Sword spec is under-par. But the best way to solve the issue is increasing the proc chance rather than increasing the damage of the added. A ppm proc could be viable aswell, but wouldnt scale well with haste.
The only positive thing regardin sword spec is possibility to proc sudden death, but 0.05 * 0.09 is still meaningless in overall picture
Yeah sword spec is really lacking, I'm still hoping Yogg-Saron drops a 239 axe or pole but I doubt it. Not looking forward to losing nearly 10% crit between weapon spec and Ulduar gear.
I was curious as to others thoughts on the itemization that we've seen so far from Ulduar. Given that we always have a feral, I opted to skip trauma in this build, favoring weapon mastery. http://tinyurl.com/da8zrq
With this setup Arms warriors get 4 expertise from SoA and 2% dodge reduction from WM. As we all know the cap for expertise is at 6.5% (214 rating), so with these two talents, we are looking at 214 - (4*8.2) - (2 * 32.78998947) = 115.62 or 116 rating, which converts back into 14.1 expertise. If we want to take no chances of getting dodged, we can use 15 expertise as the working cap for talented arms.
Looking at our T8 25 man DPS set, http://ptr.wowhead.com/?itemset=-79 I think it also safe to assume we'd only wear 4 pieces and look for an offset piece, presumably the plate legs from Flame Leviathan hard mode. http://ptr.wowhead.com/?item=45134.
This setup comes with 56 expertise rating (gloves) and 91 hit rating (gloves/shoulders), meaning we need only 59.62 more expertise rating to cap and 171.32 hit rating to cap. Looking at the remainder of gear that is out there, I am thinking we go with:
Belt- http://ptr.wowhead.com/?item=45241 (Iron Council) (46 hit rating, 125.32 left to cap)
Boots- http://ptr.wowhead.com/?item=45559#created-by (Blacksmith crafted)
Bracers- http://ptr.wowhead.com/?item=45888
Cloak- http://ptr.wowhead.com/?item=45138
Neck- http://ptr.wowhead.com/?item=45459 (47 hit rating, 78.32 left to cap)
Ring1- http://ptr.wowhead.com/?item=45469 (42 exp rating, 17.62 left to cap)
Ring2- http://ptr.wowhead.com/?item=45106
With this setup so far we have 78.32 hit rating til we cap and 17.62 expertise rating until cap. We still have to fill out our weapon slot, ranged slot, and two trinket slots. Where do you go from here?
Despite sword spec being sub par to axe spec, do you go with clearly the best weapon in game(so far) in Voldrethar, Dark Blade of Oblivion http://ptr.wowhead.com/?item=45516 or do you opt for something like the axe, which isn't itemized as well.
Just curious as to the community's thoughts thus far. Also, I had heard some mention of gemming for ArP in light of the recent changes to it, has someone run these numbers yet to see if or at what point it could possibly be better? I hadn't seen anything in these threads on it yet. What I do find odd is that spell pen is a blue slot, while ArP is a red slot, yet most other items have parity in this regard. If ArP was moved to a Blue slot, it would certainly be a strong choice for non-JCing types. However, I'm guessing they have it this way since Spell Pen is purely a PvP thing, although I'm not sure that is very logical.
Right but lets say you hit the cap and the extra 5% doesn't matter. I'm talking in raid with full buffs.
The crit cap is 75% for white and 100% for yellow damage.
It is reasonable to think you won't cap it even raidbuffed, considering crit is not your best stat, so you gem for str, crit/str or arp and use ap/str/arp food and elixirs.
Anyway 5% crit by itself has diminishing returns in therms of damage increase, but the 5% crit damage bonus is more effective the more crit you have. At 50% crit it is an average 2.5% damage bonus, at 75% it is a 3.25% damage bonus etc.
Sword spec has only 5% chance to give 1 more hit (white hit with same crit chances) but has a 6s cd that cripples it.
