Densor

I'd question whether HS could ever be a better rage dump than SD executes. HS costs 12 + the lost rage from your swing for 495 base damage, plus a bit of extra damage on crits and reduced chance to miss. On the other hand, execute costs all your rage, dealing 1665 damage plus 38 per point. The base rage cost of HS multiplied by the 38 extra damage per rage you'd get from execute is 456, which is barely less than what the HS would have given you in terms of damage. Execute, since it doesn't cost extra rage as well, would be better than HS if it cost 0 rage base and only did 38 damage per point of rage, rather than having the base damage.

I can think of several reasons why HS would be better than execute, but I don't feel that any of them merit discussion, since they don't make up for the fact that a cycle of BT, WW, Execute, wait, BT, wait, WW, wait, BT, Execute, wait, wait, will almost always be better than using only HS. As such, any build that doesn't include SD is going to be inferior to SD unless there is something else major that it does include, like TG.

I noticed another small error in my calculations that dropped TG DPS. SD is looking to be superior, but I still feel that TG is viable, since it has no extra threat. As for my calculating TG without Bloodsurge, the points were better spent in 2H spec, because I picked up Imp Slam for a Slam rotation. Had I not been using Slam already, then Bloodsurge would probably have been a better choice. I could recalculate to include it, but I don't think it would be enough of an increase for the effort.

 

torand

Arms PVP without Death Wish, Blood Craze, Weapon Mastery, and Enrage makes me want to cry inside. As a matter of fact, I am not sure why there are even arms talents past 48 points .

Honestly, I REALLY want to know if a 51-point prot build will be good for PVP. I think a pally/warrior team with this build on the warrior would destroy any double-DPS team they fight.

 

Dartholorin

WorldofWarcraft.com -> Info -> Classes -> Warrior -> Talent Calculator

This is a spec I came up with for fury, with an additional point to put almost anywhere (Poleaxe probably, if you have axes for weapons).

I read here and on the forums about lots of people saying titan's grip was junk and intended for pvp. I have come to the conclusion is that it is plenty good as is.

My spreadsheets are really ugly so I will just share my assumptions.

1. Kara gear (sorry been arms spec for months now).
2. No expertise beyond talents, or armor pen, or any armor consideration at all (see 1)
3. Normalization remains unchanged for 2-handed weapons. (I.E, WW will get 3.3 speed AP contribution for both weapons, compared to 2.4 from 1-h).
4. enough hit to cover instants
5. Perfect rotation. BT every 6, WW every 9.
6. Bloodsurge is used whenever it is up (non-normalized, and does not reset the swing timer).
7 92 dps 2.6 speed 1-handers
8. 120 dps 3.6 speed 2-handers
9. 20% speed pealty does not increase AP contribution to weapons (otherwise, what would be the point in the penalty?)
10. heroic strike used every 10 sec for the 1-h spec, every 15 for the 2h.
11. derived number of hits before flurry runs out by the following formula (MH + OH + Instants) * 3/(MH + OH) (Theoretically, I should have done some sort of limit equation on this, but I'm not THAT hardcore)
12. flurry reduces the full weapon speed, including the penalty.
13 2H spec increases ALL damage done.
14. Spec before titan's grip: WorldofWarcraft.com -> Info -> Classes -> Warrior -> Talent Calculator
15. Spec with titan's grip: WorldofWarcraft.com -> Info -> Classes -> Warrior -> Talent Calculator



at 2600 ap, 27.58 crit, +14.31% hit:
My formula yields 1175 DPS w/o titans grip and 1249 DPS with, an increase of 6.35%

bump it up to over 5000 AP and you get 1920 DPS without and 2034 with, an increase of 5.94%

So clearly, titan's grip is better for dps than nothing. But lets compare specs at lvl 80. Since we're capped out, we will drop 1 point in precision, and pick up Iron will and poleaxe specialization.

