With the 10% ArP buff to battle stance, one might consider the following 2x1hand build:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warr...0&version=9658

You give up the following:
- Whirlwind
- Bloodsurge
- Titans' Grip
- Unending Fury
- Rampage
- Intensify Rage
- Imp. Berserker stance
- 3% crit from Bers. stance

You gain:
- Rend
- (imp.) Overpower
- Poleaxe spec
- Trauma
- Incite
- Strength of Arms
- 10% ArP from Battle stance
- Shattering Throw (?)

Once again, I do not quite see this spec working out, at least not without a 2.7 or slower mainhand axe but it might be worth a try.

edit: It might also be worth mentioning that you gain imp. thunderclap for AoE fights, though I'm not sure that it is safe enough to use.

So far current itemization (aka lack of good 1H axes) doesn't favor such builds. Probably its pipe dream but I still believe in 2x1H DPS build comeback .

Another crazy idea is dual wielding maces wit maces specialization (15% ArP) .

As Landsoul has stated, ArP becomes the more valuable the more you get, until you reach the cap. With the 24% from sunder and faerie fire, the 10% from battle stance and the x% from items (which tends to become quite a large value, even without the ArP trinket proc), Mace spec is indeed starting to look like a viable alternative.
The problem is: there seem to be neither good axes nor good maces in ulduar so far, d'uh.

edit: is overpower normalized?

However the more reduction effects that you place on armor, via arms stance and shattering throw, ArP becomes worse. Even the value of mace spec is completely watered down with all of these stacking effects. I don't think you are seeing the big picture here.

Picture:
Armor penetrating effects effect on armor value:
(1-.05)*(1-.20)*(1-.10)*(1-.15)*(1-ArP)
(FF)*(sunder)*(armsstance)*(macespec)

Does that mean that it's more effective to stack ArP rating and attempt to swap the other -armor multipliers for their alternatives?
For instance, fury would have an advantage over arms as it's not using battle stance (-10% armor), and if you happen to be arms, choose something other than mace spec?

Well, mace spec and arms stance would have a specific amount of armor penetration value depending on how much armor penetration rating you had, so it may be better at one point but not another, while something like axe spec remains untampered with. I'm not too sure if there is a point like that, but the watering down concept is very real. It's very hard to say what can be better than another without a very solid model and knowing exactly what gear the person is wearing. Even a small mechanics change (like the new arms stance) could change everything.

According to Whitetooth's post here ArP rating is additive with buffs and debuffs like Sunder, Battle Stance etc. There are a number of bugs currently (Blizzard goofed and divided the effectiveness of ArP by 1.25, rather than multiplying and somehow the Battle Stance debuff got hit by that as well), so it's tough to say whether that might be one of them.

If it isn't, then Mace Spec will be ~10% Armor Penetration at worst.

Wow, if that change makes it live, doesn't that mean that ArP will be the best stat bar none until you get 100% armor reduction?

Yes, and it scales exponentially if my late-night math is accurate. I did some very basic estimation a few nights ago and had decided that it just had to be multiplicative, since that appeared to scale linearly and I was estimating its point-for-point effectiveness at just under strength's. Additively, it appeared to scale exponentially -- albeit with a fairly low curve -- and be considerably better than strength. I didn't think that meshed with the direction Blizzard seemed to be going with gear itemization.

It makes more sense than making it multiplicative. It would be way too punishing for arms warriors since you'd be penalized for having so many different sources of armor reduction. (mace spec/battle stance/gear/shattering throw)

And besides, an exponential stat is fun and was already a huge part of melee dps in TBC.

While I hope ArPen is going live as an additive stat, I highly doubt it. It reminds me too much of the TBC days where stacking ArPen as high as possible was the name of the game and I doubt Blizzard changed armor penetration values to ratings only to go back to that scenario.

I made a simple ArPen calculator that shows how much of an effect it has: "Simple" ArPen calculator.
It requires JavaScript and it assumes the 25% buff to ArPen ratings is implemented, rather than the current 25% nerf on PTR.

I dont think anybody can really tell until theres an accurate spreadsheet ready for the patch 3.1 changes. However I doubt that it is going to be, its passive stats of 83 hit rating puts it far behind other trinkets, and it would be a big toll (pun intended) for the trinket to pull ahead based on its proc. Even if it will be a lot more potent, the procs on other trinkets (such as mirror/greatness) are already really quite powerful.

As has been already pointed out a few times - with all the armor reduction and penetration flying around, you might even want to avoid Grim Toll because the massive proc will put you over 100% reduction. But noone can tell yet.

25.3% ArPen from gear to get 100% ignore with Grim Toll proc. and Sunder/FF (without Hearty Rhino food - 22.05% with)

Found a very basic ArP calculator here:

"Simple" ArPen calculator

Not sure about the legitimacy of its calculations, but it's a start at least.

