Ever since its rework in the Original Patch 1.6, Warrior DPS has only gotten better and better, both in its perceived viability as well as its power. By the end of the Original run of Vanilla, Warrior had clawed its way into being a respectable DPS class, and by the time Classic rolled around in 2019 was considered the best DPS in the game. The gap between DPS Warrior and every other class was immense, and was incomparable to any other gap between DPS specs across the history of the game, with the possible exception of early Death Knights in Naxxramas during WotLK Classic. As such, Warrior was fully expected to receive heavy changes heading into Forever, and while some of the removals and additions we have seen feel both expected and understandable, others only seem to invite more questions.
Rage and all its friends
To address the Devilsaur in the room, Rage Normalization was, in my opinion, a change that was much needed. Rage normalization refers to the change made in Cataclysm where instead of Rage being generated with a formula based on damage dealt with auto attacks, Rage is instead generated with a flat amount based on swing speed, with a bonus amount generated with Critical Strikes. Non normalized Rage was by far one of the most prominent issues with DPS Warrior; gear not only increased your damage outright, but also scaled the amount you could press abilities, leading to a situation where the gap between gear levels was far higher than it initially seemed. This gap could be felt even when leveling; Getting a new weapon not only sped you up simply by the fact that you had a better weapon in the first place, but your rage generation would be increased by a significant amount as well.
Rage became a much bigger issue with Dual Wielding, however. Due to a major bug with the way the game recognized attack tables, queuing an "on next attack" ability such as Heroic Strike or Cleave would remove the Dual Wield miss penalty from your offhand while the ability was queued. This meant that a major disadvantage of Dual Wielding, the added chance to miss with your auto attacks, was completely removed, and in raiding content meant that your rage generation was vastly above what it should be. Instead of these abilities becoming a way to dump extra rage, they became a much more common part of your rotation because simply pressing them had a good chance of your off-hand generating more rage than you would spend on the ability. Once again the problem became even worse with gear, and at end game you could simply ignore your rage bar for a large part of the fight unless you got a streak of unlucky dodges. This bug persisted all the way through until Heroic Strike was reworked in Cataclysm, and has finally been fixed in Forever, although we have received the Furious Precision talent to compensate for its loss.
The initial variant of Rage Normalization we received, however, had several significant issues. The first, and most important issue, was that it simply did not generate enough rage. The base formula for Rage generation is expressed as a simple formula, as displayed below
base = 3.46 x weaponSpeed x handMultiplier (off-hand: half)
swing = base x 1.3 for a two-hander, else base
Credit to The Forever Warrior Github
With this amount of Rage generation, Warrior struggled to keep its abilities on cooldown, and the relatively fluid and active play style it enjoyed before was almost completely removed. Not only did your abilities cost a large amount of rage, you generated it relatively slowly, and your stats were far worse than before - the removal of easy access to Weapon Skill through racials and easily accessible items such as Edgemaster's Handguards meant that you needed more hit to achieve your soft cap than before. Most notably, the rage scaling with gear the spec enjoyed had almost completely vanished - critical strikes in the initial build of Forever did not give extra rage, making the only way to generate more rage to stack Hit %, a design that ran antithetical to one of our talents that already gave us hit on our offhand.
This rework was met with no small degree of outcry - While DPS Warrior had needed a nerf from its 1.12 iteration, this had been far too brutal. The low rate of Rage generation would cause the spec to be incredibly slow in end game content, and go from being a spec with one of the more active play styles to one where you would be expected to potentially press no buttons for ten or more seconds. Blizzard quickly announced changes two weeks after the Beta went live, however - adding a 75% additional rage modifier to critical strikes, before increasing it to 100% the same day due to their internal metrics being influenced by a bug with one of the talents.
An image comparison (Credit to Marrows Compendium) of how our rage generation compares between the 3 versions of Forever and Classic.
This change finally put Warrior rage generation where it should be - enough to press your main rotational abilities on cooldown, not enough to spend the whole fight spending Rage on Heroic Strike, but with a way to gradually increase our ability to press more buttons through gathering Critical Strike, an attribute we must balance with the rest of our gear. Blizzard will need to pay close attention, however, and adjust both our base rage gain and the amount we generate from Critical Strikes in case we are either generating far too much or, in all likelihood, still generating not quite enough.
Talents and Abilities
When compared to some other classes and specs, DPS Warrior gained very few new toys to play with in WoW Forever. Victory Rush is possibly the biggest of these additions, but is mostly a leveling bonus; landing killing blows in end game content is rare, and the spell doesn't hit hard enough to consider it a big loss to be unable to proc it reliably anyway. The other major new addition is in the form of Tactical Mastery now having a baseline component, letting us conserve a small amount of rage when changing stances without a talent point investment.
