

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Q u o t e:


Yeah, it is. I'll try to explain.

I think in the minds of most warriors they say "Would I like to have a 10% percent damage penalty or not? I think not."

But of course that's not the way it would work. If we redesigned the stances it wouldn't be in order to give warriors 3% more crit and 10% more health. That's just a straight buff. What we would likely do is something similar to the death knight presences -- lower your health by 10% and then increase the damage reduction of Defensive Stance and give Battle Stance a tiny bit of damage reduction. (Or maybe Battle Stance would take the same damage as Berserk, but have a more meaningful bonus like movement speed or attack speed). Now your tooltips don't use the word "penalty" so you maybe feel better about them, but the balance hasn't really changed much -- Berserk would be an offensive stance and Defensive would be a defensive stance. Being in Berserk would still be risky.

If instead you're just arguing that warriors are weak and need to be buffed, that's a different issue. But there is no reason we would have to solve that by removing stance penalties.

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So, Jimmy can swing a bat and hit two birds with it. Tommy can swing his Light Blessed twig and hit two birds with it. Jimmy gets punished for his stance and hitting two birds with his bat. Tommy doesnt get punished because he's a paladin and the gods smile upon them and dont mind if they whirlwind without a penalty....

Whirlwind is a part of the Fury warrior's rotation. Divine Storm is a part of a Ret paladin's rotation. Both hit 4 targets, only one requires the wielder to take 10% more damage. Counter point : The warrior can hit with both weapons. Counter-counter point : What about an arms warrior? Oh he doesnt use Whirlwind anymore? Ever? Well even if so he still doesnt have Pummel. So Jimmy cant knock the teeth out of that venom-spitting bully, but Tommy can kick him in the groin and stun him for 6 seconds while he continues to beat the snot out of him with holy light....

The joking aside.... 10% more damage so we can do what other classes can do without penalty is just silly and a little unfair. Makes the warrior unique? So did MS and Shield Slam but that didnt stop you guys. If we absolutely MUST have a penalty, cant even you agree that 10% of ALL DAMAGE is a bit excessive? How bout, direct damage? Or just Physical Damage since spells dont get mitigated by our lolplate anyway.

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Q u o t e:


So, Jimmy can swing a bat and hit two birds with it. Tommy can swing his Light Blessed twig and hit two birds with it. Jimmy gets punished for his stance and hitting two birds with his bat. Tommy doesnt get punished because he's a paladin and the gods smile upon them and dont mind if they whirlwind without a penalty....

Whirlwind is a part of the Fury warrior's rotation. Divine Storm is a part of a Ret paladin's rotation. Both hit 4 targets, only one requires the wielder to take 10% more damage. Counter point : The warrior can hit with both weapons. Counter-counter point : What about an arms warrior? Oh he doesnt use Whirlwind anymore? Ever? Well even if so he still doesnt have Pummel. So Jimmy cant knock the teeth out of that venom-spitting bully, but Tommy can kick him in the groin and stun him for 6 seconds while he continues to beat the snot out of him with holy light....

The joking aside.... 10% more damage so we can do what other classes can do without penalty is just silly and a little unfair. Makes the warrior unique? So did MS and Shield Slam but that didnt stop you guys. If we absolutely MUST have a penalty, cant even you agree that 10% of ALL DAMAGE is a bit excessive? How bout, direct damage? Or just Physical Damage since spells dont get mitigated by our lolplate anyway.

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making direct references to other classes (especially one so overtly-hated as retadins) has no influence on the blues.

Instead consider the mechanic at work from a design standpoint. We give up moves, and take 10% more damage, for 3% crit and other moves. Do the moves and 3% crit we gain, make up for taking 10% more damage? The answer in my mind is a resounding NO!

On the other hand, the other classes do not need to make such distinctions, and simply choose whichever "presence, form, aspect, armor, etc" that they need, the only drawback to all of them being that they can't have the benefit of their other aspects/forms/poisons/etc. I have begun to expand into other classes, so let me keep it focused.

@Blizz - It sucks to take penalties above and beyond move selection, when others can simply choose what enhancements they want situationally, with no counter-balance. At the moment the incentive to justify us using the other stances is not "baked in" to our class, and warriors feel dejected.

If we were to strip everything away, take a warrior with all his moves available, any other class and all their moves available, put them in a ring and say fight, the other class will win most of the time. Other classes have massive amounts more utility than we do. Then, you add restrictions on the warriors spells through stances, penalties of defensive and berserker stance (and they are straight penalties in pvp - see PS-1), and we are in even a worse position. Now, the other class also gets their mage armors, presences, forms, auras, aspects, or what ever, and they are in a hugely advantageous side of the fight.


PS -1
Defensive stance deprives the warrior of the moves necessary for burst, as well as reducing dmg output by 10%, making the warrior an effective limp noodle until the warrior's partner can heal him to a usable state again as dps.

