Vindicta

I know there are already numerous Warrior Talent SPEC discussions, but I would like to start a thread discussing specific Talents and how they compare to each other in terms of dps output. This is very much spec related since there are only so many points you can spend, but I think this deserves a different thread. This is mostly a fury warrior discussion since the pathway is fairly clear for a mortal strike warrior, but feel free to add comparisons between arms talents in dps terms.

The default warrior takes the following to reach Bloodthirst and I doubt these will be contested too much:
5/5 Cruelty
5/5 Unbridled wrath
5/5 Improved BS
5/5 Enrage
1/1 Deathwish
5/5 Flurry
1/1 Bloodthirst

I know this doesn't total to 31, but these are the talents that very few deviate from so I would prefer to leave them out of the discussion unless they are affect or are affected by the below talents.


The Main DPS talents I want to focus on are:

Improved Heroic strike
Improved Overpower
Anger Management
Impale
Improved Execute
Dual Wield Specialization
Improved Cleave
Improved Disciplines (sword spec/poleaxe spec)
Improved Berserker rage
Precision
Improved Whirlwind
Improved Berserker stance
Rampage

Many comparisons between talents stem from having to give one up for another, so I will start with the following few and we can go from there.


Rampage and Improved Berserker stance

vs

Improved Arms Discipline (Sword Spec/Poleaxespec)

My experience has only been with Rampage and imp zerker and it is a very strong build. With Rampage being reduced to 20 rage, it will basically be a 250 AP buff up at all times during raids. Imp berserker stance affect all AP bonuses including those coming from Strength making it a very strong choice. Unbuffed it gives me around 110 AP and its a scaling talent potentially making it one of the most powerful. One thing to note between these 2 talent choices is that you cannot get bloodthirst, a full improved discipline and Tactical mastery, so stance dancing addicts like me wont really feel at home without 25 rage tranferring over. I am really interested to hear about any testing done with the 5% crit or sword spec procs.

Dual Wield Specialization

A blessing or a burden? At 5 points it gives 25% more damage from the offhand. Is this worth it or are 5 points better spent elsewhere? In many cases, getting 5/5 of this means dropping most of Precision leaving you with maybe 1/3 precision and losing fun talents like improved intercept. Rogues have the same talent, but it gives 50% more offhand damage for the same amount of points, so my question is...is it worth it? You could drop 1 point in Piercing howl, 2 more points in Precision and pick up either improved berserker rage or improved intercept (many options here).

Other DPS talents

How good are these? when are they used? how are they used? These are the talents that most people ignore or are new talents that arent the mainstay of the fury warrior. Are they worth getting?

Improved Heroic Strike: Personally I have never been a fan of this talent nor this ability in a dps sense except on threatless fights like Patchwerk, but it offers the strongest rage dump. Are 3 points worth it here vs other talents. The other option for me would be Iron will, since all of the 2nd tier arms talents are crap. But is it worth taking point out of this due to the dps implication of this situational ability. Some people may use this in all fights in moderation so that they dont pull agro, but is it worth it for that?

Improved Overpower and Impale: One of my favorite abilities is imp overpower. I am not completely certain of its power in PvE, but being almost a guaranteed crit and low rage cost ability, this seems like a strong choice. This is of course requiring lackluster 2nd tier arms talents, but going for this and impale could be a good choice. My question is, how does this compare to side talents in the fury tree. Is it worth dropping points into almost useless arms talents to pick this and Impale up.

Anger Management: I know very little about this talent and have never really used it. Any information on this talent and its worth would be appreciated, however I would like to mention that to get it, you would need to drop a point from imp overpower, tactical mastery or a spec that does not include rampage (so it better be damn good hehe).

Improved Execute: I have played with this talent for quite a while and since I have never really played a fury build without it, I can't really touch on how good it actually is. In PvP it is a nice discount to have, but I am wondering that in a DW fury situation if it is really worth 2 points. The 5 extra rage generates 75 more damage on every execute which sounds good on paper, but is it really better than something like improved Berserker Rage.

