Fury takes 10% more damage in Berserker Stance

Fury Warriors in WoW Forever take 10% more damage in Berserker Stance, and 15% with Death Wish active. Rage now comes from weapon speed and critical strikes. An overview of what changed for the Warrior on the beta, and which points are still open.

In Classic, the Warrior was the strongest damage dealer by a wide margin. Forever takes a lot of that away. Some changes come with a replacement, others do not.

Rage from weapon speed

Rage in Classic grew with the damage of each swing, so better gear also meant more Rage. Forever uses normalized Rage, as modern WoW has since Cataclysm: a fixed amount per swing, based on weapon speed. Players calculated that a swing gives 3.46 Rage for every second of weapon speed, 30% more with a two-handed weapon and half for the off-hand. Blizzard has not confirmed that formula.

In the first beta build, critical strikes gave no extra Rage. Blizzard added 75% and raised it to 100% the same day. Critical Strike is now the stat that gives a Warrior more Rage as gear improves.

An old bug is gone as well. In Classic, a queued Heroic Strike or Cleave removed the miss penalty of the off-hand, so a Warrior with two weapons got far more Rage. Forever fixes that. Furious Precision, a new Fury talent with up to 10% hit for the off-hand, makes up part of the loss.

What came and what went

Change	Classic	Forever
Flurry	30% attack speed	25%
Battle Shout (level 60)	232 Attack Power	140
Blessing of Might (level 60)	185 Attack Power	133
Slam	No cooldown	18 seconds
Rage kept on a stance change	Up to 25, all from the talent	10 baseline, up to 25 with the talent

Tactical Mastery is now baseline at level 14 and keeps 10 Rage. Improved Tactical Mastery adds up to 15, so the maximum stays 25, as in Classic. Victory Rush, from level 20, hits for 15% of Attack Power and heals 10% of maximum health, within 20 seconds after a kill.

Arms gets Bloodthrill: main hand attacks on a target with Rend can allow Overpower for 6 seconds. Weaponmaster replaces the four weapon talents, with 15% armor ignored for maces. Improved Slam cuts 3 seconds from the cooldown of Slam. Spearing Strike deals 40% weapon damage, plus 80% against Giants, Dragonkin and mounted targets.

Stances and Recklessness

Each spec is tied to a stance. Arms needs Battle Stance for Rend and Overpower, Protection needs Defensive Stance, and Fury needs Berserker Stance for Whirlwind. Berserker Stance gives 3% crit chance and 10% more damage taken, magic damage included. Battle Stance has no bonus at all.

That extra damage is under discussion. Rogues and Feral Druids also fight in melee, but take no extra damage. Against that stands the higher damage of the stance. Whether 25 Rage is enough to switch stances in the middle of a fight, is also debated.

Recklessness keeps its 30 minute cooldown: 15 seconds of 100% more crit chance, with 20% more damage taken. In a developer podcast, Blizzard said that Warriors did far too much damage in tests with shorter cooldowns. One proposal from players: half the effect for half the cooldown.

Cleave and Sunder Armor

Blizzard wants Warriors to be the kings of cleave damage. Cleave costs 20 Rage, and the queued swing itself gives no Rage, also not on a critical strike. Players suggest a cheaper Cleave, Rage back when it hits two targets, or Rage at half rate from queued swings.

Sunder Armor still stacks 5 times, at 15 Rage each, and lasts 30 seconds. In Classic, a raid had many Warriors to share that work. Most raids in Forever are for 10 or 20 players, so one Warrior may spend the first five global cooldowns of every fight on it. Faerie Fire and Curse of Recklessness give their full effect at once. One proposal is a maximum of 3 stacks.

Whether Blizzard changes any of these points before launch, is not known.