Warlords of Draenor Warrior Changes

By Wowhead Updated: 2016/07/17

Looking for the WoD Talent Calculator? Check it out here.

Want to know how to play your class on live? Check out our Warrior DPS Guide (Arms/Fury) and Protection Warrior guide.

Last update: October 23(Note: This guide is intended to be an overview of changes between Mists of Pandaria and Warlords of Draenor. Due to its popularity, we have included Patch Note updates for 6.1, but its main purpose is to compare the two expansions.) Highlights

Warrior ability pruning focused on removing abilities that were redundant and tweaking rotation.

In order to make stances feel more meaningful and ease keybindings, stances now have their own action bars and some abilities now have stance restrictions. If you use an ability that isn't in your current stance, you will also automatically shift into it.

The Arms rotation has changed to both remove needless complexity while also adding depth. Overpower and Heroic Strike have been removed for Arms Warriors, whiel Slam now costs less Rage and Execute has changed to provide dynamic gameplay throughout the entire fight.

Arms mastery has changed as Strikes of Opportunity favored frequent little hits which didn't make sense with Arms favoring fewer heavy-hitting strikes. The new mastery, , increases the damage of Colossus Smash, Mortal Strike, and Execute by 20% (increasing with mastery).

Colossus Smash has been removed for Fury warriors entirely.

Cooldown stacking is being reduced across all classes, so Skull Banner was cut. However, some of the personal benefits of Skull banner were added into Recklessness.

Haste is a tricky stat for Warriors, providing little value. Warriors now have a new cooldown that allows haste to effect their global cooldown and the cooldowns of some rotation abilities: .

As Dodge and Parry are removed from gear, some changes have been made to Protection Warriors which let them value Haste and Critical Strike as important stats. Riposte now gives defensive value to Critical Strike.

Heroic Strike has been removed for Fury Warriors, and Wild Strike has been modified to fill the role of a quick excess Rage dump.

Deep Wounds is receiving a change to limit effectiveness in PvP without hurting effectiveness in PvE.

Second Wind was sometimes too weak or too strong, so it was changed from a passive health regeneration effect to a new Leech effect. With these changes, low-health Warriors have to maintain combat to benefit instead of kiting or playing defensively.

Level 45 talents previously centered around CC; they have been removed as part of a general CC pruning effort. The new talents are specialization-specific and provide a variety of playstyle choices.

Several combinations of Level 60 and Level 90 talents were problematic, so they swapped places like Bladestorm and Stormbolt.

Each point of Agility or Strength now grants 1 Attack Power (down from 2). All other sources of Attack Power now grant half as much as before.

Weapon Damage values on all weapons have been reduced by 20%.

Attack Power now increases Weapon Damage at a rate of 1 DPS per 3.5 Attack Power (up from 1 DPS per 14 Attack Power).

Attack Power, Spell Power, or Weapon Damage now affect the entire healing or damage throughput of player spells.

Patch 6.1 Updates

Blizzard

Talents

Avatar now lasts 20 seconds with a 1.5-minute cooldown (up from lasting 24 seconds with a 3-minute cooldown).
Second Wind now increases Leech by 25% (up from 10%).
Siegebreaker (Arms, Fury) damage and knockback distance has increased by 50%.
Slam (Arms) damage has increased by 43%.

General

Execute damage decreased by 11.4%.
(Arms, Fury) now absorbs 24.4% more damage.
Thunder Clap's (Arms, Protection) snare effect now lasts for 10 seconds or 8 seconds while in PvP combat (up from 6 seconds).

Protection

now increases armor by 10% (up from 5%).

Armor Sets

Tier-17 4-piece bonus for Arms Warriors (Item - Warrior T17 Arms 4P Bonus) now causes Colossus Smash to generate 20 rage (down from 30 Rage).

3D Armor ModelsWarlords of Draenor Transmog Guide

New Spell EffectsSet Bonuses

Item - Warrior T17 Arms 4P Bonus: Colossus Smash now generates 30 rage.

Item - Warrior T17 Arms 2P Bonus: Colossus Smash has a 40% chance to reduce the cooldown of your Mortal Strike by 50% for 10 sec.

Item - Warrior T17 Fury 2P Bonus: Raging Blow critical strikes have a 20% chance to activate Enrage.

Item - Warrior T17 Fury 4P Bonus: While Recklessness is active, your attack speed and critical strike chance increase by 6% every second.

Item - Warrior T17 Protection 2P Bonus: Shield Slam has a 8% chance to automatically cast Shield Charge.

Item - Warrior T17 Protection 4P Bonus: Shield Charge increases the damage of Heroic Strike, Slam, and Revenge by an additional 5%. Defensive stance: While Shield Block is active, your shield block value is increased by 30%.

Item - Warrior WoD PvP Arms 2P Bonus: When you use Charge, the critical strike chance of your next Mortal Strike is increased by 50%.

Item - Warrior WoD PvP Fury 2P Bonus: When you use Charge, the critical strike chance of your next Bloodthirst is increased by 50%.

: While Recklessness is active, getting a critical strike with a special attack will increase the duration of Recklessness by 1 sec.

Item - Warrior WoD PvP Protection 2P Bonus: When you use Charge, the critical strike chance of your next Shield Slam is increased by 50%.

Item - Warrior WoD Warrior 4P Bonus: You now generate Rage from taking damage.

TalentsClick here

: Use your full strength to slam the target with both weapons, dealing 300% damage, and knocking them back and down for 1 sec.Replaces Intimidating Shout.

: Throw a whirling axe at the target location that inflicts (82.5% of Attack Power) damage to enemies within 6 yards every 1 sec. Lasts 10 sec.

