Hit roflstomps haste. They are not close enough for there to be any question at all as to which is superior. Hit has crushed haste the entire expansion, and there is no conceivable gear setup(besides at hit hard cap) where haste catches up.

Agreed. That's the reason behind it at least, although somewhat of a poor design for things to end up that way. Without a ton of hit to back it up, a gain in haste means so very little unless you are connecting on those faster hits. So for haste to be valuable at all, you need a proportionally high amount of hit to go along with it, which just isn't worth it when you factor in how much nicer crit treats us. That's why it sucks.

On the other hand, it appears that some sims are showing mastery as falling behind even haste for SMF at least. I wonder how well that holds up on the varying gear levels or if it pretty much has sunk down in the stat priority overall.

I did a few experiments between haste and hit and haste has always pulled through for me. If we're going with heavy hit builds should we be prioritizing heroic strike now? I'd like a little bit of discussion on whether our rotation priorities change with this, because hit just doesn't seem to be working for me.

The guide says landsoul prefers haste and yet he's reforging to hit. So...

What do you mean by "Stance Dancing" on the Arms spec? Switching to Battle Stance to Overpower twice or just casting Overpower to keep the Tier 4pc Bonus up?

Thanks in advice.

Thats the jist of it, you can simplify things by binding your stance changes into the abilities (only recommended with Tactical mastery 2/2)

Just a series of macros, with the correct stance in them and its usually easier to have the buttons mirrored in zerker and battle so you always hit the same key for the same ability.

it does require a double press to activate the ability (one for stance one for attack)

i.e. From zerker - MS > OP > Slam == MS once > Op button twice > Slam button twice

The macro's are like the below for your abilities

#showtooltip Overpower
/cast [stance:3] Battle Stance
/cast Overpower

#showtooltip Mortal Strike
/cast [stance:1] Berserker Stance
/cast Mortal Strike

I've found that although you can make mistakes with this macro (change stance before op is ready etc) with the removal of rend refreshing in 4.1 its about 1-2k+ dps increase on most fights.

After testing the stance dancing, I personally opted to pass on it. Reasons are as follows:

1) Firstly, the numbers people post are a bit outlandish. 2k+ dps? The whole bonus is less then 5% - its 110% vs 105% so less then 5% increase, and not everything is perfectly multiplicative, so in fact its about 4%. Then add the fact that basically the overpowers (15% of our dmg) and 1/6 of whites/opportunity strikes , dont benefit from it (since you still cast them in Battle Stance. That reduces it by further 20% so its more like 3.2% bonus now. So even at this stage to get 2k+ dps you would have to do 60k+ dps otherwise - thats likely on like halfus, but there are other factors there so lets not count that fight. For a typical 20-30k dps fight the bonus is around 600-900 dps. AT THIS STAGE.

2) You do sometimes lose rage when stance dancing, even with Tmastery. It also takes time. Granted , overpowers having 1 sec gcd make it less of an issue, but think about it this way - if due to the stance dance, over the round of 12 sec you lose 3% of time - ~350ms , you are barely breaking even. And it easily can happen. Im not even getting at major mistakes etc.

All in all I find the stance dance bonus to be below 400-600 dps - which can be significant, but its not as high as some people make it. It also only applies to single target fights - on multitarget, tclapping to spread rend etc is a better dps increase. I also have higher latency (US servers, playing from Europe ) - which might apply to some other people, making it harder.

Finally I dont believe its here to stay. Blizzard took clear efforts to make arms warriors use battle stance, and even 4.2 notes show further steps in that direction (namely making recklessness etc usable in any stance). I dont see that mechanic as intended or desired, and I expected it to be purged.

Again even 1.2k seem too high although way closer to the target. I think my assessment with perfect rotation but lag and reaction taken into account is around 600.

Now there is one more thing that isnt covered - to make this work, you need to overpower twice (with dance like 2.5 sec) at PRECISELY given time. There is no leeway of delaying it like you normally would, so you can make sure you hit every MS. So your rotation will miss mortal strikes, gain some slams, but overall i estimated the dps loss just from the rage loss from battle trance to 200-250. Then there is lower enrage uptime from lower number of MS.

Overall yes, i noticed a considerable dps increase in the patch. But stance dance is borderline even for me (again i do have higher then average lag which i blame for that, still i dont think with low ping it would suddenly become extremely potent).

One more thing to consider though is dropping overpowers completely, in scenarios where you have excess rage. Rend ticking/refreshing means you dont lose damage from that, and overpowers while potent due to their crit, dont hit that hard. Their main purpose is to conserve rage - which isnt always necessary. Seems fights like Sinestra for example, staying in zerker and completely ignoring overpowers could be worth it. Slam hits for 50% more from the base multiplier (comparing slam in zerker to overpower in battle) + the pretty hefty extra damage (which seems to mostly offset the white swing loss).

Hello EJ

I have a question about Expertise. I notice the prot guideline stat 26 expertise, However I notice all of the high and mid game tanks are around 3-10 expertise. Did I miss something ? or is it only good between 3-26 ? Thanks for your time.

Expertise, aswell as hitrating now that pummel does not require hit, is purely a threat improving stat. If you do not need to produce more threat, you don't need more expertise. The reason many high end protection warriors don't gear for expertise or hit is they simply don't need more TPS.

The reasoning behind this is that once your vengeance stacks up you have enough AP to be able to maintain and build a threat lead on the few attacks that do land.

Apologies, I went over my data again, and noticed a major oversight.... I used the wrong weapon on one of the tests.

I retested and the difference is a little over the 500 dps mark with no proc or haste results to skewer it.

This macro do not show Overpower shining while in berseker stance, please help

Use the Light my macro addon or use bartender.

I'm no longer actively playing WoW and will similarly cease maintaining the FAQ. That said I'm not aware of any major changes in 4.3 that warrant an overhaul of the FAQ so it should suffice until Mists of Pandaria.