[6.0 Guide] Arms - The 10 second master

[Archimtiros]

I love it. its the closest its been to vanilla arms in years. Actually feels like its own spec and playstyle now. Does it make sense thru and thru? No.. but due to blizzard catering to real gamers and casuals and pve'ers and pvp'ers all in the same game all while letting the players determine the direction of the game instead of the developers who made it.... most classes dont. Its a farce to the genre as a whole.

That being said, theyve already said no mechanical changes this go around just like they said no flying - dont expect that to change.

what has me heated is it was nerfed when it didnt need it. They could have made the execute nerf pvp only, or they could have re located the damage from execute to something else. Instead they flat out pancake nerfed us heavy and hard in our most damaging/essential ability. Now arms is right where it started before the adjustments. Dead and at the bottom.

Blizzard would make me mad if they werent so stupid. The hilarity > the rage

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"pre-nerf"

and that has to do with the people playing and the class itself. Due to FOTM'ers a ton of people were playing it while not even knowing the darn mastery buff was unbuffed soon thereafter. If you checked "pre-nerf" sims arms was behind on about... 8/10 fights lol.

regardless "post-nerf" arms is so far removed from the equation that anyone playing it has to do so from a deep love of the spec or with complete disregard for output.

I think we're the worst or the second worst melee dps atm. Fury is much higher now. Much much. As it was months ago when they started the process to bring arms up lol. /shakes head.

That nerf was not nearly as bad as a lot of people pretend either. Fury is higher now on Single Target, but Arms is still good at the things it was good at before.

Everyone over reacts on MMO-C, who would have guessed!?

[klepp0906]

The RNG on Arms has a higher ceiling than Fury.

Here's a very shitty paint drawing to show what I mean. This particular bell curve shows the dps that ONE person could do on any attempt for an encounter, with the only variable being normal RNG, not player skill.



50th/90th percentile is also very misleading on warcraftlogs because it depends on the sample size.

Ex: If you have 100 arms and 1000 fury sample for one encounter, the 90th percentile parse for Arms is #10, while the 90th percentile for Fury is the #100.

Id just like to give you kudos for having the common sense (i wont evne go so far as saying "brains" becauase its such a simple concept) to understand/realize this. I'd swear you would think ..... oh nevermind. My poor poor raid leader uses rankings as the end all be all yet fails to understand just how many variables (most FAR beyond player skill and unalterable from the individuals standpoint) go into ranking past a certain point.

So.. TLDR - Kudos! If I know even 1 other person isnt blinded by the number on the surface, i feel that much better about humanity.

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While we're on the subject of talent choices on Maidens - what are you guys using? And ofc, I'm talking efficiency and not meter padding.

We downed Hc Maidens this Sunday, I was on first and third boat (singletarget + cleave) and felt like I had a pretty good time running TfB, DR, BB and Ravager (as I now see the guide states as well, so I might have my answer there), but I'm curious to what you guys might think?

no such thing as meter padding. the damage has to go out to show up on the meters. So long as its not at the expense of an encounter mechanic.. padding doesnt exist. Its somewhere hovering around the word "necro" in regard to forum posts in my list of sheepy-irrelevant words.

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While we're on the subject of talent choices on Maidens - what are you guys using? And ofc, I'm talking efficiency and not meter padding.

We downed Hc Maidens this Sunday, I was on first and third boat (singletarget + cleave) and felt like I had a pretty good time running TfB, DR, BB and Ravager (as I now see the guide states as well, so I might have my answer there), but I'm curious to what you guys might think?

sounds like an awfully overcomplicated strat if your sending different groups of people for different boats imo.

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If you're not planning to go on the ships, going BS + AM is fully viable too.

This. +1 for monk h8. We get nerfed and monks are chugging along /boggle.

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I generally found that bladestorm had too much of a negative interaction with the tier bonuses on IM, especially with AM. BB/Rav feels like the better choice, though the logs seems to be indifferent if you're just looking at highest dps parse

never look at just the highest. Those are purely carries with the help of guilds. reliant on the time of kill (another byproduct out of your control) and some luck among other things. Your rotation can match the top parse 1:1 and even have the same ilvl yet rank 100's of spots lower based on kill time alone.

I always look at a grouping of 10+ in the 95% percentile range. Anything higher your gettingn into fake logs and guild carries much of the time.

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Actually I'm not sure if it's even 155% on live right now. I'd like for someone to doublecheck this.

