I was hoping someone would ask the classic question after 3.0 and take the flaming but I guess if no one will I'll have to.

So... which weapon spec?

How much damage on average is 15% armor penetration against cloth and plate? What if the target is sundered? Axe spec is looking really attractive with the added synergy with Sudden Death/Deep Wounds and the new 5% increased critical damage bonus but I'd first like to grasp the true value of maces before making a choice.

There's a spreadsheet 1 or 2 pages ago that breaks out how much damage a given spec does to a given armor class, so please refer to that. There is also quite a few people (with high arena rankings) that say damn the numbers, swords give you an intangible in unpredictable burst. Sudden death is completely up in the air right now, but the last time I checked it was going to a flat percentage per hit, not crit, and only one spec gives you more hits than the others. In the future, however, if you think you are going to get flamed for a post and you state as much within your post, it is probably within your best interest to not post.

Don't think I've seen exact numbers in here on the value of mace spec, so I'll give it a shot.

From Wowwiki, at 70 with a level 70 attacker the armor formula is

DR = Damage Reduction = Armor / (Armor + (467.5 * AttackerLevel - 22167.5)) = Armor / (Armor + 10557.5)

so

Damage Multiplier = 1 - DR

DR' = Damage Reduction with 15% less armor = (0.85 * Armor) / ((0.85 * Armor) + 10557.5)

1 - DR = 10557.5 / (Armor + 10557.5)
1 - DR' = 10557.5 / (0.85 * Armor + 10557.5)

% increased damage from mace spec = (1 - DR') / (1 - DR) = (Armor + 10557.5) / (0.85 * Armor + 10557.5)


Mage in full S4 gear without frost armor has 2644 armor.
Paladin in full S4 gear (with S4 healing shield, no devo aura) has 18036 armor.
5 stack of sunder is -2600 armor.

So, the general range of possibilities is in PvP is

Keep in mind that not only does sundering the target's armor reduces your target's armor, so do faerie fire/other armor reductions, and (presumably) rogues dismantling your shield-using target does as well, in that last case to the tune of over 6k armor. So, it's a decent dps boost on PvP high-armor PvP targets, but is almost useless on squishy ones, and provides no burst like sword or axe spec. And all of the above is qualified by the assumption that I didn't screw the math up :P

Overall, if you're using PvP weapons, Orcs are going to want axes almost hands down now I think, with axes or swords both being decent choices for all the other races, and maces probably a bit behind, especially in the extremely high dps environment after 3.0. Dwarves would probably want to at least consider maces with their new racial bonus, while humans probably favor swords a minor amount. Of course, if you're using a PvE weapon where you can't go pick an equivalent weapon that's the type of your choice, or don't want to drop the points/honor on a new PvP weapon, this may be a bit moot, as unless you have several weapons close in quality the weapon quality may outweigh spec bonuses.

It's a topic that I think was worth discussing after the patch, I wasn't really asking for someone to tell me what to spec.

Thank you Nethris for the math on mace spec that's exactly what I was looking for.

I've seen 2 specs in here where people spec for both MS and Furious attacks. Is the thought here to keep at least a 25% debuff on at all times? Surely these don't stack do they?

Pretty sure those don't stack, just like every other -healing debuff doesn't stack. Were these some of the same specs that included taking both MS and BT and commenting how awesome having both would be after deciding to skip reading the discussion of those abilities sharing a CD? Really not seeing the benefit of going 31+/37+/0 given the talents that gives up by not going a little deeper in either tree, short of the "crazy MS + BT dps" idea, and taking both -healing debuffs sounds like something in that same vein.

I was simply referring to the spreadsheet 2 pages back Warrior PvP Thread. I understand you had no ill-intention but the point is that this is not new discussion, maces were deemed to be worse in that spreadsheet against all but the very highest of armored targets (bear form druids and paladins). With the revert of sudden death, even humans must consider the possibility that axes will create the most difficult to heal damage stream now.

Is it confirmed that sudden death is reverted? I ran a few tests this morning on beta before they took the servers down and it was definitely still proccing on normal hits. I guess we'll know as soon as downtime is over.

Nope, on live now and sudden death is definitely 9% proc chance on all attacks.

Just to clear it up, Dismantle doesn't reduce your armour (at least on the paperdoll).

It sure does when you're in defensive stance with a shield out, which is what he's talking about.

*edit* Regarding SD, GC stated that they didn't like it in its current (nerfed) form as it was 'too much RNG' whatever the fuck that means. Basically they didn't like the change but they nerfed the talent anyways (genius) and now don't know when/how they'll change it so that warriors 'dont stack crit'. Hopefully this change is reverted when Wrath goes live or soon after people start hitting 80 as it was a great talent in its pre-nerf form.

I don't understand what Defensive Stance has to do with it?

Dismantle removes your shield when you get disarmed in defensive stance.

Shield or no shield, the stance has nothing to do with how much armor you have. That is the point.

Yeah, I tested this on my Shaman, so I have no idea what effect stance have on it.

I think his point was that you are more likely to be in defensive stance with a shield out, which is when dismantle reduces AC. This is just semantics though, you and Lode are correct.