LF Post about Windfury vs. GoA
 

Good day to you.

I definetly know that there is already a thread about this but I didn't really find it cause the search function is bugged :<

Maybe anyone of you got a link to the thread?

Question in our raid (alliance) came up cause we now also got shamans /cheer

Now what's better in a group like:

Warrior
Warrior
Rogue
Rogue
Shaman (Resto, just for totems no Enchancement yet)

WF + SoE + RandomFire + RandomWater
or
GoA + SoE + Flametongue + RandomWater
?

WF is quite Fun especially when you have an hard-hitting weapon but is GoA better for melee dps with 2 warriors and 2 rogues? Or should the rogues just shutup and take WF?

It's windfury, always.

I don't know if this is still the case currently but at least about 6 months ago, WF overwrote sharpening stones (warriors) and poisons (rogues). Now that some rogues use mutilate they need to have their poisons my guess is that GOA + poisons/sharpening would outdo WF, but really that is a complete GUESS.

I'd really like to see the breakdown myself, just outta curiousity even though I don't play my warrior much anymore.

With two warriors I'd probably do Windfury pretty much always. If the group looks more like this:

Warrior
Feral Druid
Rogue
Rogue
Enhancement shaman

GoA is definitely better.

It's a bit complex and depends somewhat on the specs involved, but the answer is usually WF because it's sexy for Warriors and scales better with gear. The factor that causes the most variation is the Shaman. An Enhancement Shaman receives no benefit from the WF totem (he has his superior version on his weapons already). If he's below the point of 100% Unleashed Rage uptime then GoA is going to be a big boost in keeping UR up, which is in turn a big boost to DPS, and even if he isn't you have to measure GoA for five people versus WF for four. I'm not sure how good UR uptimes are for your average Enhancement Shaman or the boost of WF v. GoA to DPS Warriors, maybe somebody else knows?

Looking at the Rogue DPS spreadsheet with my gear and standard raid buffs WF is about 15 DPS under Instant Poison + GoA. My build has 5/5 Imp Poisons and Lethality in it, both of which increase the value of GoA but not WF. Most Rogue builds will lack one or both, which will make the gap that much smaller.

As a side note I'd like to inquire what fights you've got 2 Warriors DPSing on -- that seems unlikely even given 25-mans unless you have all hybrids tanking.

As I am now feral I definately prefer GoA.

Even as my rogue I preferred GoA.

WF is more spike/uncontrollable burst damage. I rather have the constant benefits of AP/Crit that GoA gives and also be able to use my poisons. Number crunching put them both very close, so it just came down to personal preference. Also what was posted above is a very important point. If it is an enhance shaman, he doesn't gain any benefit from the WF totem as he already buffed his weapons with WF, so GoA is definately a good way to go.

Weapon Totems don't override stones or poisons but they don't apply to weapons if there's already an temp enchant on it (poison/stone).

Our two rogues in that group are Combat Dagger and deep Subtlety afaik so they don't really need Deadly on their mainhand.

I couldn't really check the difference cause DPS meters aren't really representive on Maulgar and the rogues had both Wound Poison and Mind Numbing up for Blindseye.

@Bluefish
We just needed 3 tanks on Maulgar, 1 for Maulgar and 2 for the warlock, and got 6 in our group which maybe isn't a perfect setup but we killed him after two hours of trying yesterday so we won't change anything atm :>

Maybe I'll get a better chance on Gruul for some number crunching.

GoA/WF is definitely borderline for rogues, varying by spec obviously. However, WF scales and will become better as we sit at 70, that is, if they ever implement decent raid gear.

Ferals and hunters are missing from your WF vs. GoA question, you often face a group like:

Cat Druid
Hunter for TS Aura
Enh Shaman
Rogue
Warrior

The warrior will beg you for WF but GoA is the clearly superior choice. However, there's probably a point of gear progression where the multiplicative benefit for the rogue/warrior beats the static benefit for the hunter/druid/shaman, but we're not there yet.

GoA 'scales' too. Crit % scales with the quality of your weapon.

yeahm but 40agi / 1%crit for a rogue is not that much, windfury is generally the way to go for sword rogues and 2hand warriors, agi for dagger rogues, druids, hunters

To my knowledge the "better" specc for rogues when it comes to raids has always been swordspecc and thus no poisons now i have seen some mace speccs aswell lately due to haste and so that should put wf on top most of the time, although with a druid in the group i'd probably go for agility if only one warrior is in the group aswell.

My rule of thumb is that if the number of warriors is equal to or greater than the number of people who get no benefit from WF combined, go with WF.

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.

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.

Nope -- any totem that applies a 'weapon enchant' type buff (windfury, flametongue, etc.) does not effect a feral druid in a form as they are not using their weapon; however, this was 'fixed' at one point during BC Beta, along with consumables in forms, and may be looked at again in the future.

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.

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.