My Midnight Arms feedback

Classes Warrior
1

I’ve had a bunch of thoughts about the changes to Arms in Midnight, so I’m going to dump them here. Overall, while I think most of the changes are going in the right direction, I think there are some significant issues remaining, including some fundamental issues with the spec’s design and with talents in the spec tree especially.

This feedback is all specifically related to PvE since I don’t PvP, and I’ve divided it into sections on the class, spec, and Colossus trees (there are probably things I could say about Slayer too, but it doesn’t feel like it has as many problems right now).

Class tree

While new utility options (finally!) are welcome, an awkward tree layout and far too many boring throughput talents really hamper the ability to make meaningful choices about much of that utility.

Warrior should have a bloodlust

Warrior still lacks any of the core group skills that are especially desired in M+ groups: bloodlust and battle res. While warrior isn’t the only class with neither of these (rogue, demon hunter and priest being the others I think?), even with the new utility abilities it doesn’t feel like warrior brings anything that would make it particularly desirable for M+. Bloodlust would be extremely thematically appropriate for warrior as a (commanding?!) shout, though admittedly it might favor prot somewhat more than DPS since it would make prot the only tank spec with bloodlust.

Still too many throughput talents

The row below the last gate consists entirely of boring 2 point throughput talents. This feels really bad because it blocks followup utility talents behind a very heavy point investment in throughput. Even ignoring that row, the bottom section of the class tree forces you choose between utility and damage.

  • Anger Management (a DPS talent that will be mandatory) is next to Last Stand (an ok-ish survivability talent that would be nice to have the option to take but requires giving up DPS as it is).
  • Battlefield Commander looks like a utility talent, but with a personal 3% AP increase to Battle Shout it’s actually a throughput talent and likely mandatory. It’s also gated behind the choice of Sidearm (a bad talent that provides minor damage in the form of unimportant tiny damage events) and Retaliation (a prot-only talent for any group endgame content).

Ideally some of the 2-point talents would just be removed or made 1 point. Wild Strikes and the Weapon Specialization also feel significantly more mandatory than the other two, but they all have the same point investment.

Thunder Clap and Rend talent issues

Thunder Clap has always been awkward in the class tree since specs that need to take it (Mountain Thane, Arms builds that aren’t pure single target, and Prot) have to invest several points in it that other specs get to spend on utility or survivability.

Despite moving Rend from Arms/Prot into the class tree (something that I always thought should happen anyway), the current tree makes that problem even worse in some ways.

  • Rend is better in almost every way than the combination of Thunder Clap and Blood and Thunder and that’s before considering the fact that it’s only 1 talent point instead of 2. It does more initial damage and it applies the bleed to all targets it hits rather than only 5.
  • There are 3 different Thunder Clap talents that are scattered almost randomly through the talent tree. Two of them are “singletons” (see below for more on those) that have no relation at all to the talent that’s required in order to take them.
  • It’s possible to take both talents that modify Thunder Clap without taking Thunder Clap. This is far from the only tree that has this kind of problem, but it’s awkward all the same.

There are a few solutions to the Rend/Thunder Clap problem that seem reasonable to me:

  • Make Thunder Clap apply Rend by default, removing both the separate Rend talent and Blood and Thunder. (1 talent point for AoE Rend)
  • Make Rend a single-target ability again and give Thunder Clap the “applies Rend if you know that talent” clause, removing Blood and Thunder. (1 talent point for single target Rend, 2 for AoE Rend)
  • Get rid of the Rend talent completely and make Blood and Thunder the only way of applying it. (2 talent points for single target and AoE Rend)

Singleton talents

The warrior tree has quite a few of what I’m calling “singleton” talents — they have a single prerequisite talent rather than multiple paths to them and they don’t connect to any other talents below them. I believe such talents should always have some understandable relationship to their singular prerequisite talent. There are some good examples of this in the warrior tree: Rumbling Earth under Shockwave and the Intimidating Shout talents under it.

