Warrior changes are unwelcome.

[Quor]

War post patch will:
*Still perform roughly the same level on deliverance damage + or - a percent here and there
*It will perform dramatically better in defiance than ever before.
*It will be better than ever before utilizing stance dancing.

*It will not 'feel' the same.

WAR in Defiance will do much less damage overall because SE is now only 10% instead of 20%. So that means instead of .75+20% (90% damage total) we now have .75+10% (or 82.5% damage total). That's a straight up nerf of 7.5% damage while in Defiance. The potency buffs and increased numbers of Fell Cleave do *not* account for a loss of 7.5% damage. Much less the outright loss of 10% damage over the course of a fight from Berserk.

While the "uptime" phase of WAR dps may or may not be "better" overall, the actual holistic package that is the WAR job has been nerfed. This wouldn't be a big deal if A.) they left SE as is, or B.) they weren't constantly pushing DPS checks and enrage timers that implicitly encourage tanks to DPS as hard as possible in order to beat the check. But every fight of significance in SB has had an enrage timer, so I highly doubt the new Omega or Byakko will be any different.

[SoulSkyheart]

Bye, have a great time.

[Izsha]

WAR in Defiance will do much less damage overall because SE is now only 10% instead of 20%. So that means instead of .75+20% (90% damage total) we now have .75+10% (or 82.5% damage total). That's a straight up nerf of 7.5% damage while in Defiance. The potency buffs and increased numbers of Fell Cleave do *not* account for a loss of 7.5% damage. Much less the outright loss of 10% damage over the course of a fight from Berserk.

While the "uptime" phase of WAR dps may or may not be "better" overall, the actual holistic package that is the WAR job has been nerfed. This wouldn't be a big deal if A.) they left SE as is, or B.) they weren't constantly pushing DPS checks and enrage timers that implicitly encourage tanks to DPS as hard as possible in order to beat the check. But every fight of significance in SB has had an enrage timer, so I highly doubt the new Omega or Byakko will be any different.

You can look at war in 3 basic ways now.

1.Full time Defiance.
2.Full time Deliverance
3. Stance dance.

*Full time Defiance, you loose (actually its 8.25% damage lost from eye, not 7.5%), but then you add in the potency buffs which is where the ~5% damage loss number comes from) you get to use IR and unchained which dramatically increases overall damage and should easily negate the 5%. Remember you can stack unchained and IR now for the DH Crit IBs. You still benefit from enhanced infuriate and will generate more IBs than currently overall. Defiance war with IR stacking unchained and more IBs easily counters 5% damage and becomes MUCH tougher. All those extra IBs and IR IBs are HP and mitigation you didnt have before. 5 DH Crit IBs? Why yes I would like to bene myself.

*Full time deliverance is what much of the discussions are about so I wont repeat that stuff.

*Hybrid stance dance: Unchained and IR are separated. Nuff said. If you stance danced before, you couldnt use unchained well....ever. Now you can. You still generate more IB/FCs overall on top of that. You still get your deliverance IR burst window. This 'version' of war actually made the most gains.

Its really much simpler than it all sounds. Look at each change


*Eye: -8.25% damage lost from Eye accross the board. All stances. Everything.

*Potency Buff: +~3ish % damage from the boosted potency. Varies a bit depending on stance and exact rotation Putting baseline damage at around -~5%.
*Additional FCs under new system. We will get at least 3 FCs minimum per 90 sec rotation. (onslaughts become FCs, New IR gives more gauge than old IR.) I suspect the additional enhanced infuriate procs from those FCs will counter the 'opportunity cost' of lost gauge GCDs from those extra FCs and nuetral out more but I need to do some more maffs with the holistic rotation. 1 FC every 30 sec (+310 potency over base combo rotation) should negate the 5% damage loss between burst windows. 30sec=12 GCDs. Base rotation for 12 GCDs with new potencies is ~210*12=2500. free 310 potency is bout 12%. Yes the natrual FCs bring that down but not by moreo than HALF which is what it would take to be a net loss. The extra FCs more than make up for the GCD eye nerf and start to cut into the AA damage nerf some. Ultimately we are going to be talking about a couple % if any. Ill know more when i finish the full rotation math.

Non burst DPS will be VERY close to what it currently is.

