I'd like to add some of my experiences in the Arms vs. Fury debate. I have 41% crit in battle stance unbuffed outside of a raid, hit and exp capped using [Betrayer of Humanity]

DPS Priority

• Rend, don't refresh prematurely (see above post)
• Sudden Death Execute (never use normal execute without a Sudden Death proc below 20%)
• Overpower AFTER an SD Execute only assuming your rage is dumped completely at this point
• Mortal Strike
• Slam

Bladestorm vs. Death Wish

Bladestorm's utility over Death Wish lies on add clearing, multiple mob DPS, and generic AOE purposes. This can come into mind on a lot of fights where you may have more than one target. As more targets are hit by Bladestorm, it's effective DPS increases in multiples where Death Wish is just a static damage increase. If you hit 1 target with it, it's damage efficiency is 100%. Hitting 2, it's 200%, 3, 300%, and so on.

I should also add this. In order to get Death Wish, you have to give up 2 points in something else in your Arms tree, which you really will not want to do.

Fights where Bladestorm can/will outperform Death Wish:

Noth
Grobbulus
Gluth
Anub
Faerlina (10-man only)
Maexxna
Gothik
Sarth (especially x3 drakes and add control)
Malygos (sparks + bladestorm + dw ticks + Nexus lords)

Otherwise Bladestorm and Death Wish have marginal difference when in a single target situation, mostly because of Deep Wound rolling mechanics.

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I'm finding CRIT > AP until you hit about 39-40% crit unbuffed in battle. After that point AP starts to become more effective as you hit the 50% margin buffed in a raid. If you are critting every other swing your rage generation is essentially "infinite" and that is how Arms DPS becomes most efficient. When you can spam Execute with Sudden Death procs without having to pay much mind to your rage, Arms becomes equal to Fury in effective DPS.

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A lot of Fury > Arms comparisons are very hard to take accurately, because of many differing factors between the specs. For example Fury scales AP better, and Arms scales Crit better towards DPS. Arms is fully capable of putting out the same DPS as top Fury parses out there, given the same circumstances.

You have to consider the time it takes to kill a boss, the gear level of warrior A vs. warrior B, and whether they're gearing for it correctly and/or playing it correctly as a factor in your comparison. Unless you can take a properly geared/played Arms warrior and an equally geared/played Fury warrior in one single raid and compare them side by side with no external factors (Hysteria, etc), there is no sound basis for comparison.

Also, without a combat rogue in the raid, Arms contribution is higher than measured on DPS, based on the number of physical DPS in the raid.

Without a feral druid, Arms and Fury both have significant contribution.

In either class's absence, Arms has a beneficial purpose in the raid (Trauma or BF, or both), where Fury only has one contribution if there is no Feral Druid. So in terms of raid synergy, Arms > Fury unless you have both a Combat Rogue AND a Feral Druid. Most rogues are going Mutilate for DPS.

4 piece T7 is a major factor in Arms performance vs. Fury. The extra 5 rage reduction applies to Execute, making the actual cost of Execute 0 rage, and adding another 5 rage to your damage output of the ability. Rage generation is a huge factor in Arms DPS, so more rage reduction across the board is good no matter how you slice it, and also because the 4 piece will proc more often as Arms due to two DOT effects on a constant cycle.

Other things I've noted as Arms

• Hit cap is actually 8%, thoroughly tested this. Lead to believe its 13% for Fury also
• Arms scales immensely better with weapon upgrades than Fury
• Crit > AP until 39-40% in battle, then start stacking AP
• Glyph of Rend is a significant DPS increase
• Executing below 20% is bad. Only execute when Sudden Death procs, because the 10 leftover rage is essential to continuing a good cycle
• Overpower followup to an SD Execute is better than using an MS or Slam followup because of the cheap DPR
• 4-piece T7 gives Arms another significant edge in closing the gap between itself and Fury

@Morsexy
Well as someone pointed out his math weren't perfect so I don't think it's 5.5k. Also, we have a combat rogue and a feral druid usually in my raid so who knows who's debuff is on and when etc.

