What would you change in an arms warrior rework?

Classes Warrior
41
  • Less procs
  • Bigger CDs
  • More SLAMS
  • Bring back Mastery: Colossal Might increases the damage of your Colossus Smash by X% and causes it to increase the damage dealt to the target by X%
  • Bring back Mastery: Weapons Master increases the damage of your Mortal Strike, Colossus Smash and Execute abilities by Y%

Colossal Might could be the top talent, a passive to replace Demolish in the Colossus Tree, and build the tree around HUGE burst potential with Colossus Smash

Weapons Master could be the baseline Mastery but provides more flexibility than the current, bleed build…

42

I mentioned the bare minimums earlier, but if I were going for something more ideal, I’d like to consolidate certain sources of fluff/convolution.

But first, some general changes:

  • Allow players to macro together GCD skills, to a maximum of two at a time. No, seriously. There is no reason one shouldn’t be able to put Heroic Throw as a fall-back to each melee skill, thereby forgoing the need for a separate Heroic Throw keybind. There’s no reason one shouldn’t be able to put Slam as a fallback for Execute or Mortal Strike, or Whirlwind as a fallback for Cleave, etc. Doing so would often be slightly sub-optimal, but that’s fine; it’s still a massive QoL bonus that wouldn’t much, if at all, reduce meaningful skill expression beyond the lowest rungs of gameplay (for which it truly doesn’t matter anyways).
...And some changes to the class tree:
  • Second Wind (revised) is now a baseline passive, granting up to 5% HP per second based on missing health, to a total of 20% health, upon dropping below 35% health. While in combat, the amount healed is then drained over 30 seconds unless an enemy granting experience or honor is slain. The effect of Second Wind is proportionately reduced if triggered more often than once per 30 seconds.
  • War Machine now also triggers Second Wind without incurring its consequent health cost.
  • The skill Victory Rush can now be used at any time, on a 30-second CD, forcing the activation of Second Wind and healing instantly for 10% of maximum health, but the health generated in this manner fades over 30 seconds. Its cooldown is reset upon killing an enemy. As such, Impending Victory is now effectively baselined.
  • Second Wind (talent) moved into the position previously housing Impending Victory and replaced by War of Attrition: “Second Wind no longer drains its health generated over time, and for each second since you have taken direct damage you heal for 1% of your health, to a maximum of 5% health per second.”
    • Frothing Berserker removed. Pain and Gain moved into its place, Spell Reflection into Pain and Gain’s former place. Bitter Immunity moved into Spell Reflection’s former place and now paths also from War of Attrition (which took the place of Impending Victory).
  • Storm Hammer now also paths directly to Shockwave.
  • Rallying Cry is now doubly effective on one’s own party, and now also paths directly to Double Time.
  • Thunder Clap and Intimidating Shout baselined. Crackling Thunder moved into the position previously housing Thunder Clap. Cacophonous Roar / Menace moved to the position previously housing Intimidating Shout.
  • Crushing Force replaced with War-Caller, which once per 30 seconds allows you to ignore the global cooldown incurred by Intimidating Shout, Piercing Howl, or Rallying Cry. The global cooldown will still be shown but can be ignored except while debuffed with Called to War (for the 30s after ignoring the cooldown).
  • Below War-caller has been added a new node, Force Your Way: Your shouts increase the movement speed of you and your nearest 4 allies by 40%, fading over 4 seconds.
  • Overwhelming Rage reduced to a one-point node.
  • Beneath it is now another node, Overflowing Rage, causing your excess Rage generated to be duplicated over 4 seconds. This should allow for greater ease of pathing.
  • Concussive Blows replaced with Surgical Strikes, which increases your single-target damage by 5% per nearby enemy, to a max of 30%. (Tuning TBR.)
  • Reinforced Plates moved into the position of Seismic Reverberation / Surgical Strikes. Seismic Reverberation / Surgical Strikes moved down 2 rows, into the capstone tier, buffed accordingly, and now path from Armored to the Teeth, Endurance Training, and Reinforced Plates.
  • Reinforced Plates revised: Stamina increased by 3%. Every second, you generate bonus Armor equal to 2% of your Strength, to a maximum of 30%. Damage reduced by this bonus Armor chips away at said bonus Armor. Bonus modified by Vanguard. (Tuning TBR; intended to act as Arms/Fury utility for infrequent physical damage taken and to safeguard Prot openers rather than being a purely passive bonus.)
    • Vanguard Armor modifier increased by 10% (additively).
    • In this way, the skill becomes primarily utility rather than just an outright requirement for Prot.
    • Seismic Reverberation now gives a 35% (additive, not separate) chance per target struck for Whirlwind, Revenge, or Cleave to repeat themselves for 35% damage. Seismic Reverberation may trigger off itself. (Tuning TBR.)
  • Wrecking Throw merged into Shattering Throw. Shattering Throw now also knocks its opponent back and now charges for up to a GCD’s time to deal up to 100% more damage and knockback. At 80% of a GCD’s charge time (1.25s pre-Haste) or more, Shattering Throw may shear damage-immunity effects, but can do so only once every 3 minutes.
  • Shattering Throw is now opposite Magetaker: Replaces Pummel with Magetaker’s Hatchet — Hurl a lumenstone hatchet into your target, interrupting their casts and preventing them from casting any other of the same school. Additionally, you gain 20 Rage upon successfully using Spell Reflect to return a damaging or afflicting spell to its caster.
  • Shattering Throw / Magetaker takes the place of Barbaric Training / Sidearm, which have been moved 2 rows down, buffed accordingly, and now path from Cruel Strikes, Shattering Throw / Magetaker, and Wild Strikes.
    • Barbaric Training now allows Revenge to consume up to 100% more Rage, based on current Rage, for up to 50% more damage.
    • Sidearm damage greatly increased and also doubles the damage of Heroic Throw and causes Heroic Throw to deal 50% damage to all enemies within 12 yards of the target, reduced after 5 enemies.
    • Cruel Strikes reduced to one point and now solely increases the critical strike damage of Execute and Slam/Revenge/Bloodthirst by 10%.
    • Wild Strikes reduced to one point and now solely causes auto-attack critical strikes to increase auto-attack speed by 20% for 8 seconds.
    • Endurance Training reduced to one point and now solely increases Stamina by 5% and reduces the duration of Fear, Sap, Stun, Root, and Incapacitate effects and the effectiveness of slows and snares against you by 10%.
    • Armored to the Teeth reduced to 1 point worth 3%.
    • The nodes beneath Avatar are no longer shared in a single choice node. They are now two separate nodes and may therefore both be taken simultaneously.