*Burst Windows: Ill just expand on a previous post i made on comparing the current optimal Zerk/IR windows with the new one. Based on my math in another thread:
Net potency gain of new IR is roughly 4148 pot/90 sec. 2765 potency/Min.
Net potency gain of current IR+Zerk (both windows combined) 5200 pot/2min. 2600pot/Min. This is the PERFECT zerk and zerk IR windows mind you. (2 onslaughts, 1 upheaval, 6FCs for IR etc).
Current IR/zerk are slightly undervalued as I did not account for natural DH/Crits. However even with that they would be very close to break even and we all know you dont perform perfect windows every time which drops it back down anyway.

Burst dps will be VERY close to what it currently is.

Deliverance war will be VERY close to what it currently is while any use of tank stance get very nice offensive and defensive enhancements.

War will be fine. Not as much fun imo, but not nerfed.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

War will be fine. Not as much fun imo, but not nerfed.

Reddit already did the calculations. These changes result in roughly a 5% decrease in their overall damage.

[Skos]

Reddit already did the calculations. These changes result in roughly a 5% decrease in their overall damage.

Which was only raw potency coupled with the Storm's Eye nerf.

It did not take into account that the new Inner Release compared to Berserk is a ~86% damage increase compared to the 30% it is now. On the other hand, you could still crit/direct hit under old Berserk. It's very complicated math but the damage seems to be smoothed out instead of relying on crits/direct hits.
It also does not take into account the amount of beast gauge you'd previously save for Berserk is now free to use, which gives you ~2 extra Fell Cleaves a minute.
It also doesn't take into account how you don't have to save Infuriate for your Berserk anymore, meaning you're now free to use it on CD to get you extra Cleaves.

It's too early to tell whether or not these changes are an effective nerf to DPS or not. The math is too complicated and will likely not be done before 4.2 releases, at which point it's easier to just hop onto a dummy and test the changes directly. Most math wizards stopped bothering.

The way I see it, people are overreacting. A lot. As usual with changes like these. People freaked out over SMN changes and it ended up fine.
From my perspective and from the math that I've seen so far, DPS will be roughly the same with the possibility of it being slightly lower or slightly higher than before. I'll be following the math very closely though because these things are interesting to me.
Heck, people's math is suggesting that it might actually be a DPS increase to hop into Defiance every 90s to hit Unchained because it uberboosts Upheaval, and the potency lost from Deliverance autos/gcds is outweighed by the damage you get from boosting that Upheaval and sitting in Defiance for 10s. A very interesting concept to be honest.

What has changed though is that Warrior's rotation will definitely be braindead easy in 4.2.

They smoothed out Warrior's damage, since in 4.2 you will no longer be praying your Fell Cleaves crit/direct hit because they were ~30% of your damage output and not critting them feels bad, in exchange for making Warrior far, far easier.
And for some people easier means less interesting.

[Quor]

snip

I still maintain that people are undervaluing the effect that these changes will have on AA dps. 10s of guaranteed AA dh crits every 90s will not make up for the flat 10% loss from SE and the additional 10% loss from Berserk (averaged for AA over time). The extra FC's won't make up for it either, because a solid 1/3 of them have lost the 30% extra damage from Berserk as well.

[Skos]

I still maintain that people are undervaluing the effect that these changes will have on AA dps. 10s of guaranteed AA dh crits every 90s will not make up for the flat 10% loss from SE and the additional 10% loss from Berserk (averaged for AA over time). The extra FC's won't make up for it either, because a solid 1/3 of them have lost the 30% extra damage from Berserk as well.

True! Good point.

I was actually very surprised to see the Storm's Eye nerf. I was more surprised to see that there were a couple things that remained unbuffed with the Storm's Eye nerf, most notably auto-attacks. AA made up about ~23% of your DPS so to have that reduced from 20% to 10% is huge. Not counterbuffing Inner Beast, Steel Cyclone and Decimate potency is also kind of weird to me.

I'm surprised nobody has done the math on AAs considering they make up 23% of your DPS on average. You see Fell Cleave math all over the place.

EDIT: after digging around a bit I missed some AA math in Bokchoy's post. Warning: Long-ish.

"Instead of a 20s Berserk with a 60s cooldown, you now have a 10s Inner Release with a 90s coooldown.
Total uptime of the "Berserked" effect is 11.1%, compared to the 33.3% of before.
So, while the buff is approximately 50% stronger, the uptime of "Berserk" only 33% of what it was before.

However, once we factor in the average potency within those burst windows.

