Arms DPS: 4.0 and Cataclysm - Page 18

Giantlol · 02/26/11, 3:09 PM

Originally Posted by Shha

CS nerf is pretty much offset for arms i feel with the base ability buff. Assuming 50% CS uptime the difference in damage is pretty much in the realm of 5% from CS nerf (excluding deep wounds). Basically 50% uptime * around 10% damage reduction to armor. Of course it ignores smart use of CS, but calling it the end of arms, when skills that are at most reduced by 10% during CS also get 15-20% dmg buff is a bit silly.

Now the bigger problem is stat scaling as noted by people here. Opportunity strikes dont get the buff, so mastery is weaker, and as a result haste (autoattacks) are even weaker as well. We become 1 stat class to the very extreme (same is happening to fury in general).

Overall if you look at the 4.1 change, its a slight net buff to arms single target dps, its a definite LOSS to SMF , and its slight loss for TG.

From my personal testing, arms is somewhat on par with fury under assumption that the fight is long, consistent on melee uptime, and without any damage buff/burn phases. Overall i guess its not that bad of a design. Both specs do same damage, but arms still excels at AoE+AoE Burst, while Fury zooms ahead whenever there is a way to make good use of stacking cds.

The only problem I have with Sudden Death (pretty much the same problem I had all of wrath) is that its completely rng dependent and that some pulls you can do a lot more damage than others just because of random CS procs. I can see why they're nerfing CS but I hope they don't forget to buff heroic strike just slightly to compensate. HS isn't a huge portion of my damage but it makes up 5-10% depending on the fight/blood frenzy rng procs.

Secondary stat scaling is also a huge issue and it'll probably cause arms warriors to fall behind quite a bit again by the next tier of content when other specs/classes are able to make more use of them. Opportunity strikes makes up 5-10%~ of my dmg which is probably a good place for it to be overall but it should definitely benefit from stance/2h buffs. Looking at WoL it looks like it does 500~ less on avg hit and about 800-1000 on the average crit on most fights. It would probably be in the right spot if it was just buffed to match white hits.

I was also hoping that they'd continue to try to make haste a more attractive stat for arms (even though I'm not a huge fan of the stat in general) because they seem to really like slam, but the way it is right now ~7% haste reduces the cast time of slam by .034~ and its not really feasible to actively try to get more haste because you'll be losing crit or mastery which are better secondary stats.

It seems like arms and fury are about as close as they're ever going to be with the top arms/fury warriors being within 2-3k dps of each other, though obviously fury warriors are probably quite a bit better for CD burn phases. (Magmaw, Maloriak(with arms warriors doing higher overall because of adds), probably about equal on Chim because warriors are usually 3rd to die after tanks)

hellord · 02/26/11, 10:00 PM

Originally Posted by Giantlol

The only problem I have with Sudden Death (pretty much the same problem I had all of wrath) is that its completely rng dependent and that some pulls you can do a lot more damage than others just because of random CS procs. I can see why they're nerfing CS but I hope they don't forget to buff heroic strike just slightly to compensate. HS isn't a huge portion of my damage but it makes up 5-10% depending on the fight/blood frenzy rng procs.

Secondary stat scaling is also a huge issue and it'll probably cause arms warriors to fall behind quite a bit again by the next tier of content when other specs/classes are able to make more use of them. Opportunity strikes makes up 5-10%~ of my dmg which is probably a good place for it to be overall but it should definitely benefit from stance/2h buffs. Looking at WoL it looks like it does 500~ less on avg hit and about 800-1000 on the average crit on most fights. It would probably be in the right spot if it was just buffed to match white hits.

I was also hoping that they'd continue to try to make haste a more attractive stat for arms (even though I'm not a huge fan of the stat in general) because they seem to really like slam, but the way it is right now ~7% haste reduces the cast time of slam by .034~ and its not really feasible to actively try to get more haste because you'll be losing crit or mastery which are better secondary stats.

