I am interested in experimenting with a high uptime single-target/cleave raid build using Test of Might and Spiteful Serenity talents. This build would directly line up every Demolish with Colossus Smash (45s), followed by 26 seconds of Colossus Smash debuff (albeit at 60% efficacy), followed by a MASSIVE Test of Might Strength buff for 12 seconds (this build doubles the amount of time we get to ramp ToM), leaving a mere 7 seconds of un-buffed damage before the next available Colossus Smash/Demolish.
Spiteful Serenity would be a terrible talent for Mythic+, as everything would die before the 26 second long CS window was finished.
I am aware that Arms sims and generally performs the best with Slayer/Bladestorm for ST and AOE, but that rotation loop is so boring to me. I am looking for the Big-Beefy Warrior play-style that chunks away health, and I want it to be Colossus. However, I also don’t want to be doing less DPS than the tanks during raid night, and won’t play with a terrible, un-viable talent build on purpose. Doing less DPS than a meta-Slayer Arms Warrior is an acceptable outcome here for the sake of my personal take on Class Fantasy.
Does anyone have insight into this proposed talent build? Have you tried it on a target dummy maybe? Are there other talent choices that could additionally augment the rage spending or cooldown alignment? I haven’t seen one guide, video, or reddit thread talk about the viability of Test of Might since Battle for Azeroth, which makes me sad because I loved it!
The most recent forum post that even mentions Test of Might is from July '24, and it is also referencing ToM as it existed during BFA. If ToM really is a completely dead talent, then it needs to get a big, hard buff during one of the mid-expansion patches!
Honestly, I hope Test of Might isn’t buffed. Overall it creates a weird feedback where Colossus Smash’s cooldown potency is diminished in exchange for Test of Might stat buff. At times during BfA it created the gameplay loop of sitting on your abilities, and holding rage bringing the rotation to a halt.
That changed in SLs and Dragonflight, but in Dragonflight we had so many resources we where doing everything possible to expend rage cluttering the Single Target rotation.
I really don’t like Test of Might and the stranglehold is had on the spec for almost 6+ years.
As for Colossus Arms on live it really doesn’t need a ton of tuning changes to catch up to Slayer in terms of Single Target. It needs a more fluid execute phase, and Demolish could use a few Quality of Life Adjustments (Castable w/o a target, Slightly bigger range on the cone, normalize the last hit of Demolish for crit vs non-crit).
TBH the playstyle you’re looking for already exists with the current Colossus builds. Mortal Strikes, Executes, and Demolish all hit regularly for several million damage.
It’s actually 23 seconds… The Blunt Instruments talent doesn’t get multiplied, it simply adds onto the 20 seconds…
The Blademaster’s Torment would pair nicely with Spiteful Serenity giving you 40 seconds of a baseline 3.00 seccond Cleave, which coincidentally still applies Fatality to your primary target as well… This build is probably more suited to M+, where you could also take Fervor of Battle to get additional primary target damage with the bonus Slams…
That said… There’s still not that many Slayer Arms Warriors either… more than Colossus, but significantly less than Fury…
I am getting an interesting interaction where Demolish gets a cooldown reduction, but Colossus Smash does not. So, if I am on top of the cooldowns, I can get Demolish to come off cooldown during the Test of Might window. This leads to a massive Demolish hit during a Test of Might buff, up to Strength +37% during execute on the raid-boss target dummy. I could also get the Treacherous Transmitter on-use Strength buff during the same window. So, approximately +30,000 Strength stat!
It definitely feels awkward to try and align all the things. Some Weak Auras might help with that.
Test of Might actually feels pretty good as a multi-target build. Dumping rage with buffed Cleaves had some big numbers, finished off with a big Demolish.
I’m glad to see others talking about this; I actually came to the forum tonight to post about this problem myself. While I’m here, I just wanted to add my 2c to the discussion:
The way Colossus is right now in conjunction with Arms makes it feel like what the spec is at it’s heart: big, tactical strikes delivered at the right time. However, in practice and actual gameplay, the spec is far underperforming when put up against Arms/Slayer, and that - at least to me - is an issue.
I’m not an inexperienced player, I understand the spec and I’m finding myself far below even the tank on several pulls if things aren’t aligned 100% perfectly. The CDs feel too long, especially Demolish, and either there aren’t enough stacks of Colossal Might at max and/or they stack too slowly, making it hard for Arms/Colossus to break even on quick, low-target pulls. (I’m sure there’s other situations, but I’ve seen that one happen a bunch of times.)
I wish I could point to a specific thing that could be fixed very easily to bring the spec in line, but it just feels sluggish and wimpy when it should feel robust and brutal. I hope we can see some buffs to this very quickly, as it’s the only warrior spec I’m really liking and having to work twice as hard for half the results is really turning me off this expansion as my orc warrior is my main.
I’ve been an Arms Warrior main for years, I’ve witnessed and played through the ups and downs. I’ve been primarily playing Colossus-Arms in PVE since launch, and my observation has been that it really starts to ramp during execute phases. This is mostly due to the cooldown reduction and Colossal Might stacks that trigger when using Execute on a target.
From the Test of Might target dummy testing that I conducted last night, this interaction is additionally bolstered by spending rage spamming Execute, creating a feedback loop into ToM that is building the massive strength buff (+37%) described above.
I hypothesize that this could be a viable raid-boss build for fights that allow for high melee uptime during execute phases, such as Ulgrax, Sikran, or Silken Court (2-target cleave). Rasha’nan starts at low health (60%) and gets into 35% execute range pretty quickly, so timing the movement phases to be during Colossus Smash/ToM down time might work out. ToM is going to be relatively mediocre during the main phase of the fights, likely averaging at +25% strength buff. But the execute phase is gonna be a hammer!
I plan on testing ToM during select Heroic fights during my guild raid this week. If it turns out to be a drag on progress, I’ll abandon the testing for the sake of my raid leader’s sanity.
It was an overcentralising talent previously and the only reason it’s been relegated behind In for the Kill in all content is due to the rage reduction of our spenders outside of execute alongside the reduction of rage generation going into TWW from DF.
Test of Might has always been a massive hamper on the balance of Arms warrior’s attack AP%s and will be until it’s removal.
In all honesty it just needs to be cut out from the spec entirely to not cause further degeneration of gameplay. Yes it’s had it’s good moments with corruption and 3x trait stacking of it during BFA but there’s no use clinging to nostalgia for it when the spec could benefit a lot from it’s removal.