I'm doing Naxx tonight and I got 1 or 2 new piece since my last run, I guess I can send you some new WWS reports.

@Mephs
Thank you very much for posting this info about 4pc T7! I'm definitely going for 4pc. That crit information is pretty interesting too. I'm sitting at 37% unbuffed in Battle Stance and was wondering what number I should aim for.

About less than 20%, you're saying to just keep doing our "normal dps rotation" instead of just spamming execute correct ?

I might actually have more than is necessary. At 38-39% you gotta consider raid buffs in a 25 man will grow out from that big time, and include Rampage/LOTP crit bonus as well. If you're near 50% you're probably in the ideal crit zone and can start stacking more STR instead of crit where possible.

I'm at 41% (almost 42), and I pretty much usually am in an infinite rage cycle where I never am short on rage for a followup to an SD Execute. If you are in a similar situation, you're probably fine on crit.

I'll get a new WWS this week, as I've made some big upgrades since the last Naxx25.

Couple of questions for you, Mephs.

1. Ragedumping before SD - Do you ragedump? If, what abilities? Im still not convinced ragedumping is the best unless ms is ready.

2. Cant see your armory-profile atm, so Im interested in your gemming. Straight up 16 crit, 16 agi or 8 agi 8 crit?

3. WWS? Id love to see what you`re able to do atm. Hopefully Ill have a shot at patch 25 tomorrow, and Ill try link the WWS here so we can look a bit at it and ponder about what seems to be wrong or right. Im currently NOT wearing 4/4 t7, so Im assuming the damage wont be good. Best Ive done so far is 3.5k dps on patch 10 with arms. Remember that my crit is lacking as well. Sitting at aprox 32% unbuffed in battle, which probably is pretty much catastrophical for good arms-dps.

Anyways, Ill try to get a wws up. Really hyped on arms atm, because I feel its more fun than TG. I keep hearing that TG is getting a nerf as well supposedly because of huge bleed-damage not intended, but we can only speculate about that for now and how hard itll hit fury, and possibly arms.

I saw that the question was asked earlier, but I didn't see an answer.

In the DPS meters pre-Wrath/post 3.0, Dual Wielding Arms Warriors were topping the damage meters on boss fights. This was due in part to SD proccing off of the two fast weapons and the fact that Execute hits the same amount of damage regardless of a fat 2H or tiny 1H weapon.

Anyone done the testing to see if Dual Wielding > 2H?

If anything Deep Wounds are getting a buff - since last days of beta overnerfed them in regard to BT /Offhand damage range.

I've been going over rotations for Arms and figured out a few things. Most people prioritize Execute and Sudden Death over most things. I personally think the order should be more like:

Rend (opener)
MS (should be kept on cd)
------------------------------
Slam
HS (if rage is above 60)
------------------------------
Execute
Overpower or Rend


Now I want to explain the rotation. Execute is only effective if you have unlimited rage, which you will almost never have. This is the reason why it is on the bottom. Consider this situation: Your white hit just landed and you use Execute because you had a Sudden Death Proc, this is where you become rage starved. You will only have 10 rage for OP or Rend. It would be optimal if you could time an Execute just before your white hit. When you land a white hit after your execute then the GCD from the Execute and the followup OP or Rend provides enough time for a second white hit and enough rage for a MS. This is the primary reason why I think it is most effective to MS first since it is the most effective use of GCD, this should prevent you from being rage starved and waste GCDs.
Slam is your secondary rage dump. Let's leave it at that and I'll say more about it later.
Ok, why HS before an Execute? Well if you skilled 15% crit in the prot tree it's even more effective but your HS should cost you 12 rage, which is 495 bonus dmg. The 12 rage translate in an Execute into 456 dmg. This part should be pretty obvious by now, and considering that you will be left with 10 rage after your Sudden Death it doesn't matter if you loose rage to HS or make your next hit not produce any rage. The important thing is the timing, this is where a weapon swing bar comes into play again. Should you have a white swing before your Execute due to GCD then land a HS first and then Execute. Should you not have a white swing then rather use Slam again and then HS and Execute.
An Execute with a full rage bar is producing the most dmg per GCD but it has to be used in such a way that you won't loose and GCDs. If you want to compensate a Slam your Execute would require around 60 bonus rage to compensate for the dmg of a slam depending on if you have a T7 set bonus or what weapon you use.
I think there is a good reason behind the fact that Sudden Death is a buff that is extremly long. It's a nice rage dump but you have to time it right to not waste any GCDs.

