The incite build appears to be the way to go, especially considering the t9 4set bonus. You end up with another 20% crit on heroic strike, which ends up being a large portion of your dps in a fight where you're constantly taking damage.
Most of my gear does not have any natural hit. I believe what I'm reading here is that 9% hit is a priority to all other stats and after that ArP and Str. I feel a little guilty gemming for hit, but if I don't I'm sitting at about 4%. Any thoughts on this?
My plan is to gem for hit until I can replace certain items that carry it. I guess I'd say this is a short-term solution to my hit problem.
I have a question, it seemed with my gear (u25/toc10/some toc25) that arms was a better fit than fury once i obatianed a 245 weapon. Is it only once you get 2 245s that fury will be superior or did i do somethign wrong on my spreadsheet? lmk of everyone's findings!
In 3.2.2, was anything changed in regards to what is calculated before or after the cap? For example, I assume that the T9 2-piece set bonus is added after the cap. I assume it is added post-cap along with battle stance, sunder armor, faerie fire, and shattering throw (or anything else that is not in the tool tip under hit rating).
Speaking of gems and enchants, has it ever occured to anyone that berserking doesn't proc? I just put berserking on the polearm from Onyxia last night and it has never proccced. Spend 20 minutes in front of the dummy and did a few dungeons and raids today and never seen it proc, I was watching both my buffs to see if anything appears and also my AP. I've just never seen it proc. Is it just a case of incredible bad luck? Does anybody have an idea?
Speaking of gems and enchants, has it ever occured to anyone that berserking doesn't proc? I just put berserking on the polearm from Onyxia last night and it has never proccced. Spend 20 minutes in front of the dummy and did a few dungeons and raids today and never seen it proc, I was watching both my buffs to see if anything appears and also my AP. I've just never seen it proc. Is it just a case of incredible bad luck? Does anybody have an idea?
No, it's nearly impossible to spend 20 mins without a proc. When I say that, I mean we're working into the orders of magnitude of how many 9s are on 99.9999...% that the thing just didn't proc for 20 mins. Look for a proc of a flexed arm, called "Berserk".
We have an arms warrior in the guild asking questions that I can't answer since I'm a feral druid. He's not hit capped, but he only has 31% static ar pen from gear at the moment (10% from stance, 6% from 2 set T9.1 of course bringing that number to 47%). Should he gem hit? He's only at like 160 hit, so that's a lot of gems he'd have to replace.
We have an arms warrior in the guild asking questions that I can't answer since I'm a feral druid. He's not hit capped, but he only has 31% static ar pen from gear at the moment (10% from stance, 6% from 2 set T9.1 of course bringing that number to 47%). Should he gem hit? He's only at like 160 hit, so that's a lot of gems he'd have to replace.
He needs to get to the hit cap, yes. Have him check the warrior dps spreadsheet to figure out whether that should be done by re-gemming 5 slots with Rigid King's Amber or replacing some gear with items that have hit on them.
I tested out the incite build (55/8/8) because the gear I want at the moment needs to be stacked with armor penetration and not expertise; so I can afford to go under the exp cap. I was testing it out, and seeing as I've been fury before it really incorporates fury into arms now with the incite talent (15% more crit on HS and cleave) so it gives us more chance at hitting higher dps in aoe situations (which coincidently is needed for H 25 ToGC Anub'arak). I also have the 4pc t9 which increases my heroic strike hits to 20% and now added that with my current normal % of crit, I crit 50% of the time on boss fights with HS. Thus largely increasing my dps.
So I'm in Sartharion and I'm dpsing him just for a test with all classes and a Bloodlust. Mind you, we're a competitive guild on the Dath'Remar server, so we don't have anybody below doing 5k dps. We kill Sartharion in less than 2 minutes. I can't remember the exact time, but we did. I topped the dps charts with 7.5k dps in single target as the adds were on the other side of Sartharion. If I had MjR/GT and lowered my arp to 50% and relied on a proc to cap arp (I stack arp hence 83% arp unbuffed without remotely close high end gear), that would enable me to stack strength to close to 2k. I would be at a much larger numbers. But at the moment, if you can master the incite build, it far out dps' any build including fury.
