Blizzard's try to balance Arms

[Kaljurei]

Thats a really good idea imho. It would fix so many things with this simple change.

- No big impact on PvP since low mastery and haste anyways (no balance issues)
- Would not result in regreting taking gear that lacks Crit.
- Creates a nice synergy with Storm Bolt
- Guarantees to keep arms competitive in the long run due to nice scaling
- Rotation would become predictable but not monotonous or stale
- Supports using rage outside of a CS window


But you would have to remove Sudden Death and probably lower it a little bit so it wouldnt be over the top.

Yeah, I intended the Sudden Death skill description to be changed to that. I should have made that clear, sorry.

It actually has a much bigger impact on PvP than PvE because 20% chance on autoattacks is pretty bad, but a constant CD reduction whenever you're able to autoattack allows for a much better CD reduction on CS.

With GC not looking at EU Forums at all(Blatant disregard for what happens at EU Forums, which I find atrocious), I don't think that idea is ever going to reach those forums.

I seriously think we should stop talking about scaling(because GC thinks we're being silly, lol, yeah we're being fucking silly alright with the worst stat scaling spec in the game since Wrath), and talk about stuff which will have a direct impact, and indirectly boost scaling, i.e Rage cost reduction on Overpower/Slam, or damage buffs, etc.

[Deleted]

sorry Im from Europe too so I cant reach him either. But I try anyways on twitter. Though if Arms end up being competitive in 5.2 I dont care what they changed in order to get it done

[Kaljurei]

NEW UPDATES :

Warrior
- For Arms, we are going to try Overpower proc'ing Sudden Death instead of autoattacks. This will make haste slightly worse (which we can fix) but we hope will help make the rotation slightly more compelling, since autoattack procs can feel really random. With Overpower you can anticipate it a little more.
- Likewise, Overpower will cost no rage in Execute range. We agree that saving rage for Overpower and spending it all on Execute don't play well together.
- We haven't made a tuning pass on Arms (or any spec) yet. Don't fret about DPS numbers at this stage.

[Minor point: would a 10-rage discount on the next Execute make more sense for Overpower?]

That is the actual implementation of the change I was hinting at. (Technically, it's a duration on all Overpowers not a single charge.) We are also going to try a slightly cheaper Slam. We agree that will help make it clear whether you should prioritize Slam or Overpower. We further agree that the problem wasn't really Arms having too much rage. The problem was Arms not having an engaging resource model since nearly every attack was free. A 20 Slam and 10 Overpower might work fine. Let us know.

This is absolutely excellent news.

->Rage cost reduction on Overpower during Execute phase brings us back to current levels, allowing us to spend all our Rage on Execute once again without having to spend Rage on Overpowers to fill GCDs.
->Slam cost reduction may make it's DPR better than OP+HS. Let's see.
->Tying Sudden Death to Overpowers, I'm not very sure.

Personally, I think the one good effect of the change is that we would have more control over when a Sudden Death proc would occur, and therefore we would be able to have a lot more control over our damage.

On the other hand, should the proc chance decrease, i.e should it remain at 20%? I think this value is what would decide whether we get more procs, or more reliable procs.

The bad thing about the change is that we may prioritize Slam over OP inside a CS window with the proposed changes which means we may or may not get a proc right after the first proc, leading to lesser number of overall procs.

I think once we look at what tuning changes he's planning, i.e next PTR build or whatever, we should be able to decide whether Arms is going to be competitive or not. Personally, I'm back to being cautiously optimistic.

[Deleted]

I dont like Overpower proccing sudden death. Id rather have overpowered reduced the cooldown of CS by 3? seconds.
Also it feels like Heroic Strike is not playing any role for arms anymore.
Still no plans for mastery and haste. Blizzard is taking their time, which probably means 5.2 is going to be march.

Cant say much for dps. I guess it wont be better than live currently. Need to see changes to haste and mastery if there ever will be one.