What makes you think that they changed ArP to be additive when it isn't in live? It's bugged in the PTR at the moment because it does not fully support additive or multiplicative data. This has been checked twice by me and a partner. It's not about what makes more sense or not, either. It's about what it actually is. Also, one person's definition of sense is probably different than someone else or Blizzard's.

Until it gets fixed (which gets checked every patch build) to behave properly will won't have the right answer.

Just some Brainstorming: The new changes to Taste for Blood ("# Taste for Blood: Will now proc 33/66/100% of the time with a 6 second cool down." - MMO-Champion - World of Warcraft Guides and Raid Strategies ), it seems that overpower may now be worthwhile! Picking up Taste for Blood 3/3 and Imp overpower 2/2 means that points have to be lost in either Deep wounds or 2h Weapon Specialization. At the same time, with Overpower being usable every 6 seconds, the only reason to switch to Berserker Stance in a PVE situation would be to Whirlwind. Since it is usable every 8 seconds, this could be quite doable. With the rotation I had in mind, a lot of stance dancing will be required in order to meet the cool downs of all of these abilities.

>With the Glyph of rend you can use overpower 3 times over the course of 18 seconds, after rend wears off you can reapply it and on the first damage proc overpower will light up. The problem is you will be stance dancing so much that with the new rage mechanics (assuming you could use enough rage to get to the sweet 25 rage spot in the first place), you will be losing 10 rage every 6 seconds to overpower, and every 21 seconds to reapply rend.

> With the 10% ArP buff in battle.. why not switch only to WW? This way you are only losing 10 rage every X seconds instead of every 6. Will the 10% AP buff from imp Berserker Stance be worth the 5 points? I am not too sure about this and I have no idea how to test this other then with raw data.
99% sure that changing stance does not trigger GCD.

I don't want to go into in details due to it being a huge ugly wall of text with numbers attached that I have not yet tested on the test realm, but it is more or less possible to use Overpower along with WW every cool down. The bloodthirst would have to be used at every possible opportunity, but it seems possible. I shall be testing it tomorrow night.

Losses: 2 points in deep wounds, 1 point in 2h Spec, maybe 5/5 Imp Berserking Stance?
Gain: 2/2 taste for blood and 2/2 Imp Overpower

Thoughts?

One major flaw I see with this is that as far as we know the rage loss on stance switching is not changing. They reverted that change. As such, you would lose a great deal of rage stance dancing that often. I see other problems as well. Deep wounds is a fairly large portion of fury damage, and I doubt it'd be worth losing that to gain an overpower every 6 seconds (which would probably be taking the place of slams, etc.)

The change was reverted? I did not know this ugh. Slams would without a doubt mess up the rotation, but the proc on the new Taste for Blood lasts 6 seconds, so it may be able to overcome it. O well, I think I am going to try it on some dummies tomorrow night anyway for the kick of it. Doing the damn thing for the last 3 years and nothing has changed but the numbers.

Well, right now I don't see the rage stance changes going in as they said. I get the feeling they aren't ready this patch. But this is what you would see happen if you tried the TFB fury spec using overpower also:

Cost: Lots of rage
heroic strikes from rage loss
slams from rage loss
some bloodthirsts due to cooldown collision
slams from heroic strikes
slams from bloodthirsts
1 point in precision (no big deal)
whirlwinds from loss of rage
bloodthirsts form loss of rage
slams from whirlwinds
attack power on autos by switching stances

Gain: overpower every 6
rend damage
armor penetration on autos in battle

I just see lots of negative effects and stance changing headache for a little gain. Only way I see this working is if the stance rage loss changes went into effect and you could make a lot of fancy macros to execute these ability chains effectively.

I dont think its even worth mentioning to op every 6 seconds. Too many cooldown collisions and also loss of points in 2h spec/dw.

What i think MIGHT be somewhat useful is to spec 2 points into TFB and go with 20/51 spec, and do a OP+rend every 15 sec (basically you ignore TFB procs until its time to BOTH refresh rend/use OP. Once per 15 sec you can probably fit it in the 16 sec fury rotation to avoid cooldown collisions (slams will still get in the way - in which case you just dont OP on that "round" since both rend/slam give more damage then OP (non improved).

MMO-Champion - World of Warcraft Guides and Raid Strategies is reporting the following PTR changes:

-Titan's Grip now reduces your physical damage done by 10% when dual-wielding two-handed weapons.
-Glyph of Heroic Strike - You gain 10 rage when you critically strike with your Heroic Strike ability.

This is great news for heroic strike! Also I'm curious now about the possibility of using a main hand two-handed weapon while using an off hand one hander. It would be nice for smooth rage generation, and we would not be paying the penalty.