I definitely hear you on the hit issue. 8% hit is an absolute bare minimum, and nothing else. Sticking to a 19-20% miss chance is asking for the RNG to make your day miserable. I seriously expect us to stick to 14-16% hit for Naxx level at least, even if it's technically worth less than other stats.

The Bloodsurge change is an obvious nerf to our crit scaling, but overall a significant buff to our rage management. This way our ability to use additional rage scales directly with all stats that increase our rage generation, rather than just crit.

However, I think this change will be a DPS increase almost immediately even if you're in Naxx. Assuming that you can use HS at least 6 times a minute and that both WW hits have a chance to proc you should (ideally) have 30 20% chances for Bloodsurge versus 12 Crit% chances. For the two to be even you need to have an average raiding Crit% of 50%. Most of the WWS I've looked at show 45% or less.

I still can't really understand what the genesis of this was, I can't believe it's for PVP. It does make me real nervous for what's next on the horizon for us. Though if a 50% crit rate on those spells means you would roughly have the same proc rate on Bloodsurge, then I guess this was an even exchange as in 50\50 10 and 25 man naxx gear I'm anywhere from 48-52% crit on those abilities in a raid.

I have heard claims that it was to up Fury DPS because arms was doing too much, not sure where that is happening because I have yet to see a WWS that shows an arms warrior beating a Fury warrior in similar gear. That is what I was told by a guildie who reads the forums/news/etc religiously, though. I was under the impression Fury was the warrior DPS king, is this wrong? Or was this done to up Fury DPS in PvP?

I'm not sure how this new bloodsurge will work out, what happens if it procs twice in a row? IE you queque a HS that lands right after a BT and both proc slam, will it give you two buffs or are we assuming there is a hidden cooldown (like on the sword procs).

Change is a buff, and actually a very welcome one - talking about BS.

a) It "spices up" Fury rotation. Its no longer the super boring WW,BT,Slam,Shout,BT,Slam castsequence (with SLam and shout obviously being optional).

WW seems obvious priority still , but then in a lot of cases using Slam over BT to maximise gcd use seems in place - especially since its better dpr (and sometimes damage, depends a lot on your weapon and stats - BT scales a lot better with ap, so when lets say mirror of truth/berseerking procs, its obvious to BT over slam, but in many cases its about even) - to BT after and have another slam chance. Again it will depends on buffs, current procs and your stats, but there is no more obvious castsequence.

b) It nerfs crit, which actually is a bit iffy. Crit at best was even with str, it definitely wasnt the super dominant stat like arms in beta. Right now Str will end up being best by far

c) It buffs haste a bit, by adding procs off Heroics.

Now the hit change+ the BS change has some serious consequences. There were many good points made about it, but i feel they lack some, and they dont show the whole picture.

a) Hit. Its obvious you wont sit at 4% hit from gear. It would be very hard to actually NOT use any hit gear. My legs + chest being best plate gear in slot regardless of hit, give me 3.5% on its own. Add some other items and you WILL be over yellow hit cap anyway. Dropping precision doesnt seem to give any reasonable dps boost either. So 8% buffed hit is just a myth - but maybe you will sit at 12% instead of 13 buffed etc...

b) Stacking hit for rage. Thats actually something I would NOT do. While it seems that stacking hit is best way to combat RNG it has significant drawbacks.

1) Hit is obviously on average your weakest stat by miles
2) It only prevents rage starvation from immediate misses. It doesnt change the fact sometimes you can lets say execute, and not get ANY swings in, before next gcd.

The answer in my opinion is stacking haste. While most warriors frown upon haste consider this:

1) Haste gives you more rage boost then hit assuming same # of heroic strikes used, and obviously it adds more dps. If instead of same #, you account for same % of heroics - yea hit gives more rage, but at even more hefty dps cost.

2) Haste can lower your swings under gcd - removing one source of rage starvation, and helping immensely with other. If you swing fast, maybe those 2 misses will only cause a 0.2 sec delay instead of 0.6 or so.

3) Haste with the new BS change goes up in effectiveness (due to more heroic strikes), and actually get about even with ArP. Consider - your gear doesnt always have only STR and CRIT. Its usually a toss between:

STR/CRIT/HIT - smoothest rage generation, but bad dps
STR/CRIT/ArP - worst rage generation, good dps
STR/CRIT/Haste - average smoothness of rage generation and same dps as ArP.

Considering that - haste is your top dps choice for the "3rd stat" on your item, and it gives close to hit efficiency in rage. Just remember - items with just 2 dps stats arent plentiful OR good. And haste will be your best 3rd stat choice.

While I understand your logic Shha, I would still prefer to see some actual numbers/statistics before claiming that haste is the third best stat.

Haste still suffers from the fact that it has diminishing returns after flurry and Windfury totems are applied, which increases its speed by 41-45%, and the faster the weapon is before haste is calculated, the less useful it becomes.

