I've put some more thought into this question I raised earlier (still no responses) and I think it depends on how much rage one has. In a raid, if the build up of rage was faster than the usage of WW/BT before Execute then you might be capped on rage (doubtful but maybe you have Heroism/Bloodlust during this phase of the fight and are getting a ton of rage). If you are at any point wasting rage by doing a WW> BT > Execute then you should probably just straight up use execute?

Anyhow, my next question is regarding weapon speed. From the sounds of it, the only benefit we get from weapon speed is to our Whirlwind damage, since our autoattacks and BT do not really take this into account, correct? Reason I ask is because I noticed that Rets and DKs seem to value speed a lot more than us. I just wanted to clarify. There isn't an extreme where a 3.8 speed weapon with less DPS beats a 3.4 speed weapon with more DPS for example?

This is the simple questions/answers thread. This isn't the "state the obvious" thread. We all know Heroic Strike is modified by haste. The fact remains that BT/Slam/WW are not. You could make the argument that it contributes to Deep Wounds, but so do Str and Crit. Str and Crit also benefit the aforementioned instant specials that haste does not benefit. This begs the question, "Why use a stat that only improves some abilities when I can just as easily use a stat that improves all of my abilities?"

Because haste requires less rating then crit for 1%. Additionally your gear haste % is usually way lower then crit % - meaning that increasing haste by 1% has more of an impact then crit. Im not saying haste is good, mostly answering your question LodeRunner. At some gear level haste will catch up to crit im sure. Right now however its lower.

Right now from my spreadsheets, as well as landsouls, and multiple sims stat priority seems to be:

1st) Str - yes EVEN if you are NOT hit or expertise capped, gemming str is best for TG. I find it a bit hard to believe - but when 5 different math models seem to give me that result... I see no other way but to accept it.

2nd) Hit/Expertise until cap. Both around 90% of STR value - at naxx gear level.

3rd) Crit - definitely above other non STR stats

4th) Agility/haste/ArP - depending on gear i use the value of those 3 switches. Most common is Agility>ArP>Haste

5th) Hit - its WAY lower after the cap then other ones.

Reason for the low hit/expertise/haste position:

Those are the stats that impact rage generation the most. Thats why they were high pre-WLK. Right now in raiding environment I *ALREADY* am capped on rage most of the time - using heroic on every swing etc. And thats beggining of the expansion. In short, raiding warriors now have infinite rage. Therefore hit only affects now offhand dps - since rage is enough to use everything else on cd, and heroics take place of MH swings. Haste is higher , but again - the rage generation boost from haste is unimportant. Same for expertise.

I know people who can make each, so yes it definitely does. The RNG will eat away at certain servers for a very short period in the end.

What happens is that expertise has a two-part dropoff, like hit on a DW build. Under the "soft cap" (MH cap), expertise has full value. Above the MH cap but below the OH cap, expertise has a reduced value. At a ballpark, whatever % of your overall damage is your whitehand damage, that percent of it's pre-soft-cap value is how much it's worth between caps. Use this value when evaluating your gear. It's not a cap-or-don't-cap issue, it just might shuffle which gear is best-in-slot or best-upgrade-in-slot at any given point.

What is the best choice for threat generation, 3/3 Improved Heroic Strike or 3/3 Armored to the Teeth? I'd wager a guess that Imp. Heroic Strike is better at first but at some certain armor value Armored to the Teeth will outscale it? Am I correct in that assumption or is Imp. Heroic Strike "just better"? If I'm correct, whereabouts would that armor threshold value be? We can also assume that Imp. Heroic Strike also gets benefit from 3/3 Incite.

all the tanks i'm seeing lately are speccing 4/8/the rest

with the general consensus being that AttT is outdoing a less rage HS, besides with proper glyph u can HS for free.

I was also curious about this STR before all (even hit cap) while it might be better mathematically, i just cant see missing what could have been a 6k bloodthirst. but i did some gem swapping (still hit capped/not expertise capped) and ran with a warrior that was expertise capped with less AP and i actually out dps'd him.

also have any of you looked into [Darkmoon card: greatness] one of these is 90str static and a 300str proc with a 33% uptime, definitely worth looking into imo. ( i tried to link the item, but apparently wowhead doesn't have it yet)

Are there any up-to-date SEP-ish addons out there? ItemValue doesn't read armor penetration properly and has string hashindex problems with adding new gems with no update in sight.

Does anyone know if Dual Wield Specialization in the Fury tree would apply to Shield-based damage (Shield Slam, Damage Shield, etc)?

Unless I'm terribly mistaken, impale affects prot abilities, correct? I've noticed that a lot of warriors are not specced into it. With the amount of crit to our abilities, it only makes sense to have this talent.

With my spec, I only trade off puncture and I guess the crit I would have from cruelty. In return I have imp hs, imp charge, and impale.

Please tell me if I missed the memo about impale not affecting prot, but I'm pretty sure (infact almost positive) that it does.

It affects prot abilities. But you need to calculate at what point 2/2 Impale is better than 5/5 Cruelty. If yellow damage while tanking is 80% by using heroic strike frequently.. At Around 39% crit 2 points of Impale start to be better than 5 in cruelty. I don't know how much % yellow damage prot tanks do or how much crit do they have. What I dont see is Impale being better than Cruelty so easily.