[6.0 Guide] Arms - The 10 second master

[Archimtiros]

Get yourself this one if you really want a recomendation: http://www.mhprofessional.com/produc...sbn=0071777539
And a STATEMENT is PART of an argument, but a statement alone is not an argument. See? PART OF.

Except you used the statement as a counter point to another's suggestion, hence starting the argument, then used it again when I debunked your opinions worth. I don't need a logic textbook, its plain as day, you used your statement as a counter point to another claim. That is an argument. Period. No if's and's or butt's!

Even if there hadn't been any back and forth and you made a statement, completely unbidden by any previous statement; the form of your sentence "Whirlwind shouldn't hit as hard as MS or Execute because it is a filler" is a form of an argument. A completely one-sided argument, but it is an argument nonetheless because you are making a claim of substantiation. THAT is your argument!

LOGIC how does it work!?

[Kumqatninja]

I'm really digging your new sig Archi. It looks sweet! What font is that?

[Malvanis]

I just don't appreciate the massive designflaw in letting, quote; "Talents being a major part of your rotational choices", when talents are gradually, and massively decreasing in value because our best stat directly opposes said statement. Did a sim with mastery > crit itemisation with an override to 750 itemlevel (pretty reasonable for end of next tier), and Ravager is sitting at 2.6% of overall damage. Storm Bolt is 2%. Whirlwind is 6.1%. It's depressing.

Would they not just buff talents ap scaling at that point and leave the major changes for 7.0? Or would that mess with the low ilvs?

[Archimtiros]

I'm really digging your new sig Archi. It looks sweet! What font is that?

Thanks. I have no idea, Stoic made it. He got disgruntled from looking at my old out of date shit for too long.

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Would they not just buff talents ap scaling at that point and leave the major changes for 7.0? Or would that mess with the low ilvs?

They could just buff talents AP scaling. In fact Fury needs it just as much as Arms does, the percentages are just skewed more with Arms because of how much Execute and MS end up doing.

Having talents scale with Mastery is an interesting idea though. I'm not sure if it's strictly necessary but definitely better than what Arms is dealing with now. Ideally I'd like to see Arms Mastery move completely away from flat damage, Fury already has that covered. I'd like to see something more like the multistrike proc we had previously (though I realize that is largely redundant now, with multistrike), some sort of Bleed debuff similar to Ignite perhaps?

Really though, I've always thought a Mastery that caused all attacks to ignore a percentage of armor would be really neat, basically working like ArP but more controllable. I feel like it would be very thematic for Warriors, seeing as all of their damage is physical anyways. Unfortunately the worth of this kind of ability is heavily reduced by Colossus Smash.

[nativity]

Thanks. I have no idea, Stoic made it. He got disgruntled from looking at my old out of date shit for too long.

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They could just buff talents AP scaling. In fact Fury needs it just as much as Arms does, the percentages are just skewed more with Arms because of how much Execute and MS end up doing.

Having talents scale with Mastery is an interesting idea though. I'm not sure if it's strictly necessary but definitely better than what Arms is dealing with now. Ideally I'd like to see Arms Mastery move completely away from flat damage, Fury already has that covered. I'd like to see something more like the multistrike proc we had previously (though I realize that is largely redundant now, with multistrike), some sort of Bleed debuff similar to Ignite perhaps?

Really though, I've always thought a Mastery that caused all attacks to ignore a percentage of armor would be really neat, basically working like ArP but more controllable. I feel like it would be very thematic for Warriors, seeing as all of their damage is physical anyways. Unfortunately the worth of this kind of ability is heavily reduced by Colossus Smash.

Mastery as a % chance to reset CD of CS will be nice

[Archimtiros]

Mastery as a % chance to reset CD of CS will be nice

Unfortunately that doesn't do a whole lot for our AoE either, and it'd create strange breakpoints (due to swing timers, weapon attack speed, natural CS cooldown, etc), having a flexible chance like that really isn't as good idea as it sounds for CS reset. I'd rather just see it baseline, though I have a feeling we'll be seeing it again.