It seems like arms and fury are about as close as they're ever going to be with the top arms/fury warriors being within 2-3k dps of each other, though obviously fury warriors are probably quite a bit better for CD burn phases. (Magmaw, Maloriak(with arms warriors doing higher overall because of adds), probably about equal on Chim because warriors are usually 3rd to die after tanks)

I don't know exactly what you are talking about, but RNG is quite compensated by the rather high number of hits per second we do (SD has no internal cd and procs from everything including non-harmful spells). Haste has no effect on Slam since it only has a static malus compared to your base weapon swing, so more haste is equal to the same relative damage loss, and since in 4.1 we'll do a relatively lower amount of damage from swings it will be a non-issue at all and honestly has never been, given its magnitude.

You never stack haste just because it has lower relative value compared to every other stat; the problem is an absolute one, the problem you underline in your second paragraph and has nothing to do with Slam.

Arms is a rather consistent spec, just because we can randomly refresh SD or get more rage from BF it doesn't mean we have very random results. SD uptime varies by a few, WC uptime has a small range of variation, HS is not THAT random, but we don't have extremely powerful cds that completely change the outcome of a fight. If we had to consider the 2 specs, fury is much more random due to miss streaks and falls behind on aoe fights (which should be kinda fixed with WW changes in 4.1). Next patch is even going to reduce the RNG effects due to CS uptime.

Also the reason why our mastery does less than a normal swing is only due to normalization and not some strange behaviour with our multipliers. I wholeheartedly agree that we are on par with fury, but I disagree about our randomness, that's not why arms playstyle has a scaling issue.

What can have a bad effect is not our wide range of potential dps, it's simply our very low haste-to-dps ratio (once you include damage taken) and the detrimental effect that haste has on our mastery (higher frequency of swings is equal to les overall chances to proc due to OS internal cd). What we need is more passive damage and a better haste and exp scaling, but it's still early to tell if these things can affect our high-end performance because we don't know yet how they will itemize further tiers.

jugajuga · 02/28/11, 1:51 AM

Originally Posted by hellord

Another factor to consider is that our scaling from damage taken has been flattened, so they might have tuned us lower than intended to not risk overbuffing, but the last 2 patch notes nerfed badly our scaling from damage taken as much as haste.

Any know the formula for damage take -> rage gen? I was extremely surprised by how little rage I got from taking Nef's 100k electrocution, which translated only to around 30 rage or less (was eyeballing it).

hellord · 02/28/11, 9:03 AM

It hasn't been verified recently, but from Satrion's posts (Cataclysm Bear Theorycraft) it seems that damage lower than 2k produces 1 rage, over this mark (not exact numbers):
physical: unmitigatedDamageTaken*18.5/yourMaximumHealth
magical: effectiveDamageTaken*40/yourMaximumHealth

So Nef's electrocution should produce around ~28 rage.

Jeremy · 02/28/11, 9:46 PM

Feb. 28 PTR Notes update:

* Lambs to the Slaughter now causes Mortal Strike to refresh Rend in addition to its current effects.

Full list of changes; Feb 28 changes are in red.

I am relieved to see this change. It nearly completely removes the rend baby-sitting component of arms, as well as people using thunderclap in their single-target rotations, not to mention the GDCs that will free up.

Rysidion · 02/28/11, 10:31 PM

Originally Posted by Jeremy

Feb. 28 PTR Notes update:

* Lambs to the Slaughter now causes Mortal Strike to refresh Rend in addition to its current effects.

Full list of changes; Feb 28 changes are in red.

I am relieved to see this change. It nearly completely removes the rend baby-sitting component of arms, as well as people using thunderclap in their single-target rotations, not to mention the GDCs that will free up.

Beyond that, it should serve as an incentive to stay in Battle Stance during the Execute phase, since Overpower has a very high crit rate and a 1 second GCD. Without having to apply rend, it should easily be worth including in one's "priority list". It also gets rid of those pesky situations where rend is falling off right as Colossus Smash is procced, and just overall makes the spec easier to play.

It doesn't address the problem of a rather long ramp up time or a way to keep up Lambs to the Slaughter during an "Air Phase" of a fight though. The philosophy seems to be that Arms should do more sustained on static fights, but Fury should pull ahead on fights with air phases / burn phases. Of course, with the massive buff to Flurry, who knows what will happen. Of course, this is still among the first wave of changes so I suppose discussion of things along these lines at this point is moot for anything other than pure speculation.

jugajuga · 03/01/11, 1:04 AM

The lambs of the slaughter change sounds like a ~8% dps boost to arms. 1 GCD every 15 secs is 10% more yellow attack, adjusted for rend and melee which makes up around 17% of total damage. That GCD is most likely going to be filled by a Slam.