Anger Management: Every 30 rage that you spend reduces the remaining cooldown of several of your abilities by 1 sec: Avatar, Bloodbath, Bladestorm, Storm Bolt, Shockwave, Dragon Roar, Mocking Banner, Heroic Leap, Shield Wall, Demoralizing Shout, Last Stand, Recklessness, Die by the Sword]

Sudden Death: Your autoattack hits have a 20% chance to make your next Execute cost no initial Rage and be useable on any target, regardless of health level.

: Ignite your weapon and deal 65% weapon damage (91% as Fire, and cause your auto attacks to deal Fire damage for 10 sec. This ability is not on the global cooldown.

(Arms version): Ignite your weapon and deal 65% weapon damage (91% if a one - handed weapon is equipped) as Fire, and cause your auto attacks to deal Fire damage for 10 sec. This ability is not on the global cooldown.

: Each time Rend deals damage, you gain 3 Rage.

Slam: Slam an opponent, causing 150% weapon damage. Each consecutive use of Slam increases the damage dealt by 50% and the Rage cost by 100% stacking up to 2 times.for 2 sec..

: Bloodthirst no longer has a cooldown.

: Wild Strike costs 1015 less Rage.

: Increases the damage reduction provided by Defensive Stance by 5%.Also allows you to forgo your defensive role, and instead focus only on offensive capabilities, by replacing Battle Stance with Gladiator Stance. Gladiator StanceA dauntless combat stance.Increases physical damage dealt by 20%, and replaces your Shield Block with Shield Charge.You cannot change into or out of this stance during combat.

: Shield Slam deals 30% additional damage while Shield Block or Shield Charge is active.

: Devastate reduces the Rage cost of Heroic Strike by 6 for 6 sec, stacking up to 5 times. Once this effect reaches 5 applications, its duration will no longer refresh.

New level 45 Talents for Warriors: Sudden Death (All), Slam and (Arms), and (Protection), and (Fury)

: For the next 12 sec, your melee damage abilities and their multistrikes deal 30% additional damage as a bleed over 6 sec. While bleeding, targets move 50% slower.

Bladestorm: Become an unstoppable storm of destructive force, striking all targets within 8 yards for 120%60% Physical damage every 1 sec for 6 sec. You are immune to movement impairing and loss of control effects, but can only use Taunt and other defensive abilities.

Dragon Roar: Roar explosively, dealing (214.1%165% of Attack power) damage to all enemies within 8 yards and knocking them back and knocking them down for 0.50 sec. Damage ignores all armor and always a critical strike and ignores all armor on the target.

: Instantly heals you for 10% of your maximum health, and an additional 10%20% over 5 sec. Usable while stunned. Effects are doubled if used if stunned.

: Instantly attack the target causing 1246(+ 200% of Attack power) damage and healing you for 20%15% of your maximum health.Killing an enemy that yields experience or honor resets the cooldown of Impending Victory. Replaces Victory Rush.

: 30 sec cooldown, down from 1 min. Reflects the next spell cast on you and on all party and raid members within 20 yards for 5 sec. Replaces Spell Reflection.

Second Wind: Whenever you are below 35% health, you regenerate 3% health per second.gain 10% leech, healing yourself for a percentage of damage you deal.

Shockwave: Sends a wave of force in a frontal cone, causing (75 / 100125% of of Attack power) damage and stunning all enemies within 10 yards for 4 sec. Cooldown reduced by 20 sec if it strikes at least 3 targets.

Storm Bolt: Hurls your weapon at an enemy, causing 125%60% weapon damage and stunning for 4 sec. Deals quadruple weapon damage to targets permanently immune to stuns.

: Your Devastate has a 30% chance of resetting the cooldown of your Shield Slam and increasing the Rage it generates by 5. Lasts 510 sec.

Warbringer: Your Charge also pins a target to the ground, rootng it for 4 sec and reducing movement speed by 50% for 15 sec.now stuns its target for 1.50 sec instead of rooting it.

Disrupting Shout: Interrupts all spellcasting within 10 yards and prevents any spell in that school from being cast for 4 sec. This ability shares a 15 sec cooldown with Pummel.

Piercing Howl: Snares all enemies within 15 yards, reducing their movement speed by 50% for 15 sec.

Staggering Shout: Causes all enemies within 20 yards that are snared to become rooted for 5 sec. Damage caused may interrupt the effect.

GlyphsClick here

: Your Heroic Strike now hits 2 targets.

: Each time you parry while Die by the Sword is active, you gain 5 Rage

: Increases your speed by 70% for 3 sec after using Heroic Leap.

: Your Mocking Banner now causes creatures to attack the tank specialization player you had targeted when placing the Mocking Banner, instead of attacking you.

: If both of your attacks from a single Raging Blow are critical strikes, then your next Bloodthirst within 10 sec heals for 200% more.

: While your Rallying Cry is active, you also gain 20% leech, healing you for 20% of all damage and healing you cause.

: Teaches you the ability Shattering Throw.
Shattering Throw - Throws your weapon at the enemy causing 12 damage or removing any invulnerabilities.

: You have a 25% reduced chance for attacks against you to be critical strikes while Die by the Sword is active.

: Your Charge also stunsroots an additional 2 nearby targets.

: Now Protection Only

Glyph of Burning Anger: Now Fury and Protection Only

: The duration of your Colossus Smash also applies the Sunder Armor effect to your target.is increased by 13.5 sec, but it now causes your attacks to only ignore 40% of the victim's armor.

: While Die by the Sword is active, using OverpowerWild Strike increases its duration by 1 sec per use.0.25 sec and using Mortal Strike increases its duration by 2 sec.

: You have a 25% reduced chance for attacks against you to be critical strikes while Shield Wall is active.Die By the Sword is active.

: Your Pummel and Heroic Throw also silence the target for 3 sec. Does not work against players. This effect can only occur once every 15 sec.

