Arms DPS: 4.0 and Cataclysm
 

Arms appears to once again be a viable raid spec and worthy of its own thread. Lets kick off discussion with this post from Hellord.

From the first minutes on the dummies and hrc 5mans,i ve found that Slam has become a bit non-existant on my rotation.HS does a lot more damage especially with 3/3 incite.Is it worth changing Improved slam for something else?Even Sudden Death seems appealing for the extra rage it reserves on Execute-spam phases.I have already changed Glyph of Slam for the Bladestorm one.

Can any1 post how the Arms warrior acts in a raiding environment so far?We havent set foot on icc with the guild yet(too many ppl having problems with UI and addons).

Ill try to get some damage parses up of arms in the next day or two. And yes the damage output of slam vs the rage cost makes it almost useless in the arms rotation at the moment.

We did some ICC-raiding on Thursday, that was before the hotfix in EU. Atm Arms and Fury have pretty much the same DPS, ranging anywhere from 13-15k single target. Will have to wait and see how much the DPS improves when the hotfix is deployed.

They had already deployed the hotfix a couple of days ago:

Can't find the actual source, but it's on mmo-champion.com anyway.

As I said in the FAQ post, with the recent changes Mastery is really close if not higher than crit, at least for 20%sh+ crit levels. It is also very likely that expertise becomes more important given that OP didn't get any buff and mastery has been buffed a lot.

For a finer result we probably need a working simulation with raidbuffs, but I'd say that crit, exp and mastery may just not be reforged at all since their value is so close that there seems to be no reason to stack any of them, with the only exception of Exp since is easily cappable, especially at level 80.

It's worth noticing that HS and Exe got a coefficient buff (HS seems to be .75AP baseline) that is not reported in the notes, and MS was buffed aswell to something like 185% weapon damage.

I just reforged/changed from 28% Haste, 41% Crit an 16% Mastery to 17% Haste, 35% Crit an 40% Mastery and got a dps loss from 400-500 on the Hero dummy. Testet both Rotations (with only Slam and only HS).

Op not critting as expected.
 

With BS up I have 40.28% crit chance, this should make Overpower an autocrit each time. For some reason this is not the case. My first thoughts were I must have let BS fall, but that doesn't seem possible given BS gives rage and I use it off CD.

What might be the case here?

Found out I crit less against mobs higher level than me. Go figure.

There are two different priority lists, one sorted according to DPRage and one according to DPGCD. In Wrath you shifted between those two a lot during combat depending on rage situation, including predictable incoming damage and your weapon swing.

Now out of Deadly Calm you are 'rage starved'. There are no calcualtions like should you delay your MS for that extra Slam because you can easily wait for the MS and use Slam right after it. Also without Colossus Smash and with expertise softcap there are no unpredictable procs, you know exactly what happens next.
OP and MS have by far the best DPRage-ratio, but they are limited. You will use MS every 4,5 seconds and you will use OP about every 6 seconds. Those two spells alone will not consume every rage. There are two possible rage-dumps, Slam and heroic Strike. Because you can neither spam Slam nor HS there is only the question which one is better DPRage-wise. There is no scenario were you will sometimes use HS and sometimes Slam. As for now HS seems to be better and as long as you never hit 100 Rage while having HS on CD there is no use in using Slam. Even if you want to use Battle Trance HS is better, althought Incite seems stronger.

Inside Deadly Calm you will use the Spells with the best DPGCD-ratio because there is no cost. Now it is a little more complicated since OP only have 1 second GCD instead of 1,5 seconds so there will be the question if you should use Slam and delay MS for 1 second or wait 0,5 seconds for MS. As far as I can tell the last one seems superior but numbers may change the next weeks. Also it is recommended to use Deadly Calm shortly after using Rend so you don't get a cost free Rend instead of a cost free Slam.

