[6.0 Guide] Arms - The 10 second master

[Deleted]

Making mastery affect all abilities would just make it too similar to other classes like Fury and Arcane. That would be a bit dull, especially if two specs on the same class are essentially the same.

True but if it doesn't it creates scaling issues. Like ms/exe hitting "ok" and ww as filler being rubbish and doesn't hit as hard with aquiring more gear.

[Artunias]

I wouldn't mind whirlwind being a limp noodle filler as much if at least our talents would scale in some form with Mastery. The MS/Execute bit is ok I guess. But when you have these talents that according to Blizzard are supposed to be meaningful parts of our rotation, they need to scale appropriately. I mean we're already at that point where most fights we're playing arms on you want to use Bloodbath over Bladestorm because Bladestorm scales like a steaming pile of shit.

[thefuga]

It's a filler, it shouldn't hit as hard as MS and Execute and obviously shouldn't scale as well...

[Crisius]

It's a filler, it shouldn't hit as hard as MS and Execute and obviously shouldn't scale as well...

That's where you're wrong. It should scale as well, but it shouldn't do as much damage. What we're looking at is reallocation of damage from tier to tier, where warrior performance on certain type of fights (aoe) is gradually faltering into nothingness while the other (singletarget) is staying where it is; at the rock bottom.

And every talent we have except Avatar, Bloodbath and partly Anger Management are faltering in value at the same pace.

Ravager for singletarget, on the beta, was at a comfortable ~10% of your total damage done, as you would expect from a shiny new level 100 talent. Perhaps a bit on the powerful side, but directly comparable to death knights' Defile. Compare that to now, Ravager is sitting at a measly ~3-4% of your damage, and this is the first tier.
It doesn't gain value from haste, it doesn't gain value from mastery. Come next tier, with more haste and more mastery on gear, not only will Ravager be redundant. Two out of three level 100 talents will be more or less damage damage neutral, just as our level 60 talent tier already is. One out of three level 90 talents will be useless as Arms, as any fight you could Bladestorm you'd lose way too much by not doing it as Fury, or even simply going Fury and spamming Whirlwind/RB since even that scales better than Arms Bladestorm.

Retribution paladins have the same issue with Execution Sentence/Light's Hammer and Hand of Light, but that's one talent row, not both an integral part of their rotation and 3 redundant talent rows.

[ItsLaw]

That's where you're wrong. It should scale as well, but it shouldn't do as much damage. What we're looking at is reallocation of damage from tier to tier, where warrior performance on certain type of fights (aoe) is gradually faltering into nothingness while the other (singletarget) is staying where it is; at the rock bottom.

And every talent we have except Avatar, Bloodbath and partly Anger Management are faltering in value at the same pace.

Ravager for singletarget, on the beta, was at a comfortable ~10% of your total damage done, as you would expect from a shiny new level 100 talent. Perhaps a bit on the powerful side, but directly comparable to death knights' Defile. Compare that to now, Ravager is sitting at a measly ~3-4% of your damage, and this is the first tier.
It doesn't gain value from haste, it doesn't gain value from mastery. Come next tier, with more haste and more mastery on gear, not only will Ravager be redundant. Two out of three level 100 talents will be more or less damage damage neutral, just as our level 60 talent tier already is. One out of three level 90 talents will be useless as Arms, as any fight you could Bladestorm you'd lose way too much by not doing it as Fury, or even simply going Fury and spamming Whirlwind/RB since even that scales better than Arms Bladestorm.

Retribution paladins have the same issue with Execution Sentence/Light's Hammer and Hand of Light, but that's one talent row, not both an integral part of their rotation and 3 redundant talent rows.

Excellent post. I guess the easiest and least creative way to fix these issues is to increase the effectiveness of our damaging talents (SB, SW, DR, Ravager, SBr) with our mastery to about 1/3 of what it does for MS, CS, and Execute. I picked 1/3 because with my current gear I have 32% mastery, meaning Fury talents deal about that much more damage than Arms due to lots of enrage uptime. I like our mastery because it makes me feel like an Arms warrior in the sense that you hit really damn hard. However, as a spec that should be competitive, there is an obvious flaw in it. That flaw seems to be mastery, to me.

