Dear Blizzard - A few comments on your PvE balance pass, Warrior PoV

[noctred]

The spec is slightly plagued by RNG, but that's there no matter what you're doing or what spec you're playing.

slightly.

lol.

[Tyrion Moonblade]

I've played Arms since open beta. Over a decade. Always hated fury, only tanked when I had to. Arms was my "class fantasy" before class fantasy was the buzzword the blizz devs decided they wanted to bandy about. I didn't want to be some retarded D2 barb swinging around two hunks of metal. I wanted to be Aragorn. Zatoichi. That's what I stuck with, thick and thin. Highs and lows. "Awesome changes" and beyond. Icecrown before they took out Arpen through HFC BS. I managed to pull my weight, if only just barely sometimes, through whatever potential "simcraft" numbers were out at each of those times. I got top 5 World of Logs numbers multiple times in Cata before my guild blew up and I took a break, so I like to think I know the class.

After the absolutely horrendous design in WoD, I had hope for the redesign in legion. I pointedly did not spec FR (saw the nerf coming a hundred miles away) and went Mortal Combo, and it felt pretty good when it was working properly. But for every fight where CS chained and you were actually having fun there were two where tactician refused to proc and you sat there, tearing out your hair, praying for that button to light up so you could not feel like a burden to your group (or just so you could actually kill a thing before it killed you). I looked forward to seeing what it felt like once I actually loaded up the ETW trinkets, but did also see a nerf to those coming (ilvl should be paramount for your artifacts..) but in no way expected the heavy handed, amateurish, almost vindictive beating that even underperforming specs got. You didn't tune numbers for an overperforming build, you have made a spec that was already frustrating without an EXTREMELY SPECIFIC set of gear and circumstances and gutted it, making it even more at the whim of your random number generator.

Whoever is in charge, or rather whoever may be reading this from the company, I hope you convey this to your "balance team". I'm done. I have been cheated and lied to for the last time. You said, specifically, that you weren't going to do this very thing. You weren't going to cut the legs out from classes. You weren't going to leave your players feeling like they made the wrong choice (in my particular case, the decision to even purchase legion with the expectation I would have a viable class). I'm going home tonight, pressing delete on my 12 year old warrior, and leaving this game. Maybe if enough of your players do the same after this much ballyhooed subscriber resurgence that came with legion, you'll finally learn to stick to what you say, and balance with a scalpel instead of a claymore.

[nativity]

When we approached the end of the beta and there were no changes is why I retired from raiding.

The gameplay of both specs is pretty shitty, and was hounded on near universally for 7+ months and alpha and beta. The same comments the whole time. Blizzard is completely out of touch with the community and class design. See warlocks, hunters, spriests, Warriors.

Legendary items are just salt in the wound. It's terrible design to have such powerful items be at the total mercy of rng.

While I still play, I only play casually with my friends in mythic+ and can't imagine any progression raider enjoying this new atmosphere.

Well, you are not alone .. So do I

[Tyrosus]

I've played Arms since open beta. Over a decade. Always hated fury, only tanked when I had to. Arms was my "class fantasy" before class fantasy was the buzzword the blizz devs decided they wanted to bandy about. I didn't want to be some retarded D2 barb swinging around two hunks of metal. I wanted to be Aragorn. Zatoichi. That's what I stuck with, thick and thin. Highs and lows. "Awesome changes" and beyond. Icecrown before they took out Arpen through HFC BS. I managed to pull my weight, if only just barely sometimes, through whatever potential "simcraft" numbers were out at each of those times. I got top 5 World of Logs numbers multiple times in Cata before my guild blew up and I took a break, so I like to think I know the class.