Improved Cleave: While never having specced into this, and scoffing at it previously, I must say that this talent does actually seem fairly appealing after doing the math. Being the only other rage dump besides Heroic strike, this ability is quite weak unless hitting 2 mobs, but increases the damage bonus to 100 is rather appealing. It doesn't have the threat modifier so warriors can spam this all day if they have the rage for it. Is it worth 3 points though?

Improved Berserker rage: 10 free rage every 30 seconds amounts to the same as anger management, but at the cost of 2 talent points. This doesn't seem to make too much sense to me, but you dont have to waste points in arms to get to it. The other problem with this talent is if you are using it for rage increase, it may not be there when you get feared. Does this talent compare to other dps talents?

Improved Whirlwind: A brand new talent. Currently I am a 2H Fury warrior to mess around with pvp which makes this talent amazing, but come burning crusade and lvl 70, for a DW fury warrior be it with fast or slow mainhands, will this talent be a significant dps increase or is it fluff. Assuming you have the rage to use it every time it is up (every 8 seconds). Is this worth taking for DW? Has anyone tested this in raids?

Precision: This talent is very much up in the air until we start seeing fully itemized players. At first this talent could be very strong, but as people get closer and closer to the hitcap between gems, enchants and gear, is this still going to be worth it? A very big question that I keep asking myself is how does this compare to DW specialization? comparing 3 points or 3% to hit to 15% more damage with your offhand weapon. Either through math or experience is there any way to stay that 1 is better than the other?

Out of all of this my point is really to find out where to put those last few talent points. All of the talents are good situationally and every has different play styles, so I am interested to see what people think are the stronger talents.

 

Brissa

I think the spreadsheet thread contains most the theorycrafting regarding warrior talents and dps.

Also going from 15 to 10 rage is much more than 75 damage per execute. Since the first ragepoints have a much higher DPR ratio than the following points it means that you are able to use execute more often (unless of course you already generate a consistent 10RPS every 1.5 seconds)

For example if you can do 3 executes at 10 rage each you are doing 1800 damage but if you are doing 2 executes at 15 rage each (same total ragecost) you are only doing 1200 damage meaning you did 300 more damage per execute instead of 75 more damage.
Of course thats an ideal situation and isnt likely to happen in reality, but we can safely say that the real improvement from imp execute is between 75 and 300 per execute.

 

Grymm

Also, I should think you would have to clarify what you mean to do with this build. You can pvp, you can be a hybrid of pvp/pve, or you can kill raid bosses. I've been playing with numbers pertaining to raid boss DPS and, depending highly on your gear, precision becomes vital for rage generation. Imp Execute is a huge boost in DPS. You have to weigh things more like: is it worth dumping 10+ points into Arms to get the first useful talent? Or is picking up minor upgrades from Fury a better spend. I have yet to come up with a fury build I'm happy with that is also able to carry Impale. Also, for raid boss dps, TM is much less essential. If you can get away without TM, OP becomes a much less efficient use of GCDs and rage. Imp cleave is nice, but less of a difference without Impale or fighting 1 target. Imp HS is a bigger rage saver if you work with a tank you can use HS's with. If your rage generation can support a lot of HS, then cleave comes back into the picture. If you only mix in HSs when you near the rage cap and don't have peak rage generation, you might not have to use cleave. DW builds and 2hand builds are pretty different. MHs and 2Hs are normalized against the same rage per second, which is a 2H fury nerf. I was 2H Fury for a while and 50 rage white crits were awesome. It takes something like 2500 white damage to do that now.

 

Vindicta

Well it isn't so much that I am trying to figure out my build as much as I am wondering if anyone has Proof that certain talents are better than others, but just for discussion's sake this would be solely for PvE. Things like is it worth taking 10 points in Arms just to get to improved overpower and impale, or is DW spec stronger than impale and imp overpower allowing points to be spent in lesser talents, but making up for the loss in dps.

