The Windfury thread
The Windfury thread
This isn’t a class-specific topic and it’s going to generate a huge amount of discussion, so let’s just get it in general and let everybody take a stab at it rather than trying to piece together the changes from posts in each class forum.
If you missed it in the notes, Windfury Totem is now a 10% haste buff rather than a chance to proc an extra attack. This is probably a positive change for the game in the long run as it will greatly reduce the randomness that is rampant when WFT is present. The bad news is it completely throws all existing theory on how the melee classes are balanced out the window of a 50 story building. Every warrior spec, rogue spec, enhancement shamans, feral druids, ret and prot paladin and probably even hunter and warlock pets are going to need a solid head-to-toe on how this change affects their abilities and DPS.
The big winners are rogues, fury warriors, enhancement shamans and druids: the former because the haste buff now affects their offhands as well as their main hands and the latter because they never got Windfury before this anyway. There’s no listed change to Windfury Weapon for shamans, so it is probable that their self buff now stacks with their totem buff. This is great for everyone as they will no longer be tempted to drop a different air totem instead of Windfury. If hunter and warlock pets are affected by this it’s great for them since they never had it before either.
We don’t really know the full extent of the tanking changes yet, so for now we can guess that both prot specs are probably not going to see drastic change here.
The minor loser is Ret. An extra attack from a two handed weapon was extremely powerful but far more bursty than it had any right to be. The increased haste makes Seal of Vengeance even more hilariously bad for Alliance than it was before, but it is pretty solid for Horde. The yet-unknown Seal of Corruption may change how Windfury is viewed by Ret.
Arms is the spec that gets the biggest kick int he junk. Unless Slam is modified somehow the current rotation that Arms warriors use will have unreasonably small margins of error if they aren’t outright impossible to play: without 3 seconds between swings, even if Slam changes to work like Steady Shot does now (cast between swings to get an extra hit off, does not reset swing timer) you’ll never be able to fit both a Slam and an instant ability between swings.
I would probably elaborate more but I am really tired. This change is pretty major in terms of melee class balance, so it warrants some discussion.
Filed under: World of Warcraft