But there are quite a few bad examples of that, singleton talents whose prerequisite has nothing to do with them. These include:

  • As mentioned before, the Thunder Clap modifying talents (and Rend). Their prerequisites are Pain and Gain and Reinforced Plates.
  • Barbaric Training: Has nothing to do with prerequisite Armored to the Teeth, though at least that’s a talent you’ll almost certainly be taking anyway.
  • Overwhelming Rage: This one is kind of ok since both it and its prerequisite (Frothing Berserker) deal with rage management in some way.
  • Honed Reflexes: Also kind of ok since it does at least directly modify its prerequisite (Spell Reflection).

Removal of Avatar

While I appreciate the goal of simplifying classes, I think the removal of Avatar (or rather, its being moved to the Prot tree only) is the wrong move. Avatar has long been a core warrior cooldown, and I think it would be better to keep it in the class tree as a central node that is obviously intended for everyone to take. Talents that add effects to Avatar could then be present either in follow-on nodes in the class tree (like the Torments) or in spec trees since everyone is expected to have it, and Anger Management could be made to just affect Avatar for all specs.

Simplification could then be taken in a different direction. For example, Fury could change Recklessness a passive that adds its effects to Avatar.

For Arms, my focus here, it’s admittedly a bit less cut and dry since Arms doesn’t have a separate self-buff ability with the same cooldown the way Fury does, but you could for example make Colossus Smash an ability that replaces Avatar and either keeps its bonuses on top of the debuff (having it increase damage as both a buff and a debuff is awkward though) or else effectively changes the self-buff to a shorter duration but larger debuff on enemies. With the replacement talent having a shorter cooldown (45 seconds) and Anger Management affecting Colossus Smash automatically (since it replaces Avatar) it would largely work like it does now, but with the ability to tie other Avatar related bonuses to it.

It’s also not necessarily a terrible problem to keep both Colossus Smash and Avatar as separate abilities for Arms, though it does reintroduce some potential cooldown timing awkwardness unless Anger Management reduces the cooldowns of both Colossus Smash and Avatar.

Miscellaneous

  • Having a group 30% movement speed buff on two different talents/abilities (Piercing Howl and Rallying Cry via Battlefield Commander) feels odd. At the very least it doesn’t feel like a very elegant design, especially given that Piercing Howl is otherwise an offensive ability that debuffs enemies. A standalone talent that says “Rallying Cry and Piercing Howl increase the movement speed of nearby players by 30% for their duration” might feel a bit more natural though.
  • The health increase on Rallying Cry is still very weak and should at a minimum have a stronger effect when not in a raid.
  • Interpose, while theoretically a nice new utility option, feels somewhat problematic as it stands.
    • A restriction (may only be used near an ally) on a ground-targeted effect is just weird and unintuitive. What counts as near?
    • Tying this kind of utility to something you might want to use purely for mobility is not great, though admittedly Intervene already had that issue to some extent.
    • It might make more sense to change this talent to an alternate version of Intervene (i.e. still targeted on a friendly player) but with the AoE sac ability rather than the attack interception ability.
  • While it’s kind of nice that they’re a little easier to take, I’m not sure Wrecking/Shattering Throw need quite such a central place in the tree.

Arms tree

The removal of Juggernaut and Skullsplitter are both very welcome. Sweeping Strikes being changes to uses “charges” rather than duration is good because it fixes the awkwardness of wanting to avoid using Bladestorm during Sweeping Strikes while also wanting to get them both on cooldown as soon as possible. The way the redesigned Collateral Damage makes Sweeping Strikes provide a consistent (rather than bursty) AoE damage benefit is nice, as one of the major weaknesses of Sweeping Strikes is its very narrow target count niche (useless in single target and increasingly low value at any target count over 2).

That said, Arms feels like it’s lacking something. Tactician remains an awkward part of the spec that doesn’t provide as much value as it feels like it should (and the value it does provide is heavily skewed toward single target and doesn’t help much at all in AoE), and a very large number of talents that are valuable either for single target or AoE but not both make it feel likely that Arms will still be pigeonholed into builds that are only good for one or the other.

Tactician and Overpower

The core gameplay loop of Arms still doesn’t feel like it quite works. Tactician resetting Overpower is one of the key interactions, but Overpower is still not an exciting ability to press. The new apex talents help with this a little bit (by making Overpower uses have a chance to change Slam into Heroic Strike) but not enough.

