Could someone tell me because I really can not find out why, why does axe spec give 5% more damage on crits? I understand it gives a 5% more chance to crit and nothing more or am I wrong? Another thing, I understand from the posts that sword spec only affects white hits so If say I have a swing time of 2.5 raidbuffed I will roughly get an extra hit once every 25seconds (not considering the internal 6sec cooldown)? Just as a fact, in ulduar gear with Rune Edge I was getting roughly about 100dps more when i put in the 5 talents in the sword spec whereas I was getting about 300 more with lotrafen equipped when I put the 5 talents in poleaxe spec and I don't think the 10Arp made the 200dps difference. I would assume the with the sword spec buff that the dps increase I am talking about would double and get to 200 but still 33% less than poleaxe spec. My guess is, as many have already said the poleaxe spec will still be best

You have not carefully read the tooltip of the Poleaxe spec: Poleaxe Specialization - Spell - World of Warcraft

There's nothing to understand, Alexxcri, it's written in the tooltip: "Increases your chance to get a critical strike and the critical damage caused with Axes and Polearms by 5%".
Also, if you have a 2.5 swing time, you will get an extra hit proc'd by sword spec every 6/2.5+9=11.4 attacks, i.e. 28.5 seconds.
However this is the first flaw in the model I posted: it doesn't take into account that the extra swing can proc from yellow attacks.
The second mistake is that i brutally multiplied the 9% dps increase by sword spec by 0.2 (percentage of white damages), while it should have been: white damages + DW caused by white crits. Assuming DW is 0.15, and the percentage caused by white crits 33% (it'd be a little complex to correctly estimate, but something like 1/3 should be real), the total dps increase by sword spec with a 3 sec swing time is 9*(0.2+0.05)=2.25%. As I said this number should be buffed when I'll correct the "first flaw", but it's still nowhere near the 6.5% by Poleaxe spec.

Anyway, the limit for sword spec is still an extra attack every 6 seconds, i.e. 1/6 relative dps gain, so 16%*0.25 (white damage + DW from white crits fraction) = 4.16%. So sword spec will never-ever increase your dps beyond 4.16% (Even if they buff it to a 100% chance). Well... it could, because will let you generate more rage. But things become terribly complicated here.

PS: I went to a dummy and tested myself that the critical damage with Poleaxe and meta is 2.16 normal, as Aw4 suggested. I should revise totally my former post therefore. Then I spammed Slam 400 times and the result was the critical damage being 2.40 times normal. I know 400 isn't anywhere near a good sample, but thus special attacks are affected only by Impale and not by Poleaxe/meta? Or is the real value 2.36 (0.2 Impale + 0.16 Axe/meta)? I can't belive I'm this noobish.

2.2 (impale) * 1.03 (meta) * 1.05 (axe spec) = 2.3793. That's easily within a reasonable error for your 400 slams.

If you were thinking impale is 2.4x by itself, reread the tooltip. Impale "increases the critical strike damage bonus of your abilities by 20%" (emphasis mine), not the critical strike damage, as the meta and poleaxe spec do. The base critical strike damage bonus of your abilities is +100%, increased to +120% by impale.

Are you getting those percentages from the tooltip while hovering over hit rating? Or have you already added the ten percent from being in battle stance that isn't represented there?

Just look at his armory. He already added the 10% from battle stance.

What would you use?

Item Comparison Tool - World of Warcraft

Arm Pen can be higher on Marrowstrike since you can gem it.

The real difference is Edge = +100~atk power

The Agility on Marrowstrike makes Crit higher than Edge & also adds some attack power through armor (Armored to the Teeth).

While Kings does add 10% to str, it does the same for agil, so the maths can get somewhat technical.

I went with Marrowstrike because it looks better and it dropped for me Love to have 2x Edge's for Fury tho.

