Thoughts on Slam?

[soakeyy]

I messed around with Slam today during the first two boss fights, and honestly, I was happy. It made Arms less boring because it gave me something to do when MS and CS were on CD. However, everyone says that Sudden Death is the way to go. While I agree, I just felt like I was waiting around for an Execute proc for too long

Thoughts?

[Deleted]

Slam makes the single target rotation less boring because you actively have something to fill the otherwise empty global cool downs but if it's not the best talent choice to take for raiding or PvP then it just won't be used by the vast majority, simple as that.

People want their class to be fun, work on a basic mechanical level but above all else I think a lot of people will still choose to be viable with a boring as fuck rotation over choosing a fun rotation and being benched for shitty DPS.

[Leih]

I tried Slam late last night for a little while on the target dummies... seemed to me like it was only a very small DPS increase over just using WW as filler instead, because it replaces WW but only does a tiny bit more damage than it. Felt better than using WW, but the tuning will have to change if it's going to compete.

Still maintain that it would work better if they got rid of WW and just gave us Slam baseline, as a more interesting less annoying filler.

[Archimtiros]

I really don't find Arms that unbearable anymore with the recent rage changes.

There are still a few spots where rage becomes tight and it is possible to starve yourself, and it is still boring with a lack of variance. Likewise, Sudden Death causing Executes to be free makes a difference.

I am not happy with the spec by a long shot, but at least it was bearable to play. I still think the extra rage on crit should be scrapped and Mortal Strike should go back to being a generator however.

[Leih]

I am not happy with the spec by a long shot, but at least it was bearable to play. I still think the extra rage on crit should be scrapped and Mortal Strike should go back to being a generator however.

Oh god yes... That would help a lot. Every time I don't get to Charge into a fight and have to wait for that first auto-attack before I can do anything is torture. At least in the old says we had Bloodrage!

[Archimtiros]

Oh god yes... That would help a lot. Every time I don't get to Charge into a fight and have to wait for that first auto-attack before I can do anything is torture. At least in the old says we had Bloodrage!

People are constantly looking for large, over reaching changes, and they really aren't necessary. While I would love a complete overhaul into an elegant and well designed spec... it simply isn't feasible at the moment (considering where we are in relation to release and how much work is still to be done with Warlords in general).

Arms may not be pretty but it really only needs two things to make it both playable and enjoyable (not counting tuning).

1) Manageable rage
Mortal Strike as a generator, or a Rage generating shout/ability. Something to add some consistency to the rotation. In MoP Mortal Strike and Bloodthirst both set the tempo for their respective specs, they are the axis around which the rest of the abilities spin.

2) A gimmick
Arms is the only spec in the game without any sort of proc or mechanic. Letting us "choose" one (really only the illusion of choice, due to optimal gain) isn't the same by far. Again, it really doesn't need to be complex, and the frame work is already perfectly set up with Rend.
Make the ticks proc something, or reset something, or do something interesting to make it a compelling button to press for reasons other than because the enemy isn't going to die within the next 10s.

It doesn't even have to be Rend though, could be any ability, could even tie something to Whirlwind to make players feel better about using it in the rotation instead of a true single target ability such as Slam/Overpower.

The question remains, what makes Arms special? The answer is absolutely nothing.
Hitting hard isn't compelling gameplay and neither is attacking slowly, especially with all the other melee slowdown we've seen. All sorts of specs hit hard, while buffs and nerfs come and go constantly. Arms desperately needs some kind of identity, something to engage players and make them want to play it.

[Leih]

I totally agree with both those points on Arms. And no, I don't think Arms is too bad. Like I said when they first added the new level 45 talents, if those 3 things were baseline so we could have all 3, I'd probably be reasonably happy with Arms. Fury is obviously another matter, but since this is a Slam thread won't go into that.

I remember saying the same thing in the other thread about the "gimmick" part a few pages back in the 6.0 thread. There's just no baseline procs or interaction between any of its abilities (no Celestalon, before you say anything, the CS debuff ArP doesn't count) so it's just incredibly boring and thoughtless.

They won't be able to even say "hitting hard" is the gimmick for much longer anyway. We all know "hitting hard" can't be a gimmick, because it's unbalanced, and there's no way they can let Arms have such substantially more burst damage than any other spec in the game. Execute's coming down in damage, and we can probably expect Mortal Strike to get a nerf too, I think (or perhaps just more Seasoned Soldier nerfing).

And can't say managing rage is a gimmick either... because, as per your first point, Arms basically can't do that either. It's just an auto-attack ping-pong when there's no way to generate it ourselves.

I don't think Arms needs big sweeping changes (I'd like to see it for Fury, but we won't see that either). But it needs something!

[Beefkow]

I think slam needs to be buffed to about mortal strike status with 2 stacks.

And then maybe buff SD to 15-20% with execute getting a slight nerf bat to avoid sudden health drops.

Tier 45 makes sense now, it's basically the "filler" talent for arms/fury with those talents filling in the empty gaps.

[Nightstalker]

Slam feels crappy when you don't have a lot of mastery. tested my alt (my main failed to copy -.-!!!!) with 545 gear and t16 2p, ~35% crit. gcd capped for ~95% of the time using slam. Slam performs way better than WW with ~130% Mastery (single target). By using fillers like SB and IV you also asure that the slam buff runs out from time to time, which is good for rage management. SD proc chance is just annoying. WW doesn't scale with mastery which is kinda meh in terms of aoe - same goes for rend. SD/Exe has to cover up for the missing ww dmg with better gear and then we're talking about nasty pvp burst.

[Archimtiros]

Slam feels crappy when you don't have a lot of mastery. tested my alt (my main failed to copy -.-!!!!) with 545 gear and t16 2p, ~35% crit. gcd capped for ~95% of the time using slam. Slam performs way better than WW with ~130% Mastery (single target). By using fillers like SB and IV you also asure that the slam buff runs out from time to time, which is good for rage management. SD proc chance is just annoying. WW doesn't scale with mastery which is kinda meh in terms of aoe - same goes for rend. SD/Exe has to cover up for the missing ww dmg with better gear and then we're talking about nasty pvp burst.

Didn't we just establish in the other thread that Slam isn't affected by Mastery?

[Secondwind]

Didn't we just establish in the other thread that Slam isn't affected by Mastery?

I dunno, the last post that was made indicated Slam was hitting like 3x harder than WW, which I can't imagine happening without mastery. It needs more testing.

[Deleted]

What sort of DPS % differencea are we looking at for Slam over SD? Presuming a Patchwerk fight of say 6 or 9 minutes?

[Nightstalker]

Didn't we just establish in the other thread that Slam isn't affected by Mastery?

Well the tooltip is and I guess I'm just gonna play around with my wod buffs/ench to check numbers popping up above target dummys.
And that's why I can argue with you and have to say that it definitely is affected. Because of ARGUMENTS :P

Not changing weapon-DPS, strength, versatility and/or mastery:
Switching flask, ring/cloak/neck enchant, mastery goes up from 73,04% to 133,48%.
That should be a ~35% damage increase for mastery affected styles.
Average Slam damage according to the tooltip goes up by - guess what - ~35%.
And yes, damage on target dummys also goes up.

[Crisius]

If it is affected by mastery they must've implemented it with this build. Last night it wasn't. Probably an oversight from Blizzards side, as per usual. Does the mastery tooltip reflect it now aswell?

I dunno, the last post that was made indicated Slam was hitting like 3x harder than WW, which I can't imagine happening without mastery. It needs more testing.

Will have to re-test it now for sure. Unsure whether whirlwind is affected by leveling perks, keep in mind that testing was done on a copied character that wasn't level 100.