While the number of specials is fixed in a 6s timeframe, the number of white hits can increase or decrease depending on haste and slam usage. The damage contribution doesn't scale, and it is fairly low even once you reach a point where you use every gcd.
Depending on itemization swords can still be very good weapons, but the spec itself is under par compared to mace and axe, that scale much better.
I'm not very good at maths, so let me ask you people who are:
How strong will mace spec be compared to poleaxe spec in 3.1?
I have Death's Bite and The Jawbone and disregarding weapon type the bone with it's speed is obv. the stronger choice, but I'm curious how good mace spec is now with the changes to armor penetration.
I'm not very good at maths, so let me ask you people who are:
How strong will mace spec be compared to poleaxe spec in 3.1?
I have Death's Bite and The Jawbone and disregarding weapon type the bone with it's speed is obv. the stronger choice, but I'm curious how good mace spec is now with the changes to armor penetration.
It's not so easy to state it until we are sure how ArP buffs stack.
We can speculate anyway how good it can be in certain situations.
Supposing the buffs will stack additively, you have 20% sunder, 5% ff, 10% battlestance.
With mace spec you reach 50% ArP and you cap arp on gear at 50%.
The relative increase in DPS is tied to your weapon damage and AP, and with good gear (let's say half Bis plate at current gear level) it's around 3%Arp ~+1% damage done.
The main difference imho is that 15% Arp is possible to reach with gear, what poleaxe spec has that isn't in any way reachable is that 5% crit damage.
In therms of itemization 5% crit is more or less 15% arp, but on top of it axe spec has that crit damage bonus.
With the 25% increase of ArP rating value 15% ArP should even cost less than 5% crit, but the returns in therms of damage increase rather than diminish.
Still, the reason to go axe spec is 5% crit damage.
The only reason why you would lose poleaxe is due to better ilvl of mace and swords, that actually we don't know for sure it will happen since we're still missing best loottable from hard-mode final bosses.
I have noticed some of the talent builds posted have points in tactical mastery. This seems to be a waste of talent points to me. Are you really stance dancing that much. I don't see how its worth it to dance over to berserker for recklessness, just to get the 3 of your next swings to crit. It just seems that dancing btwn stances would become too cumbersome, causing you to miss a proc or two. (TfB or SD). Maybe I'm wrong, but it just seems stance dancing would just complicate things. I do realize that they are changing the rage lost when switchinbg stances in 3.1, and I have not been able to get on the PTR to see it in action. IMO
I was looking at the lastest PTR build and was trying to figure out my spec with the new tree changes and I'm fairly certain I know what I'm going to do however, it never hurts to double check my math. With the weapon mastery and intercept changes that means that there is 2 possible points that could be put in the Arms tree, however by putting the two points in that means that you would either have to get rid of points elsewhere in the tree or what my main concern was is taking points out of fury down to execute. Basically what I'm trying to figure out is specing into juggernaut and weapon mastery a stronger dps increase than the 2 points in execute would be.
A few pros for that I feel are mobility which is never bad I know that from moving to mob to mob provides for a stonger overall dps increase because of that ability, less time spent running equals more time to dps and get in position faster. Now this is just me predicting that these changes will remain the same, but i always like to prepare.
The cons I am worried about are with taking the 2 points out of execute would that throw back the rotation and the need to use SD procs when they come up, because without that extra dmg u gain from reduced rage cost that might provide for slam to be used which might provide more dps, and if in fact after a charge you will gain a guarantee slam crit.
That is one possible spec I was debating. Which is still pretty much the standard as of now, however with the changes I can't figure out the numbers that would account for a stronger dps spec than that.
Weapon mastery seems to me to be more of a pvp talent. I'm wondering maybe if you took one point out of improved execute in order to get the Juggernaut. Like mentioned before the faster you can get in to melee range the more dps you can put out. Although you would lose 1 point in imp exe, I would imagine it would not be too detrimental to your dps, being that you can charge in combat. Something to at least think about.
