(I'm posting this here hoping that a dev or a dev-adjacant will see it as the Alpha Forums is on the US side which makes it impossible for EU players to post on it..)
I’ve been playing Arms Warrior in BfA and it feels exactly like the BfA Arms just with a different number-aspects than before and the issue is that the Arms Warrior in BfA felt out of place and just poorly designed.
General Warrior Feedback:
The mobility of Warriors still feels way off or nothing special. It’s even worse that we have to use a Talent in order to get either decent mobility (Double Time) or utility (Storm Bolt). This just makes us feel plain in-efficient when compared to every other class that has both as a basic part of their Class and can use Talent to make either better.
My suggestions are as follows:
• Storm Bolt would be a baseline ability.
• Double Time scrapped completely.
• Reduce the range of similar teleport abilities that has two charges baseline, like Blink and Fel Rush, to 15 yards as the opportunity cost for either is non-existent and it provides a massive mobility boost to Classes that already have high damage. The Classes affected would still get a 30-yard teleport if they use both, which would increase the opportunity cost of using them instead of them being of the, “I might as well,” nature that they feel like now.
Charge right now feel inferior to similar abilities instead of feeling different. Right now, for a mage it’s: Warrior gets in range, Blink, Warrior Charges Mage, Mage Blinks again, the Warrior is now permanently behind unless it has Double Time.
If this is done, then the Talents Double Time and Storm Bolt can be replaced with:
• Impact (New) (Arms, Fury, Protection): The Warrior’s Charge no longer roots the target instead it knocks it down. This counts as a stun that’s off the Diminishing Returns.
• Rising Storm (New) (Arms, Fury, Protection): The damage of Storm Bolt is doubled, and the duration of the stun is increased by 0.5 seconds.
Then further Warriors should have a new passive to represent their tenacious nature. This would also give Prot Warriors a real niche where they were the best tank instead of the useless, for surviving getting hit, highest damage.
• Unstoppable (Passive) (New): Any Stun, Snare, or Immobilise effects have their duration reduced by X%. The Troll Racial Flip Out and the Orc Racial Hardiness only increases their respective effect to 25%.
General Survivability:
The re-adding of Shield Block and Shield Slam as baseline abilities is something that looks good on paper and in reality is cumbersome.
They both require macros for weapon swap to work, to be current the player needs a shield and a one-hander of equal ilvl to their main weapon, and unless something changes it’s impossible to swap weapons in M+ which utterly negate these abilities. The utility of Challenging Shout is also severely limited due to all of these factors. All of the returning abilities also add a lot of clutter to the hot bars as they need seven slots and a weapon swap macro is needed as well for a total of eight. That’s a lot.
My suggestion would be to see the return of stances in a limited fashion.
• Battle Stance: Normal ability use (Arms).
• Defensive Stance: Reduce the damage that the player takes and deals by 10% and gives them a one-handed weapon and shield of the same ilvl as their main-hand with the same secondary stats. Their main attack ability is replaced by Shield Slam, Charge by Intervene and Shield Block becomes available for use. The weapon and shield can be transmogrified and replaced with a one-handed weapon and shield with the secondary stats that the player wants.
• Berserker Stance: Normal ability use (Fury).
Going into the various stances costs no Rage and never activates the CGD.
By doing it this way players are discouraged from turtling in Defensive Stance and continuing damage as there are clear drawbacks to sitting in it. There’s also a survival benefit by using it so it’s curse/kiss. By having the MH transform into a one-hander and shield there’s no need to farm one out for the slot which makes it feel optional rather than mandatory. That they can be transmogrified gives the player some agency in how they’re going to look and with no Rage-loss or GCD activation Shield Block can be used in a pinch as well as can Intervene. And importantly it frees up hot bar slots.
Keep Ignore Pain as a Protection Warrior only ability. By having it cost 40 Rage even highly precise and situational use is going to be devastating for any Warrior and the 12-second cooldown makes it practically useless for mitigation anyway.
Arms Feedback:
I’ve played only Arms because I like the narrative of the spec a lot more than any of the other two. Arms is as it was in BfA basically just with different numbers. This means that it has a low level of interactivity and requires the right everything to even be workable and even then, it still has a low level of enjoyment.
