Arms Legion Discussion

[Bigbazz]

Except for the part were WoD Arms was actually a train wreck, and Legion Arms is just an "Ok" spec.

Legion is just as much a train wreck in some ways. In WOD we joked about spamming Whirlwind because in mid beta you could do that and be pretty close to optimal, but that changed and so the "spam whirlwind" never made it to live, even though people still used the joke.

Legion Arms really is no joke though, you really do spam slam and guess what happens when you move to 2 targets? You spam Whirlwind is what happens. Now also subject to tuning is the fact that we have Cleave ability which is useless on Cleave and only worth using at 4+ targets, where we Cleave and then Spam whirlwind, even more so than we do on 1-3 targets because we reach a point where we no longer use CS.

So Legion Arms really is a spam Slam/WW spec that the WOD Arms never was. WOD Arms was terrible but it was based around 20s CS windows and so it was very reliable consistent damage, the over the top Execute made for big RNG but otherwise yeah you never spammed anything, it was based on rage management and timed bursts.

As bad as it was, Legion is worse right now because you're just swimming in rage for the first 80% of a fight and you're just firing away at Slam even ignoring Mortal Strike when Shattered Defenses is not up (First MS after CS). This can be tuned out into a spec that is better than base WOD, but it's still a terrible spec and unless they make CS not important it's absolutely going to remain for the most part the spam Slam spec.

A few design changes could help Legion Arms be a really cool spec, but right now it's far from just an "OK" spec, it's as bad or in some angles worse than WOD Arms, just with infinitely more potential if they tweaked it.

[Artunias]

I'm with Bigbazz. I don't feel like Legion is much of an improvement, other than you do hit buttons more often. But it's still just one button. Yeah they built in the CS reset, but it ticks out past the current 20 second cooldown rather often anyway. And even specced dauntless and hitting nothing but slam it can still go through the full 45 second cooldown. I don't see any reason for it to have such a long cooldown. 24 seconds, as some other mentioned, seems like plenty and matches the duration of titanic might.

The redesign of mastery was nice, so that Bladestorm and such will always feel strong. But it's still just so damn boring to play.

[Kirbydude65]

Legion is just as much a train wreck in some ways. In WOD we joked about spamming Whirlwind because in mid beta you could do that and be pretty close to optimal, but that changed and so the "spam whirlwind" never made it to live, even though people still used the joke.

There's a difference between something being almost optimal, and something being incorrect. While you do use Slam a lot on the Alpha at the moment, it's not as crippling as a lot of people make it out to seem. Overpower (assuming you've talented for it) and Mortal Strike both trump Slam for damage outside of CS, so you'll still be using these abilities on cooldown. Combined with other talented skills such as Bladestorm, the rotation doesn't have you sitting and pressing slam as often as a lot of players have been stating. Yes most of our GCDs are spent pressing Slam. No we're not ignoring absolutely everything else to fish for CS procs.

Also, you may have also forgotten the part were a lot of us half considered letting a macro play the game for us when 6.0 dropped. Prior to BRF gear, you could easily have a button hit all of your abilities in the correct order, and be within 90% accuracy of your potential maximum DPS. Any spec that predictable, has no business being in this game.

Legion Arms really is no joke though, you really do spam slam and guess what happens when you move to 2 targets? You spam Whirlwind is what happens. Now also subject to tuning is the fact that we have Cleave ability which is useless on Cleave and only worth using at 4+ targets, where we Cleave and then Spam whirlwind, even more so than we do on 1-3 targets because we reach a point where we no longer use CS.

This is of course assuming you're not speced into Sweeping Strikes. In a case where Whirlwind is replacing Slam as often as you're considering in your scenario, you'd be better off specing into Sweeping Strikes, and adding Mortal Strike to your cleave scenario. With an additional proc chance from Tactician of hitting an additional target with Whirlwind, you'd be pressing CS and Mortal strike a lot more often in a cleave scenario in a fight like Tyrant or Xhul.

