5.0 Unofficial Patch Notes - Warrior Edition, Part One

Because we all like different parts and I feel like eating turkey at some point today. Happy Thanksgiving to you Americans.

I could talk about the 4.3 patch notes but I'm not going to just yet because let's face it - The major overhaul to the game that will revolve around an April Fool's joke Mists of Pandaria is way more interesting at the moment. Maybe that's just me. I don't know if I'll be playing seriously in the next expansion as I'm not doing that much in this expansion, but I'll go ahead and talk like I am anyway.

After the jump, I'll get my hooves dirty.

Above is the current talent calculator build on the MoP Battle.net page. To be quite honest, it's sort of impossible to come up with any good spec right now, mostly because there are a lot of unknowns and there will be many, many changes leading up to the release of MoP, and even after. No one knows much about how Glyphs will convert, if at all, or how Mastery will change, if at all. Let me quote the information MMO-Champion has gathered so far as of yesterday.

 Warrior 

• Battle Stance no longer restricts which abilities can be used and now only increases damage done by 10%.
• Defensive Stance no longer restricts which abilities can be used and now only decreases damage taken by 10% and significantly increases threat generation.
• Berserker Stance no longer restricts which abilities can be used and now only increases damage done by Whirlwind and Cleave by 20%.
• Heroic Strike's cooldown has been decreased to 1.5 sec, down from 3 sec.
• Charge now generates 20 rage, up from 15, and stuns for 1.5 sec, up from 1 sec. Additionally, it can now always be used in combat.
• Heroic Throw's cooldown has been decreased to 30 sec, down from 60 sec.
• Thunder Clap now reduces enemy damage done by 10% instead of increasing the time between their attacks by 20%.
• Battle Shout now increases grants a percent-based Attack Power buff to the entire raid instead of granting Strength and Agility.
• Shield Wall no longer requires Shields.
• Intimidating Shout now costs 10 rage, down from 25, and its cooldown has been decreased to 1 minute, down from 2 minutes. However, all enemies affected by it now cower in terror instead of the 5 non-targeted enemies fleeing in terror.
• Meat Cleaver, a new passive ability, increases damage done by Cleave or Whirlwind by 10% for 10 sec when you use Cleave or Whirlwind. It stacks up to 3 times.
• Spell Reflection no longer requires Shields.
• Intervene no longer reduces the target's threat.

Arms

• Two-Handed Weapon Specialization is now called Seasoned Soldier and also increases the damage of any of your bleeds by 20%.
• Mortal Strike's cooldown has been increased to 6 sec, up from 4.5 sec.
• Slam is now exclusive to Arms and has a 0.5 sec cast time, down from 1.5 sec.
• Overpower is now exclusive to Arms. A cooldown of 1.5 seconds was added, but this seems mostly cosmetic unless they plan to take Overpower off the global cooldown.
• Colossus Smash is now exclusive to Arms and its rage cost has been increased to 80, up from 20.

Fury

• Dual Wield Specialization and Precision have been combined into Crazed Berserker but the increased chance to hit has been removed.
• Bloodthirst's cooldown has been increased to 6 sec, up from 3 sec, but now generates 10 rage instead of costing 20 rage.
• Wild Strike has been added. It is an attack using your offhand weapon that applies the Mortal Strike healing debuff and costs 30 rage. It has no cooldown.
• Raging Blow now costs 30 rage, up from 20.
• Bloodsurge is now affects Wild Strike instead of Slam. When it activates, it also reduces the global cooldown to 1 sec after Wild Strike is used.

Protection

• Sentinel is now called Unwavering Sentinel and now only increases Stamina by 15% but also decreases your chance to be critically hit by 6%.
• Shield Slam now generates 10 rage, instead of consuming it.
• Shield Block is now exclusive to Protection and has no cooldown, down from 1 minute, but costs 80 rage, up from 0. It also now increases your chance to block by 25% for the next incoming melee attack instead of for the next 10 seconds.
• Revenge is now exclusive to Protection and costs no rage but has a 10 sec cooldown, up from 5 sec.
• Last Stand now has no cooldown, down from 3 minutes, but costs 80 rage, up from 0.
• Devastate now costs no rage, down from 15, but has a 3 sec cooldown, up from 0.
• Bastion of Defense has been heavily modified and contains a combination of the Toughness, Shield Mastery, and the old Bastion of Defense.