It would do the same thing as Sudden Death does when it chain procs before you get to use it. Just refreshes the "Slam!" buff duration.

I dont understand the logic here. Haste is multiplicative with % speed increase like flurry and windfury. Therefore 10% haste will always increase your swing+heroic dps by 10% (assuming same % of heroics - in fact it gives slightly more), no matter what speed buffs you have.

I don't think your logic holds together very well.

First you assume we'll still be doing BT+WW. I think it's obvious that's exactly what we won't do. It's very obvious we'll be spacing the two abilities one GCD apart to make room for Slam. Second, I find your assumed crit rate to be far higher than what I've seen on most WWS. The average I've seen is closer to 35-45%. Third, I'm not sure what your point is with the AE pull. If anything, being nearly guaranteed a Slam to follow WW seems like a good thing.

The only stepping on toes I see is the aforementioned case where HS procs Slam just before a BT or WW. That doesn't seem like an event that will necessarily occur often. It requires that a Heroic Strike is queues ~1-2 seconds before a WW or BS which is the least like time for this to happen, it requires that said Heroic Strike have actually proc, and then on top of that have the WW or BS proc as well for anything to be lost. It's effectively a loss of 4% efficiency or less, mitigated by the basic instinct to save rage prior to using our instants.

Our rotation will certainly be different, even less mindless. Considering that our rotation was nearly identical to vanilla, and that this was the most common complaint following launch, and that (as I noted earlier) Bloodsurge now scales with all attributes and buffs that increase rage generation (including Death Wish, Blood Lust, trinkets/racials etc). I think that this is clearly a winning situation especially with the loss of the TG penalty.

My apologies, seems I was mistaken, but in any case, there's still no hard evidence to haste being superior to ArP. ArP affects all attacks, so it increases rage gained through damage done(which is admittedly not much), but it's definitely superior dps. And more damage equals more rage through normal attacks as well.

Although I haven't done the hard calculations for ArP/haste, the rage increases to both of these would probably be minute compared to hit(unless you stack mass amounts of it, in which ArP actually has increasing returns). But I'm still very much unconvinced that the Blood Surge increased dps from haste will outdo ArP.

I see it as a very slight buff. The thing is that our rotations are very tight, and bloodthrist/WW will end up doing more damage because it scales better. Let's compare rotation periods between old and new then..

Old rotation: basically if you ad 50% crit you would do 1 slam per 10 seconds.

Period1	Period2
Seconds Ability 0.0 Whirlwind 1.5 Bloodthirst 3.0 Bloodsurge Slam / FREE GCD 4.5 FREE GCD 6.0 Wait 6.5 Bloodthirst 8.0 Bloodsurge Slam / FREE GCD 9.5 Wait	Seconds Ability 10.0 Whirlwind 11.5 Bloodthirst 13.0 Bloodsurge Slam / FREE GCD 14.5 FREE GCD 16.0 Wait 16.5 Bloodthirst 18.0 Bloodsurge Slam / FREE GCD 19.5 Wait

And now with the new rotation: Lets assume you had 100% heroic strike frequency yielding 1 heroic every 2 seconds. So thats 5 heroics, 1 whirlwind, and 2 bloodthirsts. That's 8 attacks that can proc slam, however you can't possibly use this proc after every attack.

Period1	Period2
Seconds Ability 0.0 Whirlwind 1.5 Bloodthirst 3.0 Bloodsurge Slam / FREE GCD 4.5 Bloodsurge Slam / FREE GCD 6.0 Wait 6.5 Bloodthirst 8.0 Bloodsurge Slam / FREE GCD 9.5 Wait	Seconds Ability 10.0 Whirlwind 11.5 Bloodthirst 13.0 Bloodsurge Slam / FREE GCD 14.5 Bloodsurge Slam / FREE GCD 16.0 Wait 16.5 Bloodthirst 18.0 Bloodsurge Slam / FREE GCD 19.5 Wait

Taking a look at this rotation you have 3 possible chances to use slam in this 10 second period. In the first 3 seconds you have dealt 1 WW, 1 BT, and 1.5 heroic strikes. That's a 3.5*.2 = .7 chance to get a slam in the first free GCD. For the next 2.0 seconds of free rotation, you have hit 1 heroic strikes which gets you .2 of a slam. From 6.5 seconds to 8.0 seconds while you are hitting your BT and 8.0 to 8.5 seconds of free before your next WW is starting to come up , thats (1 + 1)*.2 = .4 of a slam. So in total we have 1.3 slams in a 10 second period.

All of this speculation is based on keeping the rigid rotation. However, more opportunity arises to use possible slams if you loosen your rotation. But certain extents of incorrectly loosening your rotation will destroy your rotation DPS.

This is the logic I am injecting into my spreadhseet for now. If anyone has any rotation loosening asides please discuss them.



