Discussing Solutions to Arms Fiasko

[Calamari]

Again, that is not how I recall it at all. In fact, I'm looking at the Cata 4.3 talent trees right now, and it is exactly as I remember it, with TfB being a 3 point talent that increases your OP crit chance by 20% per point and gives a 33% chance per point to allow Rend ticks to proc OP.

My bad, think I'm mixed it up with one of the early MoP beta builds.

They were experimenting with an Enrage that procs on special attack crits only, and for that purpose completely removed Overpower's crit chance for a while, and buffed it's weapon damage to be just below Mortal Strike. It felt really awkward not seeing your Overpower crit (people were in questing greens with less than 10% crit chance).

Was in response to OPs suggestion of removing the bonus crit from OP to allow better scaling with crit chance, which in itself is a fairly good point. The extra crit chance from Recklesness is wasted on Overpower, and Slam is a very expensive ability to replace all Overpowers with during Reck. Would be kind of nice if Overpower got the Chaos Bolt treatment in which all crit past 100% was turned into extra % dmg done.

[Appolyon]

Would be kind of nice if Overpower got the Chaos Bolt treatment in which all crit past 100% was turned into extra % dmg done.

I would love to see this. It would be a great way to make "I GOT GEAR!!" better for Arms. However, it would seem that there are no substantive changes coming any time soon.

[Korgoth]

Ugh hate those changes. All I want, Overpower costs no rage. Boom fixed. That should give enough of a pve dps boost to move arms up without being near the top, and make PvP function well again.

[Hand Banana]

Ugh hate those changes. All I want, Overpower costs no rage. Boom fixed. That should give enough of a pve dps boost to move arms up without being near the top, and make PvP function well again.

This. I also wouldnt mind seeing a mastery dmg bump, maybe 65% weapon damage instead of 55%? That would increase sustained without increasing burst as well as being the pve buff that arms needs. Such minor things could fix stuff so easily it seems like to me, but bliz just doesnt seem to notice/care.

[Nightstalker]

Buff Mastery/Opportunity Swings dmg to 75%.

Done.

Got buffed during 5.2 PTR, but reverted a few days later.

[Stormcall]

My bad, think I'm mixed it up with one of the early MoP beta builds.

They were experimenting with an Enrage that procs on special attack crits only, and for that purpose completely removed Overpower's crit chance for a while, and buffed it's weapon damage to be just below Mortal Strike. It felt really awkward not seeing your Overpower crit (people were in questing greens with less than 10% crit chance).

Was in response to OPs suggestion of removing the bonus crit from OP to allow better scaling with crit chance, which in itself is a fairly good point. The extra crit chance from Recklesness is wasted on Overpower, and Slam is a very expensive ability to replace all Overpowers with during Reck. Would be kind of nice if Overpower got the Chaos Bolt treatment in which all crit past 100% was turned into extra % dmg done.

Okay, I had beta access but never used it(or followed it, really), so that could certainly be the case. I too would be happy if OP got the CBolt treatment as well...and also with bumping mastery up to 75% or something.

[Mirishka]

My problem with Arms isn't that the damage is low (to the contrary I've seen some downright brutal Arms warriors in raids) but rather, that it just isn't fun to me. Its a boring spec compared to Fury (at least, well-geared Fury) and doesn't have the same 'RAWR I AM WARRIOR KEELING YOU' feel at all (in my opinion, mind you). Even protection feels more visceral to me, more impactful.

I know a lot of people prefer Arms to Fury (which is understandable given the latter's overbearing reliance on crit/enrage) though.

[Recke]

Mirishka, the problem with that is everyone enjoys their own thing, and Arms has a constant rotation, just like Fury when geared, both experiencing next to no downtime. Arms I'd say is more rng now than Fury due to the "joys" of CS and Sudden Doom. But that's a preference thing. However, as 522 ilvl comes into play (and higher ilvl on weapons) Fury takes a drastic leap ahead of Arms....or I should actually say that Arms stumbles at the first hurdle and Fury keeps going to race against the other "athletes." Fury undoubtedly scales better, and that's the Fiasko. At low gear values (which vary depending on what pieces are swapped out, but ultimately means anything up to normal ToT gear average), Arms can compete, and even outperform many classes. It just doesn't scale into the higher ilvls as well as....well as most other specs do.

[SmallBoatOps]

I liked the idea Blizz had with Overpower proccing a heavy hitting ability. Just the off GCD heroic strike for that much was a little crazy. I say bring back the proc but make it a % chance to proc a free slam or reg heroic strike? or have a much lower base % chance for overpower to hit twice buffed by mastery? I don't PvE much as Arms but I feel this would be nice to have in PvP and not outrageous. Warriors in PvP should be High Damage, Med Survivability and low utility. A lot of our control is indirect and can miss. Anyone else like this idea? Would it work nicely for PvE?

