7.2.5 Arms Warrior Feedback

[Deleted]

Hi everyone,

Reposting this from the PTR forums to shed some more light.

As one of the few people actually playing Arms (and ONLY Arms) in high-end content at the moment I thought I might give some feedback as to some of the changes we've received on the PTR.

For a while now I think Arms has been considered an RNG spec and I like the steps taken to reduce that factor. The cooldown reduction on Colossus Smash is very much welcomed by all.
The other gripe I think people have with the spec at the moment is Focused Rage and our reliance on it. I like that you have made a move to try and stop the dynasty this build has had in Legion but currently it still doesn't feel like you've quite got there yet. I'll address this a little later.

The mastery nerf I think is a move in the right direction. We currently rely far too heavily on mastery and I welcome the idea of prioritizing primary stats over secondaries.
Another thing I like is the move towards giving us more aoe/cleave capability. The buffs to Void Cleave, Will of the First King and Whirlwind + Cleave themselves will help us a lot along with the incoming T20 bonuses that synergize with Bladestorm/Ravager.
Speaking of Ravager, I'd like to talk about the talents a bit now and here is where I have mixed feelings. Initially, I liked the move to nerf the main talent build with the nerfs to Dauntless, Focused Rage and Anger Management but after having played it on the PTR fairly extensively, I found using focused rage became very clunky but playing without it still resulted in me drowning in rage. I have quite a lot to say about the talents so I will address them tier by tier.

Level 15 As stated above, the nerf to Dauntless poses 2 problems. Firstly, when taking Focused Rage, the combined nerfs essentially give focused rage a 50% increase in rage cost compared to live servers. Secondly, without Focused Rage, we will cap on rage far too much. So the alternatives are Sweeping Strikes, one of my favorite talents but of course no increase to ST damage, or Overpower which seems in a strange place. I'd like to see some more love for Overpower damage-wise to let it compete. Ideally the ST talent would be Overpower, the MT talent would be Sweeping Strikes and Dauntless would be a steady medium.

Level 45 Initially my thoughts here with the buffs to Fervor of Battle and Will of the First King was that FoB would be the go-to talent at this tier now. The trouble is that currently we rely so heavily on Draught of Souls that Avatar has too much value for us. Having said that, I think going forward that Fervor of Battle will be the choice and I welcome it. The rage it provides through Will of the First King is nice for quality of life. I would, however, like to see some more love for our old friend Rend here, too, since currently (even with the extra buffs) it hardly competes. Extra damage over time or some sort of extra interaction with tactician could be nice.

Level 75 This is the tier that needs the most attention in my opinion. Focused Rage... a lot of people hate it but I'm one of the proud few who actually enjoy the gameplay. Unfortunately, the way it plays on the PTR seems far too clunky at the moment. Using legendary gloves helps this a bit but this isn't much consolidation to those who don't own them. I can see why you are nerfing the build since it currently dominates the other builds and I think this is the right move but this isn't how it should be done. The reason is this: the alternatives are far too weak. In For the Kill is a talent that has never really seen any use and no matter how you buff it, I believe it's going to stay that way. We need a replacement for it or a complete redesign to provide any sort of competition with the others on this tier. Mortal Combo has potential I believe and is fun to play in my opinion but the burst is lacking. Perhaps a flat damage buff along with the extra charge could help this talent compete. The overall problem with this tier is that it has 1 talent that provides something we, as Arms Warriors, need: a rage dump. Since Heroic Strike is no longer baseline, we don't have a rage dump off the GCD and this is the only place we can find one. So this presents a problem in that if we don't take it we will cap rage far too often as I mentioned before. A suggestion I have seen others make is that you give us Heroic Strike baseline so we can all have a rage dump and then leave Focused Rage as an 'upgrade talent' (like Ravager is to Bladestorm). Another suggestion I have is that you make all talents on this tier off GCD and perhaps have them at varying rage costs to give way for different preferences of play. Personally I would prefer to have more low-cost rage dumps available (similar to live with the 12 rage Focused Rage) than high-cost ones (18 rage FR on the PTR). Adjusting rage costs and scaling damage could also be an option here. Scaling down the damage increase and rage cost of Focused Rage could give way to a more fluid playstyle like I feel we have on live. By the same token, increasing the rage cost and damage of Mortal Strike through a talent (perhaps coupled with Mortal Combo's current effect) could help with the rage capping issue I previously talked about.

Level 90 Firstly, I really like the changes to Titanic Might. Having permanent Colossus Smash on the target feels nice and worth the pick up. Trauma is a talent I always liked the idea of but the damage it dealt was lackluster. With the possibility of Fervor of Battle this seems like a more viable choice, especially in multi-target situations but a little more damage might help it compete a bit better. As for Deadly Calm, I'm a little surprised this didn't meet the nerf hammer, to be honest, since it's an integral part of the live build. It synergizes far too well with Focused Rage, especially in it's current PTR state, not to be coupled with it. This talent is somewhat linked to Focused Rage in that sense because without Focused Rage this talent is fairly pointless as you will always have enough rage to do what you want during Battle Cry. One suggestion I have would be to make Deadly Calm it's own ability that you can use on demand to make your rage costs 0. This would help a lot in low-proc times, would help you stop rage capping during Battle Cry, and you could also balance it easily by adjusting duration and cooldown accordingly to be competitive with the others at this tier.
Level 100 I'm not sure how to feel about the changes to Anger Management currently. I feel like this was the talent from the current build that didn't need changing. Adding the cooldown reduction of Bladestorm was done to synergize with the tier bonuses and new trait I'm guessing, which is fine, but increasing the rage required to do so by 100% was a little excessive I think. Ravager seems great, especially with the Mortal Strike tier bonus, but we will probably see no value from the other bonus with this talent chosen. The reason being that we would need 30+ Colossus Smash uses per minute (1 every 2 seconds - the absolute dream for any Arms player) to get 2 uses on Ravager for each Battle Cry. Otherwise we will hold the Ravager for the next Battle Cry, essentially negating the bonus received from our tier set. Choosing between a talent or value from tier bonuses shouldn't be a thing. As for Opportunity Strikes, the way it is currently feels the same as live: pretty boring (especially at pull). A suggestion I have here could be turn also make this an ability you could use on demand. Similar to Ravager with a 1 minute cooldown to line up with Battle Cry, but for ST.

