wow Huge Fury Warrior, Disc Priest BfA Beta Changes

[Starym 3,800]

 

We have some more class changes on the beta in the new build, with the focus moving o to Fury Warriors, who are getting some really huge changes. The big ones come to Enrage (moving to a Haste and movement buff), Execute getting a cooldown and generating rage, there's also tweaks to Rage generation, Raging Blow, Furious Slash and a lot more.

We also get some more info on Discipline Priest talents, with the new one mentioned yesterday, Sins of the Many, not currently working, as well as even more tweaks to the spec.

Fury (source)

This week's beta build caught the Fury Warrior changes mid-flight, and is an incomplete picture of the overall changes. Work is still underway – the spec is currently being iterated on. To give some more information on the overall direction of the spec, here are some points we are looking to address:

• More tightly adjust/control Enrage uptime and Rage income (both of which heavily impact pacing, flow, and the feel of the spec) throughout the expansion, rather than letting both scale up dramatically as gearing happens.
• Reduce the amount of stacking damage bonuses on the spec that are available simultaneously, which reduces the desire/need to stack multiple at once, which now feels much worse to do now that virtually all of them are on the global cooldown.
• Figure out Furious Slash’s place on the spec.

Enrage
Getting mad and being better and stronger is definitely still the fantasy of Fury, and Enrage is staying as the spec’s core base mechanic and Mastery. However, Enrage is changing a bit into 25% Haste (still being adjusted) and 10% Movement speed. It’s currently 100% melee attack speed on live, and was 50% melee attack speed previously on Beta. Haste is something that’s much more felt in terms of pacing (button presses, cooldowns compressing) compared to auto attack speed, which mostly gets covered up by ability animations anyways.

The 20% increased damage taken during Enrage is being removed. Along with this, the 15% passive increased maximum health the spec had is also going away – this was largely added to counteract the increased damage drawback that Enrage had. Now, Fury will simply have the bonus of ~8% more health than other non-tanks in the same gear level, due to being able to dual-wield a pair of 2-handed weapons.

In terms of Enrage uptime, our current thought is we’d like to try targeting Enrage uptime to around ~60%, and not growing wildly throughout the expansion as gear improves. I think there exists a sweet spot for Enrage uptime where it’s not up so often that it’s taken for granted and you don’t have to think at all about playing around it, but also not so rare that it feels bad.

Because Enrage uptime is a function of Enrage duration and Rage generation (which is directly proportional to the time in between Rampages), Enrage duration going up means uptime can get too high, which means time in between Rampages can get too high, which then feels bad. Currently, Enrage duration is back to 4 sec, but Rage generation has increased significantly since this round of Fury changes, so the spec should feel much faster now and the uptime on Enrage shouldn’t feel low.

Raging Blow
Raging Blow now Generates 12 Rage, has 2 charges, 7.5 sec recharge (reduced by Haste), has a 20% chance to instantly reset its own cooldown, and no longer requires being Enraged to be usable. It’s more similar to the Inner Rage version than the live baseline version, where it has no cooldown but requires Enrage to be usable. Raging Blow is doing a lot of things for the spec here:

• Raging Blow was changed to fit together into Rampage and Bloodthirst, both of which we thought were good and didn’t need any notable changes.
• Being usable only while Enraged, meant you very frequently pushed it multiple times in a row for 5 Rage each time, which didn’t feel super engaging.
• Having 2 charges baseline felt better, as a version with either a 6 or 7.5 sec cooldown but no charges meant it collided with Bloodthirst’s cooldown very frequently, which did not feel good. Additionally, charges on Raging Blow is sort of the only actual resource you manage on the spec, since Rage is technically a resource but only spent on Rampage and nothing else.
• Having a 20% chance to reset itself is the random proc on the baseline spec that adds an amount of unpredictability to the rotation.

Furious Slash
Furious Slash didn’t really found its place on the spec. it’s a no-cooldown free filler that didn’t feel great to press, largely as a direct result of being the lowest priority/impact ability by design. The version of Furious Slash you’re seeing this week is a first iteration, where we tried giving it more tie-ins to your core rotation/mechanics: Generates 3 Rage, has 10% chance to trigger Enrage.

