Arms Legion Discussion

[Kitaen]

1. Legendary gutting is quite irrelevant, most of us don't have the legendaries and we're still able to be competitive when not compared with Shadow Priests. The 2 legendaries were so far ahead that it was quite unfair on Warriors without them, they are still the best Legendaries and Warriors with them will still be super competitive.

2. People have been crying for non-FR setups to be buffed, and Blizzard has done just that. FR isn't all that special anymore and is mainly just used because it's the only talent on that row that allows you to turn excess rage into effective damage.

Arms didn't need a damage buff, it scales well with gear and other specs are getting nerfed. What Arms needed was options to allow people to play other builds and do decent dps, these changes do actually allow that and give the spec a lot more situational flexibility. Not only that but Titanic Might will now have more viable on cleave, especially when combined with sweeping strikes and some careful rage management to make up for the lack of Deadly Calm.

what they should have done is remove FR and straight up buff MS/execute damage to compensate for it and add in a 3rd viable talent to pick from. and i actually love to play with FR because i enjoy the APM heavy playstyle it offers.
and then again, most these buffs will change absolutely nothing at all. titanic might will not be viable, rend is still a joke dps wise, fervor of battle was never a good talent to begin with for arms, the trauma buff is a freaking insult.

[Mateng]

what they should have done is remove FR and straight up buff MS/execute damage to compensate for it and add in a 3rd viable talent to pick from. and i actually love to play with FR because i enjoy the APM heavy playstyle it offers.
and then again, most these buffs will change absolutely nothing at all. titanic might will not be viable, rend is still a joke dps wise, fervor of battle was never a good talent to begin with for arms, the trauma buff is a freaking insult.

Apm heavy playstyle? Kek

[Kitaen]

what would you call it?

[Bigbazz]

what they should have done is remove FR and straight up buff MS/execute damage to compensate for it and add in a 3rd viable talent to pick from. and i actually love to play with FR because i enjoy the APM heavy playstyle it offers.
and then again, most these buffs will change absolutely nothing at all. titanic might will not be viable, rend is still a joke dps wise, fervor of battle was never a good talent to begin with for arms, the trauma buff is a freaking insult.

You've come to these conclusions based on no ingame testing, no simulation testing, nothing. I think you're just looking to be insulted rather than looking at this from a practical and objective standpoint. You say FOB was never a good talent and yet right until the last moment of beta people were arguing about how mad they were that it was the best talent because they didn't want to use WW, this is after it was nerfed because Blizzard actually thought the same thing, that it was gonna be the best talent.

Of course FOB didn't turn out to be the best talent, and un-nerfed it would not have been the best talent because we had 50% FR. And Titanic Might, it was already considered to be situationally a decent talent for sustained cleave (just no such fights in EN/TOV), high uptime on CS debuff on multiple targets. It's now literally a 24 second uptime CS debuff with no drawbacks competing against deadly calm, it's an interesting option to have.

Like what you need to realise is that none of these talent changes have to make them the "best", they just had to make them better, more attractive and that is exactly what they have done. What are you not pleased unless the talent changes just introduces a brand new cookie cutter by overcompensating on talent buffs?

As for FR, I like off-gcd gameplay and that's why I like playing Warrior, i'd be annoyed if they removed FR, at least these talent changes can quieten down the LFR hero crybabies who ask for FR to be removed because they can't play it.

[Kitaen]

You've come to these conclusions based on no ingame testing, no simulation testing, nothing. I think you're just looking to be insulted rather than looking at this from a practical and objective standpoint. You say FOB was never a good talent and yet right until the last moment of beta people were arguing about how mad they were that it was the best talent because they didn't want to use WW, this is after it was nerfed because Blizzard actually thought the same thing, that it was gonna be the best talent.

Of course FOB didn't turn out to be the best talent, and un-nerfed it would not have been the best talent because we had 50% FR. And Titanic Might, it was already considered to be situationally a decent talent for sustained cleave (just no such fights in EN/TOV), high uptime on CS debuff on multiple targets. It's now literally a 24 second uptime CS debuff with no drawbacks competing against deadly calm, it's an interesting option to have.

