[8.0] Battle of Azeroth Arms discussion thread

[Seramore]

Deep Wounds is back, my dudes.

Arms - DPS spec. A battle-hardened master of two-handed weapons, using mobility and overpowering attacks to strike $Ghis:her; opponents down. Mastery: Deep Wounds.

[Nize]

Battle Cry going away for Arms seems like. New Anger Management reduces CD of BS/Warbreaker, while for Prot it's changing to Recklessness, which is essentially Battle Cry as it was known prior to Legion.

[Deleted]

recklessness is still there for all specs, it just does not increase crit anymore, and instead gives 100 rage

also, current colossus smash is essentially replaced by overpower as it increases the damage of the next MS/EX, and you can talent into overpower increasing the next MS or Execute damage by more through talent.

it looks like colossus smash remains as a damage cooldown.

[Nize]

Nah it's there only for Prot/Fury

[volgon]

recklessness is still there for all specs, it just does not increase crit anymore, and instead gives 100 rage

also, current colossus smash is essentially replaced by overpower as it increases the damage of the next MS/EX, and you can talent into overpower increasing the next MS or Execute damage by more through talent.

it looks like colossus smash remains as a damage cooldown.

Yep, looks like they are shifting CS away from being a rotational skill and into a rotational cooldown skill like Fury's Battle Cry is right now with CoF.

[Rafalga]

They essentially dumped the artifact mechanics in to Overpower. I an more than okay with this. We get OP back, free from the CS dependence, sweeping strikes copies everything except autoattacks (huge for m+), we can once again see a good stat distribution rather than the whole "no mastery? in to the trash it goes" shenanigans.
Set sail for hype train.

[Recom]

Very decent changes overall. Losing recklessness is a good thing imo as it stops devaluing crit, also tactician doesn't reset CS anymore so less atrocious RNG swings.

[Deleted]

Overall pretty good. We get OP and bleed back. CS goes out of main rotation. Mastery changes. We get to keep execute ring / warbreaker / EP and our AoE stun which fury looses.

[kubuntu]

Overall pretty good. We get OP and bleed back. CS goes out of main rotation. Mastery changes. We get to keep execute ring / warbreaker / EP and our AoE stun which fury looses.

Not shure what stun are you talking about, Arms lost Schockwave as well , its prot only and 2sec stun ( well all class aoe stuns get nerf so ) Overall Arms is same only diffrent is that CS now call Overpower and its buffing us insted of debuffing target what is cool but not game breaking

what consern me is that new mastery is useless on AoE unless we take Cleave talent , it shoud proc from more skills not just MS/Exe

[Doubleturbo]

Not shure what stun are you talking about, Arms lost Schockwave as well , its prot only and 2sec stun ( well all class aoe stuns get nerf so ) Overall Arms is same only diffrent is that CS now call Overpower and its buffing us insted of debuffing target what is cool but not game breaking

what consern me is that new mastery is useless on AoE unless we take Cleave talent , it shoud proc from more skills not just MS/Exe

Not really that useless, due to sweeping strikes being a CD again

[Syegfryed]

i don't know how to feel yet

they are putting a lot of dots in arms no? maybe they are changing the spec a bit in this sense, fury as the pure damage dealer and arms with dots and damage

Just wish they remove second wind of the game or change Back the way it was in MOP. its physical painful at this point.

[Deleted]

MoP's SW was beyond broken, let's just not wish for that: it creates a balance ceiling on the class way too heavy to keep.

I dig the changes to Arms to be honest, but I'd wait to see the full talent tree.

[Syegfryed]

MoP's SW was beyond broken, let's just not wish for that: it creates a balance ceiling on the class way too heavy to keep.

how it was broken? because people could burst trough? it was a rly nice talent for pvp

thy even nerfed down to 2% but changed back to 3% in that time.

[Kirbydude65]

Spent some time yesterday and this morning on the Alpha with Arms. The biggest issue right now is the lack of Rage we have. It's more akin to Warlords of Draenor with multiple GCDs of waiting, as opposed to Legion where we have a single GCD we wait every once and awhile. My hopes are that this changes later in development with either number adjustments or the introduction of Azerite abilities.

Beyond that the spec plays pretty much the same as it does on the live servers. The main difference is that Overpower takes the spot of Colossus Smash, and Colossus Smash is now our new Battle Cry. Mortal Strike and Execute fulfill the same roles as they do on live servers. Sweeping Strikes returning to a baseline ability that makes the majority of our abilities cleave, is a great change.

Talents:

15 Tier:

War Machine is a lot of fun while questing. Landing a kill and dashing to the next with the extra rage is awesome and keeps you pulling mobs. The bonus rage seems similar to Dauntless, but the reduction was much better for the execute phase, than the increased rage.