Maybe they could add heroic leap in there too? I miss using that in the rotation.

One question I have, is if they took my idea, would mastery also affect talents like Avatar, Bloodbath, Anger management? I would assume not, since those don't seem to have scaling issues, but I wouldn't want those to then become useless after x amount of mastery is reached.

Again, I am just spitballing. I just let my imagination run wild with Arms, because Blizzard has a basic, gutted spec that has infinite directions that it can go in.

[thefuga]

That's where you're wrong. It should scale as well, but it shouldn't do as much damage. What we're looking at is reallocation of damage from tier to tier, where warrior performance on certain type of fights (aoe) is gradually faltering into nothingness while the other (singletarget) is staying where it is; at the rock bottom.

And every talent we have except Avatar, Bloodbath and partly Anger Management are faltering in value at the same pace.

Ravager for singletarget, on the beta, was at a comfortable ~10% of your total damage done, as you would expect from a shiny new level 100 talent. Perhaps a bit on the powerful side, but directly comparable to death knights' Defile. Compare that to now, Ravager is sitting at a measly ~3-4% of your damage, and this is the first tier.
It doesn't gain value from haste, it doesn't gain value from mastery. Come next tier, with more haste and more mastery on gear, not only will Ravager be redundant. Two out of three level 100 talents will be more or less damage damage neutral, just as our level 60 talent tier already is. One out of three level 90 talents will be useless as Arms, as any fight you could Bladestorm you'd lose way too much by not doing it as Fury, or even simply going Fury and spamming Whirlwind/RB since even that scales better than Arms Bladestorm.

Retribution paladins have the same issue with Execution Sentence/Light's Hammer and Hand of Light, but that's one talent row, not both an integral part of their rotation and 3 redundant talent rows.

I'm not wrong, it's my opinion.

[durrtygoodz]

Is heroic vial stronger than scabbard? I keep hearing conflicting views on it.

[Shiroh]

With AM, yes, without AM, no idea.

Reason: With AM you can delay Vial 10-15 seconds and line it up with every Recklessness. Vial every second Scabbard cooldown can be lined up with every Recklessness if you don't use AM.

I don't have Vial yet so didn't get to experience it myself.

[Crisius]

I'm not wrong, it's my opinion.

If you're fine with an ability you spend the majority of your globals on, without synergy with other abilities or other context than pure DPS, doing 1/15th of your total damage, and the talents unquestionably gradually decreasing in value relative to other classes and specs in damage, you've got a weird sense of fulfilment. I won't question it though.

[Deleted]

One question I have, is if they took my idea, would mastery also affect talents like Avatar, Bloodbath, Anger management? I would assume not, since those don't seem to have scaling issues, but I wouldn't want those to then become useless after x amount of mastery is reached.

Avatar and bloodbath don't have scalling issues. They are % modifiers which means whatever dmg your doing at X tier it will make you deal x% more. Anger management its a little trickier. Its not a direct dmg boost as a talent, just makes you use your cds faster during Z period of time. The downside of it is that we are almost right there where we can't spend that much more rage to make it better (mostly fury). Ie to bring our cds back faster. AM should have been a flat cd reduction to start with, ie having reckless at 2min mark.

[thefuga]

If you're fine with an ability you spend the majority of your globals on, without synergy with other abilities or other context than pure DPS, doing 1/15th of your total damage, and the talents unquestionably gradually decreasing in value relative to other classes and specs in damage, you've got a weird sense of fulfilment. I won't question it though.

I'm not fine with it, but i wouldn't be fine with it if even if it was scaling with mastery anyways. I would rather have those insane executes (pre-nerf) with wet noodle WWs than stronger WWs with "weaker" executes. But there's PvP, right? Anyways, a decent baseline Slam scaling with mastery would be waaaay better than WWs scaling with it.

[Archimtiros]

I'm not wrong, it's my opinion.

Except you expressed it as a fact. It "shouldn't".