WorldofWarcraft.com -> Info -> Classes -> Warrior -> Talent Calculator

And for titan's grip, lets drop 2 points in precision and pick up 2H weapon 3/5 and 1 point in poleaxe:

WorldofWarcraft.com -> Info -> Classes -> Warrior -> Talent Calculator
Poleaxe:25/46
at 2600 ap, 32.58 crit, +13.31% hit: 1246 DPS
Titan's grip:21/50
at 2600 ap, 27.58 crit, +12.31% hit: 1296 DPS (4% increase in damage)

Poleaxe:25/46
at 5000 ap, 32.58 crit, +13.31% hit: 2009 DPS
Titan's grip:21/50
at 5000 ap, 27.58 crit, +12.31% hit: 2112 DPS (5% increase in damage)

None of this takes into account the fact that the ability to DW 2handed weapons presents us with a huge augmentation of our aggregate item budget, something no other class I know of has the ability to do, along with the largest aggregate item budget in the game. Yes it will take some getting used to, but this talent will, I forsee, become a staple of DPS warriors. Depend on it.

Also, if I may remind fury warriors, remember rampage? Remember how everyone freaked out about how it was so much worse and rage expensive than Battle Shout (as if it was meant to replace, rather than augment BS) The argument against TG isn't inane like that one was, but I truly believe that blizzard is not trying to screw fury warriors over. I see blizz trying to kill two birds with one stone here: Increasing fury damage and increasing its viability in PvP. And my guess is it will largely succeed with the former, if not the latter.

 

Talgog

Currently, MS/Conc will beat the tar out of almost anything in PvP 1v1. Granted, that is with the fear-breaking Deathwish and Second Wind, but it does work, to the point of being quite boring to play.

45/x/21+ with 2/2 Second Wind and no Imp. Hammy works a lot better if you absolutely have to have that 10% more Shield Slam damage. Otherwise, put those points in Cruelty. No Second Wind is going to get you demolished by rogues and other warriors, and that certainly shouldn't happen when playing an Arms/Prot build. You're castrating yourself for no reason.

 

kharpalo

As i did some maths few pages back titan grip actually is even more viable when you add haste in calculations ie. 20% from wf totem 25% from flurry (basicly 24% and 29.5% for TG) maybe 3% from retardins and maybe even some passive one from gear. I really don`t see why 90% of warriors are running around and yelling this talent is utter crap when its clearly not. Only build i could see competing dmg wise would be sudden death execute build, but with that one your threat would shoot right of the roof not making it very viable option.

---------missed part 12----------

 

Gruntle

HS is a big nono for TG builds, it costs a mountain of rage to use (using a 15 sec cd like Darthorlorin above is probably not enough). Every time you use HS you will be rage starved, it will probably be like using execute but with lesser damage as Densor says.

I don't agree on Bloodsurge though, even if you're slamming as part of your cycle I think it will be an important addition of dps to use bloodsurge slams. It's a lot harder to model though, and very dependent on weapon speed.

As to your original post, I think a slightly better TG build would be a build with Bloodsurge (dropping Precision, will just have to use more hit gear) and with 1/5 weapon spec in place of 4/5 extra damage. 1% extra crit+crit damage is very likely more damage than +1% damage. Another issue with the initial conditions of the simulations is that you seem to assume no extra stats for the TG build (well, 1% hit extra)? You should probably add some more than the extra 1% hit.

Also, using Rend in the cycle is very interesting, but will it really work rage wise? Dropping out of zerk stance midswing will put you at 10 rage in battle stance. After the Rend you will have 0 rage, and no rage to "precast" slam. You will be forced to wait until the white hits (depending on latency this will prolong your swing timer ~0.2 sec) to start cast slam, and that's assuming the white swing actually hits. Maybe it could work with very high values of hit or with high incoming damage but otherwise I think it will be too risky.

By the way, are your simulations done as a full-scale swing simulator? In that case I think it would be very interesting if you could to release it in some way, to my knowledge no one has actually done this for warriors before. In case the simulations are really swing based, how long simulation times are you running? Others who have tried doing this have run into problems with convergence.

