7.2.5 PTR Arms, Rage, and why it should matter

[Deleted]

HFC Arms could be remembered as one of the best iteration just due to how stupid our kit was and how overpowered the tier bonus was before the nerf.

Which shouldn't be surprising at all, given how MS was the only damaging button we had and how spamming it over and over and over could lead to dumb results.
As it did.

Anyway yeah, Rage should matter, but as Sarri said, as long as we don't have any control on its income then it's bound to be a mechanic that leads to be desired.
As it stands Warriors would need to build Rage through some abilities and burn it through some others, leaving whites aside.

[Deleted]

I know the meme is anything about WoD is cancer, but imo HFC Arms is tied with SoO Arms as one of the best iterations and it makes me sad they turned it into what it is now just for the sake of change. Even with the necessary legendaries FR is not a fun spec at all. But hey can't wait to spam bladestorm wow such fun.

You can't be serious? The only reason Arms in HFC worked was only because of the set bonuses and the class trinket. Without those all you did was Rend > CS > MS with WW as a filler. Surely the WoD iteration of Arms was by far one of the worst ever.

[Cherle]

You can't be serious? The only reason Arms in HFC worked was only because of the set bonuses and the class trinket. Without those all you did was Rend > CS > MS with WW as a filler. Surely the WoD iteration of Arms was by far one of the worst ever.

I say HFC iteration and not WoD iteration because I'm including the necessary gear. If I spoke on the premise of the base spec excluding gear every iteration sucks balls. I've never played a warrior spec that wasn't made 100% better with tier/trinkets.

[Deleted]

I say HFC iteration and not WoD iteration because I'm including the necessary gear. If I spoke on the premise of the base spec excluding gear every iteration sucks balls. I've never played a warrior spec that wasn't made 100% better with tier/trinkets.

You clearly haven't played Warrior for long enough if you think every Warrior spec in every expansion was shit without tier and trinkets.

[Arbiter]

Surely the WoD iteration of Arms was by far one of the worst ever.

I've been playing warrior for a loooong time.

If it's any indication of how bad dps warriors were in WoD, I was enjoying MoP doing a lot of competitive raiding and WoD made me quit the game for the entire expansion because trying to dps as a warrior was depressing. It was definitely the worst I had ever seen. HFC might have been half decent, but if it was anything close to how it was towards the beginning of WoD then I have no idea how anyone could call it fun.

[shyguybman]

I tanked during WoD because none of the dps specs were fun lol

[Softbottom]

I've played a warrior since launch; It's been my main for coming up on 13 years this fall. I've played every spec the warrior class has to offer across those 13 years. I must say I loved Arms up to Cataclysm. I played Arms through DS and got used to Colossus Smash and it was "ok" to play because at the time it was OP. The issue for me that deters me from playing arms since then I hate the rotation and the way the rotation works. Cata Arms had an awesome Overpower ability (which sucks now) and Heroic Strike which was filler off GCD. Having abilities like deadly calm was fun as hell too. Arms just feels very blah to me right now. If i was to play arms again I think I would prefer having everything buffed and Colossus Smash removed. There is something about Colossus Smash I just don't like.

[Cherle]

You clearly haven't played Warrior for long enough if you think every Warrior spec in every expansion was shit without tier and trinkets.

Since BC but quality meme nonetheless.

Edit* Also didn't say "every Warrior spec in every expansion was shit without tier and trinkets." The correct quote is "I've never played a warrior spec that wasn't made 100% better with tier/trinkets." You can make a good spec better. Lord have mercy reading comprehension.

[Usagi Senshi]

you mean like rampage? playing the wrong spec

No, you have two main abilities (one ST and one AOE), and one health regen attack that you have to hold down the attack and wait for a meter to fill up to how powerful you want the attack to be (and how much of your mana and health is spent too for the attacks). Your attacks are slow as shit but hit and crit like a motherfucker!

Probably the best style of warrior I've played in any MMO (Blade and Soul's zerker being just as good with their combo weapon wrestling moves) ever.

