Feedback: Arms 11.1 PTR Raid Test and Feedback

In Development Undermine(d) PTR Discussion
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As a Warrior who has played on and off since Legion and returned to Warrior in Classic through Cataclysm and Season of Discovery, I have to admit that Arms Warrior feels severely lacking in “fun” right now. Claiming Warrior is in a good state feels tone-deaf, especially given the long-standing requests for an Arms rework. Having done the raid on multiple classes, Arms was by far the least enjoyable due to poor class structure and a loss of class fantasy.

Tier Set Conflict:
The hedged bets mechanic for Arms warrior conflicts with the high reset rate for Overpower through Tactician, usually further enhanced by Deft Experience. After changes to martial prowess and baseline buffs to Mortal Strike/Cleave, the incentive to press Overpower while it gets a 20% buff and a 75% recharge rate over these abilities is absent. Maybe sims will reveal Overpower will be better to press again, but currently, I only prioritise it if an Opportunist proc happens.

Talent Tree Utility Problems:
While the Warrior talent tree has seen some form of improvements, utility talents remain poorly positioned and often undesirable due to the limited talent economy. I’d love to see:

  • Reposition Berserker Shout and Piercing Howl within the tree. Currently, these talents are rarely chosen due to poor pathing and are overshadowed by classes with more accessible and effective utility options like Tremor Totem or Tar Trap.
  • Buff Wrecking Throw and Shattering Throw for PvE. In the first tier, these abilities were not used even on Silken Court or Queen Ansurek, as they were outclassed by other nodes in the same row. These abilities should be reworked to be more competitive for PvE again, or at least be a desirable ranged button to press.
  • Make Intimidating Shout baseline and replace its node with the respective choice node. While Shockwave works well as an AoE stun, bringing back the Warrior’s original disrupt as a baseline ability would be great.
  • Remove Honed Reflexes. It’s simply not worth a talent point to reduce cooldowns by just one second. If it must stay, consider making it a choice node with Concussive Blows to add more value and flexibility.
  • Reduce Bitter Immunity to a 2 minute or less CD.
  • Combine Second Wind and Pain and Gain for a more practical talent.

These changes would enhance utility in M+ and provide more flexibility, moving away from the damage-centric focus.

Arms Talent Tree Concerns
I remember Arms Warrior as a fluid and satisfying spec, with combos like Avatar + Colossus Smash + Bladestorm perfectly lining up. Now, it feels cluttered with RNG mechanics: Avatar barely aligns with CS, and Slayer introduces additional random Bladestorm cooldown reductions. I’m not opposed to proc-based gameplay, but when RNG becomes the deciding factor between a 90 and 99 parse, it highlights a deeper issue. My key concerns are:

  • Rage Economy: Arms Warrior suffers from constant rage cap in the pre-execute phase but feels starved during execute. While execute should remain as is, the pre-execute phase needs improvement. Many abilities in our rotation don’t spend rage anymore. I think 2 fixes include making Colossus Smash consume rage again, as it once did, and have Sudden death also interact as if it’s spent the rage (so it works with Anger Management).
  • Juggernaut Design: For casual players, Juggernaut probably adds flavor to Arms’ execute phase, but for high-end warriors, it’s a frustrating mechanic. Relying on a 1.7 PPM talent to maintain Juggernaut stacks before execute is poor design. Instead, execute should be buffed baseline, Juggernaut capped at ~10 stacks to balance the buff, and Mortal Strike should contribute to stack generation for smoother gameplay.
  • Convoluted Talents in the bottom left section of the talent tree is jarring. Bleed and Overpower talents compete, only to funnel into Fatality, an execute-based ability. While Battlelord leading into Fatality makes sense, its connection through Deft Experience, a talent already contested by the new tier set, creates limits its use. On top of that, Dance of Death is arguably one of the weaker capstone talents I’ve seen, especially since it’s competing with Merciless Bonegrinder.

Arms Warrior needs significant adjustments to regain its class fantasy and enjoyment factor. Improving talent synergy, addressing rage economy, and reworking utility talents would go a long way toward making the spec fun and viable again.

6 Likes
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Good job. Appreciate the detailed report. GG

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Thoughtful post. Arms as a spec IMO somehow plays worse now than it did in DF and feels like it is being held together with duct tape as opposed to any thoughtful design.

I do not enjoy the lack of burst damage. It would be nice if we had a little more upfront power than we do now.

I’d like to see improved execute rage return have a component that interacts with crit I.e., you get double the rage back on execute crit if the target survives.

Sudden death should interact with anger management.

Anger management should affect avatar.