As far as i know imp execute does not increase the damage of execute like glyph of execute does, it only reduces its rage cost. So unless you have big problems with rage for some reason i dont think it is much to miss out on.
I always thought that improved execute did improved the damage since instead of 15 you can use at 10 so those 5 rage will be converted in more points of damage. I was thinking maybe instead of Anger Management put that point into Juggernaut. Especially with the new T8 2 set bonus this could be useful however i'm not entirely sure how much you would actually be charging around all over the place.
As far as i know imp execute does not increase the damage of execute like glyph of execute does, it only reduces its rage cost. So unless you have big problems with rage for some reason i dont think it is much to miss out on.
If in fact that is true then it seems like taking 2 points out of imp execute wouldn't be to much of a dps loss. Any other sources on such fact?
Could juggernaut prove to be a dps improve too, not just an overall damage increase due to more time spent dpsing?
You need to move back 3 yards to charge. Charge would then give you 25 rage, and a crit slam, without using the GCD.
25 rage is pretty nice, though we might not really need it. Is the time spent moving 3 yards back worth the extra crit on slam? Raidbuffed, its gonna be an improvement of around 40% crit.
Does anyone actually know how fast we move? How many yards a second does a character move? And how fast backwards?
Cant really seem to find that info anywhere, maybe not looking in the right place though.
The 25 rage would most probably cover the rage lost from whatever white damage you are missing on by not being in melee range. The question is then, if the increased crit on slam would be worth the slight loss of white damage. Im pretty sure you could move the 3 yards back within 1.5 sec, so not lose a GCD.
At the very least, if shattering throw makes it live, still has a cast time, and allows you to move while casting it, then you could move back during the cast to charge back in for the rage and crit slam.
Could juggernaut prove to be a dps improve too, not just an overall damage increase due to more time spent dpsing?
You need to move back 3 yards to charge. Charge would then give you 25 rage, and a crit slam, without using the GCD.
25 rage is pretty nice, though we might not really need it. Is the time spent moving 3 yards back worth the extra crit on slam? Raidbuffed, its gonna be an improvement of around 40% crit.
Does anyone actually know how fast we move? How many yards a second does a character move? And how fast backwards?
Cant really seem to find that info anywhere, maybe not looking in the right place though.
The 25 rage would most probably cover the rage lost from whatever white damage you are missing on by not being in melee range. The question is then, if the increased crit on slam would be worth the slight loss of white damage. Im pretty sure you could move the 3 yards back within 1.5 sec, so not lose a GCD.
At the very least, if shattering throw makes it live, still has a cast time, and allows you to move while casting it, then you could move back during the cast to charge back in for the rage and crit slam.
At the very least, Juggernaut would be amazingly useful for any fight in which you DO move. Remember when people determined that Boar's Speed was the best possible enchant because any amount of time you're not in melee range when you could be is a larger hit to DPS than a few stats? Well--Juggernaut, in my opinion, is like that, but better.
By the way, GC had a quote today that they might "make the slam instant", or "make your next MS crit". We'll see how it turns out....regardless, it's a huge damage increase in any fight that requires you to not stand still, even if it's not a dps increase for patchwerk.
I have noticed some of the talent builds posted have points in tactical mastery. This seems to be a waste of talent points to me. Are you really stance dancing that much.
So, where would you put 3 points needed to get deeper into arms tree?
This might be funny or dumb, but how do you guys feel about this idea.
I was reading MMO-Champion BlueTracker - Just say NO to SLAM and i thought of myself holding my 2her with a shield on. Then i thought "why the heck not". Fury can use 2 2hers Arms can use a 2her and a shield. i can't imagine how unbalanced or over powered that is but what do you guy think of this odd idea? If they did do that they might have to take revenge out of unrelenting assault.
Then again i don't really want to be a dps off tank later on, however we could use a lot of our shield skills for pvp.
On another note anyone notice you can't block or parry while you bladestorm? I noticed this when i tanked a heroic picking up a 5 pull.
03/23/09, 4:56 AM
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