Thesis: Impale is vastly overrated as a source of additional damage, and for certain specs is inferior to other possible talent choices.

First off, correcting a common misconception; Impale is a 5% increase to yellow (non-bleed) critical strike damage per point, not 10%. Each point raises the critical strike damage bonus by 10%; two points makes yellow critical strikes hit for +120%, or 220% of normal damage. 220% (2/2 Impale) / 200% (No Impale) = 10% boost for two points, or 5% per point.

Assuming, for the moment, a Warrior whose yellow (non-bleed) damage constitutes a full 50% of their damage output... a single point of Impale will provide him with a 5% damage boost to 50% of his attacks, X% of the time (critical strike chance).

5 * .5 * X = 1
2.5 * X = 1
X = .4

For Impale to become a 1% increase in overall damage using this model, the Warrior's critical chance must be a full 40%... which is rather high. Moreover, assuming 50% yellow (non-bleed) damage is considerably higher than is typical with most DW builds - with a standard ~5% damage ensuing from Deep Wounds, this would require only 45% of your damage to result from white autoattacks. Pushing the number to 50% white damage, with 5% bleed, leaves us with 45% yellow (non-bleed) damage.

5 * .45 * X = 1
2.25 * X = 1
X = .44

Even pushing the number down to about 40% white damage, with 55% of the damage being yellow (non-bleed) - a number typical of my results with 2H Fury builds - the amount of crit required to equal even 1% damage increase is rather higher - 36%, in fact.

5 * .55 * X = 1
2.75 * X = 1
X = .36

External Factors: Additional bonuses to crit damage (Relentless Earthstorm Diamond) will cause the numbers to shift slightly.

Assuming for the moment that the Relentless metagem provides a flat 3% damage increase to critical strikes (rather than only effecting the damage bonus; I've seen arguments for both, although I'm inclined to believe it effects the entirety of the crit damage), it's possible to model the Metagem as simply an increase to critical strike chance. For example, with a 33.3% critical strike chance the 3% additional bonus to critical strike damage can be considered simply an increase of 1% chance to crit (after 33.3 critical strikes, the 3% increased damage _per_ crit will have caused 99.9% of the damage that would have been dealt by one single additional critical strike). This rather simplifies the math here and does not require us to construct additional models both with and without the metagem.

Conclusion: While admittedly a moot point for many builds, where even with its shortcomings Impale outclasses the competitors (in an Arms build, for example, it's considerably better than the DPS increase from your other possible talents while building to 30 points pre-MS; it certainly outclasses Anger Management) it's highly questionable if it's worth the point investment in either DW Fury builds (allowing the addition of either utility talents or max'ing out other talents such as DW Specialization) or, especially, 2H Fury builds.

20/41/0 2H Fury provides very good damage, but Impale is strictly inferior to 2H Specialization in this kind of a build - it provides a smaller raw damage increase, and 2H Specialization also provides additional Rage generation by increases white damage output. The only way to acquire both would be to sacrifice points in both Rampage and a point from Imp. Berserker Stance, both of which provide larger damage increases than you will see from Impale in most cases, although admittedly this does rely in part upon the makeup of your melee group and your own socketing and gear; with a Feral Druid and a heavy emphasis on +crit, it would be possible to have Impale slightly outclass 2H Specialization if one doesn't consider the increase to Rage generation, but it's worth considering simply _not_ acquiring Impale and instead investing a full five points into 2H Specialization.

It may be overrated but where else would you put points in a DW build that would add the equivalent (albiet small) DPS increase?

No... it won't. I actually addressed this in the first few lines of the post. =p 1.1%, sure, not 1.2%, and it only effects specials. It adds to the damage modifier, not to overall damage; it's the same way in which Ruin is a 33% increase to critical strike damage, not a 100% increase (200% / 150% = 1.33).

I'm not sure offhand, but it does give a lot more credence to the DPS potential of a Fury/Prot hybrid build. Potentially max'ing DW spec and Imp. Zerker Rage in a more traditional DPS build?

EDIT: I'm not trying to indicate that the ability is useless, and it may still be the best choice in a DW DPS build - it's still superb at the very least in an Arms DPS build - but in, at least, the specific case of a 2H Fury build it appears to be inferior to the other alternatives.

Even if it only grants a marginal increase, it's worth it to get to Deep Wounds. Deep Wounds typically adds 2-3% of my damage on bosses who can bleed. So even if Impale did nothing, I'd take it to get the 2-3% extra damage from Deep Wounds.

He's saying that deep wounds being good tosses out the argument that dropping Impale nets you 5 talent points (instead of just 2).

Have I been missreading this all the time I've played warrior, as far as I understood it, this only applies to your SPECIAL attacks.

::Edit:: Sorry, I didnt read your whole post, but the point still stands but not directed to you. Just pointing it out

By "normal attack" I meant "special base damage", should've phrased it more accurately ;p putting while damage aside as it's obviously not a part of the discussion of how it works (only taken into account at the end to figure out what actual DPS increase impale is).

If your base special is 100%, and a crit is 200%, each 1% crit added a 1% chance to do additional 100% damage, so in essence that's 1% more DPS (when starting at 0% crit for simplicity). If you had impale, with the same 1% crit chance you'd have 1% chance to do 120% more damage, so it would've added 1.2% damage. That is assuming special crits with impale do 220% of non-crit damage, as seems to be true by the tooltip and your original post.

I hope it's more clear now.

Personally, I never understood a 0-31-30 build as you miss any points in Parry. For DPS, I would think a 5-41-15 build would be more effective and sustained damage while still giving you Shield Specialization, Defiance and Last Stand. Be interesting to see if anyone has numbers crunched on 5-41-15 or 33-11-17 builds vs. 0-31-30.

No, I was just being an idiot who hit "submit reply" without thinking first, and while doped up on cold medicine. Ah well, thanks for trying to make me look less brain dead.

(@ original poster)

The premises you're basing your argument off of are grossly miscalculated. Any warrior's dps (Fury, Arms or whatever), will be at the very minimum non-bleed 75% yellow damage in a raiding situation. Fury warriors in particular will be using heroic strike or cleave for the vast majority of their main-hand auto-attack timers. You must consider that yellow attacks cannot glance. So 75% is being very very generous to the amount of white damage done.

Even a moderately to bad geared warrior will have > 35% crit raid buffed in zerker stance and most will push much much higher.

Using the 75% yellow attacks and and 35% crit as a base, the math is simple.


Total Damge (bleeds negated) x % of damage (w/o impale) from yellow attacks x Crit chance x the Bonus from impale

or

100 x .75 x .35 x .1 = 2.625% Damage bonus from 2 talent points.

A very well geared warrior with windfury and full raid buffs will probably be doing about 80% of their damage from yellow swings, with more than 45% crit.

100 x .8 x .45 x .2 = 3.6% Damage bonus.

Correct me if you think this is wrong. But considering the ludicrous rage generation of ridiculously geared dps warriors, I think these numbers are an understatement if they're incorrect at all.

Impale really isn't that hot, especially for Fury. Just play around with the Spreadsheet. It's like 2%. But since you have the points you put them there.