First Look at Hero Talents in The War WithinWar Within Hero Talents Overview
Our Guide Writers have provided initial first impressions on the Hero Talent Trees revealed so far for the War Within. Check out all of our released opinion articles below.
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Mountain Thane Warrior Hero Talent Tree
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With the reveal of Mountain Thane, we’ve been given a look at the first Warrior Hero Class coming to The War Within!
Mountain Thanes embody the strength of the mountains and the power of the storm. They channel thunder and lightning through their reinforced bodies to make them an unstoppable force.
The Lord of War and Thunder
Mountain Thane is the first Hero Specialization to be revealed for Warriors, and it absolutely nailed the theme. Inspired by the Warcraft III Mountain King, the talents focus on Avatar, Thunder Clap, and , but the real transformative talent in this tree is , causing Thunder Clap to generate rage and enable Fury’s multi-target cleave, effectively taking Whirlwind’s place in the rotation. Interestingly, it doesn’t replace Whirlwind outright and both abilities could still be used independently, though it’s a thematic and ingenious way to promote the use of an ability which has long been ignored by Fury Warriors.
Mountain Thanes are based on the Warcraft III Mountain King, which inspired several Warrior abilities in World of Warcraft.
While some may criticize that Mountain Thane is a concept that doesn’t translate well into every playable race or that the elemental theme is more the realm of Shaman, inspiration is often drawn from multiple sources and these concepts have long been represented in abilities like Thunder Clap and Storm Bolt/Concussion Blow from the beginning. There’s no reason to believe non-Dwarf Warriors couldn’t embrace the power of the storm, much in the same way that they inherited Ravager from General Nazgrim, Spear of Bastion from Shadowlands, or Odyn’s Fury from the Valarjar – who is to say that a Night Elf or Pandaren adorned in plate and horns doesn’t set out to conquer the mountain?
In truth, this transition into a pseudo-elemental Warrior is more low-impact than one might think – Warriors have had several magical attacks in the past and although magic damage is inherently stronger than physical due to ignoring armor, this is something that’s accounted for in tuning. The biggest impact is that these Warriors will once again benefit from Chaos Brand, whereas in Dragonflight they’ve only cared about Mystic Touch, though this is not a major point of consideration as both are typically present within most organized raid groups and neither are ever guaranteed in any smaller group content. If anything, this change makes Warriors more consistent with other melee classes, but it’s really just a minor footnote.
Unrealized Potential
Despite the strong theme and intriguing ideas, there are some fair criticisms to be found within the new talent tree. Of course, this is the first version we have seen and much of the text is likely concept-placeholder, but while none of these issues are seriously concerning, they can generate some valuable discussion.
Bloodthirst vs Raging Blow
First and foremost, the talents are largely split between those which interact with Bloodthirst and those which value Raging Blow, however no Fury build actually uses both abilities regularly. Best case, the Raging Blow talents also work with Annihilator (which replaces Raging Blow with a special auto-attack enhancement), but that would shoehorn Mountain Thane into a single specific playstyle, which is not the stated design intent.
To their credit, the developers already acknowledged this in an insightful interview with PIka and Bajheera, suggesting changes within the class and spec talent trees to address this incoherency.
Ultimately the goal for hero talents is just to enhance your base build and however you want to play a class, whether it’s Annihilator or Raging Blow, both of those should feel like they work with Mountain Thane. In reality, what you see on live right now and what’s planned for 11.0 might not always mesh, so there’s some work to be done on the backend to account for that – maybe it means Bloodthirst needs to be better incorporated into the main build, so it doesn’t feel completely pushed out. This isn’t a Warrior specific issue either, several classes need to be looked at to ensure they align with the hero talent philosophies.
However, this isn’t necessarily as foolproof as it sounds. One ability is bound to take priority, and with both on very short cooldowns, it feels inevitable that one is focused at the expense of the other – either weaving in periodic Bloodthirsts, which wastes , or keeping Bloodthirst on cooldown at the expense of less . Either way, it introduces a conflict, and it feels like the specialization would be better served if it simply picked one ability to focus on.
RNG on RNG
This is another point of interest, as all of the effects are currently labeled as a percent chance, rather than the typical Proc Per Minute system most often used within modern WoW. Both have their place, however, the standout here is that some Mountain Thane effects require two consecutive procs, rather than just one. For example:
- Raging Blow has a 10% chance to trigger a Lightning Strike, which then has a 10% chance to trigger , or a 1% chance per cast… and only while Avatar is not already active, which is typically at 40-50% uptime thanks to Titan’s Torment and Berserker’s Torment.
- Likewise, Lightning Strikes have a 20% chance of triggering , which is a 2% total chance per cast.
