#0 - Feb. 23, 2009, 3:13 p.m.
I saw in another post recently that Blizz do actually seem to be wanting to help Arms and have asked for suggestions from the Warrior community to help with this. So I thought I'd do a little re-vamp of a previous post of mine to offer up some more suggestions and also get some comments from other Warriors about them. I have a number of ideas to rectify our weakness and hopefully Blizz will consider some of them, I have no wish to be overpowered, I just want to actually be viable.
In the planned changes you state "Changing stances now has a much reduced cost: you lose a maximum of 20 rage (10 with Tactical Mastery). For example, if you have 100 rage and change stances, you will have 80 rage remaining. If you have 10 rage and change stances, all of your rage is lost." Thankfully you do seem to have taken notice of how horrible this change would be. However I have still seen more posts referring to increasing Arms' damage through Overpower or Slam.
You have stated that you're moving away from RNG attacks but that's exactly what overpower is. And please do not buff slam! It is utterly useless in PvP, you will never have enough rage to spare and no enemy is stupid enough to stand there and let you cast it.
Instead Mortal Strike should be buffed. It is tree specific so won't effect Fury or Prot. It's damage at the moment is also pathetic. In Warcraft Lore Grom Hellscream would now be classed as a Warrior. He one shotted Mannoroth! Mortal means fatal and that's exactly what that was, a mortal strike. Paladins and Death Knights cause mostly magical damage (and also far more damage normally still than warriors), as of course do all casters. So it is entirely reasonable to suggest that Mortal Strike should ignore an opponent's armour (not Power Word: Shield or other bubbles though). Chaos Bolt and the Chaos damage type from Warcraft 3 also set precedent. This would be a good buff purely to Arms and would also help make up for the extremely high rage cost of Mortal Strike.
There are also a number of problems with other abilities that are well known:
Hamstring: Now requires you to basically stand on top of your target. Needs a range increase.
Charge/Intercept: Is regularly ineffective and also leaves you far behind your target. Perhaps add an automatic dismount or daze effect / increase the stun duration.
Pummel/Shield Bash: Should take effect when you use it not some time afterwards. This is a source of great irritation for many warriors.
The Stances: The GCD caused by stance swapping also causes problems, so I'd like to suggest putting them on a short, shared CD like Hunter Aspects. Also please do implement the removal of the penalties for being in the stances. It is not fair having Death Knights for example receiving massive buffs from their presences with no penalties whilst we get to help people kill us faster.
I would also like to suggest a number of talent and ability changes plus some new ones:
Bladestorm: I really like this ability, the self-CCing aspect of it can be rather annoying but it does then mean that it requires some skill to use it at the right time, and I think this is a good thing. However it is a bit too easy to escape it and it's damage is often unnoticable. So I would like to suggest increasing it's damage to Weapon Damage +200-400 per swing (as an extra effect of Bladestorm rather than a base Whirlwind buff) and adding in "anyone hit by the Warrior's Bladestorm is Dazed by the swirling weaponry, slowing movement speed by 50% for 6 sec". This would only be a minor buff so would not make it overpowered as Blink/Disengage can still get them out of range, as could repeated shapeshifts, Intercept/Feral Charge etc and Death Grip can still always (though very stupidly) pull the Warrior away.
Demoralizing Shout: Many NPC’s (such as the Murlocs in Borean Tundra) version of Demoralizing Shout reduces enemy spell power/damage. So I think the Warrior version should do this too as the caster’s concentration is disturbed and so they don‘t focus the magical energy properly.
Imp. Bloodrage: No Prot warrior specs into Imp. Bloodrage and very few Arms Warriors spec into Imp. Heroic Strike or Imp. Charge whilst Prot warriors often do. So I would suggest swapping Imp. Bloodrage for one of these two and increasing it to +50/100%.
