Arms Legion Discussion

[Sliske]

http://beta.wowdb.com/spells/12294-mortal-strike
http://beta.wowdb.com/spells/184575-blade-of-justice
http://beta.wowdb.com/spells/107428-rising-sun-kick

Okay guys so I was comparing the hardest hitting (normal rotation) abilities of all melees since I really like classes that hit hard. Do monk and paladin really hit harder with these abilities than mortal strike arms? I feel so bad about this, I was gonna main it but it seems they went for a more "spammy" playstyle in legion where MS only costs 20 rage but really doesn't pack the punch it used to.

I know numbers will be tuned but I am looking at numbers as a baseline to where Blizzard is going with abilities

Help?

You can't compare specs, based on 1 ability. Arms has colossus smash a ridiculous damage boost.

[stevan021]

You can't compare specs, based on 1 ability. Arms has colossus smash a ridiculous damage boost.

I'm not comparing for viability, I'm trying to decide where they are going with that spec etc.

About your comment, paladins use judgment before templar's verdict . judgment is basically a type of colossus smash

[Nition]

I honestly can't find this spec enjoyable anymore. I've tried a dozen times to get into it. I've tried the max pvp, I've tried leveling, I've tried hitting a dummy with differing talents to try get variation. Nothing seems fun on it anymore. Thats probably partly to do with burnout but what this spec has become is just isn't fun anymore. I hate to drop whats been my main for nearing a decade, but I'd hate to force myself to play this spec even more. And well fury, whilst the gameplay seems fun, the fantasy of the raging berserker has put me right off :/

[kubuntu]

Arms can use MS more offten then Ret can use TV and alsow Arms get bigger damage bost from CS then Ret from Judgment and too ALL abilities not just HP spenders

[stevan021]

Arms can use MS more offten then Ret can use TV and alsow Arms get bigger damage bost from CS then Ret from Judgment and too ALL abilities not just HP spenders

I know, I'm just looking for big numbers to make me feel good, not top DPS

[Archimtiros]

I know, I'm just looking for big numbers to make me feel good, not top DPS

As others have said, you can't compare like that. Doesn't matter what you're looking for, it just doesn't work. If all you care about is a single hard hitting ability, you should be looking at Execute, but it's important to remember that there's a large number of effects which go into play between the tooltip and the final product.

That aside, tuning is still ongoing, and it's well known that Arms is currently underpowered. That's not to say that Mortal Strike will shoot up to 750% wdam, but the spec as a whole is surely going to get a boost at some point.

[Okacz]

I really enjoyed Arms on PTR, perhaps even more than Fury (seriously, the Enrage system is so freaking pointless). At last Colossus Smash feels like a decent part of the spec, not something that drags it down. You just feel like a big juggernaut of pain, able to mow down opponenets with powerful strikes (and Overpower), and completly destroy them with Colossus Smash windows.

My only problem is the RNG aspect. The Tactican change was a good one, but it still feels like you sometimes have moments of pure awesome, with CS procs every few seconds, followed by absolute famine, when you can't get it to proc no matter what. It feels needlessly frustrating, and should have some protection against bad RNG tied to it. Something that remembers how much rage you spent since last CS, and increases the proc chance according to it, would be great.

The other thing is - does anyone feel like the talent tree is utter garbage? I don't mind that much, since the baseline stuff is pretty fluid and straightforward, but some rows are just bizzarre. Rend against Avarat, how is that even a thing? A boring keepup thing that synergises with precisely nothing against a solid cooldown? Or the first row, Overpower and Dauntless - what's the point of a talent, when it's just 20% less rage and competes with an ability that should be friggin baseline (don't even get me started on Sweeping Strikes no being)? With some quite awesome talent trees of Legion, like Havoc DH, Enh Shaman, Demonology or even SV hunter this feels completly worthless.

But yeah, I like the simplicity and responsiveness of the spec, reminds me the good old Wrath era Arms.

[Archimtiros]

The other thing is - does anyone feel like the talent tree is utter garbage? I don't mind that much, since the baseline stuff is pretty fluid and straightforward, but some rows are just bizzarre. Rend against Avarat, how is that even a thing? A boring keepup thing that synergises with precisely nothing against a solid cooldown? Or the first row, Overpower and Dauntless - what's the point of a talent, when it's just 20% less rage and competes with an ability that should be friggin baseline (don't even get me started on Sweeping Strikes no being)? With some quite awesome talent trees of Legion, like Havoc DH, Enh Shaman, Demonology or even SV hunter this feels completly worthless.

It's called opportunity cost.

Dauntless is actually pretty good now since it doesn't reduce the chance to proc Tactician and applies to Execute's rage conversion. Overpower is a strong attack, but it's only really useful on single target, and Sweeping Strikes is obviously useful when facing two targets.