All in all I like the changes and the direction we are headed but I think there are still some things to be tweaked. At the top of this post I mentioned some of the issues that a lot of players have with the spec and, while I personally don't have an problem with these things, I still think they need to be addressed as a lot of people are put off playing this spec because of it. The steps taken are positive but more can still be done.
I think a universal rage dump (off GCD) is needed or there needs to be a strong alternative to counteract the amount of rage we generate without one. As previously mentioned, baseline Heroic Strike could be an option or a full tier of rage dump talents could be another option.
Alternatives could include damage + rage cost increases for some talents or even just on some baseline abilities. Another possibility could be some kind of passive rage spender (maybe like a reverse Defensive Stance - deal x% increased damage at the cost of x rage per second).

Thanks for reading and please let me know if you think I have missed anything important.

[LazyCoding]

I agree with pretty much everything you said except that I think the rage nerf to FR was necesary. It is such an aggresive talent that it locks you into certain talents on all rows ,certain rotation, certain relics etc..
Right now on live people don't use FR to avoid rage cap. They spam it to proc tactition and after the proc they go back to fishing again. With the low CD of BC, FR is pretty much on cooldown unless there is no tactition proc for a while. In other words they stop spamming only when they can't do it anymore. During BC things get realy weird. Pressing 2 buttons same time for 7 seconds is ugly.
An off-GCD shouldn't be spammable it should be something you use in some situations.

I do get that FR is only viable choice in its row both on live and on PTR but now that we can't spam it anymore how about we still pick but only use it to avoid rage cap and/or to add some damage to MS when it already has a buff(SD, EP)?

I tried some builds on PTR that seem to be good with using FR this way. I can't measure dps on ptr so i don't know if it is good dps or not but it is a good rotation. You got procs(tactition,stone heart,overpower) , sustain dps with the help of TM and/or Fervor, your cool off-GCD ability. No rage starving and no rage capping.

Isin't there realy no build other than that is on Live now(with or without FR talent)?

[Deleted]

I agree with pretty much everything you said except that I think the rage nerf to FR was necesary. It is such an aggresive talent that it locks you into certain talents on all rows ,certain rotation, certain relics etc..
Right now on live people don't use FR to avoid rage cap. They spam it to proc tactition and after the proc they go back to fishing again. With the low CD of BC, FR is pretty much on cooldown unless there is no tactition proc for a while. In other words they stop spamming only when they can't do it anymore. During BC things get realy weird. Pressing 2 buttons same time for 7 seconds is ugly.
An off-GCD shouldn't be spammable it should be something you use in some situations.

I do get that FR is only viable choice in its row both on live and on PTR but now that we can't spam it anymore how about we still pick but only use it to avoid rage cap and/or to add some damage to MS when it already has a buff(SD, EP)?

I tried some builds on PTR that seem to be good with using FR this way. I can't measure dps on ptr so i don't know if it is good dps or not but it is a good rotation. You got procs(tactition,stone heart,overpower) , sustain dps with the help of TM and/or Fervor, your cool off-GCD ability. No rage starving and no rage capping.

Isin't there realy no build other than that is on Live now(with or without FR talent)?

You have a good point about the current state of FR, especially when using legendary gloves. Personally I am using Aggramar's Stride at the moment and still use FR on ~80% of its GCDs. My point really was that we lack alternatives and it drives a lot of people away from playing the spec, as you mentioned also.

Unfortunately, I've had a similar experience to you on the PTR. The standard build still seems to be the strongest but now it just feels a lot clunkier. To get an experience similar to live I have found that you can use lege gloves and CoF but that's not good news to those who don't own them.

One Build that I have found a lot of fun has been just the standard build but with FoB instead of avatar and using 2x STR trinkets (CoF + Claw) and lege gloves. This way you don't have to line any cooldowns or trinkets up and you can just use BC as soon as its up. The numbers are pretty similar to the standard build with DoS and actually sim even higher (I am not trusting PTR sims at this point, however).

[Deleted]

Heyho

Im impressed of all your thinkings to me im not a big fan of FR but its pretty fresh and im going with you it should stay in any way.
I know im pretty an outsider because id like to play with rend and trauma as well with mortal combo.
Some would say its trash maybe but i dont like the must have of our massive mastery impact aswell as the big dps increase in execute phases.
Dont get me wrong its good we can push dps late fight but i dont wanna press one button at 20% and below till the kill.

I would love a chance to dump the rage aswell without using FR mostly if i can go with my dots and fillers.
To me i would like to change trauma so like it was a time ago
Trauma increasing the damage and rage cost of slam by 30% (4 stacks) for example.

So we could think about an gameplay without FR but get good rage dump and are viable with rend over fevor of battle since my change wont affect whirlwind because i hate throwing slam away just because i talented fevor of battle.
Besides putting this change would be a good alternative to deadly calm.

Let me hear your thouhts sorry for grammar im german:P