So Legion Arms really is a spam Slam/WW spec that the WOD Arms never was. WOD Arms was terrible but it was based around 20s CS windows and so it was very reliable consistent damage, the over the top Execute made for big RNG but otherwise yeah you never spammed anything, it was based on rage management and timed bursts.

And after those timed bursts, you sat around twiddling your thumbs pressing a low damage filler if you ever risked getting high on rage. Legion Arms, while repetitive, is far more active and actually has interactions.

As bad as it was, Legion is worse right now because you're just swimming in rage for the first 80% of a fight and you're just firing away at Slam even ignoring Mortal Strike when Shattered Defenses is not up (First MS after CS). This can be tuned out into a spec that is better than base WOD, but it's still a terrible spec and unless they make CS not important it's absolutely going to remain for the most part the spam Slam spec.

A few design changes could help Legion Arms be a really cool spec, but right now it's far from just an "OK" spec, it's as bad or in some angles worse than WOD Arms, just with infinitely more potential if they tweaked it.

Except it's not worse than WoD Arms. It's actually about on Par with Mists of Pandaria Arms. A lot of players are blowing this out of proportion. You wonder why Blizzard doesn't listen, when you guys make mountains out of molehills. They can't take any of your feedback seriously when people run in and act like its the end of the world.

I agree that there are changes that could make this spec more enjoyable. However at the moment the core gameplay idea of only pressing Slam when everything else is on cooldown is an alright concept for the spec. It's not the best, but it's certainly not some horrible god forsaken spec.

But it's still just so damn boring to play.

Arms has traditionally been a repetitive, and straightforward spec. If you were expecting anything else, I'm not quite sure what to tell you.

[Bigbazz]

1. Slam outside of CS is the most optimal button to press, you don't press MS because doing more damage with MS is not worth the cost of rage + loss of CS reset % chance. Taking Overpower means not taking Dauntless which hurts you in the execute phase. If you get good RNG in the first 80% then Overpower is an increase, if you don't get good RNG then all Overpower is doing is removing a chance to reset CS. With current tuning CS is too important to not prioritise it.

2. This point is irrelevant, I had a friend who used a macro for SOO Fury that put him in contention for 95% rankings, and some people using the macro were actually achieving very high rankings. Being able to use a macro for a spec is not really anything worth discussing, the same has been true for countless specs over the time.

3. Sweeping Strikes currently does not work with Execute unless both targets are below 20% and it's not certain if it's a bug or intended, this makes Sweeping Strikes pretty poor, our priority on 2 targets is still CS uptime and so while SS has a place it's debatable whether it's going to be worthwhile, we're replacing Slam with WW for CS resets and MS gains priority via damage from SS at the cost of Dauntless for Execute.

4. You sat around twiddling your thumbs on single target waiting to do your CS burst, on 2+ targets you focussed on rend durations and burning rage generated via TFB. In Legion you sit there smashing Slam waiting for CS to reset so that you can press MS and then do the same thing again, there is very little interaction other than rolling an RNG dice and waiting for your bingo numbers to show up. Which can happen every 3 seconds or not for 30+ seconds, incredibly frustrating gameplay.

The difference is player control, players don't like being in no control, some RNG is good but this is excessive and it encompasses the entire spec, don't make it sound like I'm saying WOD was good, in that very post I said on multiple occasions that I felt WOD was terrible.. We're comparing a turd sandwich with a shite pie.

5. MOP Arms was considerably better in both the first and final iteration. The first MOP Arms was heavily RNG influenced with a far too strong execute phase, but the gameplay style was varied and interactive, the stacks of taste for blood meant you were playing with the idea of cashing in your chips or staying in the game, but that was just 1 element of the spec... Legion Arms is a lot more one-dimensional.

MOP SOO Arms was of course better again, infact I'd rate MOP SOO version of Arms as the 2nd best version of the spec in the history of the game, behind Dragon Soul Arms.. Of course that's a subjective view but for me that makes Arms in 5.4 a top 3 spec in the entire history of WOW.

It was simplistic but fast paced and had varying levels of interaction with a medium level of RNG in play via the CS resets. But you generated OP using MS and you burned excess rage using Heroic Strike, you used Thunder Clap to spread dots and you use Slam with SS to cleave. You could play 2 fairly equal single target rotations (one based on Slam, the other on OP + HS) and the player had a lot of control over damage via burning rage through CS windows.