I also think Tactician has another problem, which is that it provides very little value in AoE situations since it resets the cooldown on a single target ability (that now, with apex talents, has the ability to make a different single target ability stronger). The removal of Martial Prowess (which allowed Overpower uses to at least buff your next Cleave) has only made this problem worse.

I think something needs to be done to make Overpower and Tactician naturally have more value in AoE situations and to me at least an obvious answer is to buff Dreadnaught significantly and make it either baseline or a talent that’s very easy to take for builds that want it. Dreadnaught is at least somewhat unique to Arms in the way it does damage along the line between you and your target (particularly with Sweeping Strikes where you get 2 lines in a V). It rewards good positioning in a way that feels satisfying, and some of the most fun I’ve had as Arms in M+ was in seasons where Dreadnaught was powerful and the primary way of dealing AoE damage.

Single target vs. AoE

It really looks like Arms is still going to be pigeonholed into having very different builds for ST and AoE in a world where many specs can do both almost equally well with only slightly different builds. Particularly problematic are the large number of talents that affect Slam, Mortal Strike, Execute, Overpower, and Tactician procs (all of which are only valuable for single target).

Talents that largely provide no AoE benefits (14):

  • Improved Overpower
  • Improved Execute
  • Tactician
  • Brute Force/Efficiency
  • Tactical Edge
  • Strength of Arms (2 points)
  • Critical Thinking (2 points)
  • Soften Them Up
  • Battlelord
  • Deep Wounds
  • Executioner’s Precision
  • Massacre
  • Finishing Blows (gated behind an AoE-only talent)
  • Fatality

Talents that largely provide no single-target benefits (7):

  • Fervor of Battle / Storm of Swords
  • Broad Strokes
  • Improved Sweeping Strikes / Powerful Momentum
  • Cleave
  • Crushing Combo
  • Bladestorm
  • Merciless Bonegrinder

I think something needs to be done to make more of these talents provide some value in both single target and AoE, even if it means replacing some of them entirely.

Execute

Arms was traditionally the king of execute and that has fallen off massively over the last several expansions (really ever since BfA). While I don’t think Execute should be emphasized to the point of making other core abilities like Mortal Strike feel weak, I think returning some power to Execute would be nice for that identity.

And, related to the previous section, I think part of doing that actually has to be reducing the number of talents that affect Execute. Right now it takes a very large number of talent points to really maximize Execute, meaning that while you can make it fairly powerful, you give up a lot to do that.

Talents that only affect Execute:

  • Cruel Strikes (class tree, 2 points… does also provide crit at least)
  • Improved Execute
  • Massacre (please make baseline or part of Improved Execute?)
  • Critical Thinking (2 points)
  • Deep Wounds
  • Executioner’s Precision
  • Fatal Mark

Sweeping Strikes charge cap

While the change of Sweeping Strikes to use charges is an improvement, the cap on the number of charges makes Broad Strokes feel extremely unintuitive and bad. With both Sweeping Strikes and CS being abilities that you want to use on CD in multi-target situations, the fact that you can easily overcap by using both close together is really unpleasant.

Frankly, I’ve felt for a long time that Sweeping Strikes should just be made an Arms passive that causes all single target attacks to hit a second target rather than having to awkwardly manage a buff that can be up most (but not all) of the time. But barring that, something needs to be done to make it so CS can SS can be used close together without wasting charges.

Miscellaneous

  • Both Blunt Instruments and Spiteful Serenity seem bad. Why spend a valuable talent point to make CS both better and worse at the same time when I could spend that elsewhere and only get a positive effect?
    • Bladestorm extending Colossus Smash seemingly makes Blunt Instruments far better than Spiteful Serenity in situations where Bladestorm is taken since Bladestorm extend CS by a much larger percent of its base duration with Blunt Instruments.
  • Why remove Martial Prowess just to add Soften Them Up as essentially the same effect (though weaker and not affecting Cleave) for Slam?
  • Storm of Swords still sucks.
  • Crushing Combo seems pretty underwhelming since it essentially gives you exactly 1 extra use of Cleave in its 6 second duration.