Execute phase is far more complicated. You could use Execute every GCD because it only needs a minimum of 10 Rage and also 10 Rage will be left at least. You are also 'rage starved' so you should also use Rend and OP as usual. I'm not sure if MS should be used during Execute phase too but Lambs to the Slaughter seems really strong. If you use Deadly calm during this phase you may just spam execute, the damage with high rage is far too superior, but it could be useful to use MS for Lambs to the Slaughter and also Rend may have a higher DPGCD-Value than Execute but OP doesn't.

Seems like cruelty is broken, it doesnt give the (full) 10% Crit Bonus wich leads to big holes in the WC uptime.

http://img259.imageshack.us/img259/9...1710145403.jpg

I also testet 30% haste VS 17% VS 11% and I didn't feel very big difference between these stats in rage generation.

What about reaplying Rend with Thunderclap instead? I tested it and it's a DPS increase with little effect on Rage. Of course, I have it glyphed so it's just 5 rage more. Has anyone else done it like this instead of just using Rend?

In a raid situation, you will have haste buffs. On the dummy, you do not. So, you should have more rage generation in the first gear setting, allowing for more damage on the dummy. In a raid, the haste that you lost by regearing will be recouped. The same will happen with Crit percentage. As such, all of the other stats (Mastery and Strength) increase in relative value while haste and crit decrease in relative value. You should have more DPS in a raid with your second setup than with your first setup.

As for execute phase, I wouldn't drop Mortal Strike. As you said, Lambs to the Slaughter is very strong, especially paired with an Execute. Additionally, MS is how we get our 10% damage increase from Wrecking Crew. By dropping MS, we lose both of those effects. I would think it would be best to keep rend up and drop Heroic Strike unless Deadly Calm is on, while still using MS to Execute and Overpower after Execute benefits from Lambs to the Slaughter (while Execute still hits as hard as it does at least). This hinges heavily on how much rage you are getting in though.

I haven't seen any parses detailing exactly how much harder Execute hits when compared to Mortal Strike in a raid setting, so if it is really not a contest then it might be best to just spam it.

With Tactical Mastery now allowing arms warriors to retain up to 75(!) rage on stance change, I am finding it very easy to change to berserker stance during the rotation. Correct me if I am wrong, but the constraints on NOT being in berserker stance seem to only be dealing with Taste for Blood procs and rend refreshes. This allows one to change stances from battle to berserker immediately after an overpower, while rend still has at least several seconds remaining. You can spend enough time in berserker to do perhaps 2 mortal strikes and 1-2 heroic strikes depending on the rage situation. Then get back to battle stance for OP/rend application.

Am I mistaken that well executed stance dancing is clearly an optimization to performing your favorite Arms rotation and simply staying in battle?

If this is a good thing to do, some other notes:
- I can imagine staggering the timing of OP within TfB windows (late, early, late, early, etc.) would allow you to consolidate some of the stance changes.
- If it turns out blade storm is appropriate to use in your situation, you probably want to do that in beserker stance. You will come out of it with MS and HS up, and a TfB proc waiting for you in battle stance. Additionally, you'll probably have 100 rage. The follow-up is to simply MS and HS to drop below 75 threshold, stance change, and resolve the TfB. This does mean you need to start the bladestorm with a) TfB proc on 'cooldown', and b) a bit over 7.5 seconds until the next TfB proc is due to either expire or be overwritten. We've always had to abide by condition a, but b is slightly more strict than a battle-stance bladestorm.
- You can change stances all you want during inner rage, as long as the final stance-change you perform is at least one white-hit prior to the end of inner rage. You'll still end up with 100 rage in the stance of your choice.
- A well-timed stance change into berserker is a great time to use reck, as (by design) it is the point at which you are least likely to use an OP very soon (which we know has low to zero recklessness benefit).

From my testing, it doesn't look like the 115% WD mastery has been implemented yet. When it is, I think Mastery could overtake Crit as a desirable stat.

What would you be speccing out of and would it be worth it to spend a GCD every few GCDs to gain a 5% damage increase on MS and HS?