Warlords of Draenor Arms Warrior Rotation

[Pua]

also, if they consider "current (live) fury gameplay" as too hard to pick up for new players, then how the FUCK would watching your auto-attack swing-timer to leap/charge accordingly be any easier ... hell if anything, it's even more complicated and way harder to pull off.

wts logic ...

It's a fair point, and I agree with you, but this is the Arms thread; Fury is being discussed elsewhere.

[Deleted]

Mixed feelings here. I have no access to beta (and I definetly don't want one given the state of beta).

What I collected is from a few streams, mainly Bahjeera.

His initial shock to Heroic Strike was obvious, yesterday though he cleary answered that Arms feels fine. Can be improved but feels far from the doom we are reading here.

I'm very worried about Fury/Arms in WoD, but hearing someone who play warrior as long as he does and actually have access to their Beta/Alpha.. I can sleep a little better now that may the changes will turn out as bearable.

PS: This might be first time Blizz lifted NDA so soon in development (or rather fine tunning). We are seeing major/core skill changes being done or half way done. I think that this fine tunning should be done behind NDA to save general WoW community (insert the definition you may have for most ppl that will whine about the flower changing color in datamined patch notes..). At very least they should lift NDA in moment they have this kind of changes done,. not in moment when half of desired changes are month away leaving general public players to cry.

With all respect to Baj, he's a PvPer. Most if not all of the issues on these forums are aimed at PvE.

[Sethanor]

yeah probably xD
but you'll never know, they also said that they dont want aoe-attacks in single-target rotations and that they only tweak fury slightly, so basically at this point, everything could happen (which is freakin' scary)

It's a fair point, and I agree with you, but this is the Arms thread; Fury is being discussed elsewhere.

wasnt meant to derail the topic, just as some sort of comparison as that one actually fit the point that i wanted to make

[Archimtiros]

Mixed feelings here. I have no access to beta (and I definetly don't want one given the state of beta).

What I collected is from a few streams, mainly Bahjeera.

His initial shock to Heroic Strike was obvious, yesterday though he cleary answered that Arms feels fine. Can be improved but feels far from the doom we are reading here.

Arms feels fine to him because he's been questing 1 shotting mobs, PVP isn't much different with constant charging. Lot of brain dead people are going to agree unfortunately.
Then come 6.1 everyone will scream and shout that it sucks balls to raid with.

[Artunias]

I think the executioner thing was a pretty cool idea.

If they could bring that back in some form, with something of a filler attack, and let the spec really pick up the pace in execute range. Hopefully with some sort of interaction either with the filler or ms or something, anything really, It could be pretty fun.

I think the executes above 20% would have to be proc based and free of rage cost, and give some bonus to execute sub 20%

[Secondwind]

Okay so few days ago Porkisyum was posting about having Arms with a rampup of bleeds that get consumed for a big hit in the form of a new ability called Impale. I liked the idea but dismissed it because the devs are pretty against giving us any passive bleeds to work with, feeling our kit is more about the big hits than the little bleeds that they cause.

But I still think the core gameplay element of "Build up buffs/debuffs for a big hit" is probably the right direction to go, and spent the last couple days turning it over in my head. This is a mock up of the sort of thing I'd like to see for Arms. Originally posted on the main forums:

Abilities:
Mortal Strike: Costs 15 rage for 200% weapon damage. No cooldown. Inflicts Mortal Wounds on the target, reducing healing they receive and reducing movement speed by 50%.
Overpower: Costs 5 rage for 150% weapon damage, guaranteed to crit. Damage increased by critical strike %.
Strike of Opportunity: 20s cooldown. Costs 15 rage and deals 150% weapon damage. Grants the Warrior Endless Rage.
Sunder Costs 10 rage. No cooldown. Deals 80% Weapon Damage and grants the Warrior Sundering Blows.
Execute Costs 60 rage rage. No cooldown. Deals 150% weapon damage. Can consume buffs from the warrior for increased effect.

New Buffs
Endless Rage - Grants the warrior 45 rage over 9 seconds. Multiple activations of this ability stack, with the rage rolling into a higher total. If active while Execute is used, this buff is consumed and increases Execute's base damage by 8% weapon damage per rage remaining in the buff. Special: Glyph of Endless Rage works with this ability instead of Enrage for Arms Warriors.
Taste for Blood - Increases Haste and Critical Strike by 25% for 3 seconds. If active while Execute is used, this buff is consumed and increases Execute's damage by 20% and critical strike rate by 60%.
Sundering Blows - Grants the Warrior 40% Armor penetration for 20 seconds. If active while Execute is used, this buff is consumed and inflicts an 8 second bleed on the target for 50% of the damage dealt by Execute.
Sweeping Strikes - As on live. + If active while Execute is used, this buff is consumed, reducing Execute's cost by 20 and causes execute to hits all targets within 8 yards for 50% of the damage dealt to the primary target.