[Kumqatninja]

Thanks. I have no idea, Stoic made it. He got disgruntled from looking at my old out of date shit for too long.

Oh cool. I didn't realize, on top of his writing ability, he had a skill in logo design. I bet when he pops his head in next, he can tell us the font.

Having talents scale with Mastery is an interesting idea though. I'm not sure if it's strictly necessary but definitely better than what Arms is dealing with now. Ideally I'd like to see Arms Mastery move completely away from flat damage, Fury already has that covered. I'd like to see something more like the multistrike proc we had previously (though I realize that is largely redundant now, with multistrike), some sort of Bleed debuff similar to Ignite perhaps?

I could get behind this. It seems like something along those lines would benefit both st and aoe. Having a mastery that is poor to no value in aoe, really kind of defeats the whole simplify design philosophy Blizzard aimed for this expansion. It's counter intuitive and confusing for new players, to have to carry 3-4 gear sets depending on the amount of targets. You and Sarri talked a good deal about this in the Finalboss interview. (If anyone hasn't seen it, go watch it. Archi, Dasima, and Sarri did a great job.)

Really though, I've always thought a Mastery that caused all attacks to ignore a percentage of armor would be really neat, basically working like ArP but more controllable. I feel like it would be very thematic for Warriors, seeing as all of their damage is physical anyways. Unfortunately the worth of this kind of ability is heavily reduced by Colossus Smash.

They could always give it to Glad!

[BadTastingPudding]

I personally would love to see active rage gen back in the game. If they want to make our primary mechanic building and throttling our rage they should give us the opportunity to meaningfully interact with it more than just sitting around watching your character auto attack for a few gcds, so if they gave back mortal strike and something small like how berserker rage gave you 10 rage (obviously forego the enrage aspect) just so we have something else to play with and then fix up the slam talent maybe so stacks last a bit longer and fix the damage so now you have an effective high damage rage dump ability and ww for when you need to be more conservative, so you'd only start dropping slams in when you know your ms is coming off cd or you've pooled enough rage to stack it enough and make it worthwhile, like drop 2 stack slams ensuring you have a mortal strike off cd to use between them so you don't rage starve and berserker rage as an emergency rage boost. Also I like just having a no resource ability I can use whenever its off CD. Obviously you'd mediate the damage of ms and slam so you can shift some of the damage off ms and obviously make sure talent scaling is in line and that the extra rage doesn't blow our damage up too much. Just thinking out loud though of course so feel free to tell me what's up.

[Archimtiros]

I think the ideal Arms design has free GCDs, not an over abundance, but enough that you won't feel bad letting GCDs go. You'd use these free GCDs to do things like spread Rend or just pool rage in preparation for the next Colossus Smash. You'd use proc CS resets to inject a bit of variance and randomness in your play. I'd keep the chance high enough to be engaging, similar to 5.4 Arms, where the reset would proc approximately every 10-15s.


Procs

Now sure, Sudden Death is a proc, or why not set a "reset Mortal Strike" proc instead? Those are all well and fine, but ultimately have very little influence on the rotation. You get a good proc, you use it, you wait for the next one. Ultimately it becomes rather bland. A Colossus Smash proc forces you to plan your rotation around it and try not to overspend. Thus instead of GCDs being the limiting factor on DPS, it would be rage. Over spending would mean you'd starve yourself if CS procced and be unable to get a good burst in. Ideally, you'd end up spending GCDs only when above X rage.

If this sounds similar to the current Arms design, that's because it is. The design isn't bad by nature, it's just lacking variance and depth to keep it interesting. It needs procs to keep it engaging.


What about AoE?

Someone is about to ask, "wait, what do CS resets do for AoE?". Well in the current model they really don't, but that model should change.

