Arms Feedback from TWW Alpha

Classes Warrior
1

Posting here as the Alpha threads are not open yet. Maybe devs will read, maybe not.

I’m not going to go into node pathing as there has already been a fair amount of feedback given about this topic and why the new pathing kinda sucks, and I’m sure it will be discussed often moving forward.

Instead, I am focusing on general gameplay concerns moving into next expansion.

 

Whirlwind

Spammable, no-CD WW absolutely sucks, and is a major step back from DF gameplay. I tried the FoB build that was briefly popular at the start of S3, and it was some of the most boring gameplay I’ve ever experienced in this game. The AoE rotation went from a fun combination of TClap, cleaving MS and OP with SS, pressing juiced WW on CD, SD procs, to…spam WW endlessly and press Execute sometimes. With the removal of SoS, I am very concerned that we will find ourselves back in a place where this is the ideal way to play again, except in TWW we won’t have DF S3 set bonus, so even the execute procs might be ignored in favor of pressing more Whirlwinds.

Suggestion: Make Whirlwind have a baseline cooldown for Arms, in the 8-12 second range, and adjust the damage per cast as necessary. Whirlwind as a brief cooldown fits in the Arms space much better, and makes it feel great as a button all the time, even in single target. With this change, it could also free up FoB to have more oomph behind it, perhaps changing it to proc a free Mortal Strike on the target rather than a Slam.

 

Bladestorm

I personally love the idea of the current Slayer tree, but with the addition of Ravager to Arms, Bladestorm + Slayer will have a hard time competing with Colossus. There are also concerns that with the drastically increased amount of Bladestorm casts from the Slayer tree, players will spend a very significant amount of time channeling. I am not personally opposed to this, but I think there is a middle ground that should be met.

Suggestion: Presumedly Fury will be getting the 3s hasted duration Bladestorm that they’ve had before. I propose giving Arms the same 3s Bladestorm. The ability is iconic and shouldn’t be altered too much, but I think slightly reducing the duration doesn’t adversely affect the identity to any substantial degree, and will greatly reduce the amount of time Slayer Arms warriors spend channeling. This also reduces the opportunity cost of being locked into a BS channel when compared to being able to freely attack during Ravager. This is a minor nerf in PvP, but it’s rare that you sit the full 6s Bladestorm in PvP anyway, so it wouldn’t be that big of a deal.

Additionally, I propose giving Bladestorm an additional effect that says “Damage increased by X% when striking only one target”. Bladestorm has always felt like a strange button in single target, with players having to turn to sims and math to determine whether or not its worth pressing. Giving it this effect would ideally make it always worth using on one target, and more importantly, make it intuitive that it is worth pressing in ST.

 

Mortal Strike and Heroic Strike

These are more of a wishlist kind of thing that I don’t see ever actually being implemented, unlike the above suggestions which seem much more reasonable, but I’ll still say them anyway.

 

Mortal Strike

In my opinion, Martial Prowess in combination with Battlelord and Exhilarating Blows creates a bit of a negative response to Mortal Strike procs. To be clear, this is entirely separate from whether or not it is numerically correct to always hit MS if it lights up, I fully understand that using MS procs immediately is basically always worth it and Martial Prowess stacks can effectively be ignored.

However, there is still a feeling created by the combination of these effects that makes it feel kinda lame that I have buttons available to buff my Mortal Strike (Overpower with MP), but I should instead ignore them in favor of sending my 0-1 stack Mortal Strike immediately if it procs a reset.

Suggestion: Either remove Martial Prowess as an effect and keep the ability to proc Mortal Strike resets, or keep Martial Prowess and remove the ability to proc free resets of MS. I would actually prefer to lose both and just significantly increase the baseline damage of MS, and leave MS procs to indirect casts like Unhinged, but I think either of the mentioned solutions would still be an improvement and more widely accepted.

 

Heroic Strike

It’s been said before, I’ll say it again, having an oGCD rage dump is a lot of fun and was something unique about playing warrior in the past. I do not understand why oGCD gameplay has been largely reserved for just tanks. I don’t think any decent tank players complain about having oGCD abilities as part of their rotation, and I would very much like to see it return for DPS warrior, at least Arms.

Suggestion:

Bring back the Cataclysm version of Heroic Strike, an off-GCD way to dump rage for some minor-moderate added damage. It’s completely fine if its a button that only sees use during lust or some other period of very high rage generation, just having the option there adds so much to the gameplay of the spec and makes those very high rage generation moments less frustrating and more exciting.

I understand that there are concerns regarding button bloat, but by my count, even with zero other changes except adding Heroic Strike, Arms would have 9 rotational abilities, and that’s being generous and including Rend and TClap as separate abilities, you have Cleave talented, and are (for some reason) casting all 9 of those abilities in every situation. Realistically, in most situations the number would be lower. Even at 9, while that is on the higher side, that is still around the average number of rotational abilities for many specs.