These are the stats assuming an Inscribed Ametrine (10 Str / 10 Crit)

Marrowstrike
110 Agi (extra from bonus)
101 Stm
10 Str (socket)
10 Crit (socket)
57 Crit
154 AP
60 ArP

Edge of Ruin
121 Str
97 stm
62 Crit
76 ArP

Using Strength Equivalency Points (SEP) as follows:
(These values are based on what you will normally see
in the most recent version of Landsoul's Spreadsheet)

1 SEP = 1 STR
0.0 = 1 STM
0.9 = 1 CRIT
0.45 = 1 AP
1.1 = 1 ArP
0.7 = 1 AGI

Marrowstrike =
110(0.7) + 10(1) + 67(0.9) + 154(0.45) + 60(1.1)

[top] 282.6 SEP

Edge of Ruin

121(1) + 62(0.9) + 76(1.1)
= 260.4 SEP

Please note these are based on SEP values for ARMS warriors. Fury warriors obviously can't even use the Marrowstrike, but thier SEP values will favor STR due to the difference between Improved Berserker Stance and Strength of Arms (This is also why DKs will likely favor Edge as well)

Alright, couple things. In my current gear setup I have 0 expertise (1% from talents of course), 100% armor pen (raid buffed with pots/food) and Poleaxe spec.

My rotation is op > sd > ms > slam. As far as dps goes in ToC25, I'm number 1 by a mile on 2nd/3rd and sometimes 4th (RNG) bosses. No my guild isn't bad, yes we have fantastic dps. First fight is taken by the hunters usually... too much gimmic to overcome.

Anyway I've been reading through the thread and noticed many people prioritize their rotation completely different (ms being high priority) as well as stacking expertise to avoid dodge. Can anybody display some numbers as to why this is considered "better"? As far as I can tell OP should be top priority due to 100% crit value granting DW refresh as well as a for sure 7-9k crit (depending on cooldowns) Not to mention with 0 expertise OP procs are through the roof causing a HUGE increase in dps.

My layout on recount is usually like this.

Overpower: 18-20%
Melee: 16-17%
Deep Wounds: 14-16%
Execute: 12-14%
Mortal Strike: 11-13%
Slam: 7-9%
Bladestorm/Heroic Throw/Heroic Strike/Rend/Sweep Strikes somewhere for the rest.

Thanks in advance on some feedback.

When you have a higher-than-normal chance of being dodged (as in your expertise case), ensuring TfB procs are cleared right away by prioritizing OP over everything else is important. Doing this helps you not waste any dodge-triggered overpowers and helps you recover damage lost due to dodge. Arms warriors with high or near-cap expertise are not restricted by this and, in fact, often prefer to prioritize TfB OPs below everything except slam, up until it would expire. This way no SD procs are lost or MS delayed, etc.

Generally speaking, overpowers procced from dodged attacks will not result in increased damage as compared to if the attack had just hit. Refer to a spreadsheet and look at how they treat dodged-triggered overpowers. IIRC Landoul's new version will have enhanced support for this.

By your post, I'm assuming you're in the situation where you saw your ArP SEP get very high (passively), around 1.2-1.3 or perhaps more. Your expertise SEP, while above STR, was probably only around 1.1ish. And so, following SEP calculations here would push you to scrap all expertise (since the expertise SEP is probably calculated to be constant as a function of how much expertise you have), and gear/gem purely for ArP over all else. I'm not clear on the treatment of dodge-triggered overpowers by the most recently available spreadsheet. It may very well turn out that stacking ArP above all else really does give highest theoretical DPS. You'd be getting massive hits at the cost of missing some. I know I got to that SEP regime with only about 85% passive ArP some time during Ulduar before going Fury.

Depending on the differences between the dodge model in the new spreadsheet and the old, your experiences may be validated as best practices in the future...

We've covered this several times, with people arguing back and forth on it. Here's the basic facts:

Parry:

At 0 Expertise, ALL of your attacks (except Overpower) have a 13.75% chance to Parry when in front of the mob. Let's face it, there aren't that many fights where you can always be behind the mob 100% of the fight. While this isn't a huge concern, as you can stay behind the mob most of the time on most fights, it can add up heavily on fights where you have more and more face time with the mob. And if the attack parried and you have the glyph, while it did no damage, you then try to make up for some of that by using your new OP hit and overwriting a GCD that would have been used by either an Execute (Sudden Death), Mortal Strike, Slam or possibly even an OP that would have otherwise been there, either from another Dodged attack or a Taste for Blood proc. Only 2 of those 5 instances would actually yield something positive on the RESULTING attack. Otherwise, in total, you just wasted a lot of damage.

