In-Depth Arms DPS Discussion - Page 51

Rakhar · 04/18/09, 12:47 PM

Picked up my warrior 2 days ago, respeced arms and I've been trying to learn the rotation and mechanics of arms... so far I think I'm doing alright but I have a few questions.
On heroic (boss) dummies I run 3 - 3.4k, I test to1 million damage each attempt.
Here's two semi-random attempts I'll post details on

#1 (3050 DPS)

DW 18%
OP 18%
Melee 17.7%
Slam 12%
MS 11.8%
Execute 10.3%
Rend 8.2%
WW 3.9% (Bladestorm, I didn't stance dance to hit WW)

#2 (3401 DPS)

DW 18%
Melee 17.9%
OP 14.9%
Slam 12%
MS 10.7%
Execute 10.6%
Rend 10.2%
WW 5.6%
__________________________

Glyphs: Rending, MS, Execution

My rotation:
Rend (I don't clip rend, I let it fully expire for last tick of tfb then immediately OP/reapply rend)
OP
Execution
MS
Slam (towards end of swing timer)

I never have the spare rage gen for HS it seems, so I haven't even bothered trying to rotate HS in as a rage dump.

Anyway, to my questions (Sorry I'm long winded)

1) Judging by the percentages and rotation, what do you guys think my problem is?

2) When is the proper time to use slam... I've seen so many people argue and disagree on this, I don't know who to believe anymore. I typically try to use slam toward the end of my swing timer so my swing and slam hit at the same time.. Is this wrong?

3) Also a controversial topic it appears, should I regem for ArP or wait for more ArP gear before regemming? Or is ArP gemming even worth it at all? Armory is here if you want to look at my gear. (974 STR/3669 AP, 155 ArP[12.59%], 41.2% crit)

Tremulant887 · 04/18/09, 1:23 PM

Blue post confirms that ArP is working as intended. >Source<

I have no idea where it will lead for max dps, but I would most definetly hold off until you get some Uld25 gear with all that armor pen and a weapon like Earthshaper (1005 damage and 1.76% crit). Axe spec with str is still good and there are many more chances to get great 2h poleaxes and axes than there are maces.

The only thing I could ask for now is a reason to use one two-handed sword as a warrior. Voldrethar is downright sexy.

Sajakain · 04/18/09, 3:15 PM

Originally Posted by Sajakain

- Rend Is Kept Up (Refreshed if dropped)
- Procs:
-- Execute
-- Overpower
- Bladestorm (Always with Trinket)
- Mortal Strike
- Slam
- Heroic Strike (As a rage dump only)

With the above rotation kept in mind, I have conducted two tests. Each consisted of 1 battle shout duration (5 minutes). The first one was with the same stats listed in the quoted post, and the 2nd test was done with an added [Elixir of Armor Piercing]. (Again, only for 1 Battle Shout Duration). Both tests were conducted on the Heroic Training Dummy. DPS was recorded with the Recount addon and I have recorded after all DOTs were removed. No other player buffs (or debuffs) affected these tests.

================

Test 1:

DPS: 2517

1. Melee (25.2%)
2. Deep Wounds (Dot) (17.5%)
3. Overpower (15.5%)
4. Mortal Strike (14.0%)
5. Execute (9.8%)*
6. Rend (DoT) (8.5%)
7. Slam (5.2%)
8. Whirlwind (4.3%)

================

Test 2: (With ArP Elixir)

DPS: 2718

1. Melee (23.7%)
2. Deep Wounds (DoT) (17.5%)
3. Overpower (16.2%)
4. Mortal Strike ((14.3%)
5. Execute (13.3%)*
6. Rend (DoT) (6.5%)
7. Slam (4.4%)
8. Whirlwind (4.0%)

* Although it was on the Heroic Training Dummy, I only used Execute when Sudden Death Proc'd.

================
================

One thing I forgot to mention is that 99% of my gems are strength gems. My Meta is Crit and my shoulders are gemmed with expertise / hit. Other than those two I have either [Bold Scarlet Ruby] or [Sovereign Twilight Opal] in the sockets. Going off these two tests and what others have stated I would not be surprised if my DPS went significantly higher if I were to modify my gems just a bit to throw in some more ArP.