Playing this version some more internally, we thought the button felt better, but still didn’t feel great to press. Additionally, it overlaps some with Whirlwind, which is also a baseline no-cooldown free filler. So we’re going to try removing Furious Slash baseline and making Whirlwind the baseline filler in single-target. Whirlwind has the benefit of having better audio/visual feedback, and generally feeling better to press. It also just fits the fantasy of a whirling blademaster/berserker pretty well. It will generate 3 Rage + 1 additional per target hit, up to a maximum of 8 Rage (this is intended to also speed up the AOE rotation). Furious Slash is being merged together with Frenzy (talent) and becoming a talent in that slot, without the new experimental 10% chance to trigger Enrage mechanic.

Whirlwind's Meat Cleaver effect
Whirlwind will now cause your next 2 single-target attacks to gain the effect of striking up to 4 additional targets for 40% damage. With the changes to Raging Blow, it made sense to add Raging Blow to this effect, but at that point the only thing not included was Execute and Furious Slash, so we've added them too.

Execute
Execute being a Rage spender caused it replace Rampage entirely during execute range (against enemies below 20% health). We are trying a version of Execute where it has a short 6-sec cooldown, and generates 20 Rage instead of spending it, so that it adds to your rotation and helps fuel your Rampages, rather than replacing one of your core buttons. In the current design of the spec, it feels more correct for Rampage to remain the almighty and only Rage spender, and Execute to be a more support role (rather than the spammed Rage spender), even if it deals similar damage to Rampage on paper (because Execute is available less frequently and Rampage Enrages you).

Recklessness
With Enrage no longer coming from Bloodthirst critical strikes and instead coming from Bloodthirst at a consistent 30% rate, the spec no longer has a core critical strike mechanic, and it made less sense to have 100% critical strike chance as Fury’s baseline cooldown. Thinking about it more, 100% critical strike chance would make more sense as Arm’s cooldown, because that spec is slower-paced and more about setting up for fewer, larger hits. Fury is currently much more about flurries of many smaller hits, speed/haste, and Rage generation. To that end, Fury’s cooldown turning into double Rage generation from all sources (and some critical strike chance for flavor) made more sense, both in terms of feel, theme, and gameplay.

As a side note, one of the upsides of Fury’s resource model is that it can support a huge amount of burst/temporarily increased resource income in a way that feels great (something many other specs can’t do as well), because Rampage spends 85% of the Rage bar – we’re consciously leaning into this more with the Recklessness mechanics changes.

As always, thanks for all of the feedback.

 

Discipline (source)

Quick clarifications (all still subject to ongoing change), since this build was in a slightly intermediate state.

--Sins isn't correctly working in this build. The buff appears, but isn't increasing damage or Atonement.
--Tuning is pretty preliminary, but for context on the 75 row, Contrition is likely too strong, because it skews the choice between the modes of Penance too much. Contrition's heal should be weaker than a Penance Atonement, so that it's still a choice about doing more group healing vs. focusing on one target.
--Also on the 75 row--we're currently planning to replace Orison with Shadow Covenant.
--Luminous Barrier is still intended to replace Power Word: Barrier, as before.
--Current plan is to buff Shadow Mend a bit, as mentioned yesterday. Less sure about Power Word: Shield after reviewing more. Shadow Mend was more strongly propped up by Mastery: Reverence.

We're seeing all the feedback on relative balance of talents within a row, but I don't want to make any claims or promises on which talents might eventually land higher/lower. We just rearranged a lot, and whatever I say will probably be proven wrong once we give a more thorough look and heavier testing happens on beta.

[PatrickHenry 293]

The idea of Execute as a builder is.. interesting.  

[Rooach 34]

Yeah make it 60%. Maybe get rid of it so we all have 100% and dont relie on rng shit. After 13 years of fury i stopped and played arms just because of Enrage RNG

[Tarazet 144]

They doubled down on Enrage RNG, since now it is just going to be a flat 30% chance to proc instead of popping off of critical strikes. I do like that they brought back the option to trigger enrage with Berserker Rage again. Having that decision to make was a layer of depth that got stripped out of the spec in Legion, and I'm glad to see it return.

