Voxx

I was just wondering what high-end raiding guilds/dps warriors think of the current situation with dps warriors. As it is now we output quite decent dps, nothing groundbreaking, nothing negligible. I'm just wondering how much our damage will go up with the higher level gear.

Pre-TBC we scaled insanely well with gear upgrades due to the fact that better gear gave us better rage generation. As it is now however, rage generation is far from our worst problem with dps. When I raid as fury, I'm always put in a group with an enhancement shaman and three rogues. I bring battle shout, shaman brings windfury and strength of earth. Knowing this, windfury adds a lot to my rage generation, but it's currently at the point where I have trouble getting rid of all my rage in a threat-efficient way. I've taken to keeping Piercing Howl up as a debuff on the mobs/bosses in order to up the tank's threat, and to up my dps a tiny bit. Even with Heroic Strike/Cleave spam, there are times where it's a struggle to keep my rage under 100 (so as not to waste potential from a full rage bar + white hit generating no rage).

Basically my question is: what do you see as a future for dps warriors, considering our once limiting factor (rage generation) has all but been removed, and our new limiting factor is putting our rage to more damage per rage point?

The only stats I can see that help this are attack power and crit, and I suppose the newly added armor penetration on Tier 6. Are we going to see dps warriors stacking 8/10 strength and 8/10 crit gems and ignoring +hit? Is there really a future at all for dps warriors considering the difficulty in increasing damage per rage we can do?

 

Randor

Warriors are the most gear dependent class and as gear continues to improve, so will the dps an Arms or Fury warrior will bring to the table.

There are always was to dump rage without the extra threat from Heroic Strike: imp cleave, imp slam come to mind.

A little confused by what you mean by spamming Piercing Howl. I was under the impression that it didn't count as a true Daze and didn't add on HS damage (Blizz tweaking it as not to make it too OP for BGs).

There's also imp thunderclap and demo shout to use, both of which will help a MT out more than PH will.

And if PvE-specced and rage isn't a problem nor is keeping Flurry up, I'd consider a slower, harder-hitting OH if you have a fast one now.

I do find it interesting that much of the dps plate gear seen from BT seem to have +haste to it.

Anyway, I think there will be always a spot for a savvy dps warrior in a raid, one who can take on multiple roles, be it off-tanking, debuff bitch or damage dealer.

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Voxx

I agree we've always been the most gear dependant class, but in the past the gear dependancy came from our inability to generate enough rage without the gear. Now we can generate more than enough rage, with gear from Gruul's Lair, Karazhan and Heroics. I'm just wondering how our gear dependancy will continue when we wont benefit much from the increase in rage generation since in some cases we already have more than we can safely use.

Global cooldown limits the use of Slam, threat limits the use of Cleave and Heroic Strike. In my opinion, our limitation now isn't the rage we need to do damage, but the damage we can do with the rage we have.

As for Piercing Howl counting as a daze effect for Heroic Strike added damage, I'm fairly sure it counts as the daze. Bosses that are immune to the slow effect still get the debuff that says "Dazed." I've also noticed that when I was tanking and someone was keeping Piercing Howl up, my tps was in general 30-50 higher than without (this was at Gruul, so rage wasn't a limiting factor). However that could be just a "feeling" and not really hard evidence.

 

Trezan

I have a question regarding the ideal gearing up of a Fury warrior. I have a druid I played as my main, opting to reroll for the expansion as a Belf pally. Both of which did quite a bit of tanking. I've decided though that I wish I had intially re-rolled as a warrior. So I've done that and of course fell in love with DPS over tanking.

Anyways... My warrior is Specced 0/46/15 for Dps and OTing when needed. I just hit 70 last week and have been actively trying to gear him up, which I've done a decent job of so far. I understand the importance of hit, while also maintaing an appropriate mixture of AP and crit.

My main problem is trying to theory craft what is the best possible weapon selection. I've noticed a lot of the warriors use a Slow hard hitting mainhand with a quick offhand. I can contribute this to the relatively ease with which one can acquire the arena offhand.

However, I've heard multiple comments saying that a slow offhand is really quite good for both rage generation and dps. Up till this point i've merely needed to take the higher dps weapon as an upgrade.

So my question is this: In a raid setting for DPSing, what is the ideal style of dual wielding? A Slow mainhand with a fast offhand, a slow mainhand with and offhand,a fast mainhand with a slow offhand, or A fast mainhand and offhand? (Assuming equivalent dps for each so that it can be pure theory)

Thank you very much in advance.

