[8.0] Battle of Azeroth Arms discussion thread

[Destram]

It's entirely possible that's the case and i'm wrong. I'm not trying to say this is how it will be for sure this is just my thoughts based on pretty deep understanding and experience of the class and game along with strong gut feelings.
With auto attacks being as strong as they are now along with reduced cooldowns/GCD, and faster rage generation i just can't help but feel like haste will be MVP. Maybe crit will just be better though, we'll see.

[Shakou]

Eh, things could certainly change when things go live and damage is better tuned, but as of right now you're wildly off base Destram.

In a world where our mastery is a bleed that is nice complimentary dmg but is not strong in and if itself and isn't increasing the dmg of our main attacks, and where we do not even have recklessness available, you have to gear accordingly and you will start with arms in bfa by not undervaluing versatility. It goes without saying you will want crit on gear like you ever did on a warrior before Battle Cry/BFA Recklessness was a thing, however mastery just does not increase the damage of your main attacks at all and the dmg increase to bleeds is not great than the damage increase you will get overall from versatility.

Currently I have a high mastery build because it's just the luck of drops, but I have very low crit and versatility and even less haste. I do very solid AOE, while single target falls utterly behind. It's not that I am being rage starved often, it is not my build, so much as my attacks just plain don't hit very hard and deep wounds dmg is negligible single target.

That should tell you the value of mastery, because it's only applied by mortal strike, execute and bladestorm/ravager, you will notice it doing a lot of damage in aoe situations and very little in single target.

Solution? As of right now on beta if you can manage it don't prioritize mastery at all. Build strength > crit/haste > versa > mastery. Mastery is just crap, and I highly doubt that it will be less so on live without a major buff that would probably make it too strong. Doesn't really make sense they would change our mastery to a scaling bleed like that if they intended you to just stack mastery because you plain cannot get enough of it to even do substantial damage.

For example: I have 2 versatility/mastery rings on my war on Beta, only I lvl 300 and 305 so I could easily get better but for purposes here it more than makes the opoint. They have more mastery than versatility, how the versatility from just those two rings increases my overall dmg by 4% whereas the mastery value is not even a 2% increase to just deep wounds dmg.

It does not matter if you think versatility is boring or not. Right now it increases overall dmg of arms a lot more than mastery can. Even if they do a balancing patch and increase the damage of our major abilities mastery is still going to be weak as it is.

I can't even imagine why you would think mastery would be the absolutely king go to secondary stat for a spec that is all about hard hitting precision attacks, it just doesn't work out that way it would be like a frost mage on live going mastery. Deep Wounds is filler not the bread and butter of where your damage is coming from.

[Destram]

Well i never said mastery would be absolute king go to stat i said that about haste and i still strongly believe that about haste. I just said mastery would probably be 2nd best behind it, or 3rd best if you count strength being the best technically.

It's nice to hear your thoughts and insight though, like i said before i really am not trying to claim anything i'm saying as 100% accurate it's just my thoughts and insight to a class i'm deeply fond of and i think i'm relatively well versed in. But it's just all theory craft, i haven't even leveled anything to 120 on beta i just did intro quests and ran around killing things. Entirely possible i am off base. Maybe mastery will end up being pretty shit.

[Recom]

The post on Fury's revamp sounds like arms might be getting Recklessness back.

[simperial]

The post on Fury's revamp sounds like arms might be getting Recklessness back.

Yeah - those fury changes look like a sweeping overhaul and interestingly some of the abilities shared with Arms are going to operate completely differently - Execute and WW both generating rage instead of costing it, etc.

This will feel a bit strange if Arms doesn't see much alteration and our shared abilities function on such different extremes of the spectrum.

[Quaade]

I just hope Executioner's Precision vanish from the game completely.

As an Azerite trait it's that this for endgame or be stupid


Arms' Rage generation also needs work.

Right it feels about right with War Machine.

Rage gen with War Machine should be the baseline amount.

