A Farewell to Arms

I'll admit that Warriors were never my top pick for classes in WoW. It is always somewhat bizarre to me when people, presented with a world filled with magic and sorcery, decide that they want to be the guy who just fights with swords. On the ground of Lore and Style, Warriors were never going to be my top pick when there are Paladins and Death Knights around.

But I am, if nothing else, someone who likes to get as much out of his fantasy universes as he can, and part of that is playing every class (and every race. Yes, even Blood Elves.) I didn't really play Warriors seriously until Wrath - which was the expansion where I got 9/10 classes to the cap (Mists was the first expansion when I got 11/11 - actually, I technically got my Priest to 85 during 5.0, but before Mists came out.)

My sole Warrior (because I had both Alliance and Horde on the same server) was the Orc named Rechtar, and I had struggled with different specs for a long time. Finally, I went Arms and it just kind of clicked for me. Wrath, however, was my tanking-obsessed heyday, and I was resolved to have all four tank capable classes of the time as main spec tanks. But with the release of Cataclysm, and the new race that had been my absolute greatest hope for a new race - the Worgen - came out, I decided that a Warrior was a good fit. I felt that a physical class would be good for a werewolf, and I was between Rogues and Warriors (I wound up making both.) That Worgen Warrior, who was essentially tied for second place among my alts in Cataclysm, is in the background image for this blog.

And Arms in Cataclysm was fantastic. It was even better than it had been in Wrath. There was a great flow to it - you always had something to do. Rend was easily maintained through Blood and Thunder, and it had the unique spec identity of being the only melee class with a cast time, or rather "swing time" for Slam. Essentially, Rend would proc Taste for Blood, which would allow Overpower, and you'd hit Mortal Strike on cool down and fill in the caps, as best you could, Rage permitting, with those slow but massive Slams.

Mists saw some weird iterations on Arms, but by the end it had a great mechanical game. Basically, Mortal Strike came center stage as your Rage generator, and then you'd play a balancing game - conserving Rage with Overpower or burning it with Slam or Execute. And Colossus Smash was only semi-predictable, its cool down often being reset by Sudden Death. This made every move kind of a judgment call. Play too conservatively and you risked wasting Rage, play too liberally and you risked not having enough Rage to dump in the CS window.

Arms felt like a tricky spec, but one that could be fantastic when played well. To me, the very essence of an Arms warrior is that they are not controlled by their Rage - rather they use it as a weapon and a tool. An Arms Warrior is calm and professional - a seasoned veteran. Warriors are morally neutral, but you can basically assume that an Arms Warrior is going to be a worthy opponent, regardless of what side he or she is on. Fury is more about allowing that Rage to consume you, but Arms - flavor wise, at least - is about a respect for skill and thus lends itself to a kind of intricate gameplay.

Unfortunately, Blizzard does not agree with me. Their stance is that Arms is defined as begin the one that is about "big hits." Thus, Arms will be utterly transforming - in many ways, regressing, though under the guise of "going back to its roots." Mortal Strike is going back to costing, rather than generating Rage. Once again, Rage will be purely gained through auto-attacks (and Charge, but how often do you get to do that in PvE?) Overpower is totally gone - cut because it's a relatively small attack. Rend is back, though any interactivity it had with other abilities has been removed. The two bits that came together to make Mists' era Arms are now mutually-exclusive talents. Sudden Death - Arms' sole proc, now applies to Execute, rather than Colossus Smash (which, to be fair, was true in Wrath, as there was no CS.) Slam is now a somewhat more complicated ability, working a bit like Arcane Blast in that it gets more powerful and more expensive as you use it, but is purely a talent.

Blizzard has noted that the baseline complexity of the spec is not what one should be judging it on, but I really don't think Arms can have a sufficiently engaging gameplay unless they got both of these talents - and even then it might not be enough.

And there's a third talent that makes Rend grant more rage as it bleeds a target, but that's hardly that interesting.

Essentially, the entirety of the interesting nature of Arms has been jettisoned to make Mortal Strike a more powerful individual ability.

On the Beta forums, there has been some complaint about these changes (I have been among their contributors,) but Blizzard has remained resolute in this rebranding of the Arms specialization. I have tried to play it, and it is just, to be frank, not Arms as we know it. But beyond that, it seems like a relic from a much earlier time in WoW's design, and I mean that in a bad way. I'm talking about the times when Arcane basically just spammed Arcane Missiles over and over, or when Paladins essentially had nothing to do except cast Judgment and re-apply their seals.

The game has come very far in the last ten years, and I've almost always been happy with the direction they've taken. The occasional times when something doesn't work out (level 90 Mage tier, for example,) Blizzard has usually responded by fixing them (Mages, rejoice for 6.0.)

So sadly, I'm going to be leaving Arms behind on my Warrior come 6.0. I've played around a little with Fury in the beta, and it's decent. At level 100 I'll probably try out Gladiator's Resolve and see how it is playing Prot DPS.

I can only hope that when 6.1 comes out, or perhaps when 7.0 does, Blizzard will realize how they've gutted the spec and build in some interesting mechanics again.

I could say similar things about some of the other aspects of the ability squish, but while there are a few feather-ruffling things (like the idea that Blood will just use Blood Boil for both single-target and AoE, and loses Heart Strike,) nothing's quite so destructive as the changes I've seen to Arms.

Well, hopefully they'll come out with Demon Hunters next expansion and I can do what I did with my Draenei Shaman "Uterro" when Wrath came out and have that Worgen effectively change classes.