 

Graul

I think as long as Warriors are getting "meaningful" DPS stat upgrades on gear it will get better. The main problem is that the items have to drop first, which means it will take a while longer for a Warrior to catch up to the "real DPS classes" (I hate that term) depending on how lucky you are. I think most of our damage though, after "rage is no longer a factor" will obviously have to come from bigger BT's and better white damage through haste and AP.

And now that haste is being nerfed, it essentially becomes a sidegrade stat to AP and crit, and is no longer "the" stat to focus on.

 

Iol

I hate the term "Real Tanking Classes" =P

My question is, are you starting to feel the Threat limiting your damage output ceiling sooner than expected? As in, coming faster than gear upgrades. In an extreme case, would you be up to the point where just auto attacking and doing Heroic Strike when you can be all you can afford to do without pulling aggro?

 

Graul

If all I used were global cooldowns and auto attack, threat would be fine. It doesn't seem to grossly scale right now. The main issue with me at least is that I would be sitting at over 50 rage full time even after all of the globals if I did not toss in a cleave or Heroic every now and again. That is also upping my DPS slightly, but it's also what seems to be the biggest issue with threat right now. I also do not understand your question. Why would a Warrior just auto attack and use the single highest threat DPS ability? Doing just Heroics is really bad. Doing them over something like BT and WW is even worse. If you are just hypothetically asking if I could spam Heroic, (without using any other abilities) without pulling aggro, then the answer is no.

 

Iol

I think i wasn't clear enough... What i meant is does threat output scale faster than dps output. If so how bad is it unbalanced.

what i meant by is if that situation is possible to happen in the current state of the game.

 

Voxx

This is the problem I was referring to, we have the rage we need to do damage (in some cases more than enough) but the problem lies in our ability to either output that damage in a threat efficient way, or to output enough damage to equal the other classes.

As for the question about only auto-attack and Heroic Strike, no that scenario would not come up. Firstly because Heroic Strike is a high-threat ability, and really not all that great for dps. It could potentially come to the point where all you can do is Bloodthirst/Whirlwind on the cooldowns and auto attack. There have been some trash pulls and threat sensitive boss fights where I've been limited to using only Bloodthirst, or only auto-attack. There were even a couple cases where I had to turn off my auto-attack for a period of time due to threat.

In general though, I don't see threat as our major issue anymore. Blessing of Salvation is, for now, enough to deal with the threat we generate from our dps. My original post and it's question is asking whether other warriors see a future in the "dps warrior." Simply because I don't see our gear scaling in proportion to other classes anymore.

Like I've said previously, the gear upgrades we got pre-TBC increased our dps substantially because they gave us the rage to dps. Now we already HAVE the rage we need to dps, we just can't put it to good enough use.

As for the question about weapon speeds, a faster offhand benefits you more from a rage generation point of view. As you find yourself with more than enough rage however, you might want to consider swapping out a fast offhand for a slower, harder hitting one. Not that it really makes much difference in terms of the dps you'll output, it just wont feel so bad in terms of rage that you can't use. :P

 

Gasmask

This is what I've found to be true. When I have an enhancement shaman, I'm running at about 3500ap, 30% crit, and 16.5% hit. However, once Bloodthirst and Whirlwind are on cooldown, I don't really have anything to do. I'm constantly maxed out on rage, spamming heroic strike as fast as I can so I don't feel like I'm wasting rage generation while capped at 100.

Threat isn't as much an issue for me, as I have the fankriss trinket and use it during deathwish at engage, providing a nice buffer for the MT.

CasualGamer

 

Gronx

I've been wondering about exactly that problem, the heroic strike threat vs damage issue, that we even now, as dual wield dps warriors, runs into.

So, what can we, with the way the warrior mechanics currently works, do?

Right now i'm playing around with 2-hand fury, which actually seems to have alot of potential, and before you go "dual wield or MS" on me like the typical 2 hand arms warrior.

What i'm currently playing around with is basically to try to apply the basics of how hunters dps' to a warrior mechanics, centered around the use of improved slam.

Improved slam is one awesome skill, not AP normalised, and when timed perfectly, you get a full non normalised attack, affected by impale, capable of proc'ing windfury (with a 2hander), for 0.5 seconds of lost auto attack time, if you apply it directly after a white attack.