Now, for the proposed Arms changes:

There’s no need for Rend and Deep Wounds to be separate debuffs, nor is it thematic for Arms to lose its first-hit strike just to turn its primary bleed (Deep Wounds) into a damage amp that one is then simply tuned around. Deep Wounds should simply be a potent bleed, while the damage amp should then simply fall back into Arms’ skills base potencies (% of Attack Power dealt).

Have Deep Wounds trigger whenever a strike would nominally (e.g., on its tooltip, including any affecting damage buffs) put out more than 250% of Attack Power of damage. Simple as that.

  • Avatar + Slam? While Avatar’s active, that’s going to be just enough to apply Deep Wounds.
  • Slam with over 19% Versatility? Deep Wounds.
  • Warbreaker itself? Deep Wounds.
  • Execute at 25+ Rage (or with a 20% damage increase)? Deep Wounds.
  • Mortal Strike? Of course, Deep Wounds.
  • Cleave? With some changes below, can reliably apply Deep Wounds.
With that...
  • Have Rend simply apply Deep Wounds for 30 seconds and increase the tick rate of Deep Wounds by 50% for the next 20 seconds.
  • Rend now sits on a choice node opposite Keen Edge, which allows your attacks that would deal less than (250% of Attack Power) damage to nonetheless apply Deep Wounds but at a proportionately lower duration than the base 12 seconds and causes Deep Wounds to deal its damage 25% more quickly but for 10% less damage per tick.
  • Have Fervor of Battle instead cause Rage spent on single-target attacks to have a chance based on Rage spent to cause your next multi-target attack to cost no Rage and deal (50% AP) additional damage and your multi-target attacks to have a chance based on Rage spent to cause your next single-target attack to cost no Rage and deal (100% AP) additional damage.
  • Skills whose rage cost has been reduced or removed now still contribute towards Anger Management as if the full amount were spent.

