Ok, this might not be such a simple question or answer. But...

When and (more importantly) *why* would Arms do more dps (let's say versus single target bosses) than Fury and vice versa?

I guess Arms would pull ahead after the player read enough stupid questions so he is smashing his buttons furiously in anger right before they come of GCD..

(Sorry for this, I'd be topping meters if playing now)

When tanking some fights (like Razorscale or Thorim) I find myself extremely frustrated by the built-in overhead mob health bars. I like to have them on so I can more easily see if a mob is heading away from my group. At the same time the layout of the bars is terrible at times with the health bar being off to the side of the actual mob because there are so many clustered. Plus it obscures my ability to even see some of the mobs. So I find myself toggling on and off the health bars during fights.

I think changing the health bar orientation to be vertical would be a perfect fix to this. Any mods or config changes capable of making this possible?

In addition, any way to increase the distance from a mob at which you can see their health bar?

Hello, I have a question about whether it would be wise to start stacking ArP or not.
At this moment I have 3724AP and about 9.45% penetration (no ArP gemming at all at this moment).

Also, as rotation I'm using a priority based schedule; which is:

1. Rend up, bloodstorm on cd
2. Execute
3. Overpower
4. MS
5. Slam

I'm using every GCD.

With this I can barely "score" 2500DPS on dummies and heroics, in raid it's 3000DPS.
The DPS warrior spreadsheet estimated my arms DPS at 4800.
Therefore, I think I should be able to put out more DPS with my gear, isn't it?

Is this achievable by stacking ArP (or would it be wasting gold) or any other changes?


Thanks for your time.

42 expertise is absurd. You are wasting a ton of itemization points on a useless stat WAY past the cap.

What's the rotation for Fury? WW > BT > HS in excess rage with using slam only when Bloodsurge pops...?

Forgive me, I've been reading up on ArP here and there seems to be a lot of back and forthing.

Landsoul posted:

Unmodified cap =1232 rating
Cap with Sunder = 1074
Sunder+FF = 1039
Sunder+FF+Arms = 916
Sunder+FF+Arms+Mace = 731

I had seen no direct response to this, so I wanted to verify the validity of this. I've heard (on EJ) that Sunder and FF do not count towards the ArP cap... then I see posts that say it does. :/

So my question is simple: Does the table up top seem roughly correct? Or did I accidentally gloss over a post refuting it?

Sunder & FF do NOT count towards your 100% cap. They reduce the armor of the target BEFORE your ArP is summed and applied.

There are posts on EJ, some linking to the blue posts, which detail this. Search for the keyword "sunder" and you'll find various.

i just got one of my friends into wow with RAF and he decided to roll a warrior. He keeps asking me for advice on the class, but i have never tried a warrior beyond lvl 10 cause i dont like the rage system(my loss i guess). Well, as of right now i keep finding that fury is best for lvling, but is it better to DW or get a 2H weapon?

I would suggest leveling as arms because it requires one less weapon and the spec provides for more instant strikes sooner than fury (at 27 a warrior can have 3/3 Taste for Blood and those Overpower procs are very strong at that point). It's also really strong with the Whirlwind Axe.

Does anyone know a mod i can use that shows when Sudden Death Procs?

Has anyone every done maths on the benefits of a single cruelty point vs anger management ? I've always been a fan of anger management simply due to being able to start out fights with a maximum amount of rage (bloodrage 10 seconds before pull so anger management kicks in, then charging to the boss).

Anger management yields 20 rage per minute (or possibly slightly less if you're at 100 rage the moment it ticks), which should translate in ~2 extra heroic strikes per minute on the average. If every gcd is used there are 40 gcd's + (~40) swings which translates to 80 hits per minute which crudely means that you'll get an extra crit every 72 seconds with an additional point into cruelty.

Obviously these aren't very "scientifically" correct numbers but anger management has the additional effect of having your rage decay slower in between pulls and purely based on the above mentioned it should outperform the 1 point in cruelty. Add to that the fact that on quite a few bossfights in ulduar there's a "no-incoming damage" phase (mimiron interphases, hodir flash freeze, xt-002 heart phase, interrupting/stunning the small dwarf at council, kite-phase at vezax, numerous moments at yogg'saron) and I really don't see how the "standard" spec wouldn't take anger management in.

You can argue that if you're already spamming heroic strike 100% of the time anger management is useless and I'll agree with you fully, but honestly which fight are we talking about then ? Even on fights like xt hardmode we tend to have rageless moments or atleast moments without heroic strike usage. 3 attacks avoided in a row leaves you rageless in general which occurs 12.8% of the time (of each 3 swings that is) with 60% avoidance which isn't something to simply neglect.