The Fury Tree in particular is a stark reminder that the class has been significantly pruned down; several of the new talents are added only to compensate for removals of features we had before. Furious Precision only exists to serve as a replacement for the Heroic Strike Queuing mechanic, and the minor amount of damage added to Bloodthirst barely compensates for several of our key buffs in Battle Shout and Blessing of Might having a large chunk of their attack power removed. Even one of our core talents in Flurry had its max attack speed reduced from 30% to 25%.
The Arms Tree has a few new toys to play with, but apart from one major new talent that does add some much needed rage efficiency, the changes are very small. Bloodthrill is admittedly a strong new addition to our arsenal, being a proc that allows us to use one of our most rage efficient spells in Overpower that would normally not see a huge amount of use, also allowing us to feel as if our Improved Overpower has more impact. Everything else that was added, however, feels quite underwhelming. Spearing Strike is relegated to either incredibly niche PvP usages, or a long cooldown spell that is weak against all but a few enemy types. Weaponmaster is simply a condensing of the original different weapon type talents, with an added PvE bonus for maces. Improved Slam would be a fantastic new addition, if the baseline ability Slam hadn't been slapped with a quite frankly brutal 18 second cooldown.
Fury also maintains a baffling conditional on its core stance; Berserker Stance continues to increase our damage taken by a quite frankly unreasonable 10%. The "melee tax", a concept where melee specs inevitably take more damage from abilities due to having a smaller area in which they can deal damage but in return are given either increased survivability or are able to deal more damage in return appears to apply to some specs and not others in WoW Forever - why must we continue to pay this more heavily than any other spec? Retribution Paladins have the ability to become immune and self heal, Enhancement Shamans can self heal, Survival Hunters can go out to range. The closest comparisons are Rogues and Feral Druids, but both specs do not have an increased damage taken modifier. Is the intention that we are being made to compensate for our higher armour? If so, why does this damage taken increase translate to Magical Damage as well? If the intention is to punish us for being in a higher DPS stance, why is there not an effort to enable playing in Battle Stance more; Arms Warriors must be in it in order to apply and use their Rend and Overpower abilities, but Fury must suffer in Berserker Stance the whole time. While we have Death Wish active the situation is even worse, totaling a quite miserable 15% total damage taken increase, a not insignificant number. For reference, this is roughly the % increase Fury Warrior was ahead of other specs in Single Target fights during Blackwing Lair in the recent Classic Anniversary Run, and that was considered an unacceptable advantage to the point of being ridiculed..
Stances in general are a topic I would not be opposed to being expanded upon. Stances have been a core part of a Warriors identity for the majority of WoWs lifetime, and is a fantastic RPG-esque mechanic that lets us feel as if our choice of stance has an impact on how you are playing. At least, this is how its supposed to work in theory. Currently, each stance is hard assigned to a certain spec - Arms is forced into Battle Stance because they cannot cast core parts of their rotation in Rend and Overpower without it, Protection must stay in Defensive Stance in order to use the majority of their abilities as well as deal additional threat, and Fury is locked into Berserker Stance in order to use one of their two rotational abilities, Whirlwind. If the goal of these designs is to make players swap between stances more often, then the paltry 25 rage you get to keep when swapping feels like far too little - Arms Warriors get enough to cast Whirlwind and nothing more, while Fury cannot swap to Battle Stance to cast Overpower during gaps in their rotation without risking not being able to cast their other core abilities. To make matters worse, Battle Stance has no positive effects associated with it, making spending time in the stance feel as if you are powered down when compared to the small critical strike increase of Berserker Stance. If the goal is to make swapping between stances the core playstyle, then why is the amount of Rage we get to keep not increased? Tactical Mastery having a baseline component now seems really good, until you realize that the talent that it used to encompass in Improved Tactical Mastery now gives less per point, meaning that we are conserving exactly the same amount of rage! This feels like a much unneeded adjustment, and one that could easily be changed to let a more satisfying play style where you enjoy switching between stances take root, instead of dreading having to swap. If the goal is to preserve stance to spec identity, then adding a bonus to Battle Stance somehow makes sense - Arms seems like it will suffer in Rage generation when compared to Fury, so I would propose adding a talent in place of the underwhelming Spearing Strike that gives you a chance to proc extra Rage while in Battle Stance. Now, each of the stances has a modifier of some form, and you don't feel overly punished for spending time in any of them situationally.