Similarly Fevor, Rend and Avatar are all really good under their respective situations. Avatar works really well with stacking other CDs for quick burst (Bladestorm/Ravager), Rend is applies consistent damage against multiple targets that are up for extended periods of time, and Fevor is really useful for repeated waves of extra targets that Bladestorm/Ravager's cooldown can't cover.

There are a few talents which falter, namely Mortal Combo, Focused Rage and Titanic Might; by and large however, our talent choices are pretty decently balanced.

[Deleted]

Except off-GCD doesn't do anything when it takes the place of the GCD. It might as well be on the GCD at that point.

It'd definitely be boring, I won't argue that, but it's not meant to "spice up" the rotation, it's meant to create burst gameplay.

In most cases I would agree, however (optimal Specc-wise or not) the non-GCD-ness of FR becomes a major point during a Deadly Calm window.

[Okacz]

It's called opportunity cost.

Dauntless is actually pretty good now since it doesn't reduce the chance to proc Tactician and applies to Execute's rage conversion. Overpower is a strong attack, but it's only really useful on single target, and Sweeping Strikes is obviously useful when facing two targets.

Similarly Fevor, Rend and Avatar are all really good under their respective situations. Avatar works really well with stacking other CDs for quick burst (Bladestorm/Ravager), Rend is applies consistent damage against multiple targets that are up for extended periods of time, and Fevor is really useful for repeated waves of extra targets that Bladestorm/Ravager's cooldown can't cover.

There are a few talents which falter, namely Mortal Combo, Focused Rage and Titanic Might; by and large however, our talent choices are pretty decently balanced.

I agree that they are (or might be, didn't really check the numbers) pretty balanced. I'm mostly talking about what they add to the spec, how they alter and change it. That's why placing Rend against Avatar feels as random as it gets to me. Avatar synergises with the windows, lets you have a nice burst, while Rend doesn't do absolutely anything. And it can be an even bigger problem if it turns out Rend is better than Avatar, or FoB is better than Overpower - your choice will be "be bad" or "feel bad". It's kind of the problem of the new talent row design (choice between ST, AoE and boring), but I checked out a few specs so far, and none of those had it so bad as Arms does.

At the very least, Overpower should be baseline.

[Archimtiros]

In most cases I would agree, however (optimal Specc-wise or not) the non-GCD-ness of FR becomes a major point during a Deadly Calm window.

This is true, it would. However, practically speaking, it's such a small window that it doesn't change the overall result significantly enough to matter. I really don't think one talent should require another talent to make its mechanics work.

[Ryxxi]

Amrs has no bladestorm on PTR and fury's bladestorm is not baseline, so am assuming PTR is 1 week behind beta patches like they normally do during new expansion.

Only 1.5pages of abilities in Arms spell book! feelsbad lol

[Archimtiros]

I agree that they are (or might be, didn't really check the numbers) pretty balanced. I'm mostly talking about what they add to the spec, how they alter and change it. That's why placing Rend against Avatar feels as random as it gets to me. Avatar synergises with the windows, lets you have a nice burst, while Rend doesn't do absolutely anything. And it can be an even bigger problem if it turns out Rend is better than Avatar, or FoB is better than Overpower - your choice will be "be bad" or "feel bad". It's kind of the problem of the new talent row design (choice between ST, AoE and boring), but I checked out a few specs so far, and none of those had it so bad as Arms does.

At the very least, Overpower should be baseline.

Well Rend adds an extra rotational button, Avatar adds a stackable cooldown; if anything I'd say Rend alters the spec a lot more than Avatar does. Keep in mind that Rend does stack with CS (as it's no longer an Armor debuff) and Reck/Corrupted Blood as well, so there is synergy there.

Specifically WRT Fevor/Rend/Avatar, it's extremely unlikely that one will surpass the other in it's niche. For example, Rend and Fevor don't do anything for Bladestorm packs, so Avatar is pretty much always going to take the lead there (cooldown permitting). It is certainly possible that Rend could end up better than Avatar on Single Target, but that's not really much of a concern, unless your goal is simply to never use Rend, which certainly isn't the designers fault.

Fevor doesn't compete with Overpower, so no issue there. I really don't think Overpower needs to be baseline either, but that's a discussion that has no clear-cut answer; you're going to insist that it is, I'm going to say that it isn't, so I'm not going to bother.

The only really problematic row is T75, simply because In for the Kill is world better than it's competition, but that's honestly a problem I'm not keen to solve, as it actually works in our favor.

- - - Updated - - -

Amrs has no bladestorm on PTR and fury's bladestorm is not baseline, so am assuming PTR is 1 week behind beta patches like they normally do during new expansion.

Only 1.5pages of abilities in Arms spell book! feelsbad lol

It's not behind, it's a bug.

Fury Bladestorm is not supposed to be baseline, only Arms. However, Arms does have a bug in which Bladestorm won't be present in the spellbook and you will be unable to /cast it. Changing specs a few times, relogging, or simply making a new character seems to fix it.

