axe spec makes a comebackFollow

ouch
comes from the beta patch notes:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=8199569973&sid=2000

Edited, Jul 18th 2008 6:39am by axhed

I have to ask, are you saying Axe spec is making a comeback because of the nerfs to Mace and Sword, or did you actually see what Buffs Axe Spec is getting (you didn't highlight it, so I'm not sure you saw it)

To be clear - yes, I wholeheartedly agree ... Axe Spec will become pwnage ... and I'm delighted about it. Just shows you how much more OP the other 2 specs were for them to get such a nerf, while axe gets such a buff ;-)

Edit : Blegh, Quor beat me to it :-(

Edited, Jul 18th 2008 1:22pm by robertlofthouse

Warrior nerfs make baby Jesus cry. :(

The Overpower nerf really bothers me. And nerfing swords also somewhat double-nerfs human warriors, too.

lol you guys got me; i totally missed the poleaxe crit damage buff when i made the thread.

look at the buff mining gets:



35 stam would presumably be @ 450 mining... but at 80 that would be akin to what, 15-20 stam at 70? doesn't seem like much at first, but it's about the difference between rare and epic gems, right?

i was intending to make my warr bs/ins with my rogue herbs/mining to farm... now it would prolly make a lot of sense to go mining/bs and herbs/ins, but i think i would be really annoyed to have to farm on two toons and either log back and forth or just skip nodes altogether.

Edited, Jul 18th 2008 4:14pm by axhed

Just wanted to point out that from the wording of the new Poleaxe Specialization talent, it seems that the increase will be 5% to total crit damage, not 5% increase to crit bonus. Meaning that a crit will be doing 2.1 normal damage instead of 2.05 (assuming no other modifiers for crits).
Which I guess will add (rather than multiply) with impale to 2.3 coefficient, but you can always hope for a multiplicative stacking for 2.31 coefficient (please mind the gap :) ).

You might have refered to this in the first place, Quor, but I wasn't really certain, so thought I'd point it out anyway.

Have a nice day,
Yuval.

based on what ive read on the beta forums, current wisdom is that bladestorm and strength of arms is lackluster. my admittedly sketchy understanding of it is that each bladestorm whirlwind deducts the cost of rage per WW when the skill is used, making the total cost of a full bladestorm exactly 100 rage. bladestorm also apparently does not break CC effects, only provides immunity to them.

but those can all be fixed, and the understanding now is that more focus is on perfecting the early levels of the DK experience, as well as balancing the talents and skills so theyre not so ungodly strong (apparently frost was *the* talent tree to be in alpha due to its high damage, control, and aoe damage potential). in short, once DK's get some more attention over the coming weeks, the other classes will start to see more focused effort.

but aside from the listed drawbacks of bladestorm, theres also the tradeoff of no rage gain from damage dealt during the bladestorm as well as the inability to do other actions while bladestorming. this adds a "hidden" cost of requiring a fresh MS and hamstring on the target immediately prior to the storm in order to try and prevent the targets escape, causing bladestorm to "cost" about 65 rage. some say that bladestorm is only "truly" viable with sweeping strikes up, necessitating another 30 rage, for 95 total, but i think thats mostly in a pve sense where one is doing mass aoe damage (granted it could be useful in pvp, but by no means does it necessitate usage of SS), and even then you dont need ms/hammy on the target in pve 99% of the time.

as for strength of arms, it needs help. its the tauren racial and half the vitality str bonus, only deeper in the talent tree. if you go 51 into arms, then its much preferable to do things such as maxing imp hammy and/or 2h spec. if you dont go 51 in, then fury provides even more bonuses in the form of max flurry with the potential for some points in TM, or as you said, the ER/full flurry build (which would generate a hefty amount of rage).

unrelenting assault is pretty nice tho. good tanking talent for when an arms war needs to tank, and excellent anti-rogue and feral druid talent in pvp.

but yeah, short version, deep arms is looking pretty crummy. 41/30 or some variation therein is looking more attractive, with some warriors even suggesting 33/38 arms/fury or a deeper prot/arms hybrid (since conc blow actually deals a hefty hunk of damage now).



i hope youre right. i just like setting my expectations low so all my surprises are pleasant. plus the precedent is to enhance crit strike bonus damage. rarely does something enhance the entire crit strike. but if axe spec breaks that precedent, then whoopee, we have an axe revival on our hands.

Edited, Jul 22nd 2008 2:53am by Quor

Anyone else catch that?

Fury gets Deathwish back.

Yup - saw that.

Also noticed that SS is getting a major nerf (only 3 strikes) - at least it was so on the Alpha (according to wotlkwiki.info)

I Also did see (somewhere, can't remember where), that sweeping strikes will become trainable. Has anyone else seen this ... can someone who has access (direct or indirect) to beta confirm / rebutt this.

As Fury, having access to SS and DW will be ... mmm, delicious.

Again, this may all simply be Alpha only stuff, which they decided not to do in the Beta.