• alcaras

Don't waste your arena points on the gladiator 2h axe if you have Deep Thunder.

Deep Thunder is flat-out better, especially as raw-burst trains (in which Axe dominates) become less and less viable thanks to the general rise in stamina and resilience people bring to Arenas.

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Tszyu

On a slightly different topic, I was wondering how many of you do arena as protection?

Currently, I'm MT for my guild and have no intention of respeccing on any sort of consistant basis. I find myself sitting around Shatt doing nothing outside of instances and raiding. I like the concept of the arena and would like to get more involved in it. Only problem would be my spec, I guess.

The next question is to look at what stats to stack. Stam first, obviously. Next would be block value? Assuming shield slam is going to be a prot warrior's primary source of burst dps. In the few practice arenas I did, I put on a few of the pieces gear that has a high amount of block value and it seemed to work well. After that, strength would be my next assumption. The extra AP is always nice and the small amount of block value would add a bit more damage.

Beyond that, what abilities to you primarily use and in what order/situation do you use them?

 

valner

Can the mace spec stun and the deep thunder stun proc on hamstring? I assume so since sword spec can but obviously i have never tested this hypothesis.

http://ctprofiles.net/talents.ct?cid=550342

 

◊ Shadowed

Well, prot is just a bad idea if you want to actually do arenas but if you're just screwing around and having fun, then it wouldn't really matter. I'm not sure the formulas at 70, but the STR to block ratio is pretty bad so stacking it isn't really effective, should just go for crit types of item and resilience/sta.

In terms of gold, it's not so bad two of our players are respeccing weekly for a few days and getting all of the arena brackets done.

 

diotox

Yes to both. Spamming hamstring with deep thunder and imp hamstring is a surprisingly effective way to help get a melee class off someone squishy. Not to mention mace spec proc gives you 6 rage back, with gladiator gloves you just spent 1 rage on a hamstring. Pretty nifty really.

 

Samurro

Is it worth switching from Mooncleaver to Deep Thunder? My other opinion was when i get my full gladiator set i choose gladi 2h axe or sword, but i didnt realize before choosing axe smith that deep thunder not just has a huge amount of stamina, it also has the greatest max dmg AND a fucking big procc...dont know what has blizz driven be desiging the three craftables.

If its needed to know, i am 2vs2 Arena Team with a Paladin, my burst dmg is realy needed, without we wont even win one game. So arguments like "burst isnt worth it anymore since mass stamina and resilence" wont fit.

Thanks in advance

 

Kavtor

I've got some silly arena teams with PVE focused friends just to get our 10 games in. The difference between fielding a balanced group when I respec MS (which I've only done a couple times) and my usual protection build is pretty astounding. We all enjoy PVP, but only have enough play time to really focus on one or the other.

Usually I strap on fury gear and try to lock down a caster or a healer, or I'll bodyguard one of my healers with PH / stuns, fears, intervenes, etc. Dual wield for a little extra damage & rage, and I can always turtle up if they decide to attack me, which is pretty rare. Occasionally when we're playing another similar team of PVEers I'll have enough time on one target to sunder it up and devastate. When you stack block value for a crazy shield slam build, you loose a ton of white damage, unless you've got more good block gear than good fury gear. It's also harder to build rage for pummel's, PH, hamstring, etc.

I won't pretend it's effective, and they probably do a lot better when they've got a balanced group with out me in the line up. We could respec, and stack groups, take it seriously, and do much better if we put the time in. But since the rating system keeps us up against teams that play at our level it's still fun and we get a few points out of the deal.

 

Cel

Being impossible to kill quickly, you can serve as a permanent annoyance to a healer with interrupts and the ability to break fear/incapacitate. In 3v3 we faced a team that was a Paladin/Arms Warrior/Protection Warrior. Was a very difficult fight due to how difficult it was to control the protection warrior. Granted, we ran all physical DPS so the fight was naturally stacked in their favor a bit. (Hunter/Rogue/Paladin)

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• Apate

Does anyone have any additional advice for PvE specs in the Arena? some guildmates formed an arena team recently and I joined up. I don't PvP generally, although I did once upon a time when I was MS from levels 35ish-60, and I was pretty bad then. I'm now 4/43/14 for PvE DPS/OT and not really interested in respeccing for arenas. I'm less interested in rating high than I am in just getting better, perhaps losing less often, and killing more people before we lose when we do.

Our team for the first 10 games was:
Holy/Disc Priest
Prot Warrior
Frost Mage
Fury Warrior
Tree Druid

the only team that we seemed to do well against was 3 rogues, a druid, and a mage. Other than liberal fears and cycloning, any further advice? PvP is a foreign world to me, especially with this spec.

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Theldon

You simply will not do well with a PvE spec in arena. I'm sorry if I'm being too blunt. But a fury warrior with dual weld doesn't have the same burst capability and healing debuff as an Arms warrior (usually resulting in your target healing through the damage without urgency). Prot can be a nuissance to casters, but nothing more than that.

