As of now Arms seems to be doing well/best for DPS, but I'm worried about Wotlk and it's continuation of being a viable spec. The last 10 talent points really can't improve anything I currently use. Is it basically a no-brainer that Fury and TG are the only viable specs for Wotlk or no?

For PvP at least it can only get better for Arms. At 80 you'll have the option of once again taking up Piercing Howl or perhaps Toughness in the prot tree.

For PvE, it's probably not going to see the TG + Deep Wounds style increase, but Arms is already ahead by a bit so it should come roughly to par.

I found that if you download the OLD Doc's SwingerClub, and disable slam from resetting swing, you get a nearly working swing timer.

So how exactly does the 15/46/0 dps rotation work? I notice in Zodd's WWS that HS is like 15-25% of his damage and Deep Wounds being 30-35%.

Spam HS/BT/WW whenever its up, Slam on surges?

I'm using 15/46/0 build without any point at all in Bloodsurge. After see some parses I've observed that Slam was around 2-3% of your total Damage so I preferred just skip it and put the points in Intensify Rage and Unending Fury (1 point). This reduces this build basically to the old 17/44 but a lot more relaxed because you don't need to worry about Rampage or Battle Shout. And you can keep Demo Shout without problems even if you get some resists. In addiction you can Heroic Strike a lot because the absurd amounts of rage generation.

Answering how would be with bloodsurge, well, it would be like you'll use it just after Bloodthirst if it pops. Rest is just the same.

Well so far DW arms holds the glory i think. Im not sure maybe I do somethign wrong but i never went over 3500 with 15/46. Today sunwell clear had me at 3800 brutallus where a stupid rogue pulled aggro and got me killed in the process (got ressed but no buffs etc), and 4500 on KJ as 52/9 with dual weapon spec axe/sword combo (najentus axe + s4 sword OH).

I feel on Brutallus I could easily go over 4500 or maybe get close to the warglaive rogue 4900ish records if i didnt die.

Oh TG definitely wont reach current dual wield arms effectiveness. Not even close at 70. No DW, no executes... TG right now caps out around 3k dps +/- 10% for RNG and superb gear. The changes arent close to significant enough to get it over 4.5k.

Granted i find it "ok" since current DW arms effectiveness is simply silly. Warglaive warriors doing 15/46 and getting 4900 is silly enough, but if i can get close to that using najentus axe and heroic MgT dagger (correction from previous post, this week i switched from sword to just dagger oh to maximize sd/dw procs), thats simply heavily broken. 3k seems like "cap" for most of classes anyway so warriors doing well over 4k had to be nerfed (well didnt HAD granted how we know lvl 70 dps doesnt matter, but it was clear that once warrior stats reach similiar level in wotlk the situation would repeat).

As TG even with buffs ill have to heavily work to get on top of dps, right now I can do it without consumables/watching tv.

3800 for me to on Brutallus fight - with no food, no elixir or flask up, no sharpening stones, no scrolls and no haste potions - all this because i have some aggro problems (our tank doing something wrong maybe)
With my gear i thing 4500 is no problem, just givme some 3500+ TPS

Did anyone see the blue post today regarding warrior vs rogue dps?

I clearly remember blizzard saying the hybrids will be able to do as much dps as the pure classes, given we don't bring unique buffs with the new buff system. "Sometimes" doesn't sound very reassuring to me. Given that

1. we are harder to heal
2. designed to do less damage generally
3. our three major buffs blood frenzy (combat rogues), rampage (feral druids) and battle shout (paladins) are covered by common classes found in 25 man

Where does that leave dps warriors?

PS. I assume the blue post is referring to level 80 dps.

You seem to be forgetting, that off-specced warriors are the next best choice to apply the major armor debuff in a raid without a def-specced warrior, because:

- For a rogue the DPS-loss is greater (5CP per application vs refreshing the full stack).
- The hunter pet requires A: the hunter to spec 51 BM (as it stands inferior to the other specs in a raid) B: the worm also being an inferior (and uglier) pet.

Get hand of salv/intervene/vigilance etc.


Scrolls dont work anymore, and sharpening stones/elixir doesnt give too much to arms DW. You still lack a small bit of gear to 4500 but it shows how OP the spec is. If it makes any sence (since i expect patch nerfing SD to the ground next week), farm Vexallus dagger from MgT. Trust me even without weapon spec and 87 dps, this weapon alone will give you 200dps. Thats the current DW model/SD model effect for fast OHands , and 1.3 dagger with haste on it is about as good as it gets.

We give AP buff to the melee group, and also (with Fury spec) 5% crit from Rampage. Those buffs alone should make us viable vs Rogues.

