I really want to fulfill my Sword and Shield Arms fantasy, and I feel like it could absolutely be doable if Cleave didn’t require a two-hander (leave Mortal Strike as is). Not competitive, mind you, but doable, since Cleave would be a way to not only apply deep wounds but also use Overpower stacks.
Now it’s obvious Cleave requires a two-hander because of this reason, but I’d love it if I could go around with Impending Victory, Fervor of Battle, Defensive Stance, Cleave, and Dreadnaught. All while using a 1-hander and shield. Let me live my fantasy, Blizzard…
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Doesn’t defensive stance give you a shield?
It is strange they did make cleave a 2h only ability. If they made it a “requires melee weapon” like it does with over power, and kept mortal strike the same, cleave could be a tool to use for when you go sword and board to apply deep wounds and use over power procs.
They removed the shield from defensive stance. But that’s besides the point for me, personally.
Only if you mistakenly think they’re not trying to actively prevent people from doing what the OP suggests.
I won’t disagree that the idea of wanting to try to fulfill a sword/board fantasy on a spec that doesn’t really want anything to do with it (other than as a last ditch resort for defensive play) is pretty silly, but I also think that all of Arms abilities should work with both 1Hs and 2Hs if they are trying to bring back the flavor of a warrior wanting to weapon swap during combat depending on the situation. This was especially popular in PvP back in the day for various reasons such as spell reflect requirements or just standard defensive play if you were being focused.
Nothing suggests that they are. The continued requirements indicate they are still trying to strongly signal that an Arms warrior should keep his two hander equipped in virtually every circumstance.
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Obviously Arms doesn’t want to swap, but the changes give them more control over if how they play defensively whereas they had removed this capability prior. Instead of taunting and popping a CD now if the tank dies you have the option to weapon swap, throw on D stance, shield block, probably still pop a defensive and hope it’s enough until the situation smooths over. This is the flavor I am talking about and that flavor is absolutely back.
I think you’re half right, but not because they’re requiring cleave because they need to signal players to stay 2H for Arms. MS requires it (which is fine since it’s the signature ability) and that is more than enough to convince any new player that Arms is supposed to be about 2Hs because that ability is your hardest hitting ability and overpower feeds into it.
After reviewing a bit more to me it looks like they probably did it to prevent warriors from running around with their sword and board on and cleaving packs of mobs into oblivion since Cleave is a % of attack power rather than weapon quality and a sword/board can match a 2H in that regard. Even with MS out of the picture it seems like one could make a beefy AoE arms build with cleave and Dreadnaught, which might be good for leveling.
They used to tune a lot of melee abilities by basing them off weapon damage and that kind of took care of this kind of stuff, but the way they seem to have it set up today seems to almost force them to make them to just turn abilities off like this because otherwise it looks like a sword/board arms could be just as effective as a 2H with extra armor to boot.
Cleave might have been an oversight, as Warbreaker and Sweeping Strikes still works with a shield.
I doubt they are putting much if any thought into any of this.
Another reason why I think making Arms into a “sword and board” viable DPS spec is a complete non-starter. Their clear intent with this was to do exactly what they said, unprune abilities.