Right. A lot to take in. I don't usually cover Protection too much (I mostly look at the DPS side of things anymore), but I'll go ahead and mention that the current talent tree build for 5.0 (MoP) seems to favor Protection right now over DPS, and I guarantee that will change.

Looking at the tree closer, Tier one is all about mobility. Now, I use Heroic Leap, Intercept, Heroic Fury, and even Intervene for emergencies pretty regularly during fights because the lest time spent traveling is more time DPSing, and getting out of bad shit is good too. The middle talent, Double Time, is really just the replacement for Heroic Fury since Intercept is being removed from the game and Charge is usable by all three specs in combat. Warbringer appears to be more PvP oriented than not, given the stun it grants, and then there is Juggernaut. To me, it seems rather useless in PvE DPS when given the choice between that or Double Time. Yes, the cooldown is shortened by 8 seconds, but a 20 second cooldown isn't that long to wait considering the live Intercept cooldown is 20 seconds anyway (talented, 30 if not), and people are not speccing Arms for DPS on a boss fight to take advantage of Charge's 15 second cooldown. Of course, all that may change when MoP comes out, but the point I'm getting at is that Juggernaut seems more PvP or tanking oriented as mobility for DPS warriors in a raid setting isn't really a problem. I haven't found it to be, in any case.

Tier two is about self healing and definitely feels very Protection oriented at the moment. None of the abilities grant any type of DPS boost or enrage effect, although Second Wind does grant 20 rage when stunned. Here is where that 'baked in abilities' thing comes in that they were talking about at the panels at BlizzCon. Blood Craze has been 'baked in' to Second Wind, aside from Second Wind being buffed slightly itself. Instead of generating only 10 rage, it gives you 20, and heals you for 5% of your health instead of the live 2%. So, that plus the additional 10% chance to regen 5% health over 5 seconds seems to make this talent a good choice for PvP and Protection. We also see Enraged Regeneration as a talent now instead of a baseline ability, which does seem to lean towards warriors being too powerful in PvP (which we are at the moment), but it also puts a hamper on self healing in a raid setting. For DPS, I would take Enraged Regeneration since the cooldown has been shortened from 3 minutes to 2, and it can be used as a cooldown to aid the healers when heavy damage is going out just as it is on live. The problem comes in with the removal of being able to take other self healing talents alongside having Enraged Regen as baseline. Right now as Fury I have 2/3 in Blood Craze and 2/2 in Field Dressing, which is also going away in MoP. Because of how many effects increase the amount of damage we take (Death Wish, Recklessness, Berserker Stance), combined with the high threat generation of a good string of crits, we need all the help we can get when it comes to healing (without gimping ourselves, of course). Will this not be that much of a problem anymore with the removal of the passive increased damage from Berserker Stance and reduction of damage taken from Death Wish? It's hard to say since I don't know how much crit will be a factor for warriors, namely Fury (Although there is a blue post on the forums on the potential of crit for MoP). The third talent we have is Impending Victory, which I always thought was pretty lackluster on live, though I give Blizzard kudos for trying to make it more appealing. I have a feeling Protection may pick and choose their second tier talents according to their specific role in raids, which boss does what, and how much rage they generate, with Enrage Regen coming out as a general pick up.

Moving on to Tier four, we see that they've given us our choice of crowd control abilities. Rude Interruption is the clear winner here for DPS, and it remains exactly the same as it is on live fully talented. Disrupting Shout screams PvP (see what I did there?), and Gag Order tips its hat to Protection, although I suppose Prot could also take Rude Interruption for DPS if they really wanted to, though I can't see Prot DPS as an issue here, at least not up front. PvP warriors could also benefit from taking this talent I suppose, though it would really depend on what kind of PvP you do (Arena, BGs, World, all of the above), team make up, gear, etc.

Stay tuned for Part Two, where I talk about the last three tiers of the warrior tree, DPS mechanics, and how the hell warriors will reflect spells with their face.