 

TL;DR of suggestions:

  1. Give Whirlwind a baseline cooldown between 8-12 seconds, and adjust damage as necessary. Potentially also change FoB to proc a Mortal Strike instead of a Slam.
  2. Give Arms the 3s hasted channel of Bladestorm that Fury has had in the past. Give Bladestorm an additional effect along the lines of “Damage increased by X% when striking only one target.”.
  3. Remove the combination of Martial Prowess and the various ways to reset MS cooldown. Either have MP with no resets available, or remove MP and continue to have MS resets.
  4. Bring back Heroic Strike.

Thank you for your time.

3 Likes
2

Arms’ issue atm is it’s identity is somewhat lacking as it’s still in a similar gameplay loop to it’s previous iterations from expansions past, whereas other specs like Ret/Fury got a clear builder / spender relationship defined to the point where fixing Arms from the ground up would make it somewhat similar in gameplay to these two specs.

Rage as a resource is always a troublesome one, we’ve either got too little rage that pressing our main ST/AoE rage dumps ends up only really happening during Cooldown windows, or we’re in an excess like we are now where we can spam our attacks at will.

Reimplementing off GCD gameplay of Heroic Strike right now wouldn’t function as intended if there are so many other rage spenders, if it ended up being our only rage dump and everything else made into generators it would end up making our generators hit like a wet noodle or the dump would be the wet noodle portion instead.

What Arms needs is a bit of a reset in their philosophy of having to have most of our attacks consuming rage and not many generating rage. Too many spenders, not enough builders as you will which isn’t very helpful in engaging the player and making them feel like they’re in the driver’s seat as opposed to just being a passenger.

As for what we’re dealing with in the current Alpha build without seeing the actual feel of the reduced rage generation it’s hard to judge exactly what should change going forward to keep this a fun and enjoyable spec to play.

But off the top of my head i see a few glaring issues. The node pathways between Deft Experience, Valor in Victory and Critical Thinking need to revert back to the live pathways as Valor no longer being linked to all capstones makes it a lot more awful in filling out a build for Slayer Arms warriors as opposed to Colossus who couldn’t care less about this adjustment from glancing at the talents I think they would end up wanting to take in both a M+ or Raid progression setting. Too much QoL or important talents are now lost due to this shift in having 1 less point to spend in the capstone section.

Whirlwind being our spammable rage dump is fine for AoE, having a distinction between it and Slam so you’re pressing the right button for the right amount of targets will make things flow better.

Exhilarating Blows and Battlelord are still two conflicting talents that im not too keen on. Exhilarating blows should be changed to be the old Mortal Combo Soulbind conduit as opposed to a reset so that there’s not two talents doing the same thing where taking one means you don’t really want to be taking the other due to the overlap.

Bladestorm definitely needs a boost to the damage it deals to your primary target to further solidify it as a useful offensive cooldown that won’t just be relegated to getting rage from it’s channel from the few auto attacks that will land during it’s spin and a battery for hurricane.

1 Like
3

I firmly disagree with this notion. One of the biggest problems in post-Legion WoW class design is that nearly every spec got turned into a bland builder > spender loop. Arms is one of the very few that escaped this, and effectively only spends with very few active generation tools.

That is one of the major factors in Arms’ overall identity, and removing it to turn the spec into more of a generic builder/spender relationship like Fury and Ret (and like 90% of the other DPS specs out there) is not the path forward. That is textbook homogenization, and should be avoided.

4

Disagree here. A huge issue IMO is that Arms’ AoE kit is incredibly bloated. Where other classes are pressing 2-3 buttons for AoE Arms has Sweeping Strikes, Cleave, Overpower, Thunderclap, and Whirlwind to shove into an AoE rotation, and this is before you even consider the fluxiating values of abilities based on CDs and number of targets.

Arms AoE needs to be simplified a lot more than we’ve already been previewed IMO. I wouldn’t lose sleep if WW left our kit entirely.

A weird situation. When Bladestorm has been a single target bonus it was either before we had access to other cooldowns (Avatar and Colossus Smash) or it gave bonuses with Unhinged without sacrificing talents (Tomb of Sargeras). To me personally it feels bad to pop CDs and than spend a good chunk of time in thoes CDs channeling Bladestorm.

I think it has a solid niche atm on live servers, and short of making Unhinged more a more powerful option for single target (So that it doesn’t feel as bad to channel) I don’t think we really need to touch Bladestorm.

The free Bladestorm procs from Slayer and CDR for using Mortal Strike for Colossus could also potentially synergize enough that Hurricane is no longer the go to outside of big AoE pulls, and makes Bladestorm more appealing in Single Target.