Simple specs are fine, but there has to be enough predictability to go with the RNG and the player has to feel in control and actively engaged and that there is the problem with Legion Arms, it's not engaging enough and the level of RNG takes the gameplay too far out of the players control.

[Secondwind]

Except it's not worse than WoD Arms. It's actually about on Par with Mists of Pandaria Arms.

Really Curoar? I know you're generally more optimistic about the current state than most others, but saying it's about on par with MoP is like saying an overcooked/burnt burger is about on par with a good steak, because they're both beef that was cooked on a grill.

Legion's baseline Arms still suffers almost all of the same problems WoD did; the only real difference is that you now have a different button to hit for single target vs aoe, and CS has a reset baseline instead of via a trinket.

I look forward to seeing if tuning makes some of the more interesting talents viable and downplaying the negative aspects of more hindering talents. Heck last time I checked, Slam with Trauma was outdamaging Mortal Strike unless you had just used CS and have the artifact talent that buffs the first MS after CS. That may have been adjusted since, I haven't bothered looking since it was implemented, but it was laughable enough to stick in memory. I mean, that is a talent with a negative impact on rotation!


I'll admit that having a baseline CS reset is good, but it does not bring Arms up to par with where it was in the past; it merely brings it from "the worst" to "yeah that's playable".

[Artunias]

MS with the artifact trait boost is just barely better DPR than a Trauma Slam, but MS doesn't have a chance to reset CS.

Regardless of talent setup I've had the best results only hitting MS/Exe immediately following a CS for the shattered defenses buff. Otherwise it's just spamming the shit out of that slam button and ignoring everything else. Bladestorm is a fairly significant single target increase as well. Mixing in Bladestorm in execute seems to also be better than in for the kill if you follow this method of only using a single execute after CS, hitting slam otherwise, and throwing in Bladestorm on cooldown (during a CS obvioulsy)

CS mastery + Shattered Defenses is just too good to not be hitting a button that gives you as many of them as possible, and it will only escalate as mastery gets higher.

Daunltess seems to always win only because of how much it helps the execute phase flow. And again, Overpower is just another button that's not giving you CS + Shattered Defenses.

Arms damage is still loaded very heavily into execute phase/ability even if you're only hitting it immediately after CS.

[Beardyface]

Has anyone done the math on how hard MS would have to hit or how weak Slam would have to be to make MS a button worth hitting outside of CS?

I still wish they would just remove Tactician and give CS a 20-30 second cooldown. Preferably 20, but I'd be fine with 30.

Alternatively, they could just change Tactician to have a 15% chance for our auto attacks to proc CS. That would let us hit MS on cooldown, Overpower if we chose to take it, and Slam to dump rage.

I think what infuriates me more than anything are that the potential fixes to the problems with arms, prot and fury are super simple. They're actually common sense changes. Yet the devs seem intent on flying in the face of common sense. I honestly can't figure out what they're thinking at all.

[Murlocbait]

5. MOP Arms was considerably better in both the first and final iteration. The first MOP Arms was heavily RNG influenced with a far too strong execute phase, but the gameplay style was varied and interactive, the stacks of taste for blood meant you were playing with the idea of cashing in your chips or staying in the game, but that was just 1 element of the spec... Legion Arms is a lot more one-dimensional.

MOP SOO Arms was of course better again, infact I'd rate MOP SOO version of Arms as the 2nd best version of the spec in the history of the game, behind Dragon Soul Arms.. Of course that's a subjective view but for me that makes Arms in 5.4 a top 3 spec in the entire history of WOW.

This is everything I could want to say. 5.4 Arms was so much fun, and just made the devastation of 6.0 Arms all the more shocking and revolting.

[Artunias]

I too enjoyed 5.4 Arms quite a bit. It wasn't very complicated, but it was fun. It didn't get much time in the spotlight because it was held back by PvP tuning, and the much more rigid options they had to address it at the time which made fury just too good on most encounters.

