Wotlk 51 Point Fury Warrior Talent: Titan’s Whiff
So, I have been playing the World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King beta for for some time now. I took a break for a few weeks, after they moved around the arms tree for warriors, and decided to come back when I saw that they had removed the speed nerf from the highly anticipated fury warrior 51 point talent, Titan’s Grip.
For those who don’t know, Titan’s Grip would allow a warrior to duel wield two hand weapons. When originally announced, TG came with a speed penalty, but warriors had the option to spec additional points into it to reduce the speed debuff. Blizzard then changed their mind, moving TG down one level, making it a 51 point talent with no penalty — but the fun didn’t stop there.
I saw this and decided to log in and give it a whirl. Unfortunately, as I tried to log in, the game notified me that I needed to download another patch. The new patch contained a new nerf to TG, and this time, we had no option to spec additional points to reduce it. No longer was Blizzard going to decrease our speed, instead, they opted to increase our miss rate by 15%.
Considering that the amount of hit rating you need scales as you level, one can only imagine that warriors will need an insane amount of hit rating at level 80 to not miss on yellow (critical) attacks. The biggest problem is that most fury warriors strive to not only not miss on yellow attacks, but they also want to make sure they are reducing their chance to miss on white (normal) melee damage.
If you rolled a warrior, and you raid as DPS, you are likely not happy with the new changes to the warrior tree. In addition to the new “Titan’s Wiff”, Blizzard has reduced Blood Frenzy, which previously gave a 4% damage increase to a target, down to 2%, and your Battle Shout no longer stacks with a Paladin’s Blessing of Might. In other words, your 2-3 minute buff has been nixed by a 30 minute buff.
Blizzard has both indirectly and directly stated on their forums that they do not want one talent point to be more powerful then others across different character types, but many WoW gamers hold PVP at fault for the warrior debuff as they believe the company feels it would be too powerful for player versus player action.
Of course, this is still the beta, and things may change multiple times before release, however the introduction and emphasis on a mix of PVE and PVP seem to have watered down the traditional 3 headed talent tree approach. Might it be time to try something new?
Afterthought: What do you think of the talent tree approach? Do you think talent trees make sense in general, or is it time for something different?