The perfect situation is essentially when you have a white hit just after your Execute, you have MS on cd, and you have a OP proc ready to go after the Execute or you have to refresh a Rend. Between each MS you have 2-3 GCDs.

The run-down should be something like this:
Rend (opener)
MS
Slam (+HS if your going to Execute)
Slam (or Execute if Sudden Death procced)
OP (or refresh Rend or Slam)
MS (if you had a white hit just after your Execute you should have enough rage)
Slam
Slam
and so on...

use Overpower as an alternative to Slam if you don't have a Sudden Death Proc.

I'll test this rotation tomorrow. I'm certain about most of it though, the only thing that I am not 100% sure about is the OP. I don't know if sacrificing a slam for an OP is going to give more dps or if the OP should be kept for a Sudden Death Proc.

I think the best point to make is that Arms < Fury until you reach this "infinite rage" scenario.

To get that, you need a lot of crit. I'm talking 38% at a minimum in battle stance. I didn't notice myself doing as much damage as I probably could be doing until I hit about 38% crit unbuffed.

With food, raid buffs, and LOTP up I'm one piece of gear away from having over 50% crit fully buffed. I am NEVER short on rage no matter what part of the fight, or at least a 98% uptime on GCDs (that is, no off-GCD time where I'm not hitting an ability).

Anything unlike this situation, and Arms is just simply not effective in comparison to Fury. It's the easiest spec to be "raid-ready" for, since it requires less hit, one less weapon, and does well even with lower AP comparatively. However it's the hardest to stay competitive with in the long term. I'm able to compete with Fury but I'm also geared out (or almost there), and have an insane amount of stacked crit to achieve an endless rage status.

In this situation, Execute will ALWAYS be a better choice than anything at an equal rage level. At 30 rage, Exe > MS. At 15 rage, Exe > Slam. The only exception to this is Overpower, which is a guaranteed crit and will pretty much crit for up to 4k with good AP/Weapon on top of things. The cost of an overpower is so cheap, and is better than Execute at 10 rage, so it is the ideal followup ability to use after an Execute.

Not only does this give you an extra GCD for another white hit to lead in, but also can give you more rage for an Execute chaining off of that OP.

The Exe/OP chain is just that. Execute, Overpower, repeat until neither continue to light up. Just use these scenarios, it seems to max out my dps:

If nothing lit up:

Rend (always keep up)
MS (over 45 rage)
Slam (under 45 rage or MS on cooldown)

If overpower is lit up:

Rend (always keep up)
MS (over 45 rage)
Overpower
Slam (under 45 rage, Overpower and MS on cooldown)

If execute lit up:

Execute (over 70 rage)
Rend (use as followup to a 70 rage SD Execute)
Execute (under 70 rage)
MS
Slam

If both lit up:

Execute (over 70 rage)
Rend (see above)
Execute (under 70 rage)
Overpower (under 35 rage)
MS (over 35 rage)
Overpower (followup to 35+ rage MS)
Slam

So, if Execute is active immediately after white hit you will use Execute and then sit with 10 rage doing nothing waiting for next swing? Is not at least one GCD wasted in this scenario that could be used either for MS or slam?

I prefer to compare abilities in time frames between swings as basic blocks in which I use GCDs. Depending on weapon speed, haste, buffs etc. number of GCDs to use between two swings can range from 2 to 3 or even more. IMO it is better to try to use them all instead of burning all rage at first GCD after swing.