Passives
Sudden Death - 20% chance on auto-attack hits to reset the cooldown on Strike of Opportunity.
Taste for Blood - 40% Chance on hitting with Mortal Strike or being Parried to enable use of Overpower for 6 seconds.
Executioner - When attacking an enemy below 20% health, your melee attacks gain a X% chance to proc the Endless Rage passive, as though you had used Strike of Opportunity.


New Mastery
Increases the bonus provided by buffs listed in this post to both their passive effects and their effects on Execute by X%.



Bringing it all together
Mortal Strike is now spammable, and is your reliable filler. Sunder, Overpower, and SoO are all weak to moderate hits that enable a buff, with different availabilities. Sunder is always available and has a long duration. Overpower is frequently available (2-3 MSes allows 1 OP on average). SoO is available less frequently (about as much as CSmash on live), but when it is available it lasts longer (but ideally you want to use it almost immediately, for greatest effect). The ideal is to manage your abilities to line up all 3 buffs at once while having the 60 rage banked for Execute, for a massive execute hit. When that is not feasible due to RNG, any combination of two other buffs is sufficient to make execute efficient enough to be worth using, but lining up all 3 is what you want for a truly massive hit. And if you get a lucky back to back SoO proc, that can lead to extremely large execute hits, which become far more common below 20% when Executioner kicks in.

Note that out of all of the attacks, only 1 has a cooldown, and it has a proc. The spec's flow is all about choosing which ability you need to use based on the situation to line things up correctly, rather than forcing you into rotational cycles to hit things on cooldown.

The mastery emphasizes this playstyle by improving both the buffs and their effect on the rotation. The actual numbers and effects of everything are of course subject to change (having Armorpen as a part of the buffs and that armorpen being tied to mastery for example is potentially problematic), but the general idea is that each ability grants a distinct buff that affects you in different ways, and synergize together when you pop that Execute as you line up your perfect cut. Ideally you'd come up with some memorable catch-all name for the 4 execute affecting buffs, and refer specifically to that. (Like call them "Excellencies" and the mastery then states it boosts the effectiveness of your Excellencies).


For PVP, the potential for ridiculous burst is mitigated by reduced uptime making it harder to line up all of the buffs. Additionally, an intelligent opponent can notice you just used Strike of Opportunity, and CC/Kite for a few seconds, even if they don't run out the entire duration, every second they keep away reduces the incoming execute's damage slightly. So the Warrior gets to feel good about landing his execute, the opponent gets to feel good about mitigating some of the damage, and if the Warrior does land a perfect execute the opponent has only himself to blame. Meanwhile you have Hamstring baked back into MS, but MS is spammable eliminating a lot of the problems that had in the earlier beta.

[Eranthe]

Okay so few days ago Porkisyum was posting about having Arms with a rampup of bleeds that get consumed for a big hit in the form of a new ability called Impale. I liked the idea but dismissed it because the devs are pretty against giving us any passive bleeds to work with, feeling our kit is more about the big hits than the little bleeds that they cause.

But I still think the core gameplay element of "Build up buffs/debuffs for a big hit" is probably the right direction to go, and spent the last couple days turning it over in my head. This is a mock up of the sort of thing I'd like to see for Arms. Originally posted on the main forums:

Abilities:
Mortal Strike: Costs 15 rage for 200% weapon damage. No cooldown. Inflicts Mortal Wounds on the target, reducing healing they receive and reducing movement speed by 50%.
Overpower: Costs 5 rage for 150% weapon damage, guaranteed to crit. Damage increased by critical strike %.
Strike of Opportunity: 20s cooldown. Costs 15 rage and deals 150% weapon damage. Grants the Warrior Endless Rage.
Sunder Costs 10 rage. No cooldown. Deals 80% Weapon Damage and grants the Warrior Sundering Blows.
Execute Costs 60 rage rage. No cooldown. Deals 150% weapon damage. Can consume buffs from the warrior for increased effect.

New Buffs
Endless Rage - Grants the warrior 45 rage over 9 seconds. Multiple activations of this ability stack, with the rage rolling into a higher total. If active while Execute is used, this buff is consumed and increases Execute's base damage by 8% weapon damage per rage remaining in the buff. Special: Glyph of Endless Rage works with this ability instead of Enrage for Arms Warriors.
Taste for Blood - Increases Haste and Critical Strike by 25% for 3 seconds. If active while Execute is used, this buff is consumed and increases Execute's damage by 20% and critical strike rate by 60%.
Sundering Blows - Grants the Warrior 40% Armor penetration for 20 seconds. If active while Execute is used, this buff is consumed and inflicts an 8 second bleed on the target for 50% of the damage dealt by Execute.
Sweeping Strikes - As on live. + If active while Execute is used, this buff is consumed, reducing Execute's cost by 20 and causes execute to hits all targets within 8 yards for 50% of the damage dealt to the primary target.


