I don’t know about you but I feel that Warriors got shafted with Class changes in comparison to others.
No stances? No Thunderclap + Deep Wounds effect and stuff? I really miss Arms Warriors from MoP. They made Warriors feel like Warriors - like as if they were in their prime…
Happy with no stancedance return. Imo the game is way too fast these days. If it was 50-60% slower and more tactical oriented - mb mb. For now spending precious GCDs on stance change sounds insane. I’m pretty happy with prot talent tree shuffle and return of Execute, Shattering Throw, Challenging Shout. Not so happy with Battle Shout and Vanguard nerfs. Neutral on Whirlind - useless skill on bar for prot. Compared to DK - yes, not so many general changes here. Compared to pally - no way swag. They got stripped of passive mount speed and blessings. Got 1 useful aura out of 4 and weaker versions of WoG/Hammer of Wraith/Wake of Ashes/Concecration. Let alone re-intoduction of Meme Power for all specs which a lot of players seem to hate. So nah. I’m pretty happy with warr’s small changes.
I’m happy with Stances in the original form staying away as they did little.
That said, the Warrior changes so far in SL is extremely underwhelming as it’s things that looks good on paper and is horrible in reality as the things are impossible in some end-game content such as macros required to switch to sword and board, which you’re unable to do in M+ which essentially make Challenging Shout, Shield Slam, Shield Block and Spell Reflect useless.
Then there’s the thing that the changes in no way reflect the class fantasy and the devs have to bend themselves into mental pretzels to make them fit.
The most exciting change is the heal to Indomitable, which we’ve been shouting for since BfA was in the works and that should be a base-line ability or Indomitable will be mandatory for all the wrong reasons.
Same dude, MoP warrior was the pinnacle of arms design in my opinion, such a large toolkit , far from feeling clunky, big dmg coming from the right abilities.
WoD was kind of acceptable but nothing compared with MoP and after legion launch I basically abandoned warrior as my main.
Pretty sad
And that mastery bleed. Bleed just dont fit for class with big 2h weapons.
Test of Might has gone so that’s enough of a change for me to consider playing Arms at least. Ravager also generates rage AND doesn’t replace bladestorm, great change.
Main issue for me is the dead talents Arms currently has, are all still here to stay.
Rend was only fun when it had the Rend + Thunderclap bleeding everything like OP suggests. Cleave also feels just as bad.
T25 feels AWFUL. Stormbolt should be baseline.
Warrior has awful mobility when it can’t charge a target. Really noticeable in raids
Class design in MoP was insanely good, but it’s never coming back. Overall we are missing AT LEAST 2 new abilities so I think we should wait until Beta to see if we get them.
why is everyone talking about Arms, when Fury is the one that seemed kinda bad in Shadowlands, nerfs, no changes, same boring spec
hopefully changes come later on since it’s too early in development
Because the Arms changes like the Fury changes are BfA+ and Arms did way worse in BfA than Fury. It was also worse in Legion, WoD, Cataclysm, and MoP. Notice the pattern? And by worse I mean hard to play. It was slightly harder in WotLK and so much more rewarding since if you actually went through the trouble of learning how to play Arms well you could perform as well as Fury. After that performance vs. effort dropped massively.
Yea i dont wanna be a dotclass anymore i wanna make big ouch
I will just say one thing, heavy repercussions is a talent that we prot warrs don’t use now in bfa, we’ve never done, due to how strong anger management is…
Well, so can someone explain why heavy repercussions is even worse in shadowlands? I mean i prefer the bfa one is clearly stronger, and we don’t even use it! Cmon!
and without ToM what’s gonna boost damage inbetween CS?
if i recall, your ratios will be going up.
You needed a damn PhD to play Arms properly in WotLK. I wish Blizzard did something similar. i was fond of the Whack-a-Mole playing style. Sorting your priorities as they pop up, fast paced thinking and acting.
I personally believe that WoD Arms was probably the worst it ever was.
For BfA the mastery, apart from not being part of the class fantasy, was so underwhelming they had to increase the % increase per point of mastery. And in the BfA Beta everyone pointed out of the forums that the mastery was extremely poor. I’ll never understand how that made it to live.
Slam does, indeed, feel like it’s something to press when MS is on CD. Although i suppose it’s still better than having it on a 0.5 sec cast timer.
But indeed, the feel of arms is all over the place. Some small hits, some huge hits, and a bleed that is constantly in your top 3 damaging abilities at any item level.