Both 5.4 specs I would take over anything we have in WoD/Legion though.

[Archimtiros]

What do you mean with "in my case", do you mean I'm not well respected, or that I'm not a theorycrafter, either way, your words are hurtful!

The other way around, in my case states that I'm well known, not respected, which would imply that you (and others) are both. English sentence structure, you illiterate Swede!

[Bigbazz]

After doing Anomaly testing tonight I just can't see any reason to play Arms, the amount of not having CS available when I needed it just gimped it for me, then I switched to Fury and I had a tool for every moment at every time.. Yes I took more damage but also was able to keep myself up with healing.

On that specific fight Arms can benefit from the extremely strong Victory Rush + good playing allows Second Wind to be powerful, issue I had was on some pulls getting incredibly gimped by CS reset RNG and falling behind too much and it feels like you should hold Warbreaker for RNG protection, to be able to be sure I could provide value to the raid on damage when it was needed, even if over an average of the fight it may work out. Of course it's tuning but my Raid leader was like "why would we bring a Warrior over a Demon Hunter", Rallying Cry.

Fury for me just had the answers when I needed it, I was Fury when we killed it so I didn't get to side by side Arms with Execute phase.. But yeah I'm probably 90% sure I'm going Fury unless Arms sees considerable changes. I guess we will see how things pan out after tuning.

[Kirbydude65]

Really Curoar? I know you're generally more optimistic about the current state than most others, but saying it's about on par with MoP is like saying an overcooked/burnt burger is about on par with a good steak, because they're both beef that was cooked on a grill.

In SoO, we did kind of press the same buttons with a very very predictable rotation. With our high mastery, our uptime on CS was very predictable and it was simply bouncing between Overpower and Slam while using MS on cooldown. Execute phase was a lot better though.

There was the playstyle of saving Overpowers and Rage for Heroic Strike, but it was a very minimal upgrade in DPS. The two really aren't terribly different.

Now if you're talking about 5.0 Arms, I'll agree that was far more interesting had a lot of decision making. SoO Arms though was very spammy, and repetitive.

[Artunias]

After doing Anomaly testing tonight I just can't see any reason to play Arms, the amount of not having CS available when I needed it just gimped it for me, then I switched to Fury and I had a tool for every moment at every time.. Yes I took more damage but also was able to keep myself up with healing.

On that specific fight Arms can benefit from the extremely strong Victory Rush + good playing allows Second Wind to be powerful, issue I had was on some pulls getting incredibly gimped by CS reset RNG and falling behind too much and it feels like you should hold Warbreaker for RNG protection, to be able to be sure I could provide value to the raid on damage when it was needed, even if over an average of the fight it may work out. Of course it's tuning but my Raid leader was like "why would we bring a Warrior over a Demon Hunter", Rallying Cry.

Fury for me just had the answers when I needed it, I was Fury when we killed it so I didn't get to side by side Arms with Execute phase.. But yeah I'm probably 90% sure I'm going Fury unless Arms sees considerable changes. I guess we will see how things pan out after tuning.

The only real complaint people have with fury is the enrage window and the management of it. And the way furious slash factors into that whole equation. It has good tools, and the concepts work pretty well. Odyn's Champion, Berserking, and Juggernaut are all also pretty damn good.

Massacre/Rampage use in execute phase for all the buffs tied to Rampage is my only other complaint.

[Celarent]

After doing Anomaly testing tonight I just can't see any reason to play Arms, the amount of not having CS available when I needed it just gimped it for me, then I switched to Fury and I had a tool for every moment at every time.

Since Celestalon really only speaks numbers, maybe, a la Brewmaster, a case can be made that CS reliance as set up currently is an objective detriment.

I guess we will see how things pan out after tuning.

I wonder how far priorities outside of CS windows (e.g., using Mortal Strike and being happy about it) could be pushed before Mastery suffered too badly.

[Secondwind]

In SoO, we did kind of press the same buttons with a very very predictable rotation. With our high mastery, our uptime on CS was very predictable and it was simply bouncing between Overpower and Slam while using MS on cooldown. Execute phase was a lot better though.

