The legs are worse than the gloves...did you mean helm and chest?

I agree, the 4pc bonus is probably not that great, assuming that the stats on the items stay the same. If you look at the current t7.6 sets vs the t8.5 sets you get less crit rating. T7.5 you get 326crit rating(7.07%crit) vs T8.5 (4.27%crit). Getting the T8.5 4pc set bonus may not be worth it seeing as how you lose almost 3% crit on all your attacks, I may be wrong. However, the Str upgrades are worth it for sure, unless there are better non-set Epics to replace that 4PC bonus with.

On to a question now, do most people's naxx raid bosses die around when bloodlust is used? because I still can't figure out how some of u are doing 13k dps+ :P

mdokane ya I meant the gloves and chest since they put hit on the legs instead of crit now. Sorry got confused. I don't see how people would consider wearing the t 8.5helm though? The OS helm seems to be superior unless ArP is indeen additive which hasn't been completely proved on the PTR yet, especially if you consider that as fury we will have to pick up an extra 2% exp because of WM.

True, however I don't think there is a decently geared fury warrior out there that hasn't capped exp and dropped two points from WM completely. In my eyes this change is a non-issue for fury warriors. At least, if there are any left in 3.1 that is.

After running a few tests on PTRs (12 tests of 1million damage each) I found the following:

Normal Fury build, 2 two handed weapons: 2475 DPS average (taken from 3 tests)

Arms DPS build (Mace spec): 2618 DPS average (taken from 3 tests)

Arms DPS build (Sword spec): 2565 DPS average (taken from 3 tests) (I don't have an axe sorry folks)

Old style, 2 one handers Fury build: 1896 DPS average (taken from 3 tests)


I personally will be switching to Arms next patch, I am sorry to have to say that really.

Assuming those are from heroic dummy, those tests are meaningless. Fury tends get not even comparable benefits from raid buffs. I think im capable of outdpsing my fury dps with arms build on LIVE now, and the buffed damage is not even close. If you get such numbers, then you will get higher dps with fury by far. My current numbers are 2600 for fury and 3400 for arms (depending on RNG - arms even with changes is prone to rng - i had close to 4k dps long test runs sometimes), and im still not really sold on arms. Right now im under impression that fury got nerfed too much, but arms didnt get buffed enough.

Don't forget that Fury does scale much better than arms with gear and raidbuffs.
more damge% that profits from hastebuffs
more damage% that profits from ArP
better scaling with attackpower (stance+bloodthirst)
better scaling with crit.(flurry)

edit:
sorry i missread. (i thought you did 1,9 with tg, and 2,4 with 2x1h - my bad)
*deleted*

From the parses I've seen on the PTR browsing through WMO it seems that Arms is slightly ahead of fury in encounters atm. Even fury wars with BiS are marginally getting beat by Arms. However I do agree with Shha that Arms didn't get buffed enough. Since Arms scales worse than fury, I would estimate that it is only better in the beginning and 1-2 weeks into Ulduar most people will be switching back to fury as they receive Ulduar gear. The reason for this being is with fury I think it will be more beneficial to have the 2 set t8.5 bonus and use the rest of the gear for leather/mail, while Arms is stuck going for straight strength (which usually only comes on plate with massive chunks of stam and ArP)

One thing I have noticed though, is that most of the leather gear seems to have less Attack Power on it when compared with the plate selections. Granted, the plate also has wasted stats on stam and hit from what Ive seen, but does anyone think that the lower amount of AP on leather/mail will affect your choices in gearing? Is it worth it to sacrifice a decent amount of AP for crit/haste?

Plate items have lot of AP more than leather. Some mail items are closer to plate AP levels, but in general the trade off depends on the other stats.
You need SEP values to know if the loss of AP is worth the crit and haste. And this can be different at different levels of gear.

The opposite is also true when talking about -% scaling buffs.

Even though I received an 'infraction' for my previous post I stand by what I said. Im beginning to think developers are looking at Warrior DPS output from a somewhat different perspective.

Rage is really a key factor in DPS output. Little rage obviously translates to little DPS output and vise versa. There were some recent comments from developers giving a small yet significant insight into their thought process on DPS balance:

1 and 3 are pretty important and pretty specific to Warriors. For all the glorifying there is of Patchwerk, it really is a pretty terrible fight for Warriors. 0 raid damage and single target. You will never get the same kind of numbers on Patchwerk as you do on say, Faerlina. There is a ton of raid damage during the encounter and a swarm of adds around the boss. Both of which significantly increase damage output.

With the recent view of plate itemization I really think soaking damage for rage is going to become an intended component to Warrior DPS. Or at the very least, it will weigh significantly in terms of DPS potential. Whether or not this is an effective idea is obviously debatable. Being more taxing on the raids resources is obviously not something we often strive to do, and it is somewhat silly to assume you need to intentionally take damage to maintain maximum DPS. In any event, I do think that Blizzard is keeping such things in mind. Patchwerk parses have been relatively abysmal on the PTR but I think we need to keep in mind that Patchwerk is a pretty abysmal fight for Warriors in the grand scheme of things.

Although this does not quite belong in this thread, I would be a huge fan of a rage penalty on TG instead of a straight damage nerf. one of the reasons why TG fury scales so incredibly well is that we are basically able to live from our offhand white damage only. Main hand HS spam does not only counter glancing blows and produce large DW ticks, it also causes numerous slam! procs and when we drop it in the execute phase, we are still getting pretty high numbers on every GCD due to the masive mainhand rage income.
If Titan's Grip had an inbuilt "non-endless-rage" effect, reducing our rage generation by, say 25% when wearing a 2hand in one hand, it would effectively tune down fury dps without causing a giant outcry in the community and without the bitter taste of a direct flat damage nerf.

