Changes to Debuffs, Buffs, and Raid Stacking

In this post, Jimmythenumbers speaks of the upcoming changes to raid buffs / debuffs stacking.  I won’t paste the entire list of changes as it is very long and few of them actually touches the warrior class in itself, so I’ll just requote the ones that do affect them (from a DPS perspective).

Physical Vulnerability Debuff: Blood Frenzy, (2nd Talent Spec TBA)
So far the Blood frenzy debuff is the panacea of arms warrior, already quite reduced in effectiveness (4 % –> 2 %) A second class will receive a similar ability. My guess is that Combat rogues will get it, at least it does makes sense to me.

Melee Critical Strike Chance Buff: Leader of the Pack, Rampage
100 % Uptime Aura versus an on crit activation buff. Which do you prefer ? The druid wins there.

Attack Power Buff (Flat Add): Battle Shout, Blessing of Might
That one is the most stupid of all the changes 30 minutes buff versus 2 minutes (3 when talented) which would you take ? The pally can cast it out of combat, the warrior needs to either blow Bloodrage if he’s out of combat or waste a GCD which in  the end lowers his own DPS. Battle shout needs to change, be it that it is out of the GCD, cost 0 rage or last at least 10 minutes.

Bleed Damage Increase Debuff: Mangle, Trauma
They really don’t want us to be with druids don’t they ? Why take a fury warrior when the druid can provide the crit aura ? Why bring an arms warrior when you  get the bleed bonus from that same druid ? Unless you’re short on people you’ll definitely take the druid.

Healing Debuff: Wound Poison, Aimed Shot, Mortal Strike, Furious Attacks
Mortal strike debuff has not much use in PvE but still, it was the staple ability of arms, now fury also gets it.

Attack Power Debuff: Demoralizing Roar, Curse of Weakness, Demoralizing Shout
Not much changes here

Health Buff: Commanding Shout, Blood Pact
Who uses Commanding Shout anyway ? Well, maybe it will be used more often *if* there are more than 1 warrior in the raid or if there’s more than one pally in the raid.

All in all I’m severely concerned of the utility that provides an arms warrior in raids. Depending on which class get the “Blood Frenzy” ability, we might see no uses at all if we take into account typical raid composition. Let’s say that for the sake of the discussion combat rogues get the blood frenzy effect. In a typical raid, you’d normally at least find 1 such rogue. At that point what does the arms warrior have to offer ? Battle Shout, sorry that 2nd pally covers your raid with class specific buffs that lasts 10 minutes. Commanding Shout, see that imp over there ? He’s taking care of it. Trauma, ha that sweet bleed damage increase, sorry it’s been covered by that feral druid friend over there, who by the way took the place of the fury warrior. DPS ? Sorry but your dps is lower than a rogue, that cat, that hunter or that lock, moreover the buff you provide are already covered. Thanks for asking to come though.

Ok, this is a huge amount a QQ in one post, we’ll see how blizz balances it all, but there’s definitely changes that will NEED to be done in order to keep some classes to be viable.