Shik

The weapons are just different. You're losing 6% crit from weapons and talents, a little bit of AP crit to gain 15% or so chance of a stun proc (mace spec + DT)

I personally spend 2/3 of my arena time trying to kill casters, and there is never a bad time for either stun proc to go of. I've bursted so many healers on the back of stunning a holy light etc. cast with them at 50% hp or so, you simply don't need a big window, and in higher level PVP you aren't going to get one. The weapon helps create openings for my team.

 

Nethris

Hmm, my best uneducated guess is that's it's a preference based on stability or lack thereof in arena fights - if both sides are keeping everyone up, stun procs can be huge opportunities to actually kill someone, stop a critical heal, interrupt one of the dps in an assist train attempt, etc...

If someone is going to die less than 10 seconds after the fight begins though with your group makeup/usual opponent group makeups, increasing your burst dps even more to try to kill one of the other team before they can kill one of you makes sense I guess... axe also is damn nice in PvE if you're raiding as a dps warrior as well.

On a side note, I've been respeccing MS when my 5v5 team gets reasonably serious about it, and have a deep thunder. Mace spec stuns are definately nice. However, while prot specced I tested deep thunder on blasted lands immune mobs, and the proc rate seems pretty low, around 1 PPM I think. I think I logged it, didn't parse it for the exact rate I was getting though. Since people don't tend to focus my warrior much (at least so far) in arenas, I'd LOVE to have a 2h mace with the crafted 2h axe stats, as I don't think I'd lose too many stuns.

Anyone else tested deep thunder proc rates? (Seperately from mace spec stun procs that is, should be able to parse it even if you are MS spec though, 99% sure the debuff names for the stuns are different)

 

Andrise

I haven't specifically logged data for the proc rate, but I would say that it seems offhand really low to me. I'd say it's around the same proc rate as Hammer of Titans was, which was abysmally low.

 

Samurro

I'am not sure about the entchantings on my equip. Should i stack Stamina over all or is Strenght/Crit also needed for my Gladiatorset. My Equip can be checked @ armory Samurro EU. My Arenapartner is a Paladin, we are @ 2xxx currently. As Example should i place 40 Stamina 15 Agi on pants or the 40 Attackpower and Crit entchant? I socket all my items with 4 str and +6 stam or 4 Crit and +6 stam, depending on slotcolor. The meta slot will be filled with the 18 sta gem. So what would u prefer, entchanting dps or just more stamina?

 

XI-

If your primary focus is 2s/3s it's worthwhile to stack stamina somewhat, and I'd definitely use maces over axes. But if you want to compete in 5s, you typically want to get to 10k hp and then concentrate on raising your ap and crit, and axes are typically the better option.

 

Grailyn

While most of the top end 5's use Axes and most of the middle rank teams seem to use maces I went for swords.

My original idea was once everyone has 300+ resilience sword spec would perform better than axes. The side benefit I'm seeing is about twice a night my sword just decides someone needs to die right now and I get a crazy 7-8k <2s burst from out of nowhere.

http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/ch...ther&n=Grailyn

 

Samurro

That argument is so rediciolus...if u choose sword over axe bcuz u dont crit so often and hard against much resilence, but dreaming of an normal hit crit + sword hit crit is stupid. And when u kill ones a night a opponent by pure luckage...i'll kill all day with 1/3 of my hits are crits.

@XI
The Axe/Mace/Sword-Discussion is useless, everyone has another perspective for that. But if i understood u right, u say in 2vs2 sta > all ? So putting 12 Sta gems everywhere and entchanting sta wherever possible?

 

Grailyn

Wow why so rude?

Think about it rationally for more than half a second. Resilience lowers the effectiveness of axe spec but has little effect on sword. That was the only point. I never tried to say to was clear cut better just different and interesting. Some of the more math heavy sites even proved out that sword had much more burst potential than axes though they never took resilence into account.

Doesn't mean it's better but with my current team matrix and tactics it works out fairly well.

But apparently I suck. #1 on my server and #5 on my BG.

http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/ch...ther&n=Grailyn

 

Samurro

Ok that point goes to you. Sword isn't affected by resilence as much as axe spec. BUT you dont kill your enemys in arena without critting 2 or 3 times in a row, so if you give up 5% crit for just 5% extra swing you need simply more luck to kill a enemy. I dont believe your killing people by just extra hitting without crits.

So your argument that axe is not as good as swordspecc because of resilence isn't stable.

Iam sorry for my rude wise if you think so...

greetz,
Samu

 

Grailyn

I don't believe I ever said sword > axe.

I believe I even took the time to say it doesn't make it obviously better, but that I disagreed slightly with the people who were saying that axe was clearly better than sword. It may be better, I just think sword is very viable option.

Normal arenas I'm running with Kings since we use a lot of kiting and bof goes on the squishier dps that is getting focused. With BoK and Mongoose up I'm nearly 35% crit with sword spec so yes I do crit quite often and those crazy melee/ms/sword spec 2 of the 3 critting happen more often than you would think and can quickly change a stalemated game in a hurry.

