wow Dragonflight Beta Warrior Dev Notes: September 20th

[Staff 1,488]

Many changes arrive with the new editions of the DF Beta, as the core class tree as well as all Warrior specs get polished, with Arms and Fury being in a good place according to the devs, with not that many large changes coming, and Protection getting a lot more focus from here on in.

September 20 (Source)

This week we have a fair number of bug fixes as we start to get to a point where the class tree is mostly complete.

We’ve customized a few talents to be more spec specific, so they are clearer and more useful in their intention, such as Honed Reflexes, Barbaric Training, and Crushing Force.

We’ve heard your feedback regarding Massacre and Sudden Death, so we’ve reverted these changes and made adjustments elsewhere to ensure DPS is still in line with intentions. Massacre is now located on the spec tree for Arms and Protection where there’s a higher opportunity cost per talent point with regards to damage throughput that in the class tree.

We have some work to do on the nodes beyond the 20-point gate still, specifically related to Shockwave, Spear of Bastion, and Thunderous Roar.

We’re also looking at customizing a few more talents based on your spec to make them clearer in their function and purpose for each spec.

• Class Tree
  • Removed the lockout period from Concussive Blows.
  • Fixed the various Tormented memories procing themselves and granting extra durations. They should all be working as intended now.
  • Weapon specialization nodes now only appear relevant to their related specialization (e.g. Two-Handed Specialization only appears on the Arms version of the class tree).
  • New Protection Talent Variant: Crushing Force – Shield Slam deals and additional 5% damage and deals 5% increased critical strike damage per rank.
  • New Talent: Barbaric Training (Arms Variant) – Slam and Whirlwind now deal 40% more damage but now cost 5 more rage.
  • New Talent: Barbaric Training (Fury Variant) – Slam and Whirlwind damage increased by 20% and their critical strike damage is also increased by 10%.
  • New Talent: Barbaric Training (Protection Variant) – Revenge deals 40% more damage but now costs 10 more rage.
  • Rumbling Earth now also increases the range of Shockwave by 6 yards.
  • New Talent: Sonic Boom – Shockwave deals 350% increased damage and will always deal critical strike damage.
  • New Arms Talent Variant: Honed Reflexes – Cooldown of Overpower reduced by 1 second and cooldown of Pummel reduced by 0.5 seconds.
  • New Fury Talent Variant: Honed Reflexes – Cooldown of Raging Blow reduced by 1 second and cooldown of Pummel reduced by 0.5 seconds.
  • New Protection Talent Variant: Honed Reflexes – Cooldown of Shield Slam and Pummel reduced by 1 second.
  • For Arms and Protection specializations Massacre and Sudden Death have switched places between the class and spec trees and increases the execute threshold up to 35% again.
  • Sudden Death procs per minute is now 1.7 (was 1.5).
  • Sudden Death should now refund rage again.
  • Quick Thinking – Now also increases your auto-attack speed by 2.5% per rank.
  • Cruel Strikes – Now also grants an 2.5% critical damage per rank for Overpower, Raging Blow, and Revenge respective to the relevant specialization.
  • Arms and Protection Execute damage reduced by 5%.
  • Spear of Bastion cooldown increased by 50% but instant damage also increased by 50%.
  • Thunderous Roar Damage no longer has a hidden undocumented crit damage bonus.
  • Thunderous Roar now ticks every 2 seconds (was 3 seconds) and has a duration of 8 seconds (was 9 seconds). It now also deals a total of 160% attack power (was 135% across its duration).
  • Thunderous Aftershocks has been redesigned and renamed: Thunderous Words – Now increases the duration of Dragon Roar’s Bleed effect by 4 seconds and increases the damage of your bleed effects by 20%.
• Arms Developer Notes
  • Generally happy with where Arms is at, moving forward changes are likely to be small and/or tuning based.
  • Fixed various bugs and triggers so more things should be working correctly in conjunction with each other.
  • We’ve added some extra nodes to try and allow Bladestorm to feel more useful in various situations.
  • The left side of the tree had too many 2-point nodes, so we’ve reduced this to allow for more choices.
• Arms
  • New Talent: Gathering Storm – While Bladestorming every 1 second you gain 5% movement speed and 5% Strength, stacking. Lasts 6 seconds.
  • New Talent: Dance of Death – If your Bladestorm kills an enemy your next Bladestorm lasts 3 seconds longer.
  • Unhinged now correctly triggers outside of the Shadowlands.
  • Unhinged, Gathering Storm, and Merciless Bonegrinder now trigger correctly from various Whirlwind sources.
  • Impale is now 1 point and grants 10% increased critical damage (was 7.5% per point).
  • Critical Thinking now grants 2.5% Execute critical damage per rank instead of Cleave and Whirlwind.
  • Juggernaut now lasts 12 seconds (was 8 seconds).
  • Fatality should now always hit unless the target is immune or due to specific encounter mechanics.
  • Bloodsurge chance to trigger increased to 20% (was 10%).
  • Bloodletting now causes your Bleed effects to last for 6 seconds long.
  • Removed Weapon requirements from Sharpened Blades and Concussive Blows.
  • Concussive Blows now correctly effects the damage dealt by Warbreaker.
  • Concussive Blows now correctly increases the duration of the Colossus Smash effect by 3 seconds, and Warbreaker gain and additional 20% damage.
• Fury Developer Notes
  • Generally happy with where Fury is and do not expect to make large scale changes in the future. As with Arms, changes are likely to be small/or tuning based.
  • As stated previously, we’re looking at if Annihilator can work for multiple weapon types and if we can open this playstyle up for everyone.
  • Working internally on Odyn’s Fury subsequent nodes and expect to have them functioning shortly.
• Fury
  • Maximum Frenzy stacks increased to 4 (was 3).
  • Cadence of Fujieda has been redesigned – Now increases your auto attack speed by 5% per stack instead of your Haste and stacks up to four times.
  • As a Fury Warrior if you do not have improved Whirlwind, Whirlwind should now correctly cost 30 Rage.
  • New Talent: Gathering Storm – While Ravager is active, every 1 second you gain 5% movement speed and 5% Strength, stacking. Lasts 6 seconds.
  • Deft Experience decreases the cooldown of Bloodthirst by 0.75 seconds per rank (was 0.5 seconds).
• Protection Developer Notes
  • As we wind down attention and focus on Arms and Fury, we’re now putting more focus on Protection internally. Protection will undergo a tuning pass similar to Arms and Fury soon.
• Protection
  • Fixed another issue with Seismic Reverberation and Revenge, hopefully the last one!
  • Bloodsurge chance to trigger increased to 20% (was 10%).