Beastrage,
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the significant DPS increase you saw was not only as a result of your change in spec, but also the fight on which you tested it. There is enough raid damage on Sartharion to boost your rage gains, and an Incite build relies much more on rage. In a traditional arms build, most warriors are limited by GCDs, not available rage*. Heroic Strike is only a small part of the rotation used when there is excess rage. In an Incite build, the amount of rage you gain directly determines the amount of Heroic Strikes you can use, and Heroic Strike is a much higher portion of your DPS. A similar fight is Twin Val'kyr, where there is constantly AoE raid damage, making more rage-dependent builds like Incite or Fury better.
*You can argue that traditional arms builds are also limited by rage in that it determines the amount of Heroic Strikes that can be used as well, but if you consider a situation with infinite rage, the build that gets more out of rage (i.e. Incite) is going to trump the one that uses it as a secondary source of DPS.
I knew that, and most fights having alot of aoe damage and raid damage, I could test this out on patchwerk and still come out on top as I ended up managing 6k dps in a heroic H UK run this morning on the first boss. As you know, you take damage from the frost tomb and the adds, I did not kill the adds, the dk did, thus eliminating the damage incoming from the skeletons. Secondly, I did not get frost tombed at all, and I still managed 6k dps in a heroic.
The spec is based on judgement and prioritising. Both of which Arms and Fury require for this spec. Handling rage (Heroic Strike and Cleave) and prioritising in situations that may not be comfortable. May even say DPSing the adds in algalon and keeping both dots on algalon the the 2 adds and so fourth. Arms for me is the spec hard to master unlike the paladin "First Come, First Serve" rotation or "123456" ; rinse and repeat.
I understand where you are coming from, but fights which give me no rage regen still make me come out on top.
Definitely. I'm not doubting the ability of an Incite build to come out on top in a single target situation with no raid damage. In fact, this makes an Incite build even better. It beats traditional arms in single target, and beats arms by a wide margin in raid damage and multi-target situations, which really make up the majority of fights (there are very few fights like patchwerk in raids).
To add on, instead of execute glyph, I have Heroic Strike Glyph which evens out the rage regen thus increasing dps even more like I have said in the few posts I have made here on EJ.
But yes, I signed up to post my recordings and results of the Incite spec - my result; love it.
I ran the Incite build tonight for our attempts at Heroic Jaraxxus and I noticed that through use of heroic strike to burn off rage, I was using slam a lot less and I got to thinking if it would be feasible to remove slam from the rotation completely.
I've gotten fairly used to judging wise heroic strike usage from my time as fury and I think that unless it's a massive incoming damage situation, I'd be able to keep under the rage cap with heroic strike while keeping my other abilities on cooldown.
That would also free up the two points used in Imp Slam for something else.
Anyone happen to be running this way now and can share some thoughts?
I ran the Incite build tonight for our attempts at Heroic Jaraxxus and I noticed that through use of heroic strike to burn off rage, I was using slam a lot less and I got to thinking if it would be feasible to remove slam from the rotation completely.
I've gotten fairly used to judging wise heroic strike usage from my time as fury and I think that unless it's a massive incoming damage situation, I'd be able to keep under the rage cap with heroic strike while keeping my other abilities on cooldown.
That would also free up the two points used in Imp Slam for something else.
Anyone happen to be running this way now and can share some thoughts?
No, it's not a good idea to drop Slam from your rotation. The two go hand in hand, but do not serve the same purpose. To demonstrate what I mean, try chain-slamming when fully raid buffed sometime. You should be hovering around the top end of your rage bar. When Chain-HSing, however, your rage bar is hovering around zero. Slam is a filler, for when your other abilities are on CD. HS is a rage dump, a way to turn excess rage into damage. They do not serve the same purpose in our playbook.
The difference is that when you're just Slamming, you're still getting white strikes as well. With HS, it's a normal white strike that is turned into a yellow, adding a flat amount of damage, and adding all sorts of goodies on top. Those goodies don't overtake the value of Slam, bu the two work together in filling the dead spots of ability usage and bleeding off some free rage.