For example, let's assume we have 2 GCDs available between swings, Execute(SD) is active and we are just after swing.
We have the following situation to consider:

gcd-gcd-swing

If we use Execute at first gcd we have

execute-gcd-swing

Second gcd can be used only if SD procs from execute or ToB becomes active (so chances are 9% for SD and I think around 15% for ToB if it wasn't active before).

Now, if we use MS or slam first and execute after that we have:

MS-execute-swing

If SD procs from MS, well it's wasted but we still can have another SD from execute, if ToB procs we can use it after next swing.

Now, what is better damagewise in that swing-to-swing time frame, one execute or MS-execute combo?

Execute before MS is always better, because Execute's damage is based off your rage pool, where MS is a static value and isn't affected by it. So if you're in infinite rage you'd essentially go by whatever instant is doing more damage.

As Arms if you're waiting any amount of time for a GCD usage, then you're either not at the ideal crit or you're just having bad RNG. As a result, the best way to play arms (at least on competitive personal dps with fury) you have to use a GCD everytime its up or you're not getting the full effect.

You can't only count the ability cost of HS against the rage-wise bonus damage of execute.

If you HS just before you execute you gain about 600 damage through HS (it's higher than the plain 495 ability damage due to the fact that a HS can't glance), but you lose 52*38=1976 damage on your execute (assuming you were below 48 rage before the white swing and gain an average of 40 rage due to one white swing).
(Of course it would be better to MS first and then execute.)

Just to point out that you should never use Heroic Strike as Arms. EVER.

Yes, correct. This only applies after 20% though. The reason is that the source of our "infinite rage" scenario is that we have that extra 10 rage leftover after the Execute. That leaves us open to an immediate Rend or Overpower immediately after, but also gives us that 10 rage levy so when we get a white hit instead of a white crit, we still have the rage to Slam/MS while everything else hasn't procced. This is essential for that reason.

Infinite rage sounds silly but it basically means you are able to use a GCD everytime your ticker comes up, not "literally" infinite rage like you might remember from Vaelstrasz. I easily have a 98-99% uptime on GCD usage with my stats in a 25 man raid, and in 10-mans as long as I have windfury or Imp Icy Talons to keep my swing speed up. You could recreate this with enough haste but it'd require so much of it that its not worth stacking.

This is what I meant by infinite rage, not that we have 100 rage all the time, because I don't. But it's the reason why Execute is your best GCD, second only to rend.

My swing timer in 25 man raids is not the same length as a GCD, but it's barely a second off. There's probably at most a 1-1.2 second window where I won't swing at all, but with the rate TfB procs, I usually can follow up that Execute dump with either a Slam or Overpower at the very least. Also, I usually save my bloodrage as a followup to Execute when I know I might not get that rage burst (if OP doesn't light up, and I get a white swing just before using Execute, giving me the maximum downtime window, this is where bloodrage is best used).

Its small min/max'ing things like that and a lot of juggling both situational awareness in the encounter and watching your quartz/hotbars like a hawk.

After looking at your analysis I'm guessing you went off of ebs's spreadsheet, however that is not (as he says it) a be-all-end-all and is more useful if you aren't in an ideal rage situation.

I was perusing WWS logs the other day and happened upon this guy Wow Web Stats
I've been trying to make sense of it ever since. Either he's sloppy and has extraordinary luck or he's very good at this. You can attribute the 65% crit rate on Execute to luck, but look at the rest of it. 5 Heroic strikes, 10 Overpowers, 14 Whirlwinds. It's not like he's rocking Naxx 25 epics in every slot either.

Look at the speed of the kill though. 2.5 minutes. I avg about 4500 on a 3.5 minute kill, that would easily show as 5k+ on a 60sec faster kill.

Whirlwinds are counted by WWS where Bladestorm is used.

