1st and foremost, Arms warriors (even if you're in the closet) have some reasons to rejoice. Lots of great stuff happening for you now.
Juggernaut talent 1 point -- Charge from any stance, once you charge, your next Slam/Mortal Strike has a +100% chance to critically hit if completed within the next 10 seconds.
Add that to things like deep wounds and Trauma, and that's a pretty great way to start a combat.
Not to mention the increase to 1.5 secs stun from the charge.
The Unrelenting Assault talent (1/2 points) now does a LOT for you in addition to reducing the cd on Overpower and Revenge by 2/4 secs, it also 1) increases damage from both by 10%/20%, AND 2) If you use Overpower against someone who is casting, it will reduce their damage/healing from spells by 25/50% for the next 6 seconds. Stack that with something like "Taste for Blood" and you can basically nerf a caster as long as you can stay on them. Not to mention that if you use Mortal Strike in between the Overpowers, you might even be able to take down a healer, since (I can't verify this but) it would seem that the statements "... their magical damage and healing will be reduced by 50% for 6 secs," (Unrelenting Assault) and "... wounds the target, reducing the effectiveness of any healing by 50% for 10 secs," (Mortal Strike) seem like they're meant to stack. So it would look like you can basically chip down a healer to 25% "self"-healing just by alternating Rend/Overpower/MS, maybe a hamstring or Sunder Armor thrown in to keep you from having to chase them all over.
Although it has been reported and then still isn't in the official notes, it sounds more and more like Shattering Throw is going to make it in. For those of you that don't already know, this has a 5 min cd like Heroic Throw (whether they can be used independently or not, I don't know) but in addition to doing the same damage as Heroic Throw, it will EITHER (but not both) reduce armor on target by 20% (stacks with Sunder for a total or 40% less armor) for 10 secs OR if the target has immunity it will remove it. All for 25 rage and a 1.5 sec cast time.
I don't know about you, but it's starting to sound like Arms warriors could be fearsome in PvP finally.
2ndly, and by no means least, Prot warriors are also seeing an unexpected (at least to me) and yet exciting change. The "Warbringer" talent is now being adjusted so that Charge AND Intercept AND Intervene may all be used from any stance. Now, this isn't really a hugely exciting change, but this will mean two things. Firstly, we'll be able to Heroic Throw one target, taunt another, Charge a third, and then Intercept a fourth, all from defensive stance. Mind you, in all of that, only the intercept costs any rage, and the charge will more than make up for the 10 rage cost for Intercept, and if you fire a Bloodthirst before you start, you can even do a TC on the way through all that mess. Just imagine the kinds of HUGE groups you can round up this way!
The ability to Intercpet and/or Intervene from Battle stance is also nice for those Prot warriors who like to PvP in battle stance, but I generally don't bother leaving defensive stance. I have read reports of some Prot warriors who have only been out of defensive stance twice in the last two years, and one of them was by accident.
The "makeup" for Fury warriors who don't have access to either of these phenomenal running talents is that we lose the "expertise" buff talent that we didn't really need anyway, and we gain back Improved Intercept in its place, which is good.
ALSO, as the patch release nears, it seems that Blizz is very close to fully deciding to use the 4/8/12/16/20% strength buff for Improved Berserker Stance. As I discussed a while back, this means that there will be a small (I don't know exactly how big, as it depends on the warriors) increase to overall AP, and hence overall damage (pre-10% reduction). This will help to make up for some of the 10% loss we experience at the top of the tree, but exactly how much I will have to find out when you do because I'm going to be out of town until after the patch comes.
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