WoW Forever: warrior rage no longer grows with damage in beta

Testers in the WoW Forever beta, which opened on 17 September, report that warriors no longer gain rage based on the damage they deal. In Classic, the rage a warrior got from each auto-attack grew with the damage of that hit, so stronger hits and critical hits filled the bar faster. In the beta, each swing gives a set amount, and a critical hit gives the same rage as a normal one. A class guide updated from the beta on 20 September describes the change the same way and says it greatly reduces how much rage a warrior can build. Testers posting on Blizzard's forums say the amount depends on the weapon's attack speed: around 7 to 9 rage per swing with a one-handed weapon and 14 to 17 with most two-handed ones. These are players' measurements, not Blizzard's.

So far this comes from one report, that class guide, and from testers' own posts. Blizzard has not confirmed or explained the change, and it has not said whether rage will still work this way at launch, at 23:00 UK time on 4 November, which is midnight on 5 November in Central Europe. Blizzard's list of known beta issues, last updated on 18 September, does not mention rage. On the evening of 24 September Blizzard took the beta down to install its weekly update and said full development notes would follow. When this was written they had not been published, so it is not yet known whether the update changes anything about rage.

By 24 September testers had opened around 30 threads about it on Blizzard's European and US forums; the busiest, on the US forum, had passed 300 replies. Several of those who complain accept the idea behind the change: in Classic, better gear meant more damage, more damage meant more rage, and more rage meant more damage again, which testers and the class guide see as one reason warriors were so strong in Classic raids. Their complaint is about critical hits. Without the extra rage, testers say, a warrior swings, waits and presses an ability in the same steady rhythm, and Boundless Rage, a new Fury talent that raises the rage cap by up to 30, is of little use if rage never arrives in bursts. Others want the old system back, saying a warrior fresh at level 60 and one in the best raid gear used to feel almost like different classes. Not everyone is unhappy: one tester writes that the beta warrior feels much like Classic and that a set amount per swing is the only way to keep warriors in check.

The beta started with a level cap of 20, which Blizzard plans to raise to 30 later in the beta, so testers' figures come from low levels. Several testers have tried to work out level 60 on paper, and they conclude that a Fury warrior using Bloodthirst and Whirlwind every time they are ready would have little or no rage left for anything else, even counting raid buffs such as Windfury. The class guide says it is not yet clear whether warriors will get other ways to gain rage by level 60.

In 2024, writing about Season of Discovery, Blizzard's Josh “Aggrend” Greenfield called rage a problem because more damage means more rage and more rage means more damage. He said that if the team could start that season again, it would likely have made rage a set amount that does not grow with damage or critical hits, and made major changes to warrior gameplay to make up for it. He was talking about another version of the game, and Blizzard has not said this is the reason for the change in Forever.