Regardless, sudden death is such a small part of your total damage as arms that the potential nerf is barely noticeable. Hopefully though, we'll see some more arms buffs in the coming patch. Mortal strike would be nice.

thats being VERY optimistic imo

and yea its a tough call with blizzards refusal to update tooltips and such on time. Seeing as theyre so hard at work on new content n all.

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I hope they are working on a COMPLETE Arms Redesign in 6.2. This just gets more ridiculous with every Hotfix/Patch.

they arent

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Btw did we really go from having 150% base to max of 750% to having 135% base to 405% when it comes to execute. I don't know how to feel about this.. I feel like using execute as the tuning knob is a mistake and a half..

this so much

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Did Iron Maidens yesterday the first time on heroic. Decided to go with arms (i usually play fury, even in fights in which arms is better, because it simply does not matter most of the time and I prefer playing fury) because it seemes like the perfect fight for that.
And it was the perfekt fight, but this is the first time I really realized how fucked up the arms gameplay is. I literally did nothing except pressing whirlwind most of the Time. Yeah ok, i used Bladestorm when it was off and Dragon Roar but for the rest of the time I activated sweeping striked and pressed whirlwind. All. The. Time. This was enough to kill them with ~40k DPS and Place 1 in the dps charts. Of course it is cool to get those numbers und to dominate a fight in that way, but come one - i could have set my keyboard to auto press whirlwind and I wouldn't have lost dps.
This can not be the intended play style!

then A) you did it wrong at the expense of more dps B) you raid w/ some subpar folk and C) just because its different and plays to the style of the class doesnt make it f'd up.

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That nerf was not nearly as bad as a lot of people pretend either. Fury is higher now on Single Target, but Arms is still good at the things it was good at before.

Everyone over reacts on MMO-C, who would have guessed!?

thats debateable. I wont go into the how's and whys. but for a general idea check sims. Rankings are no longer viable unless you want to sort through the dates they were put up due to the massive nubmer changes without a wipe. Ill give you a hint though. Fury is simming higher even on cleave fights.

Fwiw im an arms lover. Kills me to have to play fury for the guild. If you cant play fury, now would be the time to learn how thats for sure.

[Deleted]

But here is the thing: You make it sound way more complicated than it really is.
- You put Rend on one target and then to all others and stay on the last target. If rend is expired here, it is expiered everywhere else. Yeah, you lose 1-2 sec with up rend, but that simple does not matter in the long run. There is no more "tracking requiered".

You do not need to track your Sweeping Strike, just macro them to your WW and you are good to go.

You do not need to monitor your rage, as long as you have rend (with tfb ofc) and/or sweeping strikes up (with that glyph), you will have no problems filling every gcd with Whirlwind. Yeah, of course, sometimes, if really shitty things happen, there are one or two empty GCDs, but that is simply how it works. There is no "rage management" requiered.

The radius of your Whirlwind is huge. It is not hard at all to position yourself right and hit the bosses.

You are implying complexity when there really is none. You are right of course, fury is not "harder" to play, but at least you do not have to press a button 5, 6, 7 times in a row (what you are doing with Whirlwind literally ALL THE TIME).

I never implied complexity whatsoever, maybe that sounded complicated for you personally. I merely said there's more to do when playing arms than fury, because your complaint was to do nothing but whirlwind.

Macroing SS is a terrible idea, it's useless on some fights unless u want to keep changing macros for every boss, furthermore it will only cast exactly when the buff is ending so if you whirlwind just before it ends followe by CS and MS or perhaps followed by a bladestorm etc. your SS won't be up. Also if you make a habbit of that you might forget to use it on Execute. (Assuming you don't keep on spamming whirlwind during that phase :P)

I obviously talked about the cleave radius of Sweeping Strikes not Whirlwind rofl, doh.

[Deleted]

Is anybody using any sort of sound based WA for rend?
Like: Is it possible to have it make a chime when it's got 5 seconds left?

The only time I was really able to play a dot based class was Shadow Priest and I'm not able to adjust that gameplay into a melee at all for some reason.
Haven't been able to play the spec because of this combined with it's slow gameplay but I need to for maidens.

I made a WA just like you described here, but I can't link it in a /CODE field (said a moderator has to approve, I think) and I can't PM you, as my account is too new. I'd be happy to give it to you, but I'm not sure which way would be easiest.. Let me know.

[Deleted]

I still hate that they removed that whole overpower rotation I want my DS glory back! I mean, whirlwind is a POOOOR excuse of a rage burner tbh.