Any additional feedback to this idea?

Hello there,

somehow my damage output seems to be somewhat low, so I started looking around, reading here and there, used the DPS Spreadsheet to optimize my gear setup, but still I can only get to an average of about 4k DPS. I'm playing WoW for less then a year and I'm still having problems getting into the theory behind what's happening most of the time.

Well, what I do is:
Keep Rend up
When ready, use Execute/Overpower with priority to Execute
Else use Mortal Strike
If MS is on CD use Slam.

But there are some things I'm totally unsure of:

What should I do when the Boss is <20%? Keep up the rotation? Spam Execute at 30 Rage?
I use Quartz to show my swing timer, but how exactly should I take that into account?
In which situations or under which condition should I use Heroic Strike?
I've noticed while looking through some WWS logs that many high dps warriors use Whirlwind, is it really worth changing the stance, thus losing rage, to do so?
Is using Cleave as Arms any good? Same goes for using Recklessness.
Should I drop Imp Execute or is it worth having?
Hitcap is 263 and any hit beyond that is useless right? And the Exp Cap is 26 if i read that right? Is that having Weapon Mastery 2/2 or do I need that on top?

Last thing I am curious about is, I noticed that - compared to other Arms warriors in my raid - I generate really low rage, although I have Anger Management + Unbridled Wrath 5/5 and I got no idea why. I read the thread about rage generation, but I'm either too dumb or unexperienced in WoW or both to draw any conclusions as of what to change from that.

If anyone could enlighten me concerning any of my questions that would be really appreciated.

Basically I am having the same problem as alot of others. I was fury, very comfortable with it, truth is, fury is very easy. Now I am arms, my dps has shot up, but I am having problems with my rotations. I do the same as most others, rend, Overpower etc. I am not doing as much damage as fury, even though my dps is much higher. Most likely this is because of inexperience, too many damn keys to press, lol. I have the hit cap, slightly less exp, I was told as I am basically just smacking a boss, from behind, exp is not so important, I think I have it on 25, but my question is, what should I gem for? The World of Warcraft Armory is my toon, I also have Deaths Bite and a mace from naxx25, can't remember the name, but it has alot of exp!! With armageddon, my hit is down, but my dps is the same, and I am talented for axes (deathsbite). Plz help!!! I sometimes think that I should just do strength and ap. Also do I need armpenetration gems??

And I have read pretty well all the threads, and I still don't completely understand. Yes, Noooob, ok, but basically if someone could just put it down in easy language for someone who does not completely understand the maths!! With hit cap reached, as arms warrior, what should I gem for, what should my rotation be, and what should I want more, crit, or str or agi or what?? Thank you

Don't use a none SD execute. You'll drain all your rage, and have to wait for a white hit to get enough rage to use anything else. Arms is all about using ever GC to do something.

Your weapon swing timing no longer matters. It used to matter for timing the use of slam, but slam no long resets your swing, so it does nothing now.

I usually use HS when I'm at 90+ rage. The fact that you do not get any rage from a heroic strike means you have to wait until your next attack to get that rage. You want to have enough to MS, possible SD, OP, and slam. So that is up to +80 rage you can use in the span after a HS with only about one normal attack. It is better to to waste rage by hitting the 100 cap then running out of rage for abilities. At the same time don't just sit at 100 rage and never HS.

That is Bladestorm. It shows up in logs as WW. Arms warriors don't actually switch to berserker to WW because it is a waste of too many GC and rage.

You can replace the instances of HS with Cleave if you will hit two mobs. Don't spam it in AOE situations though or you will have no rage for other ablities. I generally don't use Recklessness because I haven't figure out if it's really worth it. That would require more input from others.

I personally dropped Imp Execute because the warrior DPS spreadsheet showed that it's DPS increase was minimal for all the junk talents it required. I only run 25 mans, so I'm never need for the shout buffs. If you do need the shout talents then it may be worth having.

Hit cap is 263 for 8% (230 if alliance and you have a Draenei). Exp cap is 26 with no talents, 18 with 2/2 Weapon Mastery. Anything over either cap as arms is wasted.

You should not need AM or UW for rage as arms. As long as you are not spamming HS you should have more than enough rage in a raid situation. Without actually looking at a log it's hard to guess what any other problems could be.

@thehondontom

Warrior DPS Calculation Spreadsheet

When I tried the stated DPS was pretty near to what I could get out of my warrior. Just try around and see where your DPS go when gemming ArP.

Although I am as stated above not too firm with numbers and formulas, but I think i have read that gemming ArP only makes sense once you have a certain amount of ArP from gear.

@Legedi
Thanks for taking your time. I'll try to get a WWS log next raid.
So basically BS is simply recorded as WW?