: Reduces the cooldown on Heroic Leap by 15 sec, but the range of Heroic Leap is also reduced by 2015 yds.

Glyph of Gushing Wound: Now Protection Only

: Your Heroic Strike and Cleave now also reducenow also reduces the target's movement speed by 50% for 8 sec.

: Using Demoralizing Shout makes your next 3 Heroic Strikes or Cleave abilities free. Now Protection only

: Decreases the critical chanceeffects of Recklessness by 12%40% but increases its duration by 50%. Now Arms and Fury only

: Now Arms and Protection Only

: Now Protection only.

Glyph of Thunder Strike: Now Arms and Protection Only

: Increases the radius of Whirlwind and Thunder Clap by 4 yards.

: and

Die by the Sword: , , and

Heroic Leap: and

Raging Blow: and

Shield Wall: and

SpecializationsClick here

: Your multistrikes from auto attacks trigger a Blood Craze. Blood Craze regenerates 3% of your health over 3 sec. When this effect is refreshed, the remaining portion is added to the new effect.

: You gain 5% more of the Mastery stat from all sources.

: Increases your healing and absorption done to yourself, based on Stamina and damage taken (before avoidance and mitigation) in the last 10 sec.

: Increases the cooldown recovery rate by 0% on your Recklessness, Shield Wall, Demoralizing Shout, Last Stand, Heroic Leap, and Mocking Banner abilities. Affected spells are not yet final and reflect 5.4 spells instead of 6.0 changes.

: You gain 5% more of the Critical Strike stat from all sources.

: Grants 3% Versatility to the Warrior and all allies within 100 yards.

: Increases the cooldown recovery rate by 0% on your Recklessness, Shield Wall, Avatar, Bladestorm, Shockwave, Heroic Leap, Bloodbath, Storm Bolt, Dragon Roar, and Die By The Sword abilities. Affected spells are not yet final and reflect 5.4 spells instead of 6.0 changes.

: Grants 3% Versatility to the Warrior and all allies within 100 yards.

Rend: Wounds the target, causing (459.764%579.6%of Attack power) bleed damage over 18 sec, and a final burst of (175.148%222.5% of Attack power) bleed damage when the effect expires.

: Increases the damage of your Colossus Smash, Mortal Strike, and Execute abilities by 28%.

: You gain 5% more of the Mastery stat from all sources.

Bloodthirst: Instantly attack the target for 60%50% main hand weapon damage, generating 10 Rage, and restoring 1% of your health. Bloodthirst has double the normalan additional 30% to be a critical strike. Replaces Heroic Strike for Fury warriors.

: You are a master of dual-wield combat, and can equip one-hand and off-hand weapons in your off-hand.Increases your off-hand damage by 25% and causes your Execute ability to hit with both weapons.able to equip one-handed and two-handed weapons in both hands.You deal 30% additional damage when wielding only one-handed weapons.Your off-hand weapon damage is increased by 25% with two-handed weapons and by 50% with one-handed weapons.

: Now Fury and Protection only. Mortal Strike, Bloodthirst, Colossus Smash, Shield Slam and Devastate critical strikes, critical blocks, and activating Berserker Rage will Enrage you, generating 10 Rage and increasing damage done by 10% for 68 sec.

Mastery: Unshackled Fury: Increases physical damage done while Enraged by 11%.

Raging Blow: A mighty blow that deals 190%200% weapon damage with both melee weapons. Becoming Enraged enables one charge of Raging Blow. Limit 2 charges. Additional 10% decrease applied via hotfix - not in tooltip

Rallying Cry: Fury and Arms only. Temporarily grants you and all party or raid members within 30 yards 20%15% increase to maximum health for 10 sec. After the effect expires, the health is lost.

Recklessness: Requires Battle Stance. Now Arms and Fury only. Grants your special attacks an additional 30%15% chance to critically strike, Lasts 12 sec.and increases critical strike damage by 10%. Lasts 10 sec. Using this ability in Defensive Stance activates Battle Stance.

Titan's Grip: Single-Minded Fury: When you dual-wield one-handed weapons, all damage is increased by 35%30%, and your off-hand weapon will deal an additional 35% damage.20% damage. Increases the damage of Execute by 15%.

Whirlwind: 20 Rage, down from 30 In a whirlwind of steel you attack all enemies within 8 yards, causing 85%100% weapon damage to each enemy.

Furious Slash: A quick strike with your off-hand weapon that deals 230%375% weapon damage and reduces the effectiveness of healing. Unuseable without charges. Bloodthirst has a 20% chance of granting 3 charges of Wild Strike that cost no Rage. Additional 8% decrease applied via hotfix - not in tooltip

Colossus Smash: Costs 30 Rage Smashes a target for 175% weapon damage plus 2218150% weapon damage and weakens their defenses, allowing your attacks to bypass 100%all of their armor for 6 sec. Causes the Physical Vulnerability effect on the target: Weakens the constitution of an enemy target, increasing their physical damage taken by 4% for 30 sec.

Execute: Attempt to finish off a foe, causing120%150% Physical damage to the target, and consuming up to 5030 additional Rage to deal up to 625%300% additional damage. Only usable on enemies that have less than 20% health.

Mortal Strike: A vicious strike that deals 360%225% and causes Mortal Wounds on the target. Now costs 20 Rage. Replaces Heroic Strike for Arms.

Rallying Cry: Fury and Arms only. Temporarily grants you and all party or raid members within 30 yards 20%15% increase to maximum health for 10 sec. After the effect expires, the health is lost.

Recklessness: Now Arms and Fury only. Grants your special attacks an additional 30%15% chance to critically strike, Lasts 12 sec.and increases critical strike damage by 10%. Lasts 10 sec.Using this ability in Defensive Stance activates Battle Stance.

