Originally Posted by tichphys

Random musings on ArP interaction with crit:

A given armor penetration rating or rating increase yields a calculable relative increase in non-bleed physical damage. The relative (%) gain in damage dealt by some non-bleed ability or white swing due to ArP is independent of AP, haste, or crit. This makes it quite easy (as compared to some of the other theorycrafting calculations) to work out the net effect of armor penetration rating or rating increase on one's non-bleed damage output.

In reality, warriors have significant damage components unaffected by ArP: deep wounds and rend. This complicates things slightly, since the relative gain in damage from ArP affects only some fraction of our total damage table. i.e. if the total contribution of rend and deep wounds to your damage output were 50% (example number), then ArP is only affecting half of your damage. This tends to reduce the SEP of ArP.

Given this high-level description of ArP, the point of this post is briefly mention how crit rating probably affects the usefulness of ArP. For arms warriors, bleed-to-nonbleed damage ratio is driven heavily by crit rating. There are some other weaker effects, since bleed damage (rend/DW) use unnormalized damage values, while many of the nonbleed (OP,MS,EX) abilities use normalized values. However, the largest driving factor on the bleed-to-nonbleed ratio will be crit rating. As crit rating increases, more of our total damage dealt shifts to being unaffected by ArP, and the SEP of ArP decreases.

I am not 100% familiar with the current SEP values of ArP in 3.1, but my understanding is that ArP is generally much better than even strength. The above does not suggest that ArP will necessarily become less valuable than other stats, but this slightly unintuitive negative-feedback effect of crit on ArP may shift it's 1.0 SEP crossover point as a function of AP or whatever.

I'm sure simulators/spreadsheets take this into account, but it was kind of interesting to me to think about and spell out in words.

Originally Posted by tarrick

I'm not sure that I understand how DW does not scale on ArP. It seems to me that it would scale directly on ArP rating similarly to AP since its damage is based purely and directly on the damage of abilities that are affected by armor. It's not a "stand-alone" bleed like Rend that is going to do the same amount of damage on a low armor target as it does on a high armor target. Do a rotation on a normal target and check the DW DPS (not % of damage), then do the same rotation on a fully sundered target and check its DPS again, it should be higher since your abilities proccing it are hitting harder.

Originally Posted by hellord

Afaik DW damage is 48% of the weapon triggering it and it's DPS depends on the number of crits and charsheet weapon damage.
Nor crit nor WD scales with arp since it isnt a static % buff on your weapon.

So if you are saying that arp is affecting DW you are definetly wrong.
DW damage is affected by weapon damage, AP and STR.
DW DPS is affected by crit and haste by a smaller factor.
Also hit and exp increase indirectly DW DPS.
ArP rating, buffs and debuffs don't provide any increase in DW DPS nor DAMAGE.

Originally Posted by Pixee

throwing this out to see what people think:

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warr...0&version=9767

I lose imp execute...oh well...commanding presence...we have a pally with imp might, and trauma, which we have a feral druid in raid at all times, so these buffs are covered.

What I pick up is imp tclap for trash, which could be a HUGE buff to my aoe dmg...wouldnt it?

Originally Posted by Hindukel

Hello gentlemen.

First, thanks to all of you for your constant research and ideas on varying specs and theories on maximizing DPS.

I am a former prot warrior turned Arms for the sake of the Blood Frenzy utility in my guild. I spent a LOT of time trying out a DW arms spec and the other specializations, but finally settled on 2h Maces as the best overall DPS (at least in my experience). I come to you with a few questions and I apologize if they were covered previously.

Before going forward, here is my armory link: The World of Warcraft Armory

1) Here is what my 3.1 spec will probably look like:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warr...0&version=9704

Yet, I've heard some talk about speccing into Incite, in the prot tree. When I try that out, I have 0/5 in Unbridled wrath and I'm afraid I'll be rage starved without it. http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warr...0&version=9704

Anyone have any suggestions for either of my specs? Particularly for the latter spec.

2) Does trauma stack with Feral druids ability? I know they have a similar one (is it Mangle? I forget...) If it doesn't, I could move those points somewhere else. As it stands I have 41 expertise (10.25% reduced chance to dodge/parry) which is why my spec doesn't have Weapon Mastery in it. Would you still recommend picking up the Weapon Mastery?

3) How about glyphs? For the next patch I was planning on the HS glyph, bladestorm and MS for majors and charge, bloodrage and battle for minors. Yet, with the ability to use charge in combat next patch, would the glyph of rapid charging be a better substitute for the bladestorm glyph? Reducing the cooldown by 20% and all?

4) Finally, armor pen. I have grim toll (which will be a big help from the sounds of it) and I've heard a lot of talk about gemming for armor penetration. Are we saying to replace STR gems with ArP? Or just replacing any crit gems that may be in our gear with ArP instead? Clarification would be great.

Thanks again folks. I appreciate any help you can give me. ^_^

Originally Posted by Xchange

1. Your DPS spec should look more like http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warr...0&version=9767

2. Yes its mangle no it does not stack. With your current gear setup no need for weapon mastery.

3. Keep bladestorm.

4. Replace all gems with arp.

Also note if you have a good axe you'll be better off with the 5% crit.

Originally Posted by Xchange

3. Keep bladestorm.

Originally Posted by Zene

So, possible options to me for Major Glyphs: Execution, Bladestorm, Rend, Mortal Strike, Heroic Strike.

I was leaning towards, MS, Execute, Rend. Does the execute glyph not work with Sudden Death procs? (I assumed it does) Rend saves GCDs. Was wondering why Bladestorm was perceived better? Has any testing been done on this. Apologies for missing it if it's something obvious.