Sudden Death is back. For everyone that doesn't have Ayala's its a return to a passive that was very much missed. Though my fear is that this talent will become the go-to with Executioner's Precision being added to Execute baseline. We'll be in a similar case like we are on live, where its almost always correct to wear Ayla's.

Skullsplitter felt ok, but the cooldown is a little long to actually alivate rage issues. That being said, it's cooldown does scale with haste so maybe at higher haste levels it'll prove its worth as a talent.

Tier 30:

At the moment, its the same as live servers, sans the one Not yet Implemented ability.

Tier 45:

Same as live servers. Avatar maybe more useful this expansion as Colossus Smash should always line up with Avatar's CD.

Tier 60:

Same as live servers.

Tier 75:

This whole talent appears to be our Artifact abilities in one form or another. Unbridled Wrath is our passive trait of Will of the First King. Warbreaker is our Artifact Trait, and Cleave is Void Cleave, but actually dealing damage.

Of these only Warbreaker feels correct, especially as Anger Management reduces it's cooldown. Unbridled Wrath and Cleave both don't feel that great, and don't provide a bunch in terms of combat. All of these are AoE abilities, but Warbreaker feels to be the best.

Tier 90:

Mortal Combo is a passive effect, that just rewards you for pressing Mortal Strike. But hey at least its something finally interesting for the talent. Fervor of Battle is the same on live servers, but with rage the way it is currently it feels like a non-option. Deadly Calm is the same as it was at the beginning of Legion, but with double the cooldown. My only suggestion would be to change the cooldown to line up with Colossus Smash easily.

Tier 100:

Anger Management feels abused with Warbreaker. It wasn't uncommon in my dungeon group to get enough of a reduction that Warbreaker was up for almost every pack pull, and Bladestorm for every other. This might be too good with its synergy, especially with Deadly Calm.

Dreadnaught plays very nicely with Sudden Death, allowing you to hold a charge of Overpower if you do get a proc to immediately use it for execute, or to use that proc for the Mortal Strike. You do have to be careful though about it resetting as holding both charges at any time will almost always be a DPS loss on a patchwork like fight.

Ravage is the same as live servers, but maybe more powerful with Rage being a premium.

Overall: At the moment it looks like we're in store for more of the same as Legion for Arms. Sadly that includes problematic talents and effects that could prove to be too strong (Sudden Death, Warbreaker, Deadly Calm + Anger Management), and probably need a new pass, or just different talents.

[simperial]

Tier 75:

This whole talent appears to be our Artifact abilities in one form or another. Unbridled Wrath is our passive trait of Will of the First King. Warbreaker is our Artifact Trait, and Cleave is Void Cleave, but actually dealing damage.

Of these only Warbreaker feels correct, especially as Anger Management reduces it's cooldown. Unbridled Wrath and Cleave both don't feel that great, and don't provide a bunch in terms of combat. All of these are AoE abilities, but Warbreaker feels to be the best.

Hey Curoar - Is Warbreaker a replacement for Colossus Smash or an additional, AoE version? If so, the talent would also allow you to stagger the effects which means it would have pretty high uptime.

[Kirbydude65]

Hey Curoar - Is Warbreaker a replacement for Colossus Smash or an additional, AoE version? If so, the talent would also allow you to stagger the effects which means it would have pretty high uptime.

It's a replacement Talent. That being said with anger management it's still pretty high up time for that large of an effect.

[simperial]

It's a replacement Talent. That being said with anger management it's still pretty high up time for that large of an effect.

Got it. Interesting.

Also leads me to wonder if Warbreaker into a Mortal Combo buffed Bladestorm is the best combination of cooldowns for AoE damage. Not even certain how/if Mortal Combo interacts with Bladestorm.

[ATZenith]

Someone it's alpha give me the rundown, is Arms going to be better? Legion Arms is the worst (yes I don't have correct legendaries, and you shouldn't need them to play a spec). Can we actually hit things without being rage starved at some point?

[Deleted]

Our new Mastery "Deep Wounds" is in this state not so awesome.
It doesn't stack / just refreshes the dot and it is a flat damage dot scaled by mastery. So how many damage your MS/Execute does has no impact on it like it is with trauma.

Rage IS a problem right now in Alpha. I hope they fix it in baseline and not with the Hearth of Azeroth. Missing Opportunity Strikes
With Legendary Gloves it is playable (you can buy them in OG by the Flaskataur in Alpha) but still not very fluenty.

[Caargon]

New alpha changes posted. Weapon master talent on arms lvl 30 tier buffs one of our defensive CDs based on weapon type, OP can stack twice on a target, and tactician doesn’t reset MS. And abilities were all scaled to AP rather than weapon damage.