I feel like doing this removes a lot of the moment to moment gameplay decisions you have to make for Arms, especially with the reduced rage economy & the reduced tactican procs that the War Within has planned. I think removing either of these is a bad idea.

I disagree as a lot of players in the casual area don’t understand how the old Heroic Strikes worked and how they negatively impacted your rotation when used improperly to resolve an issue (Bad structure of Rage economy) that Slam should fill. It also increases the APM of the spec, something thats supposed to help differentiate Arms from Fury.

A lot of your suggestions feel like they don’t take into consideration of what we’ve been presented with the TWW alpha and what we’ve been shown (or at least the intentions).

2 Likes
5

We’ll just have to agree to disagree here. It is ultimately a subjective opinion, but I see absolutely no issue with Arms having a more involved AoE rotation. Fury exists for DPS warrior players who want to have a simple AoE rotation, ultimately the single target rotation + WW every 4 globals, so there is plenty of space in the class for Arms to be more interesting in that regard. The current SoS build is certainly not rocket science, either.

This is the entire point of of my suggested changes to Bladestorm. If you’re playing Slayer, you are going to be pressing Bladestorm in single target already as it is. There is no doubt about that. Reducing the duration reduces the impact that has on the rotation, particularly during CDs where that 3s hasted channel would become very short. How it is currently on live servers is largely irrelevant, as we’re specifically talking about Slayer here, which is obviously not live.

There are no moment-to-moment gameplay decisions regarding Martial Prowess. If you are playing correctly and using MS on CD, it is impossible to overcap MP stacks. There are 3 globals between every MS, and it is simply not possible for all 3 globals to be filled by Overpower. Additionally, when MS resets proc, it is numerically correct to just use the MS regardless of your current MP stacks, so again there’s no decision there. It’s not situational, if MS lights up > press it.

If you are actively thinking about MP stacks while you’re playing the spec, you’re playing the spec wrong, or at least greatly overthinking it. Just another point in favor of removing it, imo. If you can’t screw it up and there’s no moment-to-moment decisions made around it, why have it? The changes to rage economy have no effect on this.

I’m not going to get too hung up discussing Heroic Strike and the pros and cons of bringing it back, as I know full well that the devs simply are never going to do it. I did explain that it was a wishlist item I don’t actually have any confidence would happen.

That being said, I do not buy that it can’t be brought back because worse players would misplay around it. Whether they are pressing Heroic Strike too much or they are sitting there pressing Slam every global, it doesn’t make a difference, their damage will equally suffer either way. And again, Fury is right there for casual players who want/need a simpler experience.

As for APM, it only significantly increases APM if we are rage flooded, as we are now. With the adjustments to the rage economy in TWW, it is likely that it would be a marginal increase at worst.

6

I’m not arguing that we should only push a few buttons but to say its just your Single Target Rotation + WW is very incorrect.

Your ability priority changes bases on the number of targets, your uptime on Sweeping Strikes (Overpower has various different values bases on this), Thunderclap/Rend Applications, Sudden Death Procs, and your other avaliable CDs. This is before you factor in talent choices like Blademasters Torment, Cleave, FoB or Storm of Swords.

The kit absolutely needs a trim when you look at other specs. Even a Frost DK with their mess of a spec has a more straightforward AoE rotation. It’s complicated for the sake of being complicated when there are solutions that many people have proposed (Like Sweeping Strikes Returning to its Legion version where it just lets MS passively Cleave) that simplify it. It doesn’t have to be Fury’s Meat Cleaver in terms of buttons to press, but it most certainly shouldn’t be the mess we have atm.

Depending on tuning you might not. There’s a good chance with Ravager being a choice node with Bladestorm that you’ll just use that for Single Target Rotations gaining the benefit without channeling Bladestorm.

And again, Unhinged may very well solve the problem of Bladestorm/Ravager being more attractive single target for both Hero Trees as casting Mortal Strike for free will have additional benefits (CDR on Demolish and Free abilities whenever you proc Frentic Flurry).

I don’t think trying to force Bladestorm to be a big ST cooldown is the right play.

And yet that’s what seperates good Arms Warriors from poor ones. The vast majority of the time when someone is doing poor damage for their ilvl as Arms its because they’re not pressing Mortal Strike enough. You’re right, there’s not a decison to be made when playing perfectly, but being able to respond to a reset and not mindlessly pressing Overpower is important to the moment to moment gameplay. A simple mechanic, but one that certainly stands out when people play incorrectly.

The simple proc keeps the rotation interesting enough. Additionally the devs pointed out earlier in the week you’ll have the option to separate if you want double Overpower Charges with Improved Overpower now that its been decoupled from Dreadnaught. So the rotation going forward (Also combined with the reduced Tactican Proc Rate) most likely won’t be just jamming Overpower as often as we are on live servers with additonal decison making occuring.

