[6.0 Guide] Arms - The 10 second master

[Archimtiros]

There was one iteration, where you could drop MS and be like 95% optimal. I don't remember the specifics, but I do remember that being a thing for some short period of time.

Maybe right after they nerfed MS for the umpteenth time and buffed the Slam talent, but if so it didn't last long.

No matter which way you cut it, abilities that don't interact with one another leads to crappy design. One of the most common complaints with Ret Paladins, despite having one of the best proc game play systems in the game, is that their abilities don't feel different enough because they all did about the same amount of damage and few did anything appreciably different from the others.

[Artunias]

Anyone working on Mythic Gorefiend? Killed it?

What spec are you playing after the nerf? Sweeping strikes seems wonky as fuck on that fight and always seems to end up cleaving the player spirits that I'm not close to at all for some reason. And then I'll be like inside the bosses model hitting the Tank Spirit and it won't sweeping to anything. I haven't been able to really figure it out as I'm afraid to hit sweeping now in fear of killing player spirits too early.

Thinking about going back to fury, but IDK. Fight is annoying as fuck as melee.

[Fog]

No idea myself. Finally got my hands on the 4 set, and I simmed my char in many different ways, because the outcome I got was something I didn't expect to see..
Long story short; at the end of the day, arms simmed highest of the 3 ST variations I have available; t18 arms/fury and t17 fury.
I know it depends on situations and whatnot, but still shows arms as competetive...for me. To be fair, I only got UH from HFC, and since that's a BiS item for arms, my results might change as soon as I get proper trinkets for fury..

[Deleted]

I played arms on gorefiend post-nerf. Rending the spirits is just too good.

[Woodgnome]

Is it just me, or is the latest SimC (620-03) not taking the Rend nerf into account?

These results seem a bit crazy at least (2-target LightMovement):

• 2pc T17 (M) + 2pc T18 (H): 76.2k
• 4pc T18 (2N, 2H items): 98.0k

That's almost a 22k DPS increase, SimC isn't really updated, is it?

[Darkfriend]

No actually, I don't remember a time at all during Beta (or Alpha) in which you ignored Mortal Strike. I'm not sure what beta you were playing in. During beta it hit like a freight truck.

Vanilla beta maybe?

[Archimtiros]

Anyone working on Mythic Gorefiend? Killed it?

What spec are you playing after the nerf? Sweeping strikes seems wonky as fuck on that fight and always seems to end up cleaving the player spirits that I'm not close to at all for some reason. And then I'll be like inside the bosses model hitting the Tank Spirit and it won't sweeping to anything. I haven't been able to really figure it out as I'm afraid to hit sweeping now in fear of killing player spirits too early.

Thinking about going back to fury, but IDK. Fight is annoying as fuck as melee.

Depends on what you are doing. If you are only attacking Gorefiend (and adds downstairs), go full single target Fury.

If you are on spirit duty (as I am), Arms seems to be better because it can chunk Spirits down and it's rotation isn't gated by BT. Rend weak enough, you can put it on everything and not worry about it breaking things out early, but reap the benefits of endless Rend resets.

- - - Updated - - -

Vanilla beta maybe?

Actually you could talent both Mortal Strike and Bloodthirst (old version, 100% crit chance on next special attack) and one shot people.

[sjsctt]

Anyone working on Mythic Gorefiend? Killed it?

What spec are you playing after the nerf? Sweeping strikes seems wonky as fuck on that fight and always seems to end up cleaving the player spirits that I'm not close to at all for some reason. And then I'll be like inside the bosses model hitting the Tank Spirit and it won't sweeping to anything. I haven't been able to really figure it out as I'm afraid to hit sweeping now in fear of killing player spirits too early.

Thinking about going back to fury, but IDK. Fight is annoying as fuck as melee.

Working on it now. Our other warrior taking arms to execute the folks that need broken out with just passive starfall, necro and rend being the perfect amount of damage to do this. I am full single target fury and only switch to the first Gorebound spirit. I love fury's ramp up time. It is like they took our strong suit of no ramp up and dumped it upside down like a trash-can.

[Rorke]

Did anyone try Glyph of Die by The Sword with Arms 4p before it was nerfed? If so, did you have infinite uptime on DbTS?

[sjsctt]

Did anyone try Glyph of Die by The Sword with Arms 4p before it was nerfed? If so, did you have infinite uptime on DbTS?

On beta it was possible, but they adjusted it before it went live.

[Ryanite]

Did anyone try Glyph of Die by The Sword with Arms 4p before it was nerfed? If so, did you have infinite uptime on DbTS?

yeah tried it on ptr, it worked.

Guys I need help with a weak aura string, I need it to simply track how many rends are out on each target not the duration just the amount.

[Kalmakk]

No idea myself. Finally got my hands on the 4 set, and I simmed my char in many different ways, because the outcome I got was something I didn't expect to see..
Long story short; at the end of the day, arms simmed highest of the 3 ST variations I have available; t18 arms/fury and t17 fury.
I know it depends on situations and whatnot, but still shows arms as competetive...for me. To be fair, I only got UH from HFC, and since that's a BiS item for arms, my results might change as soon as I get proper trinkets for fury..

That's quite curious, I've lately been finding myself wondering if I might even be better off trying arms ST again myself. Im in a similar situation where on some fights I feel obligated to play fury simply on the assumption of the Arms nerfs... When I fundamentally feel better when I play Arms. I'll have to test out SD ST and see how it feels. I may be in a similar situation.

May I ask what settings you applied to simcraft in order to simulate that higher dps? WW threshold, talents, etc?

