Heroic Strike

I shouldn't have to say this, but give it back.

http://www.heroicstrike.org/

Please Blizzard, listen to the Warrior community.

The Warrior

(Disclaimer - I may seem like I'm ranting at some parts, but rest assured that I'm writing this while I'm calm, even if I wasn't calm when I first discovered some of these things)

So while I usually talk about changes to the class, possible suggestions for new ideas or mechanics, I'd like to actually take a step back and look at this amazing class that I play for a second and really get down to what defines a Warrior in most fantasy worlds, as well as our own.

The Warrior. Undoubtedly the most "realistic" of any fantasy game's class portfolio. Warriors have existed from the dawn of time across a myriad of species, from Ants to Beetles, and from Lions and Tigers to Humans. There's a certain archetype that keeps cropping up of this strong, ruthless individual that destroys anything in the way of them and their goals. The diversification goes further if we just look at our own species, we've had the Shogun and the Samurai, we've had Vikings and Crusaders, and Warrior hero symbolism from Genghis Khan to Charlemagne. Being a Warrior (to an extent) is in the blood of our species, and it's easy to identify with Warriors in games for a lot of people because they're so real.

Transfer this to a video game. Darksiders, Warcraft, Borderlands, Fable, God of War, Warframe, Monster Hunter, Dark Souls. All of these games I just reeled off like it was nothing. You can pick up a big weapon (Melee or Ranged) and mash, carve and saw a path through any amount of enemies in your way. The "final form" of the Warrior, so to speak. And while a core part of the Warrior is to chop their opponent into Meaty Bits™, they're also a stalwart defender of their allies, regardless of whether they defend their friends with a shield or just by killing whoever is threatening them. My point here is that Warriors aren't just one or the other, they're versatile and can/will do whatever the situation requires of them.

Now here's where a lot of people will probably stop reading. I don't think what Carbine Studios have called a Warrior is a Warrior at all. One of the main things that irks me about Wildstar is that you are limited to 8 abilities, you can't use more, but you can use less if you want. This, to me, is irritating to no end. Like I mentioned earlier, I feel that Warriors are versatile and can do whatever the situation demands of them regardless of their primary role, whether they're normally a Tank-style Warrior that puts on his big-boy boots and stomps some faces, or a DPS-style Warrior that throws on an aggro modifier (see: Defensive Stance or Stance: Juggernaut) to save one of their allies. To be blunt, Wildstar Warriors don't have this flexibility in my opinion.

People might read that and say "But you can use any ability you have in a situation, just put it in your Limited Action Set". And yes, while you can use any ability you have for any situation, you have to give up something else in return. The most powerful argument I could possibly have here is for Power Link and Smackdown, which I'll explain for people that don't play a Warrior in Wildstar.

*deep breath*

Power Link is an instant cast spell with a 25 second cooldown and a Range of 20.0m, it requires at least Level 18 and throwing all your AMP points (think pre-MoP talents) into Utility, rather than Assault (DPS) or Support (Tank). It grants you and 4 party members (chosen at random if there's more people) an Empower, increasing all their damage dealt by 18% (baseline) for 10 seconds. At maximum rank, it increases damage dealt by 25.3%, and adds an extra effect that gives you a stack of Storing Power every time you land a direct attack (stacks to 3), after the Power Link expires, it combines 14.63% of your Assault Power and Support Power together, and deals that as Technology Damage to 5 foes within 10m.

*breathes*

And Smackdown, for all intents and purposes is basically an instant cast Shattering Throw. That hits 5 targets. On a 10 second cooldown. And the effect lasts 10 seconds. ~100% uptime, AoE, Shattering Throw. Okay then.

Now you can probably see where I'm going with this argument. In terms of any kind of 5m+ group content, why would you not run with these two abilities? They're undoubtedly idiotically strong and so even without wanting to, Warriors get to be the class that has the two amazing buffs that everyone needs, at the cost of less damage coming from the Warrior than anyone else *cough* Tier 14 *cough*. Why at the cost of personal damage you say? Well because that's two abilities that you will have to take. That means you only have 6 abilities left for yourself. If we say that this Warrior is a tank, then he also has to have a taunt, lowering his abilities to 5, and in a raiding situation, there's probably no reason to ever not have Defense Grid (AoE 25% damage reduction, Shield restore every 2 seconds and 2.5% Deflect chance), so that drops our humble Warrior tank down to 4 abilities. Now I don't know about you, but I'd like to have more choice than 4 abilities when I'm tanking.

