Warrior in my guild told me that the orc racial works even if you only wield 1 axe (MH or OH doesn't matter).
Instantly respecced to hammersmith.

[Shifting Tanzanite] is the reason I run H. Steamvaults twice a week. Have only seen one and my rogue stole it.

Anyhow, you shouldn't blindly match sockets "just to mix it up," nor should you ignore all bonuses. Know what the set bonus is offering and weigh the benefit of matching colours agains the loss.

[Master Assassin Wristwraps] gets an Inscribed Noble, because +6 Crit & + 4 Str is better than +8 Str. [Shadowprowler's Chestguard] got 3 BLRs, because +4 agi is not worth the blue.

Picking which items to put your two blues in should also be based on decent set bonuses:

[Midnight Legguards] got two BLRs and a Jagged Cryospase; [Cyclone Helm] got a Sovereign Tanzanite. Result was trading 17 STR for 8 hit rating and a gem activation.

(yeah, i realize i could regem the helm & chest, activate BOTH set bonuses, but -4 Str, +4 CR, +4 Agi isn't worth the -180g to me)

Of course it works, the racial is expertise when wielding an axe. It doesn't care what hand or whether both hands are axes, but the expertise only gets applied to the hand with the axe. So respeccing to hammer smith doesn't mean you get expertise applied to the dragonstrike just because you have a rising tide in your OH.

If you mean that it was applying to both hands, that was a bug which was fixed. It now works like Malan says above.

Does anyone have actual data on whether the orc racial applies to both hands if only one hand is an axe? Last time I tried to find real information on this there just wasn't any to be had.

It's a hideously difficult problem to test. You're looking for a 1.25% difference, which would require hours and hours of in-game swing time. You'd have to do the test under conditions where you can reliably distinguish between mainhand and offhand swings - i.e. naked and wielding a lv10 vendor offhand. If someone out there is masochistic enough to have actually done a decent test, I'd love to see the results.

Well one way to test that I could think of

[e] Nevermind you were talking about a different test.

if you just went to a Servant in Blasted lands, you'd basically just have to worry about parries and dodges.
Then if you spent an hour with 2 axe, then an hour with an axe and a mace OH, you could look for a 2.5% variance (1.25% dodge and 1.25% parry) in the miss column of most DPS trackers.

Maybe more than an hour would be needed to ensure consistency, but would this be an appropriate test?

No, the Blasted Lands Servants are not good for testing much of anything due to the level difference.

Deleted from user.

No, it would be extremely easy to test. Wield any axe, any hammer, same speed. Start WWS. Fight one boss. Look at Dodge percentage on melee attacks. Is it 4.75% -- both weapons getting 1.25% dodge reduction -- or some number between 5 and 6?

No need for name calling. Yes, on patch day the notes said that orcs got +1% crit, but actually they got 5 Expertise with axes. It was a late-in-the-process change that apparently nobody told the tech writers. I think even the interface got it wrong -- but the mechanics were there.

Hey, I've read your guide over quite a few times. Unless I missed it, I don't know how good the 4 set bonus for tier 4 is. It's the one that does 30 damage per weapon on a stormstrike. Here's the link to what I have:

Cyclone Gauntlets

Now, I was wondering if it's worthwhile to replace them with this:

Gauntlets of Sniping

The reason i'm asking is, it would break up my 4 set bonus. All I really want to know is how much the 4 set bonus helps.

From some basic calculations it's 30 damage per weapon, so 60 damage in total. Which would, sine there's a 10 sec cooldown, would be about 6 dps.

Thanks in advance for any help!

I off tanked the trash between chess and Prince in my S2/S1 gear... with a Merc Axe and a Triptych Shield. But yeah, as mentioned before, in a pinch, offtanking trash if you have poor group make up is fine, i.e. if you just have prince left, and need to clear trash, and don't wanna bring in 2 prot warriors, just for 3 trash mobs.

Also check out Trickster's Stickyfingers.

With 1st page T5 values those are 2EP worse with 8str + 4str/4crit gem not to mention if you put epic gems to those (due str gems regardless your personal stats sniping should be better in most cases). Also with sniping you'll get "free" 20int and 310 armor.

This got me thinking about how you could calculate this. Is it as simple as multiplying 20 expertise rating (which is 5 expertise from the top of my head) with the EP value of expertise rating, dividing it by the amount of ap that should give you roughly 1 dps, and adding this amount to your weapon dps?

So in this case, using high end expertise values, it's 20*3.18/3, giving 21.2 dps added onto the weapons dps. If this is the case the orc racial is really insanely good.

The math looks sound, but 21.2dps is assuming you are standing infront of the mobs. Since mobs can't parry when you attack from behind therefore in general raid dps terms is worth 10.6 dps (still a lot).

Or does the EP value for expertise already take into account you are standing behind the mob?

Edit: Sorry, brain's not quite revved up this morning. Pay no attention to me.

Hello, ive got a problem with the totemtwisting macro, atm i use /castsequence reset=8/combat/alt Windfury Totem, Grace of Air Totem. but it only spams the wf totem not the agi one ..and the one on the front page does the same ..any help avalible?

I ran into a situation recently that has caused some debate among my guild members. In a party with two sword rogues and two hunters, one of whom has three ranks in expose weakness, which air totem should be dropped? The guide says with two sword rogues you drop WF totem but the hunters claim that expose weakness tips the balance in favor of grace of air totem.

Since, to my knowledge, this specific circumstance wasn't addressed in the front page guide, I'd appreciate any information that has been gathered on this scenario that I might have missed in the many following posts. Thank you all for your help, as this guide has been very helpful for me in the past.

You can use just:

/castsequence reset=8 Windfury Totem,Grace of Air Totem

Note, make sure you don't have extra commas or typos, but should work fine.

If you have issues, get rid of the spaces after commas.

You'd probably have to do the math on how much increase in AP the AGI from GoA would give the hunter to the raid, but I'd suspect with 2 combat rogues, WF is still the answer. Worse case, Totem Twist. Any loss in your personal DPS will be made up for in Expose Weakness buff in addition to the increase in DPS that the rogues AND hunters will get from WF + AGI.

Do you not have any DPS Warriors? Not having one in that grp makes me a sand panda Also, something to note with hunters and GoA... Are they even going to be in range of your GoA? If it's a mobile fight, the hunters may not even be getting the AGI buff, especially depending on your spec (too lazy to armory you). So that's another thing to keep in mind.

If you run heavy hunters, you might want to consider a Resto Shaman/Hunter/Hunter/Druid/Misc grp, with the RESTO Shaman dropping AGI. Chances are the Druid might lose some of the AGI buff due to range, but a Resto Shaman will be more easily able to drop a totem a little closer to the melee, while still being in range of hunters.

Find out what you can do to prevent that abortion of a group from ever being formed again. Your raid leader should be handling that type of situation - in my mind the shaman should never be left wondering which totem to drop, it should always be as clear as day.

My decision would be WF purely because if the hunters are in that group, they are there as left overs because group compositions got strange elsewhere. Enhancement shaman buff Warriors, Rogues and Retadins and feral druids, anyone after that should be happy they get mana spring for being in your group.