Arms Legion Discussion

[noctred]

tbh the funniest thing about all this arms shit is that ETW will still be the best relic because the entire spec revolves around resetting CS as many times as possible to synergize with artifact traits.

Unless they remove ETW from the game or redesign the entire spec, it will continue to be the best relic no matter how much they nerf it.

[Valkaneer]

I call the Hamstring change stupid, because it didn't achieve that we do not have to use it. It nerfed a mechanic that should have been completely obliterated. So no, they were not carefully listening. They failed and again show that they do not fully grasp the mechanics they are changing.

Hamtring still does 3k dps and Hamstring will still lower BC cooldown by 1 sec per use through AM. So while using it was considerable nerfed, we are still required to use it for optimal dps. And yes sir, that is stupid and bugs me.

Additionally this cost us a ~36% chance for an additional Tactician procc during BC, which is a rather significant damage loss. The 15% buff to base tactician was simply not enough. Should've been at least 20%.

The idea was to nerf FR.

- - - Updated - - -

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/10 - 75th Percentile - 3rd highest spec, lagging a fair bit behind MM/Havoc
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/10#dataset=80 - same
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/10#dataset=90 - same
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/10#dataset=95 - 2nd highest, a tie between 4 specs.
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/10#dataset=99 - 2nd highest
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/10#dataset=100 - 5th highest.

And that's in Heroic where we still have pure single target fights. We're not in any situation the top performing spec in Emerald Dream when looking at it as a whole. https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...=100&boss=1864 - We are 6th highest on Xavius absolutely years behind MM hunters/Mages/Priests and DH's... And we have a highly RNG reliant (thus no consistency, no reliable focus target dps) spec that has no multi target utility or versatility as damage dealers, and our cleave while strong has extremely sensitive positioning requirements to even function.

So honestly, tell me again why "we needed nerfs"... Because we were the top spec on Ursoc Heroic?

Cuz your using all ilvls, and blizz does not balance at the 75th. They balance up at what the top raiding guilds can do in the best gear.

[Bigbazz]

It does, or else I'm spamming so much i hit two globals after, execute + hs + fr is a pretty quick cooldown for BC

You're probably dumping a load of rage just as BC falls off, go test it and watch the timer, it will go down as normal and you will have 55s left at the end of the 5s BC duration, if your Slam/Hamstring/FR happens just after it falls off you would be in the 50-51s range.

The idea was to nerf FR.

- - - Updated - - -



Cuz your using all ilvls, and blizz does not balance at the 75th. They balance up at what the top raiding guilds can do in the best gear.

Did you not even click the links then? Because I posted every % ranking list from 75% to rank 1, that was the point. And anyway, the 95-99% with Arms is largely about RNG, the sim shows that even absolute flawless perfect robot playing has incredibly massive variance on DPS even on a patchwerk fight, which becomes much larger in a realistic situation.

But yeah, at least read the post and its contents before you reply, because I have literally included the rank 1 parses all the way down to the 75% to show that at no point of skill/RNG is Arms the top performer. RNG is RNG, you can find semi casual enthusiasts beating Method level players, ranking has never been primarily about individual skill and that's more true now than ever.

[TummyBoy]

So, patch notes updates:

Tactician proc rate increased by 15%.

Hamstring no longer procs Tactician.

Exploit the Weakness bonus reduced to 4% per point.

The first point is very confusing to me. Does that mean .65 + 15% of its current value? That would put Tactician at a base of .74% chance to proc. Or do they mean just adding a value of .15 to its current rating of .65, giving us a .8% chance to proc per rage spent? They stated this very weirdly.

So let's do a little napkin math. With three points in EtW, Focused Rage "uses" 16.8 rage per cast. 16.8 * .74 is each time we FR, we have a 12.4% chance to proc Tactician. With one EtW relic it's 12.8%, followed by 13.2% with two, and 13.6% with three EtW relics.

If the value is .8%, we start at 13.4% chance for a Tactician proc at 3/3 EtW. Then with 1, 2, and 3 relics it goes 13.9 -> 14.4 -> 14.9.

On live, the current chance for Tactician to proc off of FR is 12.7% with 3/3 EtW and no relics. With one relic, however, it's 13.7% chance to proc, two 14.6%, and three 15.6%.

Add that on to the fact that we're taking another 10% hit to FR, and losing Spamstring for Tactician procs, and this is still a fairly convincing nerf. I think we'll be back to beating Fury in ST (Fury was winning out in recent sims), but the proc rate of Tactician is going down no matter how you spin it.

I think Blizzard more or less achieved its intended goal. I know that the only reason why I played Arms was because I loved the frequent Colossus Smash resets and high APM nature of the build, but if I'm waiting on a proc while just swinging at a target, I'm not going to be having a good time. We'll have to see what they meant by 15%.