Some won't like this, but let me just compare this to a Warrior Tank in Warcraft as of right now (Patch 5.4.3), I'll try and use what I consider the equivalent abilities in WoW as what I've listed above:

• Has Skull Banner
• Has Shattering Throw 
• Has Rallying Cry
• Has Taunt
• Has more than 4 buttons left to press

I'm one of the few that doesn't mind how many buttons my class currently has, I don't mind having (roughly) 36 buttons bound, because it's neat on my screen (12x3) but that's just my opinion. The main issue I have is that I have all these cool abilities on Wildstar like Defense Grid and Breaching Strikes and Grapple and Leap and Augmented Blade... But I can't use them all whenever I want to, and I wish the game had been designed so that I could. Warriors are masters of all weaponry and all tactics, whether they choose to become a human/monster/alien battering ram, or protect their allies against one.

Needless to say, it's kind of ironic that Warriors are one of the classes that are getting the 3% Versatility buff in 6.0. Many people would class a Hybrid as a Tank/Healer or a DPS/Healer, but Warriors are probably the best Hybrid DPS/Tank in the game (excluding Druids with Heart of the Wild). Fury Warriors have the second highest non-tank health in the game (Beaten by, of course, Warlocks), have one of the best defensive abilities to tank a boss with (Die by the Sword) and can abuse the fact that they're tanking something in order to do more damage (Berserker Stance). I think Collision previously simmed out that sitting in Defensive Stance for a Patchwerk-style fight as Fury barely dropped our DPS at all.

"He's kind of a nuclear-powered Swiss Army Knife, attached to a... pro wrestler." - Warrior Devspeak for Wildstar

I'll agree with this statement for one reason only: Have you ever tried using more than one part of a Swiss Army Knife at the same time? Doesn't work, probably never will.

And why would you want that in a class? I tend to play more supportively than most other Warrior players, and I'd rather use my defensives to keep someone else alive (when I'm not tanking), and I'd rather line up my Skull Banner/Shattering Throw with other people's cooldowns to get the most benefit out of them. I like being able to support my group and help them do better than they would have if I wasn't there. Many would then ask why I don't like the "Support Warrior" that Wildstar could maybe offer?

I don't like it because I can either support, or do lots of damage myself, and never both. I don't like it because I can either DPS or Tank, but never really both. You have to commit yourself to specific roles for every encounter, whether that's "Oh we need your Defense Grid for this fight" or "Oh there's burst AoE so you have to throw 8 Tiers into Power Link". If you want to play half tank and half DPS you can, but at a crippling cost of DPS for the sake of a bit more survivability. If I wanted to play a true Hybrid I'd stick to WoW and main a Druid.

Why can't I just commit to being a Warrior? With WoW you pick a Specialisation, what you specialise in. That doesn't prevent you from doing anything outside of it, it just means you'll do it worse than someone who specialises in that area of the class. Imagine a Fire Mage never being able to use Mirror Images or Time Warp because those are Arcane Spells, imagine a Frost Death Knight never being able to use Raise Dead or Death Strike because those are Unholy and Blood spells. Your class and your skill with that class should define what you can pull off with it. I played Fury when I was progressing on Lei Shen during 5.2, and being able to solo soak a Static Shock by jumping into Defensive Stance and popping Shield Wall to prevent the other people in my quarter taking any damage at all is supportive gameplay from a pure DPS spec. Something that I feel Wildstar needs to learn from.

I know Wildstar is young and in its Vanilla stages and I sure as hell know that Vanilla wasn't nearly this good when it was first released due to bugs and whatnot, but if Wildstar wanted to have Warriors be true Warriors, I feel that they should be able to be tanky, do some meaty damage if they want to and still be able to help their allies, rather than only picking one of them. Many won't like the fact that I compared Wildstar Warriors to WoW Warriors, but they should be comparable.

They're both called Warriors, aren't they?

I love to hear feedback on anything I write, so feel free to leave a comment below or on my Twitter at @CM_Exhil.

Alpha Changes, and The Direction of Arms Warrior

I guess I need to preface this article with a disclaimer of:

• All of the following is based on the latest Alpha build as of June 19th, 2014.
• I do not have Alpha Access, so a lot of my data is either napkin math, given to me by Warriors with Alpha Access, or just pulled out of my ass in context.
• Bear with me, I will make sense eventually.