Accordingly, some changes to our Mastery:

  • Mastery: Deep Wounds changed to Mastery: Tactician – Increases the chance of triggering your bonus effects by X%, the damage bonus of your temporary damage-increasing effects by 2X%, and the damage of your Deep Wounds by 2X%. (Tuning/ratios TBR.)
    • In this way, Mastery can provide a tuning lever for Overpower resets, Sudden Death procs, etc., in terms of actual ratio instead of of just Haste’s raw frequency, while generally increasing the relative value of each build-based optimization (maintaining bleeds, putting damage into the damage amp windows, aligning Collateral to Warbreaker and Merciless Bonegrinder, etc.).
    • The greater your Mastery of the spec, the greater your Mastery damage, to a degree greater than from any other secondary stat. For an easier time, avoid it, but it should be a very well tuned stat past Haste breakpoints for virtually all builds.

Similarly…

  • Martial Prowess replaced with Momentum: Every 10 Rage spent grants a stack of Momentum, consumed by your next Mortal Strike or Cleave to increase its damage by (30% of Attack Power) Physical damage, split over targets struck. Overpower grants 3 stacks of Momentum. Stacks up to 10 times.
And with that...
  • Bloodsurge now on a choice node with Readied for the Culling: Damage from your Bleed effects has a chance to afflict your enemies with a stack of To be Culled. To be Culled consumes its stacks in place of or alongside Momentum to increase the damage of your next Mortal Strike or Cleave, to a max of 10 stacks’ worth total.
  • Skullsplitter revised: Bash in the enemy’s skull, dealing (300% of Attack Power) Physical damage and causing your bleeds on the target to bleed out 100% faster for 10 seconds. Every other tick thereafter afflicts the target with a stack of Sundered, to a max of 10 stacks, consumable in place of Momentum to increase the damage of Mortal Strike against them.
  • Exhilarating Blows replaced with Double Strike—Mortal Strike and Cleave have a 10% chance, plus a further 4% chance per Momentum consumed, to reset their cooldowns— and now on a choice node with Battle Churn: Mortal Strike and Cleave now grant Momentum, themselves.
  • Executioner’s Precision replaced with Mortal Combo: Every other stack of Momentum consumed briefly increases the damage of your next Execute, in turn, against its victims.
  • Fatality reworked: Each stack of Momentum has a 10% chance to afflict the victims of their consuming attacks with a Fatal Mark, causing your next Execute against them to deal an extra (276% of Attack Power) physical damage. Your chance of applying a Fatal Mark is increased with your damage bonuses but the damage of consuming a Fatal Mark is not affected by any temporary damage bonuses.
  • Battlelord buffed: Overpower has a 35% chance to reset the cooldown of Mortal Strike and Cleave and generate 10 Rage.

I.e., you’ve got a simple granular mechanic that allows for a fair bit more involvement.

43

What, do you not want us to play anymore? if i have less procs and bigger cds i will just auto attack.

44

I’d love this!

2 Likes
45

TL;DR I would ask that Blizzard “bake in” affects from some abilities to reduce the button bloat and reinforce the “tactical, trained soldier” theme and remove/reduce/reskin the abilities that imply frenzied, draconic or elemental strikes.

Arms is (easily) my favourite mechanical spec in the game- but it suffers horribly from homogenized identity with several other specs/classes- and some of the longest-running button bloat attached to the fantasy.

  • Foremost is the Fury Warrior, which conceptually is a frothing and howling, blood-bathing berserker. And yet, mechanically, Arms is the Warrior bleed spec- that moves like a frenetic wrecking ball? I’m not going to advocate for changing Fury, here- it just seems fantasy and mechanics are remarkably backwards.
  • Next is Protection Warrior, which (as a holdover from Legion) seems to be some conglomerate of an Avatar for the draconic Earthwarder/Stoneforged Odyn-thrall position by merit of Ravager, Thunderous Roar and gladiatorial taskmaster with its bellowing shouts.
  • Then there is the challenge over Arms’ capacity as a weapons-trained martial artist with the Outlaw Rogue’s duelling panache as a Blade Flurry weaving, Parry master swashbuckler.
  • And then, particularly, there’s the weird Enhance Shaman connection of “Blood and Thunder!”, where the premier Prot Warrior ability since Vanilla “Thunder Clap” has been the way to apply Rend to multiple targets since Wrath, and Shockwave- which I guess belongs between the Shaman and the Prot Warrior fantasies. Point is, its magical in origin, which (to me) has always seemed to defeat the point of the Arms warrior.

To address these issues of mine, I would change the following:

1. Mortal Strike and Execute.
Consider that the words are so similar. Remove Execute button by giving to Mortal Strike Execute’s effects when within Execute hp% range. Current Execute procs should simply empower MS.