: While wielding a two-handed melee weapon, your Physicalall damage dealt is increased by 25%10%, and the Rage cost of Whirlwind and Thunder Clap are reduced by 10..

: 10 Rage, down from 30 rage. Your melee attacks strike an additional nearby opponent for 75%50% damage. Lasts 10 sec. Using this ability in Defensive Stance activates Battle Stance.

Thunder Clap: Now Protection and Arms only, and level 14. Blasts enemies within 8 yards for (72.3%84% of Attack power) damage. Now costs 30 Rage, and also reduces the movement speed of nearby enemies by 50% for 6 seconds. Requires Defensive Stance or Gladiator Stance.

Whirlwind: 20 Rage, down from 30. In a whirlwind of steel you attack all enemies within 8 yards, causing 85%100% weapon damage to each enemy.

Devastate: Deals 200% weapon damage. 220% weapon damage plus (1658 * 220 / 100). Has a 30% chance to reset the cooldown of Shield Slam and cause it to generate 5 more Rage. Sunders the target, causing Weakened Armor. Replaces Sunder Armor. Weakened Armor Weakens the armor of the target by 4% for 30 sec. Stacks up to 3 times. Additional 5% increase applied via hotfix - not in tooltip

: Now Protection Only. Your Mortal Strike, Bloodthirst, Devastate and Thunder Clap cause the target to bleed for 0 (+ 396%300% of Attack power) Physical damage over 15 sec. This effect is cancelled if the target reaches full health.

: Now Fury and Protection only. Mortal Strike, Bloodthirst, Colossus Smash, Shield Slam and Devasate critical strikes, critical blocks, and activating Berserker Rage will Enrage you, generating 10 Rage and increasing damage done by 10% for 68 sec.

Mastery: Critical Block: Increases your chance to block by 4% and your chance to critically block by 18%.18%.Also increases your attack power by 8%.

: Now Protection Only

Shield Slam: Damage formula has changed, see tooltip for details. Critical strikes with Shield Slam cause your next Heroic Strike to cost no Rage and be a critical strike. Additional 5% increase applied via hotfix - not in tooltip

Unwavering Sentinel: Your Defensive Stance provides several additional benefits. Increases your total Stamina by 15%.Reduces the chance you will be critically hit by melee attacks by 6%. Reduces the chance your attacks will be parried by 3%.Increases your armor value from items by 25%. Reduces the Rage cost of Thunder Clap by 100%.

Bloodsurge, Fury: Now part of Bloodthirst.

Blood and Thunder, Arms, Protection: Effects have been merged into Deep Wounds and Thunder Clap.

Colossus Smash is now Arms only.

Mastery: Strikes of Opportunity, Arms: Grants a 18% chance for your melee attacks to instantly trigger an additional melee attack for 100% normal damage.

Meat Cleaver, Fury: Dealing damage with Whirlwind increases the number of targets that your Raging Blow hits by 1. This effect stacks up to 3 times. Using Raging Blow will consume this effect. Now merged into Whirlwind.

Overpower, Arms: Instantly overpower the enemy causing 105% weapon damage. Cannot be blocked, dodged or parried. Overpower has a 60% increased chance to be a critical strike.

Recklessness: Now Fury and Arms only.

Single-Minded Fury, Fury: Now part of Crazed Berserker.

Sword and Board, Protection: Now part of Devastate.

Titan's Grip, Fury: Now part of Crazed Berserker.

Ultimatum, Protection: Your Shield Slam criticals make your next Heroic Strike or Cleave cost no Rage and be a guaranteed critical strike. Now merged into Shield Slam.

Unbridled Wrath, Arms and Fury: Whenever you are struck by a Stun or Immobilize effect, you generate 15 Rage over 10 sec.

Vengeance, Protection: Each time you take damage in Defensive Stance, you gain 1.5% of the unmitigated damage taken as attack power for 20 sec.

Class AbilitiesClick here

Haste reduces your global cooldown, and the cooldown of Shield Slam and Thunder Clap.

Battle Shout: Increases the attack power of all raid and party members within 100 yards by 10%. Lasts 5 min.Generates 20 Rage.1 hour. Targets may only have one Shout active on them per Warrior.

: An aggressive combat stance Generates high Rage from normal melee attacks.that generates Rage from melee autoattacks. Battle Stance for Arms Warriors now generates increased 100% Rage from auto-attacks and Critical Strikes now generate double Rage.

Berserker Rage: You go berserkbecome Enraged, generating 10 Rage and increasing physical damage done by 10% for 6 sec., removing and granting immunity to Fear, Sap and Incapacitate effects for the duration of Berserker Rage.6 sec.

Charge: Charge to an enemy, stunningrooting it for 1.50 sec and reducing movement speed by X% for Y. Generates 20 Rage.

: Increases the Stamina of all party and raid members within 100 yards by 10%. Lasts 5 min.Generates 20 Rage.1 hour.

Vanguard: Defensive Stance for Arms Warriors now generates 50% as much Rage from auto-attacks as in Battle Stance.

Execute: Attempt to finish off a wounded foe, causing 6886320% weapon damage to the target. Only usable on enemies that have less than 20% health. For Arms Warriors now costs 10 Rage, and consumes up to 40 additional Rage to deal additional damage. Causes 160% weapon damage to the target, and consuming up to 40 additional Rage to deal up to 320% additional weapon damage.

Hamstring: Maims the enemy for 5% weapon damage, reducing movement speed by 50% for 15 sec.

Heroic Leap: Leap through the air toward a targeted location, slamming down with destructive force to deal (79%52% of Attack power) Physical damage to all enemies within 8 yards.

: Instantly deals 85% weapon damage (119%75% weapon damage (105% if a one - handed weapon is equipped). Use when you have more Rage than you can spend. This ability is not on the global cooldown.