 

Graul

Wouldn't it be (base weapon speed *1.2)/1.25? Not sure if that's what you meant.
And did you do any calculations for one-handed builds using either a weapon spec or Incite for comparison?
The biggest problem with Titan's Grip is white damage. White damage = rage = abilities. You're also going to get a lot more glancing blows due to the inability to actually use Heroic Strike and yet if you don't use Heroic Strike you'll potentially be wasting a lot of rage at the same time, so either way you're going to have issues with rage management.

We would need all of those "free" stats to be a lot of hit rating as well as a nice expertise boost early on for this to have any chance or you will see spikes of rage similar to...35...miss...70...miss...dodge...35 which might look fine on paper but with the actual speed that this is taking place in your cycles could be thrown off quite a bit. In fact, you'd need a lot more hit rating for this to be viable. It's no different than having two 2.6 speed weapons with 150 hit rating compared to one 2.6 speed main hand and a 1.5 speed off hand with the same hit rating. Anyone who has played with a similar setup can validate the rage differences.

That complaining about Battle Shout being better was pointless, but the ability was very annoying with a 20 second duration. It's still high maintenance today, but not nearly as troublesome.

I didn't see your math, but many people were under this odd assumption that somehow the new Windfury would "cancel" out the 20% lowered speed from Titan's Grip. I hope that's not what you are talking about as well. You are going to get a benefit from haste regardless, but try adding 20% more haste to two one-handed weapons that have enough rage to Heroic Strike (+Incite or weapon spec) every two seconds for comparison.

You are looking at it as though Execute scales when it doesn't. Initially it might be better, but Heroic Strike doesn't just allow more crit damage, it also prevents glancing blows which also allows more potential Flurry uptime. The more damage you can deal with your main hand without a Heroic or glancing, the better Heroic becomes. You also have to factor in Execute damage x 1.25% threat and 10% more threat due to missing Furious Resolve vs Heroic innate threat with 10% less threat overall. Also, has anyone actually verified what Sudden Death does as far as a window of opportunity goes? Does it give you 5 seconds, or is it simply your next instant attack or it fades?

 

Dartholorin

Yes, thats what I meant, also if you go back to my original post, you'll see I compare a lvl 80 poleaxe spec to a full lvl 80 spec, and then use lvl 70 stats because thats what we're familiar with.

Since HS doesnt generate rage, Im not exactly sure what is meant here. I agree with the central premise that rage generation is the biggest problem with a TG build. However, I would point out that as a PvE arms spec, I have few rage gen problems, and an arms build needs more rage than a fury build, b/c we slam every swing. Glancing blows never bothered me either. it does a little less damage but generates close to the same amount of rage.

Im imp slam arms; lets talk high maintenance.

Umm, crit has nothing to do with glancing. You'd have to have god-awful itemization for glancing blows to affect crit at all.

Say rather, it lacks direct scalability with AP. Every other stat (Crit, expertise, armor pen, etc) gives bonuses to execute as to other abilities. All stats increase execute damage indirectly by increasing white damage. It would still hold true that execute lacks the scalability of BT or WW, but I doubt that I would ever use HS over execute. All the things about not glancing and criting for 120% etc. apply equally to both abilities. I really don't know what to think about incite yet. I'll keep in touch I guess.

 

Graul

You can't crit if you glance is the point and Heroic removes that chance. You would also need weapons with as low a speed as possible to make Sudden Death work, which would also require either more hit or actually using Heroics...which kind of defeats the purpose of it in the first place doesn't it?

 

Alaron

When you are dual wielding, both weapons get an additional 19% chance to miss on white hits. With your current 2H arms build, that chance is not present, and with even remotely decent gear you are pretty much guaranteed rage on a very regular basis (miss and dodges should be pushed off the table for a 2H). You might get a big spike of rage (crit/current wf) or a regular spike of rage (regular hit/glance), but you aren't likely to get none at all. With slow fury weapons, getting a few misses in a row is quite likely, which can really kill your cycle if you aren't budgeting your rage properly. With 4 seconds per swing, this budgeting becomes a nightmare.

