Arms DPS: 4.0 and Cataclysm - Page 19

Seerow · 03/01/11, 7:19 PM

Originally Posted by hellord

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.

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.

1) I'm still not getting where you're saying we're not gcd capped. Are you saying we lack the rage to use slam every gcd, or are you implying there's a situation where we shouldn't be filling an open gcd with slam? About the only thing I can think of is that you're counting the .5s freed up from overpower as a situation where you're not hitting slam to wait the extra .5s for MS to come off cooldown, which I don't think most of us would count.

2) I believe they gave it both a damage boost and a proc rate boost, but my PTR client is downloading at the moment so I can't check for sure. Looks like the proc rate got brought up to 2.2%, but I also saw a note saying damage was increased by 10%. I'm curious if this will be enough to make Arms competitive.

3) Arms still has gear scaling issues, so if we've been overtuned for current gear, it's likely because they're tuning for the next tier of gear, which appears as though it will be ilvl 391. This will likely be a pattern for Arms until they fix the scaling rather than band-aiding us. The mastery buff is a step in the right direction.

Glory · 03/01/11, 9:49 PM

Well these Changes lower the Gap between the ones that are doing well with Arms (about same DPS as Fury on some single Target fights, considering most Arms Warrior have less Gear than their Fury counterparts, Top Guilds with DPS Warriors have Fury Warriors) and the ones that don't execute this Specc as well.

Babysitting Rend is a nuisance. It could easily drop off, be reaplied badly.
As well as the impact of Colossus Smash is reduced. So less benefit by 10% more Debuff Uptime with good Timing.

Originally Posted by Shha

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.

Overpower did get buffed, just was not stated under Arms Tree as it is an Ability every Warrior has.
First it was 125% Weapon DMG to 145% Weapon DMG
Right now it is Buffed to 140% Weapon DMG on PTR (According to current Patchnotes 28.2.)

MS Buff is : 1.75/1.5= 1.166 -> 16.7% Increase (Base Spell Characteristics change)
Slam Buff is : (1+0.15+0.4+0.3)/(1+0.15+0.2+0.3)=1.1212 -> 12.12% Increase (Talents, Glyphs, TierSet Bonuses behave Additive) (WarAcademy, Imp Slam, Lambs to the Slaughter)
OP Buff is : 1.40/1.25= 1.12 -> 12% Increase (Base Spell Characteristics change)

So the Slam Buff is not as much as some might believe. MS is getting buffed much more, so that it is still our Top priority Spell.

Also Overpower DPS, if you can somehow get Value of the 1 Sec GCD is higher than any other Strike (even Execute (as you spend the Rage saved for a higher Execute). Consider that Crits also bleed and in Execute Phase Overpower effectively has a 1 Sec GCD.

Execute Remains Unchanged so far. This will probably set our Priority in Execute Phase like.

-- CS if no CS debuff
-- MS
-- Execute if above 60 Rage
-- OP
-- Execute

Without waiting for MS to get off CD.

jugajuga · 03/01/11, 11:04 PM

I still believe my original back of the envelope math of ~8% gain from the rend change is in the neighborhood. Where I would've cast rend every 15-18secs, I now have 1.5secs to cast slam, assuming rage is sufficient. Avoiding MS/CS collision with rend is an additional benefit.

Regarding rage, on target dummies, I can maintain every GCD with Rend/MS/OP/Slam/Shout outside of DC if I don't use HS; and in raid (with the haste buff and even with low inc damage), my rage steadily increases while filling every GCD, forcing me to hit HS once in a while. (Aside: This is the primary reason why I now raid in fury, the rage income made DC, our biggest cd, the equivalent of 3 more HS every 2 minutes.)

Regarding the SoO buff, I believe Blizz's comment that it's just to bring mastery back on parity is correct. As MS/Slam/OP all got a boost relative to white hits, SoO proc's became a smaller % in comparison. thus it was reducing the benefit of mastery. I feel the stat weight for mastery is probably going to be the same as where it is now.

Deathwing · 03/01/11, 11:26 PM

Originally Posted by hellord

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.

You sure about this? I remember back in beta there being tests that showed two procs at the same exact timestamp.

hellord · 03/02/11, 4:11 AM

Originally Posted by Deathwing

You sure about this? I remember back in beta there being tests that showed two procs at the same exact timestamp.

The procs seemed to happen at the same time, but the spell that triggered them weren't. Latest tests I did few weeks ago on live, I couldn't even get double procs from a nonhasted Slam and that's the minimum interval I can consistently replicate.

hellord · 03/02/11, 4:59 AM

Originally Posted by jugajuga

I still believe my original back of the envelope math of ~8% gain from the rend change is in the neighborhood. Where I would've cast rend every 15-18secs, I now have 1.5secs to cast slam, assuming rage is sufficient. Avoiding MS/CS collision with rend is an additional benefit.

Regarding rage, on target dummies, I can maintain every GCD with Rend/MS/OP/Slam/Shout outside of DC if I don't use HS; and in raid (with the haste buff and even with low inc damage), my rage steadily increases while filling every GCD, forcing me to hit HS once in a while. (Aside: This is the primary reason why I now raid in fury, the rage income made DC, our biggest cd, the equivalent of 3 more HS every 2 minutes.)