Heroic Throw: Now has 8 yd minimum range. Throw your weapon at the enemy, causing 50% weapon damage. Generates high (300%) threat.

Intervene: Run at high speed toward a party or raid memberan ally within 25 yards, intercepting the next melee or ranged attack within 10 sec while the target remains within 25 yards.10 yards.

Shattering Throw: Throws your weapon at the enemy causing 12 damage reducing the armor on the target by 20% for 10 sec or removing any invulnerabilities.

Revenge: Now requires Defensive Stance. Protection Only. Instantly attack an enemy and two additional enemies, dealing 8413 to 10281(+ 300% of Attack power) damage to the primary target and 50% damage to the secondary targets, and generating 20 Rage. Your successful dodges and parries reset the cooldown on Revenge. Additional 5% increase applied via hotfix - not in tooltip

Taunt: Now requires Defensive Stance.

: Now available to all specializations Absorb formula has changed, see tooltip for details. Consumes up to 6040 additional Rage to increase the amount absorbed.

Thunder Clap: Blasts enemies within 8 yards for 312 damage and applies the Weakened Blows effect. Weakened BlowsDemoralizes the target, reducing their physical damage dealt by 10% for 30 sec.0 (+ 72.3% of Attack power) damage.

Victory Rush: Instantly attack the target, causing 1246(+ 200% of Attack power) damage and healing you for 20%15% of your maximum health. Can only be used within 20 sec after you kill an enemy that yields experience or honor.

Removed Class Abilities

Berserker Stance: A reckless combat stance. Generates some Rage from normal melee attacks and some Rage from damage taken.

Cleave: A sweeping attack that strikes the target and an additional nearby target, dealing 82% weapon damage (114.8% if a one - handed weapon is equipped). Use when you have more Rage than you can spend.

Demoralizing Banner: Throw down a war banner within 30 yards that decreases the damage dealt by all enemies within 30 yards of the banner by 10%. Lasts 15 sec. You can Intervene to your war banner.

Disarm: Disarm the enemy's weapons and shield for 8 sec. Disarmed creatures deal significantly reduced damage.

Skull Banner: Throw down a war banner at your feet that increases the critical damage of party or raid members within 40 yards of the banner by 20%. Lasts 10 sec. You can Intervene to your war banner.

Sunder Armor: Sunders the target, causing Weakened Armor.

MoP Abilities Changed to WoD Specialization/Talents

Shield Wall: now Protection

: now Protection

Recklessness - now Arms, Fury

Rallying Cry - now Arms, Fury

Thunder Clap - now Arms, Protection

Draenor Perks

: del]The damage radius of Heroic Leap is increased by 2 yards.When you use Heroic Leap, the cooldown of Taunt is reset.

: Increases the damage reduction from Die by the Sword by 10%.

: Sweeping Strikes now lasts 5 sec longer.

: Each of your autoattacks causes (76.62% of Attack power) additional Physical damage from your Rend on the target.

: Whirlwind's effect to increase Raging Blow targets now grants 2 charges per Whirlwind and can have up to 4 charges.

: del]The damage radius of Heroic Leap is increased by 2 yards.When you use Heroic Leap, the cooldown of Taunt is reset..

: Increases the damage of Execute by 20%.

: Increases the damage reduction from Die by the Sword by 10%.

: Heroic Throw no longer has a cooldown.

: Defensive Stance now increases your armor by an additional 15%.

: Increases your block chance by 10%.

: del]The damage radius of Heroic Leap is increased by 2 yards.When you use Heroic Leap, the cooldown of Taunt is reset.

Changed Crowd Control

Charge now Roots the target (instead of stunning). The Root effect does not share a Diminishing Return with other Roots.

Warbringer now causes Charge to stun the target for 1.5 seconds instead of rooting it.

Disarm has been removed.

Intimidating Shout now has a 6-second duration in PvP (down from 8 seconds).

Blue Tweetsactive on TwitterBlue Tweet TrackerPatch Notes

Latest Patch Notes

h3]Ability Pruning
See the Ability Pruning section above for discussion of why we're pruning class abilities. For Warriors, we focused on removing abilities that were redundant, and making some tweaks to their rotations.

Berserker Stance has been removed.
Cleave has been removed.
Colossus Smash is now available only to Arms Warriors.
is now available only to Protection Warriors.
Demoralizing Banner has been removed.
has been removed.
is now available only to Protection Warriors.
Mortal Strike now replaces for Arms Warriors.
Rallying Cry is no longer available to Protection Warriors.
Recklessness is now available only to Fury and Arms Warriors.
Shield Wall is now available only to Protection Warriors.
Throw has been removed.
Thunder Clap is no longer available to Fury Warriors.
Whirlwind is now available only to Arms and Fury Warriors.

Ability Consolidation and Refinement

Battle Shout now lasts 1 hour and no longer generates Rage.
Blood and Thunder's effects have been merged into baseline for Protection Warriors.
Charge no longer generates Rage when charging against a non-player target multiple times in a row. Charge will still always generate Rage when used against other players.
now lasts 1 hour and no longer generates Rage.
Vanguard now reduces damage taken by 20% (down from 25%).
Demoralizing Shout now lasts 8 seconds (down from 10 seconds).
Last Stand now lasts 12 seconds(down from 20 seconds).
Shield Wall now lasts 8 seconds (down from 12 seconds).
Titan's Grip: Single-Minded Fury's effects have been merged into .
Titan's Grip's effects have been merged into .
now increases all damage by 30% (up from 20%) while using one-handed weapons.
Hamstring now costs 10 Rage and deals 20% weapon damage, in addition to the movement speed slow.
Meat Cleaver's effects have been merged into baseline Whirlwind for Fury Warriors.
now increases damage by 10% (down from 15%).
's effects have been merged into baseline Devastate.
Thunder Clap now costs 10 Rage, and also reduces the movement speed of nearby enemies by 50% for 6 sec.
's effects have been merged into baseline Shield Slam.

