Hey guys, me and my fellow warriors in <Cold Embrace> have been discussing the recent announcement about the feedback that will be asked on possible class changes.
I am a purely PvE guy so my feedback wille be exclusively focused on that with the intent to neither buff nor nerf warrior in PvP Ill let others provide feedback on the matter.
The crux of the matter:
Warriors are known as the most overpowered class in the game, best tank, best DPS , insane potential and mechanics.
I'm here to argue that this is not the case in fact it is quite the contrary. Fury is overpowered, a combination of Rage, Death Wish, Flurry and the linear scaling of Bloodthirst makes it punch way above the other two talent trees which are known as complete jokes in PvE. both Deep Prot and Deep Arms are complete and utter garbage and that's why DPS AND Tanks go 31 points into Fury.
My aim with this feedback is to make Arms and Prot, if not optimal, at least viable in PvE keep in mind that these changes follow 3 rules:
- They do not have any noticeable impact in PvP
- They cannot in any way shape or form benefit Fury and as such should be in the 5th, 6th or 7th talent row of their trees
- They are independent changes, it is not an all or nothing and work on their own.
Arms:
Arms as a dps spec suffers from being a purely PvP spec that provides 0 utility in most PvE single target situation, they are meant to be the 2 Handed spec but are utterly beaten by 2 Handed fury due to the inaccessibility of Flurry and the fact that Mortal Strike scales off of weapon damage compared to the AP linear scaling of Bloodthirst.
When I heard the word "Arms warrior" what do I picture ? Well it's in the name : a Master of Arms, one who is patient, calculated and strikes with a single blow that defeats their oponent, if I were to think about what NPC is an arms warrior in Vanilla it would be Instructor Razuvius a master who teaches and can destroy anyone with one attack.
To better represent that here are my suggested changes:
- Poleaxe Specialization x/5:
Increases your chance to get a critical strike with axes and polearms by 1%/2%/3%/4%/5% and increases Two-Handed Axes and Polearms Weapon skill by 2/4/6/8/10. - Mace Specialization x/5:
Gives you a 1%/2%/3%/4%/5% chance to stun your target for 3 seconds with a Mace and increases Two-Handed Maces Weapon skill by 2/4/6/8/10. - Sword Specialization x/5:
Gives you a 1%/2%/3%/4%/5% chance to get an extra attack on the same target after dealing damage with your swords and increases Two-Handed Sword Weapon skill by 2/4/6/8/10.
- Improved Discipline:
Reduces the cooldown of your retaliation, recklessness and shield wall abilities by 6/12/18 min.
adding weapon skill to arms is one way to augment the damage of the arms warrior in PvE but it in no way makes it viable, you would still be 15%-20% weaker than a fury just due to lack of BT and Flury. The way to fix this would be to make recklessness available on pretty much every boss (or at least every two bosses) for Arms warrior which would provide a noticeable 'but not broken) boost.
Although this change might seem super impactful in PvP I believe that it doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things : either the warrior you face has Retaliation up or not and the way to deal with him is still the same : kill their pocket healer and wait for retaliation to go down.
If the availability of retaliation is too much to handle the talent could be changed instead to :
- Improved Discipline:
Reduces the cooldown of your retaliation and shield wall abilities by 2/4/6 min and reduces the cooldown of your recklessness ability by 6/12/18 min.
I'll still share that leveling Arms in WotLK was so satisfying because of the rework of the specc, primarily due to added synergies with Rend and scalability of the weapon damage.