Welcome to 53/8

Sorry Pix! I just started playing 53/8 last night so I don’t have a great deal of Recount data yet. Here is a post on Arms from the games I played on Sunday.

Before I get into 53/8, let me say that 8/53 (Prot) was great fun for PvP BG style. The only classes I really seemed to have a problem taking down 1v1 were Ret Pallys (Surpised?) and Frost mages (again?) I could way outlast the little mutilate rogue and kill them. 8/53 was capable of very respectable burst damage and added with the survivability factor should be looked upon wearily by anyone running up the sword and board warrior.

53/8 is what I went for in Arms. Yes, I got Bladestorm. Like I have said before, Bladestorm is great for PvE. Well, you can think about BGs the same as PvE grinding most times. BGs are objective based and not the same as arena. You can go have fun in a BG and not have to play your class for control like you have to in Arena.

For example, there are few things as fun as running into the other team and tapping Sweeping Strikes, Retaliation and Bladestorm and watch the numbers flying off of SCT. I played roughly 10 BGs last night as 53/8 and not one of those was I out of the top 3 damaged done from both sides. Pallies and Mages were usually my competition.

The more I played 53/8 the more I realized I may very well have been wrong about its burst capabilities. The random procs for Execute and Overpower made my burst really random but the old burst I was able to do was still there as well if I needed it. Also, the hits I was capable of doing had greatly increased. Crits were normally in the range of 2300 now. I even had an execute crit of around 7-8k.

I have not done arena with 53/8 it yet though. I see it working the same as 31/28 minus the Piercing Howl goodness which we’ll have again at 80 just in time for new arena season. A 53/8 warrior could truly shine in 5v5 with the SS,Ret,BS combo provided he had a pally with BoF handy. The DPS is done to everyone and the bleed pretty much gets put on everyone. I don’t think it would be an easy thing for a healer to keep up with that kind of DPS if all 5 of his team got hit.

Get the Bladestorm rotation off while focus 1 toon and having a second backup toon as another focus? MS the healer and then kick it in? He has a choice of healing himself or healing the other 4 members of his team that are taking the same damage. Not great options eh? I will be playing 53/8 for the rest of the week and will do a follow up post but for right now, consider my foot in my mouth about the state of arms not being able to burst well.

Just like with Prot being more dynamic with random Shield Slams and Revenges being available, Arms requires you to pay close attention to procs and not the random button mashings of relied sequencing. Time to wake up and play again warriors!