ok so here are my stats with no buffs and no stacks of fury five flights

ATP = 3756
Hit = 261 (i'm alliance)
Crit = 33.33%
ARP = 26.23% + 10% from stance = 36.23%
Exp = 27
Haste = 216 (6.59%)

So what I'm wondering and can't decide is,

1: Should i drop some str jems for arp pen and how much atp and arp am i looking for exactly?

2: Should i swap FFF or greatness for grim toll (after i lower my hit for it)?

3: I tried Bladestorm glyph in place of rend and didn't like it at all, MS, Execute, and rend still best for arms??

4: How good is sword spec now, seeing as how the best 2h is a sword? Should i shoot for the mace from yogg? or a axe, or polearm with crappy hunter stats lol ?

For the record it took some time to get used to arms but i like it now that i'm actually doing good dps, still miss doing top dps on thad, loath, and other fights as fury. Also i find i barely use HS anymore, unless im moving alot like on mir or heroism is up, Slam for the win, gonna miss that 4 set.

Thanks in advance for your advice.

You can answer questions 1,2,4 on your own by using the spreadsheet.

dont have one dont have excel

OpenOffice.org - The Free and Open Productivity Suite

thanks alot!!!

what do u guys think about the bladestorm glyph?

Pretty sure the spreadsheet doesn't work on open office.

I hope you mean glyph of rending, not glyph of overpower. Even for pvp there a lot of better options.

I've been running Arms as my DPS offspec and having some moderate success. I found Power Auras Classic triggers for overpower (action is available), sudden death (buff is active) and rend (target debuff cast by me is not active) very helpful to ease the learning curve.

A question though: I'm very rarely finding the need to slam. Most of my GCDs are taken up with the main rotation abilities. This is especially true if I'm keeping up sunders and shouts (quite likely in my 10 man group). Is this a sign that I'm being a bit slack with my rotation or is this fairly common? If it's the latter, given that this is just an offspec, I'd be tempted to ditch imp slam in favour of imp hamstring for pvp purposes, and just rage dump a little more into heroic strikes.

Unless you are the RNG king you are pressing (Or clicking) your buttons a bit too slowly. I usually have as many slams as MS/OP (Or fairly close) in any fight that doesn't require constant movement. Basically if you aren't moving you should be finding room for Slam.

^^ What he said. Even if you are keeping sunder and shouts up, that's only two GCDs every 30ish seconds. You can only MS every 5 seconds. You can only Overpower every 6 seconds. There's a whole lot of GCDs where you could be using for Slam in there.

Also, Slam fits the bill in low rage situations. Sitting at 20 rage? Slam. It gives you options.

If you can't fit Slams into your rotation you either have the most generous SD RNG in the world, or you're doing it wrong.

Other question ->

best weapon ingame gernal vezax soft mode?

5% more crit like betrayer ok but i will earn 15% armor pen with earthshaper from Yogg-Saron. The stats on Earthshaper not so good because hit and so on ...

I worked with Rawr and the spreedsheet and -.-

I was just chatting in vent with some friends about this, but I was wondering...

How important, with an arms/UA build is it for us to stay EXPERTISE capped? I am, atm, under my expertise by 1.5%. After a whole night of raiding, my WWS reports that I did 1137 white attacks, of those, 14 were dodged. (1.2%)

The thing is, isn't this technically a good thing? All 14 of those dodged white swings were turned into Overpowers, which averages almost 2k more than a white swing and nearly always crits. So I ended up doing more damage on those 14 swings then I would've if they would've connected AND crit.

I also had 5 rends dodged. All 5 attempts at applying this dot, yielded 5 more OP's than I would've had, if I were expertised capped. That's just free damage.

Now, where the debate comes in is this... OP crits are, on avg, more dmg than MS and Execute HITS. Since OP crits 90%+ for me in a raid setting, the dice are in my favor for going for a dodged MS/Execute on the chance that it will LIKELY not crit compared to the OP. IF a MS/Execute is dodged, there is potential that the overall DPS would come down, but there is also a chance that it will go UP.

Anyway, Im not sure where I personally stand here yet, but Im beginning to think that Arms should be getting hit capped, and then stack ArP and Crit, and throw Expertise out... take it if you get on a piece, but dont build for it.

I'll post the WWS so you can review it yourself, if you want: Wow Web Stats

It isn't free damage. It comes at the cost of whatever else you could have used in that one second GCD, which is at least always 2/3rds of a Slam. The cost of a dodged attack is quite high.

It is critical. Sure, those whites you missed turned into weapon damage with a near-guaranteed chance to crit at a low rage cost, but think about all the rage you missed out on, and thus, all the extra Slams, HSs, and Executes that could have been. Try artificially increasing your expertise on a spreadsheet; you'll find a very noticeable increase in DPS.