Passives
Sudden Death - 20% chance on auto-attack hits to reset the cooldown on Strike of Opportunity.
Taste for Blood - 40% Chance on hitting with Mortal Strike or being Parried to enable use of Overpower for 6 seconds.
Executioner - When attacking an enemy below 20% health, your melee attacks gain a X% chance to proc the Endless Rage passive, as though you had used Strike of Opportunity.


New Mastery
Increases the bonus provided by buffs listed in this post to both their passive effects and their effects on Execute by X%.



Bringing it all together
Mortal Strike is now spammable, and is your reliable filler. Sunder, Overpower, and SoO are all weak to moderate hits that enable a buff, with different availabilities. Sunder is always available and has a long duration. Overpower is frequently available (2-3 MSes allows 1 OP on average). SoO is available less frequently (about as much as CSmash on live), but when it is available it lasts longer (but ideally you want to use it almost immediately, for greatest effect). The ideal is to manage your abilities to line up all 3 buffs at once while having the 60 rage banked for Execute, for a massive execute hit. When that is not feasible due to RNG, any combination of two other buffs is sufficient to make execute efficient enough to be worth using, but lining up all 3 is what you want for a truly massive hit. And if you get a lucky back to back SoO proc, that can lead to extremely large execute hits, which become far more common below 20% when Executioner kicks in.

Note that out of all of the attacks, only 1 has a cooldown, and it has a proc. The spec's flow is all about choosing which ability you need to use based on the situation to line things up correctly, rather than forcing you into rotational cycles to hit things on cooldown.

The mastery emphasizes this playstyle by improving both the buffs and their effect on the rotation. The actual numbers and effects of everything are of course subject to change (having Armorpen as a part of the buffs and that armorpen being tied to mastery for example is potentially problematic), but the general idea is that each ability grants a distinct buff that affects you in different ways, and synergize together when you pop that Execute as you line up your perfect cut. Ideally you'd come up with some memorable catch-all name for the 4 execute affecting buffs, and refer specifically to that. (Like call them "Excellencies" and the mastery then states it boosts the effectiveness of your Excellencies).


For PVP, the potential for ridiculous burst is mitigated by reduced uptime making it harder to line up all of the buffs. Additionally, an intelligent opponent can notice you just used Strike of Opportunity, and CC/Kite for a few seconds, even if they don't run out the entire duration, every second they keep away reduces the incoming execute's damage slightly. So the Warrior gets to feel good about landing his execute, the opponent gets to feel good about mitigating some of the damage, and if the Warrior does land a perfect execute the opponent has only himself to blame. Meanwhile you have Hamstring baked back into MS, but MS is spammable eliminating a lot of the problems that had in the earlier beta.

your enthusiasm is pretty cool, but these kinds of posts almost always get ignored by the devs. they can't test every player's ideal rotation. there's not enough hours in the day.

i think if you want to get something changed, your best bet is to find a problem with the rotation, explain it very thoroughly and suggest a solution, one at a time.

[Secondwind]

your enthusiasm is pretty cool, but these kinds of posts almost always get ignored by the devs. they can't test every player's ideal rotation. there's not enough hours in the day.

I'm well aware. It's still fun to play with.


Anytime I want the devs to read something, I provide much broader more general feedback (ie "I want to build up to a big hit, not just have attack in my arsenal be a big hit and have no attacks"). Providing even specific individual suggestions for them tends to be a waste of time, because saying "I want MS to have no cooldown and have a chance to proc OP" might strike interest, but is more likely to just look dumb without the broader scope for context.

[Ultramad]

I've given my feedback in the official forums but unfortunately it seems we have a rather large change coming for the arms rotation if they're putting heroic strike back in.

Now I've been questing, one shotting things easily as can be like everyone else. The big problem I've seen is if you get through about 8 seconds of combat or so. In the current rotation you don't have enough rage after using MS for the second time to do a whirlwind. If you do then you've got no rage left and, for me, about 4.5 seconds left on the MS swing timer, 20s or so on storm bolt, 25s left on impending victory and about sub 10s on the CD of colossus smash.

So with the introduction of heroic strike back into our hands, when can we press it? I've killed some rares and if you get to this point in the rotation, you're left just waiting on rage. Or you're jumping out of range in order to charge again, which I absolutely hate. We need some way to generate rage other than auto attacks. I personally do not like our old way of the Vanilla/TBC warrior where we just auto-attacked for rage. I dislike it. Maybe that's the inherent problem with my opinion. Though my subjective opinion is all I have here really.

