WoW Patch 3.1 PTR Warrior glyph

We covered the changes (including the undocumented ones) to warriors on the PTR, including the new Titan's Grip 'damage tax' on fury warriors. Yeah, it sucks, I'm not happy about it, but it's probably not going to go away.

The idea of Titan's Grip being too powerful is too entrenched in too many minds, so we basically have to hope that the damage penalty only comes into play while you're actually dual wielding and is not just a flat penalty on all of your abilities while you have the talent, which would make offtanking or tanking five man instances quite painful for fury. We'll see how bad it is. Dropping fury warrior DPS by a full 10% seems pretty extreme and it hurts those warriors doing their absolute best the most (if you're putting out 4.4k DPS now, you're losing 440 DPS with this change). I guess it's a good thing I specced my tauren Arms when I did.

But enough grumbling. What about the changes to glyphs?

Glyph of Heroic Strike -- Increases the critical strike chance of Heroic Strike by 5%. (Old: You gain 10 rage when you critically strike with your Heroic Strike ability.) Glyph of Barbaric Insults -- Your Mocking Blow ability generates 100% additional threat. (Old: Your Mocking Blow ability also taunts the target.)

Glyph of Sweeping Strikes -- Reduces the rage cost of your Sweeping Strikes ability by 100%. (Old: You generate 30 rage over 12 sec when you use your Sweeping Strikes ability.)

Glyph of Overpower -- Adds a 100% chance to enable your Overpower when your attacks are parried. (Old: 50%)

Glyph of Bladestorm *new* -- Reduces the cooldown on Bladestorm by 15 sec.

Glyph of Shockwave *new* -- Reduces the cooldown on Shockwave by 3 sec.

Glyph of Vigilance *new* -- Your Vigilance ability transfers an additional 5% of your target's threat to you.

Glyph of Enraged Regeneration *new* -- Your Enraged Regeneration ability heals for an additional 10% of your health over its duration.

Glyph of Spell Reflection *new* -- Reduces the cooldown on Spell Reflection by 1 sec.

Glyph of Shield Wall *new* -- Reduces the cooldown on Shield Wall by 3 min, but Shield Wall now only reduces damage taken by 40%.

Well, I'm not happy with that HS glyph for my tanking, but it will help my DPS (even with the damage tax on fury) so it's kind of a wash. I loved the synergy of the revenge and heroic strike glyphs, and I'm not sure why it was changed... I always take the HS glyph for my fury DPS rotation, so maybe someone thinks fury also has too much rage. At any rate, this makes me rethink my Blocking/Revenge/HS glyphs for my standard tank glyphing. Considering some of the new glyphs, that may be a good thing.

The Barbaric Insults glyph doesn't change the fact that I can think of better glyphs for tanking than one for an ability with a one minute cooldown. This is a major glyph, I'm probably still going to go with some combo of the Glyph of Blocking, Glyph of Devastate and Glyph of Revenge. Now that we also have the Glyphs of Shockwave and Vigilance to consider, this one seems like a lot of work to revamp a glyph no one is going to use. However, I'm sure someone has figured out a use for this that would shock and amaze me so we'll see.

The Sweeping Strikes glyph change seems good in that it makes the ability free, so you can pop it whenever it is up and not worry about having the rage. Just simplifies the whole thing. The Glyph of Overpower's a flat buff but I'm not sure exactly how much more of one. It seems mostly aimed at DK's in PvP, who else is parrying a lot of arms warrior attacks? Bosses don't parry when you attack from behind and warriors tanking don't generally stance dance just to throw an overpower out, although if the stance changes come in that might change too.

The new glyphs are generally all good. Bladestorm has a 1.5 minute cooldown, anything that shaves that down will be good for Arms DPS. As soon as Dual Specs come in I'm grinding up the 1k gold, and I'm very interested in both the Shockwave and Vigilance glyphs listed here, the trick is finding room for all the glyphs I'd like to have. It almost makes me want to have prot/prot as my spec on one of my warriors. Amything that makes it easier to AoE tank is fine by me, but I'd love to see this glyph also trade the stun off for more damage or threat from the ability.

Enraged Regen glyph buffs the ability, but unless it's a minor I don't think I'd have room to take it on any build I'd have. The Spell Reflection glyph is also in the same boat, although it's a stronger glyph merely because it's a stronger ability, especially for tanking magic damage mobs or in PvP against spellcasters. And the Glyph of Shield Wall effectively turns Shield Wall into a kind of Icebound Fortitude. With full Improved Disciplines and this glyph, you could Shield Wall once a minute. The damage reduction dropping to 40% helps balance that, I suppose. I don't like it but I can understand it.

Basically, you can now really customize your glyphing as a tanking warrior. If you want more AoE threat, the Shockwave glyph looks good, while the Vigilance one is a standard 'good' glyph for any tank and the Shield Wall glyph allows you to increase your amount of cooldowns in a minute (you could effectively use Shield Wall constantly while tanking rather than as a panic button) if that's how you prefer to tank. The DPS glyphs all seem aimed at arms, while the HS change makes it less desireable in my opinion.