2. Slam, Auto Attacks and Colossus Smash (+ Demolish).
Slam does not need to be filler, and auto attacks could be better designed. When the Arms Warrior does NOT strike with an ability, auto attacks should passively increase in damage.
Colossus Smash would now called Slam and keeps all its previous effects/description/cd.

  • “Colossus” Hero Talent turns Slam into Demolish. Demolish would now be a “charged” ability like the Evoker Fire Breath; holding the mouse click for longer periods changes (deepens) the burst effect/number of targets struck. Demolish can now be used while moving.

3. Whirlwind, Thunder Clap and Hamstring.
Thunder Clap animation has always been thematically wrong for Arms. Thunder- to apply a bleed? Its basically an Enhance Shaman ability. So give the talented Thunder Clap ability effects to Whirlwind. Remake the Crackling Thunder talent so that it applies Hamstring (reduction of movement speed) to either Whirlwind, or perhaps Cleave.

4. Cleave, Deep Wounds and Rend.
Cleave is ADDED back as its own ability (it does not replace Whirlwind, and is baseline).
Rend is removed, and Deep Wounds has a 100% chance to be applied by Cleave and also stacks to two.

6. Bladestorm.
This animation (in particular) does not fit for a tactical master of arms. Give Bladestorm the animation of Samuro’s Bladestorm from HotS. Optionally, give Bladestorm a glyph that allows “spin to win” Arms Warriors the option to choose (as with any other changes).

7. Charge and Intervene
One ability, target dependant (Intervenes on friendly target). Every 15 seconds the use of one resets the other.

The effect is that you could easily have the following 16 abilities for Arms in total:

  1. Overpower.
  2. Mortal Strike (with Execute)
  3. Slam (Colossus Smash + Hero Talent Demolish)
  4. Charge (Intervene)
  5. Whirlwind (+ Hamstring)
  6. Cleave
  7. Class Ability (Avatar/Thunderous Roar/Champion’s Spear)
  8. Ranged Attack (Stormbolt/Wrecking/Shattering Throw)
  9. Bladestorm/Ravager (the latter I’d reskin to racial glaives)
  10. Impending Victory
  11. Heroic Leap
  12. Sweeping Strikes
  13. Die By the Sword/Spell Reflection/Ignore Pain
  14. Taunt
  15. Interrupt
3 Likes
46

All these mastery ‘suggestions’ sound awful.

There’s a reason it was changed to what it is now after multiple iterations. Mastery is literally meant to be a damage amp with a hoop to jump through.

We currently have the best version of mastery available since it’s inception as a stat. Previous versions were either Single Target only, legion mastery sucked majorly to the point where mastery was literally a dead stat anytime you needed to AoE.
You do not want mastery as a dead stat as it is pretty common on gear.

BFA’s iteration was awful for our damage profile since everything you did fed into your deep wounds damage, so while your button presses mattered the fact that deep wounds was such a large % of your throughput your work in actually making that % possible was relegated to it being passive.

This is just two of the worst iterations that we had of mastery that have had more negatives to them than positives.

The current iteration is the best we’ve had and I’m glad it’s stayed as is since SL onward. It’s a simple hoop to jump through applying it to either a single target or multiple targets.

Banners were heavily criticised when it came to the DF beta, their inclusion does not fit in the Warrior class as anytime your personal cooldown has benefits for someone else you are going to have unneeded drama with entitled people.

2 Likes
47

Remove the bleed spec, make the classrevolve around big chunky hits and being a real support for their allies. Rn arms literally dies when he intervenes someone in pvp. Also buff our mobility, hammstring is an old skill it needs a rework asap.

5 Likes
48

Seems like everyone but one person agree that arms should NOT be a bleed spec, and they need a rework on that aspect.

So of course, blizzard will double down on bleeds down the road and in the following up expansions

6 Likes
49

YES PLEASE !!

We’re hitting with giant a 2 hander for big numbers. The bleed isn’t what our enemy should be worrying about !

And i’d add: Can we please stop focusing tiersets on overpower ??? Maybe make our tierset about our main damage and not the annouing filler ones thanks.

6 Likes
50

A mastery being “meant to be” a worse / duller Versatility doesn’t make that goal, or its impact, good.

It’s a wasted opportunity and, worse, athematic.