Whirlwind for Arms is silly. Not because I don't like to spin to win. Not because it doesn't feel meaty enough, not because I like Slam or Overpower better, but three other reasons instead:
1) One button spam AoE rotations are stupid.
2) Fury already has that corner, and does it better.
3) Arms has a niche with Sweeping Strikes. Time to use it.

Rogues, Hunters, Warlocks, Mages; every class that has more than one same roll DPS spec has been complaining for years that their specs aren't differen't enough. That using the same tired old abilities is boring and they need to feel and play different. I agree wholeheartedly.

Arms has Sweeping Strikes. It doesn't need any more AoE in its toolkit because it's built in! It's thematic, a big two handed weapon swinging in wide arcs cutting down everything around it; it's simple, you simply maintain your normal single target rotation (modified as necessary via talents), and it works! I don't think it's a huge stretch if it works for Combat Rogues too. Two out of 35 specs that have built-in multitarget cleave isn't an abundance by any means. And it separates Fury from Arms further.

I propose that Sweeping Strikes be given the Bladeflurry treatment.

• Allow it to hit all targets within X yards for Y% damage. Modify the damage and resource cost accordingly.

I would probably suggest it work slightly different from Bladeflurry though, instead of having a resource hamper and all hits do full damage. I would keep it similar to current design and have the cleave hits take a damage penalty so as not to fully hamper that single target rotation. Why?


Because Arms attack should hit hard

Because there are less of them. Remove the silly damage sources like "enhance rend" and whirlwind spam. Remove the ridiculous Mastery and nuclear Execute damage (more on this later). Roll that damage into Arms passive Seasoned Soldier. This redistributes the power curve equally, instead of baking all of our damage into 2 abilities, and affects talents; similarly to what Enrage does for Fury.


And Execute?

I'm sorry, I know people like that huge hit and it's fun to see; but it's absolutely terrible design. In PvP it essentially means that the player has 80% of his health bar, and in PvE it means the Warrior is useless until 20%, if the boss even has an execute phase! And the consumes extra rage mechanic is just plain clunky.

Execute doesn't need to be a nuclear bomb to be good for us. It should definitely be our most powerful hit, but reasonably so. The Warrior focuses on killing the enemy and drops everything in favor of the stronger attack. The Alpha Arms revamp had the perfect mechanic:

• Sub 20%, double(ish) rage generation to allow Execute to be spammed.

It becomes our priority. We'll still use CS, we'll still use Sweeping Strikes, we'll still use Rend (for long lived targets); but most filler attacks will fall to the wayside, and instead of letting GCDs go, we'll be filling them with Execute, pausing only slightly for Colossus Smash. This creates the same bursty feeling at 20%, without making it ridiculous. We don't one shot people, instead we go into a maniac rage and start Executing everything in sight (keep in mind Sweeping Strikes cleave, so its an AoE boost as well) until they are all dead. Like our own personal Bloodlust.


Filling in the Rotation

Obviously if we are going to remove Whirlwind we need to fill in the rotation. I think Rend should stay. It's not a terribly imaginative ability, but I kind of like the difference it creates between Arms and Fury. I don't, however, think we should auto spread it. It just isn't needed if Arms is going to have spare GCDs anyways and the pandemic effect works in our favor already. At most, it could replace a talent.

• I'd replace Whirlwind with a basic filler attack. Call the ability Slam or Overpower, I don't really have a preference.

Moderate rage cost/moderate damage. Not enough to be spammed, but enough to put pressure and fill CS globals without feeling like wasting an ability. The idea is to have an ability to press when nothing is going on, but CS resets giving us a reason not to press it when we don't need to. Allow the Slam talent to give the ability extra interaction if specced, even during Execute range (stat buff? Increase damage of your next Execute by %?). Hell just call the base ability Slam, and then have the talent turn it into Overpower for flavor!

Supplementary suggestion:

• Allow Execute to be used >20% at a heavy rage cost.

