Arms Warrior is not fun

In Development WoW: Forever Beta Discussion
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I think I’ve commented quite a bit in a multitude of threads, but the beta is now over and while my other specs got some needed changes and I’m rather happy with them, my main spec suffers from being left behind.

The rage issue has been talked to death so I’ll keep my thoughts on it short. It is not fun playing a spec where the majority of your gameplay is waiting. Arms has no form of generator, no good access to crit, 5% with Sword specialization only IF you’re using a sword is not enough. The entirety of my time playing Arms was just keeping up my maintenance debuffs and none of the “Wow! Look at how big that crit was!” gameplay that Arms is pretty much known for.

Slow, but rewarding with really big damage. In it’s current state, you don’t do that. You don’t press Heroic Strike and the rage economy will probably make it rough for when we eventually get MS as well. I hope I’m wrong, but according to simulations and research-- I won’t be.

I’ve talked about my utter disdain for Spearing Strike to no end. It’s a shame I can’t call it completely worthless considering it has an effect on 5% of the mobs in World of Warcraft in it’s entirety, with of course the exception of what kind of mobs will be added in Forever. It’s damage is 40% weapon damage vs everything else which is pathetic, on top of a 15 second cooldown, and a 15 rage cost. Sure it increases to 120% against the specific targets of Dragonkin, Giants, and Mounted targets but those are so rare it would not surprise me that you don’t take the talent. The dismount got removed so the PvP portion of it got completely annihilated.

A lot of the talents in the Arms tree just… don’t feel like anything. You have Rend into Deep Wounds into Impale which shouldn’t be changed, those talents still feel great to talent into. But then you have the other talents in the first row. Parry and Heroic Strike. As I mentioned earlier Heroic Strike is a rage negative because it consumes your generator being a white attack when we face rage issues already. -3 rage is not going to do anything. Then you have the alternative of Parry which has no offensive value whatsoever for a spec centered around two-handed weapons and slow, heavy hits.

Tactical Mastery and Anger Management do so little you can’t even afford to stance dance as you should be to play into the whole ‘Hybrid’ role that warrior is supposed to. You lose too much rage.

I mostly have no complaints about Bloodthrill. It can be tuned, but it honestly just seems like Taste for Blood which is nice.

The devs stated they weren’t happy with Slam and with the most recent patch notes nothing happened.

Sweeping Strikes I understand being a “Gold Ticket” talent due to the fact we’re supposed to be cleave gods, but nothing in Arms warrior kit really lends itself to being that. It makes more sense being something single target oriented. Fury seems like the cleave god which by all means, let it be.

Improved Slam kind of falls in with the whole Slam comment from earlier, so I hope that will just change in it’s entirely. No point in rehashing that talking point.

It truly feels like they don’t know what to do with the spec and it’s really unfortunate. I hope it gets some love instead of everyone going “Hah! At least I’m not an Arms Warrior.”

TLDR: A generator that isn’t a white attack would be nice. Spearing Strike being something else in it’s entirety is needed at this point considering it’s basically dead in the water. How about a strike that activates an effect somewhat like Inner Calm for your next 3 attacks? let’s do something cool with Slam and make Sweeping Strikes still a talent, but not a link to Mortal Strike.

Those are my thoughts at least.

oh and ps reck is still 30 minutes lol

Brief edit thanks to some comments.

I understand friction is a thing in Vanilla, but we now have TWO talents that are ‘situational’. Bloodthrill will simply not work on mobs you can’t bleed so you completely lose access to your Overpowers.

Something like this is not friction, it just doesn’t work. Talents are supposed to enhance your spec, both Spearing Strike and Bloodthrill have X mob type modifiers instead of enhancing the class.

Why is there such a heavy caveat?

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TLDR: A generator that isn’t a white attack would be nice. Spearing Strike being something else in it’s entirety is needed at this point considering it’s basically dead in the water. How about a strike that actives an effect somewhat like Inner Calm for your next 3 attacks? let’s do something cool with Slam and make Sweeping Strikes still a talent, but not a link to Mortal Strike.

Spriest is in the same boat. They gave us Shadow Word Death on a 16 second CD and i hope that’s not all they intend to give us in the end. They will eventually make their way around to every spec as this is an actively tuned version of vanilla. Hang in there.

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Funnily enough, Shadow Priest is my second favorite spec. The rework was awesome, still some issues but now it’s at least playable.

I get Rogues being upset about the whole “Yeah we’re the best spec in the game for single target, but the rotation is extremely boring” too.

Except Arms just sucks and it’s “rotation” is atrocious.