Colossus tree

Having separate cooldown reduction mechanisms for CS and Demolish is still awkward. One option for solving this would be to have Demolish be an ability that temporarily replaces CS each time it’s used. That’s a mechanic we’ve seen in other classes quite a bit lately, ensures that CS and Demolish are naturally synced, and provides a nice thematic connection between the Colossus hero spec and the Colossus Smash ability that’s currently lacking. That said, I do see some potential issues with it:

  • It might make the CS cooldown reduction from the apex talents disproportionately strong for Colossus, though I’m not sure this is really a problem since it can be balanced around and the apex talents will likely be taken regardless.
  • It might remove some incentive to focus on abilities that give Colossal Might stacks, though trying to stack them as high as possible between uses of CS could be enough.
  • Prot doesn’t have any equivalent ability to tie Demolish to (…Shield Charge?), which could mean the tree has to function differently enough between the two that it doesn’t make it feel like it’s actually the same hero tree anymore.
3 Likes
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Yeah I get the argument but I also don’t agree with it personally.
Warriors will always want either a Shaman and or a Hunter in their ideal m+ groups. Shaman because their buff is amazing for Arms/Prot and Hunter because it’s the only ranged dps that benefits from our battle shout in ideal comps. BOTH of which bring lust.

The only one benefiting from this at all is Protection warrior joining a group lacking any lust dps/healers. DPS specs will not see much of an invite rate increase at all.

Yeah, the 2 point gates in the class tree are rough, but I can also see them as being necessities to a degree with how it’s currently pathed. However if they adjust it ever so slightly to mirror more like DK’s rung 3 which has the same layout as ours, but their rung 3 is setup as the following’
1/1/1/1
2/1/2
1/1/1/1

While we have
2/2/2/2
1/1/1
1/1/1/1

Now as for what would move? AM would replace Wrecking throw’s spot as a the central 1 point in row 2 rung 3.
Two handed Specialisation would then be the 2 point node in that same row on the left, and then wild strikes would be the 2 point node on the right.

To then be something of the following layout.

Cruel Strikes(1)/Sidearm-Retaliation(1)/Wrecking-Shattering Throws(1)/Deft Strikes(1)
Two handed spec (2)/Anger Management(1)/Wild Strikes (2)
Crushing Force(1)/Last Stand(1)/Champion's Spear(1)/Battlefield Commander(1)

While not perfect you’ll be able to pickup 9/11 nodes like DKs can in their 3rd rung. However I’d go one step further with this config and remove Cruel/Deft strikes, merge their stats into Wild strikes, then drop wild strikes to an omni 1% for 2 points investment (0.5% per point) so it would be 1% Crit/Haste/Mastery. Weapon specialisation would pickup the AA dmg increase of 50/100% per point (kinda makes sense for warriors to hit harder with their weapons over other classes) and then the Cruel Strikes/Deft Strikes nodes would be replaced entirely with different non throughput based talents.

The difference here really in talent layout would just be the ability to get one more talent rather than taking 7 nodes and investing 1 point in the 4th stat node in row 1 rung 3 that is the least throughput out of the 4 available. Which let’s face it is probably deft strikes 99/100 times.

Honestly the problem mostly lies here from multiple specs sharing the same class tree.

Thunderclap could just be made baseline and be the driving factor for applying Rend if talented in the tree with the one point investment, however Rend’s iteration for Midnight is much better since it’s uncapped and hits a tad harder for the same rage cost and doesn’t have the slow attached to it either.

I’m ok with this separation as well as it allows Arms to forgo all the Thunderclap Talents and just pickup Rend while also not trolling the group by slowing the pack passively which can be apart of a strat on some raid encounters painfully enough.

Rend is also a cooler animation, a spin attack > little racial ability stomp anyday.

From a Prot/Fury perspective keeping it as is also works better for them as Prot only has Blood and Thunder since they have to take thunderclap anyway, while Fury would opt for Blood and Thunder too if they play Thane.

This is in large due to how our talent tree is set-up being very rung 2 heavy alongside the additional 3 points being added into the mix.

As for Armoured to the Teeth and Reinforced plates being weird gates I disagree, they’re technically both throughput gating throughput (assuming both are taken which we will almost always do) while Reinforced plates doubles also mostly as defensive, it still has synergy with Armoured to the Teeth to provide a higher throughput increase.