Any insight?

- Sajakain

Lamprey · 04/18/09, 5:06 PM

One more question on rotation. When boss is sub-20% I have been hitting Overpower if it is up and execute otherwise, unless my rage is above 50ish in which case I will MS and then execute. Is this optimal at all?

Dragonspear · 04/18/09, 5:15 PM

In order to fix Quartz so that it only shows your buffs make sure that you download Quartz r13. This is the latest version and I can confirm that it only shows your own debuffs again.

P.S. My main alt has and always will be an arms warrior hence why I am trolling here too

morimacil · 04/18/09, 9:49 PM

Sajakain, I am not convinced at all by your test. To be honest, I simply doubt that 45 ArP can increase your DPS by 200.
Looking at the numbers you provided, your execute damage % jumped from 9.8% to 13.3%, while your MS damage stayed pretty much the same.
Since I have no reason to believe that execute benefits more from armor penetration than mortal strike, I simply believe that you had more sudden death procs on the second test.
The decrease in slam damage also points in this direction, since more sudden death procs would lead to less free GCD to fill up with slam.
5 minutes is probably not enough time to see a real difference, too prone to RNG.

Sajakain · 04/18/09, 9:59 PM

Originally Posted by morimacil

Sajakain, I am not convinced at all by your test. To be honest, I simply doubt that 45 ArP can increase your DPS by 200.
Looking at the numbers you provided, your execute damage % jumped from 9.8% to 13.3%, while your MS damage stayed pretty much the same.
Since I have no reason to believe that execute benefits more from armor penetration than mortal strike, I simply believe that you had more sudden death procs on the second test.
The decrease in slam damage also points in this direction, since more sudden death procs would lead to less free GCD to fill up with slam.
5 minutes is probably not enough time to see a real difference, too prone to RNG.

I would also agree with you. Something I have not posted: I did re-socket ArP. Guess what happened? DPS went down to 2300 - 2400. So while ArP may be nice, and could help, slightly at most, it's not the stat to go for. SD did proc more on the 2nd test, as the results show.

However, I would say a 5 minute fight would be as good as a 10 minute fight, going strictly off the Battle Shout CD. The only difference is time. You're still going to do the same rotation, just twice over. The only other difference that would come into play is the chance for more procs.

The question that remains, though, is how are some people putting out 3500 DPS when at best a handful of us can only put out, at best, 2500 - 2800? Is it just they're getting extremely lucky on procs? Or is it something else?

- Sajakain

uglygreenguy · 04/18/09, 10:06 PM

Rend
Bladestorm
SD
MS
OP
Slam when everything is on GCD
HS with overflow of rage

I did 10 separate 6 minute tests my lowest DPS was 3483 and my highest was 3772

My only buff was non imp BS

Sajakain · 04/18/09, 10:18 PM

Originally Posted by uglygreenguy

Rend
Bladestorm
SD
MS
OP
Slam when everything is on GCD
HS with overflow of rage

I did 10 separate 6 minute tests my lowest DPS was 3483 and my highest was 3772

My only buff was non imp BS

What were your procs like? What was the frequency of them? Your 54/17 doesn't differ from mine with the except of two talents. Your stats are just about the same as mine, save you have more AP and more Crit and between the two of us our gear balances out.... and to top it all off..our rotation is basically the same. But yet you're coming out with 1,000 more DPS?

Is this on the Heroic Training Dummy or the Grandmaster Training dummies? I can put out 3K+ on the Grandmasters.

- Sajakain

uglygreenguy · 04/18/09, 10:56 PM

DPS For Heroic Training Dummy

Melee 19.3%
DW 15.6%
OP 15.5%
Slam 13.3%
MS 12.4%
SD 11.1%
Rend 7.9%
BS 4.7%

Total dps for this 10 minute fight was 3343.

I did three 10 minute attempts the others being 3302 and 3407dps, a little lower than when I did my six minute runs. Interesting RNG will always be RNG though I guess. My advice is that if you have over 30% ArP and have a side grade item or two with ArP on them + regemming it would be well worth it.

There is another arms warrior in my guild with that nice mace off 10man leviathan who does very similar dps on the dummies as well. ArP is the way to go.