Regarding the SoO buff, I believe Blizz's comment that it's just to bring mastery back on parity is correct. As MS/Slam/OP all got a boost relative to white hits, SoO proc's became a smaller % in comparison. thus it was reducing the benefit of mastery. I feel the stat weight for mastery is probably going to be the same as where it is now.

I don't really agree with that. We gain 10 rage every Rend we aren't going to use. Some of those gcds will collide with MS or CS and aren't exchanged 1:1 with Slam. Every gcd that won't collide will use a Slam for some rage that would have been used on HS. Also Slam isn't doing as much dpet as MS or OP and thus doesn't account for 10% of the "special" damage we do. My ballpark estimation of this change is in the range of 5%sh, which is simply great don't misunderstand me.

EDIT: Including berserk stance we can get a significant buff, but it's significant only if you compare 4.1 in bers vs live in battle. Given it will be easier it must be included, but I don't think this estimation was based on this side effect.

Rage on a target dummy is rather predictable and manageable, you rarely use HS mostly because you rarely run close enough to cap to risk wasting it. With 10% additional attack speed and raid damage the chances that you have to use HS increases dramatically, also at the expense of Slam tbh. On a sidenote, DC produces at least 5 HSs every 2 minutes, 4 in the duration and one just after it (since you'll end up at 100 rage every time but in the exe phase).

SoO value is more or less modelled as Deep Wounds, where every spell has a component due to it. We won't use Rend anymore and we'll fit more Slams with these changes, so we actually lost some procs (Rend application could proc Os, Slam has the same chance but delays a swing and costs more thus reducing HS usage), the average damage of Os is dropping by 7-8% due to CS nerf and mastery relative damage dropped compared to STR and Crit, but not compared to haste or exp.

This change, especially considering the internal cd, isn't going to bring it up where it is on live compared to those stats, simply because those stats will raise thanks to increased proc chances aswell (especially crit considering DW). It gives Mastery an evident edge versus haste anyway.
Raising its damage would have retuned Mastery vs crit since the DW component wouldn't have scaled (on PTR the tooltip still says 100% normal damage and the chances are increased by 10% per mastery point; I didn't test its damage on a dummy tho).

Aedilhild · 03/02/11, 11:29 AM

For literal "stat parity," Mastery would need its damage increased by 30-40% and its per-point proc chance raised to 3% — or a combination thereof — to approach Crit's 60 or so latter-day SEP. Strikes of Opportunity would then contribute considerable DPS and damage done, but it would beg the question: with a source of damage such as that, would continued increases for Mortal Strike, Slam and Overpower be necessary?

Regardless, for those of us concerned about Arms' scaling and the apparent cycle of overtune/underscale, what the recent change to Mastery represents in terms of design priorities is most welcome.

jugajuga · 03/02/11, 11:27 PM

Originally Posted by hellord

We gain 10 rage every Rend we aren't going to use. Some of those gcds will collide with MS or CS and aren't exchanged 1:1 with Slam.

Agreed. I used Slam as an example because it's our lowest priority GCD. However, in the case of where Rend application would've collided with MS/CS, it would thus be replaced by MS/CS and for increased uptime on those and overall better damage contribution than using Slam. This is why my estimate uses an overall damage increase by having 1 more GCD every ~15secs.

Originally Posted by hellord

Including berserk stance we can get a significant buff

Agreed. This will be an additional buff prob in the range of 4%.

Originally Posted by hellord

With 10% additional attack speed and raid damage the chances that you have to use HS increases dramatically, also at the expense of Slam tbh.

Are you saying that if we get a rage spike (from damage) in the middle of MS/OP, we'll have use HS or risk rage capping? I think this situation will be fairly controllable such that we can manage our rage to use as much rage for Slam first before HS. MS+OP+Slam = 40 rage. If we maintain our rage between 40-70 most of the time we should have enough to fill every full GCD and react to sudden rage spikes from damage (which from our previous conversation is now only in the range of 30 rage at max). As arms we also don't need to worry about miss streaks at all.

Originally Posted by hellord

Raising its damage would have retuned Mastery vs crit since the DW component wouldn't have scaled.

I must've missed a previous conversation, can DW ticks proc SoO? Or are you saying SoO crits proc DW and thus more SoO will increases crit value? In either case, increasing Str and Crit scaling may help arms get closer to fury's scaling, which is a good thing; this in combination with the Fury's decreased Str, Crit scaling from reduced based mastery.

hellord · 03/03/11, 5:41 AM

Originally Posted by jugajuga

1) Agreed. I used Slam as an example because it's our lowest priority GCD. However, in the case of where Rend application would've collided with MS/CS, it would thus be replaced by MS/CS and for increased uptime on those and overall better damage contribution than using Slam. This is why my estimate uses an overall damage increase by having 1 more GCD every ~15secs.

2) Agreed. This will be an additional buff prob in the range of 4%.