While I can agree it’s a little jarring at first, I came around to actually liking this change a lot when I realised we’re not longer cursed to be the 90s trinket meta which is a godsend now that we’ve no longer got most of the on use trinkets that drop being dead choices in our great vault each season.

CS being such a short cooldown too through both AM and Apex synergies works insanely well together.

I’d say it’s both. More defensive though but now it’s got an offensive use in it’s movement speed. Currently you would defensively use it to to slow down enemy targets in PvE and in PvP you would use it to defensively or offensively slow your enemies in arenas.

While I agree, i also understand that the 5% leech added to it with BC is an added little extra and anything more powerful would lead to stacking Warriors again in filler spots for a defensive raid position over other melee which isn’t good for balance overall. This was what lead to Rally’s nerf in the first place so I don’t think we’ll ever see it get back to it’s SL days in terms of health buffering.

Yeah this is a DoA ability, reticle targeting while also requiring an ally to be basically pixel perfect (hyperbole) for it to function is a little weird. Not a bad idea but definitely could just have the same movement as intervene rather than being a reticle.

Idk I can’t agree with this one myself as Dreadnaught is still a lock in most likely in every single build as it stands now so really your gripe here is almost a moot point as overpower will always cleave that damage to secondary targets while having synergy with sweeping strikes to also deal an additional 75/100% damage a second time when it is active.
Keep in mind Dreadnaught does benefit from almost every single overpower dmg % modifier too so it’s low ap modifier of 50.0138% does get quite higher so it’s no slouch in AoE either.

Wrong, it’s AoE benefit buffing Dreadnaught by 15% the second charge is great too to avoid resets being lost.

Wrong, more OP = More Dreadnaught = More AoE.

Brute force Yes, Efficiency Wrong. Slam will still be used in AoE as a last resort when MS/Cleave are on CD and OP is out of charges so this 80% tact rate will almost always force OP to become available to fill in the next GCD before MS or Cleave become available.

Pretty solid Colossus Synergy since it’s always casting MS on CD so more tact procs = less time spending free GCDs on Slam = More dreadnaught casts = Higher Master Tactician uptime rates too.

Wrong, flat overpower damage effects Dreadnaught once again.

In 3+ targets, synergies with Fervor of Battle will make your next MS hit harder which will almost always be sweeped to a secondary target within that pack.

Wrong, very high value for Colossus AoE as it fuels Demolish CDR by a lot.

SD procs can hit secondary targets with Sweeping Strikes up, not really all that bad at all for AoE and amazing for 2 target.

Storm of Swords? yeah. Fervor of Battle? it’s a ST increase at 3+ targets, not to mention it’s synergy with Collateral Damage does make this more of a ST increase as it’ll bump up cleave to +75% extra dmg per cast as opposed to +50% so it’s good free extra funnel damage.

Broad strokes in pure ST? Yeah no value, however it’s value bumps up quite a lot whenever there are secondary targets in a raid fight so those priority adds will allow for a lower ST loss especially paired with powerful momentum.

Well obviously it’s meant to be an AoE attack, we would only ever take this in raid fights if there are add waves of 3+ targets present. This is also only a 1 point investment, 2 if you also pickup collateral damage, 3 if you’re changing Bloodsurge to Fervor of Battle. These are not bad trade offs at all for a 2-3 point investment.

Huh? It’s literally a cooldown that Slayer will take and use in ST situations. Brutal Finish and Culling Cyclone both improve it’s ST throughput while also there’s 3 hero talents missing yet from Slayer’s tree which might also improve it’s ST contribution to make up for Unhinged’s removal. Who knows maybe even Unhinged is added in to Slayer baseline.

Yeah this interaction is a little weird, imo if broad strokes is taken sweeping strikes should just be removed from being a button you can press and just have it auto cast as it does on Alpha right now with every CS hit. This would fix the whole weird charge nonsense as it wouldn’t be an issue at all with this implementation. Plus it puts Broad Strokes as a QoL talent to save you half a GCD which puts it more inline with Just Warming Up being a very minor increase/QoL too.

