The Current and Seemingly Final State of Warriors in Legion

With the recent post in the Arms Class Feedback forums by Celestalon:Posted by Celestalon We've heard the feedback, and are happy with how Arms (and Fury) are playing right now, with yet-to-come tuning in mind. Talents make up a huge part of that, and we're seeing them satisfy their role quite well. Upcoming changes to Arms/Fury will be primarily tuning.I felt it is necessary to inform players of the current state of Fury and Arms in a consolidated manner since as per Celestalon, this is how the specs will ship - warts and all. Most testers from top guilds have been pointing out flaws in both specs for months, and the above response is the equivalent to a slap in the face for them.It's easy to get lost in the new abilities and flashy animations that are coming in legion, and not clearly see problematic design flaws that will make their way known a few weeks into the expansion/prepatch when players see beyond the makeup. After WoD Arms, the feedback then, and looking at the feedback now, the cycle is apparently about to repeat itself. So let's talk about core Arms for a second, then we'll get to Fury.(I started writing this post before the class feedback thread came up, but even so, I think this deserves its own post due to Celestalon stating openly that both Fury and Arms are finished specs in their eyes, and at this point, providing feedback is mostly a moot point. This post in mainly to inform the community of the design flaws in both spec's core rotations and hopefully get enough attention so that these flaws are fixed before Legion launch)ArmsThe largest complaint so far has been the repetitive usage of Slam, both the main filler, and enabler of the spec. The passive Tactician makes it so Slam, Whirlwind, and Execute have a 15% chance to proc Colossus Smash. 15% is extremely low, a player in the last feedback thread posted a visual guide on the probability of resetting CS: http://ift.tt/1UnLpfk - If WoD Arms gave you nightmares about Whirlwind spam, Legion Slam might actually be worse.CS isn't meant to be a 100% uptime buff, we know this, so having a significantly higher chance to proc it, really isn't the main problem, it's the question "Why press anything other than slam". This is especially problematic when you choose to talent into Overpower or rend which cost rage and a GCD and have 0% chance to proc CS, and since you can't save charges of Overpower anymore, it's not worth putting off til a CS window. Not only that, but when you enter execute phase, you are still fishing for CS resets with Slam, because Slam has a rage cost of 15, and execute has a rage cost of (up to) 40, yet both have the exact same chance to proc CS. One of the suggestions to combat this was to make tactician give a % chance to reset CS per rage spent.Moving on to Colossus Smash specifically, it has a 45 second CD, and if you're unaware, was reworked so that the target takes your % Mastery extra damage for 8 seconds instead of ignoring armor. A big concern with players is the lack of bad RNG protection, aka going the full 45 seconds or even close to that without getting a reset. The RNG between pulls or in a PvP environment is far too high. Some players suggested reducing the CD to around 20 seconds, so that not proccing CS doesn't feel so bad, and makes your damage cycles more predictable. Nothing is worse than sitting on cds for ages and waiting for a CS proc. Also, this is mainly a PvP thing, but also occurs in PvE, where your CS gets dodged or parried and you end up being locked out of a large part of your damage because of it.To make a sort of conclusion, the spec is best described as boring, there is no interaction between abilities, you simply press slam to advance the rotation to CS phases, get a few Mortal Strikes in, and then go back to the grind of proccing CS again. There's nothing dynamic or fun about the spec, the skill ceiling and floor are nearly identical - some of the best feelings I get while playing a class is when I make a mistake and realize I could have done something different to maximize dps. There's currently none of that in Legion Arms, you're either pressing slam, or you're doing it wrong. You can technically play in execute phase without pressing slam, but it requires spamming low rage cost executes, but hitting execute with more than 15 rage is just a wasted opportunity and you would have been better off pressing slam. When you're spamming low rage cost executes, you're not able to pool rage for the next CS phase either, the "fantasy" and gameplay elements don't seem to line up very well. Finally, talented abilities actively work against the core concept of the player advancing the dps rotation by proccing CS, the wasted opportunity just feels bad, especially when you can regularly go 5+ slams in a row without getting a reset. To be honest, Arms almost needs another ability, preferably a proc like overpower baseline to make the spec more dynamic, because otherwise it goes way beyond just easy, it's just mind numbingly boring.In a perfect world, Tactician would be changed to a % chance per rage spent to reset CS, the CD on CS would be reduced to 20-25 seconds, Mortal Strike would generate rage sub 20%(In for the Kill baseline), and Overpower would be made baseline, and return to the stacking charge system so you can pool charges for CS. These changes would considerably smooth out and make the rotation actually engaging to play.To post some bugs(?) that have been reported for quite a while now and haven't even been addressed, Sweeping Strikes has a ridiculously small cleave range, and execute will not cleave onto targets that are above 20%FuryEasily the largest complaints about fury