I’m not sure I’d want to be stance switching to AoE unless there was going to be a long enough AoE period to justify losing the damage to all my other abilities in exchange for more damage for my Whirlwind and Cleave. I’m also hoping Bladestorm and Shockwave, as the top tier warrior abilities of the new talent tree, will be included in Berserker’s AoE boost. If not,Battlemay be the superior AoE DPS stance for anyone taking those talents.

It’s no surprise to see Rend, Heroic Strike, Enrage, Victory Rush, Thunder Clap, Berserker Rage, Heroic Throw, Pummel, Whirlwind, Disarm, Shattering Throw, Execute, Hamstring, Cleave, Shield Wall, Commanding Shout, and Heroic Leap all included as baseline class abilities. I was a little surprised to see Sunder Armor there, since it’s been said that Sunder is being removed, but it’s there for the moment. I was also surprised to see Meat Cleaver on there as a class ability, making Whirlwind and Cleave a lot more attractive for arms warriors than they currently are. With there being no apparent stance restriction that I can find on any ability, one could even imagine WW-and-Cleave being used to gather group threat by tanking warriors if they happened to have the rage handy, especially since Meat Cleaver is now baseline.Enrage no longer increased damage dealt but rather increases rage generation from melee attacks by 25%. (This is also the case for Death Wish in the level 75 talent tier.) This makes Enrages much less about increasing your damage directly and more about giving you rage to spend on attacks.

 I expect this to mean that Unshacked Fury will be potentially returning to the same mastery level as other masteries, since it won’t flat-out buff all damage you do while enraged, the way it does now.The real big implication of all this is that nothing is stance-defined or -limited anymore. Basically, you’ll be hitting Battle Stance for DPS and Defensive Stance to tank, and at present with so little getting benefit from Berserker Stance, I don’t know if you’ll want to use it much outside of huge trash pulls. Buffing Zerk to affect Thunder Clap, maybe even Rend from Blood and Thunder, and abilities like Bladestorm/Shockwave seems almost necessary to make it a worthwhile stance. Another possibility would be simply having Zerk increase all damage by 20% when striking four or more targets with a damaging ability. This would mean you’d always want to be in zerk for AoE situations and always out of it otherwise.