WoW Forever Warrior changes: the Rage rework, Victory Rush at 20, Weaponmaster, Vanguard and every talent Blizzard listed

Rage is the Warrior's only resource, and Blizzard changed both halves of how it is generated. For Rage from taking damage, it 'kept the original formula ... but with one big change. Rage gain from damage is calculated by ignoring Armor. So, wearing Armor will no longer reduce the Rage you gain.' The article says the game now uses 'the old formula as if you always had 50% damage reduction from Armor'. Absorbs are ignored too: 'Rage gain also ignores all damage absorption effects, so Power Word: Shield will no longer decrease Rage gained.'

The practical result is that a tank's Rage income stops depending on how much armour they have stacked, and a Priest shielding the tank no longer starves it of Rage. Both were long-standing frictions in the original game, and Blizzard addresses them without changing the base formula itself.

Rage from dealing damage is now 'fully-normalized', which Blizzard explains as: 'Rage gained is now based on the speed of the weapon that dealt the damage.' The article also admits a beta-specific detail: 'In the launch beta, we gave no additional Rage for dealing critical strikes. We are re-adding that. Critical strike will now give 75% more Rage than non-critical strikes.' So a fast weapon and a slow weapon should no longer produce wildly different Rage over time, and critical strikes are back to being a Rage bonus.

Two abilities are new to the Warrior's baseline kit. 'Tactical Mastery: Learned at level 14. Allows the Warrior to keep 10 Rage when changing Stances. Can be further improved with Arms talents.' In the original game, keeping Rage across a stance swap needed talent points; now every Warrior keeps some from level 14. 'Victory Rush: Learned at level 20. 30-second cooldown instant attack that deals damage (increased by Attack Power) and heals the Warrior for 10% of maximum health. Activated for 20 seconds every time you kill a non-trivial enemy.' That is a self-heal for a class Blizzard itself says 'lack[s] the tools to easily recover from taking too much damage'.

Three big cooldowns are separated. Recklessness, Retaliation and Shield Wall each 'no longer share' a cooldown with the other two, and Retaliation and Shield Wall both have their cooldown 'reduced to 15 minutes'. A Warrior can therefore use a defensive and an offensive cooldown in the same fight instead of choosing one.

The rest are tuning and usability. Rend and Thunder Clap 'now gain significant damage scaling from Attack Power'. Thunder Clap becomes 'Useable in Defensive Stance', with its cooldown 'increased to 6 seconds' and its threat 'rebalanced (reduced) to account for being usable in Defensive Stance'. Battle Shout's Attack Power bonus is 'reduced to compensate for both factions having both Shaman and Paladin buffs', but 'benefit of Improved Battle Shout also baked in'. Sunder Armor is 'Now usable even if the target has a more powerful Expose Armor effect active', and its 'Threat generated now scales with Attack Power'.

Arms gets seven listed entries. The headline is consolidation: Axe, Mace, Sword and Polearm Specialization 'all removed. These are now a part of the Weaponmaster talent.' Weaponmaster, a new row 5 talent, 'Combines the benefits of all weapon specialization talents into a single talent. You gain a different bonus based on your equipped weapon.' The bonuses: 'Axes and Polearms grant increased critical strike chance. Maces and Staves ignore some of the target's armor, and Sword have a chance to gain an extra melee autoattack.' Changing weapons no longer means re-spending points.

Spearing Strike is the Arms 16-point gold medal talent: 'An instant attack for 15 Rage with a 20 second cooldown. Deals a percentage of weapon damage to target and dismounts them. If the target was mounted, a Dragon, or a Giant, damage is doubled.' Bloodthrill, a new row 5 talent, ties Rend to Overpower: 'Your main hand attacks on enemies afflicted with Rend have a chance to activate Overpower for 6 seconds.' Together with Rend's new Attack Power scaling, that gives Rend a reason to stay on the target.

Improved Slam moves from Fury to row 6 of Arms and is redesigned: 'Only 2 points. Reduces the cooldown, global cooldown, and cast time of Slam, and Slam no longer delays or interrupts your melee auto attack swing time.' Slam's swing reset was the reason it was rarely used in the original game, so this is a meaningful change for two-handed Arms play.

Fury has the longest list, at 13 entries. Several feed Rage directly: Unbridled Rage's 'Chance increased. Now grants 2 Rage if the weapon equipped is a two-handed weapon.' Boundless Rage, a new row 3 talent, 'Increases your maximum Rage.' Enrage is redesigned and 'Now has a chance to trigger from taking any damage', while Blood Craze is 'Now also triggered by attacks that deal more than 20% of your maximum health in a single hit and by striking a target with Bloodthirst'.

