Where to start...
The current meta
When the new Warrior meta build first came out, a lot of people, myself included, didn't like how spammy ITZ made things. It was especially hard to keep up with mobile, but the more you played it the easier it got. With that being said, I would agree it wasn't the most enjoyable build to play. However, it was by far the best build for Warrior, so everyone played it. Allow me to explain why.
Unlike the other classes, where kiting and doing damage from a distance is key, the warrior is in the middle of battle getting hit with EVERYTHING all the time! This requires investment in a combination of defensive attributes and abilities in order to survive. It's not just about surviving, it's also about dealing AoE damage. Luckily this build has all the AoE skills you need to get you through the trial with Rending Slash, Leap DoT, WW proc, and Shockwave. Now let's look at the abilities Warrior uses with this meta build:
Rending Slash - AoE and DoT needed to fuel Shockwave damage
Cleave - 15% damage reduction
Leap - 50% damage reduction, AoE and Leap DoT fuels Shockwave damage
Shockwave - 25% damage reduction and 20% health regen per second!
ITZ - 2k parry. This probably ends up being around 50% damage reduction. Personally I'm at 40.8% Parry and with ITZ it goes to 72.8%, which is effectively more than 50% DR. Additionally, the more you parry the more you will maintain Templars 5k CR, proc WW for damage and crazy amounts of LoH, and reduce cooldowns with ITZ's effect.
Tough as Nails - +20% Armor
Lightning Reflexes - 400 Parry Rating
Power Infusion - 40% damage boost on proc
Oh, and can't forgot about the WW proc from warlords 4 set bonus- 30% damage reduction.
I play with anywhere between 93-95% damage reduction from Armor to survive trials 160+.
***Now, my first concern is that we're losing the cooldown reduction from ITZ. Will Warrior be able to Leap every 3 seconds for the 50% damage reduction? If not, the warrior will take twice the damage during the downtime and probably die. Will it be possible to maintain 100% ITZ uptime during mob phase? This is essential for the parry (damage reduction), damage, and recovery it provides. If it will not be possible, how is the Warrior going to survive?
A meta shift to inspire diversity
What does Warrior need? It needs better scaling with toughness and damage! Warriors don't scale well from attributes right now. They scale from their skills. This is why Warriors have the flattest curve. In observing the range in trials between the top 100 of each class, Warriors have the tightest range. In Discord, we had a challenge to see how high we could push with no CL points. I did TL 155 with a couple minutes to spare. The build does all the work. I agree, it needs to change. You need to scale into the late game rather than just having static amounts of damage on abilities.
Looking at toughness, maybe change the k value of Armor for Warrior, so Armor can give higher damage reduction. I can get 95% damage reduction with almost 28.5k Armor, and that's sacrificing a lot of damage attributes already. What happens if a warrior wants to have a build without Leap? In order to reach the same level of damage mitigation needed for high trials they'll need 97.5% damage reduction or 58.5k Armor with the current k value of 1500 (not possible). Changing Warrior's k value to about 750 would give you 97.5% damage reduction at 29.25k Armor, which is doable.
Damage reduction= a/(a+1500)
vs
Damage reduction= a/(a+750)
Or you could maybe give us a passive ability that provides Warrior with a base damage reduction apart from Armor.
Providing Warriors with alternative defensive boosts will remove our dependency on some of these active abilities that provide otherwise necessary defensive boosts. This will increase build diversity. It would also be nice to see changes in Bracer of Mastery for some abilities, so we can see other builds thrive. There is so much potential to see multiple builds competing against each other, not only for Warrior, but for the other classes too. Adjusting BoM bonuses would be a great way to balance this.
If you are going to get rid of ITZ's cooldown reduction effect, Warrior won't be able to spam skills nearly as fast. Fewer ability casts = less damage, obviously. To compensate, why not at least buff the damage of other abilities? Is the 25% damage buff of ITZ going to compensate for 50% fewer Shockwave casts? And again, it would be nice to see skills scale with attributes. For example instead of saying Devastate will do 6,000% damage per hit, why not do something that scales with an attribute such as CR or Power. Below, are a couple examples.
Ability damage = 1000% + (cr x 4%)
If you have 0 CR, you still do 1000% damage per hit. If have 2000 CR, you would be doing 9,000% per hit. If you scale your CR to 3000, you're now doing 13,000% per hit.
Ability damage = 1000% + (power + 2%)
If you have 0 Power, damage will be 1000% per hit. 5000 Power would be 11,000% per hit. If you scale Power to 7000, it would be 15,000% per hit.
The last thing I want to point out is how Osmosis changed the meta to AoE builds > single target builds by a long shot. Finish mob phase quickly and start stacking Osmosis on the boss, and within a few minutes you're hitting like a truck, especially during your talisman procs. Just look at these values:
After 2 minutes: 81.7% extra damage
3 minutes: 144.9% extra damage
4 minutes: 230% extra damage
5 minutes: 344.8% extra damage
6 minutes: 499.6% extra damage
7 minutes: 708.1% extra damage
How would a build like old dw shine with Osmosis when it would get at max 1-2 minutes for boss? There are players who get 7 minutes on boss fights at high trials. Sacrificing a weak mob phase for a strong boss phase doesn't work with Osmosis. By efficiently pulling to AoE everything down as quickly as possible, you get rewarded with insane damage on the boss later in the fight.
Sorry I was kinda all over the place, but I'm eager to test some builds out for myself in beta and figure out some of these answers. A lot of Warriors, myself included, are worried where Warrior will be, moving forward. If I were to guess, I would think they will easily be 10TL+ behind the other classes unless some other changes are made to compliment the ITZ nerf. Otherwise, other classes will be taking several steps forward while Warrior will be taking 10 steps back.
Special thanks to Shade for editing!