Flurry buff adds about 9.4% white damage and rage income (math below), and the extra rage can only be spent on HS so yellow damage increase is slightly less. This also has the side effect of reducing haste scaling for fury.

All-in I'd say both buffs are approximately equal.

Fury Rage Breakdown (rps):
Melee: 8.1 (for dual wield and 8% hit, 6.5*1.5*83%)
Battle Trance: 1.5 (30 rage for HS every 3 secs with 15% chance)
Flurry: 1.2 (25% haste with 60% uptime)
Raid Haste Buff: 0.8 (10%)
Shout: 1.0 (30 rage every 30 secs)
Zrage: 0.2 (5 rage every 24 secs)
Total: 12.8 rps

Flurry buff = 1.2/12.8 = 9.4%

hellord · 03/01/11, 8:48 AM

Arms is not gcd capped in PVE, so what you gain by not having to use Rend is 10 rage every 16-17s. However you can't benefit anymore of the 5s cd of taste for blood.

EDIT: The GCD we gain from not using Rend will most likely increase our MS uptime since they collide rather often, but by itself it's not going to make much more space for an additional Slam. In fact it will only translate some of HS rage into Slam rage, which is probably dps neutral with never being able to "cheat" taste for blood cd.

With this change staying in berz most of time become actually viable (and TM is worth a bit more dps per point) since we only need about 2s every 12 to dump both OP together, and even just swapping for OP every 6s is far better than having to do this also including Rend refresh.

Molie · 03/01/11, 9:01 AM

With the lowered gcd, you would still be able to get an extra slam now and then, which would be a dps increase.
The thing that you dont have to look for the rend, will make arms a much easier spec to play aswell, and not less for pvp, this will make it alot easier to refresh hamstring, without rend running out, and will make Lambs to the Slaughter have a higher uptime.

Resike · 03/01/11, 11:40 AM

Arms DPS buff from 4.0.6-4.1.0

Hotfile.com: One click file hosting: ArmsPVE 9.0.xlsx

Seerow · 03/01/11, 12:16 PM

Originally Posted by hellord

Arms is not gcd capped in PVE, so what you gain by not having to use Rend is 10 rage every 16-17s. However you can't benefit anymore of the 5s cd of taste for blood.

EDIT: The GCD we gain from not using Rend will most likely increase our MS uptime since they collide rather often, but by itself it's not going to make much more space for an additional Slam. In fact it will only translate some of HS rage into Slam rage, which is probably dps neutral with never being able to "cheat" taste for blood cd.

With this change staying in berz most of time become actually viable (and TM is worth a bit more dps per point) since we only need about 2s every 12 to dump both OP together, and even just swapping for OP every 6s is far better than having to do this also including Rend refresh.

Huh? For the most part we are pretty much gcd capped. Admittedly, some of those gcds get spent on shouts or something instead of a damaging attack, because our rage generation is a bit lower than our consumption for a full rotation (something I think should be looked at by the devs), but for the most part there is something we can hit every gcd, particularly in raids with a bit of incoming damage.

We may have trouble translating 100% of our newly opened gcds into slam unless rage gets modified somehow, but I doubt it will be that big of a deal. Like you said, extra gcds open means more chance you can use any rng from bloodfrenzy towards slam rather than having to heroic strike while you refresh rend instead, and the rage from rend can go towards slam as well, so we should be able to fill most of those gcds, if not all.

As to sitting in berserker most of the time, unless there's an addon that can tell you how long until your icd next refreshes, I don't see that being particularly viable. The letting rend fall off then refresh it was doable, simply because you can set up an aura to warn you when it falls off, and you just reapply it on the next gcd, giving you the 16-17 seconds needed. Even then there was some risk (a half second too early and you were wasting 3 seconds of overpower time).

With this swapping to battle stance just as OP's ICD is about to refresh so you can hit 2 back to back, you have a high risk of losing the first OP completely.

hellord · 03/01/11, 1:01 PM

Originally Posted by Seerow

With this swapping to battle stance just as OP's ICD is about to refresh so you can hit 2 back to back, you have a high risk of losing the first OP completely.