[simperial]

Im interested in the 15% increase as well. How are they actually mathing this? And how is EtW calculated relative to the 15% change?

[Gorgrom]

tbh the funniest thing about all this arms shit is that ETW will still be the best relic because the entire spec revolves around resetting CS as many times as possible to synergize with artifact traits.

Unless they remove ETW from the game or redesign the entire spec, it will continue to be the best relic no matter how much they nerf it.

People were giving upto 25ilvls on their weapon for etw relics. With the changes, whilst it will still be our most favoured one, we wont be disregarding ilvl upgrades like that.

[Valkaneer]

You're probably dumping a load of rage just as BC falls off, go test it and watch the timer, it will go down as normal and you will have 55s left at the end of the 5s BC duration, if your Slam/Hamstring/FR happens just after it falls off you would be in the 50-51s range.



Did you not even click the links then? Because I posted every % ranking list from 75% to rank 1, that was the point. And anyway, the 95-99% with Arms is largely about RNG, the sim shows that even absolute flawless perfect robot playing has incredibly massive variance on DPS even on a patchwerk fight, which becomes much larger in a realistic situation.

But yeah, at least read the post and its contents before you reply, because I have literally included the rank 1 parses all the way down to the 75% to show that at no point of skill/RNG is Arms the top performer. RNG is RNG, you can find semi casual enthusiasts beating Method level players, ranking has never been primarily about individual skill and that's more true now than ever.

Your using aggregated scores and all ilvls. You take out the people with sub par ilvl gear and use DPS and warriors are almost on top all the time. Toward the very top WW and a few others surpass them but your talking about like less than 100 parses.

[Gorgrom]

So, patch notes updates:

Tactician proc rate increased by 15%.

Hamstring no longer procs Tactician.

Exploit the Weakness bonus reduced to 4% per point.

The first point is very confusing to me. Does that mean .65 + 15% of its current value? That would put Tactician at a base of .74% chance to proc. Or do they mean just adding a value of .15 to its current rating of .65, giving us a .8% chance to proc per rage spent? They stated this very weirdly.

So let's do a little napkin math. With three points in EtW, Focused Rage "uses" 16.8 rage per cast. 16.8 * .74 is each time we FR, we have a 12.4% chance to proc Tactician. With one EtW relic it's 12.8%, followed by 13.2% with two, and 13.6% with three EtW relics.

If the value is .8%, we start at 13.4% chance for a Tactician proc at 3/3 EtW. Then with 1, 2, and 3 relics it goes 13.9 -> 14.4 -> 14.9.

On live, the current chance for Tactician to proc off of FR is 12.7% with 3/3 EtW and no relics. With one relic, however, it's 13.7% chance to proc, two 14.6%, and three 15.6%.

Add that on to the fact that we're taking another 10% hit to FR, and losing Spamstring for Tactician procs, and this is still a fairly convincing nerf. I think we'll be back to beating Fury in ST (Fury was winning out in recent sims), but the proc rate of Tactician is going down no matter how you spin it.

I think Blizzard more or less achieved its intended goal. I know that the only reason why I played Arms was because I loved the frequent Colossus Smash resets and high APM nature of the build, but if I'm waiting on a proc while just swinging at a target, I'm not going to be having a good time. We'll have to see what they meant by 15%.

It makes no sense for 0.65 + 15% to become 0.8% chance per rage spent to proc tactican is 0.65 + 15% = 0.7475% with 3/3 etw we add 12% to this to make 0.8372% which compared to live is 0.845 which is a 1% difference on live. 6/6 is now about 10% weaker than it was.

[Holofernes]

Tactician proc rate increased by 15%.

065 * 115 /100 = 0.75 would be my bet.
its not increased by percentpoints (which would be a buff if u were running less than two relics. and would be a misspelling in the text, there is a difference in increasing by % and in increasing by % points), its , if written correctly from blizz guys, increased by percent.

so now the trait without relic adds 12 % (0.84) , and 3 relics would add 24 % , 0.93.

so rage cost of fr is 15, lets calculate:

base: 15*0.75 ............. 11,25% chance to reset per fr

exploit trait 3/3 15*0.84.............12,6 % chance to reset (compare to old version 12.7 %)

Full relic 6/6 15*0.93----------- 13.95 %

Conclusion:
So without relict its nearly the same reset rate before. The effectiveness of relics has been nerfed. If u had non or only one relic, u wont notice a difference in resets.


This is a typical solution for a problem like this, a exponential function gets cut off the bottem and get its upper limit maximised at a lower peak so the valid part of the relict-function stays nearly linear.

[fuzeddd]

So does this mean the FR nerf is out?

[Anuibus]

Hamtring still does 3k dps and Hamstring will still lower BC cooldown by 1 sec per use through AM. So while using it was considerable nerfed, we are still required to use it for optimal dps. And yes sir, that is stupid and bugs me.