[sjsctt]

I made a WA just like you described here, but I can't link it in a /CODE field (said a moderator has to approve, I think) and I can't PM you, as my account is too new. I'd be happy to give it to you, but I'm not sure which way would be easiest.. Let me know.

Paste bin it and I will link it.

[Archimtiros]

thats debateable. I wont go into the how's and whys. but for a general idea check sims. Rankings are no longer viable unless you want to sort through the dates they were put up due to the massive nubmer changes without a wipe. Ill give you a hint though. Fury is simming higher even on cleave fights.

Fwiw im an arms lover. Kills me to have to play fury for the guild. If you cant play fury, now would be the time to learn how thats for sure.

It's not debatable whatsoever. It's exact, we know exactly what the nerf was, what it did and how much DPS went down by. I already went through one debate on this, I'm not having another and I don't want to write out a wall of text so here is the short version:

You can't expect rankings to get reset every time there is a buff/nerf, Arms is still good (read: generally better than Fury) in the places it was before, you can't compare rankings without looking at them very in depth due to a lot of nuance, user error, RNG, etc; and I'm not sure whats wrong with your sims or what settings you use.

[Artunias]

It's not debatable whatsoever. It's exact, we know exactly what the nerf was, what it did and how much DPS went down by. I already went through one debate on this, I'm not having another and I don't want to write out a wall of text so here is the short version:

You can't expect rankings to get reset every time there is a buff/nerf, Arms is still good (read: generally better than Fury) in the places it was before, you can't compare rankings without looking at them very in depth due to a lot of nuance, user error, RNG, etc; and I'm not sure whats wrong with your sims or what settings you use.

I mean the nerf still hurts quite a bit when you look at all the buffs almost every class got. But I agree that just the nerf to us wasn't THAT bad, but the only fight I feel like it's worth playing arms on now is Maidens. MAYBE, blast furnace. A few other fights could be close, and I don't think you're arguing this exactly, but arms feels in a real bad spot performance wise. Where as fury I feel fairly competitive on more than a few fights.

[nativity]

Just copied my toon into PTR and see how things go .. chances are I gonna go ballistic with the song "Angry Again" buzzing in my ears ..

[Archimtiros]

I mean the nerf still hurts quite a bit when you look at all the buffs almost every class got. But I agree that just the nerf to us wasn't THAT bad, but the only fight I feel like it's worth playing arms on now is Maidens. MAYBE, blast furnace. A few other fights could be close, and I don't think you're arguing this exactly, but arms feels in a real bad spot performance wise. Where as fury I feel fairly competitive on more than a few fights.

Definitely. But people act like the sky has fallen by saying things like FURY IS SO MUCH BETTER THAN ARMS NOW!

I don't know how to break it to them.... Fury was always better than Arms on Single target, and intermittent AoE, and basically anything except 3 cleave fights. Guess which fights Arms is still as good/better than Fury on?

Now don't get me wrong. I firmly believe that design should adhere to one of two types of tenants: Either every class should be equally good at everything (less desirable and even realistically impossible), or specs should have general niches where they perform well.

Arms has a niche, cleave. The problem is that it is [I]too/I] niche; there is barely any actual cleave in the tier. Likewise Fury has a problem, its niche is a talent. Which means anytime you can't or don't use that talent you are effectively screwed. Bladestorm is perhaps the worst thing about our class right now, as odd as that sounds, because its so strong, the developers intentionally limit us from doing anything else.

The other side of the niche argument is that every class needs to adhere to niches, and they don't. There are way too many classes that are good at single target, good at aoe and good at movement. Their only niche is that they don't have one!

[Deleted]

Arms has a niche, cleave. The problem is that it is [I]too/I] niche; there is barely any actual cleave in the tier. Likewise Fury has a problem, its niche is a talent. Which means anytime you can't or don't use that talent you are effectively screwed. Bladestorm is perhaps the worst thing about our class right now, as odd as that sounds, because its so strong, the developers intentionally limit us from doing anything else.

The other side of the niche argument is that every class needs to adhere to niches, and they don't. There are way too many classes that are good at single target, good at aoe and good at movement. Their only niche is that they don't have one!

That's what I don't get as well. Fine nerf arms, but how is it that they don't touch fire mages for example, who excel at pretty much everything, pretty strong single target and insane cleave/aoe, the log mainpage for BRF is flooded with them on almost every fight yet they remain untouched.