13.75% of your GCDs wasted means 13.75% of your DPS is being lost.

Dodge:

At 0 Expertise, ALL of your attacks (except Overpower) have a 6.50% chance to Dodge, at ALL times. You can reduce this by 1% per point of Weapon Mastery. For the remainder of this paragraph, let's assume you didn't.

There are several situations where OP ends up getting used:
1) Your White Swing was Dodged
- Cons: You didn't deal that damage for the White Swing. You didn't gain rage from the Swing landing, thereby reducing your chances of having enough rage for your next attacks and for Heroic Striking.
- Pros: You Triggered an OP, which could overwrite a lesser attack that would have been on the GCD (the only two that it would have helped would be Mortal Strike or Slam so this is a low chance of helping)
2) Your Slam was Dodged
- Cons: You didn't deal that damage for the Slam. That's a wasted GCD, period. You spent rage on something that didn't land.
- Pros: You Triggered an OP, which could overwrite a lesser attack that would have been on the GCD (the only two that it would have helped would be Mortal Strike or Slam so this is a low chance of helping)
3) Your Mortal Strike was Dodged
- Cons: You didn't deal that damage for the Mortal Strike. That's a wasted GCD, period. You spent rage on something that didn't land.
- Pros: You Triggered an OP, which could overwrite a lesser attack that would have been on the GCD (the only two that it would have helped would be Mortal Strike or Slam so this is a low chance of helping)
4) Your Execute was Dodged
- Cons: You didn't deal that damage for the Execute, which is MAJOR loss. That's a wasted GCD, period. You spent rage on something that didn't land.
- Pros: You Triggered an OP, which could overwrite a lesser attack that would have been on the GCD (the only two that it would have helped would be Mortal Strike or Slam so this is a low chance of helping)

6.5% of your GCDs wasted means 6.5% of your DPS is being lost.

So let's add up your losses:
6.50% + 13.75% = 20.25% @ 100% time in front of mob
6.50% + 00.00% = 06.50% @ 000% time in front of mob

Let's use an average of those two together for fights in general:
(20.25+6.5)/2 = 13.375% of all your DPS is lost, period

Can you make up that 13.375% damage loss by upping Strength?

Let's consider that all your Expertise would be coming from Gems (+16 Expertise each) vs Strength (+16 Strength each)

You need 213 Expertise Rating to cap Dodge (459 to cap Parry, but that's excessive).
213 Rating at 16 per gem is 13.3125 gems
13.3125 gems at 16 STR each is 213 STR (easy calc, lawl)

213 STR is 416 AP (not including kings)

416 / 14 = 29.714 DPS

So if you are, in actuality, doing 4000 DPS (after the 13.375% loss) then gain the expertise to cover *just the dodge* and drop STR (by use of gems):

100% - 13.375% = 86.625% (your 4000 DPS)
86.625% + 6.5% (Dodge) + 3.625% (Parry reduced by the expertise you gained at half value (13.75 - 6.5) / 2) = 96.75%
So take your 4k and modify it to the higher 96.75% by use of simple fraction solving:

4000.000	086.625%
4617.605	100.000%
4467.532	096.750%

4467.532 new DPS total - the DPS lost from STR 29.714 = 4437.818 which is still 437.818 DPS over your original 4000.

YES, there are other variables that affect this, but it STILL doesn't make up the 438 difference in total.

[Edit] Additional note, it's difficult for Landsoul's sheet and Rawr to fully model this idea, but Rawr has gotten very close on it.
[Edit] Fixed the calcs

ArP nerf is apparently on the PTRs. People are reporting that ArP is giving about 13% less compared to live. This isn't as huge a nerf to us considering this boosts our 2 pc t9 and battle stance (and makes mace spec a little more attractive), but none the less, this is a pretty hefty nerf otherwise.

