[In fact, recent warlock problems were foretold by Arms warriors being balanced around Incite in Icecrown – if you weren’t doing that, you fell behind. Badly.]

What concerns me here is the changes to how the spec “feels”. Right now, Arms is a great spec to play because it’s a simple, proc-enhanced (vice proc-reliant, such as Bloodsurge) priority system. The reason it works is because it has four key rotational abilities that fit very distinct roles, while retaining enough depth for changing it up and the inclusion of a good proc.

The most important part is Slam as a filler. When all else fails, you still “feel” like you’re doing as much damage as you can because you’re not wasting GCD’s. I’ve hated Fury throughout Cataclysm because of the gaps in the rotation making me feel like I’m getting it wrong. Even when those gaps are few and far between, I still feel that I’ve cocked it up and I can’t imagine that’s nice for anyone.

Now, Arms DPS is going to be geared toward how many times you can Slam throughout an encounter. This is potentially going to have ugly implications for the spec, as things like charges and shouts are slotted into a rotation just to make the most of rage gain and, thus, increasing the chance to Slam more often. Being able to practically spam Overpower seemed really exciting until I realised:

a) Slam is now above it on the priority list.
b) Improved Overpower is gone, as well as the critical strike.

What agitates me further is the inclusion of glyphs that encourage you to use non-rotational abilities just to prop up legitimately rotational ones. Cleave buffs your next Overpower by 10% via a glyph, yet even that doesn’t put it anywhere near Mortal Strike, Slam or Colossus Smash in terms of priority. Will Cleave plus a buffed Overpower be worth more than Slam assuming identical rage cost? If not, what’s the point? If so, what’s the point of Slam considering Overpower is practically spammable?

This is why I’m probably moving on from warriors in MoP, assuming I bother playing it much at all. It just appears to me that the warrior design team don’t actually play warriors and are just doing things for the sake of it.

I’m really looking forward to your results over the weekend. Hopefully we can chat a bit more about it then.

I’ll have to do more extensive testing after finals week, but one of my big concerns is that all this tweaking they’re doing to Arms is going to cripple the spec back to Wrath-level weakness. If that happens again, I’m not sure what I’m going to do, but it will be hard sticking with the class and spec that I love when it’s not helpful to my raid.

I’d rather they simply accepted that Heroic Strike simply isn’t compelling as a stand alone ability, and either made it work in a normal rotation or cut it altogether. Either way, it’ll be interesting to see which way they go.

The bigger problem is the new role of Execute, something you can’t establish on a dummy so I’d be interested in your thoughts on it. While it’s role has consistently been known as the filler for the execution phase, replacing Slam outright appears to make the rotation VERY clunky sub 25%.

I don’t like not having addons in Beta. It’s a pain.

I would personally be happy to see it leave the Arms rotation completely and I had the same positive reaction as you did when you saw that Slam is finally losing its cast time. That’s one change I really hope will make it into live MoP!

Here’s what it was before the change:

Heroic Strike does 160% weapon damage plus 796.8 (224% plus 1116 if a one-handed weapon is equipped).

And here’s what it says now:

Heroic Strike does 100% weapon damage plus 498 (140% plus 697 if a one-handed weapon is equipped).

Not just a nerf, but a HUGE one.