So, now Bornakk comes out with a description of rage mechanic changes along with a brief blurb about haste.
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Quote from: Bornakk (Source)
We are going to take the opportunity in Cataclysm to try and fix some of the problems with the Rage mechanic for both warriors and druids. Some of these problems include:
To resolve these issues, Rage will be normalized in Cataclysm. This will make the Rage gained by characters more consistent and avoid drastic differences between low-end and high-end gear.
The concept of normalized Rage may leave a negative impression on some veteran players, as we tried it once before in The Burning Crusade and it wasn't successful, resulting in them feeling weakened. However, we think that the concept is still sound -- it was just that the previous implementation didn't balance the values correctly, leading to players being Rage-starved. That is not the goal. As part of the change, we want to give warriors and druids a lot of ways to control their rage, so even in the worst-case scenarios they won’t feel like they lack the resource to do their job.
Here are some of the ways the Rage mechanic will change in Cataclysm:
1) Rage is no longer generated based on damage done by auto-attacks. Instead, each auto-attack provides a set amount of Rage, and off-hand weapons will generate 50% of the Rage main hands do. This amount is based on a constant formula which factors in the base swing speed of the weapon. This means the Rage gained should be averaged out between fast and slow weapons. The constant formula also gives us the ability to easily increase the rage gained if it feels too low (or reduce it if is too high). We are also implementing the following mechanics, which will still allow rage to improve to some extent as you improve gear:
2) Rage from damage taken will no longer be based on a standard creature of the character’s level, but instead will based on the health of the warrior or druid. Again, there is a constant that is multiplied by the rage generated in order to allow for fine-tuning. This calculation ignores all damage reduction from armor, absorption, avoidance, block, or similar mechanics, so improving your gear will not reduce Rage gained.
3) We will provide warriors and druids with more instant sources of rage. For example, the warrior shouts are changing to work more like the death knight ability Horn of Winter. Instead of Battle Shout consuming Rage, it will generate Rage but have a short cooldown. Both classes will have additional methods to generate Rage in an emergency or bleed off Rage when they have too much.
4) All “on next swing” attacks in Cataclysm are being removed. Heroic Strike and Maul will be instant swings that cost a variable amount of Rage. For example, imagine Heroic Strike costs between 10 and 30 Rage. You must have at least 10 Rage to use the attack, but it will consume all available Rage up to a maximum of 30. Any Rage consumed above the minimum will cause the ability to hit harder, and in some cases much harder. We will tune the ability so that it’s generally not a good idea to hit it when you have low Rage (unless everything else is somehow on cooldown) but becomes a more attractive button the higher your Rage.
We understand this change may be scary for many players, but keep in mind that the constants in the formulas for gaining Rage will give us the ability to make quick adjustments if we feel Rage generation is too low. Our goal is for each character's Rage to not be always high or always low, but rather a resource that needs to be managed properly by the player.
- Warriors/druids in the lowest levels of gear can be Rage-starved.
- Warriors/druids in the highest levels of gear no longer have to manage their Rage when it becomes infinite.
- Warrior/druid tanks lose Rage income as they improve their gear and take less damage.
- The gameplay of warrior and druid tanks loses a lot of depth when massive boss hits means never having to manage Rage.
- Heroic Strike and Maul are effective, but tedious abilities for using up extra Rage.
- In general, warriors and druids don’t have enough control over their Rage.
To resolve these issues, Rage will be normalized in Cataclysm. This will make the Rage gained by characters more consistent and avoid drastic differences between low-end and high-end gear.
The concept of normalized Rage may leave a negative impression on some veteran players, as we tried it once before in The Burning Crusade and it wasn't successful, resulting in them feeling weakened. However, we think that the concept is still sound -- it was just that the previous implementation didn't balance the values correctly, leading to players being Rage-starved. That is not the goal. As part of the change, we want to give warriors and druids a lot of ways to control their rage, so even in the worst-case scenarios they won’t feel like they lack the resource to do their job.
Here are some of the ways the Rage mechanic will change in Cataclysm:
1) Rage is no longer generated based on damage done by auto-attacks. Instead, each auto-attack provides a set amount of Rage, and off-hand weapons will generate 50% of the Rage main hands do. This amount is based on a constant formula which factors in the base swing speed of the weapon. This means the Rage gained should be averaged out between fast and slow weapons. The constant formula also gives us the ability to easily increase the rage gained if it feels too low (or reduce it if is too high). We are also implementing the following mechanics, which will still allow rage to improve to some extent as you improve gear:
- If the attack is a critical strike, it will generate 200% Rage.
- Haste will accelerate swing times to generate Rage faster.
2) Rage from damage taken will no longer be based on a standard creature of the character’s level, but instead will based on the health of the warrior or druid. Again, there is a constant that is multiplied by the rage generated in order to allow for fine-tuning. This calculation ignores all damage reduction from armor, absorption, avoidance, block, or similar mechanics, so improving your gear will not reduce Rage gained.
3) We will provide warriors and druids with more instant sources of rage. For example, the warrior shouts are changing to work more like the death knight ability Horn of Winter. Instead of Battle Shout consuming Rage, it will generate Rage but have a short cooldown. Both classes will have additional methods to generate Rage in an emergency or bleed off Rage when they have too much.