So there were some changes to Warriors in the Alpha notes, and while there was a short note above the Warrior section saying that " Arms is still undergoing heavy revision and additional information will be made available later." it still doesn't quite add up. Let's look at sources of Arms' damage on the Live servers, in no particular order:

• Mortal Strike
• Slam
• Colossus Smash
• Overpower
• Deep Wounds
• Strikes of Opportunity (Mastery)
• Bladestorm (No other T60 Talent Choice)
• Heroic Strike
• Thunder Clap
• Sweeping Strikes (Regular + Slam-Cleave)
• Auto Attacks
• Execute

So as we can see, we've got a fair few sources of damage, but the rotations/priorities for Single Target and AoE DPS are a bit different. However, based on the recent changes to the Alpha notes, what we're probably going to look at is:

• Mortal Strike
• Colossus Smash
• Whirlwind
• T60 Talent
• T90 Talent (If you pick Bladestorm)
• T100 Talent (Assuming Ravager or Ignite Weapon)
• Auto Attacks
• Sweeping Strikes
• Execute

So straight off the bat (unless I've missed anything) we've already dropped 6 sources of damage from Live (Slam, Overpower, Deep Wounds, Strikes of Opportunity, Heroic Strike, Thunder Clap), 4 of which required us to press the button to do anything anyway. But what have we gained in return?

The Tier 60 Talent of choice, more often than not, is probably going to be Storm Bolt unless Dragon Roar is significantly better than it is on Live, simply because Storm Bolt's weapon damage component will keep getting better as we get better gear, where as Dragon Roar's burst seems very reliant on "can I line it up with my enchant proc, trinket procs and Skull Banner". On top of this, due to it not scaling at all with Critical Strike, I think it's going to be debatable whether we use it at all with Recklessness active in Warlords (Reckless and Skull Banner are baked together, meaning we can't split the two for Dragon Roar's use). It might be worth considering that Dragon Roar is changed to scale with Crit like Chaos Bolt does, but this might make it a bit too cookie-cutter when everyone is decked out in full T19 Mythic gear and has 40%+ Crit on top of their other stats. Moving on!

The Tier 90 Talent is going to shift around. Assuming they're all balanced and have their niche, it'll be Avatar for tight burst windows where you just need raw damage, Bloodbath when you need that extra kick of sustained ST/AoE DPS, and Bladestorm when you need reliable burst AoE. Unfortunately that pigeonholes us into specific talents, but then again I guess Blizzard want us to use different talents for different situations. That fits the mould so I'll accept it and move on.

The Tier 100 Talents are our new toys, and we get two choices if we want an actual ability, these are Ravager and Ignite Weapon (again, as of the latest Alpha Build).

As you can see, the choices are interesting. We either get a Single Target ability that then buffs our Single Target damage (via ignoring armour), or we get targeted burst AoE damage + Defensive Cooldown all baked into one nice package. In regards to the Ignite Weapon tooltip, it doesn't actually replace Heroic Strike for Arms, as Arms no longer has access to Heroic Strike. I feel like one of these two abilities is going to end up being mandatory for any kind of competitive DPS simply because of what Celestalon has tweeted is the intended rotation as of this Alpha Build, but we'll get onto that later.

So now we get onto possibly the most thought provoking source of damage in the Warlords of Draenor Arms Warrior rotation.

Whirlwind. No I am not joking.

And honestly, I wish I was. I wasn't playing a Warrior when Whirlwind was in the rotation for Single Target, and I'm kind of glad on that part. If I was to visualise a Warrior carving someone up in true Warrior style, it would be strange to watch them drive a sword through their chest, only to pull it out and start spinning around. If I take the flavour text from the Arms spec:

A battle-hardened master of two-handed weapons, using mobility and overpowering attacks to strike opponents down.

I know the first thing that would pop into your head is "why not have Overpower back instead of Whirlwind?". On the Live servers, I'd disagree completely, I really don't like Overpower as an ability, it's quick, doesn't hit very hard, and it's only gimmick is that it can't be dodged or parried. However, in Warlords we have the option to change bad things about the spec, and take good ideas and run with them before they eventually land in 6.0. Whirlwind is -not- a Single-Target damage ability. It is an AoE ability. If I wanted to be an AoE machine I would take Bladestorm, Ravager and Dragon Roar and jump into a crowd of enemies and chop them into bits. I don't want to be using Whirlwind against one target, it doesn't feel very Warrior-like to me, and I know some people might disagree.

