I am curious as to why this is myself, since I have been doing CS > MS since forever (This would change once I have my 4 piece).

Is it because of Battle Trance? Or is just because the numbers from spreadsheets show overall damage to be much higher doing MS > CS at all times if both are up. I was always taught that whenever CS is up, it takes precedence over everything since (I thought) you want to maximize your uptime of the CS debuff on the target.

I know it doesn't always come out in practice like this, since I almost always squeeze 1-2 GCDs before refreshing CS on the gamble I won't get another SD proc, and it's served me fairly well, but does anyone have any proof as to why we should always MS > CS regardless of T13 4 piece?

Ran, some quick napkin math showed me that my slam is still higher damage per rage than a 20 rage cost heroic strike on a target dummy.

This was very quick napkin math done by doing 30 slams and 30 heroic strikes with the same buffs up, then dividing the average result by the rage cost (or theoretical rage cost in heroic strikes case).

I did the math with Slam costing 20 rage instead of 15, as I wasn't 100% sure what we loose in white damage from casting slam.

In my current gear with no buffs, slam was doing about 652 damage per rage, with heroic strike doing about 233 damage per rage at 30 rage, and 356 damage per rage at 20 rage.

I'd wait for smarter men to confirm though (or I'll do more when I have more time).

You're neglecting several things:
-Slams cast time also delays the melee swings, so you need to account for the 0.5s lost of melee+crit rate of melee+deepwounds bonus on that crit rate+mastery
-Heroic strike's incite and high crit rate boosts the deepwounds proc chance
I was fairly sure it was confirmed that you should still slam>irHS a few pages back though.

Plus short term buffs, such as trinkets and procs, such as enrage, and RNG will skew your results, therefore performing one test to ascertain whether slam is more DPR than Heroic Strike + Inner Rage is not reliable or remotely accurate.

Firstly, just because the top warriors do it doesn't mean it's optimal.
Secondly, can you link us to some evidence of these top warriors doing it, as far as my own digging had gone I have not seen anyone make this switch as arms?
This argument isn't something that can be solved by napkin math and unless an experienced theorycrafter that has the resources (MATLAB etc) and willingness to do it you most likely will not see an empirical answer.

I know that haste is a horrible stat for arms, but the only 410 belt and one of the rings you can currently obtain have haste on them. That being said, is the 410 Belt off heroic Hagara, and the 410 Breathstealer Band Better than other alternatives? I am looking at SEP calculators trying to determine if the extra Strength from 397-410 item level boost is worth the crit-haste loss you would have. Its either the badge belt / ring, or these 410 rings for clarification.

Are there any solid SEP numbers out there at this point? Maybe Landsoul or someone else can chime in and give people a general idea of how the SEP work for haste/mastery in the bigger scope. This would make a lot of itemization choices easier for people.

Incite is just a crit modifier. As far as I can tell from testing incite gives about 30% extra crit for HS. Using your 20% crit, HS would have about a 50% crit chance. So assuming 20 rage HS: 0.5(1040)+0.5(1809) = 1424.5 DPR which is still less than slam. We would need a significant amount more crit chance to have HS be more dpr than slam through IR.

Also slams dpr should be a bit more diminished if you take into acount that white attacks have a 10% chance to give 20 rage, although it's a very small amount... maybe 0.3 rage per slam depending on how much haste is involved.

The big question that I have has been mentioned before but not investigated. Should we prioritize MS > CS with the T13 4pc?

HS with Incite-Buff means only one HS used after getting the buff and this has a 100% crit chance.

Also, you should priorize MS>CS with 4pT13, even the CS-uptime will be better.

Greetings.

Lately been playing around with my spec, going between 3/3 incite and 1/3 incite 2/2 blood and thunder .
So far , It seems that in AoE situations (spine/madness/yor hc for example) benefits much more,
while I havent had much of a decrease on single target.
Might have been due to low % of hs (used only when over 85 rage,prefer to slam on a free GCD) and thus a liability to judge the result myself.
Can I have your thoughts on this?
Note that I was away from the game for almost a year and dont have any recent parces,will post, if needed,on next reset.

Do not do this. While not a huge portion of a fight is done in the last 25%, frequently (at least with the majority of Heroic Bosses) the last 20-25% blocks are the most important. Morchok = enrage. Yor'sahj = get potentially 1 less ooze pack. Zon'zozz = Hits hard as hell and likely soaking the black phase. Ultraxion = Tons of raid damage. Gunship = Blackthorn hits hard as hell.

The short answer to the question is spec appropriately to whatever your current progression is. I used to flop specs between 3/3 incite and 1/3 incite 2/2 BnT based on what boss we were pulling. When Yor'sahj was progress I was always 1/3, 2/2 and it was my job (no dk for howling spam) to make sure the adds had the -10% attack speed.

That said, I don't know what you're hitting that you're waiting till 85 rage for a heroic strike, but man. As you get more accustomed to your rage gen and use inner rage (-10 rage per) more frequently you should be able to get a better feel to use HS at far less rage than that. I.E. You just hit MS->CS and you know you'll have a overpower + MS + Slam coming. If you're floating at 40-45 rage, you're about to use a 5 rage ability in overpower and you'll have another auto swing before you need to MS. If inner rage is up, use your HS in between that overpower + MS. You'll have plenty of rage to float the next several abilities you'll need.