[Deleted]

Nice, thank you for the update. Agreed on the OP proccing SD change, feels a bit odd. It kinda feels like OP would have a higher priority than Slam during Colossus Smash unless you already had a Sudden Death proc. It does make it a bit complicated actually.

So... MS > CS > OP > Slam still, where Slam > OP if target already has CS on them. Weird. Now if OP APPLIED the CS debuff rather than reset the CD on CS, that's a different story. But just as confusing. ;S

Maybe allow Sudden Death to stack in the way Raging Blow stacks?

I dunno. Seems so complicated.

OP reducing the cooldown is a better idea.

[Kaljurei]

I dont like Overpower proccing sudden death. Id rather have overpowered reduced the cooldown of CS by 3? seconds.
Also it feels like Heroic Strike is not playing any role for arms anymore.
Still no plans for mastery and haste. Blizzard is taking their time, which probably means 5.2 is going to be march.

Cant say much for dps. I guess it wont be better than live currently. Need to see changes to haste and mastery if there ever will be one.

I think that would be more balanced as well.

With regards to Heroic Strike, I'm going to be looking at it from a CS perspective and a Rage perspective.

We have 3 GCDs(4 for people who can squeeze it) inside a CS window. Depending on the amount of rage we have, we can use HS along with OP/Slam/MS inside the CS window, which means HS still has use, but not much.

With regards to Haste and Mastery, I'll wait and see. They aren't done with tuning yet so changes might be in store. He did hint as to the fact that Haste's value would decrease due to the fact that they're tying SD into Overpowers, so they may either buff the Haste buff to 100% again or put in a different mechanic to increase its value.

Nice, thank you for the update. Agreed on the OP proccing SD change, feels a bit odd. It kinda feels like OP would have a higher priority than Slam during Colossus Smash unless you already had a Sudden Death proc. It does make it a bit complicated actually.

So... MS > CS > OP > Slam still, where Slam > OP if target already has CS on them. Weird. Now if OP APPLIED the CS debuff rather than reset the CD on CS, that's a different story. But just as confusing. ;S

Maybe allow Sudden Death to stack in the way Raging Blow stacks?

I dunno. Seems so complicated.

OP reducing the cooldown is a better idea.

Yes, that's what I'm thinking too. I'm thinking that, would using OP inside a CS window, when we don't have another CS available, would be an overall DPS increase over Slam even when considering the fact that Slam will do slightly more average damage? I'd reckon we have to wait for SimC testing to tell us how it would be like.

Allowing SD to stack in the way RB stacks is a brilliant idea. Having CS charges would allow us even greater control over how and when we use CS, but we must have OP to proc CS otherwise we may end up wasting the stacks as well. I think it might become too much to handle as well, like you said it would be complicated.

Direct reduction of CD by say 2/3 seconds like GoldenEnergy said would be a better idea, much like my older idea for Autoattacks to reduce the CD by seconds.

Let's see how it goes. We'll have to test it to be sure of the best action priority.

---------- Post added 2013-01-25 at 12:04 AM ----------

Another update for you guys :

Sudden Death - Your Overpower hits have a 25% chance of resetting the cooldown on your Colossus Smash. Your Execute hits have a 100% chance of making any Overpower free for 10 sec.

This is very very interesting.

The proc chance got buffed by 5%, and we ideally use 2x OPs every 6 seconds, on an average thats an OP every 3s, which is better than an autoattack every 3.5 seconds(taking Haste into consideration). So, it's probably more CS procs as it is, mathematically.

The Execute change is balanced, and proper. We should easily be able to Execute every 10 seconds so this is not going to be a problem to upkeep the buff.

This is very interesting. Execute phase would be pretty much the same as Live, except pressing OPs will allow us to get more CS to be used for those Executes and OP. Excellent.

Now we only need to know on how they wish to balance Sudden Death so that Slam is not ignored, even with the reduced Rage cost.

