There’s no reason for Arms to be such an underperforming spec in PVE. If “it’s a PvP spec”, then why is Affliction warlock one of the highest dps specs in the game?
Arms should be at least around where Ret pally is.
One way to buff Arms is to have a glyph that will make Bladestorm do much more damage to your primary target, but less damage to other nearby targets. This would allow Bladestorm to actually be a useful ability. It’s the main spec feature, but it’s nearly useless against bosses. Arms warriors just use it during lust, and occasionally during execute for deep wounds and rage generation. This would make Bladestorm into an exciting ability for warriors and something they will rely on during boss fights for damage. This may affect PvP however.
Another option is to have a glyph that will increase the damage of your Slam by an amount when it is used. This can be a player buff that lasts maybe 10-15 seconds. Maybe it can be +5% damage and stack about 3 times to +15%. This would give us damage, and it would make Slam feel less bland. This wouldn’t affect PvP much since you aren’t relying too heavily Slam when you need to be moving around constantly. Meaning stacks would fall off easily in PvP.
Another option is to make a glyph that allows the warrior to ramp their damage the longer they are attacking the same target. It could be in the form of increased crit rate over the duration, increased armor pen, increased bleed damage, increased haste, or just overall increased damage. This could even potentially be used by Fury warriors as well since they are also needing a buff. Since PvP has shorter fights and usually requires switching targets during longer fights, it wouldn’t have much affect on PvP.
A fun bonus option could be improving the existing Glyph of Mortal Strike. Maybe in addition to the 10% damage, it could also apply one stack of Sunder Armor to the target. This would be an indirect buff to warriors since they would no longer need to waste so much rage using Sunder on bosses. That’s more rage for using damaging abilities which is more damage. Sundering has felt really bad as a dps warrior the whole time. This would also give Arms warrior a little more appeal in a raid environment. This would also pair extremely well with the proposed Slam glyph I mentioned since you would still have a reason to use Mortal Strike even with +15% Slam damage. Not only is this an indirect damage buff, but also a massive QoL buff.
I could keep going forever, but these are a handful of potential buffs which would bring Arms warriors to a more reasonable spot without breaking PvP.
Can give arms wars the same buff they did ret, mocking blow does no dmg to players and a glyph could lower the cd remove the taunt and increase the dmg.
Unfortunately we don’t even use tactical mastery in Wotlk. I loved stance dancing before, but all we’d gain from Berserker stance is whirlwind, but it’s balanced around Fury’s two 2h’s so not worth it.
While those other changes sound nice, Arms needs a BIG buff just to still be the lowest dps spec. Fury consistently does like 10-15% more dps than Arms, and Fury is weak af too.
What would you recommend that Arms warriors get? I’ve mostly only played the protection warrior tanking fights, but sometimes I will get benched on a fight when warrior tank just underperforms on some hard mode attempts versus a Paladin or DK. I would switch to Arms for DPS, but lately I’ve been opting to just bring my Shadow Priest as backup for those fights.
Buff Slam by a bunch but reimplement its old interaction with the swing time where it resets. There, Arms is fixed while requiring mechanical skill to play.
im not sure about the other specs mentioned in their post about " not a goal" i love playing arms and unfortunately have to play fury but i just find it stupid how much raid utility an arms has, it has 4 unique debuffs and shares its 4% to physcials with one other spec ( like i said can’t compare other specs mentioned if they have similar things) but Mortal Strike, Shattering throw, Trauma, Demo, and provides the raid with a commanding shout. seems like the spec was made for PvE @blizzard
The other thing to consider is all of those other classes have 3 dps specs. So they have 2 perfectly viable specs for a raid, but warrior barely has 1 viable spec.
My guild has designed it’s comp around having Arms (no feral), so Arms absolutely has a place in PvE content, it’s just being totally overlooked by Blizzard for how low it’s damage is. Even compared to Frost mage and those other specs mentioned, Arms is WAYYYYY lower.
It feels so bad putting in so much effort and playing Arms which is a much more technical and difficult spec than Fury, getting 99 parses, but being last or 2nd to last dps for the bosses.
I have a few ideas on how to make Arms a little more competitive.
Rework glyph of mortal strike to. Execute increases the damage of your next Mortal Strike by 25% for the next 10 seconds stacking up to 2 times. This affect does not work against other players.
Glyph of Heroic Throw- Heroic Throw now deals 300% increased damage against targets that cannot be stunned. This change would actually help all warrior specs.
Other buffs that could be useful would be to make mace and sword mastery better so we aren’t forced to use poleaxe mastery. They could remove the CD on sword mastery and give 1% additional armor pen for each point in mace mastery.
Which is why I reckon my idea to simply buff Slam while adding the old swing time reset is best as that would give Arms a much needed PvE performance boost without any significant PvP carryover.
As for the Slam buff, simply add bonus damage to the Improved Slam talent. There, nice and simple, but the old swing reset has to be reimplemented so as to keep the ability from becoming mindlessly powerful. You’d use it as one would in TBC which made for a fun and skillful rotation.
EDIT: I would also agree with removing the Sword Spec CD and buffing Mace Spec so as to add actual variety to weapon selection.