[Chazman 0]

 

17 minutes ago, Tarazet said:

They doubled down on Enrage RNG, since now it is just going to be a flat 30% chance to proc instead of popping off of critical strikes. I do like that they brought back the option to trigger enrage with Berserker Rage again. Having that decision to make was a layer of depth that got stripped out of the spec in Legion, and I'm glad to see it return.

I think you misread the post. The only thing that seems to activate Enrage now is just Rampage. They removed the Enrage on Crit from Bloodthirst.

 

 

Looking over these notes, this seems like a pretty solid change for Fury. The spec right now on live seems to pingpong alot: you either spent 8-10 seconds not enraged, because either Bloodthirst didn't crit or you are waiting to reach 100 range for Frothing Berserker, or you enrage too often and barely have time to do anything before you procc'd it again, especially during Lust windows where you can fill your rage meter in something like 4 seconds.

Execute being a rage generator instead of spender is going to take some getting used to, but I think that's going to make their windows much better. The execute spam that goes on right now gets a bit annoying.

[Eldre 4]

43 minutes ago, Chazman said:

 

I think you misread the post. The only thing that seems to activate Enrage now is just Rampage. They removed the Enrage on Crit from Bloodthirst.

 

 

Looking over these notes, this seems like a pretty solid change for Fury. The spec right now on live seems to pingpong alot: you either spent 8-10 seconds not enraged, because either Bloodthirst didn't crit or you are waiting to reach 100 range for Frothing Berserker, or you enrage too often and barely have time to do anything before you procc'd it again, especially during Lust windows where you can fill your rage meter in something like 4 seconds.

Execute being a rage generator instead of spender is going to take some getting used to, but I think that's going to make their windows much better. The execute spam that goes on right now gets a bit annoying.

No, they said that 

 

10 hours ago, Starym said:

instead coming from Bloodthirst at a consistent 30% rate

 

[Chazman 0]

I completely missed that line in my original read-through. Not sure how much of an impact that's going to have though. It looks like they smoothed out rage regen pretty well, although I dont have beta access so won't be able to tell if it plays as smoothly as it reads.

[Tarazet 144]

3 hours ago, Chazman said:

I completely missed that line in my original read-through. Not sure how much of an impact that's going to have though. It looks like they smoothed out rage regen pretty well, although I dont have beta access so won't be able to tell if it plays as smoothly as it reads.

I have beta access, but I can't feed back just yet since they had to publish the latest Tuesday build update with only half the Fury changes done. I was using Endless Rage / Outburst / Frothing Berserker / Bloodbath / Reckless Abandon, which felt very smooth to me, but that build is no longer possible because they moved talents around and changed how Raging Blow works. I'll wait until this coming Tuesday and see if they get the rest of their ideas implemented.

[Chazman 0]

According to feedback on the beta forums, the current changes are a rousing success amongst the warrior community. The only issue seems to be some CD bloat caused by the GCD changes.

[Perak 25]

From what i tried, its much more smoother than before … i´m starting to have problem with choosing between fury warr and demon lock xD .

But what i can say is, the rage buid up is prety fast so you dont spen much time for Rampage (depending on talent of choice 1-reduce rage cost by 10 and increase its dmg by 10%...or 2- increase cost to 95rage but increase ALL dmg done by 10% for 6 sec) realy hard to choice here :) (tested it on 110lvl which had 27%crit, 12%haste(37% with Furious Slash talent buff) and 43%mastery) -> cca 2k dps on single target.

 

All in all, smooter rotacion, more rage and so, more rampade and enrage :)

[Pigsticker 0]

Execute as a rage builder failed once before if memory serves (and maybe im wrong), and 6 seconds is a long , long time in battle, especially in pvp and ESPECIALLY when a foe is that close to death. You are making Fury useless as a pvp option without the burst from utilizing multiple buffs in a single macro and a horribly long Execute cooldown time. I do undertand why you would put more buffs on the GCD but still I much prefer Execute as a rage spender than a rage builder. To change it to a 6 sec cooldown rage builder completely changes the utility of the best finishing attack in the game into just some bonus attack that will only see measurable utility in raids and high M+ dungeons.