[Kankipappa]

Mirishka, the problem with that is everyone enjoys their own thing, and Arms has a constant rotation, just like Fury when geared, both experiencing next to no downtime. Arms I'd say is more rng now than Fury due to the "joys" of CS and Sudden Doom. But that's a preference thing. However, as 522 ilvl comes into play (and higher ilvl on weapons) Fury takes a drastic leap ahead of Arms....or I should actually say that Arms stumbles at the first hurdle and Fury keeps going to race against the other "athletes." Fury undoubtedly scales better, and that's the Fiasko. At low gear values (which vary depending on what pieces are swapped out, but ultimately means anything up to normal ToT gear average), Arms can compete, and even outperform many classes. It just doesn't scale into the higher ilvls as well as....well as most other specs do.

I have 521 ilvl atm, and Arms is only like 2k behind my TG fury sims with same talents, so still I can't see that (still have 1 LFR ring and upgraded MSV heroic boots, nothing big). On single target I do pull more as Arms on average, since fury's rotation is so subject to RNG with trinkets and procs. Sometimes no trinket procs for a while and then rotation falls in smoothly or trinkets proc but can't have anything decent to hit with them, while on Arms you always have stuff to hit when trinkets start rolling out, so I can always have the max benefit of them.

There are good days with Fury that allows me to pull decent dps, but I can't see the scaling yet on my ilvl, so I do believe It's more of a heroic gear thing.

[Recke]

I have 521 ilvl atm, and Arms is only like 2k behind my TG fury sims with same talents, so still I can't see that (still have 1 LFR ring and upgraded MSV heroic boots, nothing big). On single target I do pull more as Arms on average, since fury's rotation is so subject to RNG with trinkets and procs. Sometimes no trinket procs for a while and then rotation falls in smoothly or trinkets proc but can't have anything decent to hit with them, while on Arms you always have stuff to hit when trinkets start rolling out, so I can always have the max benefit of them.

There are good days with Fury that allows me to pull decent dps, but I can't see the scaling yet on my ilvl, so I do believe It's more of a heroic gear thing.

Do you have t15 2set? Because that's kind of a crucial thing. Outside of that, not sure, maybe your weapon options, aka, do you have two 522+ 1handers or 528/522 2handers. Fury, being a two hand kind of thing, gets a fair bit of it's damage from it's offhand, so if you are stuck with a suboptimal offhand, it can mess things up (same with the t15 2set as it grants quite a bit additional enrage uptime and RB procs). I know I'm at about 522 as well, and Arms keeps up with(and can beat) Fury (for me) but Landsoul (during progression) when he had a 528 weapon and a 517 offhand, Fury was significantly better and he was on his was about 528 ilvl (so tf, just above normal gear). And that's another thing to keep in mind is TF gear I consider slightly above normal gear, however it can inflate your ilvl depending on what pieces you have/don't have.

[Darkfriend]

I have 521 ilvl atm, and Arms is only like 2k behind my TG fury sims with same talents, so still I can't see that (still have 1 LFR ring and upgraded MSV heroic boots, nothing big). On single target I do pull more as Arms on average, since fury's rotation is so subject to RNG with trinkets and procs. Sometimes no trinket procs for a while and then rotation falls in smoothly or trinkets proc but can't have anything decent to hit with them, while on Arms you always have stuff to hit when trinkets start rolling out, so I can always have the max benefit of them.

There are good days with Fury that allows me to pull decent dps, but I can't see the scaling yet on my ilvl, so I do believe It's more of a heroic gear thing.

You don't sim warriors to get DPS numbers. You sim to determine differences between gear and stat weights and the like.

[Kankipappa]

Do you have t15 2set? Because that's kind of a crucial thing. Outside of that, not sure, maybe your weapon options, aka, do you have two 522+ 1handers or 528/522 2handers. Fury, being a two hand kind of thing, gets a fair bit of it's damage from it's offhand, so if you are stuck with a suboptimal offhand, it can mess things up (same with the t15 2set as it grants quite a bit additional enrage uptime and RB procs). I know I'm at about 522 as well, and Arms keeps up with(and can beat) Fury (for me) but Landsoul (during progression) when he had a 528 weapon and a 517 offhand, Fury was significantly better and he was on his was about 528 ilvl (so tf, just above normal gear). And that's another thing to keep in mind is TF gear I consider slightly above normal gear, however it can inflate your ilvl depending on what pieces you have/don't have.