7

This was in regards to Fury, not Arms. I would’ve though the “every 4 globals” part of my statement would have made that obvious, yet here we are.

There is no guarantee that the Slayer tree will function at all with Ravager. It seems very unlikely that it will, even, as Ravager is superior to Bladestorm in every single metric, and (assuming no further changes to the two abilities) Bladestorm would only ever get picked specifically because you are playing Slayer and you have to have Bladestorm for Slayer to function.

The other alternative is that it will function with Ravager, and if thats the case, then Bladestorm will be a dead talent for the entire expansion unless they implement my suggested changes, or some other significant buffs to the ability.

Mildly hypocritical of you to come at this from the PoV of assuming Ravager will work with Slayer, when it has not been expressly stated that it will and it currently does not on alpha, after saying “A lot of your suggestions feel like they don’t take into consideration of what we’ve been presented with the TWW alpha and what we’ve been shown (or at least the intentions).”

Absolutely nothing about your last two paragraphs has anything to do with or is remotely relevant to my points about Martial Prowess. If all that matters is pressing MS on cooldown, which is true, Martial Prowess does not make this happen. If you’re trying to help a bad Arms warrior and you see that they are overcapping MP stacks all the time, you wouldn’t go to them with the solution “Make sure you’re tracking your MP stacks so you don’t waste them”, because that isn’t actually relevant. The only relevant point is “press MS more”, and by doing so, they will naturally play around MP perfectly.

My entire point is that the buff does not create any meaningful gameplay in any way. Reduced availability of overpower, reduced tactician procs, reduced rage economy, all have literally, completely, absolutely, nothing to do with Martial Prowess or its place in the kit, because Martial Prowess has no impact on the kit at all. The buff could be completely removed or it could stay as it is, with zero other changes, and absolutely nothing about the rotation would change. If that’s the case, the buff should either be removed so there is less variance around MS/Cleave damage, or it should be reworked to something that is actually impactful and played around in a meaningful way.

To be honest, you have managed to completely miss the point of almost every single thing that I have said, replied with mostly irrelevant responses, and this conversation is fruitless because of that. I’ll take some of the blame myself, perhaps I have not communicated things clearly, but it is what it is.

8

Misunderstood your point than. My pov of Arms AoE being far too involved and requiring too many choices still stands though.

This would go against a lot of design Philosophy changes they’ve made in several years. For several years Bladestorm and Ravager interactions have been interchangeable. To make it so Slayer didn’t allow them to interchanged would be a gigantic shift in how not only Warriors are developed but most classes in WoW.

This one is gonna blow your mind but Alpha is Alpha. One spell currently being non-functional when a lot of abilities and effects are currently NYI, doesn’t make someone hypocritical for making assumptions based on current and past design decisions. Especially when something like Ravager has been completely interchangeable with Bladestorm in terms of functionality from talents to Legion Legendaries.

Except it does? It puts additonal value on Overpower and free ability that argubly has some anti-synergy with the Specialization when it comes to things like Test of Might and Anger Management. It makes Overpower a button you’d like to press.

Yes there’s not a gameplay decision to be had because you should just “follow a prioroty” but that doesn’t mean the talent needs to be removed or we need to move into just adding the flat damage to MS. Martial Prowess’ only issue was that in Dragonflight it put helped put too much emphasis on Overpower, but that was honestly a team effort from Tactican, Dreadnaught, Strength of Arms, and others talents.

Its ok for talents to not always have huge game play decisons, especially one as close the top of the tree as MP is.

I mean this conversation was fruitless (your words) because a few reasons.

1.) You’re giving solutions. Its not our job as players to give solutions to issues. Our job is to voice our pain points with our spec. What you or I want, is largely irrelevant in terms of solutions or suggestions. We’re not the ones developing the game.

2.) Your “solutions” expect everyone to always play as an expert. A great example Martial Prowess can also be seen as a teaching talent. It quickly establishes the player that, “Ok if Mortal Strike is my most important button, Overpower is my next since it buffs the damage and resets Mortal Strike.” Your ideas are only towards high end game players, and don’t always consider someone new.

I’ll apologize for misunderstanding your AoE point, but largely you’ve come up with a lot of changes that feel like you want them to occur for the sake of change, and not really talking about other painpoints like…

  • Bloated AoE Kit
  • Concerns about proposed new Rage Economy
  • Damage Profiles (ST & AoE)
  • Defensive Value
  • Lack of Spec Fantasy
  • Parastic Design of ToM + AM
  • Class Utility

There are so many other discussion points and you’re making a big deal out of Martial Prowess.

1 Like