1. TG still trumps 1h fury spec. End of story. Dual wield arms, might end up catching up or not (and i really dont try to guess atm - just saying its still not fully explored), 1h fury simply doesnt - 4% damage buff isnt worth the huge damage loss on instants and stats. Yes the 10% nerf , affects us more then 10%.

@ Machinator - IBS is a nerf as well - considering fully raid buffed with old IBS we could get to lets say 7500+ AP, it was worth 700 or so AP. Current IBS wont get close to it in leather and barely match in plate (using known ulduar gear - in naxx gear it wont even get there). So we are left with a choice of a nerf if we use leather, or forcing us to use previously sub-optimal plate. Nerf is a nerf even if worded well :P. ArP buff is something way overhyped. Sure we will use ArP more - but even assuming its a buff by 25% (not so sure for fury), currently we sit at 300 or so. WE can additionally switch lets say 300 str to ArP because of buff. Given how after buff ArP shows at around 1.1 SEP that means a buff of ~100 STR. Nothing to sneeze at - but even 300 AP (less then 4% gain) wont come close to compensating for 10% nerf. Its more like together they make the nerf an _actual_ 10% loss.

2) Most likely. Fury still isnt far behind (if even ) from arms. Overall warriors got nerfed to the "hybrid dps" level, and maybe even a bit much. Dont expect to switch to arms and do dps close to current 3.0 one.

3) I have serious doubts for fury - look for spreadsheets, and stick to one you trust i guess.

4) I think yes, good or bad, the amount of ArP on proc is massive. 612 itemization points proc is always powerful - even if stat isnt perfect (and ArP will be close to perfect choice)

5) I personally like Mark of Norgannon as a trinket. its a good trinket design. Problem is that competition is just way out of bounds. I seriously think Grim Toll/Greatness card for 213/200 ilvl trinkets are way too powerful and should be nerfed. Well they arent, and it is disputable if even some hard mode Ulduar trinkets (if there are any) will replace them. DST case all over again. However if you dont have one of those 2, Mark is a really solid trinket - and if you arent expertise capped it seems just fine (MoT is honestly really "suppressed" in real fights compared to spreadsheet. The way it procs makes it VERY unreliable to time it with deathwish and other cooldowns.)

6) If not for anything else, ill go arms to simply "have fun with it" and change my pace , IF it wont hinder my progression. Atm it seems it wont (and it offers some extra "features" fury doesnt have - like more mobility with juggernaut).

Particularly in current BiS with 12 out of 17 slots having no strength and all procs/enchants/pots adding AP rather than str, the IBS change is also a considerable nerf. Losing weapon mastery is another nerf to fury dps unless every fight in Ulduar benefits from being able to intercept more often. Arms has been shown to be the top DPS spec going into Ulduar of course, but if you plan on staying fury, TG is still the way to go over traditional 1 hander builds. Also yes, 10% nerf to TG equates to more dps lost due to a lower rage income in a vaccuum, but the effect of that is potentially a nonissue if you are sustaining a large amount of raid damage.

This depends entirely on your raid composition. If you are melee/hunter heavy and you have a combat rogue bringing savage combat then most likely yes, rampage is worth it. If your stacked on non combat rogues, no druid or other warrior then you can squeeze more raid dps from arms. There's no firm answer here, and the answer can change everytime your raid's personnel switches spec or rotates out.

Depends who you ask. the SEP values for ArP are all over the chart right now, and due to the way ArP increases in value the more you have, they should actually change depending on your current gear. Check out http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t29453-c...evel_80_a/p16/ for a more detailed look at ArP in 3.1 and then compare it to the now increased value of strength (IBS) and come to your own conclusions.

Short version, probabbly. 612 arp rating is somewhere between 459(extreme lowball) and 685.44(highest SEP value i've seen was 1.12) compared to 500 for MoTruth proc without IBS/kings. IBS of course drops the SEP values of everything that isn't strength, and most estimates are putting Arp SEP value at ~.9 for fury wich gives SEP values or ~416 for Mirror proc with a lower uptime and an uncapped static effect versus ~550 for Grim Toll proc with more reliable uptime and a static effect whose value depends greatly on your other gear.