3) Are you saying that if we get a rage spike (from damage) in the middle of MS/OP, we'll have use HS or risk rage capping? I think this situation will be fairly controllable such that we can manage our rage to use as much rage for Slam first before HS. MS+OP+Slam = 40 rage. If we maintain our rage between 40-70 most of the time we should have enough to fill every full GCD and react to sudden rage spikes from damage (which from our previous conversation is now only in the range of 30 rage at max). As arms we also don't need to worry about miss streaks at all.

4) I must've missed a previous conversation, can DW ticks proc SoO? Or are you saying SoO crits proc DW and thus more SoO will increases crit value? In either case, increasing Str and Crit scaling may help arms get closer to fury's scaling, which is a good thing; this in combination with the Fury's decreased Str, Crit scaling from reduced based mastery.

1) But while it's easy to understand we gain a GCD every X, is not as easy to know how we replace it. We gain reasonably 1 GCD every 17sh that is half of a Slam in therms of rage, so the other half will be subtracted from something else, ideally from rage cap, but most probably from HS. The overall increase you presented is like adding a Slam every 10s or so on top of whatever we do.

2) In the best case scenario it will be more in the range of 2.5-3% since with perfect play we aren't probably going to use berserk stance for more than 70% uptime.

3) I'm simply saying that with such a shallow resource pool and randomly variable (with increased variability in raid situations) you can't simply drive all the resources into your best DPR move whenever you want. The higher you increase the treshold for HS the more likely you are going to waste rage due to cap, the lower the treshold the less likely you'll have rage to Slam when you have the opportunity.
Having less rage to spend on Rend means not every single bit of that rage can be spent on Slam. It's a rather complex system that propagates longer than we can predict and we can't simply eyeball the real effects.

4) DW scaling is based on frequency, and the smaller the damage the higher the value of crit due to DW (being tied to weapon damage and not based on the attack that procced it). Especially after the CS nerf, Os is probably going to scale better with crit. Since the value of stat is relative, increasing its damage would have tuned up mastery vs crit, increasing its frequency will not change or even increase the gap.

Iluwen_de · 03/08/11, 5:53 PM

I am curious whether one of you guys who switch between berserker and battle stance constantly could actually provide some logs from live raids?

I think I am playing very, very well myself, I checked a lot of log from top ranked Arms-warriors and I don´t see anyone with very good live results acutually doing this. I practiced a little and I cannot pull off the stance-dancing effective enough to profit from the theoretical 2-3% damage increase if you do it perfectly - and I think in a live encoutner this would be even less the case.

Resike · 03/08/11, 8:20 PM

I used to switch zerker with deadly+recklessness up, for 10sec hstrike and slam spam. Its insane burst. I got my 4th pc t11 lately and today i did 22-23k dps on singletarget fights.

hellord · 03/08/11, 8:29 PM

Actually while using berserk stance is a small dps increase, it's surely annoying to do it without 2/2 TM.
Personally I'm not using much of berserk stance nowadays, partly cause of the problem Resike mentioned (which is posted on EU forum since a rather lot, no sign of changes on PTR in last week's build), and partly because you need a lot of additional attention to not waste rage and not dump your OP uptime.

With 4.1 changes tanks will be able to interrupt reliably, which makes DoW less useful (I actually find it's needed to interrupt without dps losses). Rend going away means we have 10% more potential uptime of berz stance and additional space to slam. Using a dancing playstyle makes your expertise valuable (more or less as valuable as crit up to high levels) and 2/2 TM will provide a nice dps increase because of this.

You end up standing in berz for single target and swap as soon as you used MS and your rage drops under 75, use OP (ideally use 2 in a row, but at a high risk) and then swapping back immediatedly after. With a simple use of macros this is very doable and grants up to 70%sh uptime of berserk stance.

In current content and considering Rage of Ages bug stance dancing is viable only with very low latency, 2/2 TM and no requirements but to beat the boss. The only exception is bladestorm since you can simply macro the swap and throw an additional whirlwind before stepping back in battle. Anyway, if you run with low expertise there is no way you can get better results with stance dancing.

Resike · 03/08/11, 8:49 PM

Why would you need exp for stance dancing? Any what else you can talent instead of 2/2 TM?

tentfox · 03/08/11, 9:49 PM

Originally Posted by Resike

Why would you need exp for stance dancing? Any what else you can talent instead of 2/2 TM?

Because Exp is valued low due to the fact you make back lost damage on a dodge with overpower, and you cannot overpower in berserker stance.

sean.awesome · 03/08/11, 10:40 PM

in regards stance dance uptime being more accessible because of the Mortal Strike change, because the stance change does not cause a GCD but rather a stance cd of 1 second, you could create a macro such as:

/cast Battle Stance
/cast Overpower

and then ideally place a macro such as:

/cast Overpower
/cast Berserker Stance

in exactly the same spot on your battle stance bars. Not only does this allow for less attention to be payed to your CD's but it fires off both spells in the sequence and it allows you to switch back to Berserker Stance with a second push of the button.

The only real question is whether or not its a dps increase over Incite on single target fights.

on second thought macroing a stance switch to all your other moves such as mortal strike and slam to put you in zerker stance might be easier as you'd never even have to pay attention to it.