The current meta
When the new Warrior meta build first came out, a lot of people, myself included, didn't like how spammy ITZ made things. It was especially hard to keep up with mobile, but the more you played it the easier it got. With that being said, I would agree it wasn't the most enjoyable build to play. However, it was by far the best build for Warrior, so everyone played it. Allow me to explain why.
Unlike the other classes, where kiting and doing damage from a distance is key, the warrior is in the middle of battle getting hit with EVERYTHING all the time! This requires investment in a combination of defensive attributes and abilities in order to survive. It's not just about surviving, it's also about dealing AoE damage. Luckily this build has all the AoE skills you need to get you through the trial with Rending Slash, Leap DoT, WW proc, and Shockwave. Now let's look at the abilities Warrior uses with this meta build:
Rending Slash - AoE and DoT needed to fuel Shockwave damage
Cleave - 15% damage reduction
Leap - 50% damage reduction, AoE and Leap DoT fuels Shockwave damage
Shockwave - 25% damage reduction and 20% health regen per second!
ITZ - 2k parry. This probably ends up being around 50% damage reduction. Personally I'm at 40.8% Parry and with ITZ it goes to 72.8%, which is effectively more than 50% DR. Additionally, the more you parry the more you will maintain Templars 5k CR, proc WW for damage and crazy amounts of LoH, and reduce cooldowns with ITZ's effect.
Tough as Nails - +20% Armor
Lightning Reflexes - 400 Parry Rating
Power Infusion - 40% damage boost on proc
Oh, and can't forgot about the WW proc from warlords 4 set bonus- 30% damage reduction.
I play with anywhere between 93-95% damage reduction from Armor to survive trials 160+.
***Now, my first concern is that we're losing the cooldown reduction from ITZ. Will Warrior be able to Leap every 3 seconds for the 50% damage reduction? If not, the warrior will take twice the damage during the downtime and probably die. Will it be possible to maintain 100% ITZ uptime during mob phase? This is essential for the parry (damage reduction), damage, and recovery it provides. If it will not be possible, how is the Warrior going to survive?
A meta shift to inspire diversity
What does Warrior need? It needs better scaling with toughness and damage! Warriors don't scale well from attributes right now. They scale from their skills. This is why Warriors have the flattest curve. In observing the range in trials between the top 100 of each class, Warriors have the tightest range. In Discord, we had a challenge to see how high we could push with no CL points. I did TL 155 with a couple minutes to spare. The build does all the work. I agree, it needs to change. You need to scale into the late game rather than just having static amounts of damage on abilities.
Looking at toughness, maybe change the k value of Armor for Warrior, so Armor can give higher damage reduction. I can get 95% damage reduction with almost 28.5k Armor, and that's sacrificing a lot of damage attributes already. What happens if a warrior wants to have a build without Leap? In order to reach the same level of damage mitigation needed for high trials they'll need 97.5% damage reduction or 58.5k Armor with the current k value of 1500 (not possible). Changing Warrior's k value to about 750 would give you 97.5% damage reduction at 29.25k Armor, which is doable.
Damage reduction= a/(a+1500)
vs
Damage reduction= a/(a+750)
Or you could maybe give us a passive ability that provides Warrior with a base damage reduction apart from Armor.
Providing Warriors with alternative defensive boosts will remove our dependency on some of these active abilities that provide otherwise necessary defensive boosts. This will increase build diversity. It would also be nice to see changes in Bracer of Mastery for some abilities, so we can see other builds thrive. There is so much potential to see multiple builds competing against each other, not only for Warrior, but for the other classes too. Adjusting BoM bonuses would be a great way to balance this.
If you are going to get rid of ITZ's cooldown reduction effect, Warrior won't be able to spam skills nearly as fast. Fewer ability casts = less damage, obviously. To compensate, why not at least buff the damage of other abilities? Is the 25% damage buff of ITZ going to compensate for 50% fewer Shockwave casts? And again, it would be nice to see skills scale with attributes. For example instead of saying Devastate will do 6,000% damage per hit, why not do something that scales with an attribute such as CR or Power. Below, are a couple examples.
Ability damage = 1000% + (cr x 4%)
If you have 0 CR, you still do 1000% damage per hit. If have 2000 CR, you would be doing 9,000% per hit. If you scale your CR to 3000, you're now doing 13,000% per hit.
Ability damage = 1000% + (power + 2%)
If you have 0 Power, damage will be 1000% per hit. 5000 Power would be 11,000% per hit. If you scale Power to 7000, it would be 15,000% per hit.
The last thing I want to point out is how Osmosis changed the meta to AoE builds > single target builds by a long shot. Finish mob phase quickly and start stacking Osmosis on the boss, and within a few minutes you're hitting like a truck, especially during your talisman procs. Just look at these values:
After 2 minutes: 81.7% extra damage
3 minutes: 144.9% extra damage
4 minutes: 230% extra damage
5 minutes: 344.8% extra damage
6 minutes: 499.6% extra damage
7 minutes: 708.1% extra damage
How would a build like old dw shine with Osmosis when it would get at max 1-2 minutes for boss? There are players who get 7 minutes on boss fights at high trials. Sacrificing a weak mob phase for a strong boss phase doesn't work with Osmosis. By efficiently pulling to AoE everything down as quickly as possible, you get rewarded with insane damage on the boss later in the fight.
Sorry I was kinda all over the place, but I'm eager to test some builds out for myself in beta and figure out some of these answers. A lot of Warriors, myself included, are worried where Warrior will be, moving forward. If I were to guess, I would think they will easily be 10TL+ behind the other classes unless some other changes are made to compliment the ITZ nerf. Otherwise, other classes will be taking several steps forward while Warrior will be taking 10 steps back.
Special thanks to Shade for editing!
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