Defending something as an opinion is a terrible form of argument. In fact you immediately lose the argument because you have no counter claims to back up your assertation than because.

Anything that isn't rooted in scientifically proven fact can be an opinion. However, Crisius post wasn't aimed at doing what he feels should/not be liked, he was pointing out legitimate flaws with the spec.

Everyone has an opinion as to what they do/not like. That is rather immaterial as any designer knows it is impossible to create something that is universally liked. The problem with Arms isn't a matter of opinion though, as Crisius clearly points out, it has actual scaling problems, as the vast majority of our abilities do not interact with stats bonuses. The gap will only continue to widen as gear increases. Already Fury is beginning to beat Arms even in cleave and heavy sustained AoE, two areas that were Arms saving graces.

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Avatar and bloodbath don't have scalling issues. They are % modifiers which means whatever dmg your doing at X tier it will make you deal x% more. Anger management its a little trickier. Its not a direct dmg boost as a talent, just makes you use your cds faster during Z period of time. The downside of it is that we are almost right there where we can't spend that much more rage to make it better (mostly fury). Ie to bring our cds back faster. AM should have been a flat cd reduction to start with, ie having reckless at 2min mark.

It absolutely should. I've been saying this since Alpha.

[Crisius]

If they did indeed change the mastery to affect every ability at one third the conversion rate, and leave Mortal Strike and Execute as is, that would bring our talents and whirlwind directly on-par with the fury counterpart.

Mastery: Weapons Master Requires Warrior (Arms) Requires level 80 Increases all damage dealt with a two-handed weapon by 12%, and further increases the damage of your Mortal Strike, Colossus Smash, and Execute abilities by 31,68%.

This is actually the kind of change I'd expect from 6.1 (or now 6.2). Either that or they'll need to go in and adjust every ability and talent one by one and rather let arms warriors be overpowered at lower itemlevels.

[Archimtiros]

If they did indeed change the mastery to affect every ability at one third the conversion rate, and leave Mortal Strike and Execute as is, that would bring our talents and whirlwind directly on-par with the fury counterpart.

Mastery: Weapons Master Requires Warrior (Arms) Requires level 80 Increases all damage dealt with a two-handed weapon by 12%, and further increases the damage of your Mortal Strike, Colossus Smash, and Execute abilities by 31,68%.

This is actually the kind of change I'd expect from 6.1 (or now 6.2). Either that or they'll need to go in and adjust every ability and talent one by one and rather let arms warriors be overpowered at lower itemlevels.

Better to just give a whole new mastery all together. I always find it funny how they talk about the need to simplify melee rotations and abilities, yet (some) casters have really varied spell effects, rotations and mastery effects.

[Crisius]

Better to just give a whole new mastery all together. I always find it funny how they talk about the need to simplify melee rotations and abilities, yet (some) casters have really varied spell effects, rotations and mastery effects.

Indeed. After the Windwalker fiasco in Mists I sincerely doubt they'd go ahead and give a mid-expansion mastery revamp, though. This would be a nice way of bandaiding it to accommodate to immediate concerns.

Actually, on the topic of casters, I find it funny how they even made our mastery the way it is to begin with. Compare it to demonology mastery. It's the exact same, but with the added baseline damage for talent-scaling. Same thing for destruction.

[Archimtiros]

Indeed. After the Windwalker fiasco in Mists I sincerely doubt they'd go ahead and give a mid-expansion mastery revamp, though. This would be a nice way of bandaiding it to accommodate to immediate concerns.

Actually, on the topic of casters, I find it funny how they even made our mastery the way it is to begin with. Compare it to demonology mastery. It's the exact same, but with the added baseline damage for talent-scaling. Same thing for destruction.

There won't be any mid expansion revamps period. Put that dream to bed right now. The only thing you should be hoping for is 7.0.

Our mastery is actually a direct copy of the Shadow Priest Mastery. Difference of course is that their rotation works wildly different from ours, so theirs isn't quite as hampering.

[thefuga]

Except you expressed it as a fact. It "shouldn't".