The only way hamstring is going to reduce BC cooldown is by using it outside of BC, which you will never be doing unless you are playing the non fr build, are at 85+ rage, and your melee swing is coming in before your gcd is finished.

Im a bit curious as to how the hamstring change will effect the non fr build. maybe we'll go back to using opportunity strikes/trauma.

[globezorz]

The only way hamstring is going to reduce BC cooldown is by using it outside of BC, which you will never be doing unless you are playing the non fr build, are at 85+ rage, and your melee swing is coming in before your gcd is finished.

Im a bit curious as to how the hamstring change will effect the non fr build. maybe we'll go back to using opportunity strikes/trauma.

Yeah I was hoping to see some sims for the nonFR builds with the new changes in place, I thought it was so strange that DC, AM and mortal combo took over in those builds cause of the EtW changes. Maybe it's gone back now

[Gorgrom]

The only way hamstring is going to reduce BC cooldown is by using it outside of BC, which you will never be doing unless you are playing the non fr build, are at 85+ rage, and your melee swing is coming in before your gcd is finished.

Im a bit curious as to how the hamstring change will effect the non fr build. maybe we'll go back to using opportunity strikes/trauma.

DC and AM were a lot better for the non-fr playstyle because of the etw nerf meant that the extra cs resets gained from dc/am outweighed the damage that ops was giving. I'd think the buff to tactian rather than the nerf to hamstring will result in changing back to ops.

[biggerthanpete]

So yeah, you don't want slam or WW on your Spam macro. You'd only want FR+Hamstring since they have their own GCDs that aren't shared with your main dps abilities. The whole Arms spec revolves around hitting as many MS's buffed with both Shattered defenses and Focused Rage. During that small BC window, your main goal is to hit as many of those buffed MS's as you can get. If you are lucky, you'll get CS resets throughout the BC window, but you can really only hit so many and you often don't have the ability to get FR to 3 stacks. You pretty much want your main ability globals to be spent on chaining CS>MS>CS>MS>CS>MS. Having Slam or WW on your spam macro will put CS or MS on the GCD and you won't be able to chain them. The only reason you hit Slam or WW during BC is because you didn't get a CS reset and both CS and MS are on Cooldown and you spend a global trying to spend rage to get a reset. You do some damage with Slam and WW during BC, but the main goal is to spend rage to get a reset. If you have to spend 2 globals on Slam or WW duing BC, you got little chance of getting another buffed MS in before BC runs out. It's just how it goes. Following that you are spending rage for a reset, it was recommended that you use WW during BC as it costs more rage than Slam and has a greater chance of getting a reset. It does less damage per global than Slam on ST but that isn't it's point.

TL;DR don't put slam or WW on your spam macro as it will "steal" a CS or MS spot during BC.

[Pingding]

So yeah, you don't want slam or WW on your Spam macro. You'd only want FR+Hamstring since they have their own GCDs that aren't shared with your main dps abilities. The whole Arms spec revolves around hitting as many MS's buffed with both Shattered defenses and Focused Rage. During that small BC window, your main goal is to hit as many of those buffed MS's as you can get. If you are lucky, you'll get CS resets throughout the BC window, but you can really only hit so many and you often don't have the ability to get FR to 3 stacks. You pretty much want your main ability globals to be spent on chaining CS>MS>CS>MS>CS>MS. Having Slam or WW on your spam macro will put CS or MS on the GCD and you won't be able to chain them. The only reason you hit Slam or WW during BC is because you didn't get a CS reset and both CS and MS are on Cooldown and you spend a global trying to spend rage to get a reset. You do some damage with Slam and WW during BC, but the main goal is to spend rage to get a reset. If you have to spend 2 globals on Slam or WW duing BC, you got little chance of getting another buffed MS in before BC runs out. It's just how it goes. Following that you are spending rage for a reset, it was recommended that you use WW during BC as it costs more rage than Slam and has a greater chance of getting a reset. It does less damage per global than Slam on ST but that isn't it's point.

TL;DR don't put slam or WW on your spam macro as it will "steal" a CS or MS spot during BC.

I have several questions and if someone could help that would be awesome. I am finding a lot of mixed information.

1) Are we supposed to stack 3 FR before using MS? Or do we just MS as soon as there is a SD proc regardless of current FR stacks.

2) What we do during the execute phase?
Do we stop using FR during execute? Do we execute only when we can get a full rage execute off? Do we use MS at all?

3) Even though hamstring no longer procs tactician shouldn't we still use it during BC for the damage it does. It's low but why not?

4) Do we BC on cooldown or wait for CS to be on target? I have sat for 20+ seconds with BC off cooldown and no CS proc.