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I’d love to see arms changed. I really wanted to play warrior especially in PvP but it seems like in PvP especially it will be totally worthless. Also I didn’t know they removed the dismount portion… how lame that was the fun of the ability…

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the dismount was briefly removed and then added again.

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parrying finishes your swing timer.

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sweeping strikes benefits from cleave and whirlwind.

so for example for cleave: cleave hits 2 targets and procs two sweeping strikes attacks, bonus instant attacks with a 2h weapon is huge.

also it’s “gold medal talent”

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The problem is the spec does not have enough rage to do any of this.

It is unfinished and mathematically unequivocally does not work.

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slam does suck but they couldn’t leave it as it was or it would’ve been overpowered, slam is the one abilities that warriors have that does weapon damage in a fixed amount of time that doesn’t suffer from weapon damage normalization. if you were able to snap off slams every 1 second with a 3.8 speed 2h weapon it would be busted.

if it were up to me i would change spearing strike to have a slightly shorter CD and change the mobs it works to to be any mobs that are immune to bleeds so we have something to press when bloodthrill is off the table.

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wait is this what retaliation does? its not retaliating at all

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Retaliation does yellow hit spike damage based off your AP-modified weapon damage, unrelated to the parry haste mechanic.

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i mean no retaliation should be counter attacking your attacker, i don’t know what you’re referencing but if an ability is straight up not working it will definitely be fixed.

but i did oversimplify what parry haste does. it doesn’t always finish your swing timer each parry removes 1/2 of the remaining swing timer or something like that so a parry at the end of your swing timer does almost nothing, but a parry at the start is very noticable.

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Shame, because Arms could’ve had some fun options if they gave it a touch more attention. Guess it’s gonna have to be leveling a Warrior as a second char if they make some post launch changes.

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Yeah. These were my thoughts too. I desperately want to play the class, but I am simply not a Prot or Fury player.

I would really love to be pleasantly surprised with some notes or changes that I login to on launch day but Arms direction on retail and now Forever seems like they’re unsure what to do with the spec.

I don’t think people would complain about making Arms ST-oriented/PvP spec. That’s what it’s always been, anyway.

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You juts described all of Rogue :slight_smile:

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Yeah, I’ve heard that you guys have a problem with your spec. I sympathize, but this is a thread for Arms. I hope things get better for you though.

Unfortunately we’re getting hybrid taxed(???) and we weren’t so brazenly touted to be the de-facto best single target spec in the game.

They could definitely make your rotation a little less dull. I played one as an alt, SS spam → SnD is just not it.

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Same tbh, I just think there’s a disconnect between the active playing the game and the Devs design intentions and I don’t know where it is. White Damage is (and always was) the biggest portion of damage for melee classes, but having multiple classes and specs that are just “Autoattack and maintain a few buffs uptime” isn’t engaging and I can’t for the life of me figure out who would have felt otherwise?

Arms deserves to play the game just as much as Rogue does etc.

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Yeah, Whites have always been a huge thing and even White crits (at least for 2H users) can be extremely satisfying.

I don’t think ANYONE goes into playing Arms warrior and thinks the gameplay loop is going to be maintaining status effects. They think they’re going to be pumping out MASSIVE damage. Sure it can feel slow at times, and it can be a real battle of attrition in PvP-- but once you connect? Terrifying.

Rogue has a spec for debuffs, it’s Assassination, Combat staying the Sinister Strike and SnD spam makes sense I suppose but it could definitely use a little seasoning.

Subtlety I am not knowledgeable enough to comment on so I’ll keep my mouth shut.

The specs have room for nuance. Forgive my ignorance for not knowing all of Rogue’s issues, but I can easily see what some were coming from playing Classic Rogue.

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I’m the same in that I’ll simply never choose either Fury or Prot to level in - it’s Arms all the way.

I was going to main an Arms Warrior with BS/Mining + First Aid but I’m a bit concerned about what I’ve been reading. I’m starting to think that there may be other classes I’d have more fun with/an easier time levelling if what’s been said is true - but then weirdly enough I know I’ll be envious the instant I see another Arms Warrior of a decent level and wish I’d stuck it out.

I’m just hoping they’re really not as bad as people are making them sound.

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Not trying to be a jerk or anything, but I honestly feel the complete opposite. I’m enjoying Warrior A LOT right now! For the first time, I feel like all three talent trees are actually decent, viable, and fun to play, even in PvP.

I’ve tried multiple classes and originally wanted to main Paladin, but sadly, I just don’t think it’s in a great spot right now. I also gave Rogue and Druid a shot, but after the Warrior rework, Warrior came out on top for me, hands down. Nothing else even comes close!