Alpha Changes, and The Direction of Arms Warrior

I guess I need to preface this article with a disclaimer of:

• All of the following is based on the latest Alpha build as of June 19th, 2014.
• I do not have Alpha Access, so a lot of my data is either napkin math, given to me by Warriors with Alpha Access, or just pulled out of my ass in context.
• Bear with me, I will make sense eventually.

So there were some changes to Warriors in the Alpha notes, and while there was a short note above the Warrior section saying that " Arms is still undergoing heavy revision and additional information will be made available later." it still doesn't quite add up. Let's look at sources of Arms' damage on the Live servers, in no particular order:

• Mortal Strike
• Slam
• Colossus Smash
• Overpower
• Deep Wounds
• Strikes of Opportunity (Mastery)
• Bladestorm (No other T60 Talent Choice)
• Heroic Strike
• Thunder Clap
• Sweeping Strikes (Regular + Slam-Cleave)
• Auto Attacks
• Execute

So as we can see, we've got a fair few sources of damage, but the rotations/priorities for Single Target and AoE DPS are a bit different. However, based on the recent changes to the Alpha notes, what we're probably going to look at is:

• Mortal Strike
• Colossus Smash
• Whirlwind
• T60 Talent
• T90 Talent (If you pick Bladestorm)
• T100 Talent (Assuming Ravager or Ignite Weapon)
• Auto Attacks
• Sweeping Strikes
• Execute

So straight off the bat (unless I've missed anything) we've already dropped 6 sources of damage from Live (Slam, Overpower, Deep Wounds, Strikes of Opportunity, Heroic Strike, Thunder Clap), 4 of which required us to press the button to do anything anyway. But what have we gained in return?

The Tier 60 Talent of choice, more often than not, is probably going to be Storm Bolt unless Dragon Roar is significantly better than it is on Live, simply because Storm Bolt's weapon damage component will keep getting better as we get better gear, where as Dragon Roar's burst seems very reliant on "can I line it up with my enchant proc, trinket procs and Skull Banner". On top of this, due to it not scaling at all with Critical Strike, I think it's going to be debatable whether we use it at all with Recklessness active in Warlords (Reckless and Skull Banner are baked together, meaning we can't split the two for Dragon Roar's use). It might be worth considering that Dragon Roar is changed to scale with Crit like Chaos Bolt does, but this might make it a bit too cookie-cutter when everyone is decked out in full T19 Mythic gear and has 40%+ Crit on top of their other stats. Moving on!

The Tier 90 Talent is going to shift around. Assuming they're all balanced and have their niche, it'll be Avatar for tight burst windows where you just need raw damage, Bloodbath when you need that extra kick of sustained ST/AoE DPS, and Bladestorm when you need reliable burst AoE. Unfortunately that pigeonholes us into specific talents, but then again I guess Blizzard want us to use different talents for different situations. That fits the mould so I'll accept it and move on.

The Tier 100 Talents are our new toys, and we get two choices if we want an actual ability, these are Ravager and Ignite Weapon (again, as of the latest Alpha Build).

As you can see, the choices are interesting. We either get a Single Target ability that then buffs our Single Target damage (via ignoring armour), or we get targeted burst AoE damage + Defensive Cooldown all baked into one nice package. In regards to the Ignite Weapon tooltip, it doesn't actually replace Heroic Strike for Arms, as Arms no longer has access to Heroic Strike. I feel like one of these two abilities is going to end up being mandatory for any kind of competitive DPS simply because of what Celestalon has tweeted is the intended rotation as of this Alpha Build, but we'll get onto that later.

So now we get onto possibly the most thought provoking source of damage in the Warlords of Draenor Arms Warrior rotation.

Whirlwind. No I am not joking.

And honestly, I wish I was. I wasn't playing a Warrior when Whirlwind was in the rotation for Single Target, and I'm kind of glad on that part. If I was to visualise a Warrior carving someone up in true Warrior style, it would be strange to watch them drive a sword through their chest, only to pull it out and start spinning around. If I take the flavour text from the Arms spec:

A battle-hardened master of two-handed weapons, using mobility and overpowering attacks to strike opponents down.