Almost certainly you woud be better off expertise capping before any other consideration, I would reccommend doing it in the most painless (dps wise) way available to you
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IMHO if you're serious about PVE dps as your warrior role, you should dual spec arms/fury. Even with fury being lower average dps, there are going to be fights where it's better to be fury, and as discussed above, sometimes your roster changes mid raid and your raid dps could improve by switching spec.

Has been shown where? By whom? I've read all of the Arms, Fury, Spreadsheet, 3.1 and Simple Questions thread, and have not seen any sims/calculators showing numbers.

My own personal tests came out as thus:

Test dummy solo:
Arms occasionally running into rage issues, but putting out considerably more DPS than Fury which was having huge rage issues and being unable to maintain all skills on cooldown let alone making use of HS.

Raid testing on Patchwerk in Ulduar:
Very close DPS-wise; the only major buff missing being Improved Windfury which would have favoured Fury more. I didn't bring any unique buffs as either spec on the tests. Both specs scaled extremely poorly with the Shirts of Uber relative to the boosts every other class was getting from them. Rage was enough to keep abilities on cooldown as Fury, but couldn't get high HS usage. Rage as Arms was a joke; easily fitting in slams on all opportunities and getting off a number of HSs.

In actual fights:
Fury always came out ahead because all of the US tests incorporated large amounts of incoming damage and running. Many missed Slam opportunities for Arms while Fury was getting nearly 100% HS usage.

That said, I'm going to spec whatever buff we need for each fight. Combat for rogues doesn't even come close to HAT, and Trauma is easily better than Mangle for the raid. Arms covers these very well. The only time I think I'll be Fury is when we don't have a feral tank, as our druids could likely be resto instead.

Thanks for the info, I'm really interested in this as I still don't know what I'll dualspec as besides Protection. If Arms is on-par with Fury in dps I'd definitely go Arms cause it has less gearing requirement what with only needing one two-hander and having a really low expertise cap. It all of course depends on if I'm running with a feral druid or not. I haven't seen any WWS with both Arms and Fury in the raid for 3.1 in any thread, if anyone got some with the latest build with the changes to Imp Berserker Stance it'd be great if you could share them.

I try out new Landsoul spreadsheet and with my curent gear and without regeming for ArP, sheet shows me 5727 dps for Furry and after switching some items and all gems with ArP ones - 5591 for Arms!
Also SEP values for ArP for Furry is 0.8959, Arms - 1.1125!
Did someone else geting same results?

Because of the fury talent that gives 20% to str.

The above.

I have read this post but, like Landsoul, i am not sure and need more data...

Sorry, but something seems horribly wrong with the warrior itemisation once more and I'm highly concerned about it now.

Armor penetration simply seems to have become a too good stat, in such extremes that for some slots Tier7 drops will be better than the available Tier8,5 items we know about for the moment. I'm intensively using Landsoul's spreadsheet, which seems very accurate and it's consistently showing the T7.5 shoulders or even the ones from Noth ([Shoulderguards of Opportunity]) to be much better than anything available from Ulduar. (While having thoroughly selected the BiS items for the other slots while taking into account the hit- and expertise cap).

All of this because some tier7 drops have armor penetration, while there are no ArP Tier8-Tier8.5 hardmode alternatives.

I really can't believe that they will leave the situation as it is, and assume that at some point they'll buff the % of strength on improved berzerker stance even further, or simply nerf ArP for warriors. Or that Tier8.5 alternatives will pop up we don't know about yet.

I'd hate to see warriors ending up running around with a mish-mash of Tier 7, Tier8, Tier9 gear, just to wear whatever has the most ArP on it.


Not to mention that some leather items are still heavily out-statting plate gear. Although in a complete BiS gearsetup this doesn't seem to be the case anymore.