Now these numbers are probably placeholder and don’t need to be incredibly high, but the first look is not overly exciting. There’s also a good argument to be made for these abilities not being overly invasive, as they are supposed to be additions to the main kit rather than the central focus, but it would be nice to see a little higher frequency, as these kinds of layered RNG procs rarely feel fun when they’re so infrequent.
- Personally, it would be nice to cut straightforward talents like , and split out into two talents instead – one focused on triggering Avatar with greater frequency and the other on its interactions with .
Hero talents modify visuals and capabilities alike, granting Avatar a new storm appearance. Image credit: Plkatv’s Mountain Thane Interview.
Lackluster Defenses
This is odd for a specialization also available to tanks, though somewhat more forgivable with how generally tanky Fury Warriors are already considered to be. That said, these bonuses feel fairly small or lacking in uptime, and so it would be nice to see something a little more impactful or thematic, perhaps interacting with Heroic Leap or Avatar.
- amounts to about a 40k shield when using current numbers, or 4% of the same Warrior’s life pool, which only works against magical damage and at the cost of an additional talent point. This is obviously more impactful for tanks though, who naturally have higher armor and can safely intervene other tanks without getting one-shot in return.
- and feel even more minor, due to their infrequent triggers, short durations, and low values. We can file them under “every little bit helps” but they aren’t doing much to excite me.
- sounds exciting and is at least thematic, but the addition of two untargeted half-duration stuns almost sounds more inconvenient than anything else – contributing to diminishing returns without a guarantee of stopping anything worthwhile in pulls that regularly consist of 5-10 targets. If it applied to all nearby targets, it would become an outright better version of Shockwave, but that feels unlikely to happen.
Tuning TBD
This is the last point for a reason, as tuning is obviously far from complete, but it’s worth bearing in mind that Fury Warriors have historically had a lot of issue with supposedly “high value procs” which aren’t actually all that high value. With such a small rotational toolkit, each ability is already individually important, so anything new needs to be very powerful to take priority, and simply… isn’t. As of right now, and accounting for all applicable talents:
- Whirlwind generates 4-8 rage, while Thunder Clap will always generates 5.
- Thunder Clap is ~13% weaker than Storm of Swords Whirlwind, while Thunder Blast is only about 20% stronger (which sounds like a lot, but keep in mind that Whirlwind only accounts for ~0.5% of Fury’s single target damage and ~6% in a typical Mythic+ dungeon).
- Thunder Blast is also 8% weaker than Slam, 15% weaker than Raging Blow, 28% weaker than Rampage, and 40% weaker than Execute – without considering all the myriad additional effects those abilities trigger.
So Thunder Blast would need a substantial damage increase just to break even with most rotational abilities, much less actually be prioritized over them. As is, it feels more like a small damage boost on a low priority filler, rather than an exciting gameplay moment.
Mountain Thanes use Thunder Clap in place of Whirlwind to enable AoE, and can empower it to become Thunder Blast.
You’ve Been Thunderstruck
Overall, Mountain Thane looks incredibly exciting, evoking feelings of nostalgia from a game that got many players into Warcraft in the first place. While there are some fair criticisms, they’re generally straightforward, and first impression remains that of a very solid concept which enhances Fury with small additions, rather than fundamentally changing what is widely considered a very smooth and popular playstyle. I, for one, cannot wait to see what other ideas and themes will be expressed once we get to see Slayer and Colossus in the new year.
Lightning Strikes
Damaging enemies with Thunder Clap, Revenge, Raging Blow, or Execute has a 10% chance to also strike one with a lightning bolt, dealing moderate Nature damage.
Lightning Strikes occur 50% more often during Avatar.Call of Thunder
The Stormstrike damage or Nature damage your abilities deal is increased by 5%. Stormstrike damage ignores Armor.
Thunder Clap damage increased by 50%, and it generates 5 Rage.
Improved Whirlwind and Meat Cleaver now improve Thunder Clap as well as Whirlwind. Strength of the Mountain
Bloodthirst and Rampage damage increased by 10%.Storm Shield
Intervening a target grants them a shield for 5 sec that absorbs magic damage equal to 3 times your Armor.Storm Bolts
Storm Bolt also hits 2 additional nearby targets, stunning them for 2 sec.Steadfast as the Peaks
Victory Rush increases your maximum health by 10% for 5 sec.Steadfast as the Peaks
Thunder Blast reduces damage you take by 4% for 5 sec.Burst of Power
Lightning Strikes have a 20% chance to make your next 2 Bloodthirsts have no cooldown.Avatar of the Storm
Casting Avatar grants you 2 charges of Thunder Blast and resets the cooldown of Thunder Clap.
While Avatar is not active, Lightning Strikes have a 10% chance to grant you Avatar for 4 secs.Thunder Blast
Bloodthirst has a 20% chance to grant you Thunder Blast, stacking up to 2 charges.
Thunder Blast
Your next Thunder Clap becomes a Thunder Blast that deals Stormstrike damage.
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