There was the playstyle of saving Overpowers and Rage for Heroic Strike, but it was a very minimal upgrade in DPS. The two really aren't terribly different.

Now if you're talking about 5.0 Arms, I'll agree that was far more interesting had a lot of decision making. SoO Arms though was very spammy, and repetitive.

When I talk about SoO arms I do refer to the playstyle of saving overpowers/rage; because I felt like that was a more fun rotation, and it was optimal. The only problem was that it wasn't tuned to be better enough for most players to care.

But yeah, when I say SoO Arms was fantastic, I am referring to playing SoO arms as it should have been; since that was how I played it. If I played 5.4 Arms just doing "MS-OP-OP-Slam" occasionally replacing Slam with CS, I would have been just as upset with it as I am at this. As it was I loved 5.4, I just wanted tweaks to reward the more interesting playstyle, and maybe make OP a bit less frequent (like 1.5x per MS instead of 2x per MS)


But yeah overall I prefered 5.0 Arms (my personal list is 5.0 > 4.x > 5.4), and was sad when it got broken for pvp reasons.

[Bigbazz]

Since Celestalon really only speaks numbers, maybe, a la Brewmaster, a case can be made that CS reliance as set up currently is an objective detriment.


I wonder how far priorities outside of CS windows (e.g., using Mortal Strike and being happy about it) could be pushed before Mastery suffered too badly.

An objective view on average slams cast per CS reset was already discussed in the previous thread I believe, the problem is that averages do not account for needing a CS at a specific moment and having massively varying results on a pull to pull basis, the long cooldown of CS means that it's in no way realistic to base strategy around RNG protection via the cooldown length.

That's the problem, if you took averages then it looks ok. If you isolate pull to pull you see 4 resets in a 15 second window followed by no resets for 30 seconds, that kinda problem happens surprisingly often and when you have a target that needs to die in 5 seconds and your CS still has 15 seconds cooldown from what was essentially a different phase of the fight (where you also needed CS) you're screwed.

So Arms has the potential to be incredible for dps on a good pull and a waste of a raid spot on a bad pull and there isn't much a player can do about it, if you hold back too much in the name of RNG protection for important dps focus moments you end up with really poor performance overall.

Artunius made a post just earlier outlining possible changes, a few of which have been discussed previously in the earlier threads. Anyway his design changes would go a long way in fixing Arms to make it a usable spec, and a more fun/engaging to play spec.

[Kirbydude65]

When I talk about SoO arms I do refer to the playstyle of saving overpowers/rage; because I felt like that was a more fun rotation, and it was optimal. The only problem was that it wasn't tuned to be better enough for most players to care.

Ahh then I agree with that. However the Blizzard intended version for 5.4 wasn't much different from what we have here in Legion. Which once again I'm ok with. Not great, and could be better.

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An objective view on average slams cast per CS reset was already discussed in the previous thread I believe, the problem is that averages do not account for needing a CS at a specific moment and having massively varying results on a pull to pull basis, the long cooldown of CS means that it's in no way realistic to base strategy around RNG protection via the cooldown length.

That's the problem, if you took averages then it looks ok. If you isolate pull to pull you see 4 resets in a 15 second window followed by no resets for 30 seconds, that kinda problem happens surprisingly often and when you have a target that needs to die in 5 seconds and your CS still has 15 seconds cooldown from what was essentially a different phase of the fight (where you also needed CS) you're screwed.

So Arms has the potential to be incredible for dps on a good pull and a waste of a raid spot on a bad pull and there isn't much a player can do about it, if you hold back too much in the name of RNG protection for important dps focus moments you end up with really poor performance overall.

Artunius made a post just earlier outlining possible changes, a few of which have been discussed previously in the earlier threads. Anyway his design changes would go a long way in fixing Arms to make it a usable spec, and a more fun/engaging to play spec.

Except none of those changes actually create engaging playstyle occurrences. Combined with the fact that a tuning patch hasn't occurred yet, I think it's safe to say that Blizzard's intentions aren't for us to be spamming Slam as you and Artunius suggest.

