Baseline tools every warrior gets

In WoW: Forever, Victory Rush is baseline at level 20. It is a 30 second cooldown instant attack that scales with Attack Power and heals you for 10 percent of max health, and it switches on for 20 seconds after you kill a non-trivial enemy. Tactical Mastery, learned at 14, lets you keep 10 Rage through a stance change; an Arms talent raises that to as much as 25.

Recklessness, Retaliation, and Shield Wall no longer share one cooldown. Retaliation and Shield Wall both drop to 15 minutes. Thunder Clap now works in Defensive Stance on a 6 second cooldown, with its threat reduced to pay for that. Battle Shout's Attack Power bonus was cut because both factions now get both Paladin and Shaman buffs, but the old Improved Battle Shout upgrade is baked into the baseline shout.

A human Warrior in Elwynn Forest raises a two-handed sword glowing gold after a kill, Dee beside a shield against a fence, Northshire Abbey behind.
Victory Rush lights the blade after every kill. The talents around it changed again on 1 October.

What changed for warriors on 1 October?

On 1 October, Blizzard's patch notes say they fixed a bug where Dual Wield Specialization was granting its hit chance bonus to both weapons instead of just the off-hand. The developers say that fix forced another balance pass on Fury. The same beta notes also list an identical bug under known issues for that build, so it is unclear whether the fix is fully in.

After that pass, Whirlwind hits with both equipped weapons without spending a talent point, a baseline change that used to belong to the Raging Blows talent. Off-hand hit chance moved to a new talent, Furious Precision, worth 4, 7, or 10 percent. Flurry's prerequisite flipped too: Death Wish now leads to it, not Enrage, which frees early Fury points for other choices while leveling.

Arms gets Spearing Strike and Weaponmaster

Arms gets Spearing Strike, a new 16-point gold medal talent: an instant attack for 15 Rage on a 20 second cooldown that deals a percentage of weapon damage and dismounts the target, doubled against a mounted target, a Dragon, or a Giant. It no longer needs a two-hander, just Battle Stance. Weaponmaster, a new row 5 talent, folds the old axe, mace, sword, and polearm specializations into one choice: axes and polearms add critical strike chance, maces and staves ignore some armor, and swords gain a chance at an extra attack.

Bloodthrill, in row 5, triggers Overpower off main-hand hits on a target you have Rend on. The same beta notes raised its proc chance to 4, 8, 12, 16, or 20 percent per point, up from 2, 4, 6, 8, or 10, and limited it to main-hand swings, including Cleave and Heroic Strike. Milestone talents still land at 11, 21, and 31 points, now joined by a 16-point tier, which is where Spearing Strike sits.

Protection opens a path for non-shield warriors

Protection's stated goal in the 1 October notes is a path through the middle of the tree for warriors who are not holding a shield, useful as a PvP-leaning secondary spec. Row 1 now holds Iron Will, moved over from Fury to cut stun duration instead of adding resistance, alongside Improved Bloodrage; Toughness was removed, Anticipation moved from row 1 to row 2, and Improved Revenge, Improved Disarm, and Improved Shield Bash each moved one row earlier. Vanguard, a new 16-point gold medal talent, lets Charge work in Defensive Stance.

Wowdee's class guide for Warrior will track Arms, Fury, and Protection against the patch you're actually playing, not an older screenshot, so a change like this shows up the day it lands.

Still to come

Not yet settled by our sources or tested in game:

  • Whether the Rage-from-taking-damage issue players flagged on 4 October gets its own forum patch note; a developer only confirmed it was unfixed on a podcast, not in writing.
  • Final numbers for Furious Precision, Weaponmaster, Bloodthrill, and Spearing Strike once more tuning passes land, since beta values move weekly.

Sources

Beta notes are dated because Forever is still changing.