Applying a slam after each auto attack is the basics of what i try to do currently, then apply a special afterwards, and wait those 0.3 seconds for the next white attack.

This also gives you an allmost 99% flurry uptime, as you basically have 2 special attacks for each white attack, all of those capable of proc'ing flurry, which means that the calculation for flurry would start to say 100% - the chance that i haven't landed a crit the last 8 attacks.

assuming a 100% flurry uptime, this gives the 2 hand fury warrior, with a speed 3.7 weapon, an attack cycle looking like:

You lose some BT damage here, as there'll be (if you add a bit of lag) 7 seconds or so between the BT's, there's also the issue of WW only being applied roughly each 14 seconds, due to the cooldown not being up when the next "time to apply a non BT speciel" comes up, this gives time to apply shouts + rampage though, so not exactly wasted dps time.

A sidenote here, is that this build benefits greatly from an additional haste effect, a dragonspine trophy proc for example, would put the auto attack timer at 2.38, which with the 0.5 sec slam cast time, would give you a close to optimal 3 second cycle, with auto - slam - special - ready for next auto attack.

Lets try to look at the differences between 2 hand fury and dual wield fury again:

Dual wield gets:

Roughly 20% more white damage (was what playing around with the spreadsheet gave me)
A higher and more steady rage income (which is close to a non issue, as our ragegain in a raid enviroment is high)
the ability to apply a weapon buff to your offhand

Two hand fury gets:

A higher flurry uptime
Benefits more from windfury, as the build will be landing roughly as many mainhand + special attacks as the dual wield fury build, while proc'ing a big fat 2 hander hit, instead of a one hander attack.
A pure damage to threat ratio, without HS adding additional threat.
The bonus from 3/5 two hander specialisation, which you can get without missing any important PvE dps talents
A higher percentage of damage comming from specials, thus making impale a better dps talent.
No low offhand crit's canceling one's deep wound effect, thus making deep wound actually tick for ok ammounts relatively often.



In a lagfree enviroment, this seems like two hand fury is more than capable of doing equal damage to a dual wield fury build, but if you take lag and human errors into equation, it becomes way more even.

I've just started to play around with two hand fury, but it seems viable, i'm still cancelling some of my auto attacks due to making mistakes with slam and such, and still i'm close to the level of dps i had while dualwielding before.

Aside from all this, it's also fun, at least to me, to try out something new, and this actually demands more from the warrior than just spamming skills, it requires some ammount of timing and adapting to haste proc's and such, thus making it more fun to play, at least for me.

I sadly cannot find a dps spreadsheet taking these things into account, and since Excel hates me, the one i worked on myself, seems to have been corrupted, yay. But, if any of you could run this theory through a spreadsheet, it would be nice to see, even though i probably will be proved wrong in saying that 2 hand fury have as much a potential for dps as dual wield, without as much threat.

 

Apate

I wouldn't be opposed to a slight aggro reduction component to Rampage.

See you, auntie.

 

Randor

What spec do you use? I haven't tried a pure 2hand fury build but I do like imp slam on a 33-28 or 31-30 build (cookie cutter, yes, but also effective).

Pre-xpac, I was 2hand Fury for quite a long using Ashkandi. Come xpac, I leveled up as DW fury with points in Prot for instances.

Now, I've tried DW and 2hand builds, and I'm enjoying using a 2hander (Mooncleaver) when I'm not specced Protection.

The main reasons I've gone with the cookie cutter build are

a) I tend to get lots of Overpowers and hate losing rage switching stances.
b) In battle stance, I can keep imp Thunderclap up on the MT's target, offering some additional benefits besides shouts.
c) With Blood Frenzy, I can do the same for other melee folks.

I do keep imp Slam (I feel naked without it these days) and however many points I can in Flurry.

This build gives the same functionality as 2hand fury, offers some extra benefits and still puts out a large degree of damage.

For cycles, if I can get a charge in, I usually open with a Slam (IceHud casting bar helps with the timing), thunderclap, Heroic Strike, Mortal Strike, switch to zerker, slam again, Whirlwind (if no CC'd mobs around, HS-MS.

If a mob is near 30% hp, I'll do a couple of slams and it's usually time for execute by then.

Oh, and I have Mongoose on my axe and already have good crit and attack power the extra haste helps and can be boosted even more by my Abacus of Violent Odds.

So, it seems as the mechanics and cycles are very similar, just wondering how Bloodthirst compares as a special against Mortal Strike at that point.

