adammmm

Power Auras is good. I use it for rend and execute(stops me wasting executes under 20% when SD isnt proc'd).

 

illusive_2008

Is - Sudden Death - This Excute only uses up to 30 total rage. - This documented on new PTR build, really just another slap in the face to Arms warriors?

 

Yabanjin

No they don't. I tested that on the boss dummy with [Inevitable Defeat] + my gear + dwarf racial I had 35exp. and just doing slam/MS no rend, I never had a single attack dodged, therefore no overpower proc.

With my normal weapon, [Wraith Spear] I'm at 20exp and had my normal ~1.5% dodge rate.

Also, what the poster said under you is very true:

Depend how it works. If you have a sudden death proc and you have 60 rage, will you just use 30 for execute and be left with 30 rage ? Or will it consume the 60 rage but using only 30 for execute dmg ?

 

Gorrog666

In fact it is really sad news for us.

While I did not have the chance to do Naxx this week yet because my guild decided we should do 5 minute Malygos I was not really able to do any DPS testing on Patchwerk. However, on countless Malygos tries I noticed something. I already mentioned earlier that I would try out "The Jawbone" this week and so I did. I immediatly saw the increased damage from Slam and from some normalized attacks but I wasn't quite happy with my usuall Slam+MS rotation. I decided to add up Execute whenever I had an Overpower proc ready or when Rend was running out so that I wouldn't have any GCDs wasted and depending on whether I had good SD procs with plenty of rage I saw a decent increase in DPS. On average I was around 3k-3.2k without Execute and with Execute I was able to get up to 4k DPS. I'll post the WWS later since I am rather dissappointed after reading the nerf about SD. Today I finally realized that SD is also importatn in producing high DPS as it gives you in the right moment a huge damage boost if you can time it so you don't disturb your normal rotation and now these news from Blizzard.

I am confident that my understanding of the new SD is right and in the new build you will only be able to use 30 rage on an Execute. The wording that Blizzard is using is:

"Sudden Death now only uses up to 30 total rage." (Which implies that you can only use a TOTAL of 30 rage. Or to put it in other words: Sudden Death now only uses rage up to a limit of 30. This is a major nerf to us)


The wording which would imply the opposite and a buff to SD would be more like:

"Sudden Death now only uses up to 30 rage."



I hope somebody at Blizzard used some bad wording because if I understand that statement correctly we get a nerf and the single word "total" is the implication that Execute will always work with 30 rage only no matter howmuch rage you have. Now if I'm wrong and SD will only cost 30 rage at a maximum then we are looking at a major buff.

I'm sure someone will find out soon enough and will share it with us.

 

Tankietka

I don't think so.

On general it will allow to use SD more freely - I understand that now SD execute will be in fact ability that uses up to 30 rage and "returns" 10 rage afterwards (assuming that part of SD stays as is). So if you had 10 rage when you used it - it is free, if you had 30 rage or more, it "costs" 20 rage. So now you won't have to watch swing timer to check whether it is near the end of swing to safely use it without risk of rage starving.

On the other hand, this change is bad on situation when you have plenty of rage (no matter what is its source) and you cannot dump it fast enough with your abilities - SD Execute was quite nice for that. But such situations were not so common, so in general I think it will make playing arms easier.

Of course the above is just first thoughts. I will have to do some testing/calculations for final decision on how to make the best use of this change.


Thing that is not clear for me right now: will SD use only "up to 30 rage" also for damage calculation? (probably yes, else it would be a bit overpowered).

 

Romoose

OVerall the Sudden Death nerf doesn't hit our DPS too hard, relative to DW getting nerfed that is. How much harder was slam hitting on the PTR? I mean I'm already hitting 6-6.5k crits with it, so making it hit harder doesn't seem like a solution to me. Something like removing the swing timer pause would allow white DPS while slamming, but I painfully think of Autoshot/Steadyshot in that context. Is there anything else that they can really buff? I'm pretty happy with rend since it's meant to be a catalyst for Overpower. If the scaling on Overpower from AP was changed so that OP hit as hard as MS and Slam, THEN I think we would be moving in the right direction.

 

sulliwan

If you take into account the deep wounds damage then OP DOES hit as hard as MS or slam(considerably harder than slam in fact, even with 2p t7 and also harder than unglyphed MS).

 

angi

I can`t really see the SD change as "Nerf", for PVE it is a buff, because Damage from additional Rage had a bad Dmg/Rage conversion, you can use that rage now to do a Slam. Its only a nerf on gimmick fights like Thaddius or Loatheb. Making Slam instant for Arms warriors would be a very welcome change, cause it makes Slam a viable button to press in PVP in Berserker Stance.

 

Tankietka

Another thing that isn't clear for me: is initial cost of Execute accounted for "up to 30 rage" limit?