[Deleted]

Wasn't Executioner's Precision merged with Execute?

[Vastoorode]

Wasn't Executioner's Precision merged with Execute?

no they changed it to an azerite trait

[Deleted]

Oh boy, isn't it fun losing it from the artifact only to have to regain it again.

[Jastall]

I tried Arms a bit, and while New!Fury is better IMO, Arms seems pretty decent with the right talent setup. There's still a bit too much downtime for my taste, but with talents such as Skullspliter, Deadly Calm and Anger Management that is mitigated.

[MatthewOU2015]

After playing arms for a week i'm starting to like it. I would like better sustained aoe though

[volgon]

After playing arms for a week i'm starting to like it. I would like better sustained aoe though

If you are looking for sustained AoE, definitely try out the Cleave talent. With Deep Wounds being bonkers at the moment, it gives Arms tools for 2 targets via Sweeping Strikes and 3+ with Cleave. Currently a very strong dungeon talent.

[Deleted]

Excited about not having to choose between Avatar and Rend. Less excited about choosing between Rend and Massacre (being able to execute at 35%)

[Wolfman31]

Excited about not having to choose between Avatar and Rend. Less excited about choosing between Rend and Massacre (being able to execute at 35%)

I don't think there's any way Massacre doesn't get nerfed. 35% is just too good, especially when paired with Death Sentence. The tears from PvP'ers will get it nerfed soon after it goes live, if it even makes it that far because it's easily the best talent in that tier for PvE as well. Rend is great and all but we don't maintain it during our Execute phase because Execute just does that much more damage. Being able to Execute much sooner weakens Rend even further. Of course, the duration of a fight's different phases will be a factor but overall I think that Massacre at 35% is going to beat out Rend's damage. Our damage doesn't really begin to shine until the Execute window anyway, so the sooner we can get to it, the better. But like I said, I don't see it lasting long at 35%.

[Pestilent]

I don't think there's any way Massacre doesn't get nerfed. 35% is just too good, especially when paired with Death Sentence. The tears from PvP'ers will get it nerfed soon after it goes live, if it even makes it that far because it's easily the best talent in that tier for PvE as well. Rend is great and all but we don't maintain it during our Execute phase because Execute just does that much more damage. Being able to Execute much sooner weakens Rend even further. Of course, the duration of a fight's different phases will be a factor but overall I think that Massacre at 35% is going to beat out Rend's damage. Our damage doesn't really begin to shine until the Execute window anyway, so the sooner we can get to it, the better. But like I said, I don't see it lasting long at 35%.

I think people are seeing this as more than a problem than it is honestly.

Take the following into account
-Our mastery is no longer super powered strikes with CS applied which contributed to a part of executes power for sure, mastery will not scale execute to extremes
-The greater power of execute was actually in Executor's precision which made Mortal Strikes the strongest hitting ability (during execute phases primarily)
-Sudden Death albeit aiding in earlier full rage cost Executes also has the drawback of being a little redundant since if you pick massacre the execute phase happens faster, so really all it becomes is rage savings (which you could be using skullsplitter or war machine for as well).

Granted I am not on beta so I cannot test these but I think it is fine where it is, paladins used to have the execute at 35% and theirs used to hit for monstrous damage as well, I think execute will stay equally powerful to how it is now frankly, due to the mastery change, and I honestly think the power to Arms will be in comboing with executioner precision + Dreadnaught.

At most I think this extended execute range may honestly bring out more viable build archetypes and I would hate for the naysaying to cause it to be nerfed before we even see if there is a problem.

Time will tell, but I actually really like the option to be executing faster, and I think with the mastery change alone we really shouldn't see the problem everyone is worried about. Really this just gets us to the executioner precision phase of rotations faster, which is by and far the most enjoyable thing from legion in my opinion.

[Wolfman31]

I think people are seeing this as more than a problem than it is honestly.

