wow Upcoming Arms Warrior Changes on BfA Beta: Jun 6

[Stan 5,240]

Arms Warriors are currently experiecing issues with the Rage economy on Battle for Azeroth Beta and Blizzard outlined changes planned for the specialization in an upcoming Beta build. 

Arms Warrior Changes Coming to BfA Beta Tomorrow:

• Avatar and Fervor of Battle swap places (Avatar to 90, Fervor to 45).
• Trauma removed, and replaced with the new Massacre design: "Execute is now usable against targets below 35% health."
• Skullsplitter generates 20 Rage (was 30 Rage).
• Anger Management no longer affects Deadly Calm. It now only affects Colossus Smash/Warbreaker, and Bladestorm.
• Overpower will have a new animation.

Blizzard (Source)

In the next Beta build, you'll see a few changes for Arms that should address the Rage economy issues pointed out in threads like this one. The baseline pacing is slightly lower than intended, and talents can cause too big of a swing in either direction (slowing down or speeding up the pace).

• Rage generation from auto attacks is increased by ~16%.
• Tactician's proc chance is increased to 1.4% per Rage spent (it was 0.9%).

This adds more button presses to the rotation regardless of your talent build, and pushes Overpower more than other abilities to avoid creeping too close to "Slam-spam" territory. The moment we’re trying to eliminate as much as possible is the, “I have enough Rage to Slam right now, but I don’t know if I’ll have enough to Mortal Strike afterwards unless I have a swing timer.” These changes add enough Rage, and enough Overpower procs, to make that a rarer occurrence.

However, pumping more Rage into the rotation doesn't solve the problems with certain talent setups that have been highlighted here. There are a handful of Rage management talents that have big impacts on the spec's feel and flow, but it is easy to accidentally put together a build that is either starved or flooded.

• Avatar and Fervor of Battle swap places (Avatar to 90, Fervor to 45).
• Trauma removed, and replaced with the new Massacre design: "Execute is now usable against targets below 35% health."

This makes the purpose of each row clearer. 45 is all about spending more Rage. The row will have a more predictable impact on total button presses over time, while each talent still has a distinct impact on moment-to-moment gameplay.

Similarly, the 90 row is now all about cooldowns. Putting Avatar and Deadly Calm against each other limits the pacing swing between different talent setups, as well as lowering overall burst potential (something at which Arms already excels). Having strengths is important, but pushing them too far can lead to feeling like you’re a one-trick pony.

Finally, two more related tweaks:

• Skullsplitter generates 20 Rage (was 30 Rage).
• Anger Management no longer affects Deadly Calm. It now only affects Colossus Smash/Warbreaker, and Bladestorm.

Skullsplitter was adding too much activity, relative to the other options on the 15 row. Even with this change, it is still the most active choice for players who enjoy being closer to GCD-locked.

Rather than adding Avatar to Anger Management, we've opted to keep it simpler on the surface while still having all three 90 talents interact with it in different ways: In For The Kill is directly buffed, Avatar feeds extra Rage into Anger Management, and Deadly Calm makes it easier to set up for the more regular Colossus Smash windows.

Oh -- we're also trying out a different animation for Overpower. 

As always, thanks for the feedback and discussion!

[Innervoid 16]

Arms warrior was really suffering from resouce scarcity... but they're not the only ones. I've tried all DPS classes atm in beta and I can tell you that this is really serious in many of them. The feeling is, after you do your burst in a time window (shorter or longer considering your class) you'll end up on looking at your bar for seconds waiting for a new skill to come out of cd for you to use it or even waiting for your resource meter to fill a bit more so that you may press a button. I'll leave you with the DPS classes struggling with resource atm:

- Arms Warr (terrible but it seems they'll fix it);

- Retri Pala (this one really makes me cry, even if I adjust all my talents to prevent resource scarcity it's still deplorable and I lose all my freedom of choice. To make things worse you'll even strugle when on burst dmg);

- DK in general (though it has a wider time for burst so you'll only feel the scarcity later);

- Survival Hunter;

- Feral Druid;

- WW Monk (same as DK, even longer burst)

[VictorVakaras 83]

"Oh -- we're also trying out a different animation for Overpower."

Best bit.