Going back to Alpha Arms, I think it was a really interesting concept and gave some unique interactions with planning around Colossus Smash. Only three reasons I don't like it:
1) It could have definite PvP implications.
2) Sudden Death would have to be changed to allow for it. Perhaps instead of making the ability free, it would only half the rage cost?
3) I'm just not sure the rotation would really need another button.

The third might sound strange to some people, but I don't think we need a lot of buttons. Arms would have the same amount of buttons as it does now and while it does mean the rotation would boil down to only a few most often pressed buttons (Mortal Strike, Slam), keep in mind that you'd be using Colossus Smash more often as well, so I think there would be enough variance to get by.

If it did go in, rage generation and damage would have to be tweaked so as to not allow the player to simply pool up and spam Execute. The other buttons should still be worth pressing on their own right, but Execute would still be used once every 10s or so. Alpha Arms did this with over the top rage generation, so that we were filling GCDs with Slam but were "forced" to use Execute to keep from capping. Without that interaction, I'm not sure how well it would work. I'll have to come back to this one.


Mastery
Finally. As I mentioned earlier. Our current Mastery is dumb and way too top heavy. A lot of ideas have been thrown around and I'm not really sure what I like best. I kind of feel like a Bleed based mastery, similar to Ignite would be really interesting. I think Bloodbath would actually make an amazing Mastery.

Something that came to mind was what if it worked but only off of certain attacks? Example would be a bleeding ignite effect that only rolls damage from Mortal Strike or Execute. This would work really well with the idea of using Execute >20% and rolling the Mastery onto multiple targets without every attack doing it.

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Obviously this is a overview draft. I purposefully left open ends, because I know it could use tweaking. Still I think it sets the stage for an easy revamp of Arms that would retain the "slow & heavy" feel, but fix the flaws the spec currently has. There is a lot to say on the subject of talent improvements as well, but that should probably be saved for its own post due to length.

Feel free to chime in, but please try to add more than "I think X should be in because I like X". I'd like to see some feedback as to why you think a certain ability or interaction would be good for the build. I also know this will probably get buried within a day, so if enough people really think it's worth discussing, I'll make a new thread.

[Headscutter]

This "Mastery"/class modifications need a separate thread where we can all go in, discuss and suggest ideas (just my personal opinion).

It's really sad to see the current Mastery for Arms, it's total garbage imo. It would be nice to work as "Ignite" bleed damage like you are stating.

Now about our rotation, damn it sucks. The fact that we have to use WW for single target is just meh.

[Crisius]

Would they not just buff talents ap scaling at that point and leave the major changes for 7.0? Or would that mess with the low ilvs?

Considering they'd have to double the ap scaling, if not more, yes. It would make arms insanely overpowered for challenge modes, for example.

[Deleted]

I enjoy pointing out the idiocy in others.

Oh god, I have this exact same thing and it's not even enjoyment for me, it's more like an urge, like when I see something like that I HAVE to point out how effing dumb that is.


Anyways great suggestion on the Arms "Re-vamp" idea. I think it would really work well as you have suggested; as long as we have the procs and just a little bit of thought process going into, what if my CS procs next, and make you use rage a bit more wisely, having empty globals wouldn't have an adverse effect whatsoever. I used to enjoy my feral quite a lot in MoP, and you have some empty GCDs on that energy mechanic as well (since you need to pool energy to get full benefit of DoC etc.) and it really didn't feel like I was just sitting doing nothing, because it was actively making you think about what you would do next, pooling energy and using DoC etc. was all very engaging. I feel like, the problem with arms is you are waiting but you are doing nothing in the meantime, you're not even planning your next move, you're just sitting there doing absolutely nothing, no thinking/planning on what's ahead.