Originally Posted by Hindukel

HS because the 10 rage off HS crits would help maintaining rage (though I wonder if that'll be needed anymore with Juggernaut...)

Originally Posted by Bula

"They were bad, stop trying to figure out why bad players do bad things."

Originally Posted by Hindukel

Execute does work with sudden death procs. I didn't think about the GCD-saving property of the rend glyph. I was going for MS, Bladestorm and HS because the 10 rage off HS crits would help maintaining rage (though I wonder if that'll be needed anymore with Juggernaut...) The 15 seconds off bladestorm CD is pretty substantial. I'll probably spend some time playing with it over the next few days.

Originally Posted by Stuntspike

Just to start off i would wager that your test is going to return results of the rend glyph being superior. I have not done the math behind it yet but assuming the average boss fight length being 6 minutes give or take the cooldown on bladestorm is 90 seconds so with the bladestorm glyph your going down to 75 seconds allowing for 4.8 bladestorms on a fight of that timeframe. Now you can't really round that up so it leaves you with 4 you get to use, unglyphed you also get 4 in a 6 minute fight.

glyphed: 360/75=4.8
unglyphed: 360/90=4

Rend on the other hand saves you GCD's throughout the fight.

Originally Posted by Hindukel

1) 2/5 unbridled and imp. shouts? I would assume that we would have a ret pally with improved might so I fear those points might be wasted, and with no anger management and 2/5 unbridled I'm afraid Rage would be an issue...

2) Thanks. That's what I thought.

3) Ok, thanks.

4) All of them huh? Alright, I think I'll wait for a bit more input but I'm definitely leaning that way.

5) On axes, I did go 2h poleaxe with Wraith Spear for a while, but I wasn't seeing the sort of DPS that I can pull with my 2h mace, and with the buff to armor penetration it seems that Maces would be an even more valuable spec now. Of course, all of this in my experience and opinion.

Thanks for your help. ^_^

Originally Posted by hellord

It depends on how much AP you have.
At some point in AP inversely proportional to your ArP, 1 point of arp is better than 1 point of STR.
The reason is that the %damage increase you get stacking strength will dimish the more you have, and the buffs from Imp berz and bok doesn't turn this curve into an increasing one, they'll just raise it a bit.
On the other side Arp is an increasing curve up to the cap.
So the question is not IF it is worth but WHEN it is worth stacking arp instead of STR.

Originally Posted by Ryo Saeba

1) 1 Point in Anger Management is worth more than 3 points in UW: check THIS comment on wowhead.

2) Yes, it's Mangle.

3) As it's already been said: Rend/Execution/MS.
Bladestorm Glyph is useless, shorter the fight and less seconds you'll be able to gain with it, and with so many other better choices, there's no point in betting on it.

4) Don't gem everything for ArP, in raid there're a lot of ArP buffs that now aren't anymore a fixed value but a %, so you won't need to gem completely for it.
I'll quote another post made in this forum:

So don't replace anything, first you have to understand when you're near the turning point

5) Poleaxe Specialization give you that 5% more critical damage that can make the difference, also, you tried Mace Specialization with a Mace that probably was completely different than the Poleaxe you used (generally, maces and polearms are not itemized in a similar way) so you can't really compare on that.
I don't understand the new ArP mechanics in the upcoming 3.1, but till now Poleaxe Spec > Mace Spec, considering also that the best two handed weapon ingame was an Axe.

Originally Posted by Hindukel

Cool thanks for pointing out that UW post.

Back to the poleaxe thing: I'm not crazy with the math like some of the people here, so I apologize if my very simplistic way of analyzing it is totally skewed but for me the poleaxe spec still seems to rely on chance whereas mace spec you see a benefit in damage with every swing. I mean, theoretically if you are mace specced every swing is ignoring more armor then if you were axe or sword spec'd, thereby doing more damage. Going poleaxe, let's say you start with a base of 30% crit, sure your crit goes up to 35%, and those crits do an additional 5% dmg, but it seemed to me that since it was still a statistic that wasn't guaranteed as opposed to a constant state of armor reduction that the mace would provide better overall DPS.

Regardless, I'll be rolling mace and probably won't be able to pick up and experiment with a decent axe for a while (as they'll be going to the DKs/TG fury warriors).

Originally Posted by Bula

"They were bad, stop trying to figure out why bad players do bad things."

Originally Posted by Pixen

It's helpful if you think of a swing as a random roll from 1-100 (this is a very simplistic example). 1-30 will be crits, 70-100 will be hits. Say you hit for 500, crit for 1000. The expected value of a given swing is .30(1000) + .70(500), or 650. If you raise your crit chance by 5%, the EV goes to .35(1000) + .65(500), or 675. By increasing your crit, you increased the expected value of any given swing. Raising your ArP would do the same thing, but it would change the base numbers instead of the percentages.

Originally Posted by Kampfschaf

Anybody noticed that they changed wording of the new UA to "if you strike a player with OP while casting" ?

Originally Posted by Pixee

throwing this out to see what people think:

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warr...0&version=9767

Originally Posted by Hindukel

Oh! Cool, well thanks for explaining it that way. I'm a humanities major so when I see all those formulas and stuff I just zone out lol.

Again, I probably won't be able to experiment with axes until much later. Until then I'll probably keep rolling with maces.

Thanks again to everyone for all your help.

Here's my final spec (well "final" is a loose term): http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warr...3&version=9767

Originally Posted by Shha

If you actually need the expertise, -2% dodge is definitely better then imp execute (and that lets you pick up other stuff - like anger management for example).