[meathead]

The worst part about it is that there's also a ninja nerf that makes it so op from ms doesn't proc if the ms is parried.

Good luck against plate melee..

un fucking real-so if MS does not straight up land,we get no OPs procs,thats not good at all.like i said before,what does blizz expect warriors to do when we miss a MS "its going to happen". MS will be on CD and OP will not proc,that would leave us with slam/HS/hamstring and TC,all of which costs rage.so if were lucky we could get off 1 attack,and thats IF we had any rage.bad design from blizzes b-team.

blizz thinks its ok for dks deathstrike or whatever its called to heal if it lands or not,and thats just there heal.but its not ok for warriors whose hole rotation depends on MS procing op to not have it proc on misses,lmfao.

---------- Post added 2013-01-24 at 01:57 PM ----------

NEW UPDATES :


This is absolutely excellent news.

->Rage cost reduction on Overpower during Execute phase brings us back to current levels, allowing us to spend all our Rage on Execute once again without having to spend Rage on Overpowers to fill GCDs.
->Slam cost reduction may make it's DPR better than OP+HS. Let's see.
->Tying Sudden Death to Overpowers, I'm not very sure.

Personally, I think the one good effect of the change is that we would have more control over when a Sudden Death proc would occur, and therefore we would be able to have a lot more control over our damage.

On the other hand, should the proc chance decrease, i.e should it remain at 20%? I think this value is what would decide whether we get more procs, or more reliable procs.

The bad thing about the change is that we may prioritize Slam over OP inside a CS window with the proposed changes which means we may or may not get a proc right after the first proc, leading to lesser number of overall procs.

I think once we look at what tuning changes he's planning, i.e next PTR build or whatever, we should be able to decide whether Arms is going to be competitive or not. Personally, I'm back to being cautiously optimistic.

i may be wrong because i do not pve at all,but with these changes it would make arms even more dependent on execute phases right?we still be short on rage form 100% until execute procs?

[broggernaut]

i may be wrong because i do not pve at all,but with these changes it would make arms even more dependent on execute phases right?we still be short on rage form 100% until execute procs?

Not necessarily.

I think there will be more changes coming down the line for Haste/Mastery. The spec needs to be re-tuned badly in comparison to nearly every other DPS spec, as we hit NORMAL MODE ilvls of 522, in a spec like Fury, Enrage uptime is going to be approaching 90-100%... we're already seeing RNG put some players around 80%. There's no way, in its current form, that Arms could keep up with that. Arms' scaling is based purely on weapon damage. You get a new weapon? Congratulations, you've reached DPS Plateau X. Next weapon? Plateau Y.

The Execute change will just make it so we're not auto-attacking with our thumbs up our asses until we have the rage to Execute.

What we don't have a good look at right now is the new CS uptime, which is potentially much better than it is now.

[cFortyfive]

What we don't have a good look at right now is the new CS uptime, which is potentially much better than it is now.

Not too sure on that one - it is of course more reliable but purely number of procs wise I doubt that the difference should turn out that significant.

[Kaljurei]

i may be wrong because i do not pve at all,but with these changes it would make arms even more dependent on execute phases right?we still be short on rage form 100% until execute procs?

Well, with the changes to Slam, we'll be using the same amount of Rage we normally did, roughly. So I think it'll be fine.

Not necessarily.

I think there will be more changes coming down the line for Haste/Mastery. The spec needs to be re-tuned badly in comparison to nearly every other DPS spec, as we hit NORMAL MODE ilvls of 522, in a spec like Fury, Enrage uptime is going to be approaching 90-100%... we're already seeing RNG put some players around 80%. There's no way, in its current form, that Arms could keep up with that. Arms' scaling is based purely on weapon damage. You get a new weapon? Congratulations, you've reached DPS Plateau X. Next weapon? Plateau Y.