Stance Changes

Warriors have always had stances; they're very important to the feeling of being a Warrior. In order to make stances more meaningful, and ease keybinds, we made stances have their own action bars, and re-added stance restrictions on abilities. However, we also made it so that you'll automatically be shifted into the appropriate stance if you try to use an ability that isn't usable in your current stance. One important difference between this and previous incarnations of Warrior stances is that these abilities are rotational, not utility cooldowns. Stances are now more for different gameplay modes (dealing damage vs. tanking). There shouldn’t be cases where you find yourself swapping stances, use an ability, and then immediately swapping back.

Warrior Stances now once again have their own action bars.

Attempting to use an ability that requires a different stance will now automatically switch to that stance.

Colossus Smash now requires .
Recklessness now requires .
now requires .
is now available for all Warrior specializations (was Protection only) and requires Vanguard.

For Arms and Fury Warriors, Shield Barrier can be used without a shield.

Arms Changes

We wanted to fix a few problems with Warriors. Prominently, we still weren't happy with Arms' rotation (and neither were many players), so we've made some more changes. The goal is to remove needless complexity while simultaneously adding more depth. As mentioned in the above section on Ability Pruning, Overpower and Heroic Strike have been removed for Arms Warriors.

In addition, we weren't satisfied with the Mastery for Arms. The intended flavor for Arms is about hitting with few, big, and heavy weapon strikes. Strikes of Opportunity actually went opposite of that, adding frequent little hits. We've replaced Strikes of Opportunity with a new Mastery which accentuates their intended design.

for Arms Warriors now generates 115% more Rage from auto-attacks and Critical Strikes now generate double Rage.
Vanguard for Arms Warriors now generates 50% as much Rage from auto-attacks as in .
Arms Warriors now generate Rage from taking auto-attack damage. Each 1% of health taken as damage will generate 1 Rage, up to 5 Rage per hit.
Mastery: Strikes of Opportunity has been removed, and replaced with a new ability, Mastery: Weapons Master.

Mastery: Weapons Master increases the damage of Colossus Smash, Mortal Strike, and Execute abilities by 28% (increasing with Mastery).

Colossus Smash now costs 20 Rage, deals 225% increased damage, and no longer increases the damage of Slam.
is no longer available to Arms Warriors.
Execute for Arms Warriors now costs 10 Rage, and consumes up to 30 additional Rage to deal additional damage.
Mortal Strike now costs 20 Rage (instead of generating 10 Rage).
Overpower has been removed. Arms Warriors should now use Rend and Whirlwind instead.
Rend is a new ability for Arms Warriors.

Rend causes bleed damage over 18 seconds, and a final burst of bleed damage when the effect expires. Costs 5 Rage

Slam has been removed. Arms Warriors should now use Rend and Whirlwind instead.
now costs 10 Rage (down from 30 Rage).
Sudden Death has been removed.
Unbridled Wrath has been removed.

Whirlwind now costs 20 Rage for Arms Warriors.

Burst Damage Cooldowns

As with other classes, we wanted to reduce cooldown stacking. Cutting Skull Banner did a ton to help that across the whole game. But for Warriors specifically, we needed to make further changes, including merging some of the personal benefit of Skull Banner back into Recklessness. Also, to make up for Throw being removed, we modified Heroic Throw to be more frequently usable.

Heroic Throw is now a high-threat ability, generating 300% extra threat, has a 6-second cooldown (down from 30 seconds), but now has a 15 yard minimum range.
Recklessness now increases Critical Strike chance by 15% (down from 30%) and increases Critical Strike damage by 10% (up from 0%).
Shattering Throw no longer reduces the armor of the target; it only does damage and breaks immunities.

It also is no longer learned via any specialization, but instead through a new Major Glyph, Glyph of Shattering Throw.

Haste for Warriors

Haste has long been a problematic stat for Warriors, usually being of little value. As part of our commitment to ensuring all secondary stats are valuable (except Bonus Armor for non-tanks and Spirit for non-healers, of course), we're making a significant change to Warriors, to ensure that Haste has strong, competitive value. We're giving all Warriors a new passive, which lets haste affect their global cooldown, and the cooldowns of their very-short-cooldown rotational abilities.

is a new passive ability for Warriors:

: Haste reduces global cooldown and the cooldowns of Mortal Strike, Bloodthirst, Shield Slam, and Thunder Clap.

Protection Changes

Protection Warriors have received a few notable changes. First, we removed Dodge and Parry from gear, and expect Protection Warriors to value Haste and Critical Strike as important secondary stats. In order to achieve that, we made Riposte give defensive value to Critical Strike. The aforementioned also helps for valuing Haste.

Mastery: Critical Block now increases critical block chance by 12% (down from 17.6%).
is a new passive ability for Protection Warriors.

causes Multistrike auto attacks to trigger a , which regenerates 3% of the Warrior's health over 3 seconds. When this effect is refreshed, the remaining duration is added to the new effect.

Riposte has been redesigned.

Riposte now gives the Warrior Parry equal to their Critical Strike bonus from gear.

Shield Block now regenerates a new charge every 12 seconds (up from every 9 seconds).
Unwavering Sentinel no longer increases Armor, but now also reduces the chance for attacks to be parried by 3%. (See also: Hit and Expertise Removal.)

Talent Changes

A few Warrior talents also were in need of revision. First, Second Wind was problematic; it was sometimes too weak, and sometimes too strong. We chose to change it from a passive health regeneration effect to the new Leech effect, so that low-health Warriors have to maintain combat in order to benefit, instead of kiting, hiding, or otherwise playing defensively. was changed to account for the removal of from Arms.