Swap Imp. Beserker Rage and Imp. Slam as I see Fury Warriors don’t seem to spec for it and because Slam is pointless in PvP. (Note: I am unsure if my suggested Mortal Strike change would make up for the loss of DPS to PvE Arms from this change)
Endless Rage: This is a very weak 51 point talent (and in my opinion the worst), further proved by the fact that no-one bothered with it in TBC. Hunters and Rogues both have an ability that refreshes cooldowns so I’d suggest giving the extra 25% rage generation from damage to all warriors and replacing it with: Onslaught: (No rage cost) 10 minute CD. Refreshes the CD on your Bloodrage, Bladestorm, Intimidating Shout and Enraged Regeneration abilities. I think this is perfectly balanced as it gives Arms some extra use out of it’s abilities. Most still require rage and it’s not every CD so it would still require timing to be good; and it has a long CD.
Anger Management: Death Knight’s version that generates Runic Power at 2 RP per 5 sec works out as more than the rage from Anger Management but not even for a primary resource! So I think increase the rage gained from this talent to 2 or 3 rage per 3 sec rather than 1.
Hellscream: Most classes have silence effects and I think it suits the Warrior class to have a similar AoE silence effect, this is obviously based upon Grom Hellscream's warcry but I think it also suits other races to have their own "Hellscream". Hellscream: 15 Rage, 2 Minute CD (Note: This is a much longer CD than other class' silence effects and is only this long as I am not familiar enough with them all to know how many are AoE) 15 Yard Range. The warrior lets out a terrifying warcry making his enemies dumbstruck, preventing them from casting any spells for 5 seconds.
Warriors are based on the Warcraft 3 heroes: Tauren Chieftain, Blademaster and Mountain King (along with some troop types) and there are a few abilities from there that I think would work well.
Tauren Chieftain’s Endurance Aura: Gave a 15% run speed and a 15% attack speed increase. I think it would work well as a replacement for Sweeping Strikes. Sweeping Strikes is also a rather poor ability that would be better either as a class ability or just removed. Endurance Aura should be a self buff only, to 1: Avoid a long cooldown like Bloodlust has, and 2: Keep the Shamans from complaining. Endurance Aura: (No rage cost) 30 second CD: Increases the warrior’s run and attack speed by 15% for 15 seconds (Note: if used before Bladestorm the run speed increase should persist; but the attack speed increase should not then affect the Warrior whilst Bladestorm is active). Multiple classes have similar effects (Rogues have things like Slice and Dice and Blade Flurry for attack speed, Shaman’s have Bloodlust, Unholy Death Knights have Unholy Aura, Rogues and Druids have Sprint/Dash etc). And as this is not as big a speed or damage buff as all of these (or in the case of Unholy Aura this has an extra effect and thus a cooldown and duration) and does not give any snare immunity, like Hand of Freedom, I think it is an entirely fair and justifiable talent for Arms.
Mountain King’s Stormbolt: Vanndar Stormpike already has Stormbolt so there is a mechanic for it and Death Knights have a ranged snare. So a small 3 second stun or so is justifiable. Granted we have recently gained Heroic Throw but perhaps a stun effect could be added to a talent, similar to Gag Order.
Mountain King’s Avatar: In it’s Warcraft 3 incarnation this would be overpowered, as it gave a health, armour, damage and size increase plus immunity to magic, but I think it could still be workable. For example it could be different depending on what stance you’re in. Health and armour in defensive, damage and size (and thus more range) in battle and magic immune in berserker. Or merely a damage and size increase plus reduced magic damage taken (Death Knights have Anti-Magic Shell and Shield; and Rogues have Cloak of Shadows so there are similar abilities). Death Knights, Paladins and Rogues (and to a lesser extent Mages’ Ice Block and Priest’s Power Word: Shield) all have powerful defensive spells and other powerful cooldowns (Evasion, Cloak of Shadows, Cheat Death, the various Paladin bubbles, Anti-Magic Shell and Shield) that don’t impair them so it is justifiable.
Hopefully you will agree with at least some of my suggestions and maybe include some of these proposed changes in the patch. They are all justifiable and other classes have similar abilities so it is balanced.
Anyway, thanks for reading!