Have I missed something since 3.0 came out? Arms Dual Wielding was the best DPS (Brut was he benchmark) because of endless SD procs. Has DW really changed so much that getting a fat 2H overshadows a constant SD?

Sorry to bring this up again, but no one has acknowledged it and I feel like I really missed something since no one's brought up he Dual Wielding superiority from less than a month ago.

Ugh, I forgot about the Bladestorm/Whirlwind thing. I feel dumb. Also I guess that says really bad things about their Fury Warrior who had 2 chances to Death Wish and managed 800 DPS less.

I'm both specced for HS and use it when applicable while playing Arms, when I am rage capped or will rage cap with another white hit I'd rather HS and get the extra damage, especially when I'm on GCD but about to use another non-Slam ability when I come off GCD.

Also finally have a half-decent Patchwerk WWS finally. 4356 DPS, 4th dmg, 3rd DPS, 4:10 kill.

I agree with this, based on my experience. One thing I didn't think of/wasn't aware of was that the PROC of SD is what leaves you with 10 rage...I thought I noticed my rage dropping completely, but I wasn't sure...now that someone else confirms it I'll have to be more careful sub 20%.

I would also like to back this up (though I would even go so far as to say that you can be as low as 31-34% and start considering more AP). If you don't crit as Arms, you're basically not going to develop enough rage from your attacks to do your damage...you should basically have SOMETHING going on every GCD...more attacks == more chances to proc SD, also. Amusingly, fights like Sapphiron where there's constant and reasonably high AOE damage, are VERY nice for arms warriors...so long as you can stay alive. The additional rage you gain from the AOE translates very nicely into extra damage, moreso than it will for a fury warrior (lacking the speedy rage dump that arms has).

I'm definitely looking forward to getting some more pieces. I have been eyeing that 4-piece and hoping it was as glorious as it looked. I'm even more excited now that you're confirming how excellent it is.

Just leaving this in here because it's good info and doesn't hurt to repeat.

There's a lot more wrong than that.

22 Bloodthirsts? I whipped on my windows calculator to make 100% sure that 60\5 = 12.

So 22 vs 32 Possible. Even if you only spam executes, and the last 20% is the same pace as the first 80, thats still 4 Bloodthirsts not used. Irregardless this is some very nice arms DPS, Riz was in Transcended before FL and he does some really good DPS and hes below ( I don't know spec\gear advanatges etc ) the arms warrior.

Though the 440 hit and 14% haste isnt helping the fury warrior's dps at all.

Edit: I looked at my number of Bloodthirsts on our 3 min kill and I only used 24, so I guess that's a non or less of an issue. But I also do a lot more DPS with more fury based stats so I think my point stands even though I was wrong about BT usage.

Edit 2: I guess he can't Deathwish twice anyways because he doesn't have that spec'd and he has 4\5 enrage. Also 2.5% expertise so Its probably not a fair comparison.

You are saying exactly what I said - it is better to use every available GCD. But at the same time in your opinion Execute should be used immediately after white swing? Sorry, it seems like contradiction. When you use Execute at first available GCD after swing, then in most cases you won't have enough rage to use second GCD.

And once again - you are comparing two abilities only by the damage they deal upfront, not counting into equation that one of them will suck up almost all your rage, no matter how much you had.

Or maybe your infinite rage scenario is having at least 30rage for each GCD no matter what ability was used on previous one?

You can tell by looking at his buffs that he doesn't have the HS glyph. There's also nothing wrong with using HS when you're rage capping due to suspiciously long SD procs even while Slamming. With the Whetstone, a haste potion, higher than average BL uptime due to the speed of the kill and WF it wouldn't be surpising that he may have a hard time dumping all of his excess rage without using HS. And with that much haste, using HS would actually be better than Slam even with the improvements.

Thanks a lot for your advices Mephs (your post on the official forum is excellent too). Even if your whole post is interesting, I would like to point something : you mention the hit cap is 8% instead of 9% like everyone else believe. No one here confirmed it. How sure are you about this and what about the other players here ? Also, is it true for other classes ?