We haven’t really lost Martial Prowess it’s just moved replace Collateral Damage instead. Which is great from a simplification PoV and no longer is just linked to overpower meaning any sweeped attack enables higher cleaves the next time you cast it, while also making synergies like Fervor of battle allowing you to always hit 3 stack CD cleaves every time you cast Cleave in a 3+ target situation.

Agreed, imo it could probably just be removed at this point. Fervor of Battle is a much more interesting AoE talent especially due to the already mentioned interactions with it and Collateral Damage.

Funnily enough I don’t think it’s much of an AoE increase over Tactical Edge which will enable a higher Master Tactician Uptime within your CS window and contribute to more Dreadnaughts while you’re building Collateral Damage stacks between your Cleaves.

Not really, if you compare actual talent you’re passing over for the execute as most of these are in the 3rd rung anyway or pathing to it outside of Critical Thinking. Fatality has also moved more to an any% talent too that’ll be consumed on SD procs rather than it being a pimple we pop on the boss sub 30% which you’ve got as a lock in anyway from rung 1 so it’s not so much an execute talent as it is a free damage increase from your MS casts.

If anything the way these talents are set-up and a portion of Execute’s power being put into a higher Deep wounds application/uptime helps a lot in bringing Colossus and Slayer closer together for ST. Which is definitely a net positive in the long run as we might finally get to see it during prog outside of 2-3 target council fights.

Yeah I can’t agree with you there mostly due to how the current mechanics for Colossus works with Demolish. Demolish is an absurdly high pay off ap% wise per cast which ends up being 4x the average cast of your Mortal Strikes so these chunk hard. Demolish ends up being a

Given CS’s cooldown ends up being 22~25s with AM/Apex talents involved you’ll almost always have the CS debuff available whenever you’re wanting to cast Demolish, even then waiting ~5 or so seconds to resync them up will be more of a gain for key moments if you’ve had a bad crit rng streak as CS will have a 40-45% uptime with neither Blunt Instruments of Spiteful Serenity taken. Mind you if a secondary target is present Demolish’s CD will basically match CS’s CD or be lower than it pending Battlelord/Exhil blows RNG anyway so that’s also a very good synergy right there to have 10 stack Demolishes going ham.

If anything linking CS and Demolish just cause dramas that would’ve otherwise been solved by WAs pinging at you at the optimal CM stack count of when to cast it before your CS expires which is definitely anti player in it’s interaction if they kept it as is at 10 stacks. Maybe if Colossal Might got reduced to 5 stacks for max damage and still kept the same modifiers but if it lost that much in the process just to make people less mental about having cooldowns coming up at different rates it wouldn’t be a good trade off for ruining the skill expression of knowing when to save and when to go ham.

Even in raid settings you’ll almost be syncing up that CS/Demolish combo anytime 2+ targets are present for the sheer destruction that it would do with those 10 stacks banked up. Not to mention if an Add wave is going to be spawning you’ll have a nuke ready to drop on them as well.

I think it’s fine personally but there also might be some additional QoL that demolish gets through it’s 3 upcoming hero talents we’ve yet to see which we might see in this week’s Alpha update since we’re hitting what phase 4 this week? and next week would be phase 5 of the Alpha itself.

3

Not going to try to respond to all of your responses but a lot of your points about Overpower/Tactician related stuff actually being AoE benefits since they affect Dreadnaught are technically true but rely on Dreadnaught having significant enough damage that it’s both worth taking and that the modifiers actually matter. Dreadnaught’s 50% AP value is the same as it is on live where it’s not taken for AoE. There are differences from live that might make it worth taking as things stand (no longer on a choice node, and Sweeping Strikes improvements may increase its value somewhat), but I don’t think that makes it much stronger overall. And things like a 15% increase to a 50% AP scaling ability is 7.5% AP which is really not that much. My main hope is just for Dreadnaught to have a strong enough baseline that those things do feel like they matter.

