So it seems Blizzard doesn’t know how to fix Arms. I mean, every expansion pack the spec is changed dramatically. For example, pre- Warlords, to Warlords, then Legion and now BFA. Pre- Warlords arms was pretty great, fun, viable. Then Warlords happened, they gutted it, then towards the end made it raid viable only with the stinking slam trinket. Which, wasn’t fun, that was just CS-slam slam slam slam slam slam repeat. Then, we got to legion. I personally LOVED the focus rage build. Sure it needed a tad nerf, but they completely gutted it and made everyone change the way they played Arms. Which basically made everyone change to Fury. Then BFA happened. It was decent at launch, nerf bat, then as always mid cycle “Well, we know we screwed up arms, let me give you buffs.” Why can’t they just go back to builds people told them they liked, builds that worked, and leave it alone, maybe buff, nerf to balance things out. Or, when they are told, “Oh wow, Arms is in a great place” not change it. I just don’t understand why they feel they need to completely change the entire spec every single expansion.
I completely agree. Arms has always been the spec I want to like the most out of every class. Basically, Wrath through Panda was the version of the spec I appreciated most. Panda was a little carpal tunnely with the spamming of overpower, but still a basic rotation that I enjoyed.
Ive made a thread about this before but it has not gotten a lot of attention so I wanted to offer the idea here. Granted this is a suggestion of a complete retool that the OP says they do not want, but I would love to know what y’all think.
Take away all the different skills (i.e. MS, Slam, Overpower) since they essentially all look the same and just hit for varying damage amounts and may or may not apply an on hit effect. Blizzard seems to want to switch everyone to an easy to play rotation with few skills to use. Not a problem. Give warriors 3-4 types of swings (left swing, right swing, overhead, jab… or something like this that fits the swing animations each race already has). Make different combinations of swings apply different on hit effects. Therefore players need to learn and utilize different swing patterns (i.e. left/right > jab = mortal strike debuff, jab > overhead = overpower type strike that cannot be parried, left/right > overhead = apply rend) Each debuff will last only a few seconds so the player is constantly using the different swing combinations to re apply the debuffs they need to maximize their DPS or PvP viability. Simple to play but requires for skill to master. You could keep rage as a resource that fills with more successful weapon swings or combo completions and at full rage you get to use execute for a nice big hit. In addition you could get a stacking haste or execute damage modifier buff that lasts 3.5 seconds or so when you complete a three hit combo that is consumed when you use execute.
This, to me, would make me feel like a weapons expert. What do you think?
same answer as every other arms related thread. The bleed mastery has to go or it will always be messed up.
I agree with you. But let’s be honest, focused rage was awful and I’m sure an overwhelming majority of arms players hated it.
Bring back any iteration of arms before WoD and bam, fixed.
Arms started to die when they started fricking with stance dancing post-wrath. They basically removed all mechanics that differentiate it from other classes and now you’re just a walking DPS rotation. Like every other DPS spec but without a defining kit.
I love how Blizz just keeps giving Warriors overal % dmg buffs instead of actually fixing the class mechanics.
They did add skull splitter, but took away way too much for it to make up for it.
How about we give arms Shield wall, last stand and enraged regen. D stance should be baseline and for crying out loud Dbts should not have such s long cooldown
Honestly, you are the first person I have heard, or read, say that. I do agree, I definitely prefer Arms before Warlords, but, I definitely like FR too.
You must’ve not read the forums much when focused rage was a thing. The consensus was it sucked pretty hard, because well, it did.
No skill player here.
Can confirm people on this forum disliked focus rage. This was mostly due to the spammy nature of it being off gcd. By and large the biggest complaint was “fingers falling off”
Personally though I loved it. It made sense to me from a gameplay and thematic sense. Use rage and timing to hit hard.
The next build in legion drastically reduced my fun playing arms. The whirlwind Fervor of Battle rend build. A lot of people loved this build when compared to focused rage.
This build was so stupid. But better players liked it so who am I to say what’s good? Maybe I just didn’t understand and needed to get good. So I didn’t speak up. That was a mistake.
Why is deep wounds a mastery? Because rend competed with FoB. Since arms players seemed to like twirling in a circle over using MS, as well as bleeding a target let’s let them do both. That is why 45 talent row is set up like that. FoB is awful. It shouldn’t be an option. And look, people are taking massacre over both it and rend now.
You can see “choices” and effects like this all over arms spells and talents. Instead of iteration on FR it was scrapped. Too hard to balance, or maybe allowed for too high a skill ceiling. As not a good player I didn’t care if I wasn’t best DPS, I cared if it made sense and was fun…Spinning around in a circle doesn’t make sense nor is it particularly fun…
I have two arms, they are great! Do you all have two arms too? Aren’t they awesome?
They could fix arms right now if they wanted too.
Change our mastery from a bleed over time effect to armor penetration.
I’m sure they could work out the percentages to keep it from getting nuts like it did before.
If Arms Mastery is Deep Wounds, it should function synonymous with Ignite. Our abilities put a stacking bleed on our target for a percentage of our overall damage.
Here’s how Arms should itemize stats:
Strength should not be the bottom of the barrel, nor should any class disregard their primary stats. It’s a PRIMARY stat for cryin’ out loud!
We should not be prioritizing Haste as a stat. We’re about hitting HARD. We don’t his as quickly, but we make it count. Where Fury takes six swings to hit for 6000 damage, we should be hitting that with one!
We should be looking only for a low level of haste, probably more like 10%.
Versatility and Mastery should be our stats to stack. We should appreciate Crit too, but I’d rather see some of our abilities have a Cold Blood style of mechanic, like Wings for Ret Paladins. We should get a definite 100% crit ability. Maybe that could be tied to Tactician instead. That’s much better than resetting Overpower, since Overpower hardly ever crits anymore.
In short:
Strength > Versatility > Mastery > Haste = Crit should be our itemization.
Mortal Strike needs to just feel -better- to use. It used to be one of the scariest abilities in the game, but now it’s just… Meh, 20k damage. Or a 30k crit (in pvp where crits are bad).
Sudden Death should be BASELINE again for Arms! It was our thing for a long time before it got gated.
Rend should be BASELINE again!
Double Time should be BASELINE!
Again I will say ARMS NEEDS MORE DEFENSE
ignore pain
Shield wall
Def stance
Enraged regen
def stance now reduces dmg taken AND armor by 25% reduce dmg done by 10%
Yes arms def needs some changes. Self healing that isn’t completely situational, change the bleed mastery crap, more defensive power (since arms warriors are supposed to be masters of battle they should get more chances to parry/dodge both abilities and spells much more often than other classes/spec), and more dmg that does not involve using whirlwind which should never be used as arms in the first place imo.
Make arms fun and viable again for both PvE and PvP please!!!
No, you mean Defensive Stance is baseline. 20% reduction and 10% damage is fine. DO NOT TOUCH THE ARMOR.
Yeah I think you mean’t to say INCREASES armor by 25%…the way you typed that means that we would have 25% less armor and that is not good.
Honestly they just need to normalize armor even more than they already have. Just put it to a fixed value of ‘physical damage reduction’ and avoid the difference between iLvl 350 and 450 since it’s percentages of percentages that will scale to the point of needing to be changed.
Cloth should be 15%
Leather should be 25%
Mail should be 35%
Plate should be 45%
Shields should add 5% for non-tank spec, 15% for tank spec.
Swap Verse with Crit and I agree 100%
My big issue with swapping crit is the PvP balance being trash ever since that was a thing.
One of my biggest hype moments for Classic is gonna be the return of the delete buttons.