fucking brilliant. we're back to HW now in a good way but the fact is it never should have been changed in the first place.
a long time coming. 250 was fine when it had arguably the best raid debuff in game attached to it, but once the debuff was gone it needed something else. would be best if they had BB also give 20 gauge; would give tanks more incentive to use their aggro combo beyond the opener. also would be nice if BB was buffed to a flat 300 instead of just 280.
good changes. you'll still never use unchained once you hit 70, at least not as long as it's linked to the same CD as IR, but that doesn't change the fact that it's nice to be able to just pop it on, say, huge aoe trash packs where you'll be in tank stance the whole time, and have it not interrupt your steel cyclone usage. as for IR, it's nice in that you can now fit 2 onslaughts into a single IR window, on top of an upheaval and your 6 meme cleaves, resulting in a solid little bump in damage. so that's nice.
the life steal on it is nice. i liked it better when it was called Bloodbath and we had it on every fucking skill for 30s, but hey, i guess you can take my food away and then spit out a few chewed up scraps into my mouth and tell me how lucky i am. seriously, just bring bloodbath back, preferably as a tank role skill. it's infinitely better than anticipation ever will be. you could even keep the shorter duration version that DPS have access to.
all in all, it's positive. all of it, really. it's just positive in the sense that it's better than the trash there was before. now, don't get me wrong, WAR was totally viable. it just was clunky with the gauge loss much smoother and more fun now that that's gone and the other nerfs combined to make you feel weaker at 70 than you were at 60. sure, i can do 6 fell cleaves in a row, but they all hit for ~10-20% less than they did at 60. yes, that's technically a gain overall, but when i was getting FC crits of 16k at 60, and at best i've only seen an FC direct crit of 15k at 70, it just feels bleh. granted, that was end-game 60 vs. new xpac 70, but the general point still stands.
the biggest thing they need to do with WAR is add some kind of unique not overpowered, just unique utility. an idea floating around the official forums was have thrill of battle provide half the effect to all party members within a 30y radius. so a 10% max hp buff and heal for 20s. which is great. it's not completely unique, as brd already has the same thing via BV+Ballad, but it's still rare enough that it would work.
shake it off also still needs to be addressed. it's the worst skill in game at the moment. anything you want it to work on it doesn't remove, and the stuff that should be taken care of by a healer is what it does work on, rendering it useless. if it's going to stay like it is now, then it needs to do something drastic, like removing the vuln debuffs from when you screw up certain mechanics in end-game content. this would essentially make it a mulligan every 60s for WAR's.
some people have suggested turning shake it off into our raid utility by modifying the skill somehow. that would also work, if it was the right utility. but it needs something. as of right now, WAR has no level 68 skill. it's not even worth keeping on your hotbar, unless you get a kick out of standing in Bad Breath and dispelling 9 debuffs at once i suppose.