Like what you need to realise is that none of these talent changes have to make them the "best", they just had to make them better, more attractive and that is exactly what they have done. What are you not pleased unless the talent changes just introduces a brand new cookie cutter by overcompensating on talent buffs?

As for FR, I like off-gcd gameplay and that's why I like playing Warrior, i'd be annoyed if they removed FR, at least these talent changes can quieten down the LFR hero crybabies who ask for FR to be removed because they can't play it.

what you need to realise is that buffing talents and still not beeing on par means the same as having done nothing at all. there is no need in buffing things that will not get used anyway. either you buff a talent so it will offer a real choice compared to another one or you nerf the cookiecutter talent. they did well with sweeping strikes but the other talent choices are still not on par. FOB still remains bad while titanic might is such a niche talent in most cases that will not get picked either. same goes for trauma, i don't need a sim or calculator to tell you that this talent is still a mess.
ravager MIGHT see some play in m+, but i highly doubt that aswell considering our lvl100 talent is the bread and butter of our specc

and on the FR point: i would prefer it beeing removed from the talent tree and made baseline rather than removed at all.

p.s: why did we never get a mortal combo like talent for colossus smash? that would certainly smoothen any RNG related issues with CS uptime

[Archimtiros]

Regarding the Arms PTR changes:

Rend is still an underwhelming talent which has no interaction with the spec aside from some passive damage.

Ravager is likewise underwhelming. While there's something to be said for being able to deal passive AoE damage while also using your GCD, it doesn't provide near the consistent increase that Anger Management provides, especially since it replaces Bladestorm.

Sweeping Strikes is an interesting change. Difficult to justify over Dauntless unless there are exactly 2 (now three) targets, but it's real failing is the abysmal cleave range. It really is silly that Barrage, Living Bomb, or Blade Flurry can hit half the room, yet Sweeping Strikes can't hit mobs unless they're directly on top of one another. The other downside in terms of damage is that the majority of Arms damage comes from Colossus Smash, which is rarely applied to two targets being cleaved, so while the cleaved Mortal Strike may deal full base damage, it doesn't get the ~100% damage mastery bonus.

Titanic Might is the real star the attraction. I have doubts it will prove overall stronger than Deadly Calm, but at the very least it would significantly reduce the specs variance. Likewise I feel like a 24s Colossus Smash is excessive, but it would allow Colossus Smash to be applied to multiple targets for cleave fights, and with enough mastery could even become the prime single target talent. If that were to happen, Focused Rage would lose a lot of viability and probably be ousted as well, leading to a new playstyle for Arms.



All in all, I'm very interested to see how this pans out. While most of the changes are minor, the chance for Titanic Might to supplant Deadly Calm opens the door for a new playstyle without Focused Rage and potentially using Fervor of Battle/Opportunity Strikes again, similar to late Beta builds. I think moving away from this spammy build will bring a lot of players back into Arms, even if it's not a strictly better build, simply due to the reduction of variance in Arms performance.


A few issues which still need to be addressed:

Mastery is too strong for Arms, and by extension Colossus Smash is far more powerful than (ex) Fury's counterpart Enrage (on average it's double the effect, and lasts twice as long). This imbalance is mitigated by the randomness of Tactician procs, but the new Titanic Might increasing Colossus Smash to 24 seconds allows the player essentially 100% uptime on a huge damage increase. Arms stat weights are already massively skewed towards Mastery, and this won't help that situation. On the other end of the spectrum Crit is an abominable stat, to be avoided at all costs. While it feels good to have stat prioritization, it doesn't feel good to be put in a situation where you have gear you don't want to use over an item with significantly lower ilevel but better stats.

Unending Rage without Deadly Calm renders the artifact trait (and all relics which provide a bonus to it) effectively useless, since Arms will return to being a resource limited spec which never actually rage caps, much less makes use of the increased cap.

[Kirbydude65]

While the buffs seem good, they don't seem to do very much to break up the synergy that is Deadly Calm + Anger Mangement. However as Archi has Mentioned Titanic Might may bring up some usefulness when it comes to attacking multiple targets.