[Sethanor]

if arms would get more focused around dots (which i suggested since beta), there should be some interaction between the dots and at least one skill (MS maybe)...

like "MS multistrikes trigger a rend-tick equal to a rend's final tick" or ANYTHING that makes some interaction between bleeds and skills...

also with a more bleed-based spec, CS should probably be changed to enhance bleeds instead of ignore armor (since bleed ignore armor anyway).

soooo many awesome possibilities ... and they went for the ONE that was destined to fail xD

[Archimtiros]

if arms would get more focused around dots (which i suggested since beta), there should be some interaction between the dots and at least one skill (MS maybe)...

like "MS multistrikes trigger a rend-tick equal to a rend's final tick" or ANYTHING that makes some interaction between bleeds and skills...

also with a more bleed-based spec, CS should probably be changed to enhance bleeds instead of ignore armor (since bleed ignore armor anyway).

soooo many awesome possibilities ... and they went for the ONE that was destined to fail xD

Interesting concept but unlikely for two reasons:

1) Feral already controls this niche (and honestly, it doesn't work out very well for them either half the time!)

2) It doesn't really fit the theme of an Arms Warrior.

Now I know that is a funny thing to say, and kind of a weak excuse, but hear it out. Theme is very subjective, and it's easy to explain away a sensible approach to anything. That said, I do think Arms works well with some sort of dot, it's fitting for a big "hulk smash" type spec to leave some kind of lasting hurt on an opponent, which is why I think a bleed style Mastery might be neat. The difference of course is that the bleed is the secondary effect from the punishing hits, instead of the other way around.

That said, I don't think the spec should be centered around it like a Feral Druid is. Once you do that, like your CS change for example, you shift the concept of the Warrior away from this armored knight two-handing a giant sword, that breaks through his opponents defenses (CS) and cleaves through his opponents with wide sweeping swings (sweepingstrikes); into a Warrior who cuts up his opponent, "death by a thousand papercuts" style, steps back and watches him slowly bleed out.

Fun sounding concept? Hell yes! But not really quite what I would associate with an Arms Warrior. If anything, it may be a bit closer to a vision for Fury.

Again, not that your idea is bad and as I said before, good writing can justify anything, I just don't see it very fitting with the Arms theme.

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Oh god, I have this exact same thing and it's not even enjoyment for me, it's more like an urge, like when I see something like that I HAVE to point out how effing dumb that is.


Anyways great suggestion on the Arms "Re-vamp" idea. I think it would really work well as you have suggested; as long as we have the procs and just a little bit of thought process going into, what if my CS procs next, and make you use rage a bit more wisely, having empty globals wouldn't have an adverse effect whatsoever. I used to enjoy my feral quite a lot in MoP, and you have some empty GCDs on that energy mechanic as well (since you need to pool energy to get full benefit of DoC etc.) and it really didn't feel like I was just sitting doing nothing, because it was actively making you think about what you would do next, pooling energy and using DoC etc. was all very engaging. I feel like, the problem with arms is you are waiting but you are doing nothing in the meantime, you're not even planning your next move, you're just sitting there doing absolutely nothing, no thinking/planning on what's ahead.

Agreed. I used this same argument back during Beta against the slow Arms playstyle.

Downtime for no reason is worthless, unengaging and simply not fun. Being unable to press buttons when you want to simply because you are resource limited just doesn't feel good.

Downtime that serves a purpose however, allowing the player to choose not to fill GCDs on purpose, such as to pool for Colossus Smash or fish for some sort of proc, is very effective. You are putting the burden on the player without actually limiting them. End result is the same, lost GCDs, but the key difference is that the player feels in charge of it; not the resource system. Putting a reason behind the rhyme so to speak.

5.4 Fury was very good at this. The spec didn't have enough resources to spam Heroic Strike endlessly (at least not until very BiS gear), and the resource system did limit that, but instead of simply pressing Heroic Strike whenever the player had the rage, Colossus Smash gave them a good reason not to press the button. It's a subtle difference, and players who simply don't care can feel free to go about it however they want, but for the rest of us, it makes the rotation feel much more complete when you give a reason for using buttons when you do outside of "because it does damage".