Regarding Execute, that sounds pretty good, but I would imagine that with a fast execute switch mainhand, you would always have the rage to use execute on every GCD, which is why I am wondering if 2 points in it are a good choice.

I don't remember seeing a discussion of talent vs talent, so sorry if this has already been posted.

Edit: Yes, Deathwing's spreadsheet does provide some reliable dps numbers for talents, but the spreadsheet largely covers tank and spank fights, which is likely going to become less and less common. This isn't to say that I am not interested in info regarding that, but it is always better to prepare for everything rather than for just 1 aspect of raid dps.

 

• Ultramagnetic

I read something recently to the effect that Slam was going to change in the expansion. The change would be that you would no longer be interrupted by damage while "casting" Slam. Can anyone playing the beta confirm or deny this? If the change is for real, it could make slam useful and maybe worth improving.

You know what's fun is Slamming people to death in PVP, if you can manage to make it happen. It's easiest to do if someone is getting stunlocked but the real challenge is doing it without that crutch.

 

Cerevantes

I sit at around 2500ATP/32Crit/18%hit Raid Buffed and was still finding myself rage starved with Noth's hatchet and GM Swiftblade so I opted to spec for imp Bloodthirst and imp Berserker rage with the rest being in Fury as normal.

I've tried out Anger Management, but as its been stated, you lose too much on wasted Arms talents.

I think its worth noting that 40% of my rage generation/white damage comes from my offhand, so adding 25% damage on the offhand gives 10% more rage generated. That's an enormous damage/rage increase and I'd never spec currently at 60 without 5/5 in imp DW. At 70, as you've said. Itemization is needed to see if stance dancing is possible. But for the 60 Berserker-stance-only build, I'm solid on imp DW.

5/5 Cruelty
5/5 Unbridled wrath
5/5 Improved BS
5/5 Enrage
1/1 Deathwish
5/5 Imp DW
5/5 Flurry
1/1 Bloodthirst
3/3 Precision
2/2 Imp Berserker Rage
5/5 Imp Berserker Stance
1/1 Rampage
2/2 Imp Execute
1/1 Piercing Howl (gogo Gluth)
1/2 imp Intercept I sometimes go to 2/2 and drop Piercing howl when I feel greedy and want to dps on Gluth.
2/2 Imp Bloodrage (its bad, but there are no better options atm)


For level 70 my aim is to keep rampage and go get Last Stand and Defiance for mediocre offtanking and for incredible Arena fun. Weapon specializations might be instore as they scale much better than Rampage, but not until I have decent level 70 epics will I have to make this choice.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...evantes323.png

 

Vindicta

whoops, double post

 

Vindicta

Sorry if this sounds like a joke, it really isn't, but I am wondering how Rend and Deep wounds are going to come into play. With 40 debuff slots, I don't think that the raid will be hitting those 40 debuffs very often so there will be room for both deep wounds and rend. Adding Mangle to the mix to increase bleed effects and the increase in rend and deep wound dps due to mechanics change, I am wondering if a 75% increase in rend dps would be useful?

The lvl 68 Rend will do 182 base damage + whatever you get out of the weapon damage calculation over 21 seconds. I don't know how the weapon damage calc works, but I would think that it would give some minimal amount like 40 damage over 21 seconds with a moderate speed mainhand. That makes it almost 11 dps and a 75% increase would be a 18.5 dps DoT + mangle making it 23.1 dps. On second thought a 7.5 dps upgrade isn't a lot, but it beats it might beat out taking 5% parry if you're never tanking (although boss cleaves do hurt), but I does make me wonder whether we should consider deep wounds dps as well which a pure fury build would never see. Assuming decent raid drop weapons are around the quality of something like the Wicked Edge of the Planes (http://thottbot.com/beta?i=14727), that would give an average weapon damage of 266 of which 60% of that is 159 over 12 seconds or 13 dps modified to 16.25 dps with Mangle up (not bad for 3 talent points).