The level-45 talent row was removed for crowd-control disarmament reasons, and also wanted to allow you to choose more rotational complexity through talents. We replaced the row with new talents, many of which are specialization-specific, giving you a variety of playstyle choices for your Warrior.

For the level-60 and level-90 Talent rows, certain combinations were proving problematic. We decided that Stormbolt would better compete with Shockwave and Dragon Roar, and that Bladestorm would better compete with Avatar and , so swapped Stormbolt and Bladestorm's positions. We also adjusted the effects of a few talents in order to make them more competitive with the talents on their row.

Bladestorm is now a level-90 Talent, swapping places with Stormbolt.

Bladestorm no longer allows use of Shouts except Demoralizing Shoutwhile active. It does still allow the use of Taunt, , Shield Wall, and Last Stand.

now heals for 100% more but the amount healed is no longer increased by being Enraged.
Dragon Roar's damage is no longer reduced when hitting more than 1 target.
's cooldown has been reduced to 30 seconds, but it now replaces Spell Reflection.
Second Wind no longer directly heals the Warrior while active. Instead, Second Wind grants the Warrior 10% Leech while active, which causes the Warrior to heal for 10% of all damage and healing done by the Warrior while active.
Stormbolt is now a level-60 Talent, swapping places with Bladestorm.
has been removed and replaced with 3 new talents that vary by specialization.

Arms: Taste for Blood: Each time Rend deals damage, gain 3 Rage.
Fury: : Furious Slash costs 25 less Rage.
Protection: : Shield Slam deals 30% additional damage while Shield Block or Shield Charge is active.

Piercing Howl has been removed and replaced with a new talent, Sudden Death.

Sudden Death causes auto-attack hits to have a 10% chance to make the next Execute free and useable on any target, regardless of health level. These Executes do not consume additional Rage to deal additional damage.
Piercing Howl is now available to all Fury Warriors as a baseline ability.

Disrupting Shout has been removed and replaced with 3 new talents that vary by specialization.

Arms: Slam: Slam an opponent, causing 100% weapon damage. Each consecutive use of Slam increases the damage dealt by 50% and Rage cost by 100%. Requires Battle Stance.
Fury: : Bloodthirst no longer has a cooldown.
Protection: : Devastate reduces the cost of by 5 Rage for 5 seconds, stacking up to 6 times. Once this effect reaches 6 applications, its duration will no longer refresh.

Fury Changes

To better separate the playstyles between Fury and Arms Warriors, we’ve made several significant changes to Fury Warriors and make them a better fit for the specialization's theme: a relentless, bloodthirsty berserker. In particular, Colossus Smash and Heroic Strike was removed, since those abilities resulted in gameplay that was the complete opposite of that intended style. Furious Slash was modified to fill the role of a quick excess Rage dump. We also felt that auto attack damage had become too high and moved some of that damage into Execute. Execute has been changed to now deal damage based on Weapon Damage instead of just Attack Power. Finally, we've updated some to spell alerts to improve usability.

's effects have been merged into baseline Bloodthirst and no longer reduce Furious Slash's global cooldown. Its spell alert has moved to the top slot instead of the left and right slots and now has 2 charges (down from 3 charges).
Bloodthirst now replaces for Fury Warriors.

Furious Slash now has a 0.75 second baseline global cooldown and costs 45 Rage.

Bloodthirst now has 30% additional Critical Strike chance (instead of double the normal Critical Strike chance).
no longer increases auto attack damage. Instead, it also causes Execute to hit with the off-hand weapon.
Raging Blow now extends the duration of Colossus Smash by 2 seconds, and has a spell alert on the left and right slots.
Glyph of Colossus Smash is a new glyph available to Fury Warriors. The glyph increases the duration of Colossus Smash's effect to 20 seconds, but reduces its effectiveness.

and

We also expanded to affect all damage, not just Physical damage, and increased its duration slightly so that it can cover burst windows like Colossus Smash adequately. We're also making a change to the design of , to try to limit is effectiveness in PvP, without hurting its effectiveness in PvE.

Mastery: Unshackled Fury (Fury) now increases all damage (up from only Physical damage).
now lasts 15 seconds, or until the target is healed to full health.
now increases all damage (up from only Physical damage).

Blue Posts on Class Changes

Well, lets dive right in. Arms Warriors have gotten some pretty huge changes in Warlords, and that's going to upset some people who are used to the current version, or imagined something else. That's totally understandable. There are a many different points of view involved here, so let me share ours. Then, if you'd like to have some constructive discussions, we can go from there.

Arms was a spec that did not fulfill its fantasy very well. The defining characteristic that we focused on was "big, heavy hits". That is in stark contrast to the fast and furious hits of Fury. This is evidenced by the prominence of Mortal Strike, Colossus Smash, their new Mastery, and non-spammy rotation.

One of the biggest complaints we see here is about the complexity of the baseline rotation. However, from our point of view, the *baseline* rotation hardly matters; nobody actually plays with the baseline. It acts as a platform to build upon, primarily through talents. And the Warrior talent tree provides a *ton* of potential changes to the rotation, to support a wide variety of playstyles. What matters is the whole package, with talents.

Like procs? Take Sudden Death. Want to fill every GCD? There are like 5 different talents you can take to fill GCDs; I don't think any other class has that many. Etc.

Remember, not everyone plays the same way that you do. Most especially, remember that anyone posting here is on the extreme end of game knowledge and hardcoreness.

The Warrior community has been clearly frustrated lately, and I'd like to discuss this further with you all, but please make that easy for me to do, by keeping the hyperbole and anger and useless sarcasm and generally destructive behavior out of this. Thanks.

Important note about today's build: Slam nerf didn't make it into that build, but it will be nerfed similar to how Mortal Strike was, in the next build.

EDIT: And nor will it be viable to use Defensive Stance as part of DPSing. Please point out tuning issues like that, but don't give mechanic feedback on them.