As your gear gets better, you get more rage, and having a full rage bar becomes a possibility to worry about. Any hit while you are at full rage is wasted rage. This is what Graul is talking about when he says you waste rage by not using HS, which is currently the main rage dump for fury warrior (I use it every few seconds, depending on current rage and time until the next BT/WW, not once in 10 like you suggest). However, with TG, it is a lot riskier to use this as prolifically as a dump since your supply is a lot less regular, and you don't want to throw off your BT/WW. At the same time, you don't want to cap out on rage, so you can see the pain in the ass the slow speed causes.

As for the glances/crits, ordinary hits fill up the end of the hit table, not crits. In that respect, you're right that you aren't really pushing crit off, but ordinary hits. So, unless your gear is really really shitty, you are right that you will still crit the same percentage of the time. That siad, you are still going to do a lot more damage with the yellow attack on average since the chance to hit is better and since they can't glance. Now, I haven't done any math on synchronized 2H weaps and using slam as a rage dump instead of HS, but that is also going to guarantee that the period between incoming rage bursts is slower, which makes most of us pretty leery about it.

 

Liar

That's true. But that isn't a problem until you reach a really high crit %. Glancings do not push off crits from the table until you reach that. I can't remember what the % was, but it's 100% - glance chance.

Unexpected TankPoints error Clearly someone doesn't understand how EH works. That, or upgrading from T8 to T9 is optional in beating Arthas. Clearly.

 

Tornaz

The chance of a glancing blow is 10 + (5 * level difference), so 25% vs. a boss, IIRC

 

Shha

I dont quiet get it. Like it was pointed out unless your dodge+miss+glancing+crit % dont add up to more then 100% you arent losing any hit. Thats one.

Yes for SD you need weapons which are "fast" (not sure if low speed means slow swings or low cooldown for you :P). Why exactly fast weapons would require more hit? If anything you are looking into the best possible for LOW hit rating - 2 fast weapons generating very smooth rage - and a lot of it (since you arent using heroic strike).

Indeed heroic strike is a better skill with fast weapons, but it will never come close to execute in effectiveness. Even with very high stats (50% crit making best use of impale) heroic strike adds :

- white hit = 15% miss 25% glancing 50% crit 10% hit = 75% damage (crits) + 17.5% damage (glancings) +10% damage (hits) =102.5% of "damage" where damage is your basic hit damage

- heroic = 50% crit 50% miss = 110% damage (crits)+50% damage (hits) = 160% damage

- Heroic added damage 50%*500 (approximation of extra damage on hits +50%*1100(crits) = 800.

Overall Heroic adds 800+60% of your white NON CRIT swing for a cost of 12 rage+whatever your swing would generate.
Heroic with incite adds 890 damage + 77% of your white hit.

Execute at 15 rage deals 1665 damage multiplied by crits - 1665*50%+ 1665*1.1 = ~2662.

So comparing incite Heroic with execute at 15 rage gives us around 1780/0.77 = 2311 minimum white HIT (not crit) to match execute. Im not sure if gear will scale that well. In fact a heroic usually costs closer to 30 rage or even more (average rage per hitx1.5+12 - for me it goes at around 35 rage in raid setting).

Execue at 35 rage deals 3880 damage so an average white hit would have to be over 4k to outperform executes. Again a HIT, not average white damage.


All in all HS is pretty terrible. Slam is pretty terrible. Remember - those are skills used to rage dump, while execute is something that comes close even now to BT/WW. Yes its worse then BT, and it will be worse then TG WW, but those are COOLDOWN skills. Its way better then any other rage dump though.