[Deleted]

Since BC but quality meme nonetheless.

Edit* Also didn't say "every Warrior spec in every expansion was shit without tier and trinkets." The correct quote is "I've never played a warrior spec that wasn't made 100% better with tier/trinkets." You can make a good spec better. Lord have mercy reading comprehension.

Still doesn't make any sense what you're saying. For example Dragon Soul Arms tier set bonuses didn't change anything. You still played the spec the same way, you just dealt more damage. It wasn't before WoD that set bonuses was really needed for the spec to feel great.

[Bigbazz]

In TBC the set bonuses were garbage for Warriors in PVE, itemisation was king and non set pieces had better itemisation pre Sunwell, where the new added T6 pieces (belt/boots/bracers) had great itemisation (though no stamina, to stop them being used in PVP). I personally didn't use any set bonuses until T6, and by mid T5 I was topping almost every fight. Fury Warrior was nothing short of incredible in TBC so long as you had a Warrior tank doing Sunder and a Windfury Totem, set bonuses were irrelevant in that.

I've been playing warrior for a loooong time.

If it's any indication of how bad dps warriors were in WoD, I was enjoying MoP doing a lot of competitive raiding and WoD made me quit the game for the entire expansion because trying to dps as a warrior was depressing. It was definitely the worst I had ever seen. HFC might have been half decent, but if it was anything close to how it was towards the beginning of WoD then I have no idea how anyone could call it fun.

Tier 18 + Archimonde trinket completely changed the gameplay of Arms. Rend ticks happened faster and had a chance to reset the CD on MS, while the trinket effectively re-introduced the CS reset mechanic from MOP. So you had CS resets and rend spreading to increase mortal strike resets... Effectively the whole gameplay was as different to launch WOD as the Legion gameplay is.



Example.

[Fust]

Bring back stance dance macros and casted slams! Dragon Soul was pretty great and fun for arms, IMO. Didn't play after Cata until now so can't comment on iterations after that, but focused rage does not feel good on live or PTR and the talen build that dont use it lack depth and feel REALLLLLLLLY bland, almost like they are missing heroic strike or something...

[Softbottom]

rip heroic strike

[bigtom]

Bring back stance dance macros and casted slams! Dragon Soul was pretty great and fun for arms, IMO. Didn't play after Cata until now so can't comment on iterations after that, but focused rage does not feel good on live or PTR and the talen build that dont use it lack depth and feel REALLLLLLLLY bland, almost like they are missing heroic strike or something...

I have the same experience, playing warrior from Vanilla through Cataclysm, and I love the FR build. Give me 5-10mil Mortal Strikes over Heroic Strike any day, I love the current FR gameplay other than some QoL improvements with increased Tactician proc rate, SS range increase, and thankfully the pending mastery/ability rebalance.

The current FR build in PTR has been gutted and that's a bad thing because the only Arms warriors left are the ones who enjoy it. Stop the FR hate and nerfing and start pushing for Blizzard to make the other builds interesting.

[Fust]

I have the same experience, playing warrior from Vanilla through Cataclysm, and I love the FR build. Give me 5-10mil Mortal Strikes over Heroic Strike any day, I love the current FR gameplay other than some QoL improvements with increased Tactician proc rate, SS range increase, and thankfully the pending mastery/ability rebalance.

The current FR build in PTR has been gutted and that's a bad thing because the only Arms warriors left are the ones who enjoy it. Stop the FR hate and nerfing and start pushing for Blizzard to make the other builds interesting.

While I dont personally find FR builds fun to play I can completetly support rebalancing stats, making tac procs less rng, and making the other builds do anything interesting. The FR is at odds with heroic stike and could probably be a replacement ability instead of a new ability in the talent tree, which would give nonFR builds something to manage rage with. Throw in OP procs and we've almost got cata arms back!

[mysticx]

The current FR build in PTR has been gutted and that's a bad thing because the only Arms warriors left are the ones who enjoy it. Stop the FR hate and nerfing and start pushing for Blizzard to make the other builds interesting.