Defending something as an opinion is a terrible form of argument. In fact you immediately lose the argument because you have no counter claims to back up your assertation than because.

Anything that isn't rooted in scientifically proven fact can be an opinion. However, Crisius post wasn't aimed at doing what he feels should/not be liked, he was pointing out legitimate flaws with the spec.

Everyone has an opinion as to what they do/not like. That is rather immaterial as any designer knows it is impossible to create something that is universally liked. The problem with Arms isn't a matter of opinion though, as Crisius clearly points out, it has actual scaling problems, as the vast majority of our abilities do not interact with stats bonuses. The gap will only continue to widen as gear increases. Already Fury is beginning to beat Arms even in cleave and heavy sustained AoE, two areas that were Arms saving graces.

It's not an argument and anyone can see that. It has no premises nor a conclusion, it's pretty clear that i wasn't arguing. Besides, most things you all say here (even the things that i agree with, which are most of them) are opinions, not facts.
Also i wasn't talking about the flaws of the spec that Crisius pointed out - which by the way, exist. I was talking about WW scaling with mastery. I don't think it should because it's just a filler, and that's my OPINION, so there's no right or wrong. It's not a fact that WW should be affected by mastery, it's an opinion, that's all i'm saying.
There are ways to fix the spec's flaws without making WW scale with mastery. This would be just another lazy solution.

[Archimtiros]

Simple and efficient is not lazy. In fact its precisely the solution you look for when you aren't ready to put in the time necessary for a complete overhaul, which typically only happens between expansions.

It is an argument, because you argued his statement with your belief. Despite the negative connotations of the word, any expression of point and counter point is in fact an argument.

To finish off the point though, WW scaling with Mastery would have absolutely no impact on it being a filler spell. Your reasoning is that it shouldn't scale because it should be weaker than MS/Execute. That is flawed reasoning because if Whirlwind did scale with mastery, it would still be our weakest attack and remain our go-to filler. Hence there is no downside that pertains to your argument.

[thefuga]

It is an argument, because you argued his statement with your belief. Despite the negative connotations of the word, any expression of point and counter point is in fact an argument.

An argument is a set of statements formed by one or more premises and a conclusion. My phrase wasn't an argument, i was just pointing what i think. A thought is not an argument. As you can see, i didn't make any point to support my opinion and much less conclude anything.
If you want you can read some articles about what an argument is, i won't argue about this in here because this is obviously not the place. Never the less, i don't think scaling WW with mastery is the best or even a good solution. If you guys do, good for you, but i don't. Can i have a different opinion than you or is that wrong too?

[Archimtiros]

An argument is a set of statements formed by one or more premises and a conclusion. My phrase wasn't an argument, i was just pointing what i think. A thought is not an argument. As you can see, i didn't make any point to support my opinion and much less conclude anything.
If you want you can read some articles about what an argument is, i won't argue about this in here because this is obviously not the place. Never the less, i don't think scaling WW with mastery is the best or even a good solution. If you guys do, good for you, but i don't. Can i have a different opinion than you or is that wrong too?

I'm sorry but that is not correct. You are having an argument. The actual primary definition of the word is an exchange of diverging or opposite views. Along with a few other definitions. What you are trying to pass off as the definition is closer to #5 & 6, which is typically referred to as a "one sided argument" and generally only found in things like written documents such as research papers, because there is no second party to give a counter point or opposing view. That, obviously, is not the case here because this is part of an ongoing discussion with multiple parties. Hence, point and counter point.

Just like we are having an argument now. There is also no reason to get snippy, and I'd advise you to learn proper definitions before you try to correct someone else, lest you look more the fool.

You are perfectly fine having a different opinion, but don't get upset when someone points out how your "opinion" is flawed and then call it an opinion to defend its validity. Calling something an opinion doesn't immediately justify its worth or intellectual value.

As for whether or not you think it is the best or even a good solution is immaterial if you don't provide a valid reason for the belief. As I stated in my last post, the only reason you provided was "WW shouldn't hit as hard as MS or Execute"; and even if it scaled with Mastery it wouldn't, thus making your argument flawed.