I was reading on the FUTURE OF A DPS WARRIOR thread about possibly testing out sword spec DW fury but no mention of going 21/40. I recently made this change and i find it much more fun and possibly better for alot of the fights in BT. Deathwish brings back the burst in alot of fights like illidan, bloodboil, najentus, and soulz where there are times you have to hold back or are not attacking. Also for boss fights which last 3-4 mins where you're getting 25-30% uptime for deathwish, i seem to be getting alot better dps then the old 17/44. Plus the joy of not having to keep up @#$@# rampage and the extra rage i seem to have makes it feel much much better.

Also besides warglaives are s3 weapons still the best for DW even after sunwell???? I was really disappointed with the sunwell fury weapon choices.......

I was wondering if anyone better at math than me could come up with an average ArP for The Night Blade, and if its possible to come up with one using 2 as well (assuming they share one buff stack). I was thinking that in theory it could be amazing for execute range.

A few questions from a 33/28 Arms Warrior (Check my Armory link for Gear/Spec) :

1. What is the hit cap for a 2 Hander? I was under the impression it was 8% or so.

2. How important is it to be hit capped/dodge capped for an MS warrior? Do you sacrifice other stats to obtain this?

2. I have been timing my Death Wish/Recklessness/Cool-Downs for the 20% mark and going berserk, I am catching the drift here that maintaining a normal cycle will yield more dps. Can I get some clarification on this?

Wow, did you even read the original post? The irony of asking that kind of stuff right here is astounding.

I'll answer you to avoid making a useless post, but holy shit...


1. 9% or 142 rating

2. Hit capped is essential, but the worst sacrifice you'd have to make would be using hit gems. Dodge capped or Expertise is very good, but you don't sacrifice for it. The stat mostly appears on tanking gear so the sacrifices would be too big, with some exceptions.

3. What you say is generally true once you start to transcend T5 gear levels. You should get more out of combining a general cooldown popping frenzy with heroism at 95% or so and then hit them again every time they're available. However, on progression content you should probably use your burst damage when it's most beneficial to your raid and using your cd's at 95% is usually not the right thing to do. In this case using recklessness before there is a lessened chance of wiping or perhaps even needing shieldwall is also not sensible in my opinion.

The Offhand "Mounting Vengeance" is superior to the S3-Weapons. Also for non Orcs / Humans the two "Vanir Fists" will be superior too (same itemlvl less resilience / stam). And if you manage to get expertisecapped by items, Vanirs will also be superior to Orks / Humans.
Yes, 2.4 Sunwell does not provide many weapons for furys, but the leaked items showed a sword named "Murasame" which isn´t dropped on ptr so far (maybe Muru loot) and this sword is also good (especially for Humans of course). Also S4-weapons will come and "outdps" every sunwellloot. But i can´t image why Blizz is putting 3 daggers in one Instance for only 1-spec of a rogue and on the other side rogues, furys and shamans share mostly their weapons.

9% a.k.a. 142 hit rating

With weapon mastery and the new expertise trink from HC MaT you'll get a long way. Good alternative is the badge reward neck (which is excellent for your occasional tanking as well). It's all about rage income, especially for a 33/28 (what I occasionally spec on bosses like RoS where 1 tank is enough) warrior, no rage on your white = no slam = 0 DPS.

My personal experience this is true, mostly thanks to recklessness+haste = a lot of rage, making slam very damage heavy and with enough rage instants also. If my weapon speed drops < 2.5s, heroic strike + instant spam nets more damage then 'waiting' for a white hit, execute, white hit, execute.

In terms of 2.4 and the 3 new pices of Onslaugt:

It is clear, that the 3 new pices are superior to everything else, but which old T6 would be best to keep? The Shoulders? I am Engi and Blacksmith, so the "Hardened Khorium Battleplate" & the "Mayhem Googles" will be huge upgrades to both "Midnight / T6" and "Illidari / T6". Also the BoE Leatherworkinggloves are amazing and far better than everthing else. The Onslaughtlegplates are sucky today and the new Legplates seem to be very good.
Is 4T6 worth to keep an old T6 item? and which item will this be? A friend of mine who plays a rogue seid, that they will keep the shoulders. So i looked at the new off-shoulders and i think warriors will also keep the shoulders.

Which item will you keep to get 4T6? Or do you say 4T6 sucks?

So is it that because of the introduction of expertise and the total ability to eliminate dodges from special attacks at that point that the point of going hit is outweighed? I agree with that for a certain point, but one of the things I'm seeing in your main post is a distinct catering to a min of T6 level player, which the vast majority of of players are not at that level of play.

Need provide stats for about a late T4, early T5 warrior to go for. I know from experience with my alt that I've been having huge problems with dps, and it's not expertise related, it's rage related. Because my alts gear is barely at a T4 level for dps purposes I've found that stacking hit provides a far better dps gain than crit/str provide. Need to put that into your main post that the numbers you've posted don't apply for all levels of gear, and variances will occur.

It was for fun! 7954 is the updated value.

Edit: I forgot BF as well. Would that make it 8272?
This is interesting howerver: Alabamaman - WWS 7919 Execute crit.

I have a comment on the weapon speed setups. You write:
I would probably change this to something like:
Also note that while slower weapons are slightly better given equal dps and stats, dps and stat allocation are more important factors for total dps and should be accounted for.

The reason I think you should make this change is that many people seem to think that getting a slow OH (or MH for that matter) is the most important thing, making them make completely idiotic choices like using a <88 dps slow weapon over a 96 dps fast weapon with better stats. Going from Spiteblade to Akil'zon Talonblade will increase your dps even if you put it in the MH.