Now one more word on prot warriors. I said before that Im not really worried about tanking as prot warrior. You can point out other classes strengths with WOTLK. Sure, they get their "thunderclap" like paladins, and warriors dont have crushing advantage. However Im pretty sure Blizzard still regards warriors as "model" tanks. What does it mean? Same thing as in BC. You could tank everything in BC using warrior tanks. Anything. Sure you can say "but mage tank on council, or skeletons on felmyst" - but those are gimmicks - and ones that dont require anyone dedicated to it. Holy paladin with some random tank pieces can tank felmyst skeletons. Any mage can tank Zerevor. A true MT spot however is what I'm talking about. You could go from Attumen to KJ using warrior tanks. Probably you could do it with a druid or paladin too - but honestly you would run into some serious bumps (but yes, with enough gear you could probably brute force everything).

So given that - warriors still have the advantage - if your guild has a warrior MT, he can tank everything and you have the spot "covered". if there is a druid or paladin - well you might need to get other people to do tanking too - and that is always a burden (why gear multiple tanks, when one can do the job). For every fight right now where a druid or paladin is prefered main tank, you can find a fight where not only warrior is prefered - but its vastly superior.

 

kharpalo

crits are not on the same table at least with dodge if you remember the old suprise attack talent for rogues, that got changed cause it actually resulted to loss of dps in pve enviroment making your sinisters unnable to get dodged there fore reducing the crit %.

 

Shha

Thats irrelevant for the discussion.

a) Yellow hits indeed have multiple rolls to them. White hits however do not.
b) Rogue talent got changed for other reasons.

 

Dartholorin

Are you arguing that TG is incompatable with sudden death? Because you wont be able to reach both at lvl 80. A SD build would look more like this:

WorldofWarcraft.com -> Info -> Classes -> Warrior -> Talent Calculator

Since I suspect that any raiding guild worth it's salt will make a SD warrior take blood frenzy (I don't expect an MS build to be viable in Wrath with the talents as they currently are).

Giving it some thought why don't i start another discussion by saying that this talent build would bring back good ol' spamstring, Because it would have a chance to proc SD as well as flurry. This would be far more effective than an incite HS (which would make you sacrifice precision possibly even, because it would be two hits instead of one, which would give you a greater chance to crit at high levels of gear (I.E. at 30% to crit, 1 - (.7 ^ 2) = 51%, compared to 45% for incite, at a much larger rage cost. Then again, its quite possible that you will be procing SD every few secconds or so with a dw build anyway, so using both might be out of the question for the most part.

It's quite possible that you will be expected to use HS only sparingly with this build. You have to keep up BT, WW and Bloodrush on CD, so its quite likely you will keep a mostly full rage bar up at other times. But spamming HS even now can leave you rage starved. Whenever I was fury a HS was something you had to be careful with. With a TG build HS becomes more deliberative use (You might even use quartz to time it properly). Also keep in mind you're not swinging once every 4 sec, but twice. so this mitigates the miss rate and speed penalty quite a bit.

Also, I would like to see Furious Resolve changed to "Increases maximum rage by 10/20/30" instead of the threat reduction. Having two talents so close to each other that reduce threat generation strikes me as lazy.

 

Mumbles

I can't deny anything you said, and to a certain extent you are completely right, where you are not right, is in those guilds where they weight the pros and cons on each boss in regards of taking a specific class/spec, min maxing etc, allow me to elaborate.
On more 'relaxed' guilds, what you wrote will happen most likely, not only because they have they're warriors already but because of the social aspect, they are friends etc, and if the warriors do not re-roll they'll hang with them and in fact will be able to do the same things as any other tank, no doubts about that, the problem arises on guilds where the pros beat the cons and world/server firsts are a priority, regardless of they're social 'status' or any other reason, at the current state of things, they will prefer a feral druid, protection paladin or death knight instead of a protection warrior due to the obvious raid utility they provide unlike the protection warrior.

