Could Slam be reintroduced to the single target rotation of Arms? Selecting all Slam modifying talents still puts it way behind overpower in terms of damage.
As observed in top Arms Warrior raid logs, rage dumping with Thunder Clap, Whirlwind and Ignore Pain for the purpose of feeding Test of Might and Anger Management + resetting Overpower via Tactician is far and away the most optimal way to play the spec. Its super unintuitive for new players to have aoe spenders outperforming an iconic warrior spell due to their cost per GCD efficiency, and is also kind of miserable to see as a slam enjoyer. An additional non critical-strike damage modifier for the Improved Slam talent in the Arms tree of similar size to the one provided to Whirlwind by Storm of Swords should be more than enough to bring it back to the rotation. Also, please return Fervor of Battle to its BFA/Shadowlands iteration
Good ol’ classic Burning Crusade era. Slam was a move with a 1.5 second cast time that rooted you to use. The fury talent improved slam brought it down to .5 second cast. It also reset your auto-attack swing timer when used, so optimal usage was to hit slam immediately after your auto attack. Swing timers were essential for assistance. If you delayed slam by milliseconds, you were losing dps. Even worse, if you hit slam BEFORE your auto attack, you have shot yourself in the foot for not getting that vital auto attack damage and rage generation. It was a move of all time.
Current slam is comically weak and it’s baffling why it’s gone ignored all expansion so far. Arms warrior damage profile is entirely about juicing up mortal strike via OPs and executes. MS can crit for 6 figures easily even outside of colossus smash windows. I tried a fully talented slam and it smacked the boss for… 14k. All it does is shore up a rounding error - that’s how bad it is.
T clap is better for single target because a 40 rage move guarantees an overpower reset and it refreshes rend. Whirlwind, same thing for slightly more direct damage. WW actually does more damage than slam if there are no slam talents. Rend’s direct damage is even higher if slam is untalented.
Slam desperately needs something to make it good. Its pvp bonus modifier is a whopping 86% now - there’s a crazy discrepancy in design if it is that bad. It has zero interesting added properties and is the saddest, most pitiful attack move in the whole game.
Back when a swing timer was the most important addon for a warrior lol.
I know I ran imp slam for raids in TBC (and possibly wrath?) and went down to MS in the arms tree. I guess whether you were arms or fury back then was a little less clearly defined.
In fairness, the current rotation involves cycling tclap/Ignore Pain/Whirlwind cooldowns to dump rage/reset overpower. But yeah, I wouldn’t call Mortal Strike a “rage dump”. It’s not used to prevent rage capping, It’s used because it is our core rotational ability.
I hear this sentiment a lot, which I find has become exclusive to dragonflight. Why should slam be removed from the spec? What about rage dumping with Thunderclap, Whirlwind and Ignore Pain makes our single target rotation more enjoyable?
I think a lot of people are just sick of a button that just does damage.
Like the way MS refreshes its’ cooldown these days, having a bunch of rotation fillers just feels redundant. Especially when they all previously served more unique functions that justified their existence.
It’s purely a matter of personal preference, but I don’t particularly feel like filling every global makes doing damage more exciting or feel better.
To me, it feels better to use an ability when the situation calls for it, or work around mechanics that don’t allow for the use of certain abilities. Reacting to what the target does more than just using a rotation that is nearly identical regardless of the situation.
Slam was axed back in legion? It’s come and gone from the spec. The spec has enough buttons that do damage, trying to fit Slam in doesn’t do what the spec wants to do. We want to Overpower for bigger Mortal Strikes. What does Slam accomplish? It spends rage.
We have better buttons that spend more rage in Tclap, Ignore Pain, Whirlwind. These feed resets into OP which feed resets into MS. It’s a beautiful little system, and then slam rears its ugly head asking you to spend 4 talent points to make it useful, and competing with Mortal Strike for rage when it doesn’t do any damage.
I can understand this perspective. However in the context of Arms’ current single target rotation, Thunderclap and Whirlwind exist as “the bunch of rotational fillers”, which like I said in the original post, is pretty unintuitive. Slam could fulfil their role in the rotation to the same effect in a single button; reset Overpower, dump rage for the purpose of ToM/AM, while additionally offering a notable contribution to Arms’ pre-execute damage profile (which would probably require Overpower’s damage to be pulled back a little bit, maybe less damage and a bigger MS/Cleave modifier?).
I will add, people have dropped Exhilarating Blows. Overpower is the only way to reset Mortal Strike (Battlelord).
And although I don’t have an issue with this idea, the combination of Test of Might + Anger Management means you are quite harshly punished for not filling every single possible global. I just think it makes sense for that to be filled by a single target spell (Ignore Pain is cool, that doesn’t need to change).
You lose nothing from swapping the 2 points in Thunderclap and Blood and Thunder to Crushing Force in the class tree and Storm of Swords to Improved Slam in the Arms tree. It has zero affect on pathing in any of the current meta builds. Also, Slam does not (and will not if tuned appropriately) need to compete with Mortal Strike. Like I’ve said above, it can just replace the two AoE dumpers and fulfil the same role of resetting Overpower while also offering a better pre-execute damage profile for the spec.
Why does clicking Thunder Clap or Whirlwind to rage dump on a boss like Magmorax, feel better than Slam, which is a Patchwerk fight? The only reason is because Slam is severely undertuned.
Because I’ve played all the Slam talents in my primary form of gameplay which is PvP. Where Slam has a +85% bonus modifier, and it’s still a feels bad moment to press it. It will rage starve you, and leads to bad habits of over pressing the button. To top it off when you invest in slam you wanna press slam which then takes away from pressing OP / MS. Regardless of calling it bad play, it’s something that pops up and you’re training yourself off it.
Ignore Pain, WW, and Tclap feel better because they have cooldowns. They aren’t spammable, you press them, get the guranteed reset and then press OP. You’re more than likely going to get it off Slam but there is RNG involved. It’s not fun to deal with it.
If they want to make Slam a real button then baseline the talents into it so we don’t have to pay a tax for a single target filler to be useable. If not just roll the damage into MS and give us some new talents.
If not why play devils advocate when you aren’t even talenting into the ability? If I go pull up your logs am I going to see Slam at all in your abilities pressed?
I actually totally agree with what you have said here. Slam should just be stronger baseline. Or at the very least Crushing Force should just be baked into Improved Slam on the Arms tree and Storm of Swords on the Fury tree. I cant speak for PvP cause I only really engage with it via fighting middle in Warsong Gulch but I do think the PvE environment leaves you less susceptible to just mindlessly spamming buttons (much less intense, much more room to just focus on your rotation).
And yes you are correct, you will never see slam on any of my logs. Wasn’t trying to play devils advocate, was trying to make the point that Slam, or any spell for that matter, becomes a fun button to press when it actually contributes positively to your damage profile.
At the end of the day, the most Rage I spend should be on Mortal Strike and Execute. If they aren’t disproportionally dominating the resource demand, the rotation is out of alignment with the core spec feature.
