I've found it counterproductive to stance dance to Overpower, especially without Tactical Mastery. Am I missing something?

My current spec uses HS as a rage dump, but i'm hoping to get my hands on either the Kael'thas 2h or the Gladiator 2h and switch to sword spec shortly. When I do respec for 2h swords i'll be picking up Blood Frenzy (at the price of 2 points in Flurry) and shifting back to give Improved Slam a better try.

I think it really is situational. Are you looking to maximize your own performance or your raid's performance?

I'm currently 35/5/21, with Second Wind and Bloodfrenzy in the Arms tree, and on those mobs were I can apply the debuff successfully, I do definitely notice the difference in how fast the mobs die. Mind you, I've not been very deep in end-game content yet (still in Kara), so I cant really say about how it perfoms in a 25-man raid as opposed to 5-man and heroics.

But really it is a tradeoff - by taking the debuff instead of flurry, you're trading off some of your own DPS for a raid-wide buff. To take a purely sefish view, 3/5 in flurry would be better, but then if you're going for pure DPS, why not simply go for a full or part fury build instead?

But by all accounts, an MS warrior with Blood Frenzy and Imp TC/Imp DS (a.k.a. "the debuff bitch") who can off-tank if needed and produce respectable DPS if needed is a valuable part of a raid group.

On the other hand, if you already have another warrior who has Blood Frenzy, then I would say without hesitation to go for 3/5 flurry.

Sometimes it's worth it to get flurry back up and you can slam away rage to get below 10 rage to switch and overpower. I have imp overpower in my build too but I rarely use it, it does have its uses however.

Imp MS is lacklustre at best, Flurry increses the chance you'll proc an enchant or windfury or sword spec, it makes Hamstring spam more efficient, keeps the rage flowing in too. The only thing about flurry is when you add/remove points it makes timing your slams a little funky until you get the feel of your autoswing timer again.

Blood Frenzy is pretty okay and it helps me justify my raid spot to myself because I'm not great DPS unless it's a stationary fight, it's not like second wind would help me anywhere but arena anyway

I don't think you are. I've often found myself falling into a PVP mindset when it becomes available thinking "aha! overpower with impale = automatic crit!"

Which means switching to Battle Stance, then Overpower then back to Beserk Stance (tossing in some GCDs there), with a resultant massive loss of rage.

All of which means your DPS goes down the toilet, especially if you were previously slamspamming away with a friendly WF totem nearby.

The more I think about it, the more I would argue that the overpower skill should come with a big warning saying "for use in battlegrounds only!". The problem is that many of us are so conditioned to see overpower as some sort of "automatic crit" when in fact, I really think it is a comparitively weak skill.

To work out your offhand damage its 50% of your weapon DPS + 50% of your added DPS from AP < thats without dual wield specialization. With dual wield specialization its 62.5% of your weapon DPS + 62.5% of your added DPS from AP.

Right now I use the Moroes cape because it has +hit and strength, and I really love strength. I haven't upgraded because most potential upgrades are all AP and agility, and that's just more geared for the rogues/hunters. The only real upgrades as I see them are Magtheridon's cape which lacks +hit, and Teron Gorefiend's cape which just kicks huge amounts of ass. Hoping to upgrade to that in the upcoming weeks.


I still use Cloak of the Inciter for PvP though; it's very very good.

Ive got a crafted vengeance and cloak of inciter and moroes cloak, use either inciter or vengeance, moroes cape lies in the bank, un-used. Inciter for bosses due to ?? level, vengeance for anything else, as i rarely seem to miss even with 14% hit.

Gah, i wish armory would tell us what stance you are in when you log out.

Okay, so the cloak choices are the proverbial "Suckorz" until mid-black temple, which i am so far away from right now it isn't even remotely funny. Just going to have to make due.

Is anyone actively collecting either full T4 or T5 DPS suits? I have the T4 helm, and only got that as a filler to hold me over until i got the helm off of void reaver so i'm not still using the helm of second sight. The shoulders are inferior to Kazzak shoulder, gloves are worse then Gruul gloves. Pants are inferior to other leather gear, and while the chest is certainly nice, it's not something to drop a heap of DKP on IMO.

As for T5...i don't think i'm likely to get a single piece. The pants and gloves can be argued....but by and large the suit is not worth what it would cost me DKP wise.