Mostly it's a by-product of the type of game we play. We are heavy CC and Kite and our main goal is to control and keep the other team off balance waiting for a solid opening. One of many ways we get this opening is me getting a string of procs and crits with a quick assist call but there are many others that work just as well and can break a game wide open.

http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/ch...ther&n=Grailyn

 

Samurro

Okay then i miss understood you.

Do you play 5vs5, i think so. I can't rely on a procc with 5% chance, and i can not controll the opponent team in a 2vs2 Arena as you can in 5vs5. I played for a long time with sword specc in the past and for me it was a pain in the ass waiting for a sword procc, but my equip back there wasn't as good as it is right now.

For my opinion Axe is more reliable on over Sword specc and that is what i need as the only dps class in my team. (war/paly)

 

Grailyn

I'm play in all brackets but only very serious in 5x5 and maybe semi-serious in 3x3. I can't stand the smaller brackets, it's just far to much of a RNG crap shoot and praying for lucky match up's with poor small scale class balance. It's much harder to really build a good gimmick 1 trick pony team in 5's and they are much easier to counter when you do run into them.

I try to never rely on sword spec or even crits for that matter. I play my game acting like they don't exist and then when I do get them see if we can exploit it. Relying on tons of big crits or proc's is not a good way to get to or keep a high ranking IMO. Solid play, good group synergy and map/team control are much more reliable than counting on the RNG to bail you out.

My main team for those to lazy to do a search on the armory.

http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/#t...WTB+Skill&fl=1

Started out rough and semi-casual but we've slowly gotten more serious about things. Still rough and weak in some area's but we might have a shot are really competing seriously in season 2. I'm hopeful at least.

http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/ch...ther&n=Grailyn

 

Shadowed

Someone who has sword spec may want to copy over to PTR and see if it's true that extra attack mechanics were changed to yellow damage.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...02900884&sid=1

 

Merzhul

Yes, it was changed on the PTR. It's a yellow attack, and so, does not return rage.

In my opinion, this doesn't necessarily make it less viable -- it still can output a lot of burst -- but it makes it less attractive for sure. Add that in with the generally disappointing stats on swords, and I think many people will shy away from it.

On the bright side, I made damn sure they didn't nerf WF procs from the totem. It's still white damage. :P

 

Grailyn

That does kind of suck. But at least it should be effected by impale now! Not a real huge change but annoying none the less. Maybe they should bump it back to to 6% with all of these nerfs.

http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/ch...ther&n=Grailyn

 

Adrammelech

Emeraude I think it was tested it on PTR and said that it DOES return rage.

 

• Fogbug

if that's the case then it actually makes it better - one of the issues with sword spec is that you only get one proc from multiple hits - i.e you whirlwind 4 targets or cleave 2 targets, SS procs 2 or 3 times but you only actually get one extra hit since sword spec gives you an extra hit on your next swing, whereas crit or mace stun would hit 4 targets

alternatively, you could mortal strike a target, hamstring a target, proc sword spec on both but only actually get one sword spec in due to the way the proc used to work (correct me if I'm totally wrong on this, I haven't had all that much experience with sword spec)

I wish we'd get a blue post explaining these things, but I suppose it's probably a work in progress. If it really does return rage then I would guess that they're trying to make sword spec more attractive. This would actually make it genuinely better than poleaxe spec, though

 

Adrammelech

You'd get two sword spec procs due to the 1.5 GCD. You might have "lost" a white swing depending on where your swing timer was when you used MS. The only way that I was aware of you could lose a sword spec proc was if a white (or on next swing) proced with an instant that also proced.

At least that was my understanding of it.

Edit: I think they should be careful how they balance the weapon specs. Sword scales much better than the other two in my experience. If it's a yellow hit, it can't glance and thus has a pve advantage over axes just from that mechanic.

 

• Fogbug

oh man, if they changed WF like this..
although I suppose that's all possible with SS too, just a lot less likely. can anyone confirm that the sword spec procs are still giving rage?

 

DrunkenDruid

According to http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...02900941&sid=1

Emeraude from Sargeras claims that it is, in fact, giving rage.

 

Merzhul

S/he's right, just went back and used the Hunter sword instead of my level 12 gray (lol), the rage returned had looked like it was just left over being that the damage was small.

Silly me for making assumptions. Though it does seem odd that Blizzard would change mechanics like this, makes me wonder if it'll glance? Doesn't seem to be affected by Impale, but I only had 34 sword spec procs, so not a very good sample.

 

• Fogbug

almost certainly not, but you never know. this is a brand new mechanic

 

Andrise

So to answer my own previous question, on PTR now World Breaker is better than DT flat out, having the same damage range and a 3.7 speed instead of 3.8. However, the Malchezar weapons and SSC weapons being higher ilvl than T2 smithing ones leads me to believe they're going to make Vortex a more common drop, at least hopefully. Even so, it'll probably be a while before I can grab 5 for my PvP weapon, so I guess I'll just grab the next WB that drops.

 

• Fogbug

I don't know if they're making them more common, but they are lowering the number you need to do your upgrades

the armorsmith chest needs 2 now, and I think the weapons need 8

does anyone know if they increased the proc rate of world breaker on test? I usually got around 1.6-2 procs a minute with windfury up on a static raid mob before something broke my procwatch

 

• LodeRunner

I thought it was 5 for weapons now.