Dual-wielders get Raging Blows, the Fury 16-point gold medal talent, which 'Causes your Whirlwind to hit with both weapons when dual-wielding and reduces the Rage cost of Cleave.' Dual Wield Specialization 'Now also increases chance to hit with off-hand weapons', and Precision, a new row 5 talent, 'Increases chance to hit.' Improved Cleave 'Now reduces the Rage cost of Cleave instead of increasing its bonus damage.'

Two changes reduce power or trade it. Flurry's 'Total increased attack speed reduced by 5%.' Bloodthirst gets a 'Minor redesign. No longer heals the Warrior. Instead increases movement speed by 10% for 10 seconds. Damage retuned to have a base value and less scaling from Attack Power.' Death Wish 'Now increases all damage taken while active instead of decreasing Armor and Resistances.' Booming Voice 'No longer modifies Shout durations. That modification is now baseline.' The article also lists Iron Will under the Fury heading while saying it moved 'from Protection to row 2 of Arms'; it 'Now reduces duration of Stuns instead of increasing resistance to them.' That placement is reported as Blizzard wrote it.

Protection's 12 entries lean on two ideas: shields matter more, and avoidance pays Rage. Shield Specialization 'Now has chance on Blocks to generate 5 Rage instead of 1 Rage.' Master of Defense, a new row 3 talent that requires Shield Specialization, 'Grants a chance to gain 5 Rage when the Warrior Dodges or Parries while a shield is equipped.' Improved Bloodrage 'Now increases initial Rage and Rage over time, instead of just initial Rage.' Combined with Rage from damage ignoring Armor and absorbs, a shield tank should see steadier Rage than in the original game.

Defiance 'Now requires a shield equipped to increase threat in Defensive Stance', and Bastion, a new row 5 talent, 'Increases all damage done while you have a shield equipped.' Focused Rage, new at row 6, 'Reduces the Rage cost on all offensive abilities.' Shield Slam's 'Damage scaling from Block Value increased.' Anticipation 'Now grants twice as much Defense Skill per talent point.'

The 16-point gold medal talent is Vanguard: 'Charge is now useable while in Defensive Stance.' Improved Revenge is redesigned to 'increase damage done by Revenge instead of a chance to Stun the target', Improved Disarm 'Now reduces the cooldown on Disarm instead of increasing its duration', and Improved Shield Wall 'Now reduces the cooldown on Shield Wall by a large amount', on top of the baseline cut to 15 minutes. Blizzard does not give the size of that reduction.

Removed talents are where 'bring certain utility forward as baseline functionality' shows most clearly. Arms loses the four weapon specializations into Weaponmaster. Fury loses Improved Demoralizing Shout and Improved Battle Shout, which 'are now Baseline abilities'. Protection loses Improved Shield Block and Improved Taunt, which 'are now baseline abilities', while 'One-Handed Weapon Specialization has been removed'. Booming Voice's Shout duration bonus has also moved into the baseline kit, even though the talent itself remains.

The trees keep the original structure. From the article: 'Talents become available starting at level 10 and continue using a familiar structure, including one-point milestone talents at 11, 21, and 31 points, now joined by a new 16-point milestone.' The Deep Dive recap adds that trees keep 'the same number of rows' and that 'Some talents remain exactly as they were in patch 1.12'. For the Warrior, Blizzard names all three new 16-point talents (Spearing Strike, Raging Blows and Vanguard) but does not say which talents sit at 11, 21 or 31 points. Talents, including Legacy talents, are changed at 'a class trainer in one of the major cities', and Dual Specialization 'becomes available at level 40'. For how that system works across every class, see the WoW Forever talents page.

Blizzard closes the section with a statement of class identity rather than a list. Warriors 'remain the masters of melee combat. They can both dish out melee damage and mitigate damage done to them. They have a unique strength in dealing sustained damage to multiple melee targets, found on no other melee class.' The limit is stated in the same paragraph: 'they lack the tools to easily recover from taking too much damage.' Victory Rush is a small answer to that, not a removal of it, which matches how Blizzard treated the Paladin's missing interrupt in the WoW Forever Paladin changes.

What the article does not contain matters as much. There are no damage values, Attack Power coefficients, Rage costs beyond Spearing Strike's 15, talent point costs beyond Improved Slam's 2 and Improved Tactical Mastery's maximum, and no position for most talents. There is no rotation, priority list or stat weight. There is no change listed for Charge outside Vanguard, Execute, Mortal Strike, Heroic Strike, Whirlwind outside Raging Blows, Intercept, Berserker Rage, Pummel, Shield Bash or Overpower itself. A Warrior guide that quotes numbers for any of those is not quoting Blizzard. This page will add values only when Blizzard publishes them.

For which races can play a Warrior and how the reworked racials interact with the class, see the WoW Forever race-class combinations and racials pages; for the full cross-class picture, the WoW Forever class changes overview collects every class article in one place.