The Art of War(craft Class Design) and an Open Letter

So Warlords has been out for a while. I've levelled to 100, done some garrison shenanigans, some PvP, some PvE, and I'm still left with a bitter taste in my mouth. This is mainly down to one thing.

Ignorance.

The situation is this:

• Arms Warriors are actually the most braindead class in the game with no procs, no engaging aspects to the spec, and mindless AoE burst where you just stack all your talented cooldowns.
• Fury Warriors are in the early-xpac woes of having not enough crit from their gear to keep them competitive with pretty much most DPS classes. Not to mention they're also a clusterfuck and a spamfest in order to come close to doing respectable dps, which is stretching it.
• Gladiator Stance has been a tremendous success. If you count "success" as being a better DPS than the two actual DPS specs for Warrior, taking less damage and requiring less gear to do so. To be honest the only downsides to it that I notice constantly are that it doesn't have Rallying Cry or a Mortal Wounds debuff.

So where do I stand on this entire mountain of WTF?

Right at the top, wondering what on earth the Developers are doing to my class.

Normally, I try my hardest to keep a cool head and look at changes objectively, as any sensible game designer should, and try and see how they fit into the overall picture. That of course requires changes to be made, of which there are none to see for the despicable state of Arms and Fury's spec dynamic, if you can even call it a dynamic in the case of Arms. In all my time playing Warrior (Since 4.2, in case you were wondering), I've never seen such an outcry of "Blizzard, what are you doing?" until Warlords of Draenor rolled around.

Warriors were taken from their pedastal at the end of Mists of Pandaria and told that they had lived enough life of luxury and needed to go back to their roots (pun intended on multiple levels). The issue here is that nobody asked for change. What's funnier is that Celestalon himself said that Fury only needed "a bit of change".

So, I'd like to end this very short article with a request and a fairly open letter:

Dear Blizzard, and more specifically the World of Warcraft Class Design Team.

Listen to the Warrior community. Nobody wanted drastic change and you forced it on us. Nobody wanted to return to Vanilla and you forced it on us. Nobody wanted the eerie silence that we received during Alpha and Beta testing, but we got it.

Every single Warrior plays Warrior for a reason. Because it's fun? Because it looks cool? It doesn't matter.

What matters is that you don't become the reason that they stop playing Warrior.

This class has endured change after change after change from all those years ago until today, and never before has there been an outcry this large for you to change it. While we might scream, shout, and stamp our feet, understand that we just want the best for our class, just like you do.

Work with us, not against us.

You know where we are when you want to talk.

Yours sincerely,

Exhil