[Archimtiros]

That's quite curious, I've lately been finding myself wondering if I might even be better off trying arms ST again myself. Im in a similar situation where on some fights I feel obligated to play fury simply on the assumption of the Arms nerfs... When I fundamentally feel better when I play Arms. I'll have to test out SD ST and see how it feels. I may be in a similar situation.

May I ask what settings you applied to simcraft in order to simulate that higher dps? WW threshold, talents, etc?

Make sure that your simcraft is up to date too. Lot of people find themselves working with older versions.

Arms performance on ST is completely RNG, even more so than Fury (with decent gear) at this point. Fury ST should be better in just about every situation.

[Deleted]

That's quite curious, I've lately been finding myself wondering if I might even be better off trying arms ST again myself. Im in a similar situation where on some fights I feel obligated to play fury simply on the assumption of the Arms nerfs... When I fundamentally feel better when I play Arms. I'll have to test out SD ST and see how it feels. I may be in a similar situation.

May I ask what settings you applied to simcraft in order to simulate that higher dps? WW threshold, talents, etc?

It is a lot easier to play Arms then fury in my opinion, also you don't need certain haste breakpoints, so gearing up isn't such a struggle before worldbreakers resolve. You can simply stack mastery over crit and everything is fine. And even if you mess up, you can fix bad numbers with a good execute phase. I know fury is stronger on ST, but not in my hands. So i just go Arms in all of the fights, where BS can't fix my bad performance as fury. The only fight i can handle fury is a T17 3 target meatcleaver fight where your rotation basicly is WW, RB, WW, RB, WW, RB and a few BT to get some rage.

HfC doens't have a lot of single target fights without any Adds. Zakuun might be one of the few and even there Arms is viable because of his strong executephase, which is important in this fight.

[Archimtiros]

It is a lot easier to play Arms then fury in my opinion, also you don't need certain haste breakpoints, so gearing up isn't such a struggle before worldbreakers resolve. You can simply stack mastery over crit and everything is fine. And even if you mess up, you can fix bad numbers with a good execute phase. I know fury is stronger on ST, but not in my hands. So i just go Arms in all of the fights, where BS can't fix my bad performance as fury. The only fight i can handle fury is a T17 3 target meatcleaver fight where your rotation basicly is WW, RB, WW, RB, WW, RB and a few BT to get some rage.

HfC doens't have a lot of single target fights without any Adds. Zakuun might be one of the few and even there Arms is viable because of his strong executephase, which is important in this fight.

Arms has just as many breakpoints as Fury, but if you are gearing up, you don't need to worry about them, because your gear is constantly fluctuating. Those are things you only take into consideration once your gear is relatively stable. Nobody wants to regem full Mastery, only to change one piece of gear and go back full Crit for example.

Of course you are perfectly fine to play Arms over Fury; comfort is important when playing anything. I'm just pointing out that no simple changing of settings on SimC is going to suddenly put Arms on top again.

[Fog]

That's quite curious, I've lately been finding myself wondering if I might even be better off trying arms ST again myself. Im in a similar situation where on some fights I feel obligated to play fury simply on the assumption of the Arms nerfs... When I fundamentally feel better when I play Arms. I'll have to test out SD ST and see how it feels. I may be in a similar situation.

May I ask what settings you applied to simcraft in order to simulate that higher dps? WW threshold, talents, etc?

No special settings. Rage treshold at 90 rage, standard ST talents, AM for fury gave me the highest numbers, ravager and SD gave me highest for arms.

Make sure that your simcraft is up to date too. Lot of people find themselves working with older versions.

Arms performance on ST is completely RNG, even more so than Fury (with decent gear) at this point. Fury ST should be better in just about every situation.

I went to the github and downloaded the latest, so it was the newest version out there. Ran more sims, basicly same results. Will test on our raid Sunday where I can actually test my brand new 4 set.

[thefuga]

Simcraft tells me that Horn + Unending Hunger is the best trinket combination (i have all 4 HFC but the class trinket - didn't even bother to test pebble, but he's here) but i couldn't find any Arms using those two, so i'm not sure. What do you guys think it's the best combo for Arms?

[Bigbazz]

Simcraft tells me that Horn + Unending Hunger is the best trinket combination (i have all 4 HFC but the class trinket - didn't even bother to test pebble, but he's here) but i couldn't find any Arms using those two, so i'm not sure. What do you guys think it's the best combo for Arms?

You mean Empty Drinking Horn? Because simcraft told me my Empty Drinking Horn (715) was a 600 dps loss compared to my Mythic Horn of Screaming Spirits.

[thefuga]

You mean Empty Drinking Horn? Because simcraft told me my Empty Drinking Horn (715) was a 600 dps loss compared to my Mythic Horn of Screaming Spirits.

Yeah, sorry, i meant the Empty Drinking Horn. I don't have the mythic Horn of Screaming Spirits.

[Kalmakk]

Ok so I just tested Arms ST myself, and compared it to Fury, changing around talents and doing multiple attempts to try and weed out rng, and found Fog's mentioning of Arms ST being slightly ahead of Fury was true for me as well. A very, very tiny difference, only 1-3k variation, but for me Arms does more ST dps than fury with my current gearset. I don't even have an Unending Hunger. Just a Normal WBR and Mythic kagraz Horn. Best Arms settup I tried was actually still using Taste for Blood, because without it, the extra CS resets actually keep you rage starved a lot of the time.

Now, I'm not going to jump the gun here. I only tested this solo buffed (125 food, flask, str rune, AP shout) on the Shrine boss dummy 5min timer every time. But I tested it enough times over tonight to account for rng bias and Arms was ahead every single time. I'm going to test things in a live raid next week to actually confirm if the tests ring true, but considering dummies have no execute phase, and the sustained damage of Arms was winning already... my hopes of being a nonconformist hipster ST Arms warrior may still come true.