Demolish is IMO a horrible ability, I can’t understate how terrible it feels when it fails to go off or you die because you can’t move during the animation. It fails so often, I’d rather do less dps and play slayer in keys because it’s more reliable than colossus.

I’d also like to see Rallying Cry be more effective group utility. Increase its power as a group DR in raid, give it 1.5 times effectiveness in small group content and add a debuff like exhaustion with a 5 minute duration so that you can’t chain rallies and no one feels like they need to stack warriors for healing checks and such.

Whatever the intended fantasy of Slayer/Colossus is, what I’m experiencing does not make feel like I’m much of a slayer or a colossus. I feel impotent while I see other melee specs crush me on meters while providing more utility.

2 Likes
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This no. You forget there are 2 heroic specs and Colossus warrior plays on the brink of being rage starved in the pre-execute phase right now. You nerf rage in this phase and you kill Colossus. Please dont.

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Atm, its a set bonus that largely plays itself with no interaction or input from the Warrior. While not necessarily a bad thing of our last 4 tier set bonuses only our Amidrasil Bonus actually had changes with our rotational choices. The passive, “this doesn’t effect your rotation” style of tier is getting a tad boring.

Largely agree, though we don’t take Wrecking Throw mainly due to talent pathing rather than the talent itself. Doesn’t necessarily need a buff, we just need more talent points to work with.

Not sure I agree with this one. While yes cooldowns desync, you’re only ever waiting on CS to send a cooldown. With Anger Management that shouldn’t be longer than 5-10 seconds. It can be annoying, especially of your sitting on a fully stacked demolish, but its not a large issue.

I don’t think either of these results in changes that feel good for the spec. Requiring Rage to press CS means our on pull setup takes longer to get going (We’re already pretty slow at setting up compared to other melee specs). Additionally Sudden Death is frequently omitted from Colossus Builds atm, so we’d be punishing slayer more creating additional decisions around Sudden Death (Marked for Execution already is a hassle to manage before adding a rage requirement to SD).

If we’d like rage adjustments, they’d have to be baseline to reduce pre-execute, and than use a talent like Critical Thinking to adjust the execute phase.

That being said, this goes out the window if you get a nice chain of procs from Exhilarating Blows, which should be a more attractive talent next patch.

I think the idea of maintaining Jugg stacks pre-execute is something that cannot occur. You’re too reliant on RNG to actually play around it. Additionally it only adds to the complication of when Slayer should send Sudden Death procs. Just remove Juggernaut from pre-execute window phases and adjust accordingly if its a huge issue to DPS. I don’t think reworking this talent is the answer.

I still have yet to hear of anyone using this capstone, even on a fight like Ovinax where adds are dying constantly.

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For Slayer it’s pretty much a nothingburger tier set, but for Colossus it surprisingly provides some pretty interesting loops in it’s gameplay paired with battlelord that help with it’s rage economy in ST but it can also feel at some moments too when you’re wanting the faster overpower cooldown but it just refuses to end the winning streak. That’s just my own opinion from messing with it a little will have to see where sims/tuning land.

The issue with talents not being taken is not from their position in the tree, it’s the lack of freedom we have in being able to double back for talents as the final 11 points of the tree are all locked into throughput nodes in the 3rd rung which is a stark difference to practically every other class. Then there’s the issue with mandatory talents in the 2nd rung leaving you with at most 1-3 free talent points pending AoE vs ST and if you’re needing to bring an AoE stun.

The best fix without a full rework is to change Crushing Force and Reinforced Plates to 1 point nodes so we actually have some freedom given back to us that we’ve lost going into this next patch.

That is until a rework to the class tree entirely happens that yeets the ever living crap out of half of our throughput nodes and allows us to actually pick utility after taking our mandatory throughput options.

I disagree for the need for everything to sync up perfectly, it’s somewhat refreshing having short cooldowns that line up every 90s with your avatar that you get to use a lot more times throughout an encounter as with our CDR mechanics abilities tend to steer towards a 30s/45s cooldown.

The easiest fix here is to enable a variable rage dump at any% like we have sub 20(35% if talented) in execute as any change to make the first 65-80% of an encounter use your rage causes a massive fallout during execute as it would be extremely starved to the point where you’d probably just ignore execute entirely.

Slam could easily be a variable 20-40 rage ability or Execute could just replace it in it’s entirety and be able to be used at any%.

Far off potential but Arms could have an entire rework in it’s kit, moving it to be a more Cooldown based spec, where it has less ability resets compared to fury and is more about managing abilities in the correct order to unleash them into ST/AoE rage dumps (Say 50 rage cost) these for argument sake could be Colossus Smash and Warbreaker, remove the damage amp aspect of them and make them hit hard.