Berserker stance makes a warrior mobile but extremely vulnerable, with the amount of crowd control available to everyone, being in berserker usually means "take 10% more damage while can not do that while stunned" or "out of range"

A typical fight for me? charge in, hamstring/ms, crowd control till intercept, and I jump out of berserker as soon as I can. Yeah, I'd like to use whirlwind, but now in PVP as much as in PVE, whirlwind is a damned death-trap.

I'm more concered about the 10% more damage in PvE than anything. In a game where every dps class is nearly equal, but one takes 10% more damage. If any boss encounter in the future has high splash damage, the dps warrior may get sat out if it becomes a big mana drain. It dont matter if the encounter is doable with dps warriors. But most guillds in future harder raid content would rather take another class and give healers more mana. Healers using less mana is better cause that extra mana can be used for tight situations that may come up later in the fight.

Malygos is a good example, if you dont go defensive during cyclone, there's a good chance you'll die cause you're taking 200 more damage per tick.

10% less health for no 10% penalty is a buff in PvE. So I have 18K health instead of 20K, but now i'm not sucking down healers mana.

10% more damage is such an outdated mechanic, like i get why its there but at this point in the game you really should rethink it. we are already limited by stances and rage, no need to tack another 10% damage. hell take away the 3 crit if you want to.

every class in the game has a source of magic damage that already ignores plate armor except warriors. i just dont understand how this continues to be. if u use reckless, a move similar to cold blood or elemental mastery you take 30% more damage from all sources. but if those shaman/rogues want a gaurenteed crit they take the normal damage. why is this? why must warriors unecessarily take 30% more damage?

What I'm confused about is why Warriors have to wait for RNG to come in a perfect time for us to win games unlike a Mage who can press two buttons in win in Arena. You should think about making the buff stay up longer instead of trying to set up for 8 seconds and then having it fail and not actually get a kill (for Sudden Death).

It's fine now, yeah. Warriors are probably executing the second it comes up since no one has resil. It'll be a lot harder to kill anyone with 1288 resil even with a few sudden death procs.

Also, adding movement speed and damage reduction to Battle will help a lot. Although if you do that, I can see people speccing Taste for Blood for PvP and only switching to zerker for Reck Executes and Pummels. Which I would have no problem with at all.

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Q u o t e:
I think perhaps change berzerk stance to maybe 10% less movement speed or something around that idea would be balanced all around.

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Yeah, NO WAY. Not all Warriors our there sit and mash their face into their keyboards trying to kill scripted encounters like you. If this happens, I would reroll right away.

Thats my question also, why are warriors the only class that "has to make the decision" to take more damage? No other class has such a huge downside just to use some of their key abilities. No other class is ever restricted to which abilities they can use by what "mode" they are in(not even druids, since any ability they use outside of their current form automatically switches them out/into the form they need for that ability with NO cooldown trigger). Can we at least hear a real justification for why warriors are the only class that has to hurt itself to be useful but has literally no real ability to heal itself(enraged regen is a joke until it is changed to either more then 25% or instant 25%, especially since dk's can gain 50% of their hp in one weapon swing for virtually no cost).

Adding armor-ignoring abilities to Arms would:

1 - Help balance Arms to be effective in PVP by making damage more consistent across all targets. Also makes us slightly less likely to get stomped by armor ignoring Paladins and DKs.

2 - Buff Arms PVE damage without also increasing the damage from Deep Wounds.

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Q u o t e:
I suppose I need to clarify this since it is getting quoted out of context across the Internets.

My comment about Fury pulling aggro was to suggest that they also can be very RNG and burst-heavy and therefore maybe it is a warrior issue and not an Arms issue.

Aside: You may have noticed I do tend to bring up PvP issues in PvE threads and vice versa. My purpose is to gently remind players that despite your individual interests, that we must take both ways to play into consideration whenever we make changes. In my effort to post as much as I am able I sometimes type too quickly, but I'll try to be more clear.

I do have a lot of Arena experience as Arms. I tried Fury a few times but couldn't make it work, though some of the changes in LK were made to address that.

To the cynics in the crowd, I'm afraid you're stuck with me. Snicker about how elite you are if you must, but at the end of the day, if I don't understand your problems they aren't getting fixed. For my part I will make every effort to understand them.

We continue to discuss the direction we want for warrior stances. I will bring up the points you guys have made.

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Please just do us all a favor and ignore all the idiots trolling. We want our problems fixed. Thanks for your posts even though I don't agree with most of them.

which reminds me, what weaknesses are we expected to have?

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Q u o t e:


i appreciate the simplicity of "armor ignore strike".

:D

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lol, and thsoe attacks would only be more effective agsint defensive people. Ignoring the little armor of a amge vs ignoring all the armor against a prot person is no comparison. Also, a strike that cannot be avoided would clearly be beneficial against (like anotehr overpower but with no trigger, but a long cooldown like 10 seconds)

Honestly I'm not particularly interested in an armor ignoring strike. When I'm fighting against a high armor target I'm generally short enough on rage as-is, I can't afford to use a second strike when I'm barely maintaining MS and hamstring.