I can't find on the sheet whether or not it's adding in the T8 2pc and 4pc bonuses, but if it is, only the helm and chest seem worth picking up as Fury. The shoulders, legs and hands are all downgrades. Also something interesting is that for me, [Voldrethar, Dark Blade of Oblivion] + [Worldcarver] ends up coming out ahead of double Vold. That seems a bit strange, and I'm possibly missing something in regards to a better gear mix, but it's also nice to see at least we have more options.

I thought Arp is still bugged on live?

My post was based on how armor penetration should theoretically work according to the 3.1 patchnotes.

With a bit of Tier8 gear, 1 armor penetration rating quickly becomes as good as roughly +1.1 strength.

Just wondering, has anyone checked cross class about the ArP bug. With ArP being slightly above strength for me in ulduar gear a further boost would make it the best stat by far short of your hit table caps. Im wondering if this bug is intended and the warrior ArP rating bonus was suppressed, a quick check with other classes would tell us.

And slightly off topic but I am curious, for anyone with the spreadsheet what kind of numbers are you getting for BiS known ulduar setups?

On live, the observed value of arpen is similar to 3.0.9, according to this post. Are you seeing arp above strength on spreadsheet, or on live raid testing?

On the speedsheet, I assume landsoul used the ArP values from live though seeing as he waited to test the ArP formula before releasing the sheet. ArP has still been buffed in that it scales exponentially as you reach the cap because of the way it was changed to work with the armor debuffs I am unsure on the math though. With 755 ArP from ulduar gear in the spreadsheet I am getting an SEP of 1.14 for the next point of ArP.

Is it possible to simplify what everyone is talking about most of it has gone over my head. So is fury now after ArP or still strength/crit focus making sure expertise is capped.

There's an update from GC on mmo-champion talking about blizzard's math behind ArP Check it out

My first reaction to the ArP explanation above is this... Buff it by 25%, but guess what, it's only working at about 80%+ efficiency. 1*1.25*0.8 = 1

Considering lvl83 target, how do we possibly get 100% ArP efficiency. Given C = 16635; For Cap <= Armor, Armor <= C/2 or 8317.5.

While I'm aware that this is not be the complete story (stances, talents, etc.), ArP efficiency decreases as the target armor increases. I'm not clear yet if this is good or bad, but I guess what we want to know now are the effective values of ArP on current released bosses.

So, due to the blizzard blue post about armor penetration what is the cap for us?

Hi I know you hate this, but here goes. I'm a Prot Warrior with Fury as my offspec (my armory currently shows my fury set).

Given my gear and my previous experience as Fury I've stayed Fury as my dual spec, but is Arms that much better than it's worth changing? FWIW my only 213 2 handers are 2 'geddons, I don't have any good Maces or Axes.

I'm comfortable with Fury even if some find it boring...

Oh and my helm options are Obsidian and 7.5. Right now I use Obsidian + the heroic ring to get to the (new) Expertise cap. I wish I could use the Valor ring but I never got Razuvious belt or whatever so I don't have that option.

It's not a cap on armor pen rating. Rather this is a cap on the portion of the target's armor (function of target level and mob type) which will be impacted by the armor pen rating and debuffs. You still derive benefit from the various armor penetration effects and armor penetration rating all the way to 100% (in fact armor penetration still improves in SEP the closer you get to 100%).

Possibly a very dumb question, but I'll ask: I've been working prot for my Naxx runs and such, obviously passing on the DPS gear to the DPS'ers (picking up a few things here and there, but no weaponry, le sigh). Thus, I'm still rocking the standard 18/53 with my weaponry as the Runeblades. My ArP is at a robust 125, so I'm wondering if it'd be any sort of upgrade to swap to the Cobalt Crushers in favor of the ArP over the loss of haste/crit. I know there's a lot more that'd go into it (gear, spec, etc), so feel free to hit up my armory and yell at me. I'd greatly appreciate the theorycrafting assistance!