After the absolutely horrendous design in WoD, I had hope for the redesign in legion. I pointedly did not spec FR (saw the nerf coming a hundred miles away) and went Mortal Combo, and it felt pretty good when it was working properly. But for every fight where CS chained and you were actually having fun there were two where tactician refused to proc and you sat there, tearing out your hair, praying for that button to light up so you could not feel like a burden to your group (or just so you could actually kill a thing before it killed you). I looked forward to seeing what it felt like once I actually loaded up the ETW trinkets, but did also see a nerf to those coming (ilvl should be paramount for your artifacts..) but in no way expected the heavy handed, amateurish, almost vindictive beating that even underperforming specs got. You didn't tune numbers for an overperforming build, you have made a spec that was already frustrating without an EXTREMELY SPECIFIC set of gear and circumstances and gutted it, making it even more at the whim of your random number generator.

Whoever is in charge, or rather whoever may be reading this from the company, I hope you convey this to your "balance team". I'm done. I have been cheated and lied to for the last time. You said, specifically, that you weren't going to do this very thing. You weren't going to cut the legs out from classes. You weren't going to leave your players feeling like they made the wrong choice (in my particular case, the decision to even purchase legion with the expectation I would have a viable class). I'm going home tonight, pressing delete on my 12 year old warrior, and leaving this game. Maybe if enough of your players do the same after this much ballyhooed subscriber resurgence that came with legion, you'll finally learn to stick to what you say, and balance with a scalpel instead of a claymore.

This. This right here. THIS is the type of person you're losing by tuning with a closed fist and not an open hand. Think about your game's future, especially with the amount of senior devs jumping ship. You need us more than we need you, at this point.

[Ezymode]

A very well written post. Nerf FR but don't destroy the entire flow of the spec by over nerfing the Colossus Smash reset mechanic. It's completely uncalled for and has the carry on effect of nerfing the already underperforming non-FR builds.

They fixed a bug with enhance shamans that made offhand attacks guarantee windfury procs during doom winds. They then also buffed the baseline windfury proc chance to compensate. Why couldn't they use this same logic for arms warriors by buffing base tactician to offset the EtW nerf. Clearly this nerf is targeted at our ability to stack EtW relics, and the fact they are worth ~15ilvls more than other relics, but as a result they have destroyed the gameplay of the spec.

[nativity]

I'll just leave this here.. fresh from oven


Arms
Tactician proc rate increased by 15%.
Hamstring no longer procs Tactician.
Exploit the Weakness (Artifact Trait) bonus reduced to 4% per point.


Gotta give a thumbs up to Dev for finally listening..

[globezorz]

I'll just leave this here.. fresh from oven


Arms
Tactician proc rate increased by 15%.
Hamstring no longer procs Tactician.
Exploit the Weakness (Artifact Trait) bonus reduced to 4% per point.


Gotta give a thumbs up to Dev for finally listening..

For what? This is still much less chance then we had prior. And now we lost hamstrings chance to proc it as well? This is still bad.

[Plasma]

For what? This is still much less chance then we had prior. And now we lost hamstrings chance to proc it as well? This is still bad.

This. It's still an unwarranted nerf to our RNG. There's a reason EtW is so strong, it's because the base chance is bad, and it feels bad. Either make it better overall or leave it at a similar point. There's absolutely no reason to make our RnG worse. i have 2 EtW relics and often times I get 2 streaks of no resets. 30 seconds of doing nothing is is awful. I don't know why they don't just reduce the CS cooldown to 15ish seconds, or something.

[Deleted]

Looks like blizzard heard us boys We're still taking the Hammer on Pot, FR and Tactitian relics, but at least we're almost back to the 30% baseline Tactitian proc (minus Hamstring spending within BC). It's not huge, but it's something.


Thanks for the support and constructive inputs.

[Deleted]

This is ridiculous. They don't care at all about Fury.

[Sethanor]

Arms rng is still shit (slightly worse than pre-hotfix even) AND its only merrit got nerfed too hard... im so glad i didnt pick arms and i KNEW this shit would happen...

not matter that they said "we wont over-nerf specs so you dont feel like you have picked the wrong one bla bla bullshit", i called it during pre-patch and tadaaa, it happened.

fury on the other hand is just sad ... we heard nothing, they fixed nothing (still playing with bugs and shit mechanics that have been there since alpha) and our "buffs" are an insult at best