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Q u o t e:
I do have a lot of Arena experience as Arms. I tried Fury a few times but couldn't make it work, though some of the changes in LK were made to address that.

To the cynics in the crowd, I'm afraid you're stuck with me. Snicker about how elite you are if you must, but at the end of the day, if I don't understand your problems they aren't getting fixed. For my part I will make every effort to understand them.

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LOL, I love the honesty...and because of that, I don't mind being "stuck with you." The way I see it, you are in here with us trying to hash through these issues. Great!

The bottom line is that warriors have very little survival and do not seem to be doing very much damage in pvp. I can't help but compare my class to others, specifically melee, because that is how the game is played and experienced. You fight in a BG or arena and learn what other classes can do and how you can counter them or do similar actions. Right now warriors are at the bottom of melee effectiveness in pvp. We have dropped from the first ranked spot before TBC, to the second ranked spot in TBC behind Blizzard's favorite (i.e., the Rogue....sorry, had to get that shot in there because we all know its true ;-) ), to now the bottom of the barrel. Why you ask? Again, the others are doing more damage and have more defensive abilities to survive.

Certainly one of the survival issues stems from the stance issue. The reason for this is because you have to ask yourself how can a warrior survive once he is hurt or being focused? Well, it is difficult initially because all warriors are already in bezerker stance. This means they are taking 10% more damage right out of the gate before they even know they are in trouble. The reason is because bezerker stance is the only effective option for pvp. Period! The use of intercept, pummel, and whirlwind mandate that warriors must pvp in this stance to have a chance. Oh, and whirlwind is not a requirement because it hits multiple targets, rather it is necessary because it gives you a second on demand dependable instant attack. Warriors only have two! Two, GC, two! Execute, overpower, and victory rush are all RNG or situational and bladestorm depends on a cooldown making it situational and often used equally as a snare break.

So, the fact that warriors must pvp in bezerker stance immediately reduces their survival compared to other melee classes.

Lets get back to surviving as a warrior. How can this be done? Well, the answer obviously is the only chance one has is if they go to defensive stance, spell reflect, and/or burn shield wall. If you do survive this results in a lot of rage that you then want to unleash by fighting back. However, in order to do this once again the warrior must go to bezerker stance to be effective (see reasons above) which then dumps all of this generated rage and causes you to take 10% more damage. It is a cycle that is simply ineffective because the classes you are fighting against are not penalized the same way for the choice they make while in combat.

Offensively, the bottom line is that the warrior right now simply does not put out the same level of damage as other melee classes in pvp. They just do not. There is nothing else to say here, and it isn't a gear issue because that argument does not fly any longer with paladins and deathknights relying on the same strength to attack power ratio and gear.

When you look at the composition of the top arena teams right now you see Ret Paladin, DeathKnight, Rogue and Mage. These are the classes that have the most offensive as well as defensive abilities. This seams out of balance severely. It seems to me that if you are going to have a lot of offensive power then you should have to give up defensive power, or if you prefer to live longer and focus on defensive powers then you should lose offensive attacking power. The warrior class has neither at the moment.

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Q u o t e:
Honestly I'm not particularly interested in an armor ignoring strike. When I'm fighting against a high armor target I'm generally short enough on rage as-is, I can't afford to use a second strike when I'm barely maintaining MS and hamstring.

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the thing is, the armor ignore strike owuld be more rage effeicient, as in, it may not be worth it to MS him/her/it

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Q u o t e:
the thing is, the armor ignore strike owuld be more rage effeicient, as in, it may not be worth it to MS him/her/it

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I'm not always the only person attacking my target though. Also it's not just armor, I do reasonable damage to other warriors and retadins, it's the blocks and absorbs that really stop rage gen for me. Of course those are compounded by high armor values, but still it's the rage starvation that really shuts me down, not the amount of damage the yellow attacks I'm able to use do.

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Q u o t e:


I do have a lot of Arena experience as Arms. I tried Fury a few times but couldn't make it work, though some of the changes in LK were made to address that.

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Ghostcrawler, just admit it...















You play every single class.

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Q u o t e:

We continue to discuss the direction we want for warrior stances. I will bring up the points you guys have made.

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Good to hear. I don't know that players will reach any consensus on this, but I'd personally be in favor of fewer ability lock-outs (fewer stance specific abilities) in exchange for each stance having a much stronger identity. This way we choose the stance for the stance's characteristics, rather than choose the stance for the abilities. This is obviously a major design decision: maybe you want us to choose stances for the abilities. If this latter option is the case, then we really need to have rage-retention when switching stances increased greatly (i.e. 50+, or allow us to keep 70% of current rage, etc).

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Q u o t e:
I'm not always the only person attacking my target though. Also it's not just armor, I do reasonable damage to other warriors and retadins, it's the blocks and absorbs that really stop rage gen for me. Of course those are compounded by high armor values, but still it's the rage starvation that really shuts me down, not the amount of damage the yellow attacks I'm able to use do.

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i see, then perhaps a cooldown that reduces the chance to be avoided (for a short time) would be good, sorta like a reverse evasion