  • It makes Arms feel less like the burst-capable tactician it alleges to be by making its bleeds less impactful as bleeds and reducing Arm’s initiating damage.
  • It does nothing for gameplay customization except by being a way to avoid gameplay-affecting stats in the stars-aligned situation thata tier set or build offers too much anti-synergy with those stats and yet Versatility still hasn’t a chance of keeping you alive through an extra AoE.
1 Like
51

make Demolish work like Fists of Fury,

give us parry while we have it active as well, and slow people in front of the cone by like 90% or w/e WW gets

1 Like
52

Less prep time for burst would be nice. Fury just need to pop reck/avatar wich can be instant casted togueter with a macro and they’re ready to break havok, add a whirlwind cast for aoe.

Arms on the other hand; avatar, sweeping strikes (if aoe), rend/thunder clap for dot, colossus smash for debuff. “Then” you start wrecking havok

1 Like
53

Why not a simple Mastery that just increased how hard our crits hit? Like how Rets mastery increases their holy damage. They could tune it so people took Mastery to have that hard hitting, slow swinging tactician they keep saying is the theme.

54

Arms main tree left side Blade master oriented and right side Chieftan oriented.

Bleeds and technique vs power moves strength.

Chieftan right side you get cleave.
Blade master left side you get whirlwind.

Chieftan, you get slam.
Blade, you get heroic strike.

Chieftan, you get war breaker
Blade master you get blade storm.

Chieftan gets overpower/ dreadnaught
Blade master gets enhanced execute and fatal mark.

Chieftan gets something similar to shield charge minus the shield. ( can just hit in melee or use up to 20 yards to target)
Blade master gets skull splitter to make target deep wound bleed more (just remove rend.)

Chieftan gets an improved dragon roar removing the bleed but doubling the damage and increased all damage following by 5 percent for 15 seconds.
Blade master gets rogue killing spree teleport chopping group of enemies several times.

Main tree would adjust to support these adjustments. Mastery stays the same as both have deep wounds and can improve damage of xyz ability.

Middle of tree becomes more filler damage increases mortal strike based. Can pick mortal strike to hit harder for chieftan or chance to hit twice for blademaster sort of deal.

55

No. Bladestorm needs to be baseline. Having to choose whether or not to get Bladestorm locks PVPers into one build.

2 Likes
56

This is more of a general talent tree rework for the entire game. If 90%+ players take a talent, it should not be an “option”. Make stuff like Heroic Leap, Rampage, Recklessness/Avatar, baseline.

57

Because then it’d be crap without near-equal investment in Crit and the two would leave little room for anything else through their quadratic interdependence. Min Haste and no Vers would increasingly become your only PvE option (despite Mastery probably not being with taking until one can reach high Crit).

58

A talent’s being a talent was explicitly not meant to imply it is necessarily a choice across all content types. The talent trees were directly said to be a way of doling out leveling progression in a more appreciate way, not first and foremost a way to increase customization. Else, we wouldn’t be able to have the actual trees, as their mere existence (a talent being contingent upon prior talents themselves contingent upon other prior talents) forces less choice through bundling.

However, having some non-choices sprinkled throughout reduces the interdependence of nodes after them and thereby simplifies decision making (as, right after an obligatory talent, one need only choose what is worthwhile in its own right or for what comes below it without overlap from the children of other obligatory talents, rather than also needing to consider the relative values of each real choice leading down to it).

No, no one is going to give up Heroic Leap just for 15 more max rage or the like, but that does at least allow the tree to simplify choice-making right before Leap or allow for choice in QoL (where min-maxing would otherwise manage to forego the QoL in favor of yet more throughout that the class/spec would then have to be balanced around anyways).

More briefly / on topic:

Baselining a couple things would make sense, but it’s important to leave some obligatory skills on the trees for desirable pathing influence and thereby allowing what choices were actually intended to be such to be approached more freely.

That is, at least until such time as we can fundamentally revise how the trees work.

59

Id imagine it would act almost similar to how furys works, where you get enough haste to smooth out your rotation, then blast into mastery/crit. It would need to be tuned to where the % gained per point in mastery made sense, but the flavor would make sense. Id prefer a full rework though (this is rets second one coming up and mage has had a note on every hotfix this expansion almost and were not even at anniversary yet)

60

That’s the problem though. If you have it scale with abnormally high dependence on another stat (Critical Strike, since you’ve changed Mastery into purely Crit Bonus), you cannot simultaneously tune it to be worthwhile on its own or at varying above-minimal levels of Haste or Vers and not be overturned when Crit-stacked.

The solution, though, is simple: don’t make a stat scale quadratically with one stat above and beyond all others. That’s been a guideline near-constantly adhered to for a reason.