Is Arms feeling any better at the beginning of this expansion? I remember you mentioning that it felt lackluster at the beginning of Legion somewhere.

I’m overall pretty okay with Arms right now.

• It’s a pretty slow spec gameplay wise. You’re just not always going to be pressing a lot of buttons in super quick succession, and you’ll have empty GCDs sometimes. This can be partly fixed with certain talents, such as Skullsplitter, Rend, Cleave, Dreadnaught all giving you a new “something to do” button or whatever. I don’t mind too myself though. I always think of Arms as the spec that slowly and methodically uses its abilities to build up towards a moment where you finally get to do one big hit of damage. Getting the stars to align with Colossus Smash, 2 stacks of Overpower, my Blood Fury racial (plus Avatar if talented and Sharpen Blade in War Mode) allows for fantastic Mortal Strikes. And Fury is there for GOTTA GO FAST gameplay anyway.
• Arms also maintain its pretty good toolkit. Lots of defensive CDs, as usual. I like the return of Battle Shout, as well, despite it being this small thing. I just like having a buff to cast.
• AOE seems pretty good. Having Sweeping Strikes as baseline is quite nice, though it’s on the GCD because Blizz has a hardon for the GCD this expansion. Bladestorm feels hilariously powerful now (especially when combined with Warbreaker and Avatar).

There are only 2 things I actively dislike about BFA Arms:

• Stats priority got all fuckity. Mastery went from basically “get as much of it as you can” to “oh fuck it’s made of awful avoid at all cost” and now basically you have to regear your Arms War for Crit and Haste. So yeah, you’ll feel in a weird place until you start replacing gear. This probably contributes to the whole “Arms feels really slow paced” feeling.
• Execute phase is just hitting the Execute button except for when you need to use a burst cooldown. That’s it. This is somewhat “fixed” with an Azerite trait that brings Executioner’s Precision back. The problem with this being 1) I already had EP, Blizzard you fucks 2) You have to acquire whatever gear would have the EP trait and hope it’s the BIS trait for whatever you’re doing 3) There was a brief moment on alpha/beta were EP was a baseline thing before being removed and made into an Azerite trait. I hate this sort of shit. To prune it is one thing, but to prune then dangle it in front of us as its new content to be regained again after cockteasing us with the ability as baseline is really shitty.
• The only thing I dislike about Arms is the one thing I’ve disliked for a while anyway – pretty weak self-heals. You have to talent for Impending Victory and Second Wind or you got to get a Killing Blow. It’s only made worse since we’ve also lost the small bit of help we had from Soul of the Slaughter and Touch of Zakajz. I had hoped that Soul of the Slaughter would have been baked into the spec as a passive, but Blizz is really hell-bent on pruning abilities in BFA for everyone. Either way, me being salty about Arms basically being unable to heal itself isn’t new or unique to BFA’s version of the spec.

Oh yeah, the new Mastery:

• It’s basically so meh I almost forgot to even briefly mention it for being so meh. It’s a bleed. A passive bleed. With no interaction to rotation or gameplay. You just have to keep it up when you can. Congrats. That’s it. Also, it’s so fucking meh, it’s not worth investing in Mastery, hence the whole stats thing.

tl;dr – Arms is fine if a bit slow for some people’s tasks, I still beg for MoP-era Second Wind’s glorious return, Blizz prunes abilities they already gave you in the last expansion and might return them to you while being brazen enough to call it new content.