The whole Pure vs Hybrid issue leaves a terrible taste in my mouth.


Regardless, a small report/remind about new ArP: Armor penetration rating gets a 25% effectiveness hike. This will undoubtedly make it the best stat baseline if your target is sundered. ArP effectiveness does increase the more you have, still and for 3.1 you should stack it until you reach the 100% cap (which with grim toll is quite easy, in fact you have to stop stacking ArP quickly as the Grim Toll proc is very large). I am not sure this is a bandaid fix for itemization, because also there are mail and leather loots with ArP, although not as much as plate. I'd have to check the other boards for this, but maybe other classes will start looking at ArP more?

You should post with me on the WoW damage dealing forums. Smart posts are read by devs.

Also what do you think of : Haste Rating: Shamans, Paladins, Druids, and Death Knights now receive 30% more melee haste from Haste Rating.

I thought we were hybrids. Suddenly we're pures when it comes to haste buffs?

I think, in this particular case, we were deemed to be a source of issues where the haste would screw with our rage regeneration (re making it WAY too good). Haste does not directly affect a Ret Paladin's energy source.

Also, pure versus hybrid is indeed ugly. How much more pure can you get than a warrior? You hit stuff, it dies. No magic. No poison. Just you and your weapon of choice (the bigger the better).

While you can really argue about the whole hybrid vs pure thing, it really does make sense what they did with haste.
Warriors at the top tiers of gear already get to the point of ~70%+ damage being a result of autoswings (check the patchwerk 7500 dps). Remember to count deep wound contribution too and heroic of course.

No hybrid class comes close - with new playstyle
Enh shamans really do ton of their damage with maelstorm lightning bolts and other spells. Windfury is close 2nd and it doesnt improve much with haste.
Ret gets a decent improvement - but they honestly were a bit too low in my opinion.
Druids same - and their autoattack isnt a huge portion of dps.
DKs do 25% of their damage in form of melee/necrosis/blood caked blade etc if they are dual wield. Blood top dps specs raise it to 35%.

Anyway if our haste was buffed by 30% it would basically catch up to STR, giving us pretty overpowered itemization capabilities. For those hybrids it just becomes "somewhat useful".

You can't make a smart post about hybrid vs pure, the whole premise is flawed and over simplistic. GC is basically just arguing semantics and is constantly dodging any reasonable arguments. He has twisted the very definition of hybrid for one simple and obvious reason, he is trying to protect the raid spots of the so-called "pure" classes.

The original definition of a hybrid (at least for years of mmo history) was someone that could heal and support their allies while also relying on melee or ranged combat skills. It also never was so black and white, there were shades of grey, some hybrids focused on improving their support skills while their combat skills suffered, others did the exact opposite.

It feels like modern day politics, where everything has to be black or white, where words are twisted into a completely different meaning just to help the argument of a side or the other.

The classes getting completely screwed here are the ones that have no support skills, specifically death knights and warriors. Death knights aren't complaining because their dps hasn't been axed down (too much) yet, but they will be in the same exact boat as warriors once that happens. Dps death knights are still a viable off tank unlike dps warriors though, so they might still have a (small) niche.

Let me finish this entirely off topic post by saying that the reason this whole issue leaves a sour taste is that even if by some twisted logic we get forced into the "hybrid" bucket with enhancement shamans and ret paladins we still won't be competing for raid spots with them, who we will be competing with is still going to be rogues, death knights and, to a lesser extent, mages, hunters and warlocks.

I got this idea a few days ago regarding Titan's Grip. I don't really think it would solve our problem, but it could be the source of inspiration to making the (fury) warrior a more pure dps class:

Simply give the Titan's Grip talent a "debuff" preventing a warrior the ability of using shields. I do realize this (unfortunately) ruins tons of survivability/utility in PvP. Admittedly, after playing my 3rd warrior and being a "warrior for life" I like the idea of having arms for pvp, fury for pve dps & protection for tanking.

Am I full of it (with this post) or could this be an interesting idea?

