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Warrior changes in Patch 3.1 PTR build 9722

Matthew Rossi
Updated ·4 min read

Well, the changes, they keep being incremental, but they are happening. This latest PTR patch has one change that proves even in these times of nerfing Titan's Grip damage that, some times, just some times, good things happen for fury warriors. Like what, you may ask? I'm glad you did.

Improved Berserker Stance now increases strength by 3/6/9/12/15% instead of increasing attack power by 2/4/6/8/10%

I honestly can't gibber at that change enough. It's flatly astonishing. If the change was merely AP to Str and the percentages didn't change it would make the talent twice as good. But by having it increase strength by 15% instead of AP by 10%, it's now nearly three times as good, and will be even better when raid buffed. (Note: without raid buffs, this will be an AP decrease unless you are very lucky with rings to have STR in both slots. Any AP gear you have will detract from the benefit of the talent, making it stronger when grouped/raiding but weaker solo.) I think I had a small squeegasm when I read this change. But wait, there's more! It's not all this good.

The folks at MMO-Champion dug up the goods Let's take a look, shall we?


Arms

  • Rend (Rank 1) and Rend (Rank 2) had their damage slightly increased.

  • Juggernaut has been changed to : Your Charge ability is now usable while in combat. Following a Charge, your next Slam ability has an additional 100% chance to critically hit if used within 10 sec.

  • Taste for Blood now give you a chance to allow the use of your Overpower ability for 9 sec. (Up from 5 secs)

Fury

Protection


Okay, taken all in all this is a pretty solid set of changes for both Arms and Fury. Arms gets more damage from Rend, which they're using to proc Taste for Blood anyway, and the change to Juggernaut (is it really a change when the ability isn't even live yet?) gives a nice boost to Slam damage, which is always nice. Taste for Blood lasting longer is nice, too. Let's see some of that action aimed at Bloodsurge next.

Fury gets a PvP related nerf (which isn't really aimed at Fury but rather at all warriors, and since they reduced the cooldown on IS recently it's not that surprising, nor that painful) and an incredible buff. This change will definitely move DPS warriors away from leather and mail gear, as it's much easier to find strength on plate. I'll compare my AP numbers on the test servers as soon as I get a chance, but I definitely expect them to be higher with this change. Edited to Add: As of right now, with my leather DPS gloves on this is a nerf, I lose about 75 AP. When I switch to my DPS set gloves, I end up at almost exactly the same AP on live and in test. The presence of AP on my neck, cape, and ring slot (I have a Ruthlessness in one slot, so there's STR there at least) means that this change is one that has potential for a good deal more AP, but at present does not provide it with current itemization. Since I don't expect that many melee DPS rings, necks and capes with STR on them, this ability will not provide the bonuses it otherwise could. In the end, it's a wash.

Prot sees some more ways to clear snares and roots (you could already Intercept and Intervene in combat, so that won't be new) and what seems to me to be a tooltip clarification.

All in all, ranges from painless to outright fantastic. I'm actually excited for once. Real, testable arms changes and a buff to fury? I didn't see that coming.