World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> ARP

While there is a blue post asking a question as if it's a bug, I think it's a mis-communication. I won't be surprised to see ArP nerfed because every spec that uses it will be able to cap it in H ToC/ToC gear.

I wonder what the effects of this are on us though. Considering out of all the specs that do make full use of ArP, arms is probably the weakest, this might be an unintended side effect, though as mentioned above, it does boost battle stance/mace spec/2pc t9 for us.

Whats exactly wrong with being able to cap ArP though?

@tichphys:

Like I said early on in the post, this was a pretty basic set of calculations. I can't really show you the full level of math going on in a single post as there are too many variables, some of which you described. I can however, know that while working on Rawr (I'm the Arms Warrior Dev) I have seen this gravitation favoring Expertise over not. And before anyone get's their panties in a wad, no, the math you see here isn't directly the math going on in the model. We *are* using the two-roll crit system, etc. Since the coding is open-sourced you are welcome to look at it yourselves.

I used 20.25% (6.5 + 13.75) @ 100% time in front of mob vs 6.5 + 0 = 6.5 @ 0% time in front weighted directly together to simplify the math, if I were to go to 80% or some other number, it would have only complicated the napkin math. Of course, more time would be spent behind the mob in general. In Rawr, you actually have the option of setting your face-time with the mob to whatever percentage you want to check. I use 90% behind when I'm trying to determine generalized data for most fights. If I wanted to check my dps against Patchwerk for example, I'd change that to 100% behind.

Same reason for using STR vs ArP. ArP scales exponentially, not linearly and it can get closer to filling that lack of expertise gap (but still not all the way), and the post was pretty long already. And I only listed the White DPS increase as it's the only direct relation, STR does give more value in the yellows, yes, and I allowed for that with my statement of "YES, there are other variables that affect this, but it STILL doesn't make up the x difference in total." Rawr manages to show this value more accurately and making this test on an example character in Rawr showed that DPS was higher with Exp capped rather than using the same values from Gems in STR or ArP.

Extra Overpower loss make-ups I did cover, just not in extra detail. Note the sections marked "Pros", there are only a few situations where Overpower has a chance to make up some of the damage that was lost, but in truth, rarely would it be able to fill up 2 GCDs worth of damage (the one that didn't land as it was dodged, and doing extra damage over a Slam/MS). Rawr shows this almost off the bat.

I used to use Landsoul's sheet a lot but eventually stopped using it for the problems I was having and trying to communicate those issues (and how to fix them) to him yielded snippy responses. Maybe he was having a bad day, whatever, water under the bridge. The spreadsheet is a decent 2nd check in most cases for Arms but there's many variables that he simply can't model like Rawr can. For example, settling Overpower, Taste for Blood, Sudden Death, Slam and Sword Spec procs (a loop that currently is limited to 100 times). He has to use a constant overwrite value where we can show it more dynamically. Neither is perfect, but I prefer Rawr as I've gotten my grubby little hands into it to show rather accurate data over time, based upon community formulas (some came from his spreadsheet, some came from other forums, some came from blue releases, etc).

Nothing wrong for us, but maybe wrong for balance purposes.

A full time 100% ArP Arms or Fury warrior would get a huge DPS boost from the last 15-10 % of ArP needed to cap. Don't forget the more ArP you have, the more efficient it will be (up to the cap).

If the nerf goes live, it would probably be so that we wouldn't be able to get to the cap with available gear in H ToC to not reach incredibly high damage output. Even with the nerf that's on the PTR, I believe it will still be possible to reach 100% ArP for arms, but not for Fury.

That said, this is another temporary "fix" only since we'll probably be able to cap anyway comes icecrown and we'll probably look at another nerf comes this time.