I think the system where you do like ~1/3rd of your damage post 20% was a terrible system, staying in dumpster status the whole fight then climbing up the ladder at the end, it was especially frustrating in progress fights, because it looks as if you're not really contributing as much as other players/dragging them down until you reach the end of the boss. So the nerf on execute would make it better in general for Arms in my opinion, as long as they supplemented the damage elsewhere.

[Archimtiros]

That's what I don't get as well. Fine nerf arms, but how is it that they don't touch fire mages for example, who excel at pretty much everything, pretty strong single target and insane cleave/aoe, the log mainpage for BRF is flooded with them on almost every fight yet they remain untouched.

I think the system where you do like ~1/3rd of your damage post 20% was a terrible system, staying in dumpster status the whole fight then climbing up the ladder at the end, it was especially frustrating in progress fights, because it looks as if you're not really contributing as much as other players/dragging them down until you reach the end of the boss. So the nerf on execute would make it better in general for Arms in my opinion, as long as they supplemented the damage elsewhere.

It's because (and this is mostly assumption on my part but based on a long history of watching them do things) they balance for a very low play skill, and Warriors are really easy and forgiving to play. Now I'm not saying other classes are easier or harder and I don't want to have that debate, but you can't avoid the fact that you can screw up left and right and still play Warrior pretty effectively. It also really doesn't help that they balance us around the ability to Bladestorm things, but like to forget that we don't get to do that on every fight.

It's also unfortunate that the actual class designers are over burdened. The few that there are can't possibly be expected to know the ins and outs of every single class the way many of us do, because they are responsible for all 35 specs. So they make sure things work mechanically, but often overlook the nuance in rotations. This is why we end up with things like multiple Execute bugs, misaligned CDs (45s Siegebreaker has no place in a rotation designed on a 20s base), etc. Often they have a basic idea of what rotation a spec should use, but its players like WarriorSarri, Collision and I who do the leg work and actually create the nuanced rotations, which increase performance beyond what the developers initially expected. This has to be taken into account when balancing as well. They have class testers which give their own feedback, but I can't say how much of that is actually acted upon.

Time and again I've said that they need better class representation, much like they have community reps for specific games and forums, they should have specific class reps. Unfortunately this was tried and horribly mismanaged way back in the early days of WoW and now is a taboo concept because of it, but it would go far to helping both players and developers understand what each other wants and how to create it. There are a few select mediums which are used to give direct feedback, but they are very limited and still I feel like the actual designers do too much. It's difficult to honestly expect them to not only balance but also design 35 different specs and all of them be gold. Ideally I'd separate the two, get more user driven design concepts (either internally or externally), and let the class designers worry more about making things work than what they do; but I don't make those decisions.

In the end though, WoW will always cater to the casual crowd, and that's the reason we deal with many of the things that upset the more hardcore players. It's simple numbers, there are more of them than there are of us, and keeping them happy increases revenue for the game. Blizzard makes awesome games but it is first and foremost a business and will always take whatever steps it can (within reason) to make money because money makes more games.

It is unfortunate that they don't care more about high end balance sure, but they know that higher end guilds will do what they have to to succeed, recruiting, rerolling, swapping in and out classes as needed, so total balance isn't that important, they still have the tools to win.

Still I can't agree with the philosophy. Thing is... most casuals don't care about balance. They don't even recognize it because they don't run damage meters, they don't log, they don't analyze performance. They only care that they hit pew pew on their Mage and fireballs came out and that's cool. It's the hardcore crowd that love numbers, so they should be the ones catered to. In short: Casual players care about what they do, quests, dungeons, content, while Hardcore players care about how they do it.

I would however, tell people not to worry about it. I know I bitch all the time and I honestly kind of hate the class right now, but I still love it too. People live in the moment a lot and forget that balance happens. Last tier we were gods, right now we suck. I'd like it if we could find a good middle ground, but I also know that our time will come again.

[Deleted]

Paste bin it and I will link it.

Thanks!

Pastebin com /07k3S5XN

[reakwon]

I also know that our time will come again.

praise the age of the warrior

[Deleted]

It's because (and this is mostly assumption on my part but based on a long history of watching them do things) they balance for a very low play skill, and Warriors are really easy and forgiving to play. Now I'm not saying other classes are easier or harder and I don't want to have that debate, but you can't avoid the fact that you can screw up left and right and still play Warrior pretty effectively. It also really doesn't help that they balance us around the ability to Bladestorm things, but like to forget that we don't get to do that on every fight.