If we're getting heroic strike back, hopefully we get another way to generate rage other than just charge and autos because otherwise it's going to be a rare thing to press the button at all.

[Secondwind]

We're not getting Heroic Strike back.

[Ultramad]

https://twitter.com/Rygarius/status/483826587155312640
News as of this morning. Arms will have heroic strike back with some changes.

[Improstor]

Arms feels fine to him because he's been questing 1 shotting mobs, PVP isn't much different with constant charging. Lot of brain dead people are going to agree unfortunately.
Then come 6.1 everyone will scream and shout that it sucks balls to raid with.

I do agree with this. Afterall, today he seemed to acknowledge the issue more. Maybe I'm being too optimistic, but my statement that we are too early in "beta" (alpha) process stay.

Also I doubt that we can limit this forums to PvE only, sure it is much higher focus around here. But if the class/spec does not work in PvP, it is unlikely to work in PvE and vice versa. This apply to "feeling" of given spec, not its actually strenght in PvE or PvP. When player rages about auto-attacking while waiting on MS CD or with having no ability to dump his rage during CS, I believe this issues are not limited to ethier PvP or PvE.

Right now I'm sure we are not seeing HS comeback. The best thing for fury will be generally improved other abilities to make our beloved DPS spec feel right again (lets cross fingers and hope..). For Arms it is obvious that there is filler missing and without one, the spec will be abysmal to play in consistent DPS scenario (raid/arena/bg).

[Secondwind]

https://twitter.com/Rygarius/status/483826587155312640
News as of this morning. Arms will have heroic strike back with some changes.

Read the rest of the responses in that thread.

There is nothing saying HS is coming back from Arms. When Rygarius says it's not removed from the game, he means that Prot still has it. Watcher confirmed that there is no new information regarding HS beyond what is currently known.

[Ultramad]

I would hope they change their minds if they're not bringing it back for arms. It's one of the few hopes I have for Arms along with another way to generate rage.

[Secondwind]

Honestly I don't care about HS going away for Arms. It's an okay ability, but not nearly the same central gameplay element that it is for Fury. Also supports Fury's feel and flavor far more than it does for Arms.

[Deleted]

https://twitter.com/Rygarius/status/483826587155312640
News as of this morning. Arms will have heroic strike back with some changes.

This was the most misleading tweet of the year so far.

[Secondwind]

This was the most misleading tweet of the year so far.

He doubled down on it a while later insisting he didn't understand the whole RIP Heroic Strike thing because the ability still exists. I'm going with genuine cluelessness rather than intentional misleading.

[Ultramad]

So far the best analogy for the arms rotation I can use is that Arms feels like a ret paladin who doesn't have enough mana to use their abilities more than once every 10 seconds. That tweet certainly is misleading.

[Hand Banana]

Make execute cost 100 rage and make every MS give a stacking buff that reduces its cost by 20 rage limit 5. Then weave some sort of buff into execute that either does some sort of bleed or enhances your next whatever and make that a part of mastery (instead of the insanely boring current version). Something like:

Overpowering Strike:
Your next MS damage is increased by 20%(+), crit chance increased by 20%(+), and healing debuff increased by 20%(+).
or
Your next CS increases crit damage on the target by 20%(+) and is extended to 10 seconds. Targets within 10 yards are also affected by CS.
or
Your next slam damage is increased by 100%(+) and damages all targets within 15 yards. In addition, all targets affected are knocked down for .5(+) seconds.

Mastery: Executioner: Increases the effectiveness of everything above with a (+) next to it by 50%.

So you want to execute to get that awesome buff but you have to decide when to use it since it costs 100 rage and slowly gets cheaper. I dunno, something like that which is a dynamic rotation. Right now its about as boring as can be.

[Ultramad]

Make execute cost 100 rage and make every MS give a stacking buff that reduces its cost by 20 rage limit 5. Then weave some sort of buff into execute that either does some sort of bleed or enhances your next whatever and make that a part of mastery (instead of the insanely boring current version). Something like:

Overpowering Strike:
Your next MS damage is increased by 20%(+), crit chance increased by 20%(+), and healing debuff increased by 20%(+).
or
Your next CS increases crit damage on the target by 20%(+) and is extended to 10 seconds. Targets within 10 yards are also affected by CS.
or
Your next slam damage is increased by 100%(+) and damages all targets within 15 yards. In addition, all targets affected are knocked down for .5(+) seconds.

Mastery: Executioner: Increases the effectiveness of everything above with a (+) next to it by 50%.

So you want to execute to get that awesome buff but you have to decide when to use it since it costs 100 rage and slowly gets cheaper. I dunno, something like that which is a dynamic rotation. Right now its about as boring as can be.

I like it, but we'd need Slam for that third part to exist! haha. Other than that, ugh played a bit more beta tonight and just felt pretty bored with Arms leveling.