So I was attempting to get some sleep last night, and I began thinking about how the arms warrior is non-existent in pve and the overall disappearance of warriors in pvp. And that is really not that much of a suprise to me.
(and please excuse my bad use of the English language)
And btw sorry I cant use links in this post (first time posting), but if you doubt my numbers and data-related stuffs (i like people who question everything), you can find everything in Noxxic-Realistic Dps, Noxxic-Maximum Dps, Icy Veins (the stat priorities), World of Wargrafs (pve and pvp warrior representation) and World of Logs (Dps numbers for ToT bosses)
If we first look at the warrior from a pve point of view, we can quickly make out why they are dying in pvp,
First off, if you chose to pve as a warrior, you will probably not get to do anything but dps as a fury warrior. Since what I have experienced is that most guilds who plan to clear the current tier as heroic before it gets outdated probably wont accept a prot warrior simply because they lack the ridiculous tank dps we have now in mists, and most of the prot warriors who do raiding now is most likely a old member of their guild who they most likely wont switch out because of their reputation within the guild. So your left with the choice between arms and fury, which is not that much of a choice at all. Because the scaling issues with arms and fury, fury bypasses arms with some numbers at 510 ilvl, which is achievable through lfr+some valor pieces. So you are left with the fury spec. Dont misunderstand me, I think fury is one of the funniest specs to play in mists, but the numbers you throw out is just too low to be competitive against any other class/spec. But if you take a further look at the max dps for the class (aka against a dummy) the fury warrior is back up at the rank 12 and 13.
We are suffocating because our movement and re-position is way too slow and awkward, and that is hitting us heavily on any fight with movement. As we all see in the noxxic page for dos rankings, we fury lies pretty much at the bottom with the frost dk. After every target switch/getting out from fire etc. we must wait a couple GCDs to have our rage and other stuffs in place. And this patch blizz chooses to buff arms AoE, which is already our strong side, as we all see from the Tortos log from the World of Logs. If we buff our primary attacks (mortal strike and bloodthirst) then they may get more valued as attacks and not a Plague Strike for frost dks.
Now that Im done addressing that issue, lets take a step back and take a look at the stat priority for us warriors. As we all know, we dps (arms&fury) warriors will always prioritize crit (arms to a soft cap of 32%) over any other secondary stat. And because of the high crit reliance for fury warriors, it makes them operate extremely badly with low enrage uptime. But now that we almost are at the end of this expansion, fury has cached up with arms and arms is left at a very bad position. And this is inevitable how the two specs works now, having fury depend everything on the crit (if you didnt know our mastery: Unshackled Fury is pretty much a buff to our crit rating) it scales so well that its outdpsing arms with some serious numbers now. So basically poeple will pick arms for their entry blues and switch to fury further in the expac. The fear of having thisare going screwed-up cycle repeat the next expansion is definitely bothering me. One of the ways I think we can fix arms with is giving them more with haste and mastery, just make their mastery and haste scale better. If you are going to buff something, blizz, then please consider this.
And I really dont think there is anything more from a pve point of view. I will not complain anything about how deterrence, cloak of shadows and ATMS is overpowered, as we all have our strong utility sides (Shattering Throw).
Now to the pvp part of this post (I dont think there is much to be addressed here):
We are kited way to easily, blizz. Lets say Im a fury warrior pvping. Just colossus smashed, having stacked 2 Raging blows and all my cooldowns poped. Then the hunter you have been hitting for like 10 seconds goes like: haha, he just poped hes cooldowns, imma kite him till his cooldowns has worn off and then I will stay stationary and kill him just to let him know how low dps he has without his cooldowns. As we all know dps cooldowns have no effect if you cont hit anything. Which brings us to our second issue,
Fury warriors is just too cooldown-based and easily-kited (the latter is addressed to all pvp warriors) so they can get results anywhere near where unholy dks and ret paladins are now (yes, im still talking about fury). But I wont expect any changes on this simply because the entire spec is built up around this 20-sec Colossus Smash cooldown, and the massive qq after the revamping of the spec will just not be worth it. So serious warrior pvp players is left with one choice outside of Prot pvp, which is arms.
The somewhat recent pvp resilience buff has hurt us warriors more than others. Now dont misunderstand me, im not one of those who rages in the forums with their ¨pvp isnt fun anymore now that people dont die within 3 GCDs¨ and ¨now every single noob can come into a bg and not die¨arguments. I think the buff of resilience have made pvp more approachable and easier to get into. But the classes who previously could outdps a single healer poping cooldowns and spamming mana-inefficient spells is hurt much more than the ones who couldnt. And especially us warriors, who have had our burst nerfed over and over again this expansion, is left with the choice of either adapt to the new slower pvp style or go and do something else. As we see in the World of Wargrafs pvp distribution site (it was a link here - send your angry letters to (just imagine its a ¨at¨ symbol here)MMOChampion), the participation of warriors in pvp has dropped tremendously. Again, im not saying the resillience buff was wrong, but blizz please give us our burst back.
One more thing before I go to sleep: Our poor ranged dps consists of Heroic Throw, Storm Bolt (You will probably not choose this talent over Avatar-the-counter-kiting tool), and Dagger Throw (I like how it procs weapon enchants faster than anything else), which is really not that much of a ranged option. You are most likely better off targeting the circle for your Heroc Leap during that time. Which leads us back at our poor counter-kiting discussion
Now this is everything I have in my little brain that I wanted to share with you guys who randomly stumbled over my article that I choose to post here instead of the battle.net/wow forums. And please remember this is purely my feelings about this class and nothing more. So what do you guys think, please let me know.