Still I can't agree with the philosophy. Thing is... most casuals don't care about balance. They don't even recognize it because they don't run damage meters, they don't log, they don't analyze performance. They only care that they hit pew pew on their Mage and fireballs came out and that's cool. It's the hardcore crowd that love numbers, so they should be the ones catered to. In short: Casual players care about what they do, quests, dungeons, content, while Hardcore players care about how they do it.

Last tier we were gods, right now we suck. I'd like it if we could find a good middle ground, but I also know that our time will come again.

Yeah I understand that, Ghostcrawler's interview comes to mind "it's really refreshing to work on a game where I don't have to worry whether someone's grandmother can pick it up or not." I think the same regarding that case, as well, but I absolutely don't agree with it. If you balance towards the optimal way the specs are played (and lets be honest here there aren't dot snapshotting and advanced stuff like that for any class anymore, fire combustion isn't that advanced either if you ask me, don't even have to do trixtery things with alter time anymore) that will encourage people to try and improve themselves, this way the average player does decent damage and skilled players are hitting the roof.

Also going back to what you said on the topic of casuals don't care about balance, I agree and this is also why I don't get they balance towards the "bad" player, the bad player doesn't care anyway :P

I don't want to be a god, but I certainly don't want to be beaten by a hunter who is a lot less skilled than me, it's really annoying when you are in the 90% perncentile and the derping class above you is like 65% and still beating you by a decent margin.

[Deleted]

It's really annoying when you are in the 90% percentile and the derping class above you is like 65% and still beating you by a decent margin.

(c) Bekro 2015

The smartest thing to do right now will probably be to drop sub and wait for 6.2. Or level a mage/ balance druid/ warlock.
But maybe after killing mythic Blackhand at least once? Though who would want to drag a ballast:

Midwinter's Blackhand kill:

DPS (Subtlety) Slashima 644.81 (alt of Dasima 690.44)

It seems entered BRF as 644.81 and got a week worth of gear ( up to 687 ). And didn't log out until after the kill?

[Deleted]

I'd like it if we could find a good middle ground, but I also know that our time will come again.

My real gripe about the spec, and the class by extent, is that it's not fun.

I played it at its worst in both PvE (as a tank in ICC) and in PvP (in Cataclysm), and I was able to pull through regardless due to the fun I was able to get from mechanics alone.
Our time may very well be coming again. But in this term I don't think I ever had this little fun playing the class. It's not compelling, it doesn't bring me to try and exploit every nook and cranny of each and every mechanic because there's none left for me to search and learn.

Slam was really the icing on the cake: it's punishing to try and combo it with anything because with the GCD you can't realistically fit anything in a 0.5 second debuff timer, a debuff forced on the ability since the beta workarounds - this I remember - on the buff that was before.
For me, and for somebody else I hope, else it's just a rhetorical exercise, the game is no longer fun because the class I enjoyed is no longer fun.

Sorry for the rant, this digression has little to nothing to do with the discussion at hand.

[Deleted]

(c) Bekro 2015

The smartest thing to do right now will probably be to drop sub and wait for 6.2. Or level a mage/ balance druid/ warlock.
But maybe after killing mythic Blackhand at least once? Though who would want to drag a ballast.

Haha, yep.. I'm in a bit more of a casual guild (we're just starting mythic progress this week on BRF) so I'm more in it for the fun of it, have 5 IRL friends in the guild, so I'm still having fun, but it's paining to see that one guy who obviously sucks, and is always like 10-15th in dps is now crushing you on damage hehe. Will have to suck it up and wait for a little push I suppose or I could just level my hunter and continue using Collision's advanced tactics while running around. Jokes aside though, the pain about rerolling is not the leveling it's the gearing up allover again

[Ciemna]

But maybe after killing mythic Blackhand at least once? Though who would want to drag a ballast:

Midwinter's Blackhand kill:

DPS (Subtlety) Slashima 644.81 (alt of Dasima 690.44)

He's 687 on his rogue - probably had glaives on for a killshot or something.

[Artunias]

I think my biggest complaint is I feel more like a burden on my raid than a boost. Yes there are a select few fights we do really well on, but even then if it's not Thogar we're just not that amazing right now. We have shitty defensive and shitty self healing. Almost every other class just gets all these heals and what not at basically zero detriment to their dps. Our heals blow, defensive stance hurts your dps quite a bit, we have the worst move speed of any class.

It's not like you can't kill bosses with warriors, but it just feels like I would offer so much more to the raid as a number of other classes.