Now, on a completely different subject, which might change completely the way of thinking while setting up a raid, there has been a growing talk about the new feature of players having 2 different talent specs and be able to switch them in a easier way than the current method of clearing talents at the trainer and choose new ones. If this goes ahead, and, something on the lines of adding a new spell in your spell book that allows you to switch to another spec you had previously defined with a considerate cool down i guess, like an hour or so, is done, then were looking at a completely new way of setting up raid composition, because instead of thinking about a class/spec when choosing who to take in, we will be looking at thinking about a class/spec 1/spec 2 and this opens the possibility of an entire new philosophy of raiding, where for instance in boss A you can afford to take 7 healers, and in Boss B you will need 8, and fixed just by having 1 hybrid switch to his second spec that can be healing, all this happening inside the dungeon, and through the touch of a button, dropping by ground the need of switching people middle raids for specific bosses.

The above can work in an advantage for the protection warriors, by being able to have a DPS spec when not need to tank or just when X number of tanks are required, and when X+1 is required he can change to prot, stick the prot gear and get the job done.

Regardless of what they will do, and I have no doubt they (blizzard) will, I would rather have a bit of raid utility as protection.

Best regards,

 

Liar

Sorry for ending the discussion this early, but they removed the damage component from Hamstring in the Beta so you won't be able to proc Flurry or Deep Wounds from it (Pummel got the same treatment).

As for Prot Warriors, the current state of Warrior talents make them the weakest of all tanks with all the homogenization going on and with the removal of CBs. But I have hope that Warriors will get a good workover for the Prot tree so I won't complain yet that all Prot Warriors can look for is SUPER REND. :P

PS: That doesn't mean I am not jealous about the Death Knight skill Death Grip - Spell - World of Warcraft though. <_<

Unexpected TankPoints error Clearly someone doesn't understand how EH works. That, or upgrading from T8 to T9 is optional in beating Arthas. Clearly.

 

Shha

- I dont think you will use HS at all with this build. Its discussed in current BC warrior threads, and I actually tested it myself. Imp Slam is comparable to HS with dual wield, when it comes to rage dump. In fact on paper its slightly better - as for actual performance it varies from boss to boss, but definitely its on par. Now its for 0.5 cast vs 1.5 or so swing timer with all the gear/flurry etc. If we talk about 0.5 cast vs 4 sec swings for 2h slams, I think TG build will in fact base on slams as rage dumps.


- Furious Resolve seems to be placed pretty intelligently. In short - TG warriors will have it, SD ones wont. So that 10% difference might be another hidden advantage to TG build.

So basically what you are saying is : In a guild that pushes minmaxing to the limit, protection warrior will not be a 100% choice for EVERY boss. Well thats the definition of minmaxing really - that you exploit smallest advantages. Sure it will happen, but to prevent this you would have to make prot warriors superior tanks on EVERY SINGLE BOSS - thats going to far dont you think?

 

Mumbles

I think you missed my post here WotLK talent Preview/Discussion 2 pages ago.

p.s.
When I talk about raid utility I mean something in the same line as the other tanks provide to the raids, I think it could be fixed with a small not weak and not overpowered raid/group buff, who knows a shout that influences damage taken or dodge/parry/block something along those lines, that will be welcomed but not a 100% necessity, again, in the same lines as all other tanks raid buffs/utilities.

Best regards,

 

• landsoul

I dont even think TG will be all that bad with a semi faster 2 handed weapon. Even with one point in TG, a 3.5 weapon will go to 3.50*1.28/1.25=3.58 with flurry. Now mind you that is WITHOUT haste and the new supposed windfury totem. Let's add 5% haste and windfury totem now.

3.50*1.28/1.25/1.05/1.20 = 2.84

That's really not that unmanagable. If there were faster 2 handers as well maybe a 3.2 sword or something, that would be very desirable. With 1 point in TG you can also pickup 4/5 sword specialization, which is king for PvE and king for rage generation management. Also remember that at high end raiding, stats on gear become very rhinodonkulous and there will definately be a point where TG will not be feared as unmanagable. It won't be long before someone figures out the perfect macro for twisting in it's slams/bloodsurges either.

 

Gruntle

That is actually an excellent idea. It would go a long way of solving one of the main issues with TG, the rage overflow problems would be a lot less problematic.