Old Inner Release+Berserk Window:
6 Fell Cleaves @ 500 Potency
1 Storms Combo @ 610 Potency
1 Upheaval @ 300 Potency
1 Onslaught @ 100 Potency
~670 Potency from Autos
Total: 4680 Potency over 20s
Average: 234.0 Potency per second

Old Berserk Window:
3 Fell Cleaves @ 500 Potency
2 Storms Combo @ 610 Potency
1 Upheaval @ 300 Potency
1 Onslaught @ 100 Potency
~670 Potency from Autos
Total: 3790 Potency over 20s
Average: 189.5 Potency per second

New Inner Release Window:
5 Fell Cleaves @ 520 Potency
1 Upheaval @ 300 Potency
1 Onslaught @ 100 Potency
~330 Potency from Autos
Total: 3330 Potency over 10s
Average: 330 Potency per second

(Edit: Don't forget that Storm's Eye nerfs should be taken into account here too)

As you can see, the sheer potency burst that you are guaranteed to get within the duration of that damage steroid is higher, which compounds with the fact that the damage steroid is ~50% stronger.

Overall, I still think that the new Inner Release values are not as good as the old Berserk/IR values. The increase in cooldown plus the decrease in duration seems to overshadow the stronger buff and higher average potency within the burst window.

Also, it's important to note that a 90s cooldown is harder to align with 60s/120s raid buffs, like Trick Attack and Hypercharge."

On top of that, overall the Storm's Eye nerf causes you to lose ~8.33% DPS on your autoattacks outside of Berserk/IR, which is massive.

So there's the math. Take from it what you want, I'll be awaiting the results from theorycrafters first before forming an opinion because I'm bad at math myself. I just like looking at numbers.

[Quor]

All this

Exactly. From what I've seen AA dps for WAR is a solid 20% of our damage. The 8.33% loss from SE is bad enough, but we're also losing out on a ~10% increase from Berserk (30% ever 20s extrapolated and averages to 10% every 60s, which aligns with the recast on Berserk). Mathematically speaking, that's probably about another 9% real dps loss, meaning the SE nerf + the loss of zerk dmg means AA's are going to be down about 17% from what they were. Assuming AA's are 20% of a WAR's overall damage, a loss of 17% would reduce AA damage from 20% down to ~18%, or in other words a bit shy of a 2% DPS loss just from the damage we've lost from AA's. And that's assuming AA's only account for 20% of our damage. If it's 23%, then the real overall dps loss is probably closer to 3%.

[Fyce]

I still maintain that people are undervaluing the effect that these changes will have on AA dps. 10s of guaranteed AA dh crits every 90s will not make up for the flat 10% loss from SE and the additional 10% loss from Berserk (averaged for AA over time). The extra FC's won't make up for it either, because a solid 1/3 of them have lost the 30% extra damage from Berserk as well.

That has already been calculated. And yes, it is apparently a damage nerf overall. Keep in mind that these calculations were done without having the new opener and rotation figured out, so the gap is probably less important than what was claimed.

But anyway, WAR already had quite a lead in terms of DPS output. This means that with the PLD's nerfs (and DRK's up? *cough*), all three tanks will now be granting roughly the same amount of DPS to the group. So, if anything, the DPS of all three tanks should be more balanced. I know people have a tendancy to grab their pitchforks when they see the word "nerf", but Tanks balance is also something important we shouldn't overlook.

... Well, I'm talking of tanks' balance, but WAR still remains the best tank in terms of mitigation and enmity generation. So yeah... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Skos]

... Well, I'm talking of tanks' balance, but WAR still remains the best tank in terms of mitigation and enmity generation. So yeah... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Not only that, but math suggests that it's actually a DPS increase to go into Defiance when Unchained is off CD because of how high it boosts Upheaval. If you only stay in Defiance under Unchained for the minimum required time of 10s it takes for Deliverance to come back off CD, the damage you get from Upheaval outweighs what you lose in terms of GCDs and autos.

Not to forget this also gives you a "free" Equilibrium heal/threat boost you'd normally not have.

People are so focused on the changes to Warrior's DPS that they aren't seeing that the tank with the best mitigation and threat generation just got better on both of those sides.

what i see is war now need focus on crit build because 100%Crit+100%DH you IR dmg increase is X crit mod + 25% DH mod. X crit mod because Crit mod change based on how high your crit is.

This is to be seen. Direct Hit is now absolutely useless for Warrior's burst window, and Critical Hit loses half of it's bonuses (crit chance) and only keeps the critical damage portion of its effect. Crit and Direct Hit lose overall effectiveness from this change.

While it's true that Crit will have the biggest impact on Warrior's damage during the new Internal Release, it remains to be seen if stacking crit to increase your damage during burst windows is worth it over determination increasing Warrior's overall damage output.