 

Cerevantes

Mangle seems like a moot point. as it affects both normal and improved rend equally.

Rend is only usable in battle stance, which means a stance change, which means two global cooldowns and highly likely rage loss.

Test out using Rend presently, as talentless your 13 dps becomes 7.43dps which requires 3 GCDs, 10 rage, and 2 near-rage-wipes every 12 seconds.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all game for sweaking out damage. This one seems like a push though.

::EDIT:: If Battle-Stance dps comes back to pre 2.0 levels at level 70 gear itemization. I could definetely see this being debated. Currently our Raids use between 34 and 37 debuff slots, so I highly doubt that would be increased with 25 man raids.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...evantes323.png

 

Vindicta

The part you quoted was referring to deep wounds. The thing is every time you dance to overpower, you toss up rend then switch back as long as BT is on cooldown. Maintaining ~40 dps in DoTs would be quite nice especially when you only have to worry about 1 of them only every 21 seconds.

My Reference to mangle was just referring to the fact that it would make using rend that much more useful as well as having deep wounds. These are minimal dps upgrades, but how do they compare to other talents that fury provides?

 

Cerevantes

My bad on the misquote. As I said I could see it being viable, but typically I try to stay out of battle stance as much as possible when dancing. I'm going to drown in tears of QQ if I waste more rage than I have to swapping back to Berserker stance.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...evantes323.png

 

Grymm

I would probably opt for trying to work in imp slam (even with a one hander) before trying to balance out a stance dancing DPS build.

Imp Slam Requires: 2 pts in imp slam

Stance Dancing Requires: 3 pts imp rend, 2 pts imp OP, Deep Wounds, if you are going that far, Impale, 3 Pts TM.

Imp slam gives you a .5 second weapon swing rage dump which costs 15 rage, 2 talent points, and .5 seconds to your swing cycle. Chaining Slams, assuming the 1.5 GCD is in place, becomes moot. You just add a slam to every cycle that sees you sitting over 40 rage or so. Slam will replace a lot of OP's damage.

Stance Dancing gives you ~30-40 DPS in DoTs, costs a lot of talent points, and the 2 moves cost 16 rage. More importantly, you will be capped at 25 max rage through the manuever (with rage already being tight) and it takes at min 6 seconds (4 GCDs). You probably lose talents like precision and imp berserker rage in Fury to free up the points. With the high DW white damage component, Impale is devalued.


Hmmmm.....

 

ildon

One thing you have to remember, is that a lot of these talents you can't just look at on their own. If you get imp overpower, you will most likely want to get 3/3 TM for it to be worth it, so you don't blow too much rage. When making a choice between impale and imp zerker on their own, imp zerker wins, but if you can add in imp overpower and a weapon skill, it becomes less clear. Especially if you make the battle stance dps argument and use hamstring/overpower (or some such) instead of ww.

I was thinking of picking up a weaponsmithing profession and trying out a 30/31 type build (so I wouldn't necessarily have to respec every weapon upgrade).

My current build should be in my profile.

One thing I'll say, is that I tried 2/3 tactical mastery instead of 2/2 imp zerker rage, and I couldn't stand it. To me, 10 rage on demand is much more valuable than saving 10 rage for a stance switch that I rarely make in PvE anyway. I can't even get imp overpower and tm and imp zerker stance anyway at 60.

Hrm.... looking at it again, 17/41/3 is actually looking pretty good for 70. I can live without offhand spec, I think.

Man my post is a mess. Think before typing!

 

Apate

It's usable in Def. stance also, not that you'd be DPSing in that stance.

As for Slam - at some point or another, damage wasn't extending your cast time in TBC beta. I haven't used it much.

See you, auntie.

 

Vindicta

That would be a really nice rage dump if used after you have just swung your mainhand. I don't see it being stronger than using cleave as a dump and improved overpower, but definitely nice.