@ Shha and haste, again: Yes, Shha you are correct that haste is multiplicative with windfury and flurry etc, but haste is also multiplicative with strength. Stacking haste is definately not the way to go, but it is definately worlds better than hit and it always was, if that's what you were going after.

Since Landsoul has come up with that we will be using slam a bit more than we did before, would this make the 2pcT7 bonus even more desirable than it is right now? And if so, wouldn't this just increase the overall damage slam is from, lets say 7-8% total dps, to 10-12% total or even more?

PS. Hello Shha!

Actually, you could stack crit and Strength for a very very long time, until you started hitting white crit cap, then more strength, for longer than any level 80 item level will allow, before haste would catch up.

Edit: clarity

I've taken a look, and even if you attempt to space Bloodthirst a GCD away from Whirlwind you potentially encounter a collision immediately before the next. If you get a proc and use it you delay Whirlwind by 1 second. If Whirlwind, in turn, gets a proc you delay Bloodthirst by a second. This problem will continue indefinitely.

You lose ~9% Whirlwind damage and 14% Bloodthirst damage whenever either is delayed. Factoring in a rough probability of a proc that's 3% and 5% losses respectively.

The question is therefore whether the small but notable losses in DPS are made up for by prioritizing Slam to avoid duplicate procs. The chance of HS or Bloodthirst overwriting a previous proc is approximately 13%. It doesn't seem likely to me that a loss of 13% Slams will be worse, even without accounting for human error.

No you miss the point completely. You are saying "until very very high crit/str level, those 2 stats are higher SEP then haste". No problem there. Its true and I dont dispute them.

However beacause of how itemization work, the real question when it comes to an item is for example:

100 str 100 crit 150 stam

OR

87 Str 87 crit 87 Haste 150 stam.

My point is , item #2 will be better, even though haste is not perfect stat. In general SEP or not, you pick items with more varied dps stats over less different stats. And out of items with 3 diff dps stats, STR/CRIT/HASTE is the preferred combination in my opinion.

Depends on what the stats are and how much of each there are. That is why some leather and mail items are better than plates depending on what they have on them.

Seconds	Ability
0.0	Whirlwind
1.5	Bloodsurge Slam / FREE GCD
3.0	Bloodthirst
4.5	Bloodsurge Slam / FREE GCD
6.0	Slam / FREE GCD
7.5	Wait
8.0	Bloodthirst
9.5	Wait

Darian mentioned this one, but took into account the possible 9.5 slam opportunity delaying the WW. If you do not take that opportunity, ever, could this be more DPS? If you did get a slam off the 8.0 BT, WW'd at 10.0, you'd still be able to use slam at 11.5 if WW didn't proc one, making it even more complicated. There's no more free GCDs obviously, but there's an extra opportunity to use carryover slams.

So what would our current hit need to look like w/ smooth rage generation w/ out killing our dps? Also did you guys see the Executioner nerf? 850 armor to 120 armor pen rating. Kinda harsh -.-

Link for that? Cos I'm sure i'm still seeing big dw ticks.

I believe he is referring to the OH application of Deep Wounds' ticks, which were not gving the right damage for your rank of attack (I saw it proc 1 dpTick off OH strikes on the training dummies pre-wrath release). The original "bug" where OH crits were applying MH damage was fixed awhile back and the new bug (OH damage ticks) has supposedly been fixed.

As far as Bloodsurge goes, would it be better to spec only 2/3 in Bloodsurge (13%) to minimize missed procs and delayed WW/BT's? It might make for a smoother rotation with less loss, but of course a much reduced proc rate (reduced to .455 chance to proc a slam on the first three attacks in landsouls model above). Of course there is virtually nothing worthwhile to throw the extra talent point in. Has anyone heard Blizzard's logic behind removing the TG penalty? Was it supposed to be a buff to DPS or was it too easy to uptain the hit cap so they just figured to get rid of it? A better dps buff would have been to move trauma up one tier in the arms tree and move the overpower talent down.

Perhaps im not min/maxing as much as I used to but whilst we're doing mostly short naxx fights and the odd 4min+ boss fight i've got things like imp zerk rage (instead of 2min DW) - do you guys really feel you cant waste a gcd? I've usually got seconds between BT coming back up having used slam and queued a HS - an IZR can be the difference betwen having enough rage for BT if HS doesnt crit or getting rage starved by an OH miss!

They stated that a 5% hit penalty doesn't really serve any function since it's a trivial matter to soft cap hit at 11% + precision at 80. Arguably it allows people to dump more +hit off their gear in return for stats like STR and Crit, however the realities of rage generation and miss streaks could make this inadvisable. The TG change should make leveling up a Fury warrior more reasonable, but I don't plan on reducing the +hit on my gear and thus will see no effect from the change.

I don't plan on changing hit either, except by maybe taking points out of precision for either Improved bloodrage or possibly even Improved execute.

Only given an excess of hit from gear of course.