Arms - Too reliant on RNG?

[BMaxwell00 0]

Does anyone else feel that Arms' reliance on Tactician procs makes the spec feel arbitrary, unpredictable and overly reliant on luck at times?

I certainly feel that way, especially when I'm DPSing a boss and the CS debuff falls off and Tactician fails to reset its cooldown, and I'm forced to wait up to 30 seconds for it to reset so I can start actually dealing damage again, while I'm wondering if there's any benefit to me bringing my unreliable spec to this raid/dungeon groups since other specs can bring the same if not better kind of damage without the factor of luck deciding if they're actually going to be able to deal that damage or if they're going to be struggling to deal more damage than the tanks sikmply because RNG is not cooperating.

I know this is a dramatic and exaggerated topic, but I'm having a really hard time justifying playing this spec when there are specs more effective, consistent and less reliant on RNG in order to perform well. I don't know, I just feel that the game is basically telling me "you're going to perform well when I decide that you can perform well." when I play Arms. Needless to say, that doesn't make for very fun gameplay when RNG decides to screw you over.

Also, on a side-note, somewhere around 90% of the DPS Warriors I see are playing Fury. This was also the case in WoD, and I really don't think it's simply because people like dual wielding more than wielding a single weapon.

Thoughts? 

[gundblaker 2]

I mean, maybe it's a little too reliant on RNG, but you do have several ways of applying the CS debuff, no?

Even so, don't you think that having arms as a way to burst down priority ads/push damage checks with CS debuff is a good thing?  Certainly, RNGesus will punish you sometimes, and sometimes he blesses you.  But if you can at least save CS for phase changes, ad spawns, vulnerability, etc., that makes you valuable.  Also, if it is truly RNG, then you should have good times as well as bad times so it should balance out.  Anyone that knows what your spec does should be understanding as well.

PS I play fury because I like having 2 swords :)

[Valks 2,407]

Arms is definitely still competitive on a few bosses and can beat out Fury occasionally, so it's definitely not just a useless spec - RNG will always be a factor with resets, but as said by Gund, you'll have good times and bad times. Where are you generally sitting DPS-wise in your raids? How far below are you compared to other DPS/warriors? 

It might be that there is a playstyle issue that you are attributing completely to RNG, while it is only partially to blame. 

[BMaxwell00 0]

11 hours ago, Blainie said:

It might be that there is a playstyle issue that you are attributing completely to RNG, while it is only partially to blame. 

Believe me, I'm definitely not blaming it all on RNG. I still make some mistakes as I'm not 100% familiar with the spec just yet, but I've been practicing and learning, and improving. I'm well aware that if I'm doing poorly, it's not simply a case of bad luck. 

To be honest it's not even just DPS that I'm frustrated by, it's the fact that my rotation can suddenly stop and become "Slam Slam Slam Slam Mortal Strike Slam Slam Slam Slam" if Tactician doesn't proc for an extended period of time. Not only that, but the unpredictability of Tactician can make it really hard to decide when to use Avatar and Battle Cry, because if you take too long to pop them you're losing DPS, but if you go ahead and use them without a proper setup you're also losing potential DPS, so you rely on luck to be able to use your cooldowns optimally (without losing DPS waiting for resets or spells coming off the cooldown).

I gotta say, Arms became a bit of an overwhelming spec in comparison to how dull and predictable it was in WoD. It's definitely an improvement, but it's a bit of a rollercoaster ride at times. Sometimes you can get strings of 5 or 6 Tactician procs in a row and your damage skyrockets, but sometimes you can end up spamming Slam and Mortal Strike while you wait for something to happen. 

I just wish it was a bit more consistent.

[Lisonna 0]

I'm an Arms -> Fury convert since Nighthold started for this same reason. I understand, and it's not "RNG MAKES THE SPEC AND I JUST DIDN'T GET LUCKY OH WELL". 

I think it's a very fair design criticism of the spec, because it feels too overly reliant on RNG so it doesn't feel fun. For me, the spec just falls flat because while I might be excited when I get good procs, the string of bad lucks you can get is probably the worse I've ever felt while raiding, and I've been raiding for 12 years. 300+ wipes on H LK 25 didn't give me the feeling I get when I get 2 back-to-back 30s CS resets, using Warbreaker in between to get CS but that's only one. 