I know the first thing that would pop into your head is "why not have Overpower back instead of Whirlwind?". On the Live servers, I'd disagree completely, I really don't like Overpower as an ability, it's quick, doesn't hit very hard, and it's only gimmick is that it can't be dodged or parried. However, in Warlords we have the option to change bad things about the spec, and take good ideas and run with them before they eventually land in 6.0. Whirlwind is -not- a Single-Target damage ability. It is an AoE ability. If I wanted to be an AoE machine I would take Bladestorm, Ravager and Dragon Roar and jump into a crowd of enemies and chop them into bits. I don't want to be using Whirlwind against one target, it doesn't feel very Warrior-like to me, and I know some people might disagree.

The removal of Deep Wounds is also something that's confusing to me, especially with the consideration (and then removal) of Rend. Warriors won't have a Bleed/DoT. I'm pretty sure that'll make them the only class in the game without a DoT effect (barring Bloodbath of course), which means that they are going to need a lot of compensation in their autoattacks and abilities, causing serious problems for PvP and PvE. In PvP it means that all their abilities will be hitting considerably harder than other classes simply because they have to in order to be balanced against having no DoT effect, Warriors might end up just being able to global someone because that's how they'll be balanced, at least with a DoT effect you can take some damage away from the abilities to prevent crazy burst scenarios. In PvE it means that if they are out of melee range of any target they are worth exactly 0. They will be doing no damage at all, and if there's any "Stand Away From Boss Or Die" moments (Empowered Whirling Corruption says hello) then Warriors are going to be as useful as a chocolate teapot in a raid.

I'm going to throw down a suggestion here for possible sources of damage, and I will implore you to give me a response, whether that's here in the comments or on twitter (@CM_Exhil). I won't add weapon damage percentages or attack power numbers because that's not my job, my job in this scenario is to give feedback, not tune the game.

Mortal Strike - Costs Rage, has a cooldown, does damage and applies Deep Wounds (yes I'd like it back).
Colossus Smash - Costs more Rage, has a longer cooldown and hits a lot harder than Mortal Strike, makes all your other abilities ignore armour.
Overpower - Merge current Slam and Overpower, does damage, costs Rage, can't be dodged/parried, no CD, no Charges.
Execute - Does what it says on the tin, costs Rage, does a lot of damage, usable sub-20%.
Sudden Death - Your attacks have a % chance of allowing you to Execute the target at any % of health. If the target is under 20%, increases the Crit Chance of your next Execute by 50%

Now the next part is something that I feel should be part of the spec, but I can't decide what it should be. I'd like a passive for Arms called Unrelenting Assault that isn't the old version as honestly, it doesn't fit with the overarching meta-game for Warcraft any more. I've asked a few Warriors what they thought it should be and I've had some interesting responses, such as:

It has to be slow and hit hard for Arms, I always liked the idea of taking a resource risk - like spend all you've got for massive damage, but risk losing a lot of Rage. 

I want it to be iconic. If you pick any spec in the game there's always one thing that sumarises that spec. Whether it's Raging Blow for Fury, Killing Machine for Frost DKs, Combustion for Fire Mages or Chaos Bolt for Destro Warlocks, every spec has something that just screams "I am X". For Arms, I feel it should be exactly what it says it is, something that makes you progressively smash a target into the ground, so I'd like to propose the following (you'll immediately know where the idea comes from).

Unrelenting Assault - Every time you Overpower a target, increase the damage of your next Rage-consuming ability by X%, and the Rage cost by Y%.
If this effect is consumed by Overpower, it's damage is increased by (2xX)% and the Rage cost is increased by Y%.

Now I know this might freak some people out, but this is a discussion, I want to know what you all think of ideas like this, and if people in the community think up a better design for the spec they need to voice it and get it shown to Blizzard.

The entire point of an Alpha/Beta testing phase of a game is that people provide feedback on things. Whether they're good things, bad things, or things that are just okay. If something is bad, you need to stand up and say "I think this is a bad design, and here's why", rather than just saying "Oh it's alpha, it'll change before launch". The Devs can't iterate on a design when everybody is assuming it'll change on it's own, it needs feedback, and as such, I'm here providing feedback.

Thank you all for reading, and again if you have any thoughts or suggestions about what I've written, leave a comment below or send me a tweet (@CM_Exhil).