You simply need to track Taste for blood, or have a way to track OP availability from berserk stance. Swapping for a single gcd every 6s is easily doable with macros and you only need to not waste rage.
Put it like this, you can gain up to 88%sh uptime from berz stance without having to track both rend and t4b. Rend was colliding often with MS nad had a small opportunity window to be reapplied (either immediatedly after last tick or between 2 and 3s later). The closest you are to using only 1.2sh (or 1+lag) of battle stance the more benefit you gain.

Also we aren't gcd capped at all, especially when you keep a strict cd on MS. For gcd-capped I simply mean its exact meaning: whatever you use in a gcd costs you a Slam. It actually isn't true, because Slam is not good in every gcd at every rage treshold past its cost.

Shha · 03/01/11, 1:26 PM

And what is better then Slam? Especially since improved slam is now 40% (earlier notes). It seems pretty clear to me that our goal will be to gcd cap ourselves. Before there were various scenarios - like keeping rage up for SD procs, and then maybe even using HS if we got lucky with BT proc. With all the notes together (the CS nerf and buff to ms/slam), we are looking at :

- relatively weaker HS
- weaker CS, making pooling rage less potent
- strong slam (biggest buff i believe).

I can _reluctantly_ agree with you Hellord now, but with those changes Slam becomes a clear winner. IF we have excess rage it might even be better then overpower - the one attack that did not get a buff (not per rage but per gcd). So yea i see us either being GCD capped, or maybe even haste gaining value until we are.

As for the zerker stance - I can agree with that easily.

Healranktwo · 03/01/11, 4:31 PM

I am definitely GCD capped as it is right now, so I can't agree with you Hellord. Even in situations when you can see CS is coming, a battleshout means you are good to go till the next DC comes up. I tend to beat on the boss dummy A LOT with no buffs other than my own battle shout, and being GCD capped happens all the time. What you said about MS and rend coinciding a lot I agree with though - it happens all the time right now if all you do is wait to re-apply rend when TfB is coming, and not immediately. Also, waiting to re-apply rend to get the most out of TfB tend to mean that you had to rend during CSes, which the new LttS change will help with too.

I can't see how not having to re-apply rend every 15-17 seconds is not a decent boost in DPS with the extra gcd, the extra rage gained, and slightly better uptime of MS/enrage. Being able to potentially be in berserker stance now is also going to be huge, especially during the execute phase where you pretty much have a free overpower to use <20% without having to rend only when you are sitting at 10 rage.

Also, more changes to arms on the new PTR.

"Strikes of Opportunity damage has been increased by 10% to keep stat parity with other strike changes.

Strikes of Opportunity now gives a 17.6% (up from 16%) chance for your melee attacks to instantly trigger an additional melee attack for 100% normal damage. Each point of Mastery increases this chance by 2.2%. (Up from 2%)"

So mastery got a decent boost in what it gives per point, and the damage itself is going up. Haste still isn't being addressed, but right now arms really looks like it's going to be in a good place come next patch.

hellord · 03/01/11, 7:03 PM

Well, my post didn't mean to sound as "this is a very small dps boost", but I initially replied to another post stating it's about 8% damage, which simply isnt. This change is no where near bad and solves some qol issues.

Personally the gcd-cap issue is much less of problem, losing an opportunity to Slam is much less detrimental than it was and the main issue is that our ability to predict our rotation doesn't go beyond 2 gcds. But I admit we are very close to gcd-cap and I understand the concerns, we surely do press buttons too tightly and 1 more space every 15s will end up being a luxury.

EDIT for clarity: Yes, the .5s wait due to OP is what I consider the small relief from gcd-cap (and when you use 2 in a row you open up a 1s wait time which is good to fill with Slam only if CS is up and MS doesn't fall out of it) and yes, regardless of the incoming damage in some gcds you have the space to slam but rage is not enough (this also includes a gcd before MS with less than 35 rage and a swing in more than 1.5s), I think it's where everyone uses battle shout now.

For the mastery change, given its internal cd, a damage boost would have been a better boost to its scaling. I think arms is already fully competitive in both single target and aoe fight, so I'm wondering if we aren't been tuned up a bit too much in current gear.