[The State of 5.4.8 Warriors in 5.0 PvP Content]

[gangsterwow]

[TL:DR] For those who don't want to read all: Over the course of MoP, all classes barely vary relative to the class adjustments warrior receives (hugely buffed over the course of MoP] to account for increasing stats and armor, backporting 5.4.8 warriors in buffed state into 5.0 content state has left them the most over-tuned class of any expansion to date.

Description: This is an issue that I really care about so I'm going to go ahead and put a lot of effort into this post. If you are a warrior reading this, this doesn't mean I want your class gutted, it means I don't want the entire servers PvP community to die within three days of the arena season starting.

In the standard cycle of a World of Warcraft expansion, there are ebbs and flows of class strength, which are adjustment and amended by the PvP balance team to the best degree of their ability. Sometimes they do a good job, sometimes they don't. One of the shining and redeeming aspects of Mists of Pandaria was that almost all classes felt strong through the expansion, relevant, playable. They all felt like they had good damage in Player vs Player combat and to some extent; could show skill and hold their own.

However, naturally, it is cyclical and recurrent that some classes tend to do better in early expansions and worse in later expansions. A good example of this would be Warlocks amassing health pools and base stats towards the end of an expansion where arenas tend to last longer, and they start to take the edge due to their consistent damage, particularly in affliction. Conversely, classes like Rogue often have some of the burstiest damage early expansion where enemies have minimal health, minimal armour and the patch is most suspectible to imbalances due to its recency of release. Warrior; is one of those classes that have to be constantly strengthened and buffed across the expansion as they are the primary and majority physical damage dealer in the game, and as the game progresses, people unlock stronger trinkets, better abilities to kite with bigger mana pools and far more armour and base stats (important). As such, it is typical for a warrior to see buffing across the expansion overall to match this. In a vaccuum the warrior ends up in a far stronger state in the last patch than the first, but relatively could be stronger or weaker, dependant on how other classes perform.

Where I'm going with this;

Yesterday resilience was nerfed to 40%, desperately needed and a positive movement of a change, classes were doing no damage and now classes feel relevant and strong and enjoyable again.

However, even with 65% resilience warriors were clearly an issue, a huge one, they were the only class that posed any threat and now with 71% damage increase from a 25% resilience reduction, warriors are so dominant it's unbelievable, I've never seen anything like it in my 15 years of play. I'm a competent, experienced and skilled player and upon entering battlegrounds today it was the clear the top damage spots would be held by warriors if they were any, not by small margins, by multiples; threefold/fourfold, or even orders of magnitude above the rest. I entered arena's tonight and all of the games were mostly fun, matches reminiscent of old MoP, skill involved and class variety, apart from the warriors. These matches ended in thirty seconds where I as a healer was forced to pop every single cooldown at once to survive over five seconds whilst my partner spammed peeling abilities and I desperately tried to escape. On a 300k health pool target, I was regularly being hit for 120k/130k/140k, even a 225k. Once you involve effective damage from healing reduction, a warrior can essentially hit for your entire health bar of healing requirement in one ability. Their dots are ticking for 30k a tick, an absurd number. In MoP retail 5.0 this number was more like 3000 in the same gear/health pool, 90% lower than now.

Why is this? As mentioned earlier warriors are consistently buffed to match base stat increases and armor increases across expansions. In patch 5.2.0, warriors were given a 30% slam increase, a 100% deep wounds increase, a 10% sudden death increase. In patch 5.3.0, warriors were given a defensive stance 15% increase, a shield wall 40% cooldown reduction. In patch 5.4.0, warriors were given a 40% mortal strike increase, 25% slam damage increase, 65% deep wounds increase

In comparison, if you compare this to any other class at all, the other classes all just take minor nerfs overall as their base stats increase so damage doesn't get too high, or they shift up and down power, moving around an average curve of strength for the season. Nothing, and I mean nothing is similar to the buffs that are given to a warrior in MoP to account for increasing armor and resilience, and as they're physical damage based, they have to be buffed to match this.

Why does this matter?

This matters because Stormforge takes that ultimate buffed version of Warrior which assumes it is fighting against players with maximum armor for the season, maxed out trinkets, maxed out agility and parry and dodge and just generally statted to the greatest extent of the expansion cycle. And then throws them into 5.0 where we have all levelling greens, resilience 37% lower than the 77% resilience in 5.4, armor at an all time low for the expansion and you end up with the single most disgusting and overpowered class balance I have ever seen in fifteen years.

I'm not just writing this as someone who is bad or just died to a warrior and wants to complain about it. It's genuinely a huge issue that needs to be attended to immediately or the server's PvP scene will simply fall apart and die within a matter of days.

What do you mean by unbalanced Gangster?

Warriors do not only have the single most damage by a metric mile, they have the most healing reduction, two spell reflects, a root break, they are the tankiest class, they are already the most meta for the expansion, the most sustained damage and burst damage, and two reliable stuns. Now, none of this should change, that's how Warriors were in MoP and that's what made them fun. However, at no point in MoP was their damage this large and overwhelming. Actually, at no point EVER has their damage been this large and overwhelming, and it's because of the interaction between 5.0 stats and 5.4 class design.

A destruction warlock with full cooldowns in arena casting a chaos bolt on me (the strongest supposed ability in the game) will crit me for 60-80k right now. A warrior with cooldowns up will slam me for 100-150k easily depending on procs and weaponry. This becomes a 150k-225k effective hit including Mortal Strike healing reduction. As mentioned, I was hit with four back to back 120k+ hits today, and have evidence and screenshots of all (linked at the end). This is obscene, unhealable, entirely broken and requires immediate attention.