You could then potentially bring back Deadly Calm as an Arms specific cooldown which allows for the next 2~3 CS/WB to be cast at no rage cost enabling burst opportunities with your highest damage abilities.

I’d like to comment on this talent specifically it’s basically vestigial at this point as it doesn’t scale with our mastery nor is it effected by any aura buffs Arms receives in tuning parses so it’s largely a dead talent nowadays a far cry from the tiers it was useful in DF, honestly it’s a real shame as it is an absurdly fun talent and building up a nuke over the course of a fight that’s primed to blow when your enemy is at it’s most weakest and desperate phase.

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Improved Execute could be worked to give additional rage on critical strikes. Double its effectiveness. Help add a bit more rage into our execute window.

I like the slam suggestion. It really should scale its damage with rage consumed like execute.

Fatality could be reworked to be a modifier that causes the first execute cast below 35% health do X times more damage where X is the number of fatality stacks. Keeps it scaling with mastery and always relevant in ST.

I don’t know if this would break warriors but I feel like massacre should be a baseline ability.

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Arms need a serious rework, fixing some shenanigans here and there isnt going to do the trick, there is something fundamentally broken with the spec, that each patch make it worse or clunkier with so many band-aids on top of it.

It needs to change how it works/function, how interact with the talents and the talents itself need changes;

I always played arms, since is tarted playing the game in 2011/2012, sometimes i did prot to tank some dungeon in a timewalking or when friends needed, but never got to know deeply, this expansion i had to give up arms, because how awful it played, to my surprise, Fury and Prot were perfect, they played exactly like a warrior should play… why arms isnt like that?

  • There is barely, to none arms skill that generate rage, it mostly comes from auto attack and charge
  • Almost all skills consume rage, even when they don’t for other specs

Why those things happen? why can fury span whirlwind and thunderclap, while i need an absurd 20 rage for it?

why Raging blow generate 14 rage, bloodthirst generate 10, shield slam generate 15, and overpower generate PISS? Oh but there is an TALENT that make overpower generate just 8, but ONLY if the target is below 35% hp…but hey, you can get ANOTHER talent, that 35% proc can make overpower generate 10 rage, why this isnt just the basic?

Maybe isnt a concern for PVE, but imo, huge problem for pvp, if you dont proc enough overpowers you can have big downtime. And make the spec feel less fun as a warrior in general

My personal band-aids:

  • Make skullsplinter a passive, so Slam gain its effect
  • Make so that bloodletting let Mortal Strike apply rend regardless of the enemy health

This imo, will help with button bloat and will make your own skills have a good synergy with the talents you pick

  • Just remove spiteful serenity from the game, no one use it, you are not going to buff it, get rid of it
  • Remove Finishing blows from the tree
  • Make so that Battlelord always make overpower generate rage
  • Reduce ignore pain CD
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I assume everything consumes rage because Test of Might and Anger Management exist as a central part of the “design” of our spec for better or worse.

I think since IP doesn’t contribute to ToM or AM it should cost no rage and be baseline. And the choice node should be between storm wall and additional DR at the cost of the parry effect of die by the sword. Also fuelled by violence could be stronger, even if it healed for 100% of deep wounds it wouldn’t be broken.

EDIT: I do like skullsplitter being a passive of slam, maybe with a short CD :man_shrugging:

Someone suggest that slam should also have scaling damage like execute has with rage consumed.

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I actually think the design of the 4 tier set and its synergy with weapon combat is quite good, but the nerf to Improved Overpower might seems very strange. The cycle of Mortal strike and Overpower is very healthy; it doesn’t have any numerical issues and shouldn’t be nerf. It should return to 30%.

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The OP + MS combo is not nerfed. Mortal strike and Cleave baseline damage was buffed to compensate for the OP nerf. They just shuffled the damage you would get from the 30% buff from OP into the baseline of mortal strike and cleave.

It means if you press MS without the martial prowess buff (the talent that gives overpower its buffing capability) your MS won’t hit like a wet noodle cause you’re missing up to 60% of the damage from OP.

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Then thats the thing we need to fix in the rework then, besides, does anyone use test of might?

Everything costing rage is extremely unfun, i just cant see myself trading a smooth spec like Fury/prot to go back at arms if there are no reworks.

That i think, would make rage starve worse, and execute already does that, kinda overlap mechanics, and with no way to generate rage constantly might not be great

True, arms is just thin as paper, not even colossus defenses they can last as much as others, due to how poor ignore pain is as CD for then

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Test of Might was the go to single target talent in DF for all 4 seasons. However, they nerfed the overall rage generation of arms during TWW beta and they nerfed warlord’s torment to no longer proc on colossus smash which further reduced our rage generation and has made In For The Kill the clear winner.

