But Arms, oh my sweet Arms. Arms feels nothing at all like it used to, and doesn't make any goddamned sense.
I like Arms. I stayed Arms even when Wrath of the Lich King gave Fury Titan's Grip. Arms as a spec just made sense. And while it took a lot of iteration, Mists' eventual version of the spec made sense in a very clear way.
How Arms Works on Live:
In 5.4, Arms is all about managing Rage. You have the following key abilities for single-target situations:
Mortal Strike (MS) - On a 5-ish second cool down. It generates Rage, and applies Deep Wounds, a DoT. It also gives you Taste for Blood.
Colossus Smash (CS) - On a long rotational cool down, Colossus Smash is free and debuffs the target, making your attacks ignore its armor (or ignore some of it on other players.) It's also affected by Sudden Death.
Slam - An expensive ability with no cool down, Slam hits pretty hard but costs a fair amount of Rage.
Overpower (OP) - A very cheap ability but that hits for relatively low damage. It has practically no cool down (it's 1.5 seconds, which is the global cool down anyway before haste) but it is unusable without Taste for Blood
Execute - An expensive attack that hits very hard, but can only be used on enemies who are at 20% health or below. Also affects Overpower.
You have the following important procs/passives:
Sudden Death - Mortal Strike has a chance (probably 20% or so) to refresh the cool down on Colossus Smash
Taste for Blood - Allows you to use Overpower. You get it either when an opponent dodges an attack or you get two charges when you hit Mortal Strike. You can have a max of 5 stacks.
Executioner: Using Execute makes Overpower free for the next few seconds, but still requires Taste for Blood.
Putting it together:
A 5.4 Arms Warrior charges in and hits Colossus Smash and then Mortal Strike. While CS is up, they use Slam as much as they can until they run out of Rage. Outside of CS, they hit MS on cooldown, and then use OP to continue damaging the enemy without burning too much Rage. When Sudden Death procs, or CS naturally comes off cooldown, they go back into their high-damage cycle, hitting CS and then Slamming as much as they can. If they are near or at full Rage, they hit Slam regardless to avoid wasting Rage. At 20%, Execute simply replaces Slam. Execute is more expensive than Slam, but it also makes your Overpower free, so your "conservative" phase allows you to store up more Rage.
The "game" of the spec is making sure that you conserve enough Rage during your non-CS phase so that you can let loose with as many Slams or Executes as you can when it does come up. The challenge, then, is not to be caught with your pants down when Sudden Death procs, but also not to be too conservative and waste Rage waiting for Sudden Death.
How Arms Works on Beta:
In 6.0, Arms generates far more Rage from auto attacks, which is important, because other than Charge, it's their only source for it. You have the following abilities:
Mortal Strike (MS): Causes a fair amount of damage, costs a fair amount of Rage.
Colossus Smash (CS): On a long rotational cool down, debuffs the target, allowing your attacks to ignore armor.
Rend: A dot, costs some Rage. Deals more damage at the end.
Whirlwind: An AoE ability, but used as a Rage-dump in single-target.
Execute: An expensive attack that hits very hard, but can only be used on enemies who are at 20% health or below.
You have the following important procs/passives:
Haha! Just kidding. You have no important procs/passives.
Putting it together:
You charge in. You might hit CS, but you probably want to wait until you have more Rage. You hit CS, then MS. Then you're probably out of Rage. You wait. You get enough to apply Rend. You wait for Mortal Strike to come off cool down. You hit it on cooldown if you have the Rage. If you wind up with too much Rage before you can hit MS, you hit Whirlwind. You maintain Rend. At 20%, you start burning excess Rage with Execute, or maybe you just ignore MS and only do Execute and Rend, with CS when it comes off cool down.
The "game" of the spec is... is... waiting for Rage to generate?
Now, to be fair, there are some talents that throw in new twists. You can pick to either have Rend generate Rage, get Sudden Death, but one that procs Executes above 20% (or free ones below) rather than CS, or Slam, which now works a bit like Arcane Blast, dealing more damage but costing significantly more Rage with each attack. But are any of those fun? Are any as fun as 5.4 Arms? I mean, maybe if we had all three, but definitely not as it stands.
In Mists of Pandaria, Blizzard had a really cool idea for Warriors. Historically, Warriors generated Rage from damage dealt and taken. While they didn't get rid of this idea completely (though they limited it by stance, so that DPS would not try to get damaged to help their DPS,) they pushed for what I think is a far more sensible model, and is not unlike the Barbarian in Diablo III.
This idea was Rage Builders and Rage Spenders. Each spec got a builder: Mortal Strike, Bloodthirst, and Shield Slam, and thus Rage was more of an active thing.
If anything, the direction I wish they'd take Warriors is to lean farther into that model. Make Rage come exclusively from builders. You could still have a randomized element - make crits (or multistrikes) generate extra Rage. But auto-attack significance is so 2004.
What this new Arms model does is take almost all the proactive nature of the spec, as well as all the reactive procs, and boils them down into simply hitting whatever's up when you have the Rage.
I hope that it's not too late for them to do a massive re-think (or just a rollback. Is 5.4 Arms really that broken?) but I fear that, with the development team most likely getting anxious to start on their tuning passes, this bizarre, broken, and utterly illogical version of Arms will probably make it to live.
I guess we can hope for some changes in the major patches, but I think the elegant Arms of 5.4 may be going away for good.
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