Finally, one of our spec defining abilities is the source of much discussion and controversy, especially surrounding its cooldown. Recklessness is an iconic Warrior ability, but one that seems to have been intentionally ignored by the developers due to its power, remaining at a staggering 30 minute cooldown. If the class having a shorter cooldown would make it unbalanced, why is the power of the ability not being lowered? If the intention is to preserve the fantasy of being able to use this ability and become very powerful for a short duration of time a few times every night, surely reducing the effects and cooldown by 50% would make it far more satisfying. If the ability existing at all is causing issues balancing the class in end game content, I would much prefer it to be simply removed and power given to the class in other ways. A good Recklessness feels fantastic, yes, but this is always balanced out by pressing the ability and promptly either having a string of terrible RNG with ability dodges, being rage starved (a much more likely occurrence in WoW Forever), or simply getting chosen for a mechanic that requires you to disengage from the boss. The latter is not an argument for being told to not press it on a boss, either; the moment you start disqualifying entire encounters from being viable fights to use your spec defining ability on, the argument for it being a tool to balance around sheds all viability.
All of these facts come together to paint a somewhat saddening picture; DPS Warriors aren't allowed to get anything new without losing something we already had. Where as other classes have received large overhauls and fancy reworks, DPS Warriors have merely been given consolation prizes that are simply equal or worse to what we already had, and expected to be happy with it.
What do we actually need?
Warrior does not need a return to its 2019 state. Even the most fervent Warrior player can agree that that version of the class was overtuned and ridiculous. The class doesn't need a lot to feel better, however, and adding too much could run the risk of not being able to preserve a more "Classic" feel.
The first and most important change is a way to reduce our rage expenditure in cleave. A stated goal of the Warrior class fantasy is the ability to "sustain cleave like no other class can", and yet our primary damage dealer in these scenarios, the aptly named Cleave spell, costs a significant amount of rage while also preventing your mainhand swing from generating any. This raises the rage cost on the ability far beyond its base cost - if you get a critical strike on your cleave ability it still counts as an ability swing, and does not generate extra rage. This means that our rage consumption in cleave is very high - we can either give up major single target damage by delaying our Bloodthirst ability, or accept that our rage generation isn't high enough to actually be able to perform the role that the developers have set out to make us able to do. There are several easy solutions to this - Reducing the rage cost of the spell itself, giving a refund when 2 targets are hit, or even giving a talent that increases the amount of targets hit by 1, similar to the Wrath of the Lich King glyph. However, my personal request for the ability would be for swings made while Cleave and Heroic Strike are queued to still generate rage, even at a 50% penalty. This helps alleviate some of the high rage cost for committing to our damage profile, while still having a moderate cost to being able to perform AoE consistently and having satisfying gear scaling.
Another spell that needs modification to lessen the monotony is Sunder Armor. In Classic WoW, you could expect to have a fair number of Warriors in your raid, and applying and maintaining this debuff was a shared responsibility amongst a large number of players. In WoW Forever, however, raid sizes have significantly shrunk for most content - while 40 man raids, exist, the first tier of content has only a single 40 man boss, and the majority of raiding will be done in either 10 or 20 man environments. In these compositions, there is a good chance you will have no other Warriors raiding with you, depending on the perceived strength of the class, and this results in a situation where a Warrior must commit the opening 5 globals of every fight to applying a debuff, at a not insignificant rage cost. This debuff must also be maintained throughout the fight, again at a rage cost, and any time a new focus target appears, such as a new boss type mob within an encounter, this process must be repeated. No other class pays this much price for applying its utility - other Armor debuffs in Faerie Fire and Curse of Recklessness have both a longer duration, lower opportunity cost, and apply their full benefit instantly. I would like to see the stacks of this ability reduced to a maximum of 3, similar to later expansions, and a way to maintain the debuff at a reduced cost given.
Lingering Doubts
As it stands, Warrior looks fine in end game PvE; Numerically, that is. The class has lost its higher APM gameplay that was a core tenet of the Classic playstyle, has been forced into taking talents that give us removed features back, and seems to have been selected to receive a lot of the utility punishment that other specs have had removed. A lot of this ultimately will come down to how encounters are designed, and how they interact with our kit. Encounters with sustained two to three target cleave, Execute phases that require heavy burst damage, or encounters with light to medium incoming damage are all profiles that heavily support our playstyle and kit. If the encounter is focused mostly on single target, mass AoE, or the damage is too heavy, then Warrior seems to suffer from the perils of its design philosophy; balancing around abilities that are too long of a cooldown and too expensive both Rage and Opportunity cost wise means that DPS Warrior rests on a knifes edge of viability. Only time will tell how these boss fights are designed, and they could be a make or break for one of WoWs most iconic specs.