To landsoul above, won't Sword spec be a bit gimped with a 6 sec hidden cd? I imagine it could work with slow twohanders, but still, Axe spec looks better to me.

 

Shha

Im not sure why people suddenly decided sword spec is crap just because of new cooldown.

With slow/fast setup currently 2.6/1.5 pvp weapons and sword spec, you are looking at around 11 attacks over 6 seconds.
With 5% proc rate chance of no procs is around 55% ,
chance of exactly 1 proc is 33%.

12% chance to cut a sword spec is a lot - but its actually for a spec thats aiming at maximum sword specs right now (and it also benefits with slow MH sword specs proccing of fast OH - something that increases actual gain from it) - if you use 2x2.6 sword the "wasted SS would go down to around 7%.

7% lower uptime means basically 4.65% chance to proc extra attack.

With double apolyons for example, and 1/5 TG the cooldown shouldnt be really an issue.
You are looking at 7 attacks in 6 sec span. Chance of "wasting" a sword spec is basically reducing SS effectiveness by 4%.

In my opinion Sword spec and axe spec are close enough together for TG build that its somewhat pointless to discuss which is better. Its the case of "Better spec = the one that covers weapon dropping from current endgame boss". In other words - stats on weapon will be way more important then spec.

For SD builds, axes are clearly better - fast MH doesnt benefit as much from sword specs from instants (1.5 MH speed sword spec of your execute isnt as nice as a crit on the same execute) and offhand - and higher crit = higher flurry uptime (visible with fast weapons), and higher SD uptime.

 

Shha

Warriors already have shouts - with tank probably providing everyone in the raid with 2k hp. It doesnt seem as week. Granted what I would really like is some other shout for fury instead of pvp skill at 51 point - maybe a haste one, or +hit one - something to make full fury more desirable from raid point of view as counterbalance to BF.

Thats more like intensify Rage buff not furious resolve.

Edit: One more thing to discuss. Since the 5/5 TG vs weapon specs is mostly unresolved how about dropping arms tree completely for a TG build. 17/54 build doesnt have 2h spec (im pretty sure with slow swings Id rather have hit but thats i guess disputable as well... all you really pick up in arms is impale (imp heroic is kind of useless with the huge cost attached to 2h anyway).

17 points to get 10% more damage on YELLOW crits. Assuming with TG around 50% of your damage will be white (since heroics wont be vastly used - its a very rough approximation) and with 40% crit chance only ~28% of your damage will be affected - making impale only add ~2-3% of the damage. With deep wounds adding 1-2% we are looking at 4% increase in damage for 17 points in arms tree.

at 70 we took impale because frankly there wasnt anything else to take. At 80 you have 10% threat reduction (possibly equal to 10% dps increase), AND 2 points in imp slam (or dual wield spec or precision or zerker rage depending where you took them from) in fury tree alone. Thats only 5 points as well - remaining 12 can still be used.

Possibilities being:

- actually go back to arms and spec to DEEP WOUNDS, but not impale. Crazy sounding but still - 4% ap/10% threat reduction or 2% hit/10% threat vs 2-3% increase in damage? Sounds like a fair trade honestly,

- Take incite for occasional heroics when you are at full rage, and put the extra 4 points into something - booming voice might be actually a must have with raid wide shouts, so there are places to dump them.

- Take EVERYTHING in fury (assuming they would do something like the max rage change for intensify rage) - intensify rage/imp execute/booming voice/imp cleave for aoe situations.

The more I think about it, the less appealing impale is.

 

Ballistae

I'm a bit pessimistic about the warrior protection tree at the moment. A lot of the old staples have been improved, which is great, and the promise of more dps/tps is excellent, however the new skills seems a bit gimmicky and/or useless in a 25-man raid setting.

Looking at the talents as they are right now and presuming there is already room for at least 1 dps warrior in the raid... what advantages would a raid gain by bringing a protection warrior to a raid compared to bringing a feral druid/protection paladin?

Will we be preferred because of greater survivability or greater single-target threat of either, or what?