I understand the common attitude is 'no class changes in a "blizzlike private server"', however, this is not a blizzlike server, this became a custom server the moment you guys decided to bring 5.4.8 classes into a 5.0 gear and stat environment (with the exception of a minor malevolent resilience adjustment). The game was designed in 2014 for 5.4.8 gear in patch 5.4.8, gearing and class balancing work symbiotically, breaking that symbiosis is just going to create havoc scenarios like this. It's the same reason that Disc Priests are close to useless in early wrath gear with a 3.3.5 patch, but become god tier by the end. This is similar, except exaserbated to the maximum degree.

Warriors were strong all of MoP, and I want them to be strong, I want all classes to feel strong just like MoP did, that's why we love the expansion. But right now, they make everybody else feel entirely insignificant and unsubstantial, and ruin the nostalgic fantasy of the server.

How to rectify this?

First of all, resilience should be brought up to 50% for now. 65% was too much and unplayable, and 40% will quickly become too chaotic as people get more and more gear. In MoP retail season 12, most fully geared players in malevolent arena sat on between 55-58% resilience, we are not at that point yet, so for now 50% would suffice. I understand this is a custom resilience level and you guys only like to switch between 40 and 65, but this is really a necessary change to make to make the classes realistic. However, this affects all classes equally, so something else will have to be done to deal with warriors.

Indeed, something has to be done about warriors and their insanely overtuned abilities. I understand this is not typical for a PServer but the situation calls for it. I want the class to be strong so not ruin them of course, but tuning must occur, and to a large degree as they are obscenely overpowered. Perhaps it would be worth considering reverting some of the buffs made to them in 5.2 and 5.4, as those were just crazy buffs, such as a 165% damage increase on Deep Wounds, and a obscene buff to MS and Slam. It's fine to revert patches on warriors because warriors literally only received obtuse buffs whilst most other classes floated around the same relative strength of abilities.

Either way, something has to be done. Currently the game is entirely unplayable in this state (PvP - wise) for anyone but warriors, particularly in arena, and that's not an exaggeration.

Thank you for reading. Do not read this and think I'm (mad cause bad) or just am complaining for the sake of it, I understand how the game works and when it is out of balance, and I've never seen one class this overtuned, it's almost unbelievable how strong it is.

I have attached some screenshots to support my points.

https://imgur.com/a/1TYktL2

Gangster#0001 on Discord for any questions or further correspondence.

Current behaviour:

Unattainable, uncontendable and unmitigatable damage, three or four fold higher than any other class.

Expected behaviour:

I want warriors to be potent and strong, as they were in MoP, but not whatever this custom bugged class is.

[Lemonadez]

1.) Level Scaling. 2.) Gear Dependant. 3.) Your screenshot is a failure -> You dont know what buff the Arms Warrior have or used to procc trinklet / cds and You did not put a screenshot of debuff you have. 4.) Upload a video 1080p.

I destroy lvl 90 warrior with my level 90 dk in arena. This is 5.4.8

[1Botnet]

All the balancing is based on 5.4.8 Prideful gear. So math wise we want to scale 77% Resilience and the 60% Battle Fatigue down to our Season 12 gear. This is gets rid of the guess work and creates the closest feel of 5.4.8 prior to getting there. This is the easiest route to go since gear scaling / class nerfs have already been out of the question and would all in all be way more work and not even be close to the balance we had in 5.4.8.

The math starts off simple and we just compare the damage of Season 15 Gear to Season 12 Gear.

To do that we grab a few spell formulas like Slam, Heal etc and then compare the main stat of Season 15 Gear in that formula to Season 12 Gear. We ignore secondary stats to be as simple as we can be.

Then we use that ratio and minus it from 77% Resilience etc. So for instance if it was 45% more damage on average then we would be at 65% base Resilience needed for Season 12 gear.

Resilience and Battle Fatigue are a bitch because they're exponential and people don't understand that... If someone wants to know how 77% to 65% equals 45% mitigation you can read here: https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/984349-5-4-PVP-Power-and-Resilience-Guide

Please for the love all that's holy don't just guess with what it should be. Do the math to get me the feel of 5.4.8 PVP with the lower gear. This will need to be adjust every season until we get to Prideful but we can do the math ahead of the time because we have the main stats of each season gear.

I'll do the math for you if you would like. Just get me a few spell formulas that are in place as well as a few healing spells and I'll do the math. Most damage calculations don't have a 1:1 ratio with main stats so this is the reason you need to ratio out the stat weight. Google wasn't helpfully trying to look for the spell formulas sadly.

[Galact1c1337]

Its not as easy as you might think from the technical stand point beacuse if you are asking for a warrior from 5.0 then we should have all the classes from 5.0 not just a warrior which will affect alot of the stuff also in pve (probably not possible to do with current client) and it will require a lot of developement time and most likely come up with new bugs because stuff like this require testing and when season 2 starts we gonna come here again and ask for new balance changes beacuse this is how it was? Even blizzard released tbc classic on 2.4.3 already.Also playing on lastest patch with class balance changes is the thing since forever on private servers for example playing tbc season 1 on 2.4.3 and wrath on 3.3.5 and it makes some classes worse at the begining like you mentioned with disc priest its not like stormeforge came up with some insane idea. The moment they annouced that the class balance will be from 5.4.8 it was clear that the meta most likely will be different than it was in 5.0 back in the day.

[markosoca]

Big disagree on custom class specific nerfs, on the server website it clearly states "blizzlike spirit, with no custom elements" in the faq section