Yes and no. For DPS at the cost of everything else yes, but the added hit points make up for the extremely marginal drop in DPS if your hit points are lacking and you find yourself dipping into the red frequently on ae fights. That said, the Kazzak shoulders have still not dropped for us or I would have gladly taken them. Now that we have everyone "attuned" (we were short about four people) and downed VR, I would take whatever dropped first, actually preferring the T5. I just grabbed the legs last night, and after a second thought, would never consider anything else other than the shoulders at this point..

Since my guild got a couple prot tanks and feral tanks, I felt that there was not that much need for me as prot (since the other tanks got better gear than me).

So lately I've been playing a bit around with the 2H Fury build (as I got stormherald, and mace spec isn't exactly great for pve). In my opinion it's not viable without Windfury, Bloodthirst is pretty weak and there is not much rage for Slam. I must say that found rampage hard to keep up in most cases aswell, but that might be my gear or the lack of windfury. The spec can put out massive numbers in some encounters or when you got windfury. But personally I would prefer going 31/30 with a sword/axe (sadly I only got Gorehowl aviable atm).

I'm just not sure if I should try to go DW, my dps gear is more 2H orientated, as my hitrating is very low ~100ish, but one thing I don't understand is when people list values of str/hit/crit/AP etc. then hit is valued very low and since my rogue was my previous main, I know that hit is extremely important for combat rogues. My question is, how much hit rating should I aim for before even thinking about going DW? And what gems is the way to go when your dualwielding?

Hope it's not answered already, been following this & other dps warrior threads alot lately, but still not sure about it.

I have top DKP in my guild and could have gotten the T5 shoulders on our first VR kill last night, but i have trouble rationalizing taking a semi-decent upgrade for me verus a semi-decent upgrade for one of our druid or warrior tanks.

Of course a priest had to kick me in the balls and take it anyways. <cough>

At any rate, i've got so much DKP saved ATM, that i can pick and choose any 3 or 4 items i want, as well as getting all the DPS plate for virtually minimum bid.

@Graul, i agree on the shoulder issue, but i'm finding that as the gear gets higher and higher item level wise, it has more and more stamina. If things continue as they do, I'll break 10k Hp unbuffed in DPS gear before too long, so i'm not concerned about giving up a fair bit of stamina for a decent DPS increase.

Can that be our class motto or something? We were doing trash in TK last night and i somehow ended up in a mage/warlock/hunter group or something, and ended up 9th on DPS. My brother was #1 with his feral druid, and was constantly mocking me about how he was destroying me in DPS, and out-tanking me with the same spec. I said i was pretty much toast without a WF totem and we got into a big argument about how inflexible a dps warrior was if he needed a specific buff to be able to accomplish anything impressive. Anyways, the argument ended with me threatening to throw him out of the raid and me threatening to finish leveling my feral druid.

On a somewhat related note...i wonder if imp battleshout or Imp leader of the pack is better for a rogue's dps....this came up in our argument when i wanted to switch him into the hunter/mage group for me.

381 AP vs 5% crit and heals

According to my rough theory crafting, BS > LoTP when the rogue does less then 1000 DPS. Of course i'd get WAY more benefit from windfury then the druid would as well.

For trash all he as getting was SoE, WF was down for the 3 rogue/Resto-shaman that filled his group. It's unreal how much DPS he can put out. His rip ALONE maintains something like 330 DPS (660 every 2 seconds for 12 seconds). As for VR himself, i was playing it safe and ducking out of pound, had no WF and generally stayed in battle stance to lessen the amount of damage. I was 14th in DPS. Top was warlocks, mages, rogues and hunters. Highest person without an agro dump was 9th, and he got stepped on at 6% by VR (Shadow priest)

http://www.lossendil.com/wws/?report...a&s=9994-10603

Is the WWS is you are interested.

I mainly put points in Imp Overpower because I don't really think there is anything else to put it in... and there might be times when it's useful to get flurry going again (when you're rage starved).

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@ Calgar: When we're raiding with more than 1 dps warrior, I'll often shuffle extra rogues into group 1 (tank group). We often raid with 2 rogues, 4 warriors (3 of whom DPS), and 1 feral druid. So our groups usually look like this:

Group 1:
Prot Warrior
Tank/DPS Warrior/rogue
Shaman
Paladin
Rogue

Then group 3 (melee DPS group):
Feral Druid
DPS Warrior
DPS Warrior
Shaman (Enhancement)
Best Rogue <--

Your MT will lose Imp and the warriors and rogues that are normally deprived will gain a buttload of damage. Don't forget that tanks get a decent amount of TPS from windfury as well. Again, it depends on the encounter, but for most fights: this is optimal.