I don`t see how the T8.5 helmet is worse than T7.5. You get 24 STR (+8 Socket Bonus!) and 26 ArP in exchange for 26 Crit. Just from ArP's increase in effectiveness, the Stat will be considerably better than it is now, likely even better than STR (at least that's what I get from landsoul's spreadsheet with my self--made dilettante modifications for the -10% TG damage-nerf and the reduced rating required for ArP).

24 STR alone will be better than 26 Crit in almost any case. 26 of an increased-effect ArP is more than cream on top.

However, it seems like with the increased worth of ArP, T8.5 shoulders will be only marginally better than T7.5, assuming you can make use of the +Hit, and considerably worse than T7.5 if you're already Yellow-capped on Hit. Legs and Gauntlets are considerable upgrades if you can make use of the Hit and Expertise though Gauntlets will probably still be below Frosted Adroit, as t8.5 Chest will rather likely be behind the Chestuard of Recluse (and behind the Tunic of the Limber Stalker which seems to be over-budgeted).

All-in-all, however, it has already been stated that looking for BiS gear is currently a futile task as we haven't seen all drops yet, especially those from Yogg-Saron.

I'm currently leveling a Warrior with some Heirloom gear that I bought off my 80 Mage, and I'm looking at possibly using this spec for when I hit 80: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

I decided to go with the 2 points in Commanding Presence and 1 point into Anger Management to help with Rage instead of putting points into Improved Cleave. I don't ever see myself using Cleave. I may be wrong in that but I just would like some feedback on it.

They could just count us as using 1H weapons for rage normalization instead of 2H.

Improved Berserker Stance now increases strength by 3/6/9/12/15% instead of increasing attack power by 2/4/6/8/10%

I'm really not that great with math, so I ask, how much of a nerf is this?

This is moslty a leather gear nerf.
Plate itemization have loads of AP with this change.

They somehow solved the problem with plate itemization, but overall this is nerf (unless 5% of your strenght is equal to 10% of your gear/buff AP)

With 12kish armor, 1200AP and 1100 STR (factoring in AM/trueshot/UR and bok)
200 AP from Attt - now: 242 - 3.1: 220 (-22AP)
687 AP from bom/bs - now: 832 - 3.1: 756 (-76AP)
160 AP from flask - now: 194 - 3.1: 176 (-18AP)
1200 AP from gear - now: 1452 - 3.1: 1320 (-132AP)

40STR food - now: 106 - 3.1: 111 (+5AP)
155STR from How - now: 412 - 3.1: 431 (+19AP)
1100STR from gear - now: 2928 - 3.1: 3061 (+133AP)
37STR from motw - now: 98 - 3.1: 103 (+5STR)

12k armor is more or less a leather user (not fully equipped with leather anyway), a plate user generally have more STR and more armor.
It's a slight change if you were already wearing plate, but it's a massive nerf if you were wearing leather.

I don't think there was need for this change, unless it was intented to buff/compensate for tg and set to around 20%.
Instead it was completely addressed to make plate gear appealing for fury warriors and remove leather gear from their choices.
It's probably bigger the nerf to leather than the buff to plate value.

This does not make leather wearing obsolete, just not as good. There will always be some leather or agi/AP items that are a little better itemized than plate. It's a HUGE step in the right direction that I'm actually looking forward to, however. It's not really a nerf, or a buff. All this does is make some gear better than others, and DPS would be about the same with the gear reconfiguration. One of the better warrior changes in a long time, in my opinion. This change completely justifies going for the 4 piece at this point with the current release of gear. The BIS plate items are now very very close in worth to the BIS mail and leather now. Very nice.

You can think of it as a 5% buff to the AP only on plate, and a 10% nerf to AP only on leather. All other stats aren't touched.

Its also 10% nerf to battleshout, rings, cloaks, necks (most of them anyway). Overall its a good change, but a nerf - same with weapon mastery move. Im really liking it, but it should come with some lowering of the TG penalty.

Berserking Enchant, Icescale Leg Armor, AP enchants to gloves, bracers, boots etc.

The overall direction of the change might be positive, but I think there's a lot they need to consider before finalizing this, as there has been A LOT of standardization of DPS "stuff" vis-a-vis AP. They're probably not going to go back and make +Strength equivalents to a lot of this stuff.

Doesn't this negatively affect weapon and trinket procs, armor enchants as well as flasks? This also makes picking up a new ring or cloak even more limiting than before. I've never really worn more than two pieces of leather at the same time in my entire four years of playing a Warrior, but we still gained a lot of AP from other sources. It alternately does however make some of the gear you already have slightly better, especially the Greatness trinket.

And just because BIS plate may now be equal to it's BIS mail and leather counterparts doesn't actually mean this is a good change when there are so many more *good* mail and leather items that aren't necessarily BIS but are for sure a lot better than what you can get through plate. Not everyone waits to loot an item until it's BIS.

Graul it just means the tables have been turned. Theoretically previously some of us might have got plate which was good until we got that amazing BiS leather piece, now we'll get leather until we get that amazing BiS plate piece. There will still be the same number of items for each slot to choose from, it's just the priority list that has changed.

This is a good change to those of us who prefer wearing plate (who doesn't?), even though it's a DPS nerf, i'm sure they will make up for that somewhere else.