Gasmask

I've been tossing and turning in my sleep over what 2-hander to shoot for in terms of maximizing my raiding viability.

Blacksmithing has kept me competitive from Maulgar to Kael, but now that we are in T6 zones, I need to start thinking about my final upgrade. I have always used maces, since I have been quite involved in arenas and I see it as the biggest advantage. Moreso, I wasn't wealthy enough to respec every week for raids if I wanted to try swords/axes for more dps. Recently, due to BoE belt sales, our guild has built up enough reserves to pay for our learning repairs. This freed up enough gold for me to consider respeccing weekly. So now I have chioces:


[Cataclysm's Edge]

[Soul Cleaver]

[Torch of the Damned]

These are all upgrades from [Stormherald] but not so much that I can't wait for a particular one. And as the only raiding 2H warrior I should be able to snag whichever I choose.

Judging by iLvl and weapon spec, the sword should be the best. However, the sword is the fastest of the bunch at 3.5s. Although MS/WW are normalized, windfury procs and slams are not, so the slower axe (3.7s) and mace (3.8s) benefit from a higher attack power coefficient. The faster speed also means that the sword approaches the soft-cap on haste (2.5s due to slam rotation and reaction time) more quickly, wasting any extra haste buffs. The axe seems like the best compromise, but since I am human, I really prefer to choose mace/sword due to the racial +5skill.

I also wonder how much my mace stuns help on encounters where mobs are vulnerable to it. For example, even though it may not do as much damage as a sword proc, stunning a necromancer in Hyjal for 3 seconds can prevent a lot of damage. Is this more valuable situationally than the increased damage from sword spec?

I'd like to hear your considered opinions and discussion.

CasualGamer

 

Caligula

The axe and sword have almost the exact same top end damage. Unless there's something I'm not understanding about WF they should be netting you approximately the same wf and slam hits right?

I'm not in a position (currently at work) to do the math for you on the benefits of axe spec vs the extra haste and crit on the mace either but it would seem to me like those are your two best choices (if you're worried about the sword being too fast and not benefiting from haste that is).

Also: I think this kind of thread is frowned upon by mods.

 

Charsi

I've been doing some math on slam + passive haste. I favour Cataclysm's Edge because, with 5/5 Flurry, I calculate the following passive haste rating required to bring the weapon to 2.5 speed (with no other haste effects):

3.5: 127 haste rating
3.6: 160 haste rating
3.7: 194 haste rating
3.8: 228 haste rating (not including the 50 inherent to Torch of the Damned)

Math is as follows:

swing time = weaponspeed / ((flurry_haste / 100) + 1) * (((sum_of_haste_ratings / 10.52) / 100) + 1)

Using 3.8 w/228 haste and 5/5 flurry as an example..

swing time = 3.8 / 1.25 * 1.21
swing time = 3.8 / 1.52
swing time = 2.5

.. taken from the "working theories of.." thread stickied at the top of the forum.

I try to use a simple slam rotation, white > slam > instant > repeat. My goal is to get to the point where I don't have to watch my swing timer, but instead, my global cooldown governs the rotation without my resorting to dragonspine trophy proc/haste potions/etc. Right now dragonspine is very much a cornerstone. To that end, Cataclysm's End is the weapon i'm most interested in, as it requires the fewest haste items to get it where I want it to be.

Of course I may be completely wrong in thinking this is a good plan.

 

Gasmask

(Weapon damage) + ((AP/14) x Weapon speed)) = Unnormalized (Slam, Autoattack, WF)
(Weapon damage) + ((AP/14) x 3.3) = Normalized (MS, WW)

Why is this bad? If it is, feel free to delete. My apologies.

CasualGamer

 

Shaile

Just a minor point thats not OT, i see so many who links items as urls which for me and maybe others is quite annoying since you have to click it, open the tab or window to read its stats, alt tab or ctrl tab back to read what the post was about, alt tab/ctrl tab back to read the stats in question regarding the topic, then back again to continue reading etc etc and it all gets worse as you have more weapons linked in the discussion.

Whatever, what im trying to promote is the use of [ item ] tag.

[Cataclysm's Edge]

[Soul Cleaver]

[Torch of the Damned]

See? Notice how much easier it is to follow a post when all you have to do is hover with the mouse and see the stat/speed/top damage/etc in question and compare it to other weapons really fast

Reason for not sending this in a pm is to make others who do exactly the same also learn do [item] tag.