If anything (assuming nothing changes with these patch notes) we'd have a single target and a decent cleave setup now, as opposed to just waiting once every minute and a half to use Warbreaker + Bladestorm Combo.

I still expect to seee changes to our Mastery, as well as something to help Critical strike not be so pitiful.

[Anbokr]

The talent changes are probably going to make m+ a lot better -- fervor/sweeping strikes might actually be a good setup will have to see. The 2pc change seems really insane for single target considering how often our mortal strike crits with shattered defenses.

Things look pretty good for Arms going into Nighthold despite the gloves nerf. It is a pretty nasty nerf despite how good they'll still be :/.

[Deleted]

Did they nerf mastery in an earlier build, or just sneak it in now? 77% on ptr vs 86% on live with roughly 12.3k mastery.

[Velinn]

Did they nerf mastery in an earlier build, or just sneak it in now? 77% on ptr vs 86% on live with rougly 12.3k mastery.

Seems they increased the amount of rating needed per % of secondaries with 15-20% ish.

[Anbokr]

Ouch. Going to laugh if they sneak in that nerf with no baseline compensation after nerfing Fire crit and buffing all their spells. Or was it a general change to most secondaries? Logging into my fury seems to indicate a general nerf to secondaries.

edit: This really makes me wish they nerfed mastery and buffed our baseline like with fire mages in anticipation of this.

[Gibgarde]

The talent changes are probably going to make m+ a lot better -- fervor/sweeping strikes might actually be a good setup will have to see. The 2pc change seems really insane for single target considering how often our mortal strike crits with shattered defenses.

Things look pretty good for Arms going into Nighthold despite the gloves nerf. It is a pretty nasty nerf despite how good they'll still be :/.

The gloves give back 10 rage, up from 8, on the ptr. Is this a new change with this build?

[Deleted]

Guys i just got Horn of valor 885 ilvl, and currently have Memento of angerboda (870) & Ravaged seed pod (880) equipped. Is it worth replacing any of my trinkets for Horn of valor?

[Deleted]

The gloves give back 10 rage, up from 8, on the ptr. Is this a new change with this build?

10 rage? Great :3
@Topic
Will p4 be worth a huge lose in mastery anyway?

[Rhyzoh]

In the 7.1.5 ptr I see that the amount of a stat rating to get 1% has changed:
Crit is 350 -> 400 AKA 14.3% nerf
Haste is 325 -> 375 AKA 15.4% nerf
Verse is 400 -> 475 AKA 18.8% nerf
Masty is 175 -> 200 AKA 14.3% nerf

Another noteworthy thing is that there is a legendary vendor selling those new trinkets, I tried that 1 min 15 sec cd on use one and it scales with CS and Avatar. However it cannot crit so BC does not double its damage.

[Anbokr]

The gloves give back 10 rage, up from 8, on the ptr. Is this a new change with this build?

Yeah that's new. Well that probably solidifies me switching over from Fury back to Arms loot spec wise. Not a huge fan of the Fury changes (or lack thereof rather) overall and Arms 2pc/4pc/trinket just seems insane going into NH.

[Kitaen]

Yeah that's new. Well that probably solidifies me switching over from Fury back to Arms loot spec wise. Not a huge fan of the Fury changes (or lack thereof rather) overall and Arms 2pc/4pc/trinket just seems insane going into NH.

ahh thank god, that is way more reasonable

[Saiona]

Yay my gloves won't be nerfed as hard. Is the KJ trinket random off anything? I wonder if they will only be obtainable off nighthold bosses that would be nice.

[Uriel]

So with a slight buff to fervor is WW back as the primary filler over Slam? If not how far appart are they? I mainly use fervor for Mythic plus runs and helya

[Uthan]

Wish they'd change crit to also increase critical strike damage by some fraction, and take that damage out of mastery. End result could be the same, but would allow a lot more flexibility with secondary stats :P

Flat nerf to all secondaries while nice in a way (and sad, rip 100%+ mastery) changes nothing with the difference between them.