[Okacz]

The only really problematic row is T75, simply because In for the Kill is world better than it's competition, but that's honestly a problem I'm not keen to solve, as it actually works in our favor.

That's weird, I thought this tier is actually the best. IftK is really cool, makes the execute rotation way more manageable and will probably be the best pick for any boss fight where the boss doesnt "escape at 20%" or something. But, with proper balancing, this tier offers 3 pretty distinct playstyles, one that focuses on execute phase, one on the frequency of MS (if that's what they are going for with Mortal Combo, it's a weird one really), and one on making MS powerful. But I agree, right now IftK is the only thing that makes sense to pick. Hopefully they will sort and balance this tree out.

[Archimtiros]

That's weird, I thought this tier is actually the best. IftK is really cool, makes the execute rotation way more manageable and will probably be the best pick for any boss fight where the boss doesnt "escape at 20%" or something. But, with proper balancing, this tier offers 3 pretty distinct playstyles, one that focuses on execute phase, one on the frequency of MS (if that's what they are going for with Mortal Combo, it's a weird one really), and one on making MS powerful. But I agree, right now IftK is the only thing that makes sense to pick. Hopefully they will sort and balance this tree out.

The problem is that it's not an issue of balancing, it's more an issue of mechanics. Without In for the Kill, the Execute phase is effectively crippled; meanwhile, Mortal Combo doesn't synergize at all with the effects that make Mortal Strike strong (Precise Strikes, Shattered Defenses), so while it looks good on the surface, it's actually pretty underwhelming.

[Deleted]

What are your guys thoughts on AM/Deadly Calm/Focused Rage talent setup? I've been trying it out and I've been getting 2 Battle Cry's per minute .

[Okacz]

The problem is that it's not an issue of balancing, it's more an issue of mechanics. Without In for the Kill, the Execute phase is effectively crippled; meanwhile, Mortal Combo doesn't synergize at all with the effects that make Mortal Strike strong (Precise Strikes, Shattered Defenses), so while it looks good on the surface, it's actually pretty underwhelming.

Yeah, I'm not sure what's Mortal Combo about. In theory it's probably about abusing CS window, but by banking a MS for this phase you are losing an opportunity to use it earlier. Not a big gain by any means. Maybe I don't see a bigger picture there.

How about Focused Rage? It doesn't seem all that bad, you pretty much pay 15 rage for 50% of Mortal Strike - which is Slam damage/cost, only off GCD, and can be nicely abused for CS phase. Seems pretty good to me, not that it can compete with a talent that, as you said, makes the whole execute phase manageable.

[Trmp]

I get why Fury is great but Arms simply is not
However i enjoy playing Arms, things just do not add up...

As Archimtiros pointed out its a mechanical issue, they must change!!
Tried my best to make Focused Rage work by switching to Dauntless because rage will be a big problem, but that did not work (not even with DC+AM)
Focused Rage cost to much rage to make it work besides that i found it not worth it (unless you go pvp and take 'Sharpen Blade', Bajheera got a vid of this)

Fury I can hit a stable over 50k dps on a dummy without big boy cool downs Avatar + Battle Cry
Arms however struggled to hit 40k dps without big boy cool downs and shortly falls off
Looking besides the dps as everything is subject to change

Personally don't mind the Mortal Combo, meaning able to hit it besides Slam without any regret not having it up during CS window
Able to proc it self makes it even better

Arms just has major issues from 60 Talents down its clusterfuk
Focused Rage, Titanic Might, Anger Management never see my self using these Talents
Followed by Deadly Calm, I see this working out during execute phase but other then that no. Did not got rage starved to even consider (forget FR)

Overpower and Opportunity Strikes are the two talents that I would say are a success
Remaining are some personal preference of play style and situationals that can and not impact your road to success

What your thoughts?
Am curious where others stand with Arms

[Deleted]

This is true, it would. However, practically speaking, it's such a small window that it doesn't change the overall result significantly enough to matter. I really don't think one talent should require another talent to make its mechanics work.

I totally agree, just wanted to point it out since it's probably a point of some significance in regard to FR's state at being off GCD. FR might also situationally become more attractive in case of haste-inflation (probably only in regards of encounter design - think sinestra - or lopsided gearing) since at (overly) high haste levels another DPR dump helps bleed off excess rage, whereas the other two talents either increase rage generation (In for the kill) or become slightly less impactful due to the lowered CD (Mortal Combo - Could be horrendously wrong about that one though).

In any other PVE situation I really cannot see FR being anything but a highly niche talent providing a minor boost at best, and a loss of DPS at worst.

[Murlocbait]

At the very least, Overpower should be baseline.

Keep in mind, this isn't really Overpower. It's Sudden Death with it's own spell instead of relying on Execute. True Overpower is still gone from the game. (probably having tea somewhere with Heroic Strike)