Battle shout is raid-wide, so it affects more than the melee group. And it also increases ranged attack power. However, it is over-ridden by Blessing of Might. And LotP has 100% uptime compared to Rampage - not to mention there are very few dps warriors not running 2H Arms or DW Arms right now.
Technically its more than a rogue brings, but not by much.

If I read this right, LotP is per group and Rampage is raid-wide. Thus, you wont have to put bring a Feral into every meelee/hunter group. So we still bring some utility.

You read it wrong. LotP most definitely is raid-wide.

IIRC what I see in raids on live, only

• water totems from shaman - mana tide, mana spring
• tremor totem
• ferocious inspiration
• vampiric embrace (ie spriest healing)
• drums

aren't raid wide. I'm not sure about tremor totem since our shaman insists it is, while raid members claim they aren't getting it. For ferocious inspiration, our hunters say it being party only is a bug and will be fixed in 3.0.3. Drums don't exist at level 80.

Back to battle shout, I haven't used it once since 3.0. The only good blessings for dps warriors are kings and might. Other AP based classes want wisdom in addition of these two. I've never been in a raid with less than 3 paladins. (I get sanctuary as my 3rd, if you are curious). I have a question for those who run a raid group with less than 3 paladins. Can I do battle shout on top of blessings of might for the hunters? (Battle shout is less powerful then BoM just to stop us overriding it). Or do you just let your hunters go without wisdom?

In Landsoul's dps spreadsheet post he mentioned that unless you have dual glaives it may be your worthwhile to start getting your titan's grip gear ready in the next patch. There seems to still be a lot of talk here about deep wounds, however, from my understanding on the beta/ptr right now deep wounds has been fixed and or broken in the sense that BT and ww are not working properly with it.

Has anyone been able to test TG vs DW in the latest build on PTR? I was unable to find an enhancement shaman and without one in my group TG seemed to keep me rage starved.

DPS records are very superficial now with the way DWounds works. The longer the fight is, the more DPS you will do. You could pull off probably > 6000 dps if you were the only one DPSing simply because the deep wounds keep getting higher since the probability of not critting for 6 seconds approaches 0. If you have fast kills, then you cannot really reach those numbers because your DWounds do not reach the full effect of throttling your DPS value.

Secondly, how are you finding practical boss tanks that can produce the TPS required to stay above you? 5K dps *.8*.9 (arms, vigilance) = 3600 consistent TPS. Are you waiting 20 seconds before you start attacking?

Hand of Salvation and Intervene too.

I didnt expect such comment from someone who actually makes spreadsheets... How is deep wounds going to be higher on longer fight? Its 48% of your weapon damage per crit, nothing changes depending on fight length. On a very short fight sure- the "lost ticks" after mob dies can kill your dps, but after like 4 min fight it really doesnt matter if it lasts 4 or 40 minutes.

KJ fights are already around 4 min easily.

As for tanking.

a) We had tanks do 3.6k tps. Remember that vigilance gives them your threat, so if you rock high tps their goes up to. its effectively a 0.8 multiplier.

b) You can have a voidwalker tank for 15k tps :P

c) You are a NE ! L2Shadowmeld

On Beta right now SD is 9% hit instead of 30% crit. I'm no mathematician, but from a logical point of view, after considering raid buffs, this is a nerf. On top of that, GC stated the idea of capping Executes at 50 rage (didn't state if we retain the excess rage or if it goes to waste, but I'm assume we'll get to keep the excess rage). How would these changes affect DW arms dps in the long run?

Source: WotLK Beta (US-English) Forums -> So whats the deal with sudden death GC

well between the nerf to DW and that it would severly gut the spec. Right now Executes are ~40% of my dmg and DW are 35% (well maybe 35/35 is more common). I would say assuming they fix OH/Execute DW bug in beta right now, DW damage would go down to at most 20%. Executes would go to 9% from ~21% on hit, however i would switch to a fast/fast setup giving me ~20% more chances (including unchanged OH/specials). So overall its easily 30% nerf to the build with a very rough math. It STILL seems somewhat competitive to TG tbh, but i believe it will fall behind.

I really hope they go back to a better SD and nerf DW arms in other ways. Its better simply because it SCALES with multiple stats, unlike 2h arms. Also some talents make little sense. Blood Frenzy is insanely good talent for Dual wield builds - 6% haste for 2 talents is huge (close to flurry), and 4 % damage on top. And thats for build that actually procs off autoattacks so 6% haste = ~6% more damage. At same time BF doesnt give any significant buff to 2h arms.