Reap What You Sow
Discovered by chance, the change is actually an unannounced bug fix for the Season 3 Slayer tier set, resulting in much more reliable Reap the Storm procs in multitarget content, though it helps to know a little bit about Slayer hero mechanics to understand the full extent of the change and its impact.
Since the beginning of The War Within, Bloodthirst has had a 20% chance to trigger Reap the Storm per target hit, for a combined 67% chance when cleaving five targets, causing Bloodthirst to be highly prioritized in multitarget combat throughout seasons 1 and 2.
With the addition of the Season 3 Slayer tier set in Patch 11.2, Raging Blow now also has up to a 20% chance to trigger Reap the Storm, though this chance is only rolled once per cast. Because of this, Raging Blow has a much lower overall chance to proc than Bloodthirst and has not been prioritized because of it, severely limiting the practical usefulness of the tier set bonus.
Following this week's update, Raging Blow now also has a separate chance to trigger Reap per target hit, up to a 67% chance just like Bloodthirst, giving Slayer a much more reliable way of triggering Reap and finally allowing the tier set bonus to meaningfully increase its multitarget damage potential.
The result has been explosive, with Fury leaping upward to an unprecedentedly competitive ranking on Mythic+ leaderboards. It's also led to a surprising amount of extra nuance to an otherwise fairly simple playstyle: instead of just pushing each button on proc or cooldown in the order of how much damage they deal, there is now much more consideration for timing Bladestorm to apply Overwhelmed to new targets, recognizing when to Execute more in order to refresh Bladestorm's cooldown faster, continuing to prioritize Bloodthirst when Bladestorm isn't available, or spamming Raging Blow when everything else is running smoothly. For the first time, the specialized effects found in the Slayer hero talent tree truly interact with one another in what is still a relatively simple rotation, but a much more rewarding gameplay experience.
The fixed version of the tier set has made Slayer's mechanical interactions much more meaningful.
Overcoming Target Caps
Target caps have long been the bane of Fury Warriors, being largely limited to only hitting five targets via Whirlwind, leaving them quite disadvantaged in an age where Mythic+ dungeons are regularly pulled 8, 10, 12, or even more targets at a time. While Arms Warriors rely on Cleave, Mountain Thane introduced Thunder Blast and Slayer increased the frequency of Bladestorm alongside Reap the Storm procs, though both continued to be very mediocre in Mythic+ due to the inconsistent nature of those procs just not amounting to all that much damage. The Hero-themed Season 3 tier set bonuses tried to emphasize this further by increasing the amount of Reap and Blast procs, though Fury Warriors remained firmly in the C to D tier of Mythic+ specializations... until this hotfix.
Rising from D-tier to B-tier in a week, this is the most numerically competitive DPS Warriors have been since Battle for Azeroth.
Yes, Fury is now much more powerful and many players will cite that as the reason for their newfound enjoyment, though the difference may not actually be as great as the length of these bar charts would seem to imply.
Fury Warriors have risen from an average of 5.6m to 6.2m and from 7.2m to 8.2m on the top end, a substantial 10-14% increase.
Compared to Arms Warriors, Fury was previously 7-8% behind and is now 3-5% ahead, which is actually more balanced than they were before.
Colossus and Mountain Thane still continue to enjoy much better multitarget damage potential, especially in very large pulls, while Slayer brings a better balance of single target boss and multitarget damage. This means there's still a place for those other specializations, even if Slayer performs a little better on average.
Keep in mind that these stats shift a little bit every day as more Mythic+ runs are completed, but the general idea remains that DPS Warriors are enjoying a newfound place in the limelight, even if it remains unlikely that they will become meta this season. While the damage is competitive, DPS Warriors continue to lack the defensive and utility benefits brought by other frontrunners, being unable to circumvent, immune, or flat out ignore important mechanics the same way.
Another byproduct of Slayer focusing on RB and Thane on BT is further diversification of talent builds, creating more varied gameplay options.
In previous seasons, these two builds and their rotations would be practically identical.
Meanwhile, not a whole lot has changed in terms of raid performance. The change has no impact on single target and only two fights feature enough constant multitarget to have an impact: Forgeweaver and Soul Hunters. In both cases, Mountain Thane was noticeably ahead last week, though since the change the two heroes have been very competitive, giving players more freedom to choose one or the other at their preference.
Bug Fix, Hot Fix, Tuning Mess
The only real complaint here is making this change in an unannounced hotfix. While nominally considered a bug fix for the previously inconsistent proc behavior, it has had a large (though not unwelcome) impact on balance, leaving players to discover it on their own or through word of mouth, rather than any official source.
That said, even the announced class tuning is often missed or misleading for many players. It's hard to really understand the impact of some of these changes are when one ability is buffed and another two are nerfed, particularly when so many player communities are cagey about testing and publicizing their information - a seemingly well-reasoned +4% buff suddenly turns into massive +30% advantage due to a conveniently discovered bug with a previously "unplayable" talent, further confusing any attempt at understanding the already convoluted state of balance in competitive World of Warcraft.
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For their part, community response for those who are in the know has been exceptionally positive, not just because of the much needed performance gain, but for breathing new life into a class that hasn't had a whole lot of reason to get excited for Mythic+ in several seasons. Announced or otherwise, this bug fix has been a delightful surprise, and we can only hope to see more similarly well-intentioned changes in the future.
Accurate representation of Slayer Fury Warrior gaming following the bug fix.