Personally, and i cannot stress enough the fact that this is solely my opinion, i think that arms needed a complete overhaul. Better do it at the start of a new expansion rather than do it in-between 9.0 and 9.1 when it inevitably goes south.
I would like to see more emphasis on the fact that i’m wielding a huge 2 hand weapon. Happy to see shattering throw make a comeback. i am happy about that change. I’d also like to see a new mastery, maybe not a DoT. But i think that ship has sailed. As did the class fantasy ship.
That being said, i wouldn’t mind Arms being lower damage than fury but be more aoe oriented, maybe even reverting sweeping strikes to dealing full damage to the second target for all abilities. You’d still have WW, Bladestorm, Ravager, SS and cleave.
I just don’t want to play a class that’s good at a little bit of everything. Stick to something and that’s that.
Less a PhD and more being awake and it felt good as back then the difference between someone who played Arms Warrior well and someone who played it poorly was more than just 3*ToM and a ToM window.
And it felt great and rewarding. I wish something like that make its way back in Shadowlands. Despite the fact that in Wrath you had to play a near perfect game as arms to match fury.
Seems unlikely they’ll go for that approach again, however.
The problem is MS, or rather the MS debuff. It’s a “do-all” ability if it was reverted to direct damage and is the main cause for M: DW to exist in the first place as without the MS debuff this would be utterly bad. My suggestion is doing these three things:
Mortal Strike (New): 30 Rage, 30 seconds cooldown, instant, 10 seconds duration. The Warrior strike the target injuring them severely. This attack leaves a DoT on the target and for as long as the DoT lasts all healing received is reduced by 25%.
This would increase the skill-cap for Arms severely as MS would no longer be “point and click” in PvP as it would have to be used at the right time to have maximum effectiveness.
Mortal Strike as an ability would be replaced with Heroic Strike
• Heroic Strike (New): 30 Rage, 6 seconds cooldown, instant. The Warrior strikes their target and inflicts a high amount of damage and leaves a small Deep Wounds DoT on the target for 4 seconds.
By doing it this way the deeply unpopular Mastery: Deep Wounds can be removed as the total damage of the Arms Warrior is more controlled. This opens the way for a new Mastery. My suggestion would be:
• Mastery: Rend (New): The Critical Hits of the Arms Warrior does X damage over Y period. This effect stacks.
There is definitely room for more abilities. And i do agree with something to replace MS and increase MS cooldown in consequence.
The deep wounds do have to go.
The Rend Mastery seems quite similar, though. Proccing solely from crits, right. But it could still get out of hand and higher levels of gear and might put arms back where it currently stands, relying on a dot.
Now, i just started following the conversations here, so i’ve had next to no time trying to at least consider a viable solution, but would you think that any of the below would be easier to balance?:
Overhaul the whole spec to fit a scenario in which all abilities deal reduced damage until you hit max rage, but also generate rage when used. Once you hit max rage, they start to consume it, but deal increased damage. Feels like it can limit you a bit, but add a few procs in there to give you a meaningful choice and you might get somewhere. Downside is a missed or wrong ability used might gimp your damage too much. Also it becomes rather predictable with practice and could get old fast.
While at max rage get increased damage for X seconds, mastery further increases damage caused. (extremely similar to unshackled fury, sadly)
The reason i’m playing around with rage generating scenarios is because it does fit the spec fantasy as well. Build up, release for large amounts of damage. Obviously i can find more issues with both scenarios in practice.
However, i really appreciate the fact that instead of arguing, you are actually being constructive and coming up with well thought through ideas. Thumbs up.
If the crit numbers that i was seeing with my mortal strike in a vers build are anything to go off then mortalstrike would be beyond broken if they gave it any more damage.
And that is before adding strength stacks in.
Never ever. This’d spell the end of arena arms. You essentially decided to only keep Sharpen Blade for healing reduction, but weaker and on a +5 sec CD.
Arms needs the constant pressure of permanent MS, otherwise they fall into the same category as fury. Worthless.
No one else needs to have a MS debuff, they’re perfectly capable of killing someone without it. Having it just makes it easier. And if Arms Warriors are only MS debuff bots then you might as well remove the entire spec from the game as it’s boring and unimaginative. Shattering Throw provides a good counter-play mechanic, it just needs to be expanded so that even 100% abilities like Evasion and Die By the Sword stops working if hit by it.
I find it “funny” how everyone is willing to kill everyone else darlings except their own. Some things just have to be removed or changed as their presence as is as it’s counterproductive for the game and/or spec.