[Razorrect]

I really like your suggestions, Archi, and I'm sad to see you are not the warrior class designer for Blizzard (there should be a warrior class designer!).

[Artunias]

What's even more sad is during the beta there had to have been at least 15-20 different ideas posted. All pretty similarly thought out and as explained as Arch's posts here. And even the WORST of those ideas, were sounding better than what we have.

It's just mind blowing how we've ended up with this version of Arms.

[nativity]

What's even more sad is during the beta there had to have been at least 15-20 different ideas posted. All pretty similarly thought out and as explained as Arch's posts here. And even the WORST of those ideas, were sounding better than what we have.

It's just mind blowing how we've ended up with this version of Arms.

That will remain as the greatest mystery in the history of WOW Warrior Design on why did the design went south from Alpha to Beta .. I wonder what's in store for 6.2 ?? will it be like another 6.1 with More Garrison Updates ?

[Sethanor]

That will remain as the greatest mystery in the history of WOW Warrior Design on why did the design went south from Alpha to Beta .. I wonder what's in store for 6.2 ?? will it be like another 6.1 with More Garrison Updates ?

well IF there would actually be some good garrison upgrades, that would be something xD ... all 6.1 really brought us was the selfie-cam and twitter ... yay us -.-

@Archi:
my bleed idea was just something that sprung to mind while reinstalling some servers, so its far away from a concept or anything, but you are right, it wouldnt fit the CURRENT arms discription... but neither does the ballerina shit we have right now in my opinion.

in any case: mastery needs to change ... seeing it go towards more dot/bleed stuff would be a welcome change of scenerie

i also hope they change SS at least a bit towards QoL like: runtime 15 secs, cd 10 secs ... so you can "clip" it a bit and dont have to hammer the button, just to make sure the next MS that comes off cd at the exact same time actually benefits from the buff
or you know... just make it toggle-able cause the reduced cleave-dmg would actually be penalty enough

[Archimtiros]

well IF there would actually be some good garrison upgrades, that would be something xD ... all 6.1 really brought us was the selfie-cam and twitter ... yay us -.-

@Archi:
my bleed idea was just something that sprung to mind while reinstalling some servers, so its far away from a concept or anything, but you are right, it wouldnt fit the CURRENT arms discription... but neither does the ballerina shit we have right now in my opinion.

in any case: mastery needs to change ... seeing it go towards more dot/bleed stuff would be a welcome change of scenerie

i also hope they change SS at least a bit towards QoL like: runtime 15 secs, cd 10 secs ... so you can "clip" it a bit and dont have to hammer the button, just to make sure the next MS that comes off cd at the exact same time actually benefits from the buff
or you know... just make it toggle-able cause the reduced cleave-dmg would actually be penalty enough

Yeah. Like I said, I don't mean to try and shit on your idea. It is an interesting idea. I just don't think it quite fits and moves away from the standard.

Complete overhauls rarely happen, and there are so many variables to consider; between balancing aspects and general design philosophy of the class/spec/game. Because of that, I try to tailor my suggestions around previously existing examples.

I know it would be easy to redesign something from the ground up, make massive sweeping changes. They might be awesome... or the might fall flat. I feel like a better way to suggest change is to try for smaller, targeted changes that accomplish the intent without changing the conceptual design. That of course doesn't mean it's the only way. Sometimes wildly different ideas can be inspirational, if nothing else.

[Headscutter]

i also hope they change SS at least a bit towards QoL like: runtime 15 secs, cd 10 secs ... so you can "clip" it a bit and dont have to hammer the button, just to make sure the next MS that comes off cd at the exact same time actually benefits from the buff
or you know... just make it toggle-able cause the reduced cleave-dmg would actually be penalty enough

This would actually be really useful, amazing. The only problem is that they will need to fix "You already have a more powerful active spell".