 

Vindicta

Has anyone had the chance to test the worth of improved whirlwind in raiding? It sounds good in theory and taking it vs precision points seems sensible since itemization wont lower the CD of WW, but it can increase chance to hit. I already know it is amazing for 2H fury, but 2H fury will likely be a thing of the past in terms of PvE dps except in AOE situations maybe, so my question is more directed at DW fury.

 

• Tharas

Just two points:

1) Imp Execute is must-have for PvE. Execute is your most efficient rage->damage converting ability.

2) Cleave has bonus threat applied, not sure why you think it doesn't. In the Kenco threat values, HS9 is about 175, Cleave (Rank5, I think) 100. Later work in TBC showed HS10 at 195 threat and Cleave6 at 130 threat to the primary, 60 to the secondary. 3/3 Imp Cleave on single-target starts to approximate threat/rage of HS (though HS is still about 10% better).

Back in the days of being 2h fury, I had 3/3 Imp Cleave and it was quite enjoyable in places like the suppression room, Fankriss tunnel, etc. -- it's also a beast for speed running Baron, etc for guildmates alts -- very effective for tanking medium-large pulls, assuming the healer is geared enough to not be bothered by you standing in zerk stance with your DPS gear on, spamming WW and Cleave.

 

Vindicta

huh? Cleave generates additional threat? That is definitely news to me. All threat modifiers have a note in the tooltip I thought? "...and causes an X amount of threat."

 

Gronx

While talking about Warrior dps talents and such, i've been wondering exactly how much dps one will lose if one goes for a 31 fury/30 protection build, with BT and one hand spec, if i'm not mistaken one hand spec is a +10% physical dam aura buff, so it affects every special and such... Would it really be such a major loss compared to a 41 fury, if you plan on getting some prot for tanking anyways?
The minus about this is of course the lack of deflection, which still makes me a sad panda, but still, wouldn't it be worth it for the flexibility of a fury/prot build?

 

Brissa

No no no.

Pretty much all abilities generate some threat.
There is a thread in this forum called something along the lines of "a guide to threat" which you might want to look up for threat values for different skills.

 

Vindicta

Well you can't get Bloodthirst unless you spend 32 points or 31 and giving up 5% out of flurry which hurts right there (5% haste or 2% damage). You also lose imp execute or 2 points of DW and even more if you intend to take Piercing howl.

I guess if you want to be average as a tank and average as a dpser spec that way. But Pure specs are going to be much more important in TBC raids IMO. Hybrid classes are likely going to find themselves having to choose 1 aspect of their class and pouring all their focus into it. This is definitely derailing the topic, but with the rise of paladin tanks and druid tanks, maybe you wont need to be both tank and dps? Also, Devastate brings a new dynamic to the tank where they can still do moderate dps when not tanking either with or without a shield (unless they change devastate to actually generate enough threat to be useful for tanking that is lol)

 

Whiteknight

http://forums.elitistjerks.com/viewtopic.php?id=9486

Cleave definitely has additional hate. In the same vein, Execute doesn't say it has bonus threat, but it seems to be the only multiplicative warrior threat ability in the game (threat = damage x 1.25)

 

Gronx

What?
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent-bc=TZVVzmLxoVzZMEtoh0d0x Is with BT, 5/5 flurry, 4/5 DW and 5/5 one hand spec, was something like this i was considering.

Was just curious about the 3% hit, 6% AP and rampage vs 10% more one physical damage, that is, assuming that one still wants some protection talents, else the deep wounds/imp overpower/impale should still win it for the pure dps build.

 

Shik

http://www.thottbot.com/?sp=772

This is wrong, check out the tooltip, you have always been able to Rend in defensive stance, and on any boss with aggro wipes its worthwhile to get it up there, if only for the chance that its the first thing to tick post wipe and he rubberbands back to you.

Was quite useful on Satura actually.

 

Cerevantes

I believe we were discussing warrior dps.

Show me some Warrior DPS in Defensive Stance and I'll change my post.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...evantes323.png