Warrior ability list changes.

I’ve just been having a look over the class ability list on MMO-Champion, and there are some interesting points of note for those of us who still play warriors; amazingly, a couple of the most interesting things are actually positive for a change.

Obviously, don’t forget, this is beta and things may change etc. Also, my reading of the ability list could be flawed because I wasn’t responsible for compiling it and there are some contradictions with the glyphs I spoke about yesterday. As a result, these points are not promises in any way, shape or form.

Pinky swear.

But first up, is Bladestorm. Here’s what it now says:

Bladestorm: Renamed from Whirlwind. You become a whirling storm of destructive force, striking all nearby targets with your main hand weapon for 75% weapon damage. Also does 75% weapon damage for off-hand.

Now, this appears to imply that Bladestorm has flat-out replaced Whirlwind (unless I’m reading the text wrong), but Whirlwind appears to have made the cut and has glyphs that affect it – but in the Fury section. Bladestorm now comes listed under general warrior abilities, meaning EVERY warrior will get it as baseline at the cost of Whirlwind.

Wow.

But adding to the default caution, no duration is made clear. Bladestorm may be closer to Whirlwind’s duration than the usual six-seconds we’ve all become accustomed to.

Next up is our tanking favourite, Devastate:

Devastate: No longer has a rage cost. Deals 75% weapon damage plus 945 and sunders the target, causing Weakened Armor. Replaces Sunder Armor.

Yep, it looks like they’ve decided to remove the cooldown from Devastate. Thank goodness for that. In the history of bad ideas, putting gaps into the Protection warrior priority system is right up there with the worst of them. Trying to fix something that works perfectly just doesn’t make sense.

That said, I’m sure Blizzard will likely hit us somewhere because of this obvious change.

Oh, look at Shield Slam:

Shield Slam: Now generates 10 Rage, but no longer dispels a magic effect.

We knew about the pointless loss of the dispel, but it seems it now generates half the rage it was originally mooted to generate. This is the price for getting Devastate back, by the look of it, and it has a horrible implication for Shield Block. At its whopping cost of 60 rage we’re now, at best, looking at 36 seconds before we’ve built enough rage to use Shield Block.

But then again, Sword and Board has also changed slightly:

Sword and Board: Your Revenge has a 60% chance of resetting the cooldown of your Shield Slam and increasing the rage it generates by 5 for 5 sec.

So, using Shield Slam while under the effect of Sword and Board will give 15 rage rather than 10. This will probably be enough to push our use of Shield Block under the thirty seconds it stands at now (or Shield Barrier, obviously), yet it still works out at an overall nerf. Shield Block is only going to be up for 6 seconds rather than ten, and it will cost a ridiculous 50 rage more.

Given that rage will no longer be generated by damage taken, and accounting for misses, dodges and parries on Shield Slam, AS WELL AS the two-table rolling for block, this seriously needs looked at again, or explained better. It’s a fucking pigs ear.

Anyway, some miscellaneous notes are worthwhile.

Despite the glyph shoring it up, Recklessness doesn’t appear to pop up in the list. Has it been removed entirely because it’s such a crap cooldown, especially in a world where our baseline critical strike rating is so low? I don’t think that’s the case; rather, with Bladestorm moving into the baseline abilities list, I’m more inclined to think Recklessness has taken its place as a talent. I know, the imagination at work here is astounding. In saying that, having not seen a potential rework, I’ll judge it when I see it.

Anyway, that’s enough conjecture for now. Naturally, all of this could be complete rubbish and we’ll need to see the next beta build in order to get clarification on any of this. However, it just doesn’t look as if the warrior development team actually has any long-term warrior players on it.

You’d think that a requirement.