EDIT: Sajakain Just from looking at the difference in my melee dmg and yours I am going to go out on a limb here and say that your problem may lie in not maximizing your GCD as good as possible. Also, I am using slam a lot more than you. Hope this helps.

RPZip · 04/18/09, 11:46 PM

Originally Posted by Sajakain

I would also agree with you. Something I have not posted: I did re-socket ArP. Guess what happened? DPS went down to 2300 - 2400. So while ArP may be nice, and could help, slightly at most, it's not the stat to go for. SD did proc more on the 2nd test, as the results show.

You really can't base anything on a 5m parse; there's far too much RNG over that small of a sample size even just factoring crit chance and what crits before you even factor in things like SD procs.

The spreadsheet is using the correct armor formula based off the numbers GC posted, and it's really good... once you get enough of it, that is. It's showing at about 1.15 SEP on the spreadsheet when you're at ~700, which is pretty huge.

volcarr · 04/19/09, 5:34 AM

I have a question about how much ArP i should be going for exactly. I have Grim Toll and i remember reading and seeing some math that said i should just use Grim Toll and socket/gear ArP till im at the cap with when Grim Toll procs. So with Sunder + FF + Battle Stance i need ~916 ArP rating i think with Grim Toll. Take off 612 of that and im at 304 ArP rating which i pretty much hit with straight gear just about.

Thing is when i go to the spreadsheet and enter my setup and then convert the gems from STR to ArP i am still getting an increase in DPS. So with Grim Toll approximately when does socketing ArP become inferior to STR? the cap?

Gorrog666 · 04/19/09, 6:30 AM

ArP CAP according to Blizzard:

C=400+85*targetlevel+4.5*85*(targetlevel-59);

Boss armor in Naxx25 is 13083

LVL 83
For a level 80 target, C=15232.5. For a level 83, C=16635

The cap for Armor Penetration then is: (armor + C)/3

the cap therefore is (13083+16635)/3 = 9906

you can essentially reduce the boss armor to 3177 with 100% ArP through equip unfortunately Blizzard didn't mention how exactly spec and stances are calculated into this. It could be that it is additive and just added into this calculation in which case you would just have a 100% ArP cap.

EDIT: Well I did some testing with a hunter pet and I have to say Blizzard is telling us a big pile of crap. As of now there is no real ArP cap.

Here are the results:

The pet had 18830 armor at lvl 80 putting the cap at 11354 armor reduction or 60.29% with Blizzards formula.

This would put the pet capped at 7476 armor. I used buff food and pots to reach 52.05% ArP through equipment and Thunderclap as damage since it's very constant

Battle Stance 395
Battle Stance + Sunder 444
Battle Stance + Sunder + Grim Toll 561
Battle Stance + Sunder + Grimm Toll + Mace 608
Grim Toll 450

Alone Grim Toll puts me above 100% ArP and ever ArP effect still pushes damage above any possible cap. I am pretty sure that bonuses like stance or spec or sunder armor are totally seperate from ArP from your equip. So you can essentially reach the ArP cap Blizzard mentioned by reaching 100% ArP and reduce the rest through Sunder Armor. I definetly have to do more testing on this.

Mågius · 04/19/09, 7:47 PM

I was under the impression that the Boss armor before debuffs is 10643. After sunder and FF are applied, it goes to 8088.68.

Then doing all of the calculations, you get:

(8088.68+15232.5)/3 = 7773.56 (104.05% to cap)

That is what is posted here: Official 3.1 changes and discussion

Since we are in battle stance, 10% is automatically taken of and we get 94.05% to cap (without the Grim Toll proc)

With Grim Toll proc: We would only need 44.36% arp in battle stance (no mace)

44.36 * 12.32 = 546.52 Arp rating

Kballa · 04/19/09, 8:12 PM

Basically what I'm looking for is what is the lowest attack power/crit you can have after gemming arp before it will get better than gemming strength. for example as axe spec with str gems, I have 3379 ap, 36.94 crit, and my hit is a little high but thats cuz of gear, nothing gemmed.

I calculated how much ap and crit i would lose after going mace/arp gems, and i would be sitting around 29.5 crit with 3091 ap, yet have 287 armor pen rating, not including mace spec or battle stance. I'm wondering if this would be too low to have a significant dps increase.