For example let's assume we have 43 rage and we will use SD-Execute.
I can think of two scenarios:
a)
- cost of Execute gets substracted from 43 giving 33 rage
- damage and rage used is calculated as Execute with 30 rage
- rage left is 33-30+10 = 13
b)
- cost of Execute gets substracted from 43 giving 33 rage
- damage and rage used is calculated as Execute with 20 rage (30 rage limit already decreased by 10 rage cost of Execute)
- rage left is 33-20+10 = 23

 

Romoose

And then don't forget to throw in Imp Execute.

 

Vhad

How can you even say that? MS and Slam doesn't proc deep wounds damage? Overpower is extremely lackluster and barely crits for more than a white swing, not sure where you're getting your numbers.

What!?

 

François

I suppose he takes into account 50% added crit chance on Overpower.

 

sulliwan

Overpower has a 50% increased crit chance from talents, so it procs deep wounds significantly more often than MS and slam. It's not entirely obvious because you don't actually see bigger numbers pop up on your screen, yes.

Let's say you got 5500 ap and 45% crit raidbuffed with a 3.6 speed 203 dps weapon. This makes your average unnormalized hit 2145 and normalized 2025. That gives a deep wounds of 1338(after trauma).
Overpower has 95% critrate, slam has your normal 45%.
Average slam hit with deep wounds is: ((1-0.45)*(2145+250) + 0.45*(2145+250)*2.2*1.03)*1.1(t7 bonus)*0.65(damage reduced by target armor) + 0.45*1338 = 3290
Average overpower with deep wounds: ((1-0.95)*2025 + 0.95*2025*2.2*1.03)*0.65 + 0.95*1338 = 4170

35% armor reduction should be around what most bosses have after armor debuffs, no?

 

Hamburglar

If you look at average damage in wws, you should be able to work out whats better to prioritize of slam and overpower. In my case, its pretty clear that overpower is inferior to slam at least when considering average damage.
Thats why I pretty much always just use tfb op to fill a gcd when Im freakishly low on rage / have executed.

On the execute nerf / buff, shrug .. who knows. We need to accuratly understand how it works before we can assume anything. Im a bit annoyed about fury getting a tiny truck full of nifty buffs and we getting pretty much nothing, tho. But hey, maybe later.

Ah, and wws for last night. Was a pretty horrible run imo, but at least Its something : Wow Web Stats

I feel my weapon is holding me bak a whole lot, but nothing I can do with that as long as nothing keeps dropping.

 

Healranktwo

Having played on the PTR with the new SD, I have to say it feels very much like a buff. Beating on the dummy, I went from 2400-2600, spiking to 2800 VERY RARELY on live to easily sustaining 2800 now.

SD isn't something you have to decide when to use anymore, it's something you want to use asap so you do not ever lose procs. I think the priority with the change now will be Rend -> OP -> SD -> MS (If over X rage) -> slam.

Having done over an hour on the dummy, I felt like I got a lot more procs. Except, I didn't. It only feels I got more procs because i'm burning SD faster now instead of saving it, thus not "wasting procs".

Like someone mentioned before me, this will probably be a nerf in a situation like Thaddius or Loatheb. However, I honestly feel this is a buff in every other situation. I guess we will have to see for sure in a raid enviroment.

 

Tankietka

This way you are not counting in Deep Wounds (and some other things), hence your impression that slam is better.


Actually if you were not using SD whenever it procced before, then now you should see slight increase in number of procs (that is procs that you can use which before ment only refresh to already present buff).

Can you decide on your PTR tests which one of scenarios I presented few posts above is correct?

I internally implemented scenario a) in DPSSim and did few simulations. Seems like for my gear (low-end) with my rotation (that already included below 25rage condition) it changes nothing. However in real environment with lag and human reaction time new SD can save me from rage starving myself, so for now I'm rather optimistic.

I believe that if someone was using old SD-Execute whenever it procced should now get better results with the same approach.

 

Healranktwo

It's scenario B but you do not get 10 rage back. You only get put at 10 rage if execute takes you below 10 rage. So it's basically:

43 rage, and you use SD

43 - 10 (initial execute cost) - 20 = 13 rage left.

You will not get back, or put at 10 rage unless you execute with 39 rage or under.

Execute is our best rage dump now by far, though I'm too lazy atm to do the math to see if execute is a better thing to use than slam if you are low on rage. It's simple math though, so I will do it sometime tomorrow if someone hasn't yet.

Timing SD before a white swing is not easy by any means, so I do feel this is a buff. I'm not sure if it's a nerf or not in a raid environment where you can SD and white swing right after it (hoping it crits) and continuing your rotation. I do know however, this is a probably a buff even if you were really good at doing that, since it's not risky where you have a 50/50 chance of continuing your rotation, and it's one less thing to worry about on an already decently complicated spec.

Of course, we are still prone to RNG for our DPS. It will be interesting to see how Blizzard buffs arms after nerfing deep wounds. Deep wounds is a good portion of any fury/arms war dps, so they have quite a bit to make up if they already feel we are too low atm. I don't think buffing slam is the way to go since that would make MS even weaker.