To be quite frank, I agree. I figured, after a few days of playing with the idea, that it might be worth sharing though. One never knows, maybe someone might get a brilliant idea from some rant like this.

Personally I believe the "everything being equal" ideology is wrong. I don't think everyone and every spec should be equal. But that's a completely different subject.

Sorry to drift off topic slightly but as I'm an EU player, I obviously can't post on the US forums. If i could, I would. In answer to the whole hybrid vs pure crap I found a pretty awesome post which pretty much said exactly what i wanted to say:

Don't know if it's worth posting anything like that on the US forums for GC to see, but it's a pretty damn valid opinion.

I'm just going to jump on the sour taste bandwagon, except it's more like soap to me without any water to wash it down. And yes, it does seem more like politics than actual truthful developer feedback which is why anymore I do not like reading anything posted by GC. He tries to play both sides repeatedly and keeps changing his story depending on the current audience. The so called "pure" classes argue that anyone that can change roles are "hybrids" but seem to greatly enjoy forgetting everything their respective classes bring besides just DPS alone.

I'm not really worried about a raid spot right now, and it really doesn't seem like even an "intelligent" post on something so inane would get their attention, so all we can do is hope that guilds like Premonition, Juggernaut and the like end up supplying enough data that will actually cause some real change and that Blizzard ends up close to what they have proposed instead of how things are shaping up currently on the PTR.

I know I might get flak for this, but I actually agree with GC. Classes that can only function in the DPS role should do better DPS than hybrids. There should not be a difference between healing/tank/dps and dps/heal or dps/tank hybrids since in the end, all of the hybrids can do more than DPS if they choose to spec so. The main gripe is, as you mentioned, buffs. I don't think that just because Hunters, Rogues, Mages or Warlocks can bring buffs to the raid that their DPS should suffer, just how I don't want the DPS of hybrid DPS classes that bring buffs to suffer either. Buffs should be evened out between all classes and things like BoM vs BS should be homogenized so that neither is better/easier to apply. When they achieve that, their stance of pure classes doing more DPS than hybrids will be more readily accepted in the community, too. Lastly, the difference between Rogue and Warrior DPS will not be big enough anyway that you can't outplay/outgear the Rogues DPS if you really are the better geared and more skilled player.

You probably had ret aura or ferocious inspiration

Defensive stance is multiplied by TG penalty, as any other multiplier.
Those under 100% (def stance and i don't recall anything else then debuffs in pvp) will get a decreased reduction, those above 100% (enrage, deathwish, tott and even talents contribution from 2h spec and blood frenzy) will have a reduced increase.

The rege generation "shortage" is increasing with damage buffs and not the opposite, since part of the rage you deal is not damage related but related to weapons speed and crit chances.

The nerf was more about scaling than about damage itself.

Anyway I'm not sure the problem will hit low geared and unbuffed furies, but Ulduar BiS ones. In a few words they have probably killed the competition for first places in the damage meter. We are back to a point where you practically only compete with yourself and undergeared rogues.

So does this mean that Arms Mace spec would be ideal for PvE? Or would Poleaxe or Swords be better still?

I didn't see any commentary on this -

Any thoughts on how this may impact our dps?

This is simply stating the hotfix they did ages ago to stop double-dipping, why they decided to put it in the patch notes considering it is already on live I don't know but this change is nothing new.

Poleaxe spec is worth strictly more than 225 crit rating since it increases the critical damage done by axes or polearms by 5% on top of the 5% crit. Of course you need to take into consideration that the 5% crit is on top of 50% crit you already have vs the 15% arp on top of a 25% arp.

But rating is not the whole picture. Doing back of the envelope math, to find the net increase of 5% crit on top of 50% crit, assuming a 125% crit modifier to model both impale and deep wounds:

0% crit -> 100 points of damage
50% crit -> 162.5 points of damage (50 * (1 + 1.25) + 50)
55% crit -> 171.5 points of damage (55 * (1 + 1.3) + 45) (the modifier goes to 130% because of poleaxe specialization)

So the net gain from poleaxe specialization is roughly 171.5/162.5 = 5.4% increased damage.