The removal of Deep Wounds is also something that's confusing to me, especially with the consideration (and then removal) of Rend. Warriors won't have a Bleed/DoT. I'm pretty sure that'll make them the only class in the game without a DoT effect (barring Bloodbath of course), which means that they are going to need a lot of compensation in their autoattacks and abilities, causing serious problems for PvP and PvE. In PvP it means that all their abilities will be hitting considerably harder than other classes simply because they have to in order to be balanced against having no DoT effect, Warriors might end up just being able to global someone because that's how they'll be balanced, at least with a DoT effect you can take some damage away from the abilities to prevent crazy burst scenarios. In PvE it means that if they are out of melee range of any target they are worth exactly 0. They will be doing no damage at all, and if there's any "Stand Away From Boss Or Die" moments (Empowered Whirling Corruption says hello) then Warriors are going to be as useful as a chocolate teapot in a raid.

I'm going to throw down a suggestion here for possible sources of damage, and I will implore you to give me a response, whether that's here in the comments or on twitter (@CM_Exhil). I won't add weapon damage percentages or attack power numbers because that's not my job, my job in this scenario is to give feedback, not tune the game.

Mortal Strike - Costs Rage, has a cooldown, does damage and applies Deep Wounds (yes I'd like it back).
Colossus Smash - Costs more Rage, has a longer cooldown and hits a lot harder than Mortal Strike, makes all your other abilities ignore armour.
Overpower - Merge current Slam and Overpower, does damage, costs Rage, can't be dodged/parried, no CD, no Charges.
Execute - Does what it says on the tin, costs Rage, does a lot of damage, usable sub-20%.
Sudden Death - Your attacks have a % chance of allowing you to Execute the target at any % of health. If the target is under 20%, increases the Crit Chance of your next Execute by 50%

Now the next part is something that I feel should be part of the spec, but I can't decide what it should be. I'd like a passive for Arms called Unrelenting Assault that isn't the old version as honestly, it doesn't fit with the overarching meta-game for Warcraft any more. I've asked a few Warriors what they thought it should be and I've had some interesting responses, such as:

It has to be slow and hit hard for Arms, I always liked the idea of taking a resource risk - like spend all you've got for massive damage, but risk losing a lot of Rage. 

I want it to be iconic. If you pick any spec in the game there's always one thing that sumarises that spec. Whether it's Raging Blow for Fury, Killing Machine for Frost DKs, Combustion for Fire Mages or Chaos Bolt for Destro Warlocks, every spec has something that just screams "I am X". For Arms, I feel it should be exactly what it says it is, something that makes you progressively smash a target into the ground, so I'd like to propose the following (you'll immediately know where the idea comes from).

Unrelenting Assault - Every time you Overpower a target, increase the damage of your next Rage-consuming ability by X%, and the Rage cost by Y%.
If this effect is consumed by Overpower, it's damage is increased by (2xX)% and the Rage cost is increased by Y%.

Now I know this might freak some people out, but this is a discussion, I want to know what you all think of ideas like this, and if people in the community think up a better design for the spec they need to voice it and get it shown to Blizzard.

The entire point of an Alpha/Beta testing phase of a game is that people provide feedback on things. Whether they're good things, bad things, or things that are just okay. If something is bad, you need to stand up and say "I think this is a bad design, and here's why", rather than just saying "Oh it's alpha, it'll change before launch". The Devs can't iterate on a design when everybody is assuming it'll change on it's own, it needs feedback, and as such, I'm here providing feedback.

Thank you all for reading, and again if you have any thoughts or suggestions about what I've written, leave a comment below or send me a tweet (@CM_Exhil).

Progression Raiding, and How To Get Started

Long time no see. I know I probably should have kept writing here to give myself something to do in my spare time, but I could never think of anything interesting to say until a few days ago when I committed to getting myself back into a Hardcore Progression environment, and subsequently had a few people asking me what the difference is between that and regular raiding. So this article is for you if you happen to want to get yourself started on the ladder, or even just to satisfy your curiosity.