Gameplay
Arms is a Builder-Spender it’s also the only Builder-Spender in the game where there’s zero interactivity with the Builder-aspect of the gameplay as the spec only generates Rage from auto-attack, even Fury and Prot have abilities that they use to build Rage, Arms have none. This creates a gameplay where an Arms Warrior essentially sits and wait for the auto-attack to generate a new chunk of Rage that the spec can then Spend. Baseline the spec has no other abilities to Build and it does nothing except waiting a period equal to Auto-attack – Haste to get more. It feels unfulfilling.
What I feel needs to be changed is for Arms to have an active Builder Ability. This can be solved by looking at the spec as it is now and change some things around. What I would is the the following:
• Rage is generated in lowered amounts than Rage from auto-attack.
• Rage is generated from using Overpower.
• Overpower no longer increases the damage of Mortal Strike. (Since Overpower now generates resources there’s no need for it also to improve the damage of said ability.)
• Veteran Soldier removed. Critical hits only give basic Rage. (With Rage being generated from Overpower and Overpower being a lot more stable this is unnecessary.)
• Tactician (Passive) (new): In addition to having a 1.40% chance pr. Momentum spent to reset the cooldown of Overpower, it also applies Expose Weakness, which is a cumulative, stacking buff that increases the chance for Tactician to work. of +the previous chance. (Alternatively, this can be a simple PPM.)
• Tactician and Overpower are now a part of the Arms Warrior basic package since the spec is unable to work without either.
Due to Overpower being a part of the Builder rotation it should no longer have any interactivity with MS or HS. Instead, it should be something like this:
• Overpower (New): Strikes the target for xxx damage. It’s impossible to Dodge, Block, or Parry this attack. Generates XX Rage.
By moving the Rage generation around so that it’s both passive and active at the same time playing Arms will feel a lot more engaging as it gives the player control over the outcome and that feeling of control is important to how attractive the spec feels. When the player can do nothing, they’ll feel frustrated on a subconscious level and eventually just stop.
By making Tactician more reliable their Rage generation can also be better controlled and by getting more Rage Arms Warriors will also be able to participate in other styles of gameplay than the turret one they’re effectively relegated to now. It would also make the Talent Juggernaut more desirable.
A reliable Overpower also means that the DPS of the Arms Warrior can be moved around so it’s less dependent on essentially Joust abilities.
Damage for Arms
Damage is a touchy subject for Arms since a lot of people want to see it go back to being direct and front-loaded and for balance-issues that would be an utter nightmare since the MS debuff is essentially "point and click" with no real skill involved as it does far too many things at once. It would hit hard; it would reduce healing received and it is on a short CD.
What I would suggest it that MS is changed to be its own separate ability with a longish CD. I imagine something like this
• Mortal Strike (New): 30 Rage, 30 seconds cooldown, instant, 10 seconds duration. The Warrior strike the target injuring them severely. This attack leaves a DoT on the target and for as long as the DoT lasts all healing received is reduced by 25%.
This would increase the skill-cap for Arms severely as MS would no longer be point and click in PvP it would have to be used at the right time to have maximum effectiveness.
Mortal Strike as an ability would be replaced with Heroic Strike
• Heroic Strike (New): 30 Rage, 6 seconds cooldown, instant. The Warrior strikes their target and inflicts a high amount of damage and leaves a small Deep Wounds DoT on the target for 4 seconds.
By doing it this way the deeply unpopular Mastery: Deep Wounds can be removed as the total damage of the Arms Warrior is more controlled. This opens the way for a new Mastery my suggestion would be:
• Mastery: Rend (New): The Critical Hits of the Arms Warrior does X damage over Y period. This effect stacks.
This keeps the burst damage of Arms down while at the same time keeping their DPS within the benchmark set for the spec and it feels better than M: DW as it feels less essential. It’s important that this is a number instead of a % since % tends to go crazy with better gear as 10% of 200 is double that of 10% of 100. This would also make the removal of the Talent Rend necessary.
To avoid issues with Hamstring in particular I suggest adding to it:
• Critical hits from this ability are unable to activate Mastery: Rend
With Overpower being both a Builder and reliable the spec is now centered around it instead of it being the weird mix that there is now where both Overpower and Deep Wounds are important since Overpower is something to do between each haul of Rage-generation and the Mastery being around Deep Wounds. Which right now makes up for large part of Arms’ damage.
Survivability and Utility for Arms
Ignore Pain costing a set 40 Rage is going to make it cumbersome to use for Arms as it competes with doing damage. No other class or spec has to do this and can keep up with their damage while increasing their survivability. It just feels incredibly bad and the times where it could have been beneficial to use, I lacked the Rage to use IP. This is further compounded by all the videos I’ve seen of Youtubers praising that we have IP in all specs never using it despite it being highly useful in the situation they are in. Furthermore, IP pain no interactivity with Second Wind at all. Even though the damage is absorbed you still count as taking damage for the purpose of SW.
