The lore describes Arms as masters of Calculated Strikes - tactical duelists who exploit weaknesses. Right now, the Master of Warfare talent is supposed to represent this ‘exploitation’, but RNG makes it feel anything but.. - Understanding reaching the 5 stacks MoW isn’t reliably intended, personally ive seen it less than a handful of times, but that was fishing for it, on training dummies. Maybe this is worth is revisit, sweeping could also synergies with HS for MoW, call it “calculated strike” acting as a double swing specially for single target fights. With SS already baked in CS (if talented) it could help us with a faster ramp up, address some of our missing dmg, and add a priority choice skill expression ?
In short, all ‘Calculated Strikes’ would do, is allow that same stack-acceleration logic to function when we’re facing single targets. It ensures the button always has a tactical purpose
Changing Sweeping Strikes to be a ST cooldown sounds awful. There’s no variation between ST/AoE then if they made the change you’re suggesting.
It also doesn’t really make anything anymore interesting either.
I think you’re irrationally stuck on Heroic Might always needing to be at max stacks for your next CS, when in reality it’s just a bonus that makes your next Colossus Smash have a slightly higher damage amp and in moments where it’s important such as Belo’ren (AKA Vitiligo Birb) that you would sacrifice a CS cast in order to ensure you’re going into that burn with the highest modifier possible of 45% instead being subject to RNG.
Even then RNG wise CS’s modifer goes from 30% to 45% isn’t all that big of a difference, more often than not you’re going to have medium RNG where you’ll have 2-3 stacks going into most, maybe 1 or 2 in that fight at 5 stacks with the odd 1 cast at 1 stack because RNG didn’t go in your favour for that ~30s interval. Almost every single raid fight of mine looks like this, even looking at the logs of other Arms warriors they’ve all got similar distributions of heroic might stacks.
Forcing a situational to instead be always useful can as easily make it feel like it loses its specifically tactical purpose. If unvaried between ST and AoE, we’d as likely lose skill expression as gain it.
Fully agreed that we should see more of that “Calculated Strikes” theme play out in gameplay, or at least have talent options through which to do so, but I don’t think this would help with that; slightly the opposite.
Im not suggesting changing ss to be a st cd, rather adding stack-acceleration where we currently have none.
Im not stuck on HM, again this is about 5/5 stacking MoW (+15% armor pen, +25% MS, cleave, and OP + 25% critical strike dmg) if reliably maintained, this would certainly not be a small difference. Alas more dmg is more dmg, and I still think we need some, when it comes to st.
They designed it, and I would love to see it !
If you make that the goal then you just force loss of safety margin / decision space. We aren’t meant to regularly hit 5/5.
While AoE and ST relative performance could certainly be nearer, ST fixes don’t specifically require removing our margins by accelerating stack-gen where not ostensibly intended. It just requires sufficient tuning, especially on ST-specific skills/outputs.
My bad for assuming since Master of Warfare doesn’t have a hardstack count and Heroic Might does, when you’ve had previous complaints conflating the two.
I still think it’s something you’re blowing out to be bigger than it is, Master of Warfare is a 30s buff after each HS cast that is meant to be a consistent uptime reward. There is no ‘5/5’ stack cap.
It’s not something that changes how you play or even have the need to track either. Much like the executioner change, if it’s up it’s up, if it isn’t well no worries.
Wait until you find out that the battle-hardened master of weapons that uses mobility have one of the worst mobility in the game and is constantly shut down in PVP
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That’s not how I understand it - At rank 3 it reads stacks up to 5 times, assuming this is referring back to previous mentions in rank 2.
Because it’s dang impossible to sit or reach 5 stacks, so I would suggest this is aligns.
Alas, all this was more floating an idea of stack-acceleration, added to sweeping (maybe) for single target situations, like a double swing. In tune with Arms lore I named it ‘calculated strikes’
If interested, here’s a thought - so this is happening. Instead if telling me how it doesn’t work, tell me how it could work. Single target stack-acceleration.
That’s because you don’t understand it. You’ve conflated two separate buffs with each other.
This is an entirely separate effect in the Apex 4 node, which is speaking on Heroic Might, which is the increase the next CS’s debuff mechanic by 3% per stack, stacking up to 5 times.
Apex 2/3 are additional effects ontop of Apex 1’s buff of Master of Warfare. Master of Warfare does not have a hard cap.
It doesn’t need anything additional to be put forward to it because it’s main driver is Heroic Strike procs, which provide two separate buffs with separate functions that act as passive damage increases and have no need to be tracked whatsoever.
You’re overthinking things way too hard and confusing effects because they’re under different sections of the Apex talent system for Arms.
Sweeping Strikes does not need any function at all in pure ST situations.
It actually caps at 10 stacks, but you will practically never get there.
Like Heroic Might, you’re not intended to reach the cap regularly; it only exists to provide overflow in the case of inordinately lucky proc streaks.
Yeah fair point there Archi, points still stand though about OP’s fixation on a non issue.