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lav

Gonna try a 2h fury/slam build soon

 

Zurgat

Hmm. so. blade twisting, concussive barrage, etc.. they all work on bosses?
i always figured bosses were completely immune, so i skipped that talent.

might just be worth trying it then.

 

Graul

2h Fury is great, I'm just not sure how big of a difference it is though going at least 41 into Fury compared to just going 31/30. You lose 5% crit and 5% damage with 2h weapons (2% in your case) for an additional 250 + 10% AP. The main thing I noticed from it was that Flurry was not up quite as much, but Slams were higher in damage. BT was also higher than MS fully raid buffed.

 

Legedi

Funny, I was just looking for a thread about 2H warrior slam DPS. When I was leveling up my DW gear became pretty bad around 69. So I picked up a Crystalforged War Axe and tried a 2H slam build with axe spec. I was very impressed, but only stayed with that build for a week before going prot for tanking.

Fast forward to this weekend. I decided to have some fun with a Gorehowl, and went for a 31/30 build. I picked up both PvP and PvE talents. So I'm not optimized for one or the other. I had a discussion with some people about warrior slam DPS and came to the conclusion very similar to what Gronx said. On the one Gruul run I went on I was pleasantly surprised how well I did. What I would really like to see is if someone could make a DPS spreadsheet to plug some numbers in. I've tried, and fail horribly in making one myself.

This biggest perk to me for this build was it seems to take a fair amount of skill/timing to maximize it. It seems like a fun challenge. It also has the fun side effect of being a very good PvP build. IMO slam can do amazing things in PvP. I’ve just scraped the surface of what it can do.

I also found a mod by mistake that helps out with slam. It's called Quarts, and it is a timer bar mod. It adds a swing timer bar, so you can see when your next swing is going to happen. Helped me a lot with timing my slams.

Edit: Yeah "Quartz" not "Quarts"

 

• mutagen

Quartz! And come to think of it, it would be wonderful for timing Slams

Mutagen runs off to spend yet more gold respeccing and regearing his warrior alt.

 

lav

Slam dps last week. First time I had used a swing timer plus Magtheridon is nice cause he does not move.

http://www.lossendil.com/wws/?report...1832,2573&a=22

 

tedv

I don't primarily play a warrior, but I can relay this explanation from one of the best warriors I've ever raided with:

Dual wielding you want a fast mainhand and a slow offhand to minimize the number of flurry charges consumed by the lower damage offhand (only 62.5%).

Of course, that's assuming you can't get 100% flurry uptime. I didn't ask how the math changes when your crit is sufficiently high.

 

Nezralix

I apologize if this seems ignorant, but... how can warriors be so threat limited at this stage? With Blessing of Salvation, a warrior is generating 56% threat from damage; if the tank is putting out around 1000 threat per second, then shouldn't you be needing to do around 1750 DPS to pull aggro? That seems very high.

 

Emeraude

I've been using a 2-hand Fury build recently, 20/41, it's been a huge boast in my DPS over 31/30.

Until I saw this thread, I hadn't seen much information out there on builds for it. >_>
I do want to try a DW build eventually, but to be honest spaming Heroic Strike kinda frightens me.

Slam->BT->Slam->WW does seem like the best rotation.

One thing that I've noticed, and kinda bugs me about 20/41 is that it's extremely difficult to keep up rampage with this build. If I try, I CAN keep it up, but it takes alot of effort on my end and can distract me from my rotation, and far too often do I find I get critless streaks during the last 10 seconds rampage is up, making it so I can't refresh it even if I want too.

Side Note: Having the Lionheart Champion definately helps out because it constantly procs over long fights for an extra 200AP.

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lav

Rampage is a pain always.

 

Legedi

I'm curious what the numbers are behind what makes a 20/41 build better than a 31/31 (or 30/31) 2H fury build. From what I see it comes down between a weapon spec (using axe right now, and +5% crit seems very good with flurry) and 5% damage, or +10% AP and +250 AP. Or does that +3% hit also help? I forget how much a 2Her needs against bosses.

Where is someone good with excel when you need them?

 

Apate

Arguments can be made for quite a few fast/slow pairings in MH/OH. Often enough, it becomes a moot point when you have to consider available weapons.


Does the Warrior DPS spreadsheet not support Slam?

Also, this isn't the only thread that has discussed 2h fury, imp slam, etc., so don't stop here if that is what you were looking for

See you, auntie.