The Execute change will just make it so we're not auto-attacking with our thumbs up our asses until we have the rage to Execute.

What we don't have a good look at right now is the new CS uptime, which is potentially much better than it is now.

An apt description of our scaling with WDPS. It's just unreal to have a factor close to 10 for Arms, where other classes don't even cross 7 because they have decent scaling with every other secondary stat and 3+ scaling with the primary stat. It's not compensatory.

I think you shouldn't be looking at the Sudden Death change purely with the view of whether we're going to have better uptime. Wasted procs and unreliability in choosing whether we want a proc at that time or not is the main concern.

Firstly, we're going to have complete control over when SD is going to proc so that we can use the damage from that CS a lot better.

Secondly, because of us being able to have more control, we're going to have better average uptime. This is important to understand. The proc chance is also more, we also use more Overpowers every 6 seconds compared to autoattacks. This only changes during Heroism, which we shouldn't be too concerned about because it's only 40s of a fight and furthermore, the rage generation increase should offset it as well.

[Hand Banana]

It is beyond me why they dont just make our mastery better like they orginially wanted to. In pvp our sustained damage is average and our burst is too high. Warrior mastery buffs sustained damage and has little effect on burst and they could nerfed some of our burst (which is the biggest complaint against wars) to even it out if it was that big of a deal. I wont even go into tfb...

Additional, while I dont pve, apparently arms is way behind everyone else so buffing mastery is a solid buff to dps in general, who cares what stats are more important over other stats, a buff is a buff.

Seriously, making our godawful mastery something worthwhile literally fixes alot of problems for pve and pvp. Cant fathom why they arent changing it.

[Deleted]

Putting the Haste and Mastery changes back probably has something more to do with not changing too many things at once, I can see Mastery (and/or Haste) getting buffed again soon.

I'm really not sold on this Overpower change, I fear that, once again, it's going to do weird things to the priority of certain attacks in the rotation, and there's going to be so many if statements in the thought process that, as was seen with TFB, the rotation is just messy.

As it stands, it appears that they're aiming for something like this:

Mortal Strike every cooldown
If target doesn't have Colossus Smash debuff: Colossus Smash
If target doesn't have Colossus Smash debuff, and Colossus Smash is on cooldown: Overpower
If target DOES have Colossus Smash debuff, and Colossus Smash is on cooldown: Overpower
If target DOES have Colossus Smash debuff, and Colossus Smash is ready (because of Sudden Death proc), Slam
Heroic Strike to avoid rage capping.

Does this look about right?

[Kaljurei]

Putting the Haste and Mastery changes back probably has something more to do with not changing too many things at once, I can see Mastery (and/or Haste) getting buffed again soon.

Me too. They already said that the SD change would nerf Haste so they will bring that up to par again. I personally hope that the change will also increase our rage generation somehow.

I'm really not sold on this Overpower change, I fear that, once again, it's going to do weird things to the priority of certain attacks in the rotation, and there's going to be so many if statements in the thought process that, as was seen with TFB, the rotation is just messy.

As it stands, it appears that they're aiming for something like this:

Mortal Strike every cooldown
If target doesn't have Colossus Smash debuff: Colossus Smash
If target doesn't have Colossus Smash debuff, and Colossus Smash is on cooldown: Overpower
If target DOES have Colossus Smash debuff, and Colossus Smash is on cooldown: Overpower
If target DOES have Colossus Smash debuff, and Colossus Smash is ready (because of Sudden Death proc), Slam
Heroic Strike to avoid rage capping.

Does this look about right?

Perfectly. Ideally, if we have a MS->CS->OP->(CS procs)->Slam/HS/Storm Bolt rotation going on most of the time, with CS and OP interchanging places depending on whether we have CS available or not, and OP replacing the Slam/HS/SB as well if that occurs to get another CS proc.

It may also be possible that if Storm Bolt looks better than Bloodbath(also when considering opportunity cost), then we'll be using more Heroic Strikes than before.