I do not know how to compute the ArP gain from 15% mace specialization.

Fury can't get mace or poleaxe spec. This is not the arms thread.

There is a small difference.. that you get x2 multiplier base, +0.2 from impale and +0.05 from axe.
If you add up a metagem you are reaching 2.28 damage on crit but will only be 2.23 without axe spec (not .25 base .30 with poleaxe) and will only be 2.03 on white hit(that counts for ~20% of the overall damage that can crit).
Bleeds can't crit but deep wounds is effectively triggered by a crit.

If we consider DW (and fury only have that bleed so it's reasonable) a crit adds up 2.23+0.48 weapon damage on weapon damage related attacks (WW, BT and HS), 2.03+0.48 on white crits and 2.23*BT (or HT or execute) + 0.48 weapon damage for AP dependant attacks.

at 40% effective crit (reasonably low but consider 4.8% crit reduction on boss) from axe spec you get

a) Specials
40*2.23 + 40*0.48 + 60 (168.4% dmg) -> 45*2.28 + 45*0.48 + 55 (179.2% dmg) -> +10.8% damage
50*2.23 + 50*0.48 + 50 (185.5% dmg) -> 55*2.28 + 55*0.48 + 45 (196.8% dmg) -> +11.3% damage

b) white damage
40*2.03 + 40*0.48 + 60 (160.4% dmg) -> 45*2.08 + 45*0.48 + 55 (170.2% dmg) -> +9.8% damage
50*2.03 + 50*0.48 + 50 (175.5% dmg) -> 55*2.08 + 55*0.48 + 45 (185.8% dmg) -> +10.3% damage

c) Ap dependant are similar to specials

So you have around 10% increase for 85% of your damage (exclude bleeds since they cant crit even if your bleed damage will be higher due to more DW) and the synergy with deep wounds and impale only make it one of the best per point talent.
At 40% crit (44.8% crit on tooltip) 5 pts in axe spec are worth a lot more than other weapon specs and scales greatly untill you start to cap crit (75% on white) or unless you have to spend better those talents (IE Titan Grip if you are fury).


Actually 3-4% ArP is about 1% physical MITIGATED damage increase, this excludes bleeds so you can't get 1% damge but 1%*mitigatedDmg% increase. Generally for an arms with 6% Rend and 14% deep wounds you have left 80% damage that is mititgated by armor. So mace spec is worth about 4% damage.
After patch we arent seeing ArP being more effecctive, but ArP rating being more valued, so 15% are still 15%. And actually it isnt even removing that 15% (and this could be the bug). Stacking with buffs it soesnt seem to increase by much its value.

I posted few tests on the combat rating post, even if I couldnt derive a new formula you can still see that rating and buffs (and even buffs stacks in a strange way) except sunder alone, are working way differently than expected. And a bit lower (battle stance is worth 10% penetration but you seem only to get ~8.2% arp)

On PTR with 10% arp you get 2.05% damage on a heroic dummy and 2.15% on the same dummy with 5xsunder (80% armor).

So at best mace spec can be 5% overall damage.

If they are planning to increase armor values of bosses in next tier(s) then Armor penetration will be worth more than now, but is not even close to the damage increase by crit+crit% since you can't gem for that

Yes. What threw me off was that the 5% increase in prot's damage had already been implemented.

Your % increase in damage is wrong:
a) Specials:
40% crit: 168.4% -> 179.2% => +6.4% damage
50% crit: 185.5% -> 196.8% dmg => +6.1% damage

b) white damage
40% crit: 160.4% -> 170.2% => +6.1% damage
50% crit: 175.5% -> 185.8% => +5.8% damage

Taking into account that this is 85ish% of your total damage this is pretty close to the 5.4% with back of the envelope math I did above.

That's true I didnt consider the relative increase.
Anyway it's true that there are some other things to consider, that OP won't scale with the crit part over 50% if 2/2 imp OP, that the bleed dmg part is multiplied by trauma and ignores armor.. etc.

It's more or less 6+% damage afaik (never done the real math behind btw)
This is probably more intresting for arms unless TG is gonna be unworty,