So, in reality, it does little to nothing even though it looks impressive on paper. Arms survivability still needs to be increased though as the spec is incredibly fragile. I would suggest a form of self-healing, just a minor one that conceptually is different from the self-healing of other classes.
• Vanguard (Passive) (New): The Warrior is healed by X for each X Rage used.
To compensate for this as there is no free lunch:
• The healing effect of Victory Rush should be lowered so the total healing is roughly equal.
Again, no percentages as percentages quickly go out of control with better gear.
This also opens up for Talents to be linked to this layer of gameplay and reinforce them instead of adding completely new layers. This can be done like this:
• Second Wind (New): While the Warrior is at or below 35% health the effect of Vanguard is doubled.
Speaking of Talents. The Talent Ravager adds nothing of note other than another AoE cooldown, to add to that the AoE is utterly useless if any movement happens as it’s used on a point on the ground instead of on a target it can follow. I suggest replacing Ravager with something that uses pre-existing gameplay-mechanics of the spec without adding any new layers, something like this:
• Analytical Insight (Arms) (New): The cooldown of Sweeping Strikes is reduced by X when using Overpower, max XX seconds and the cooldown of Heroic Strike is reduced by 1.3 seconds after using Overpower.
This combines the Striking the Anvil Azurite Trait with some AOE utility, so it matches the other two effects that add AoE damage as well as single-target damage.
Anger Management could get the same treatment where it’s usage of Overpower instead of usage of Rage that gives the effect as Rage is going to be more plentiful and predictable.
This leaves party utility and Arms has none other than what the basic Warrior Class provides. Fury has more utility than Arms.
My suggestion is to expand the War Banner PvP Talent and change the system. The problem with War Banner is that it essentially roots whoever is affected as if they leave the War Banner area, they also lose the effect.
My suggestion would be to create a new ability called Command:
• Command (Arms) (New), 30-yard range, Instant, Duration X seconds: The Warrior issues a command that has the effect of increasing Y by X. Only one Command can be active on a player at any given time. Using one Command activates the cooldown of all of them.
Command would be a nested ability, one Command for each secondary value of Critical Hit, Haste, Mastery, and Versatility. The shared cooldown prevents rapid-fire use of them and the “one Command” limitation prevents stacking, It also fits the name and theme since if people get multiple commands at the same time they either make a hierarchy for them or tends to go in circles as they can only perform one at a time.
The War Banner PvP Talent could then be remade into a new Command without the limitations imposed on Command.
Fury:
I’ve no feedback on Fury.
Protection:
Like Fury it’s a spec that mostly works, it has one glaring deficiency compared to every other tank spec out there in that it can only prolong its own death instead of preventing it. It’s only good because it has some damage, can take some hits and otherwise brings nothing to the group. This is the last thing a tank should want to be known for.
As it is now Protection Warriors are the worst tanks by far when it comes to actually surviving things. They are only in favour because the content favours their skill-set, to the point where it’s almost detrimental to bring one when the content is made for different skill-set.
To add to their general survivability, which is what you want a tank for, I suggest that the healing from the Talent Indomitable is split off to its own separate basic ability as the presence of it pretty much makes Indomitable mandatory. My suggestion is making the heal a baseline ability like this:
• Bulwark (Protection) (New): The Warrior is healed by 1% of their total health for every 10 Rage they use.
This would make the choices in that row all viable depending on what you want, do you want a massive heal at times with additional protection while you use it? Choose Bolster. Do you want increased self-healing all the time? Choose Indomitable. Do you want it to work while you’re getting additional protection? Choose Never Surrender. By tying the healing to Indomitable and making the healing better simply by choosing it then all it solves is to make that Talent mandatory.
The last suggestion is a change that would make Warriors better when tanking magic damage as currently, Prot Warriors are weaker against magic than any other tank by an order of magnitude.
• Spell Reflect: Reflects the first spell that the Warrior takes after the use of this ability. In addition, all magic damage is reduced by 15% for the duration of this ability.
Talents:
I’m of the belief that talents should just add extra layers to already existing gameplay instead of adding new layers to it by introducing new abilities. This is a problem especially for Warriors in general and Arms in particular since almost all the rows, for Arms it every row, adds a new ability instead of strengthening an element of already existing gameplay.