i....admit itFollow

i admit to being....we'll say "disheartened". what im disheartened about is the future of the warrior class. or perhaps more poignantly, the seeming lack thereof.

i dont know about the rest of my warrior brethren, but im a pretty avid follower of the beta process. i like seeing things as theyre made. i like knowing the history of things (some of you may be aware of my work-in-progress "history of the druid class" on the druid forums). i like seeing the steps taken to go from one stage in a class's life to another.

much to my dismay, the next stage in the warriors life seems to be obsolescence. in short, we're being phased out. or at least it feels that way.

now, i try to talk reason into myself. i dont want to be a doom and gloomer. i dont want to have this negative attitude about things thats just going to ruin my fun for the game. i dont want to look forward to another xpac with a sense of dread. but i feel like i *do* dread WotLK, and im beginning to have a much more negative attitude about warriors (and incidentally, blizzard) in the process. im about ye far *fingers an inch apart* from going all doom and gloom on everyone.

why? well, the most recent nail in the coffin was the hunter changes, specifically the aimed shot cast time change. its now a better MS effect, for ~1/3 the talent point cost. yes, itll be rebalanced to be somewhere between its current damage and arcane/multi on a single target (which means itll be lowered a bit) but the fact remains that its a better version of MS.

but...i kinda came to terms with that. hunters have suffered throughout BC, especially in arena (altho, to be fair, they did just fine in world pvp and BG's), so this seems a natural change. what really struck me hard tho, was the response koraa had to the change:



i dont think i need to explain the problems with this statement. LoSing a 3s cast spell isnt too terribly hard as long as youre a smart player with good reaction time and situational awareness ("skilled" if you will). it is, however, statistically and physically impossible to LoS an instant cast attack. as long as the person is in view for the time it takes to hit the button, the effect goes off. when said effect has a range of 35 yards (41 talented) the window of opportunity is ripped wide open.

perhaps most disturbingly, Koraa followed up the initial comment with this:



again, im sure i dont need to go into the problems with this (not the least of which accounts for latency or rage gen) but the area im going to focus on is the aforementioned "window of opportunity".

now, the old aimed shot had the exact same range as this new, instant aimed shot (41 yards talented max). it also had a 3s cast time, meaning that a potential target, if they saw it coming, could enact a means of countering it via straight LoS (duck behind a pillar) or, if at the extreme range of the hunter, just running out of range (this would work if they started immediately and wernt snared). this generally meant that in order to get the best effect out of aimed shot, a hunter (or his partner) would need to snare the enemy in some way, or otherwise keep them from taking advantage of the cast time.

conversely, mortal strike has a comparatively much smaller WoO than even casted aimed shot did, but MS made up for this by being instant. warriors had an innate ability to keep enemies snared consistently, and this allowed (assuming no outside interference) for a relatively consistent maintenance of the MS debuff. the window of opportunity was at a range of five yards (melee range) but this in turn was mitigated due to the presence of intercept. proper snaring and CC could counter this to varying degrees if used correctly (ranging from being a minor nuisance to game-winningly clutch), but that was a part of the game, and could be worked around.

in this case, MS was the winner over a casted aimed shot, but not by too much, and certainly when you consider the relative cost (11 points vs 31) such an advantage is justified.

enter instant AS....and the entire dynamic changes. even given no other tools to gain range or anything, AS outperforms MS in its primary role (keep up a healing debuff). add into this the synergy of other talents (easier to access scatter shot, being able to snag intimidation, AS and SS in a single build) as well as changes to skills (specifically disengage) and you have a recipe for....i wont say overpoweredness, but theres definetely a LOT of power there. too much in my opinion.

this hurts me as a warrior even more, because so much of the arms spec (and indeed, the warrior class) has been designed around the presence of MS. its a commonly repeated theme that life doesnt "start" as a warrior until you get your first unconditional instant attack at level 40, such is the power that our 31-pt talents hold over us. and now, to see something like this, both implemented (even just in beta!) and then supported in such a way by a class designer....well, its disheartening.

i feel like the fire has gone out of my belly. even with the admittedly awesome changes (and not the bad kind of "awesome changes") that prot has received, i just cant get excited for my warrior. on the one hand, i look forward to leveling him to 80 with my friends, or more specifically, leveling *with* my friends to 80, using my warrior. but i think id be more eager to just grab a death knight and power him to 70, then take him up along with my friends to 80.

and man....that sucks. as a warrior at heart, saying that really hurts.

for those interested, here is the source thread for Koraa's remarks:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=10529923337&pageNo=3&sid=2000#51

heres another thread that disappointed me with its content as well, albeit not in quite the same way as the first one did. inside this one, ghostcrawler responds to a laundry list of concerns that have been on the tips of warrior beta testers for some time:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=10043282292&pageNo=7&sid=2000#138

hope springs eternal. i hope things change for the better. i really do.

Edited, Sep 26th 2008 3:07am by Quor

Honestly.. as much as hunters will suck with instant cast 41 yard MS.. Stun + bladestorm with sword spec will be the way to drop a healer. Shadowdance Rogue and skillstorm warrior 2v2.. um, hello? 4 ambushes, four whirlwinds. It was destined to be.

If you actually remember the TBC launch, we sucked. Horribly. Rage was nerfed right into the floor, Bears were doing about as much damage as Arms/Fury was even while tanking and I'm sure there's some other things I'm forgetting. Warrior's Rage was buffed pretty decently, albeit not to the point it was pre-TBC, and Bears were nerfed a few months into TBC.

I'd rather just skip the whole "few months of total suck" this time around.

From what I gather given all the new pvp friendly prot changes blizz wants to push us into the control/support roll of arena instead of the "HULK SMASH" MS spamming monsters we are now.

Look at it this way. Specced 8/11/52 you have a 5 second single target stun on a 30 second cooldown. A 4 second frontal cone aoe stun on a 20 second cooldown. Anytime you block or parry you have a 50% chance to stun whomever you choose to hit with revenge (remember it doesn't have to be who you blocked/parried). A 1 second ranged stun on a 15 second cooldown that puts you next to your target and gives you rage. A 3 second ranged stun on a 30 second cooldown (stance dancing required) that puts you next to your target.

That is a **** load of stuns of a warrior. Deminishing returns be damned.

Then you also have a 3 second silence, point blank or ranged. Vigilance with no rage cost or cooldown, swap it to whoever is being FFed. Your intervene target takes 30% less dmg for 6 seconds. Spell reflect becomes a grounding totem only a **** load better. A spammable aoe snare. And to top it off a melee dispell on a 6 second cooldown. (afaik SS can dispell anything save pally bubbles and ice block)


There is just so much there that makes for a great support/control class.

Just seems to me that is where blizzard is trying to focus the warrior class in pvp now.

I just had to say something in response to Quor...I am "disheartened" as well. I find it strange that there are Warriors and well..everything else isn't the same. Then the talent changes came and I felt like I am wearing cloth even tho my DPS is still good. I know we are very gear dependent so I'm hoping at 80 my view will change.
And as a Warrior at heart also...I can hope.