Rage Normalization = FFXI?

[ringthree]

I knew this was coming! Man, I was thinking the best way to fix rage was to stabilize it like the system FFXI has. Sure, they have different tweaks like crits and off-hand 50% but man this is almost exactly like the FFXI system. It is even based on a constant formula based on swing speed.

In before "need 2.8 swing weapons for 20 rage per swing!" (I don't know how much rage you get per swing, I was just making a joke).

Full post from MMO Champ

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:

* 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.

Also in before haters assuming I am saying that WoW is "stealing" from FFXI. WoW has been dealing with this issue for a long time, and may have come up with this solution with or without FFXI's existence. It is a good solution to the scaling problems they were having with making Warrior DPS so gear dependent and tank overgearing such a problem. I am actually surprised that WoW let rage from damage given and damage taken exist for this long.

Now I am just waiting for Blizzard to add a "Store Rage" mechanic. LOL

[Correction]

So one unhasted noncrit swing of a Shadowmourne will generate as much rage as two swings of a simple dagger?

Awesome, can't wait.

[ringthree]

So one unhasted noncrit swing of a Shadowmourne will generate as much rage as two swings of a simple dagger?

Awesome, can't wait.

Ummm... no?

Shadowmourne is 3.7, most ICC daggers are 1.8. The dagger would only get 2.7 worth of Rage for their 3.6 speed round. Unless you mean that people will use one dagger and no off-hand weapon, but that would be stupid because they would lose the stats from the off-hand weapon and they would be using a horribly low base damage weapon.

My concern would just be about Titan's Grip, but I wonder if they might change Titan's Grip to decrease the nerf on the second hand and remove the damage nerf from it altogether. Something like "Allows you to use two two-handed weapons and your off handed weapon now gains 75% rage". Or they could just have an external talent that lets you gain more rage from your off-handed weapon.

Or it could just be balanced around 50% from off-handed rage gain, and they wouldn't have to do anything different.

And that is before you consider the fact that they said they are going to use a corrected formula for determining rage per swing. Which again like FFXI, will probably favor higher swing two-handed weapons over low speed one handed. I would venture a guess and say that daggers and lower speed weapons would get one level of return and the higher level of return would be on one-handed swords and higher.

[Boyiee]

Race changing to troll

[Aesctaa]

Horrible change.

The problem with warriors has been the massive ilvl inflation of WotLK, if they just kept gear constrained to a ~40ilvl spread with cata from fresh 85 gear to the top raid tier, there would be no reason to change any of this.

Glad i'll have quit before cata ships.

[fantasticdan]

Horrible change.

The problem with warriors has been the massive ilvl inflation of WotLK, if they just kept gear constrained to a ~40ilvl spread with cata from fresh 85 gear to the top raid tier, there would be no reason to change any of this.

Glad i'll have quit before cata ships.

It's not just a problem with dps warriors, the current system is extremely retarded for tanks. You're either taking enough damage to have infinite rage, or you're not taking enough damage and you're raged starved. Not to mention the reverse scaling with armor/avoidance...

Rage has always been a terrible mechanic, from vanilla to now, this normalization has been a long time coming. I look forward to playing my warrior in cata again with this, and especially the removal of "on next hit" attacks.

[ringthree]

It's not just a problem with dps warriors, the current system is extremely retarded for tanks. You're either taking enough damage to have infinite rage, or you're not taking enough damage and you're raged starved. Not to mention the reverse scaling with armor/avoidance...

Rage has always been a terrible mechanic, from vanilla to now, this normalization has been a long time coming. I look forward to playing my warrior in cata again with this, and especially the removal of "on next hit" attacks.

Yeah, I have to agree. I don't play that much WoW, but I like to see the comparison between MMOs, and I have to wonder how they made the old Rage system work for so long. It's not that it was terrible so much as it was poorly adjusted. They could have "normalized" rage better by increasing the amount of rage you get from hitting for low damage or taking low damage, and doing the opposite for hitting for high damage/taking high damage.

Using a FFXI TP style system means they never have worry about it again though. It will be universal and won't be gear dependent at all (well except for Haste and swing speed, and I can see Haste becoming even more important up until a point), so skill will be the real determinate of a Warrior and not gear.

[Aesctaa]

Current system for tanks seems fine to me, the shield specialization talent really removed the 'overgearing content' problem.

Infinite rage when tanking raid bosses could bring about so many interesting mechanics for its usage in new abilities, wasted opportunity IMO.

[fantasticdan]

Current system for tanks seems fine to me, the shield specialization talent really removed the 'overgearing content' problem.

Infinite rage when tanking raid bosses could bring about so many interesting mechanics for its usage in new abilities, wasted opportunity IMO.

lol? The shield specialization talent certainly helps with the inverse scaling problem with avoidance to some extent, but it definitely doesn't fix it, and does nothing for the inverse scaling with mitigation. Dodging a boss hit and getting 5 rage isn't the same as taking a boss hit and capping your rage bar. The only real fix for the overgearing problem on live is swapping in dps gear, which is an ok solution, but it really shouldn't be mandatory. The current system also punishes warrior tanks for stunning/disarming mobs, interrupting spells, using/receiving defensive cooldowns, etc.