Has anyone found a proc rate on Lionheart Champion?

 

Ramielle

This is a super solid and super tough team to break for 5v5 Arena. In fairness, if you were asking about being able to tank heroics better but not being interested in spec'ing prot, the response would be similar.

 

• Fogbug

fury is fine as long as you assist the MS warrior. all in all 2 MS warrior might be a little stronger, but fury is probably more effective if your target already has MS/wound poison and you can stay on them most of the time

 

Andrise

Chocula, I know you use the World Breaker because you're an armorsmith, but I was wondering how you think it stacks up vs. Deep Thunder. Only asking because the last one went to the MT, which was fine, since I'm usually Fury, but I was wondering if the proc being so much more common than the stun proc on DT made it worth looting to use over DT in arenas.

 

Donzilly

As a prot warrior you could just run a 3s team with a paladin, mana burning priest, prot warrior and just play 10, 10 minutes games and simply out last the other team forever until one side gets bored ;p. We faced a 3s team with enhancement shaman/disc priest/paladin at 2130ish 3s rating and its simply not fun but it works.

http://ctprofiles.net/2303173

 

• Elendril

You also have WAY less crit with Deep Thunder than Mooncleaver, between axe spec and the stats on the weapon.

 

• frmorrison

From limited tests (a Warrior with it beside me in a BG), it was at 1 PPM.


For the Arena with PvE specs, if you don't want to respec to be more competitive, just have fun with the games. Assuming you group can play together a bit, over time you will see works. If you don't have the time to play more than 10 games a week , then there isn't much you can do.

 

• Fogbug

deep thunder is better, I think. I would actually be surprised if it procs much more often deep thunder - with constant windfury coverage I get maybe 2 procs a minute with constant melee on a raid mob

think of it as a passive +crit bonus in proc form; it seems like it was designed for the proc to fall within the item's ilvl

it does look cooler than Deep Thunder, though

also, does anyone know of a good proc-counting mod? procwatch's "hits per proc" count seems really inaccurate, and I don't know how to gauge the proc in swstats since it doesn't do damage. It's tough to tell because aside from a little windfury-style animation I don't even get a buff on myself - just "you gain world breaker" in the combat log

The best solution I can think of is to count procwatch's proc count and compare it to my total swings in swstats, but I keep forgetting to tally results before I have to tank things which really throws off the results

 

◊ Shadowed

It's not that bad, you're sitting in berserker stance most of the time and i'm still at around 27%-28% crit without the 3% crit from the stance.

 

• Fogbug

less crit is still less crit. mooncleaver -> deep thunder will drop you around 6% after talents, which really is huge for a warrior

I do think DT is easily the best weapon, though. The proc on it doesn't seem to be part of the budget for the item

 

◊ Shadowed

Yeah, but given mace spec and/or DT proc it's not that bad to take the hit in crit for the rage on mace spec and the stun on both.

 

viji

I see your points about Mace spec being superior in 2on2. But still confuses me alot that I see all "professional" pvp warriors use the axe. If you look at the top teams, and some of the few wow tournaments (WSG had a 3on3 event recently, where the winning team ran warrior/paladin/mage, and the warrior used axe).

I personally have 12 nethers on my warrior, and got the tier1 axe, but have a hard time deciding wich one to pick

 

Chimp

Has anyone looked at the proc rate of sword spec in TBC?

I was looking at my swstats breakdown after a couple of hours of PvP, and, disturbingly, sword spec procs only accounted for 2.2%~ of my total dmg output. Which was only 0.1% more than the dmg done by the 'impale' proc of my weapon (despair).

I would expect that if every instant attack has a 5% chance of triggering a sword spec proc you would be looking at 4%~ of total dmg coming from sword spec (less than 5%, as aoe dmg wouldn't trigger sword spec procs afaik). I'm aware they stopped sword spec procs triggering off other sword spec procs, but given the results it makes me wonder if they may have put some sort of internal cooldown on sword spec procs.

 

valner

... for my two cents, I do not have deep thunder because i am too cheap to drop engineering. I am waiting to see what actually hits live for engineering before I decide to drop something for smithing.

Anyway, I would take deep thunder for pvp over anything else at the moment. With deep thunder and mace spec you have a 10% aggregate chance of a stun. Stuns are godly in pvp. A lucky stun can easily turn the tide of a match. Also, remember with WW you have 4 instant attacks which means odds are good someone will eat a stun.


The other contender in my mind would be the Glaive of the pit. Does anyone know the actual proc rate on the glaive?

oh and as an aside, has anyone heard anything about the cleansed ashbringer? We have been theorizing the quest would continue in the outlands but as far as I know it has never been finished.

http://ctprofiles.net/talents.ct?cid=550342

 

• syeren

"Because it's better."

Was the answer Noktyn gave me when I asked him a month or so ago :P

I imagine it has something to do with potential burst, and the extra rage generation from critting