However, I also have a feeling that the rotation becomes a bit more challenging and fun to play, but we definitely will need to track a few more things because of this change. I like it to be honest, that's what Arms rotation in Cata was all about.

[Deleted]

Yeah it could be fun. What I loved about 4.3 Arms was weaving in those Heroic Strikes, and delaying Overpowers so you got two back to back, meaning you only had to switch to and from battle stance once.

We might get a similar feeling from delaying our OP while CS is up and ready. Slam gets a nice clear spot in the rotation, although now they've said about buffing Slam damage so it does more than OP + HS I am a little worried, because that could have some even weirder effects on the rotation. Even then, I'm not sure - CS uptime is surely our greatest DPS increase.

Will be interesting to test this on PTR at least!

[Gatsu]

Yeah it could be fun. What I loved about 4.3 Arms was weaving in those Heroic Strikes, and delaying Overpowers so you got two back to back, meaning you only had to switch to and from battle stance once.

We might get a similar feeling from delaying our OP while CS is up and ready. Slam gets a nice clear spot in the rotation, although now they've said about buffing Slam damage so it does more than OP + HS I am a little worried, because that could have some even weirder effects on the rotation. Even then, I'm not sure - CS uptime is surely our greatest DPS increase.

Will be interesting to test this on PTR at least!

It's a bit OT, but you didn't need to delay OP to get 2 in a row in 4.3, most of the times it was a dps loss :P
Loved the playstyle btw.

[meathead]

Well, with the changes to Slam, we'll be using the same amount of Rage we normally did, roughly. So I think it'll be fine.



An apt description of our scaling with WDPS. It's just unreal to have a factor close to 10 for Arms, where other classes don't even cross 7 because they have decent scaling with every other secondary stat and 3+ scaling with the primary stat. It's not compensatory.

I think you shouldn't be looking at the Sudden Death change purely with the view of whether we're going to have better uptime. Wasted procs and unreliability in choosing whether we want a proc at that time or not is the main concern.

Firstly, we're going to have complete control over when SD is going to proc so that we can use the damage from that CS a lot better.

Secondly, because of us being able to have more control, we're going to have better average uptime. This is important to understand. The proc chance is also more, we also use more Overpowers every 6 seconds compared to autoattacks. This only changes during Heroism, which we shouldn't be too concerned about because it's only 40s of a fight and furthermore, the rage generation increase should offset it as well.

Well, with the changes to Slam, we'll be using the same amount of Rage we normally did, roughly. So I think it'll be fine.


not to sure about that-two ops =20 rage,the new slam is only saving us 10 rage,were still losing out on 10 rage.looking at this from arms pvp point of view,i think arms in magor trouble.even in b-stance arms can not maintain is rotation on the ptr. op's
slams,hamstring HS, there's just not enough rage.and now that MS has to actually land to get op procs we will sit there with our thumbs up r asses if it misses.

blizz nerfed d-stance already just revert the op nerf making it rage free again and problem solved.

[Landsoul]

They reverted Mastery/Haste because Arms Warriors would have to roll on DK / Ret gear because crit became worse than the other two. This is never a good thing. Mechanics and general gear scaling needs to be fixed first before anything drastic is done.

We are likely to see a few rounds of mechanics improvements before scaling / DPS is on the table.

[Dawnrage]

Doesn't the rage changes to OP hurt our AoE capabilities? On live as it is, it's not very impressive already.

[Darkfriend]

Doesn't the rage changes to OP hurt our AoE capabilities? On live as it is, it's not very impressive already.

How so? I mean, it might mean a few fewer TCs/WWs or less uptime on SS, so in that context yes.

[Gatsu]

How so? I mean, it might mean a few fewer TCs/WWs or less uptime on SS, so in that context yes.

It's not exactly like that, more like removing OPs during an AoE rotation in the "not enough rage" GCDs.