You should already be HSing as Arms - just nowhere near as much as Fury. If you're HSing yourself into a position that you are wasting globals by not having enough rage to Slam (just as any other ability), then you're hurting your potential output by a good deal.
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I'm sort of wondering why everyone's suddenly in a furor over the Incite Arms build. I've personally been using it for... oh, months now? As have many others. It's not "fresh" by any means, and is well-established as the best pure DPS Arms build.
No, it's not a good idea to drop Slam from your rotation. The two go hand in hand, but do not serve the same purpose. To demonstrate what I mean, try chain-slamming when fully raid buffed sometime. You should be hovering around the top end of your rage bar. When Chain-HSing, however, your rage bar is hovering around zero. Slam is a filler, for when your other abilities are on CD. HS is a rage dump, a way to turn excess rage into damage. They do not serve the same purpose in our playbook.
The difference is that when you're just Slamming, you're still getting white strikes as well. With HS, it's a normal white strike that is turned into a yellow, adding a flat amount of damage, and adding all sorts of goodies on top. Those goodies don't overtake the value of Slam, bu the two work together in filling the dead spots of ability usage and bleeding off some free rage.
You should already be HSing as Arms - just nowhere near as much as Fury. If you're HSing yourself into a position that you are wasting globals by not having enough rage to Slam (just as any other ability), then you're hurting your potential output by a good deal.
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I'm sort of wondering why everyone's suddenly in a furor over the Incite Arms build. I've personally been using it for... oh, months now? As have many others. It's not "fresh" by any means, and is well-established as the best pure DPS Arms build.
I have personally been advocating the Incite build on the Warrior Forums for a long while now. I get a lot of unfavorable responses though, such as "you should never be using HS as Arms." Which is completely false, but it is the Warrior Forums after all.
As it's been said before, it really shines when you're working on H Anub 25. We tank a pair of adds on each side of the boss, and glyph of cleave + incite works wonders. You can also thunderclap all 5 targets to apply Trauma/BF. The only reason I can see myself speccing into imp. execute is for commanding presence.
Well the only real aoe fights you will encounter in ToC is Anub'arak Heroic mode. I personally think the Incite build is good for both aoe/single if used correctly and you manage your rage correctly. Set limitations such as the old saying "only heroic strike over 75 rage" in my case, but is different for others. There is no point taking points out of Imp. Slam because it is still in your rotation, and I use it far more than the excess rage I get from Heroic Strike. The only time I use Heroic Strike more than Slam is when I have near unlimited rage and/or in a heavy aoe intensive fight I am being dealed damage (zerker rage etc).
For me, this build brings up the standards of a warrior's dps and now we can compete against those feral kitty dps, rogues and paladins.
Also. Managing rage and prioritizing correctly splits apart the good warriors from the excellent warriors. Heroic Strike is a tool and if you play with it too much, you will end up severely hurting your dps. Being rage thirsty sucks in some situations.
I've been a tank for a while and now I'm trying to get back in DPSing. However I noticed I needed Grims Toll to be something ... well I don't have it (using Darkmoon Card: Greatness & Banner of Victory) so I've been gemming for ARP.
I entered my gear into Rawr but it says STR gems are better for me? I don't get it anymore ... I got 59.52 + 10% stance ARP atm. Should I just be stacking ARP and get as much ARP as possible from gear over STR or?
I've been a tank for a while and now I'm trying to get back in DPSing. However I noticed I needed Grims Toll to be something ... well I don't have it (using Darkmoon Card: Greatness & Banner of Victory) so I've been gemming for ARP.
I entered my gear into Rawr but it says STR gems are better for me? I don't get it anymore ... I got 59.52 + 10% stance ARP atm. Should I just be stacking ARP and get as much ARP as possible from gear over STR or?
I'm not using a Grim Toll or a Mjolnir. Really, through all of the time we had on Naxx on Uld, I just never got either to drop.
DPS, as Arms or Fury, is 100%, absolutely, completely possible without either of these trinkets. Discussion about the ArP "soft cap" just seems to be all the rage over the last few months, especially after the ArP rating conversion nerf. It's actually getting kind of old - there's generally someone coming in to ask what the soft cap is with one or the other trinket about once every day or so.
09/28/09, 5:43 PM
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