Though I suspect in season 3 when we have a lot haste from secondary stats IFTK may fall off and ToM might pull ahead.

Typically we feel rage starved in execute and flooded with rage outside of execute so the slam suggestion probably wouldn’t be a big issue but synergise with AM and ToM better.

They could give us a bit more rage via Improved Execute, currently it refunds some rage if the target lives. The could double this rage refund if the execute crits, it would further solidify our love for crit and feedback more rage during execute.

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With Tactician and Maxed Deft Experience, you can get up to a 75% chance of resetting overpower through casting Mortal Strike. Even with most builds taking one point in Deft it’s still a substantial 60% on MS, or 80% on Execute. We really don’t need a talent that clashes with this system or better yet completely disregards the Opportunist talent in the slayer tree. I like the MS and OP relationship, but this tier set is implemented horribly and in its current state, losing winning streaks at lower stacks replaces “stronger” versions of the buff.

Otherwise I’m pretty happy to see a lot of Warriors agree with my PoV. Definitely some good insights that made me realise there’s more problems than what I’ve mentioned, plus the fact that some of it would be so easy to fix.

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I didnt play DF so i could not know, but ever since, i remember the talent, it was never an option, at least not in PVP, in for the kill was always the choice

More because it give us haste, and arms desperate need haste to keep up with the auto attacks for rage.

I guess this is the case for PVE so isnt as bad, but imo, rage starve can happen anytime, due to how uptime works, so you are very dependant on procs, which are ultimately RNG

Combine this with button bloat and poor survivability, i dont see a reason to not play fury

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Test of Might’s lack of use now doesn’t exactly come from a lack of rage generation it’s more a lack of ability to spend rage and focusing on it during CS windows by extension ignoring Overpower procs due to how much they added to Mortal Strike damage % Wise.

Quite honestly Test of Might had been way too oppressive for way too long and caused some more annoying aspects of gearing/gameplay which the spec would be better off overall with it’s removal entirely.

Issues with Test of Might really boiled down to the following.

  • Ignoring Overpower in favour of other attacks during CS windows feels bad from a gameplay pov.
  • Made strength passive trinkets way too good compared to secondary stat passives, pigeon holing you into specific gear even if the secondary effect of the trinket wasn’t much use, the passive strength was way too good to pass up.
  • Our AP% on attacks is somewhat hamstrung by this talent whenever it’s the go to.

Arms winning streak combo break buff just gains duration when it ends the Winning Streak from what I saw on the PTR. It’s still got the same flat 75% CDR and 20% damage increase regardless of how many stacks are consumed on it’s proc. So if a 10 stack duration combo breaker is replaced entirely by say a 1-2 stack combo breaker and reduces the buff duration as opposed to adding to it that’s a major bug that needs to be reported and fixed. (wasn’t paying attention to the buff potentially having it’s duration overwritten when I was doing my initial testing).

Opportunist however is already being taken over by Fierce Followthrough with current crit rates, so next patch’s crit rates (especially with the amount of Crit/X rings available, especially in raid if the random stat ring rolls crit main) and base MS AP% buff should place it as the premier ST option which also synergises better with the set bonus.

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You got to love how the devs are out of touch when it comes to basic warrior game play:

Continuing the discussion from Undermine(d) Development Notes:

You have goto be kidding us right? Tell us you don’t play warrior without telling us. Oh wait you just did. You understand its called the Execute Phase BECAUSE YOUR DMG IS RAMPED UP BY USING EXECUTE! Other than Mortal strike guess what ability is normally second in dmg for Arms Warriors? Oh ya Execute. How on earth can you even pretend like you play a warrior and not understand that? Please Blizzard answer us stop ignoring warriors or fire the guy in charge of warriors cause clearly they do not play the class what so ever and get someone in that plays one. No one is happy with the warrior nerfs and yet you are just sitting here with your fingers in your ears ignoring feedback saying LALALA I cant hear you! So much for valuing player feedback.

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I mean, he is out of line but he isn’t wrong, Execute isn’t a hard-hitting ability anymore, is piss damage

The irony of it is, also, exactly that, EXECUTE not being a hard-hitting ability. While paladin hammer can tick you off by 2-3 million, execute struggle to get 1m

Thats why i said, arms need an entirely rework, to make it a proper warrior, execute going back to being an actual execute would be a first step

1 Like
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For me Execute is normally my second or third most dmg. I commonly see Executes of 1.2 million to 2.1million on my Dracthyr crit warrior. I do think Execute needs to go back to the way it was but I was more a fan of the SL Execute when you could take it as Condem oh those were some fun days.

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we were buffed for 60 minutes, but it was reverted… no structural changes… Class is still low utility medium dps…