Back to topic on best hunter wea... err warrior weapons in end game raiding :P

 

Gasmask

Thank you, those numbers are helpful. Although, I think I will be more likely 3/5 flurry, due to the 2 points in blood frenzy. 10% to my haste can't possibly outweigh the dps done by the 8 or so other melee damage sources in the raid. Also, I can't count on gruul dropping a DST any time soon; additionally, I'm 2nd in line.

CasualGamer

 

Caligula

I was under the impression that "should I use X or X" threads were too specific, however, I guess it does fall under a broader category of "best end game 2h" as well.

Carry on until someone who matters comes along and says otherwise.

 

Gasmask

Thanks for the heads up regarding tags. Also, I'm quite glad blizzard put strength on all these instead of attack power or agility!

CasualGamer

 

Fugazor

I would abandon axe, especially that you said you are human. Now both sword and mace looks lovely. It really depends how much better (or is it?) sword spec is from mace spec for PvE. I think I would take mace for sake of PvP fun after raid.

 

◊ Turik

I'm still waiting for the day where we see 72DPS two handers with like 250 agility.

 

Gasmask

Hmm, I'm not concerned about pve to pvp switches. I will have to respec anyway 33/28/0 (pve) to 35/23/3 (pvp). I guess what I'm trying to determine is if sword spec outweighs the damage lost due to faster weapon speed.

CasualGamer

 

Hidden

I think it depends on how much Crit/AP you need to sacrifice to get the slower weapons down to your favoured speed and on your stats and buffs as well. High Attack Power and a Windfury Totem benefit the slower weapons more.

 

axhed

Is there a link or something about this 2.5 sec soft cap on haste?
Situationally? Sure, but stunned mobs cannot dodge or parry, so mace spec would also make another nice little raid-wide dps boost.

 

Chimp

Wow Web Stats

You will have to excuse the messiness of the kills in the WWS parse. Our normal raid leader wasn't about, and the whole raid was a little unprofessional from start to finish.

Either way, we had two 2h dps warriors in the raid. I just got the acrhimonde sword and was trying out a 2h pve build for the first time. Might be some useful information in the parse somewhere. As a side note, Lolly had an enhancement shaman and i had a resto shaman who wasn't that consistant with dropping WF totem.

Stafu: Using [Cataclysm's Edge] with a 31/30 build

Lolly: using [Stormherald] with a 33/28 build

 

Charsi

Not sure but it's relatively easy to explain.

t=0.0 white swing lands, begin slam, begin gcd, reset swing timer
t=0.5 slam lands, reset swing timer
t=1.0
t=1.5 slam's gcd finishes, perform instant (MS/WW), begin gcd
t=2.0
t=2.5
t=3.0 instant's gcd finishes, white swing lands, begin slam, begin gcd, reset swing timer

That's basically the theory. 2.5 is the weapon speed at which the two gcd cycle of slam + instant coincides exactly with the span of one white swing (that is offset 0.5 seconds by slam). Zero latency is assumed.

 

Grayson Carlyle

Plugging all 3 into my spreadsheet with end-game plate gear, if you ignore weapon specs, the mace comes out the winner mostly because it has it's budget spread between 3 DPS stats, whereas the other only have 2. Add sword spec and Cataclysm's is now doing more damage, helped even more if you're wearing lots of other pieces with -armor. Add that you're human and Cataclysm is the clear pure DPS winner when you don't take into account the rest of the raid. Mace stun on stunnable mobs would be helpful to the whole raid though, so honestly, I'd say just choose whichever of those 2 drops first, but pass on the axe.

 

Darkrenown

Not that I'm anywhere near getting any of these, but how does the axe look when you factor in the orc racial?

 

HeavyTwenty

Forgive me if this has been covered before; I've searched through the DPS warrior spreadsheet thread and the future of dps warrior thread, yet I found nothing about the optimal rotation for 2handed dps. The spreadsheet did not even have slam on it.

So, is "white > slam > instant > repeat" the best rotation. Or would MS/WW whenever the cooldown ups, with slam being a secondary concern be more efficient?

 

Randor

http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t12386-w...e_dps_warrior/

It is covered a few pages back.

This is a computer-generated message and needs no signature.