And warrior tanks really don't need more rage dumps in the current system, the discrepancy between warrior main-tanks and warrior off-tanks is already a problem. Prot pally or dk tank dps doesn't change all that much between tanking and offtanking, but a prot warrior who isn't currently tanking a hard hitting boss (or a shit ton of adds with shield specialization) has his dps drop to the floor due to rage starvation. It cements prot warriors into a MT or bust situation for fights with tight dps requirements, and just sucks altogether for fights where you inevitably won't be tanking anything a fair amount of the time due to tank switches.

[Katlan]

and especially the removal of "on next hit" attacks.

This, this x100. I hate having to spam my Maul button

[Aesctaa]

5/5 Shield spec and i can go back to pretty much any content as prot and maintain more than enough rage to spam anything on GCD nonstop.

Shock horror you might actually need to put a few more points into Shield spec to be optimal in old content/OT situations, no different to DKs with their MT blood spec and Unholy OT specs.

They removed all the taunt immunities in raids since BC(and will soon be increasing taunts chance to hit to 100%), really the 'ineffective as OT' argument is pretty weak. In terms of picking up adds, I'd prefer to OT those type fights as warrior over my post-nerf DK anyday.

[Aesctaa]

And to repeat, from a DPS perspective; there was never anything wrong with the current system beyond the ridiculous scaling that gear went through in wrath, when gear is doubling in stats within 2 patches without the rage formula being changed, things are inevitably going to get stupid.

It isn't just warrior that has been fucked up by how fast the gear has got ridiculous, take the blanket healing in bgs/arena change, or the resi changes, it wouldn't have been necessary if they would have kept gear from tier 7 to tier 10.75 within some sort of parity and not gone stupid with skipping out on stam budget for dps/heal stats.

Shadowmourne has more than twice the base top end damage of Titansteel destroyer, within 3 patches.. its not sustainable.

[fantasticdan]

5/5 Shield spec and i can go back to pretty much any content as prot and maintain more than enough rage to spam anything on GCD nonstop.

Not while spamming HS/cleave you can't.

They removed all the taunt immunities in raids since BC(and will soon be increasing taunts chance to hit to 100%), really the 'ineffective as OT' argument is pretty weak. In terms of picking up adds, I'd prefer to OT those type fights as warrior over my post-nerf DK anyday.

What do taunt immunities have to do with prot warriors doing terrible dps compared to other tanks while offtanking?

[Aesctaa]

Not while spamming HS/cleave you can't.

Yes you can... easily.. have you seriously played warrior? 100 rage 50%+ of the time, spam cleave and use every gcd. The buff that talent got was plenty enough. I just did Razorfen for a friend a couple weeks back and rage was a non issue.

And honestly, every fight these days has some kind of damage aura or AoE, the situation of "prot warrior offtanking while not taking any AoE damage whatsoever nor landing any white hits" is ridiculous, all you end up losing is revenge, and guess what, this system isn't going to change that. Taunt lessens the requirement of the OT to maintain threat parity, and sunders alone will more than compensate for the slight extra dps a dk or paladin OT could put out.

Completely stupid and lazy change, if i wanted a dk RP or rogue energy resource i would have made them my main a long time back.

[Correction]

Sunders alone will more than compensate for the slight extra dps a dk or paladin OT could put out.

Calling bullshit unless you can provide some meters/logs otherwise.

[Aesctaa]

Calling bullshit unless you can provide some meters/logs otherwise.

That sunders for a 25man raid don't match 1-2k extra dps from the offtank? what?

Speadsheet gives me (edit, just ran it through the spreadsheet to check and its actually 800 dps boost for me alone) from 5 stacks of sunders with 100% uptime as fury. sure i could stack them myself but not every raid has a fury warrior, and its pretty tough to stack them as arms and maintain your optimal rotation.

Even in a 10man it'd win if you got a few melees.

[D44kpunk]

blizzard doesn't copy SE, i have a feeling you're trying to say that. FFXI is a failed game, a piece of shit to be honest, why would blizzard copy it? I guarantee you it was the devs own idea

[Miraun]

blizzard doesn't copy SE, i have a feeling you're trying to say that. FFXI is a failed game, a piece of shit to be honest, why would blizzard copy it? I guarantee you it was the devs own idea

Spoiler: show

Every MMO company steals mechanics they like from other MMOs.

[Lucavi]

Sounds fine to me. Change is good, and expected for a company that has to continue to find ways to squeeze out additional flavor from a food people have been chewing on for years.

[Boyiee]

That sunders for a 25man raid don't match 1-2k extra dps from the offtank? what?

Speadsheet gives me (edit, just ran it through the spreadsheet to check and its actually 800 dps boost for me alone) from 5 stacks of sunders with 100% uptime as fury. sure i could stack them myself but not every raid has a fury warrior, and its pretty tough to stack them as arms and maintain your optimal rotation.

Even in a 10man it'd win if you got a few melees.

Stacking sunders as fury is always always always a dps gain for yourself and every other physical dps in the raid. It barely affects your rotation and even if it does somewhat, it's still always a positive gain.

That is, if you have no prot doing devastate. In 10man even if you are only melee it's still a dps gain for youself. So many fury's don't sunder and it hurts themselves and the rest of the raid, just because they are bad or lazy.