Also with the CS bug, its' not surprising you probably felt underpowered in the raid setting test.

Once again, I'm not calling this "the best version of Arms ever". I just think it's not as awful as a lot of people are making it to be.

[Secondwind]

Artunius made a post just earlier outlining possible changes, a few of which have been discussed previously in the earlier threads. Anyway his design changes would go a long way in fixing Arms to make it a usable spec, and a more fun/engaging to play spec.

I actually just went and checked it out, and honestly... I think what he's looking for is too much. Like, with a decent crit strike rate 100% uptime is totally plausible, which is too much.

I'd actually recommend abandoning the CS extension mechanic (except maybe as an execute phase mechanic? Tying it to Execute would make execute phase feel much better, without making uptime outrageous outside of execute).

Everything else though is good. Especially the Trauma suggestion. Trauma on MS would make so much more sense. I'd love it even more if it was designed in such a way as to encourage back to back MSes via Mortal Combo. I also think having OP reduce CS cooldown while Slam resets it has merit. Say you bring OP baseline, drop its damage some, and let the player stock up 2-3 charges. Each use of OP drops CS cooldown by 3-4 seconds (6 is way too much).

Now you get back that same sort of OP/Slam interplay that made past arms tend to feel great, with the end goal being maximizing CS uptime. So early on during a CS cycle, you want to use Slam to try to score another reset right away, but the longer you go without a reset the more you want to push OP to make the next CS come up faster guaranteed. Occasionally you'll use a OP earlier just to avoid wasting it (OP is still a more efficient/damaging attack than Slam), but that's a decision you need to make on the fly.

Honestly with something like that I might even feel comfortable with a 30 second CS cooldown. I know it's all a pipe dream, but it's literally a single ability that would turn the rotation from bearable to a lot of fun.

[Bigbazz]

Ahh then I agree with that. However the Blizzard intended version for 5.4 wasn't much different from what we have here in Legion. Which once again I'm ok with. Not great, and could be better.

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Except none of those changes actually create engaging playstyle occurrences. Combined with the fact that a tuning patch hasn't occurred yet, I think it's safe to say that Blizzard's intentions aren't for us to be spamming Slam as you and Artunius suggest.

Also with the CS bug, its' not surprising you probably felt underpowered in the raid setting test.

Once again, I'm not calling this "the best version of Arms ever". I just think it's not as awful as a lot of people are making it to be.

The CS bug where other Arms Warriors overwrite the your debuff? I was the only Arms Warrior in the raid so it's not an issue. If you're talking about some other bug then I'm not sure about it.

Artunius changes do this

1. Incentivise Mortal Strike use outside of Shattered Defenses.
2. Make Overpower more competitive + RNG protection
3. More RNG protection
4. Extension mechanic brought back.. It's not an issue because it can easily have a hard cap on duration.

That takes you away from purely focussing on slam to reset CS by baking interactive gameplay into Mortal Strike and Overpower, and at the same time it gives protection against poor RNG without exagerating good RNG. Numbers can be balanced around it, the spec could do with being more engaging and more reliable.

I'm watching back footage of our 2nd pull on Anomaly (did about 5 pulls as Arms) where I got my CS reset with 8 seconds to go on the cooldown, that's absolutely ridiculous. It makes it nearly impossible to properly stack cooldowns (Battle Cry + Corrupted Rage) or make the most of Anger Management without just surrendering to the fact that you're just gonna need to use them on CD and hope for the best.

Too much control is out of the players hand, Artunius changes obviously could use with tweaking but you know we've had barely any good iteration with the Arms design, and iteration is what it desparately needs. The worst thing about this is that it is a diamond in the rough, but it's still extremely rough, problematic.

Fury has issues but it's very reliable and very capable, even when RNG doesn't favour you it's not like you're completely fucked and with Arms it tends to feel that way.



Edit : In other news, can anybody elaborate on this? It dropped from the boss, so I guess it's a "next week we can kill it easy" item?



1000% dps? I don't even.

[Celarent]

Is that Blizzard's internal notation sneaking into a tooltip? I thought all calculations were done two decimal places up.