Arms Warrior Rebalance Suggestion

Hey guys, we’re coming up on a major content patch and retuning is going to probably happen across the board soon. With that in mind I wanted to make a suggestion to the community to gauge their response, and maybe float the idea to Blizzard.

Arms is currently on the under-side of DPS balance currently. It’s not unplayable, but it’s not in a great place either. I would assume we are going to get a slight buff in the next retuning sweep. With that in mind, I think the buff should go specifically to one ability.

Execute.

The ability currently feels very underwhelming compared to Legion. The class flavor and power of getting someone to execute range and fearing for their life just isn’t there anymore. Having the ability to just WOMP when someone reaches 35% or 20% is really fun, and thematic. Taking sudden death would also be a slightly stronger build as a result of this.

If there is any rebalancing buffing to be done, I would prefer it ended up specifically in that one ability as opposed to sprinkled across all of our abilities. What do you guys think?

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They could get rid of the 35% trait and make that something else and just buff execute by a lot. Freaking envenoms into defensives hit harder than execute

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I agree. It’s depressing to see Execute hit for 2k at times.

I agree, Execute feels weak, in many cases you end up killing a foe with another move making Execute feel pointless and eat your rage. On average it takes two to three executes to kill someone under 20% without doing another move inbetween.

If the move is too OP at 20%, why not lower it to 15% and boost Execute’s dmg. Hitting 4k executes just feel stupid.

Or maybe make Execute a 100% Crit under 20%.

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Arms just needs to go back to being the spec of big meaty hits. Sweeping strikes should be a baseline version of the legion talent imo (passive 3 target cleave, less damage on cleave targets), or something similar. Currently it’s just so clunky.

Also, what if there was a talent row dedicated to moving our execute window around?

E.g.
Talent 1: Massacre - execute available at 35%, execute deals 20% more damage when the target has 20% or less hp.
(Talent heavily weighted to back-end execute, good for bosses whos mechanics get harder as their health gets lower)

Talent 2: Blitzkrieg - execute is available when the target has 90% or more hp, in addition to the current 20% hp trigger.
(Talent which can take advantage of bosses where you lust on pull, allowing for greater damage potential)

Talent 3: Headsman - mortal strike critical hits make your next execute usable at any time for 5s and always critically hits.
(General use talent that takes advantage of arms’ preference for the crit stat)

The executioner’s precision azerite trait really needs to come back too.

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If arms is going to be a straightforward damage bot with no ulitity and survivability it needs to hit hard. And currently as it stands the numbers are lackluster. Primarily in execute and whirlwind.

As of now I have never have reason to hit whirlwind ever.

Also give back that little heal on mortal strike from legion. It was tiny but at least it was something.

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I don’t want to ask for too much, just a little buff to Execute in some form. How they do it is fine. It just needs some love. Everything else is fine imo.

We need enraged regen, D stance to return to 20% dmg dr 10% dmg rd , rend buff, and for crying out loud a baseline stun!

I really question if the devs are playing the same game as us:

PVE:
The removal of EP was such a devastating blow and has been one of the most prominent factors that has kept our single target remotely competitive since Legion. Since the onset of BfA Arms has been in a far worse state in terms of single target damage with our only redeeming factor being AoE and to a lesser extent cleave. With other classes still outshining in all facets.

I fail to understand how its complete removal, without any sort of consideration to drastically improving our single target was remotely acceptable. Not to mention that EP was (in my opinoin) was one of the most fun abilities they have every introduced to the spec that made the execute phase feel so rewarding and fun and filled a niche role that was functional and fitting for the spec.

Bottom line to keep things short and sweet they need to drastically improve our single target damage across the board as the current state of the spec is nothing short of laughable.

PVP:
Competitively to other melee specs our survivability, utility, damage, cc and actual uptime on targets are sub par. They have degraded the spec to be a mindless tunneling damage bot and have even gone so far to take away the threat of our damage. Many specs/classes can literally STAND STILL and shrug off our damage as if it was nothing (hello warlocks).

We are the defacto least self sufficient melee class/spec in the game bar-none with the historic argument always being “but hey we do great with healers”. While yes our synergy with healers is great I would be hard-pressed to say that we have any real intrinsic advantage with a healer over any other given melee spec in the game in the current iteration of the game.