 

anticide

have to think, as your weapon approaches the 2.5s where gcd can replace quartz, your slams are also costing you more of your white damage.

at 3.5s, a perfectly timed slam (.5 sec) only costs 1/7 of your auto attack
at 2.5s a perfectly timed slam costs 1/5 of your auto attack.

just like slam would be worthless if you were swinging at .5s. as you get more haste, slam gets worse, and sword spec/spamstring builds become more appealing. bloodlust helps spamstring builds more, which is why you'll see them topping WWS charts.


i haven't done any serious calculations, but i rather have crit/ap over haste for a slam build.



slam is priority.
white>slam>MS>white>slam>WW>white>slam>MS>white>slam>hamstring/demo/tc/bs

 

Meyla

What about this new Zul'Aman two hand like old Zin'Rohk? I would honestly go for that haste rating instead of - armor.

 

Beeftank

Few things I would point out...

The sword has 10 more strength than the axe which equals out to 11str or 22 ap better with kings. Its not a "ton" but ap is ap and the more the better. The extra ap is even better if your doing a fury build for the imp zerker stance.

Another thing to note about the axe and the sword is that armor mitigation is very powerful, even though there is not much on it. Its one of the reasons that Bone Reavers Edge was so competitive, even against bwl 2handers.

If your going with a mortal strike spec, i feel that axe and sword are more useful to raid dps. Mace spec is still nice with the rage proc, but it doesn't directly increase your raid dps.

If i had access to the sword I would value it over the other 2 just because sword spec is powerful, and combined with wf totem, you will be netting all kinds of extra rage and attacks. Also, with the sword you can get blood frenzy for raid utility, and take the 3/5 flurry. This is a boon if your already concerned about hitting the haste soft cap, and your passive haste items not become obsolete as quickly.

 

RPZip

To start with, I'd heavily recommend trying out a 2H Fury build if you haven't given it a spin. Especially if you're looking at using a Mace, it helps compensate for the fact that (in most cases) Mace Spec is complete ass in raids. Situationally it's handy on stunnable mobs, but if you're just looking for DPS output (or boss DPS output) it's nigh-well useless. I've been using this build for PvE, and speccing back to a pure PvP build on our off nights to do arenas. In moderate SSC/TK gear I can get above 4,000 buffed raid AP along with capped +hit and ~30% crit in Battle with an Enhancement Shaman; it's rather nice, since Bloodthirst outdamages Mortal Strike by a rather large degree at that point. If you can get above ~3250 AP with your current weapon (Stormherald) you will hit harder with Bloodthirst than you will with Mortal Strike... and that's including the free AP from Rampage and from Imp. Zerker Stance.

If you want to say MS spec'd, I'd find it rather hard to bypass the sword. As fast as it is you should be under the soft-cap if you can replace the Dragonspine with another trinket, and Sword Spec is really rather good with a Slam build. Moreover, even with the attack speed (and thus losing the normalized Slam damage) it's got an additional 8 raw DPS, which covers a lot of sins, in addition to the armor penetration.

With all that said, though...

If you're the only raiding 2H Warrior, how do you justify not getting Blood Frenzy? It's a rather large increase to raid DPS and, for that matter, to your own personal DPS (4% increased overall damage being aprox. equivalent to 10% haste). Get the sword, get Blood Frenzy and you should still slide in under the haste soft-cap due to only having 3/5 Flurry... while still dealing about as much damage and buffing the rest of your raid's physical DPS. It also has a slight boost to tank TPS (~2-3% with the new Revenge), which can be handy on threat-limited fights and helps counterbalance the increased damage. *shrug*

 

Ferias

What about duel wielding as fury? Do you want a slower mainhand and a fast offhand or both fast? I've used both and I can't tell personaly because of the darastic differences in the dps and stats of the dagger to the sword. Also could I have a few other fury tips? Like should i sub 60-100 ap for 39 hit rating?

 

Berin

Since they changed unbridled wrath to a PPM model rather than a flat % proc, I think a slow offhand may have become more favourable because it eats less flurry procs than a faster substitute. Personally I just try to OH the best weapon I can with the most favourable fury stats since at 35-40% crit I don't think eating flurry procs is going to gib you that badly. Also in terms of AP to hit rating conversion it's really hard to come up with a flat equivalency since not every hit % is equal (first 5.6% apply to white and yellow hits, while every hit afterwards is applying only to white hits), and AP becomes more or less valuable depending on spec etc.