Is the "nerf" officialy noted somewhere or is it still considered a bug? I recently swapped from Lotrafen, with Executioner, to Hammer of Crushing Whispers, with Berserking, and finally reached my ArP cap. On OG dummies I had an average net DPS gain of 300 on four seperate DPS runs for one hour each. I can't imagine Blizzard nerfing ArP again but it would be great if someone could confirm this.

Hello. I'm a long time reader

I have a question about gearing/gemming now that TOGC is up. Seeing as we'll be able to get more ArP, how much likely is it that we'll be able to get ArP capped without the use of an ArP Trinket?

I assume getting a passive 100% ArP would be better then having 100% ArP only while the trinket is procced. Just wanted to make sure if that's correct.

I am currently sitting at 45.96% ArP according to my tooltip at Hit Rating. Because it doesn't change when i swap stances, I assume that doesn't include the 10% ArP from Battle Stance. Since I recently got the 2 set t9 bonus, Battle Stance gives me 16% ArP. That will put me at roughly 61.96%. Now seeing as I'm at 116.96% ArP with trinket procced, I'm not getting all that I could from it. Which is why I'm thinking of getting a different trinket, and going for 100% ArP without an ArP trinket.

I guess what I am asking for is some insight before I decide to gem and gear a certain way.

Since I am currently gemmed mostly for STR (with an except of a nightmare tear), If I replace those with ArP gems i will gain 6x20 ArP + 3x34 ArP = 222ArP = 18% ArP (Assuming 1%ArP = 12.32 ArP Rating)
That will put me at 79.96% Passive ArP.
Now is the matter of replacing the ArP Trinket. Assuming everything I've done so far and my theory of getting to 100% ArP being win is good, the only trinket that comes to my mind is the [Banner of Victory]. Would that trinket be the best possible replacement? Would it be an overall upgrade?

This new trinket would give me 84 ArP = 6.82 % ArP Which would put me at around 86.78% Passive ArP.

Now assuming everything above is correct (if it's not please correct me), I guess the question is - at what percentage does ArP > STR. I remember seeing this question answered on this forum before and I hate to be one of those people but I just can't find it.

Any other insight is appreciated, thanks.

GC quote:
"The nerf to armor pen in 3.2.2 is intentional. Compared to the recent buff where we increased the value of armor rating to 125%, this nerf would take it back down to 110%. While we are still evaluating the effects of this change in the 3.2.2 build, we did want to let you know of the possibility in case you were about to spend a lot on armor pen gems."

This isn't anywhere dramatic. A nerf for average geared warriors, but since when we'll have complete access to Coliseum gear (and later, Icecrown Citadel) it would be easy to reach 100% passive ArP, it's not that bad. If your SEP for ArP is now 1.1, it will drop to 0.97.

so 100% ArP would be

12,31*1,15*100= 1415,65 ArP ?

1,15 because of 15% more ArP u need after the nerf... or am i wrong?

no, just take the current conversion rate R and divide by 1.1/1.25

newR = R / (1.1/1.25)

this negates the old 25% bonus and applies the new 10% bonus

Hello, I've been reading different sources and I can't decide, for PVE (and also PVP if it is not completely different to boost our dps) purposes, the answer to this question :
What characteristic are we Arms warriors going to stack in 3.2.2 ?
-Full Armor Penetration up to the cap of 100 % ?
-Full Strength because Arp is not efficient enough any longer ?
-Back to the solution of using an Arp proc trinket + a certain value of passive Arp on gear ? (And what value of Arp then, in percentage ? With more points of Arp needed for each 1%, the trinkets won't give as much percentage of Arp than in pre 3.2.2)
I also read some interesting maths about the expertise cap above. The maths are interesting, but nobody seems to put a clear end to the discussion by saying in what circumstances reaching the expertise cap would be a very high priority and boost our dps more than the rest.

Can someone provide some DPS data with a "Hammer of Crushing Whipers" equivalent weapon, preferably on Vezax HM. I am trying to figure out if mace spec is that bad, I just don't have any axe and because of mace spec I can gem a lot of STR and remain ArP capped.

Here's some of my data on WMO WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay

6152 dps on Vezax HM, mace spec.