There just is no way to make other builds compete with FR without nerfing the way FR, anger management, deadly calm, Dauntless, avatar, shattered defenses all pile onto mortal strike for the maximum achievable DPS in arms spec, nothing can compete with the way all those factors fit together, in part because base MS damage is pretty low just so MS with SD and 3 stacks of FR doesn't pop players like soap bubbles in PvP.

There's no way to really fix the problems with Arms spec without a redesign, and Blizz won't do that mid-expansion... Who am i kidding, they're likely to just make things worse in the inevitable "Change for its own sake"-rework for the next expansion... ~_~

[Bigbazz]

There just is no way to make other builds compete with FR without nerfing the way FR, anger management, deadly calm, Dauntless, avatar, shattered defenses all pile onto mortal strike for the maximum achievable DPS in arms spec, nothing can compete with the way all those factors fit together, in part because base MS damage is pretty low just so MS with SD and 3 stacks of FR doesn't pop players like soap bubbles in PvP.

There's no way to really fix the problems with Arms spec without a redesign, and Blizz won't do that mid-expansion... Who am i kidding, they're likely to just make things worse in the inevitable "Change for its own sake"-rework for the next expansion... ~_~

There are plenty of ways to make non FR competitive without nerfing FR. Use your imagination, if Mortal Combo for example had a secondary element to increase damage, and if need be increase rage cost of MS while it's talented. It's silly to think that they can't just tune talents by adding damage into them.

FR is best because it allows you to convert rage into damage and benefit from strong synergie. So all they must do is channel that approach to other talents.

[Kirbydude65]

There are plenty of ways to make non FR competitive without nerfing FR. Use your imagination, if Mortal Combo for example had a secondary element to increase damage, and if need be increase rage cost of MS while it's talented. It's silly to think that they can't just tune talents by adding damage into them.

FR is best because it allows you to convert rage into damage and benefit from strong synergie. So all they must do is channel that approach to other talents.

Even of they did that FR would still probably be on top due to being an off the GCD ability, unless they hilariously buffed the other talents (IE Mortal Combo allows Mortal Strike to increase all damage by X for X seconds, Where X is like 5-8%).

Reworking our Artifact Traits is probably out question as well at this point in the expansion.

Short of removing FR (or changing it to not work with MS) to at least break up the synergy of the spec, I'm not sure what else can be done.

[Bigbazz]

Even of they did that FR would still probably be on top due to being an off the GCD ability, unless they hilariously buffed the other talents (IE Mortal Combo allows Mortal Strike to increase all damage by X for X seconds, Where X is like 5-8%).

Reworking our Artifact Traits is probably out question as well at this point in the expansion.

Short of removing FR (or changing it to not work with MS) to at least break up the synergy of the spec, I'm not sure what else can be done.

It's not as difficult as you're making it sound. A number of different approaches could be made that achieve the same thing, more closely balanced numbers between talents without nerfing FR. Taking into account that it's perfectly fine (and preferable for me) to have FR the best single target talent, Mortal Combo has massive potential with some imagination, such as outright increasing the damage on MS in addition to 2 stacks, perhaps having it not consume Shattered Defense, having it extend CS duration on MS use, or as you mentioned a stacking damage buff.

In for the Kill is the problem talent because it's actually purely situational and quite weak at that, it needs to be outright replace or have some additional factors. I think it's important to stress though that Focused Rage being the best talent on single target is not a bad thing, and the primary reason for it dominating is down to the weakness of the other talents, they put a strong valuable talent next to 2 weak talents.

[Deleted]

I don't see the problem with FR - it's different to other classes and spec, but that adds variety and thats fun. I agree they should find a way to make another build for Arms viable, but the way to do that isn't to nerf the FR build. It's not like any Arms spec is making great waves - it's not totally broken either, just a bit of fine tuning required. It's going to be rubbish though if in attempting to make another Arms spec more viable FR is still the best performing spec, but becomes incredibly frustrating to play due to rage issues, because that is simply the way to destroy a Arms as a choice.