It is still important, but is not as important as hit. When you miss a white hit you lose rage, when you miss a special you lose gcd time that you replace with a 1s OP. In the second case the deal is 1 OP in 2.5s vs 1 special in 1.5s, not a big loss but surely not increased damage.

What you have to consider is what are you losing to cap expertise. If the difference is huge then you better be under cap, if it isn't then go for it. Anyway just a spreadsheet can tell you if it's worth or not.

Well you maybe gain 1 Overpower, but you can also gain no Overpower if:

Your Attack gets dodged but you still have TfB procc up (has to be confirmed).
Your Attack gets dodged but you have only 4 Sec TfB proc left (if the above Statement is Wrong)

I use TfB Proccs as late as possible: MS>Execute>TfB OP>Slam but using all OP proccs.

Actually, does spreadsheet accounts for such situations? Does it increase number of calculated OPs due to dodges?

Exactly. One should never blindly follow "go for the cap at all cost" advice. Sometimes it is better to get that pure dps item without expertise to replace blue with lots of it (exaggerating a bit here) even if you go below cap.

While that is certainly true it just isn't the situation we are facing as raiders. Especially an arms warrior, that needs only 3.5% reduction to be capped (115 rating), if you spend any time raiding and collecting gear you will have more expertise than you know what to do with.

You also have to consider that in addition to being under expertise cap for your white hits, you are also risking the loss of damage from MS, executes, or lost rend uptime. The ability to use overpower doesn't make dodges good...it just compensates a little bit and makes it slightly less bad.

For arms dps is axe or mace better in full nax gear? How about for pvp? I like axe more but dont have the numbers.

Now i am new to posting here and have done alot of reading. Althought i am confused right now on a few things with the way the Arms spec since the 3.1 buff to ArmPen. I am curious as to Why should i be gemming Armpen over STR and what Is the reasonable ArmPen rating be at with the current itemization. Any help on this would be great. The reason i am concerned is because i am currently pushing 3.5k+ dps following the rotation that has been given through here. and I'm using every GCD as frequently as possible. I have seen a large increase in my dps with the addition of BoH but with the current push for armpen that Blizz as brought in on gear but im just worried that im gimping myself by not having enough Armpen.

Now before i have someone thinking i am begging. I am really just more in lines concerned because im not recieving a direct answer via the majority of posts i have read and sadly 34 pages of posts is hard to sit and read all in a couple of sittings lol. Once i have a better understanding I will do more research and post my appreciations.
Armory Link here.

The problem with this logic is that you say "The overpower does more then the white swing, ergo net gain" and "rend dodge = 5 free overpowers". In reality what happened was you lost 19 GCD's, 14 rage-generating white hits (which could equal anywhere from 30-60 rage easily per swing) and 15 seconds on waiting for an initial rend tick (assuming you overpowered then tried to reapply rend)

A white swing, when dodged, generates no rage and makes you wait ~3 seconds until the next chance to generate rage. Overpower helps fill the dmg, but if your white swing hits, and your rend isn't dodged, then you can either SD, MS, or Slam until rend ticks, then OP, and continue your roation thusly.

Getting dodged is never good, even if we have an attack that does awesome damage as the result of dodges, because its moving sideways rather then up... the damage that slam does as a result of the rage that the dodged white swing WOULD have generated is greater then the damage of the overpower as a result of the dodge

TL;DR getting dodged is bad, it wastes GCD's and rage, even if it nearly guarantees a crit.

Because we can bring the boss to negative armor which results in a massive damage increase. The chart posted in another thread shows that for every -1000 armor you reach, roughly 7% damage although its not a static 7%. It increases each time you reach another -1000 armor.

Armor # Bonus Dmg
-1000 +7%
-2000 +15%
-3000 +25%
-4000 +36%
-5000 +49%
-6000 +65%
-7000 +85%


Currently I am sitting at 649 Armor pen rating before a grim toll procs. When I am raid buffed (food) and during a grim toll proc, I get to 1301 armor pen rating or 105.63% armor penetration. Since the initial cap is set at 104.05% I am already reaching the negative armor amounts of the boss.

According to calculations, I am ignoring -122.71 amor from the debuffed boss.

Debuffed boss:

10643 * .8 * .95 = 8088.68

(8088.68 + 15232.5) / 3 = 7773.73

7773.73 * 1.0563 = 8211.39

8088.68 - 8211.39 = - 122.71

So at -1000 armor I should see an increase of 7% (while grim toll is active).

This value would be:

8088.68 - x = -1000

8088.68 + 1000 = x

9088.68 = x

Now:

7773.73 * N = 9088.68

N = 9088.68 / 7773.73

N = 1.17

which is: 117% armor pen or 1441.44 armor pen rating.

With my current gear setup and grim toll procing, I would need an additional 141 armor pen rating or 11.44% armor pen.