Some very interesting changes this week, and I’d say things are looking up overall. I like what Arms is turning into, though there are still a few points of consternation.
The Class Tree is almost fixed
You can now take all of the main damage nodes, but still won’t have any points left over for anything else, and players never ever enjoy dropping performance for defense or utility.
- Reducing Champion’s Spear damage so that it’s primarily a utility/mobility effect would help immensely. Between Odyn’s Fury, Colossus Smash, Bladestorm, Demolish, and now Ravager, we already have more offensive cooldowns than we need.
- This still leaves us in the position of dropping offensive value for Rumbling Earth, Last Stand, or Spear, so I’d recommend freeing up just one more point somewhere to give us the barest amount of customization. We don’t need every talent on the tree, but being able to choose just one non-offensive option would be nice.
Arms has a lot of Cooldowns Again?
I thought PvP players would welcome the re-addition of Avatar, but it seems to have lost its root break, so I’m not sure what the main draw is other than Colossus pathing.
In any event, restoring Avatar and Ravager completely reverses the previously stated intent to reduce cooldown stacking and alignment. We really just traded Roar for Spear.
- Considering players are practically always going to want to use them together anyway, retuning Ravager to passively activate whenever Colossus Smash is used would help address that cooldown-sequencing issue and consolidate keybinds, since Colossus already has an extra button in Demolish anyway.
- Without the extra talent point of opportunity cost, the baked in Merciless Bonegrinder damage bonus can temporarily make Cleave a better single target ability than Slam, which is just plain awkward.
- Ravager not being affected by Anger Management means its never going to line up particularly well with anything either.
Alternatively, just scrap Ravager
The more I think about it, giving Arms and Fury both a Bladestorm vs Avatar talent choice node makes a lot of sense.
- It reduces the amount of cooldown-sequencing.
- Gives Colossus a simple and universal talent to path through instead of Bladestorm.
- Bladestorm and Demolish already compete very well against each other, and Avatar seems more thematic to Colossus anyway.
- Colossus would still have one additional button, but an off-GCD cooldown is a lot easier to juggle than an on-GCD cooldown that doesn’t line up with anything. I imagine many players will just macro it to Colossus Smash anyway.
- It can even get the root break back, that way both Slayer and Colossus can have one without doubling up - Bladestorm reduced by Execute and Avatar reduced by Anger Management.
Still Some Problematic Talents
Broad Strokes now gives full sweep charges, which is a big buff for the talent, but continues to unintuitively push players to desync Colossus Smash and Sweeping Strikes.
- It’s pretty hard to spend 24-36 charges in 20-30 seconds anyway, so it kind of seems like Broad should replace Sweeping Strikes, though spending a talent point to save half a GCD isn’t particularly useful.
- Side note: why in the world is Sweeping Strikes still on the GCD, five years after every other non-damage dealing cooldown was taken back off the GCD at the end of Battle for Azeroth?
Crushing Combo still causes tracking/alignment issues.
- Its unique duration requires holding Bladestorm until the last few seconds of Colossus Smash, and Cleave is already used every 3rd GCD anyway, while increasing it to every other GCD limits the ability to fit Overpower, Mortal Strike, Sudden Death, and Demolish into the Colossus Smash cooldown window.
- Replacing the temporary CDR with a chance reset Cleave’s cooldown (ala Exhilarating Blows) would be less invasive, though I’d still think Arms has an abundance of multitarget talents.
Collateral Damage and Improved Sweep/Powerful Momentum should trade places.
- Otherwise, gating the Sweeping Strikes enhancements forces Whirlwind/Cleave into the two-target rotation, which is awkward with Fervor of Battle being limited to three.
- Based on current numbers vs two targets, Cleave beats Slam even with Powerful Momentum, while Whirlwind is only stronger than a regularly swept Slam as Slayer but not Colossus.
- I don’t think weaving in Whirlwind/Cleave like this is necessarily bad gameplay to opt into, I just don’t think it should be required in order to reach those Sweep enhancements. Swapping the positions just gives players more options.
The Apex / Heroic Strike triggering from Overpower continues to make a complete mess out of the Execute phase. Slayer is unlikely to stack Opportunist and Colossus has a much harder time keeping Mortal Strike on cooldown for Colossal Might while using Overpower on cooldown to fish for procs.
- Mortal Strike still seems like the better choice: it’s already the highest priority for Colossus, and even Slayer uses it practically on cooldown thanks to Executioner’s Precision.
- Because Opportunist now stacks twice, Slayer should also have more freedom to use Mortal Strike regularly in multitarget, similar to Colossus.
- Overpower should still have plenty of value since its a free filler… not to mention triggering Battlelord, dealing AoE damage, and has eight other talent points feeding into it across the tree.
T3 updates are pretty good though. It needed some gates, and it makes sense for Colossus to lean into Battlelord, though I’m not sure Fatality makes as much sense for Slayer, considering it no longer resets Mortal Strike to stack the effect.
- Consider swapping it with Executioner’s Precision, since Executing so frequently demands Critical Thinking anyway, but Colossus might still want Fatality.
Pretty Rage Starved
Lowering the cost of Heroic Strike helped, but with the reduced Tactician proc rate, loss of rage generation from Battlelord, and reduced rage from auto-attacks, Arms getting pretty rage starved and dependent on constant cycle-charging with Initiative to maintain a rotation.
Assuming the intent is not to encourage constant cycle-charging (since the last time that happened, it got nerfed so hard we weren’t allowed to charge in combat anymore), swapping Initiative with Just Warming Up would smooth out both effects.
- Make Just Warming Up increase the rage generation of Charge by 10-15 rage, instead of Colossus Smash.
- Change Initiative to multiply rage generation after using Colossus Smash, instead of Charge. Can even increase the duration to 8 or the full 10s to compensate for the longer cooldown.
Then add a moderate rage generation increase to auto-attacks or elsewhere, to smooth everything out and not depend so much on simply having both talents at all times.
- I’m fond allowing Finishing Blows to always generate rage, instead of Improved Overpower - Overpower has six direct damage increasing talent points across the spec tree, surely it can spare one to help keep up the rotation. This would also ensure Overpower remains important even if it no longer triggers Warfare.
- Frothing Berserker could also afford a buff, since it’s pretty cosmetic to both Arms and Fury.
This is a reasonably geared character cycle-charging on cooldown to maintain rage. It’s fairly comfortable, though there are occasional gaps due to unlucky streaks.
Trying to maintain a regular rotation without cycle charging introduces a lot of dead globals, reducing APM by ~15-20%.
The actual Execute phase is very helter skelter, even with Initiative and Critical Thinking. Don’t even think about it without both of them though!
Mountain Thane Math
Storm Surge / Unstoppable Force was apparently changed from +50% damage and -50% cooldown to +/- 20% instead, however the cooldown is still reduced by 50% in-game.
I’m hoping this is just a tooltip error, since -20% would give Thunder Clap a 4.8s cooldown, which is indivisible by the GCD. This would make the reduced cooldown effectively worthless, since that’s still a full 4-GCD cooldown.
- If 50% is too strong, then I’d suggest 25% for a 4.5s / 3-GCD cooldown instead.
Fury TBD
Given that the newly revealed tier bonus affects Odyn’s Fury, it feels pretty likely that more changes are coming in a future build, so I won’t take up any more space talking about Fury right now.