If you look at logs, Arms can be competitive, but remember if you look at logs, the people on top are the parses where they got good procs. But the experience of getting those logs is riddled with unlucky parses. It can be good and it felt great to top meters in my mythic guild occasionally, but it was inconsistent, my damage was all over the place fight-to-fight. We had two arms warriors, and we would just trade places on the meters every fight, but never had a consistent location. As fury, the feeling is different, I feel like my damage is predictable and it feels much better. 

Arms can be competitive, but in my experience it isn't reliably competitive (Except in burst aoe). If I play arms, this is the feeling that I get. That's not to say "If you play arms you're wrong and bad." It's a personal thing, I personally stopped having fun as arms. This is a game, the point is to have fun, and raiding mythic difficulty where your damage needs to be there makes me feel like I'm letting my raid down when procs don't happen, and there's nothing I can do about it. 

I loved Arms in WoD once HFC set bonuses were available, as the damage was reliable, whereas Fury's damage was based on Enrage procs and you could get screwed by bad crit luck. In Legion, the places have switched, and now Fury is more consistent than arms. 

(I say this after reviewing hundreds of logs to improve my playstyle and reflection on rotation after being Arms through Mythic Xavius, this isn't just me playing arms once and saying this)

Just my 2 cents. 

[Matster 5]

I would agree with you on that.  If they lowered the overall CD of CS by half it could greatly help with the main problems of having long CS dry spells and would not affect overall top dps for those that get great procs in a fight.  Since the general idea is for arms is to Proc for resets I don't see it causing arms to shoot to the top of the meters.  There's nothing worse than fishing for tactician procs with slam a couple times during a fight, while watching your dps slip an easy 100k per second.

[Sajakain 104]

On 2/7/2017 at 2:59 PM, BMaxwell00 said:

Also, on a side-note, somewhere around 90% of the DPS Warriors I see are playing Fury. This was also the case in WoD, and I really don't think it's simply because people like dual wielding more than wielding a single weapon.

Thoughts? 

If you exclude the extreme top % of players in the warrior community... let's say, on average, an item level of 895. Some are obviously higher due to mythic gear, etc, and some are obviously lower. (Personally I'm round 887 or something?) Just from this pool, however, you can look at the data to see what fights are shining for which spec. Overall, it's almost balanced in Heroic Nighthold. (There's not an extreme amount of data from Mythic just yet.)

• Skorpyron: Fury (with the occasional crazy prot warrior!)
• Chronomatic Anomaly: Arms or Fury
• Trilliax: Arms or Fury
• Spellblade: Fury (with the occasional Arms player)
• Tichondrius: Fury
• Star Auger: Fury (with the occasional Arms player)
• Krosus: Arms (with the occasional Fury player)
• Botanist: Arms or Fury
• Elisande: Arms or Fury
• Gul'dan: Fury

Source: Warcraft Logs Statistics

With this information you can obtain a bit more percentages:

• 50% of the fights are dominantly Fury.
• 40% of the fights are balanced between both Arms and Fury.
• 10% of the fights are dominantly Arms.

With these you can safely say that you can literally play any spec you want. The key to playing your warrior to a min/max level is to know which spec to play on which fight.

To your original statement of "somewhere around 90% of the DPS Warriors I see are playing Fury" I would say that they're playing Fury because 1) it's a statistically proven viable spec and 2) its rotation is a lot easier to manage than Arms.

=====================================

To the original topic of the post, however, I would agree with you slightly. Arms is, to a slight extent, RNG based. You can have dry spells of no tactician procs but, on the other hand, you can also have constant damage going on while you're waiting - even if it's during one of the dreaded 30 second windows of no Colossus Smash. The key is managing your rage properly and not spamming Focused Rage unless you have the gear to do so. (This is where most Arms players struggle).

Arms is a delicate beast to master. You have to tend to it, learn it's tendencies, and understand the flow of priorities to really make it shine. This is all well and good standing against a dummy but when you throw raid mechanics on top of it most people just throw the priority out the window and notice the 100K+ drop in damage done. Recovery from a mistake is not as easy as it is for Fury, in my experiences. Once you get solid reins on it, however, it's a truly enjoyable spec to play.

Don't drop Arms completely but definitely pick up Fury as well. To absolutely shine you'll need both specs. For those encounters that can go either way - play your preference.