fall around the new Furious Slash ability, which buffs the crit chance of Bloodthirst(Which no longer has a base crit modifier) by 15% per usage, to put that into perspective, Bloodthirst on Live has a +40% crit modifier. As a filler ability, it's be nice to keep the spec GCD locked and feeling "furious"(Despite reusing the annoying Wild Strike sound effect). The problem arises when you enter the execute phase, or an AoE situation where Furious Slash gets shoehorned in so that you are reliably enraged throughout those phases. Previously Whirlwind also gave bonus crit on Bloodthirst stacks, although that was removed for some unknown reason. Furious Slash will end up being used less and less as gear levels progress, which makes tying a talent like Frenzy to it seem questionable at best, again shoehorning Furious Slash into the rotation despite wanting to press more satisfying abilities, especially raging blow which is only available while enraged. To tack something on quickly, while Furious Slash and Wild Strike have the same sound, Furious Slash encompasses a full global, and not a half global like current Wild Strike.Speaking specifically about Execute for a moment, the spec plays significantly better with the Massacre talent, which makes execute crits proc a free rampage. This considerably increases enrage uptime during execute phase, fills globals while you build rage for execute, and give the artifact trait Odyn's Champion procs during execute phase, where it would not normally be present. Players have been asking for this to be baseline, because otherwise the execute phase could just be considered clunky. I'm not usually down to call for talents to be baseline, but in this case, it's almost necessary to make the spec play smoothly. I think the worst part about Massacre being a talent, is that it competes with Bladestorm, which means we're forced to suffer through a clunky execute phase on AoE fights.Warriors are known for Bladestorm, yet there's a core problem with it's current iteration. With Enrage only lasting 4 seconds, it will never last the entirety of Bladestorm which lasts 6 seconds, our mastery is basically null for around half of Bladestorm. Keep in mind, if you activate enrage with Bloodthirst, you only realistically get 2.5-3 seconds of enrage because of the GCD. The only way to get a full 4 seconds of enrage is to talent into Outburst, which is Live Berserker Rage on a 1 min CD and Competes with Avatar and Wrecking Ball.One of the big things mentioned at Blizzcon this year what that Whirlwind was getting a QoL update where it would cause Raging Blow(Now Bloodthirst) to cleave for the next X seconds, instead of being on next ability press, yet it was removed inexplicably several builds ago and returned to the "On next ability" iteration.Again drawing a conclusion, Fury is almost the opposite to arms, there is so much conflict on what buttons to actively push that it just makes the spec feel cluttered to play. As some testers have put it, the spec feels fantastic if you ignore optimizing enrage uptime (Basically using Furious Slash as filler only to keep the spec GCD locked), but obviously that won't be the best or optimal way to play Fury since our enrage damage bonus is such a large part of our damage. The question is, where does Furious Slash fit into the rotation? Am I intended to fill globals while enraged with it so that I can keep up the "streak", or is it intended to simply be a filler ability that feels far too mandatory to press?In a once again perfect world, Bloodthirst would return to having a base crit modifier(30-40%), and Furious Slash would be changed to do something like have a chance to reset Bloodthirst. Meat Cleaver/Grinder would be changed back to "Cleaving for the next X seconds" type ability instead of "On next hit". Massacre would be made baseline to clean up the execute rotation and allow Odyn's Champion procs to persist through execute phase. Bladestorm would always do damage as if enraged. Finally, Frenzy would be changed to stack off of Bloodthirst instead of Furious Slash.To post some bugs(?) that have been reported for quite a while now and haven't even been addressed, Berserker Rage gives the mastery damage increase even without Outburst talented, but not the 30% extra damage taken or attack speed buff.Overall Whew, this was honestly longer than I wanted it to be, but myself and many other Warriors disagree that the spec is in a "Good spot" right now according to Celestalon, and I honestly could go on for another 2-3 posts this size talking specifically about the talents and artifacts for both specs, and why some of them frankly just don't work very well mechanically. I didn't really touch on a lot of problematic talents because I'm going to take Celestalon's word for now and assume that once tuning phase rolls around, they will realize that some talents can't simply be adjusted numerically, and realistically can't compete with other talents in their row due to the mechanical limitations. I also ended up skipping a lot of things that weren't related to the core rotation, like self healing and defensives, because it's difficult to see what exactly balance is, since many other specs are losing so many defensives as well. If anyone is still reading at this point, I'd like to thank you for sticking around this long, and hope that we can avert another WoD and having my favorite class launch with so many glaring problems that realistically can be fixed quite easily.Notable ThreadsValermos posted in the General Discussion Forums and has an active thread discussing the lack of response to glaring problems. You can also find links to all the recent feedback threads in the Legion Class Feedback Forum on his post.