I even have 4 set what actually made Arms burst worthwhile again. No luck with thunderforged weapons, as I have 522 2-handers on both hands. Got one heroic 1-hander from jinrokh, but I have yet seen even a normal offhand for it. I have 26% unbuffed mastery for Fury and when I have buffs it's something around ~34% already, while for Arms that means mastery is around 50% while buffed. Only got 3% haste on my gear but that should be better choice for fury too. I do have my char's armory on my sig, if you wanna compare.

Maybe when I can get double axes it can turn around a bit, as I currently have the council sword as offhand what has too much useless hit. But even trading that offhand for another axe doesn't seem to give that much of a difference, if you believe the sim numbers.

You don't sim warriors to get DPS numbers. You sim to determine differences between gear and stat weights and the like.

Yeah that too, but I'm just pointing out that I can't even see the +10k difference yet what you you are supposed to get with BiS gear. My actual raiding performance doesn't seem to hint on that there is that much of a difference either, although AoE is a lot smoother and stronger to do as Fury for sure.

Edit: I haven't been using the unending rage glyph for fury (well, for either specs) most of the time due to some aoe bosses, but since it is really handy for fury it seems to affect fury sims way more, like instant 4k extra to the numbers.

[Darkfriend]

If you don't use unending rage glyph you're doing something terribly wrong. That's probably, in general, the most important glyph to use. That 20 extra rage is an extra execute in a CS, an extra HS in a CS, enables more pooling for when you're enraged, and much more.

[Deleted]

Ugh hate those changes. All I want, Overpower costs no rage. Boom fixed. That should give enough of a pve dps boost to move arms up without being near the top, and make PvP function well again.

I am already wasting a huge amount of overpower procs because slam is moar damage.

[Nightstalker]

I am already wasting a huge amount of overpower procs because slam is moar damage.

But not more DPS, since OP has a 1 sec GCD. As soon as you surpass 50% crit you can switch to Slam spam (f.e. 4pt15 or primordius with 3xcritbuff)

[Viradiance]

Slows:
Currently Harmstring feels really bad. The effect is really nice being physical and all, but its a pain in the ass to apply, yet mandatory. We are the only melee class who's slow requires a GCD, primary Ressources and melee range to be applied. On the same time we are the class that relies the most on having the slow up. This makes the whole concept of sticking to a target really frustrating. I understand that an autoslow combined with our mobility and our current pvp dmg we would be too strong (thinking 5.0), but combined with the pvp dmg nerfs mentioned above i suggest the following solution:

Disable costs 15 energy, has melee range, and is on the GCD.

Non-talented, the Feral Druid slow also requires them to be in melee range and to shred you (Infected Wounds) which costs over 40 energy. Although, they can talent Faerie Swarm, giving them a 40 yard slow.

[Flaks]

Disable costs 15 energy, has melee range, and is on the GCD.

Non-talented, the Feral Druid slow also requires them to be in melee range and to shred you (Infected Wounds) which costs over 40 energy. Although, they can talent Faerie Swarm, giving them a 40 yard slow.

Monk is superior due to lower overall cost (energy refills faster) and also has a root tacked on to the ability AS WELL AS a 1 second baseline gcd.

Ferals auto-apply their slow on their most important/most used attack (also works on mangle, not only shred).

Hamstring is undeniably the worse slow in the game and by a pretty freaking large margin.

[Ferg]

Disable costs 15 energy, has melee range, and is on the GCD.

Non-talented, the Feral Druid slow also requires them to be in melee range and to shred you (Infected Wounds) which costs over 40 energy. Although, they can talent Faerie Swarm, giving them a 40 yard slow.

Disable refreshes its duration if the target remains within 10 yards of the Monk. Hamstring has to be reapplied constantly.

Don't even start with FDruid slow....it procs off their main attack rofl...that would be like MS proccing Hamstring. Please think before you post. Hamstring is THE worst slow IN THE GAME, period. Bar none. You can't argue it.

[Stormcall]

Disable refreshes its duration if the target remains within 10 yards of the Monk. Hamstring has to be reapplied constantly.

Don't even start with FDruid slow....it procs off their main attack rofl...that would be like MS proccing Hamstring. Please think before you post. Hamstring is THE worst slow IN THE GAME, period. Bar none. You can't argue it.

Not only does Disable refresh automatically if the target is within range, it's has a 1s GCD, and if you Disable someone who is already Disabled you don't just slow them, you totally root them(you know, like Arms used to have via Imp Hamstring talent, but don't get anymore:-/).