Several of your other points seem to suggest that the existence of Sweeping Strikes makes single target ability improvements have AoE value, but I don’t think that’s true at all. Sweeping Strikes effectively makes single target abilities “two target abilities” and while that doubles the floor on their damage in AoE situations, it doesn’t scale with the number of targets which tends to be what matters in AoE (see: every complaint about hard target caps ever). Collateral Damage does help SS improve your damage in AoE situations, but not in a way that makes your single target damage modifying talents affect that scaling. To be clear, I think it’s ok for Arms to have a niche where it’s better than other specs at very low target counts, but it also needs the ability to scale its damage with increasing target counts at a reasonable rate. And while it may even have that already, I still believe the split of talents that only improve damage on 1-2 targets vs. AoE talents is quite bad for Arms compared to most other DPS specs. That’s been a valid complaint about the spec tree in both DF and TWW, and the changes so far in Midnight don’t seem to do much if anything to address it.

4

It’s an AoE gain over Strength of Arms, but players opt to take SoA over it to shorten boss damage in higher keys as even if it’s slightly less on the overall it’s contribution is higher. This is no longer an issue going into midnight as once again these talents are decoupled.

They do though, both Hero talent builds prop this up by a decent amount, that 50.0138% AP modifier gets bumped up to 104.39130405 for both hero talent builds at max modifiers.

Both get
+15% improved overpower
+10% Strength of Arms
+10% Master Tactician

Colossus gets
+5-50% per Colossal Might Stacks

Slayer gets
+20% Slayer’s Malice
+25% Opportunist.

That leaves Colossus to be calc’d at 50.0138 x 1.15 x 1.1 x 1.1 x 1.5 = 104.39130405

Slayer to be calc’d at 50.0138 x 1.15 x 1.1 x 1.1 x 1.2 x 1.25 = 104.39130405

We’ve already more than doubled it’s modifier just from basic % passives/procs.
Then you start adding things like 5% from mountain of muscles and scars, 5% from overwhelmed, your mastery rating, your vers rating, crit damage modifiers, duplicate wave from Sweeping Strikes and it just keeps on growing.

You’re wrong then, Arms has a intwined interactions between being able to hit an additional 2-3+ targets and gaining additional funnel damage. The same with ST having value in those 2 target situations due to how sweeping strikes functions.

It has that though in Rend, Cleave and Deeper Wounds. Rend is an uncapped bleed, Deeper Wounds synergises with crit and cleave’s low CD to add yet another uncapped bleed into the mix.

I disagree, the talents you’re dropping for those gains are minor ST losses at best. You’ll swap Bloodsurge for Fervor of Battle, you’ll swap 2 points out of minor gains into both Cleave and Collateral Damage.
Rend is already a given that you’re taking in the Class tree.
Bladestorm is a given for slayer builds as a cooldown they’re taking regardless for ST.
Colossus will most likely opt out of bladestorm entirely due to Demolish being good enough and the GCDs spent on channeling a bladestorm would’ve been better off on applying more bleeds through your crits and CDRing demolish faster for the insane amount of damage that it deals.

So really I think you’re wrong as you haven’t considered how much Arms already has access to as a baseline for those mob waves in a raid setting. Even for M+ where you’re building a half/half ST/AoE build you’ll still be picking up so many of the solid ST QoL talents that.

If I was to build a Colossus M+ build from what’s currently on the Alpha it would look something like the following.

https://www.wowhead.com/beta/talent-calc/warrior/arms/colossus/DAOBUUURUYRlRaJFFBRNVUVVVZYRVZUAUCFQFFVVVUBV

Sure it skips over the execute talents of EP, Massacre, Fatality and Critical Thinking, but that build still has most of the solid ST talents while also picking talents that synergise in both AoE and ST. Soften them up should give you a stack when you get a free one from FoB cleaves, which then increase your next MS you’re using to CDR Demolish faster. While also being slighty more effective pre execute phase anyway for boss damage while still maintaining a solid spike of throughput for when you get a boss to 20% by taking deep wounds so your SD executes before it also pack a harder punch.

Honestly in terms of ST vs AoE choices Arms is in a very good state. Even it’s baseline pure ST builds for 2 target only really would opt for 1 additional talent swap into Powerful momentum or improved sweeping strikes pending how long that secondary target is alive for.
This is a very good niche to have for Raids and is hopefully looking like Arms will have more opportunities for it to shine over Fury.