Our premier bread and butter has always been devastating damage, healing debuff and mobility to be envied that translated into high uptime on targets. Warriors have always been a relative easy class to kite for certain specs but this can be heavily abused now, considering when we do connect we no longer are applying the same relative pressure in terms of damage.

Healing debuffs have also been devalued till you reach dampening phases of the game at which the outcome of the match has usually already been determined inconsequential of the prescience of a healing debuff.

Our primary defensive mechanic of defensive stance needs to be seriously reworked, it gimps us in many ways. We are designed to predominately stay in defensive stance which in turn neuters our damage by 20% (the same amount we reduce incoming damage). However in the windows where we chose to go offensive in battle stance we become one of the most vulnerable and susceptible specs to be swapped and destroyed in a few globals. A cooldown on stance dancing in unacceptable either take ownership of your design decisions and completely put the final nail in the coffin of the eradication of stance dancing (as the current iteration is a joke). Or understand that the notion of having a stance comes with the understanding that should be NO COOLDOWN between changing stances. There should be innate trade-offs between being in different stances and conscious choices should be made to utilize the different stances.

Stance dancing was a facet of warrior gameplay that added a higher skill cap, was fun and rewarding added unique flavour and pressene to the class. It is a shame that many of the finer nuisances of playing the spec/class have been systematically eradicated over the years.

But I digress, with this final closing statement that the spec is in dire need of re-balancing and honestly and this point some fundamental design changes to how the spec plays (which is far less likely at this point).

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As an Arms warrior that has reached 2k+ this season and last, I think you are overstating the case a little in terms of our survivability. In this patch for example, we have the ability to reflect the most common and powerful ability in the game: the maledict trinket. It is already hard enough to survive two to three maledicts, but when you add a fourth you almost guarantee a victory. While we have no immunities per say, DBS is still a very strong counter-melee defensive, and when used against casters in conjunction with defensive stance we can survive a lot of burst. Then you switch back to combat stance when their burst phase is over. Our damage does need tuning, and I can certainly appreciate that our mortal strike debuff feels underwhelming too until high-dampening, but I like to think of it as an increased mana burn on the enemy healer - causing them to have to heal more even in early game and OOM faster than ours.

It’s not all bad, but we do need tuning.

I’d rather see a buff to MS than Execute, even though I think Execute needs a buff too. Reason being is if they buff Execute instead of MS, our damage outside of Execute windows is going to suffer.

I want to see a buff to Rend with a decrease of rage cost. I want to see a buff to MS damage. I want to see Deep Wounds reworked so that it isn’t wasted damage every time you reapply it. I want to see a mastery rework. I want to see Enraged regen return for Arms. I’d like to see auto attacks matter again rather than just building rage.

Of course, none of this will happen. But I think if we saw some changes to some of these things, you’d see warriors be powerhouses again.

I want to address this as well

I’d venture to say DBTS is a pretty decent defensive, however the fact that it’s on a 3 minute cooldown makes me feel it’s mediocre. Make it a 2 minute cooldown like Fury’s Enraged Regen, then it’d be a good defensive.

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They should bring back wotlk overpower. Cant seem to find the change on wowhead, was it improved overpower? Made casting it while the enemy is casting reduced their spell damage and healing.

I like the reduced CD suggestion, brings it in line with paladin defensives, IMO. But I think our damage outside of execute phase is fine at the moment. I liked Legion where we suddenly went from bottom to top of the meter in the last 20% - it felt good.

^I agree with this 100%. This is when warrior felt amazing.

Yeah, would be nice if when I used my MS or Execute I felt like I do something. I miss the “BAM” of those abilities. They no longer have that feeling anymore and that feeling is what initially brought me to main Warrior. Using either of those feel the no different than using Slam. Missing those big hits! SS on the GCD is just god awful for flow especially if you consider how weak it is.

It’s just kinda sad that arms warriors in pvp need to constantly sit dstance(permanent damage decrease, just for survivability). with EP removed, arms potential for big damage is gone. I think its bad that you have to talent into abilities that should be baseline. we have victory rush, which is literally a open world talent, because you aren’t getting value from your self heal in pvp or raiding, rarely in mythic dungeons as well. storm bolt should be baseline for sure. we have a .5s root, a slow, and a fear baseline. rogues have multiple stuns, incap, sap, blind, slow baseline. better defensives, better parry, cloak, and on demand hot with a short cooldown, and one of the top dps for ST and multi target cleave. warriors are just poop right now

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MS hits harder than execute…that says enough.

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