Yeah.. they added 10 hit to the shoulders ( whoopeeee -_-)

added 8 str (i believe) to earthshaper, and like 6 crit and 6 hit rating.

While tanking, Anger Management's contribution during combat is close to zilch. Everytime you gain rage over the 100 cap, it resets the amount of rage gained by AM to 0.

Say the fight has gone for 30 seconds now. You have gained 10 rage from AM. Say you're sitting at 90 rage now, and you gain 20 rage from critting or being hit by something. You can't have over 100 rage, so that's how much rage you have right now. If you didn't have that point in AM, then after 30 seconds into that fight you would have had 80 rage, and gaining 20 rage from that crit / damage received puts you at 100, just like before. So you gained absolutely no rage from having AM.

For me anyway, the situation where I waste rage because of the cap happens often enough that I get no contribution from AM. It still helps you build rage in between pulls, if starting with a full rage bar is important to you.
To save rage I usualy charge a critter and untarget it before I have a chance to kill it, so I stay in combat with it for a small while and thus don't loose any rage. In that situation AM would make you gain a bit of rage too.

Arms get a small dps increase if they manage to use those rage points in an execute proc. 38 damage per extra rage point /3sec = 12.67 dps increase? Grats.

And HS doesn't cost 9 rage (or 12 or 15). It costs that + the rage you're not getting from your next white swing - excess of rage cap.

This is only true for the rage gained since the last time you dumped rage. If at 30 seconds, you dump extra rage into an extra HS, then you have gained an advantage from AM. Capping at 100 rage at any point in the fight does not nullify the talent as you make it sound. Your example is correct if you only mean to nullify the the rage gain from last low/dump point (which we can't call zero, since warriors keep a pool in reserve) until cap.

I have seen many posts talking about ArP > Str point for point after 30% ArP. I was unsure whether or not this was still true with the change made to Imp Zerk Stance (20% more str instead of 10% more AP).

Also wondering how Kings stacks with Imp Zerk Stance. Whether its added and a factor of 1.3 is applied to my base str OR if its calculated AFTER Imp Zerk Stance is, which would make the factor applied to my str 1.43. And what about Str of Earth and Horn of Winter. Do those stack with Kings and Imp Zerk Stance?

*added in edit*

Should I be geming pure ArP or should i keep around crit/str, str/stam, and crit stam gems for socket bonus and meta reqs

My Armory

Hmm good thought! were those posts stating 30% posted before the patch or after? I am new to this place and in fact this is my first post, but i have read more than half of this thread and i'm sure i've seen it more than once aswell. I suppose, if the %30 minimal cap of effectiveness for ArP is said without taking account the improved berserker stance, then I think it is natural that we add about 10-20% to it. And that makes it around 33-36%. I'm not very good at maths and I can easily be proved wrong. However thats what seemed right to me at first thought.

It depends on your gear, I cant enter your armory (probably because of the crapiness of the pc i'm currently using) But I can recall that it is said before that the t8-t8.5 sets items provide pretty adequate ArP. And you wouldn't even need gemming? I also recall someone saying its better you reach %30 barrier without gems and then build up your ArP with the gems.



edit for addition (Not as an answer to skolyr but as a general advice): What I do for sockets is if the socket bonus is str and if it doesnt require blue I add stuff like str/crit to utilize the bonus. but blue gems kill off your benefits. I would only use a blue(I mean purple,never use blue as dps) If I have a meta socket in another piece that requires blue. And naturally I would use them in a piece that gives bonus. But otherwise I never socket gems that give stamina. and if the bonus is crit/hit/stam/exp I simply ignore the bonus and go 16str's all the way.


example (socket bonus utilized)
*Blue- 8str/8stam
*Red- 16 str
Sock Bonus- 4str
equals 28str/8stam

example (socket bonus ignored because of blue)
*Blue- 16str
*Red- 16str
Sock Bonus - 4str (not counted)
equals 32str

now compare, If you're a dps warrior which one would be better for you?
28str/8stam or 32str?
*someone from the crowd shouts: "28str/8stam!!"*
*shakes head in disbelief and slaps forehead*

All multiplier buffs stack multiplicatively (if that's a word) so imp zerker stance (20%) and kings (10%) stack to total 1.2 * 1.1.

This looks to be a very common misconception with arp, there are no set numbers for when you should start to gem for it which is why people again and again say to use a spreadsheet. Strength is linear in that adding X strength will gain you Y DPS in end terms whether you're doing 90 DPS or 9000 DPS to begin with. Arp is not linear and will end up taking who knows how much stuff into account including buffs and debuffs. So, again, use the spreadsheet.