Improving Specs: Warriors

Time for another entry in the Improving Specs series. Entry 2: Warriors. Now, just a quick recap, the concept of this series is to give every spec a talent that changes the look of the class to make it distinctive- so that you can tell what class and spec anyone is at a glance. Almost all specs already have talents that are distinctive in combat, but the real challenge of these series is to give them talents that are just as distinct out of combat, in town, and just generally out in the world.

Just to get it out of the way... Fury, Blizzard has already done a magnificent job for. The Titan's Grip talent, allowing you to dual-wield two-handed weapons, was in fact the inspiration for this entire series, and is amazing. It is, in my mind, the single coolest talent in the entire game. Job bloody well done there, Blizz. I don't even think it's that unbalanced anymore- newer gear has made it excel. Yes, it used to be god mode, and now it's just an amazing talent. Suck it up, fellow Fury Warriors.

Arms, currently, has its 51 point talent as Bladestorm. Bladestorm is basically the Fury trademark ability Whirlwind, only it lasts longer and hits more times. Good ability? Yeah. Holy god it's unimaginative, though. The Arms Warrior is supposed to be a soldier, a grizzled veteran knowledgable about combat and an expert in all sorts of weapons. There are a few talents that demonstrate this, but mostly, it's just become the PvP tree. And this is silly. Fortunately, I have (what I feel is) a great idea for a trademark talent. It would require changes to the entire rest of the tree, though. Basically, you would change all abilities (not passive talents, only the ones that give you new attacks) in the Arms tree to act differently depending on whether you were wielding a two-hander or a pair of one-handers. The two-hander versions would be more single-target and bleed effect based, and the dual weapon versions would be more AoE based. The core of the ability would be the same, but it would amount to dual wielding being great for trash and qeusting, and single wielding being great for boss dps.

Then you would have the 51 point talent... one that allowed you to equip both a two handed weapon and two one-handers at the same time. Obviously, you'd only be able to be actually fighting with one of the sets at once... but you would get full stat bonuses from both, and be able to switch them with the press of a button. This gives Arms a distinct look- two hander on back, one handers on the hip- as well as emphasizing using the right tool for the job, and weapon expertise. I really, really like this idea. My gamer sense tells me it would be hard to implement, but I don't care.

Last, there is Prot. Honestly, though I do like my idea for Prot, I think I (or someone else) can do better. Prot has DPS problems, and to fix that, as well as go along with the idea of modifying equipment that I've used for the other two Warrior specs, I thought it would be a good idea to have them be able to equip a fist weapon in addition to a sword and shield. After all, fist weapons are more worn than wielded, and thus it's logical that one could wear them without it impeding their wielding of a sword or shield too much. I would like it especially if the fist were on the shield hand, but that might create graphical clipping areas too hard to fix- fists often have very big flashy models- and if it did, you could just change it to the weapon hand. Shield hand makes more sense, though, and is cooler. So let's hope that works.

Really, the big one here (obviously) was the Arms. I really think that's a dynamite fuckin' idea. We'll have more of this series periodically, so look foward to it!