3.1 ChangesFollow

The 3.1 PTR patchnotes were just updated.



What I find interesting about this can be summarized in three ways;

1) They still don't have the TG ubernerf? This either means that they're not planning on keeping it, or they're stupid. Possibly both, I guess.
2) Last Stand going to 3m means it's at 1m with the Glyph, as it Shield Wall. Two glyphs and some talents and Warriors can tank like DKs.
3) Charge being off the stun DR means Prot is no longer godawful, and it helps Fury and Arms too.
4) Bonus - really, they still don't have TG on there? Interesting.

Minor nerf for Prot tanks:

I personally always liked being hit with TotT -- the threat on top of the damage bonus makes it a pretty sweet move. Now it looks like I'll just have to live with the threat, since my Warrior is enraged 99% of the time while tanking.

I'm a fan of the last stand cooldown change, though it also does bother me that it's pushing us more and more towards the complete homogenization of everything in this game that's happening. I'm all for this new mentality of 'Bring the player, not the class' that Blizz is pushing lately, but if it means that nothing will be unique and that I'm essentially rolling the same toon with a different skin no matter what play, then I might as well go pick up a FPS.

new ptr changes:



so battle stance gets a bit of a buff with the armor pen change. i suppose crap is better than nothing at all tho right?

shattering throw is interesting. thats an anti-HoP/ice block/DS move every five minutes. of course the cast time sucks (cant use it on the move) and the cooldown isnt much better (but not horrible seeing as all but ice block cant be used more than every 2-3 minutes) but its an interesting idea. we'll see how it pans out; it definetely gives warriors some unique pvp utility (ghetto version of mass dispel but always guaranteed to take off the invuln effect).

penalties lowered in zerker and def stance. somethings better than nothing but still not what i was hoping for.

shout cooldown lowered = good, but we'll see if its enough.

finally, a nice little disarm buff to round things out. its quite sucky intercepting after he disengages only to be hit with scatter shot or wyvern sting immediately after and not being able to do anything about it. now an intercept > disarm can guarantee some uptime on the hunter (assuming you arent being kited thru the 25-yard radius entrapping frost trap that is).

I hereby predict that Blizz is on the way to making Warriors the next extremely OP class of the game.

Here's the reason why...

The things that warriors NEED improved are:

- The rage system.
- The stance system.
- The snaring and closing abilities.


Until these are fixed warriors will be a broken class at PvP. And blizz is going circles around adding all these new abilities that DO NOT FIX the class. If they keep going this way they will keep adding more and more new powers until they fix the stuff I just talked about, and warriors will end up with this fixed AND the extra powers.

What do I know about it? Well, it's a trend, that's exactly how they got Paladins to be so über. Blizzard didn't plan for Consecration to be the major tanking AoE threat spell, it's just that when they finally fixed the tanking mechanics of the Paladins, the consecration button was already there as a result of other changes.

However, the current changes are still meh so far. It's still broken, guess my warrior will still be an epix geared bank alt for now.

I agree with you, Geo... but then everyone will be QQing about how Warriors are more OP than DKs... and we'll get raped with the nerf bat... oh wait, we already ARE raped with the nerf bat. Even though yes, we should be able to slice a clothie in half if we can close to contact range. Rogues we should have a tougher time with, since they're melee fighters too, and supposedly more agile. Plate fights should be clashes of the titans as it were... Masters of arms (warriors) versus the holy soldiers versus the undead juggernaughts.

I'll be honest with you geotank, it sounds like you just want an 'I Win' button.

I think possibly the only thing I half agreed with you on is the weapon specialisation. However I think those talents should be removed completely rather than working around them.

seriously geo, my head hurts and you're making me weep for humanity.

Less RNG for arms though I'm not sure how this will effect thier overall DPS, thank god for the Heroic Strike glyph being changed back though

im really hoping deaths bite drops next time we down KT, cause id really like a good 2h axe to use for when TG gets nerfed and i have to switch to arms to feel like my 51-pt talent doesnt rape my class.

Have you actually seen #s on that, or are you just spouting like they do at the O-boards?

Either Pure #'s (especially Rogues, but also Mages and Warlocks, Hunters to a lesser extent when I last looked) are too high or Warrior #'s are now too low. Removing WM didn't help either, although reversing the HS glyph nerf was a nice change.

When you're fighting an enemy that can cast you have to fight him in zerker stance because of pummel.

Situation 1: You're fighting a paladin and you are in Battle Stance -> He heals without needing any bubble.

Situation 2: You're in Zerker stance -> He bubbles, you switch to battle stance and don't have enough rage to use it.

20% armor reduction is nice. But 10 sec on a 5 min cooldown is MISERABLE.

I can see we're all going to be very happy when we figure how to use this. So far the first use I can think is as an extra ranged attack on a separate cooldown from Heroic Throw.

Edited, Mar 23rd 2009 6:57pm by xorq