This may be so, but I don't think that he "need to post" the info into the OP until you can say (with a spreadsheet, simulator, napkin math, or something more than an anecdote): At X gear level, I see gains of N DPS for Y +hit. At Z gear Level, I see M DPS for Y +crit. Therefore, at X/Z gear level, the increased rage per second, as seen by ____, you gain more DPS from stacking +hit.

Whilst it is true that BT is a smallish portion of our damage, the 3 new T6 pieces are best-in-slot anyway, so I would be quite surprised if it's not worth using 1 more T6 in one other slot.

Then again, 5% on 25% of our damage is only a 1.25% increase overall, that's like another 20 crit rating or so - hardly groundbreaking.

at the risk of sounding like a complete newb, what is 4T6?

I'm assuming 4 pieces of T6 gear...but what's the logic behind that?


you'll have to forgive me, my guild is extremely casual (We just started karazhan) and I'm doing my part by reading up on how to be a better dps warrior

Yes, 4T6 means 4-pieces of Tier 6, and in particular the set bonus of that. You'll find that notation used a lot on these boards, such as 2t4 (two piece tier four), 4t5 (four piece tier five) etc.

I'm not sure particularly what you mean by 'what's the logic behind that?', but we were discussing whether wearing 1 'subpar' piece of Blacktemple T6 instead of a 'better' Sunwell item would give higher total dps, due to the 4t6 set bonus.

yeah as soon as I read the first part I understood, I had forgotten about the set bonus. Brain fart. Thanks!

Please show me the math of 20 crit rating = 1.25% total damage.

Hrmm. I'm getting 2.25% increase. Perhaps my BT value is weighted differently or my computation is off. I'll double-check it.

Assuming 40% base crit and 75% yellow damage giving an average crit modifier of 215% your total damage modifier through crit will change from 1+1.15*0.4=1.46 to 1.4715 giving an increase of 1.4715/1.46=1.007876712 or 0.78767%. Assuming 1 special per 3 autohits, your average flurry uptime will change from 1-0.6^4=0.8704 to 0.87883 thus increasing your average attackspeed from 1+0.3*0.8704=1.26112 to 1.263649. Assuming 60% damage from HS and auto hits your total damage with 40% and 41% crit will be:
1*1.46*(1+0.26112*0.6)=1.68874
1*1.4715*(1+0.263649*0.6)=1.70428
% increase: 1.70428/1.68874=1.0092

So 1% crit(=22.08 crit rating) gives around 0.92% damage increase, nowhere near 1.25% from 20 crit rating.

However 25% damage from Bloodthirst isn't nearly realistic as well, normally you're sitting at 15-20%.

My alt warrior is pretty much at the same level of progression yours is, but I think he's pretty much summed up what to shoot for at varying levels of hit/expertise, which is good enough for me.

The rage point is very real for "just starting" DPS warriors. Windfury is flat-out required if I want to come anywhere near a 4x Slam + 2x MS + 1x WW rotation. The only real concern though is to maintain Slam timing since it's the most rage-efficient of the specials, even counting the hit taken to the swing timer (while obviously keeping BS active). Windfury and Sword Spec procs are a major source of rage gen, and they both help tremendously in keeping the rotation smooth.

On that note, it might be worth adding a small section on how Slam builds should deal with swing resets from Sword Spec procs. Granted, it's not a major concern, but with auto+Slam+instant along with a potential WF proc happening every auto attack interval, it is a very real aspect to plan around for 2h sword builds.

It *should* no longer happen according to the patch notes. (Sword Specs resetting swing timer)

Looking at the options for shoulders, I highly doubt that 4t6 will actually be better than using Sunwell shoulders. Depending on your personal values for ArPen, Haste, crit and ap, all of the physical DPS shoulders other than the pure rogue set seem to be significantly above t6. The closest item in terms of relative stat distribution , [Demontooth Shoulderpads] Are basically [Onslaught Shoulderblades] with an additional 20 crit rating, as well as a small gain of armor pen. That's already a sufficient boost in stats that it's likely to equal the set bonus, and the [Mantle of the Golden Forest] or perhaps [Pauldrons of Berserking] depending on the value for haste, should be even better.

I suppose since the other shoulder options are from Eradar Twins, and there may be high demand for the shoulder pieces by other raid members it might be best to stick with 4t6 for a while, as it's going to not be too huge a downgrade, but in terms of absolute DPS I don't think it's worth it.

I dont think your looking at it in the long run. Most are agreed that you would definately take the other three t6 pieces so you could essentially say that the fourth piece has an "stat" if you will, of providing "xxx" more damage on Bt or Ms.

Even just by glancing at the other sunwell items, im almost positive warriors are going to be hitting the Arp, Expertise and Hit caps and be sitting on a 40%+ crit value with easily over 2k attack power as either fury or arms specs. Thats not even raid buffed. As most know, warriors scale exceedingly well with gear and so I would say 5% extra dmg on a mortal strike will be different in sunwell gear than it is now.

Im also not suprised that the shoulders were the first piece of tier 6 to be suggested for keeping as none of the other shoulders in sunwell really scream "LOOT ME". The shoulders were also the only set piece that was best in slot during bt and hyjal, were as all the others were beaten by random items. If anyone is interested, the following appropriately gemmed armour items are probably the best setup you could get as an MS warrior;

Tier 6 boot, belt, bracer, shoulder.
[Leggings of the Immortal Night]
[Gloves of Immortal Dusk]
[Bladed Chaos Tunic]
[Crown of Anasterian]