The talents you gave us to add some depth to the rotation have mostly fallen flat. Sudden Death has gone between way too strong and way too weak. I haven't logged on tonight for the new patch to see if it's still bugged, but last build SD was using the wrong execute spell ID, and was hitting for the bonus rage damage (625%) instead of the base execute damage (150%). If that gets fixed, when combined with the nerf to Execute, we'll be looking at a 1-2/minute proc for 100% weapon damage, which is abysmally low.

Slam is a talent idea I really liked at the start, and was super enthusiastic about, but the more I play with it, both in practice and in the sims, the less of the intended depth it seems to offer. Simulation-wise, playing around with different ways to use Slam seems to barely budge its overall damage marginally either direction. So trying to manage it to use low stacks more frequently (by interrupting slam combos with other abilities) gets no real benefit. Trying to cancel aura to keep at low stack permanently shows almost no benefit since rage gen got buffed. Trying to squeeze other abilities together to get 3 stacks together at once more often is basically a loss. Rather than giving a breadth of depth to the rotation, it adds needles complexity. In actual play, the way its set up tends to lend itself to you having a 0 stack slam available when you're at high rage, thus rage capping frequently by accident, and then when you do have the 2 stack available, your rage is lower and you can't use it again even if you wanted to. This is a talent that had so much potential, but the implementation leaves us with so little control that it just doesn't feel right, and doesn't offer any meaningful depth.

The new mastery was already a weak stat unless we took Slam. With Slam no longer being affected by Mastery, Mastery falls really low. Add in the huge nerfs to MS and Execute, and it's even worse. Once Collision gets the sims updated, I'll get you some hard numbers, but right now as of this build it seems like the "Big Heavy Hits" Arms is dead. Seeing as we lost all of our depth to support that vision, we really need something back.

not

What I want to know Celest, is should arms be competitive dps? It was clearly overpowered, but a large nerf like the ones we saw today, including the upcoming Slam nerf you mention seem to put Arms quite a bit lower on the totem pole. No one wants to be bottom of the barrel no matter how optimally you play the spec and I can't say for certain we are as there is more tuning to be done.

I'd like to know why you removed Ignite Weapon. I'm rather upset by this mostly as Fury but Arms too. When you guys added it you gave us two things. One, an active on use ability without a cooldown, and two most importantly, a playstyle that doesn't depend on Colossus Smash as much. The pooling factor of CS is something MANY warriors hate. Ignite Weapon helped to make it so we didn't need to anymore. You might say well there's the CS glyph for that, but we both know it won't see any use because it's going to come at a significant DPS loss. And any warrior who does take it will be made to look the fool. Many warriors begged you guys to just move CS to a talent, but since you didn't do it we at least had Ignite Weapon to look forward to and now that's gone. In it's place we get an ability that looks at first glance to be mainly for PVP. This leaves us with two talents and only one is engaging. And that's only for AoE. I really think if you wanted to add in Siegebreaker it should have replaced Ravager instead. We don't need Ravager at all.

But okay, I'll bite, if Arms mastery was already low pre-MS/Exe nerf, and these nerfs will hurt Mastery more than other stats... what options do you have in tuning to bring Mastery up without bringing us back to "omgwtfhitme" levels of damage on those two abilities?

I just posted over in the Arms thread, but most of what was said there applies to Fury as well, so please read that first: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/13733423442?page=8#143

Today's build includes a few important changes for Fury, which actually line up with many of the issues raised in this thread.

First, Wild Strike. Same damage per cast time, same damage per rage, just in 0.75sec chunks, instead of 0.5sec. Damage, Rage, and GCD all increased by 50%. This should help with latency issues.

Second, Ignite Weapon. Obviously, Ignite Weapon didn't work, since the ability it replaced was removed from the rotation. This new build will finally add a replacement; a fairly straightforward damage/utility button, Siegebreaker.

Third, Recklessness. It's back to 30% crit chance, to feel more impactful. And a perk now adds the 15% crit damage back as well. Straight buffed. I believe that replaced the Heroic Leap perk, which was quite lackluster as so many of you so eloquently put.

Fourth, Enrage. This isn't actually in today's build, but will be in the next. We raised the duration of Enrage to 8sec, so that there's a bit more overlap, especially so that it can cover Bladestorms and Colossus Smashes.

Also, not a change, but commentary on a previous change: The Colossus Smash extension mechanic is far from superfluous. The problem before was that you didn't have time to spend all of the resources that you saved up for a Colossus Smash, and this solves that handily. It makes a big difference, and we're pleased with how that turned out.

As I said to the Arms Warriors as well, the Warrior community has been clearly frustrated lately, and I'd like to discuss this further with you all, but please make that easy for me to do, by keeping the hyperbole and anger and useless sarcasm and generally destructive behavior out of this. Thanks.

Something I would like to say is that, if I'm not mistaken, the big reasoning behind the removal of Heroic Strike that led to the other changes being necessary as a result was to make it more clear what you're supposed to use as your rage dump. I guess that's okay, and as long as Unending Thirst ends up the best talent for min/maxing I could see the spec remaining quite fun. However, I, as someone who has done heavy theorycrafting and played a warrior since vanilla, am having difficulty understanding when to extend Colossus Smash and when to use up my remaining rage, due to Unending Thirst (that is, when to sneak in extra BTs to try for another 2 seconds--under new Recklessness this can result in an almost guaranteed Enrage and extension of CS). I like the talent, and the complexity it brings, but am confused why we have traded Heroic Strike complexity (Which, in my experience of coaching warriors, most warriors fully understood--and enjoyed) for a rotation that now feels far more complex and with less guidance as that 6 second Colossus Smash window is shifting, and makes the spec feel less like the organized but furious feeling of banking and using rage.

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