Besides, The amount of DPS a warrior gains from windfury is ENORMOUS. But, justifying this to your casters who are used to getting Wrath of Air will be no small feat. The only way to do this is to prove it. Show them your damage with Windfury, and then show them your damage without it. I believe someone did the math somewhere and even if you have a group with 3 casters, a shaman, and a dps warrior; it's better to drop windfury totem than wrath of air under all circumstances.

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Another question: At what point does Bloodthirst outscale Mortal Strike with Bloodmoon?

as far as dps in my guild goes im normally 2nd with a fully epiced rogue taking 1st.

I did a test the other day where i clicked off bs and reset meters on trash normally the rogue would beat me in dps with me in 2nd. He is always in my grp so he takes advantage of my 5/5 imp bs. Once the rogue lost bs i took over the lead to 1st in dps which is the 1st time i beat him. I myself was missing bs but I could out dps the rouge. I tried it 3 times with out bs and i would consistantly beat the rouge. Applied Bs and reset meter the rogue sure enough pulled away. So they are very dependent on BS

As an update about TPS, our MT made a silly mistake and forgot to train his ranks of Shield Slam after PvP one weekend...so he was raiding near two weeks or so with the first rank. He does fine now and threat is never an issue as long as I have BoS up. He sits around 850 without WF but hovers closer to 1k with it. He also uses Devastate now. Now if only we could teach him how to consistently kill his inner demons

Yarrick, you might want to make sure your tank has max ranks!

Mortal Strike does: 469 (average weapon damage) + 210 (MS bonus) + AP * 3.3/14 (normalised AP damage)
Bloodthirst does: AP * 0.45

Set as equal, solve for AP: AP = ( 469 + 210 ) / ( .45 - 3.3/14 ) = 3169

So, about 3200 AP. This is assuming no improved Mortal Strike, note.

Grab yourself a Solarian trinket to justify your spot even more! The rogues in my guild cries blood if they find me in another group. For those that did not know, it stacks with Imp. BS, totaling at 470AP.

I wouldn't mind snagging that trinket and use it to replace my bloodlust brooch, but solarian is a distant thought for me...we are 1/6 SSC and and 1/4 TK. Praying for either a tidewalker or hydross first kill tonight.

@Graul; LOL @ your tank...i knew something had to be up with your threat issues. Grats i guess?

I'm also somewhat surprised at the rogues saying BS >>>> ILotp. BS is 27 DPS (white damage wise) and even if you were to triple that to 75ish it would still barely out pace a 5% DPS increase and the healing. <shrug> i don't mind though, just an excuse to banish my brother to the "left-over" group of mages, hunters and warlocks

Sure, 381/14=27, but that's completely unhasted autoattack on 1 weapon. I dual-weild, I'm 0.5% from the hit cap vs. 73 mobs, Slice'n'dice is always up, I have a Dragonspine Trophy, Thundering Skyfire Diamond, Haste potions, then there's special attacks, and rupture damage (buffed by AP, gains nothing from crit) to consider.

It all adds up to BS giving me over 100 DPS, while LotP is giving me around 43.

5% crit is not going to be 5% more damage unless you have 0% crit beforehand and all your attacks are capable of critting, or if your crits are more than 200% damage (which my backstabs are, 224%, but they are only between 25 and 30% of my damage).

I'm sitting at 35ish crit after Mark/Kings/Agil Food/Agil pot. 5% more crit is only 3.7% more white damage and ~3.2% more backstab damage (backstab crit is really high already because of talents).

Our MT wears a mix of gear for a little more damage, uses a haste pot for the first one, and recklessness on the second if he's unlucky enough to get two.

We've found that wearing some DPS gear makes the demons much easier while not hampering your tanking ability except perhaps in stage 2 when his dps in human form seems to go up. I think it is the same principle as wearing some of your best Epic resist gear pieces for certain fights, where the resist check you need to pass here is shitty DPS.

I've been toying with the 4% blood frenzy myself, wanted to try it in SSC and compare damage meters with it and without it and see what the break point is for % of the raids DPS as melee to really benefit from it.

Wrong, going from 0% crit to 5% crit will give you the same DPS-upgrade as going from 30% crit to 35% crit, assuming that all your other stats stay the same.