Originally Posted by
Archimtiros
I can agree with the sentiment, but not everything included therein. Arms Single Target was too high and needed to be brought down. The Exploit change was necessary because that trait was far too powerful in relation to the others, though the resulting loss in gameplay was a negative that wasn't needed. The better option would have been to tune down FR further (say 20-25%), tune down Exploit as they did, and then buff the base chance of Tactician slightly to make up for the average loss from Exploit, thereby accomplishing the goals of the nerf, but retaining the gameplay.
Now concerning Arms balance specifically, I'll reiterate: it's single target was inordinately too high, and extraordinary single target is not an excuse for low multi-target. I'll also point out that Arms does have multi-target potential, albeit on a long cooldown, and some of the best 2-target cleave in the game.
Here's the thing people seem to forget (or like to ignore): Single Target is always useful, Multi-target is not. Even in a heavy cleave fight, there's almost always a single target boss that needs to die, and total DPS isn't always a good measurement of actual performance. A simple example of this would be Immerseus - lots of AoE, and AoE classes might look considerably more powerful than a single target class, but the adds don't really need to die. Killing them (talking about the AoE pack, not the split phase adds) doesn't do anything to hasten the end of the fight other than take minor pressure off tanks. Thus their inflated DPS isn't really important. Just like pure single-target may be a bad measurement for overall balance, DPS isn't always a good measurement of contribution to success.
The TLDR here is not not equate total DPS with performance. If another class is doing 100k higher DPS on Elerethe Renferal, but substantially less single target to the boss, there's still very much a place for the lower DPS - higher single target player, as the adds only need to die fast enough to adhere to mechanics, while the boss needs to die to end the encounter. To even more TLDR it: Good multi-target is sometimes useful, good single-target is always useful.
The real problem in my opinion are the classes that do everything very well. Fire Mages, Windwalker Monks, and Outlaw Rogues are good examples of specs which flat out excel in every area, which is what causes the greatest disparity in balance.