As stated by blizzard, they wanted to push everything early in Alpha so changes can be made in time if they were needed.
Right now, the vision of arms warrior is actually good, besides the mastery, however the mastery needn’t be something that averts big hit lovers if it was kept but had additional functionality that players can elaborate upon and interact with, and so I came up with this comprehensive list that follows the changes in shadowlands and how should arms warrior play in the upcoming expansion.
The first thing I’d like to address, and it is pivotal for the class is the mastery.
A bleeding foe is a weekend foe, and this is what an arms warrior should be all about, by keeping the mastery : deep wounds but changing it’s functionality such that it grants increased damage taken and rage generation on the bleeding target with a *niche
Mastery : Deep Wounds : Certain abilities cause the target to bleed profusely, weakening them and making them take more damage and causing your auto attacks and rage generators to generate more rage, the bleed goes into three phases and additional instances of the bleed causes the bleed to become a deep wound, causing the target to bleed for massive damage over 6 seconds and during that period additional bleeds cannot be applied.
Minor bleeding : Target bleeds for a minor amount of damage, causing the warrior’s attacks to deal x% more damage and generate y% more rage.
Moderate bleeding : Target bleeds for a moderate amount of damage, causing the warrior’s attacks to deal 2x% more damage and generate 2y% more damage.
Severe bleeding : Target bleeds for a sever amount of damage, causing the warrior’s attacks to deal 3x% more damage and generate 3y% more damage.
Deep wounds : Target bleeds for a huge amount of damage over 6 seconds, cannot be refreshed and no additional bleeds can be inflicted while the target is in deep wounds.
This will do two things, it will switch arms to being a tactical class, were you have both huge front loaded damage AND backloaded damage, just not present at the same time, it will add deep thinking to how to plan your damage and causes you to play like an opportunist, the idea is that the dots are 6 seconds, you want to use each 6 seconds window to do something unique, be it build up rage, or deal devastating blows, or try to finish off a heavily wounded opponent.
The idea lends some elements of the insignia system combat rogues had in MoP, but builds upon it and is abit more deeper than it.
Now on to the playstyle it self.
Rage Generation
Rage generation will come from these sources.
- Auto attack
- Charge
- Herioc Throw
- Shield slam
- Skullsplitter if talented
- Execute refunds
Damage dealing
The damage from the warrior will come from a myriad of things as listed below
- Mortal strike ( 50 rage )
A medium hitting ability that wounds the target, causing them to bleed, if the target is already bleeding it will advance the bleed to the next level. mortal strikes damage gains a multiplier to the bleed state of the hit target as follows
Minor bleeding : Mortal strike deals 20% increased damage
Moderate bleeding : Mortal strike deals 50% increased damage
Severe bleeding : Mortal strike deals 100% increased damage
The idea is mortal strike is the core of the spec, it starts hitting small and is used to advance to the next phase, having increased damage on bleeding targets along the mastery increase will make it deal a super heavy blow at the last phase and causing the last bleed phase in which it will no longer apply bleeds.
There are times where you want to hold up on it, times where you want to use it and generally it’s usage is dependent on the situation you want, do you have a lot of range and wanna expend it before delivering a final strong blow ? or do you wanna move to the next phase quickly.
- Slam ( 10 rage )
Slam is a medium hitting ability, it costs 10 rage, but slams cast within the next 10 seconds deal more damage and consume more rage, this stacks up and refreshes until no slam is used within the next 10 seconds.
The idea is that you build your slams, and then you deliver a huge slam in severe bleeding phase, but you need to be careful as you want to have high enough rage to use mortal strike before the bleeding stops.
- Overpower ( no rage cost, 10 seconds cooldown, reduced by haste )
Overpower deals damage proportional to your slam stacks, and resets them, the idea is that it’s a finisher, it cannot be dodged, parried and does not miss, it also bypasses immunities and absorbs.
The idea, overpower is the reward for how smart the warrior played, a perfect ideal setup would be a 100 rage slam > overpower > mortal strike and which the warrior will expend three very heavy hits, but it’s not a feat easily pulled, and only the smartest and best warriors can pull it especially under hectic environments.
- Execute ( 100 rage, no cooldown )
Execute does exactly what its name implies, the warrior will try to execute the enemy by delivering a massive blow if used on a target with deep wounds, execute will deal damage as if striking on a fourth bleed phase, if the target dies then 50 rage will be refunded.
- Herioc throw ( generates 10 rage, 10 seconds cooldown, reduced by haste , 8-30 yd range )
Herioc throw deals moderate damage, if charge is cast within the next 3 seconds, an additional 10 rage is generated, if no charge is cast but an auto attack hits within the next 2 seconds, 20 rage is generated.
Herioc throw deals a good amount of damage if played correctly, it’s a gap closer, a range generator and is generally to be used while going for a charge in between auto attacks, however it has underlying depth
Charge at phase 3 will probably fill your rage anyway, so the warrior will want to dump rage > go out and charge > dump rage > go out and heroic throw > dump rage, playing this perfectly will cause the warrior to deal massive damage.
- Cleave ( 50 rage )
Cleave is basically a weaker version of mortal strike, but instead cleaves all targets infront of the warrior, has the same functionality as mortal strike.
- Whirlwind ( 15 rage )
Whirlwind is a heavy 360 aoe hitter, it is like slam but on aoe, hence the higher rage cost and acts similar to slam with more rage cost and damage per stack.
- Thunderclap ( No rage cost, 10 seconds cooldown, reduced by haste )
Thunderclap is basically overpower, on all enemies it rewards the warrior for playing it out correctly.
- Shield slam ( generates 30 rage, 10 seconds cooldown, reduced by haste )
Shield slam is a medium blow, it deals a good amount of damage and generates rage, generally a warrior will want to use it when they’re armoring up and preparing for when the opportunity comes and the best of warriors will weave in a shield slam during downtime to generate rage.
- Bladestorm ( 90 seconds cooldown )
Huge damage dealing ability, slams your main target every 2 seconds, does not build or refresh slam stacks.
Gameplay
The warrior gameplay will be that of an opportunist, the idea is they have many tools to generate rage, and many tools to expend it, but where do they want to expend their rage is the question.
The idea is, you want to dump huge amounts of rage in the third bleed phase, but you also don’t want to be rage starved and not able to move phases quickly once deepwounds ends or you’ll have huge downtime.
This gives a risk reward system, and generally rewards good judgement.
Am I going to kill the enemy? dump rage.
Is the enemy going to survive? dump rage smartly.
For M+ the warrior generally will want to have near max rage at the end of a fight, so they can skip two phases quickly and move to the last phase, but if they do that they might become rage starved for the next fight or maybe the mobs die too fast or or or or… that’s the cool thing about it, the player’s judgement plays a huge role here.
This gameplay means that warrior won’t always be a huge frontload damaging monster, it means they can be in a window of opportunity, and the bleeding will help offset that, the idea is that bleeds are going to help the warrior deal damage instead of doing it, but also will help tune the warrior so they don’t go around one shotting people with no counter play.
The idea should be that if a warrior manages to pull of a 100 rage slam > overpower > mortal in the third bleed phase, the target should be dead / near dead unless they had a defensive, stopping a warrior from achieving that should be the enemy’s concern in PvP, and so the counterplay to warriors is to watch your own bleed phase and know when to pop defensives / stun the warrior etc.
This way, not many changes to the shadowlands toolkit is needed, and a healthy balance between frontload and backload damage can be struck, I’m no dev, but in my opinion this playstyle for arms would make it a fun spec and probably please both bleed and heavy hit lovers.