 

Rishkkin

Depends, if they changed Improved Slam to make slam instant (0.75 / 1.5) then it would still be good for arms without impacting fury

 

Tankietka

I hope they will do something else (or this AND something else), because instant slam will only make our situation on rage abundant scenarios worse. Delaying swing sometimes allows for one more GCD to use rage on before next white hit.

 

Rishkkin

Indeed, but I hope it will be this AND, because if we can get insta slam, we'll gain more 'mobility' since we'll be able to move with our target should it ever move. Nothing frustrates me more than seeing a slam miss due to the target moving just out of range.

 

François

"Improved MS : MS usage increases Slam damage by x%, for the next y sec". That's their current trend into enhancing variety in pve rotations, without too much impact on pvp: Take a pvp ability and a non-pvp, and buff one under condition the other one is used.

Slam's cast time ensures it has a low impact on pvp, so it's the natural target for a pve-only buff.

 

Madarb

The biggest caveat to buffing slam is that it reduces our rotation to nothing but slam slam slam slam (repeat), which I don't think is something blizzard wants warriors to be. Couple that with slam being the arms damage skill with the greatest scalability, we see as gear increases, slam spamming dps will outrank the accepted arms skill priority that we see functioning now.

In order to ensure that arms still stays priority based and viable, we have two abilities that will need an increase in scalability to justify occupying a GCD over slam: Overpower and Mortal Strike.

Mortal Strike is hard to buff without simply making it too overpowered; if they change it to deal a higher % of weapon damage (a'la crusader strike) it will scale incredibly well with gear. If they simply add to the +380 damage added by the skill, it may get an initial boost, but as gear scales it will still feel lackluster and still fall under slam in terms of damage/gcd.

Overpower / TFB synergy will never scale as well as mortal strike because it is proc based and overpower has no added damage from the skill itself. Increasing the procrate will not make it a more efficient use of a GCD compared to slam, so as gear increases, slam will still scale better. Adding different levels to the skill, making it scale upwards as one levels, would increase the usefulness of overpower, but again, will not scale as gear increases. Another thing to take into account when balancing overpower will be the 1.0 GCD with the correct arms talents--meaning that an overpower that does 2/3 damage of a slam is still more efficient in terms of damage/GCD. The talented crit increase, as well

The biggest thing I see hindering these talents in terms of scaling, however, is weapon speed normalization. I think that removing weapon speed normalization on these two attacks, while maybe not wholly solving the "slam scaling" problem, is a huge step in the right direction.

 

Gorrog666

One thing that I'd like about the new SD. I personally think it really is a nerf because your proc rate did not change from 9%. So while earlier you had the ultimate rage dump that provide huge damage and with right timing of aa white swing or with a Rend refrech or Overpower proc did not create any downtime in the use of abilities now you can just spam SD when it procs like a stupid monkey but it won't give you more DPS. SD was always a luck ability. Perfect SD procs when you had 100 rage and an OP proc for example would give you best DPS, chain SD procs would be in fact the worst. We all have to consider that Slam and MS is the base damagae and the only factor that was not constant was SD. So while spamming Slam and MS on cd you would gain solid and constant DPS only the right use of Execute with max. rage would give you superior DPS.

This is actually the thing what we have been talking about for the past 2-3 weeks how to maximize your base DPS and how to use Execute to push your DPS further. While the new SD will make things easier for people that don't know what they are doing it will definetly hurt the people that know when to use Execute. Yes, and it will also reduce the range damage on Arms warriors and make it less spikey.

Soon the rotation will be simple as nothing:

Rend
Execute
MS
Slam
OP

put it in your G15 and go watch TV...

In the end we will have to see what happens but I doubt it will be anything good.

EDIT:

Good News or Bad News?

Go on MMO-Champion and click on Deep Wounds Nerf. Here's a comment from Ghostcrawler:

"Deep Wounds is causing too high a percent of damage for Fury and Arms, 20 or 30% of total damage on some fights, and often above white attacks. Since it is unmitigated damage we are eventually going to have balance problems here if we don't already.

Fury is slightly high in PvE, or definitely will be after these TOO [sic] changes. Arms is too low in PvE, which is why I said we wanted to buff them.

We like Deep Wounds' position in the tree. We're fine letting all warriors reach it. It's just too good."


Blizzard is going to nerf Deep Wounds, great. At least they admit that Arms damage is too low.

 

Rishkkin

anyone know what the "Deep Wounds Nerf" is ? I have tried to look it up, but haven't been able to find what exactly the nerf is

edit : found out that the nerf is still "on paper" we haven't seen it yet

 

pdpi

AFAIK, execute scales with AP at a fixed percentage that does not vary with the rage input (20%, right?). Also, with imp execute 2/2, it does a base 145 damage/rage for 10 rage, but only 38 damage per rage point above 10, so this makes execute much more rage-efficient. Yes, you lost a a rage sink when you're truly overflowing with rage, but also made one of the signature moves of the build more rage-efficient for when you're not.

Out of curiosity... At what point would it become useful to drop improved execute and shout buffs to spec into incite for what effectively amounts to trading rage for auto attack crit chance?