5) I see most everyone using slam on single target but I read a guide that says WW is better because you have more of chance to proc CS,25 rage vs 20 rage. Do we slam or WW on single target?

Thank you for your help and answers.

[Anuibus]

DC and AM were a lot better for the non-fr playstyle because of the etw nerf meant that the extra cs resets gained from dc/am outweighed the damage that ops was giving. I'd think the buff to tactian rather than the nerf to hamstring will result in changing back to ops.

I ran some sims on simc 7.0.1 and dc + am was better than trauma + ops even then. Corrupted blood and focus in battle are just that good. With that in mind, I don't expect trauma + ops to make a comeback tomorrow. I say comeback even though it is still going to be like 40k behind.

[xmr1]

Seems like a smoke and mirror trick to buff Tactician to roughly what it was before without EtW relics only to indirectly lower it again by taking away resets from hamstring. And they didn't even eliminate hamstring use, or address AoE for that matter.

[Haveth]

Ran some sims comparing Arms and Fury at N/H/M levels. All of them are using 23 points in the artifact. This is using the 9/26 hotfixes.

https://i.imgur.com/C9VEyyI.png

[biggerthanpete]

I have several questions and if someone could help that would be awesome. I am finding a lot of mixed information.

1) Are we supposed to stack 3 FR before using MS? Or do we just MS as soon as there is a SD proc regardless of current FR stacks.

2) What we do during the execute phase?
Do we stop using FR during execute? Do we execute only when we can get a full rage execute off? Do we use MS at all?

3) Even though hamstring no longer procs tactician shouldn't we still use it during BC for the damage it does. It's low but why not?

4) Do we BC on cooldown or wait for CS to be on target? I have sat for 20+ seconds with BC off cooldown and no CS proc.

5) I see most everyone using slam on single target but I read a guide that says WW is better because you have more of chance to proc CS,25 rage vs 20 rage. Do we slam or WW on single target?

Thank you for your help and answers.

1) There was debate about this for a while. I'm not sure of the final outcome. One side says hit MS as soon as you possibly can regardless of FR stacks so that you don't "miss" resets. Tactician resets both CS and MS, so if you hit CS not immediately followed by MS regardless of stacks, there is a chance that the rage you spend on FR will proc tactician and only rest CS and in theory you've "lost" a shattered defenses MS. I'm honestly not sure what current theory says. I've been running with hit MS right after CS regardless of stacks. But I'm also no pro warrior. I've just been reading the thread since like page 20.

2) I'm honestly not caught up on this one yet. It used to be that you never hit execute at all, but this changed at FR moving to 40% I think and I'm still working on the change.

3) Some one a couple pages ago said hamstring will give you a 3k boost. For me the real question is that since it no longer helps fish for resets, whether or not I wan't to have an FR key and and FR+Hamstring key. If I drop the hamstring key I've gained a key binding at the loss of 3k dps. It's probably what I will do.

4) I'm not sure about this one either. It can be really hard to save a 3 stack of FR in dungeons from the last trash pull to have for the boss fight. It's almost impossible on raid bosses. Generally if you can have FR at 3 before BC comes off CD that seems to be a good thing. How long you hold BC before it becomes a dps loss is something I couldn't tell you. maybe it's possible to sim it, no idea. One thing I've been wondering about is whether it's best to hit the 1st CS right before BC hopefully giving you more MS's in the window. Also, would it be a good idea on a boss pull to Stack 3 FR before using BC?

5) I've been using WW to fish for resets, I have no idea if it's a total dps gain or loss over the length of a fight to use Slam versus WW in the BC window. Slam is a 10.4% chance to reset and WW is 13%, so you gain 3% chance to reset at the cost of some damage. I go with the 3% increase because the payoff of another MS during BC is so big.

[demonhunter50]

Tactician proc rate increased by 15%.

065 * 115 /100 = 0.75 would be my bet.
its not increased by percentpoints (which would be a buff if u were running less than two relics. and would be a misspelling in the text, there is a difference in increasing by % and in increasing by % points), its , if written correctly from blizz guys, increased by percent.

so now the trait without relic adds 12 % (0.84) , and 3 relics would add 24 % , 0.93.

so rage cost of fr is 15, lets calculate:

base: 15*0.75 ............. 11,25% chance to reset per fr

exploit trait 3/3 15*0.84.............12,6 % chance to reset (compare to old version 12.7 %)

Full relic 6/6 15*0.93----------- 13.95 %

Conclusion:
So without relict its nearly the same reset rate before. The effectiveness of relics has been nerfed. If u had non or only one relic, u wont notice a difference in resets.


This is a typical solution for a problem like this, a exponential function gets cut off the bottem and get its upper limit maximised at a lower peak so the valid part of the relict-function stays nearly linear.

What's now the reset chance before the exploit nerfs if I have 3 exploit relics ?