4) All “on next swing” attacks in Cataclysm are being removed. Heroic Strike and Maul will be instant swings that cost a variable amount of Rage. For example, imagine Heroic Strike costs between 10 and 30 Rage. You must have at least 10 Rage to use the attack, but it will consume all available Rage up to a maximum of 30. Any Rage consumed above the minimum will cause the ability to hit harder, and in some cases much harder. We will tune the ability so that it’s generally not a good idea to hit it when you have low Rage (unless everything else is somehow on cooldown) but becomes a more attractive button the higher your Rage.
We understand this change may be scary for many players, but keep in mind that the constants in the formulas for gaining Rage will give us the ability to make quick adjustments if we feel Rage generation is too low. Our goal is for each character's Rage to not be always high or always low, but rather a resource that needs to be managed properly by the player.
So, basically, I'm torn here. First of all, I really like the ideas of the changes to rage mechanics. Yes, I know that in the beginning this will severely nerf our dps at the high end, because now we'll basically be using one heroic strike every now and again, so it would be equivalent to the 1K dps loss I see if I don't use HS at all during a fight, and yet, I think overall this will be good for the class in general. It makes crit more attractive, it makes hit more attractive, and it keeps things working in general the same for warriors at all levels even though that "sameness" will likely be less than it is now.
Am I "excited" at the prospect of dropping back in the pack as I resume my lackluster gcd restricted rotation of WW, then BT, then hit Slam only if Bloodsurge procced, then wait until BT is off cd, then hit it again, then wait for Slam to proc, then rinse/repeat? Not really, but in the big picture, at least we'll be able to hit HS for one or more of those awkward pauses in the action, and I like the fact that tanking will be so much more arranged around having better gear instead of not. I do worry some that basing the rage mechanic on total Health will prompt the exact same kind of over-emphasis on Stam stacking that goes on now, but if that's something Blizz wants to encourage, at least we know what's what.
Now, onto the blurb about haste. I mean, really, HOW IS THAT DIFFERENT THAN NOW?!?!??!?
Right now, the ONLY effect haste has on us is decreasing our swing timers. Our gcd that actually manages everything we REALLY do stays constant, but our swing timer goes down. So, stacking 10% haste (which is quite expensive, don't you know) increases our white swing damage and rage generation by 10%. Ooooooh.
And their proposal to "fix" haste so that we want it more? Leave it exactly like it is.
They're removing Armor Penetration something which I've seen personally increase dps by 40% and more even at relatively low levels, and to "make up for that" they're making haste do exactly the same thing it does now.
I'll be honest, the changes to rage are actually exciting to me, even though I dread the overall impact that the changes to HS/cleave will have on our dps as a class (I just hope they don't drop enough that I'm not invited to raids anymore). I think overall they will be good changes.
The changes to haste? Bah! What a cop-out.
Essentially, Blizzard wants to make haste more attractive, so they're trying to FORCE us to use haste in order to have enough rage to do our 75% of current dps in the future.
I mean, if you wanted to talk about changes to haste for melee dps, I have some ideas that I think are more innovative than "NOTHING":
- Make haste affect not only swing timers, but also gcd and cooldowns. If 10% haste meant gcd went down to 1.35 seconds instead of 1.5 seconds, warriors would be camping on haste so fast your head would spin. Especially now that we will have one new thing to activate our gcd during combat (HS and Cleave). If our overall cooldowns went down with haste, we could get through our rotation that much faster. Faster rotations = more interested fury warriors who don't have enough to do during their rotations as it is = Warriors and ret pallies (and possibly rogues) flocking to jump on the haste bandwagon.
- Allow haste to scale abilities that are instant. Abilities with cast timers receive this kind of bump from haste, since cast times are affected, but instant abilities (i.e. virtually everything we do) are unaffected, hence haste does nothing for us in that regard. If 10% haste meant a 10% buff to damage from instant abilities, once again, we would see melee dps flocking to haste like a bunch of escaped convicts to a government subsidized whorehouse. This is possible since so many of our abilities are based on weapon damage which actually does scale with haste on white swings, but that change isn't reflected in our yellow instant strikes which make up more than 80% of our damage.
- haste should scale dots, i.e. the dots from poisons, deep wounds, etc. that we do should speed up just like you've done for healers and caster classes. Furthermore, these dots should somehow figure into your rage calculation so that having haste would NOT ONLY increase rage generated from white strikes but would also benefit us in rage from having our dots up on targets.
- Or, finally, just drop the attempt to make haste beneficial to melee and come up with something else. Make it something called "Uberness" and it can directly scale with attack power to make everything hurt more, say 10% Uber = 10% overall increase in dps (scaled appropriately, of course).
Because, the simple fact of the matter is, if everything is going well, a warriors dps should only be about 10-12% from white strikes, and if haste ONLY affects our white strikes, then 10% haste means a whopping 1-1.2% increase in our overall dps. ONE PERCENT! 328 haste rating (equivalent to more than 16 gem slots) to improve our dps by ONE PERCENT!
If you can't do better than that, how about just leaving us armor penetration since at least that does what we need?
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