So I started raiding probably a month after the launch of Vanilla, it was the only aspect of the game that interested me at the time (I was very young and slaying dragons is always going to be cool). I had got to level 60, looked around and thought that getting epic loot and killing massive monsters was definitely the way forward. Needless to say that it was a lot more involved than I ever give it credit for, but I think that's something that, in some way, shape, or form, always carried through with hardcore raiding. On the surface it can look very similar to your Average Joe guild that wants a few bosses dead before the end of a content patch, but it's a lot more than that. I feel like I should list a few things that are different straight off the bat:

1. Time
2. Effort
3. Mindset

I only wrote three because I think if I wrote any more down people would wonder "isn't point X the same as point Y?", but I'll go over what I feel each one means.

The Time Investment

Hardcore Progression raiding takes a lot of time, and not just the time you spend actually killing the bosses. It's preparation time, minimizing downtime, maximizing uptime, theorycrafting, simming/optimizing, the amount of days you're actually spending killing whatever raid tier you're killing. There's a lot of time that gets spent actually playing or planning for the raids, and that's something that not everyone can or will put into a video game.

Effort Required

This point links in with the above, but I'd consider it as a separate point. To fully commit to hardcore or progression raiding requires a lot of effort, and whether this effort is going the extra mile to make sure you're playing at the bleeding edge and the peak of your capabilities, or contributing to your guild/team's strategies for killing a boss, dealing with a mechanic, or best use of utilizing raid cooldowns. u need to get it into your head that a lot will be expected of you, so start making a habit of going into a new fight understanding how you personally will deal with anything that gets thrown at you, and then deal with anyone else as and when appropriate. This also links into my next point:

The Mindset

You may have noticed at some point that hardcore raiders have a very different approach to things compared to a more casual player. The casual player might get a mechanic thrown at them, immediately panic, and only be able to get to grips with that mechanic after a few tries of it being solely their responsibility (again, not saying all casual players will do this, but a lot of them might). The hardcore raider might be in the same scenario, but will have a timer/countdown for when that ability is going to land, will have popped a defensive cooldown a second or two in advance if necessary and will have communicated this on some level to the team (via addon or voice communications), and transitioned from State A to B back to A smoothly and flawlessly. Now I know this might sound like I'm glorifying hardcore raiders, and I don't mean to be because they're not perfect and probably will never claim to be. What they do is get themselves into a mindset of being prepared for every eventuality, so that on the off-chance that they do have to deal with something unexpected, it's not 100% unexpected and it doesn't break down into chaos.

I've probably made some confusing statements, and knowing how I usually go off on one I've contradicted myself at least once, but the main point to get across is that Hardcore raiding requires a very specific set of skills, and to be honest, not everyone has these skills. There are players that have been playing for 10 years who don't have the spark, and I personally know a few that have been playing for less than a year who do have it. You can train yourself to do it or it can come naturally, in the end it won't matter because it comes down to one simple point.

You have to want to do it.

Some players will go the extra mile in a regular raid environment simply because it's what they're used to, but they won't expect others to do it all the time and others will be in a super hardcore raid and put in the bare minimum because they only enjoy the raid itself, not the preparation. I've raided with both types of people and sometimes it's those people that make you want to push forward and strive to be the absolute best you can be. In a perfect world I'd be able to push anyone I wanted into hardcore raiding with me because I know some absolutely amazing people who I know would be amazing raiders if they had the opportunity, but the truth is that they don't have that opportunity.

Hardcore raiding is just that, hardcore. There's so much that you need to do in order to maintain the levels of dedication and not everyone can do that, whether that's because of a job, school, family life, or any other commitments. The main thing to remember is that hardcore raiding will never be for everyone, it doesn't cater to specific individuals, it's there and there are some people that push themselves to levels that a lot of players can't do. This doesn't mean that the players who can't do it are better or worse off than the hardcore players. I've raided with players who considered themselves the best at their spec on the server, only to subsequently get trashed by a trial raider on an alt (Yes this has happened to me).

There's high and low points to this article, and at times it probably seems like I'm saying that you shouldn't get into progression raiding, but if there's anything you should take away from it, it's that the moment you have the option to push yourself to the next level, I heavily recommend you should, even if it's your first foray into this level of raiding, as the old adage goes; don't knock it 'til you've tried it.

I figure if I get any questions in the comments or responses on any kind of social media I'll either address them there or I'll just write a new blog post about it. Otherwise, I'm going to get back to fawning over the new Warrior details and theorycrafting for Warlords of Draenor. Seeya next time!