All your points are valid but the reason why people are seeing this as a problem is because we know Blizz's track record with Execute. It has either been very beefy or very limp and they had just made it beefy again in Legion so we're worried about going back in time to a limpy state. Even with the other changes in BfA, the Execute window is still our thing and our damage is balanced around it. When we see Execute being available at a whopping 15% HP sooner, there is cause for concern. What's going to get nerfed? The talent or the ability? Because one or the other or both is only inevitable given Blizz's track record with the ability, especially when it comes to PvP. Combined with Death Sentence, Execute then becomes a 15 yard charge starting at 35% HP. With the way it hits, that's going to cause quite a bit of tears. I'm perfectly okay with our niche being the Executor in PvP given how much mobility and utility we've lost over the years, but my experience tells me that it is only inevitable that we get hit with the nerf bat.

[Vastoorode]

In rated PvP Rend will probly be the chosen talen since in atleast arena it's more about putting out big spread pressure.
In bgs Massacre might be chosen tho

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I rather see them remove Death Sentence, than nerfing Execute. Not sure I like beeing able to execute at 35% tho, it feels wrong not having 20% as Execute Range.

[Wolfman31]

In rated PvP Rend will probly be the chosen talen since in atleast arena it's more about putting out big spread pressure.
In bgs Massacre might be chosen tho

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I rather see them remove Death Sentence, than nerfing Execute. Not sure I like beeing able to execute at 35% tho, it feels wrong not having 20% as Execute Range.

Why get rid of Death Sentence? It's the only thing left allowing us to finish off the more mobile casters. We already have to choose between having a stun and having semi-decent mobility. Getting rid of Death Sentence would be a death sentence for us against ranged comps. And putting Rend on multiple targets only really works against melee cleave comps and even then there's still a focus target along with other ways of applying AoE pressure. Rend isn't the end all, be all. Maybe outside of burst and CC chain windows, Rend is better but during, Massacre in its current state is probably better. If Blizz really thinks Execute at 35% is perfectly okay, then I'm all on board but my experience with this class keeps me skeptical that they won't nerf it.

[Vastoorode]

Why get rid of Death Sentence? It's the only thing left allowing us to finish off the more mobile casters. We already have to choose between having a stun and having semi-decent mobility. Getting rid of Death Sentence would be a death sentence for us against ranged comps. And putting Rend on multiple targets only really works against melee cleave comps and even then there's still a focus target along with other ways of applying AoE pressure. Rend isn't the end all, be all. Maybe outside of burst and CC chain windows, Rend is better but during, Massacre in its current state is probably better. If Blizz really thinks Execute at 35% is perfectly okay, then I'm all on board but my experience with this class keeps me skeptical that they won't nerf it.

If I must chose between a nerfed Execute and remove death sentence I chose to remove death sentence, I don't Think warrior need more mobility, it's bad for the game, melee needs less mobility and casters less instant damage. We will see what will be best but I think Rend will be better for pressure against ranged since it acually do damage when we beeing kited. As it looks right now we will probly do alot of damage in the 2-3 globals we will hit before beeing kited and the bleed will keep the damage going. But we will have to wait and see

[Deleted]

If I must chose between a nerfed Execute and remove death sentence I chose to remove death sentence, I don't Think warrior need more mobility, it's bad for the game, melee needs less mobility and casters less instant damage. We will see what will be best but I think Rend will be better for pressure against ranged since it acually do damage when we beeing kited. As it looks right now we will probly do alot of damage in the 2-3 globals we will hit before beeing kited and the bleed will keep the damage going. But we will have to wait and see

Sorry I disagree. Death sentence is so clutch. Without it we will just get kited to oblivion and melee range lagged. Death sentence + buffed execute would be stupidly OP, buffed execute on its own without DS would suck. The solution is to make DS only usable for regular <20% executes and not triggerable from sudden death, but I doubt Blizzard will do this. Also maybe nerf execute damage a bit in pvp.