Originally Posted by Coriolis
Sorry but do feral druids get any benefit from WF? Our feral druid claims so and I was sort of believing him but now I'm not so sure with all you ferals saying you like GoA better. Or actually I suppose with the WF cooldown and how fast cat attacks are perhaps it really does screw over WF dps.
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No. Ferals do not benifit from WF, but get more benifit than rogues from GoA. There was a (very short) beta time where they did benifit from WF though.
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As for rogues from what I get from our rogues and what the theorycrafting predicts, it seems that mutilate builds are better with GoA+poison (beause of poison talents) and combat builds are better with WF, but the differences are not too radical. With a standard raid melee group, i.e. cat druid, enh shaman, war and 2 rogues, if they are both mutilate I'd go GoA if combat WF, if mixed probably goa.
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In the past it was the case that combat swords, maces, ect, all benifited from WF, combat daggers it was a wash, and heavy Assination GoA. Now it's almost universally GoA > WF for all specs, at least till gear scales up enough again.
As to the original question, I wrote up a long post about this on my guild forums, after a long thread on these forums and some discussion, and it basicly breaks down like this, modified for 2.0 (feel free to skip over, some of this has been covered):
If your tank is in your group, is a warrior, and could ever run out of rage, ever ever ever, WF totem.
If your tank is in your group and is a feral druid, GoA.
If you have a dps warrior in your group who is rage limited, WF.
If you have more than one warrior in your group, WF.
Otherwise, GoA.
WF's rarely an amazing deal for rogues. It's bursty, unpredictable and for some specs messes with thier talent spec (inasmuch as they don't get to utilize the points they have). It's a horrible deal for Ferals and Hunters. It's pointless for enhance shaman.
For warriors, it's honestly nicknamed Totem of Endless Rage. Its' so powerful that people exploit the hell out if it by spamming HAMSTRING to get WF procs with a 2hander, which is (if you want to go look at the DPS thread in the other forum) really, really powerful. It more or less guarentees that there will never be a dps warrior short on rage for thier abilities, enabling them to guarentee shouts, pummels, and respectable dps. To be perfectly frank, with the gross dps increases many classes have seen, the only reason DPS warriors are functional at this gear point is because they -have- windfury.
WF can be described (ignoring misses, which is bad, but let's skip it for right now) as .2x(1 swing), which means that for any rogue if thier MH's poison does on average more than 20% of thier single MH hit it's a bad deal. For a warrior it's that much damage (and btw, warrior weapons are traditionally a bit slower if only because not all rogues use swords), and, here's the key, _that much rage_. Giving a dps, tank or other warrior 20% more rage (and, btw, a viable button to spam if they're cooldown limited) ridiculous. It can proc off of almost everything, meaning that that Heroic Strike you were considering could end up netting you rage instead of hurting rage generation, or that Shield Slam did quite a bit more aggro.
Sorry to get all fanboy, but I realize that many alliance don't realize how absurdly overpowering (not overpowered!) WF is for warriors (okay, maybe a little overpowered). You haven't been raiding with it for the past 2+ years, and so it's understandable to have sceptism (sp!) about the strength and power of this one single ability. So allow me to close thusly:
BoK, BoM, ect, were all compared to WF, and not a single sane person ever said that WF was not better for all things warrior. It was the horde's answer to Paladins, Fear Ward and the like, and while it may have fallen short it didn't miss the mark by -all- that much.
Oh, and has anyone actually tested to see if WF totem has a cooldown? Frankly I kinda doubt it.