[WotLK] 4.0 Warrior FAQ - Page 10

bartc · 10/15/10, 5:43 AM

Originally Posted by Arahael

also, is it worth throwing execute in the rotation for arms? if it is, wouldn't picking sudden death for the extra 10 rage be a dps increase?

That's what I was thinking; especially since you can take it instead of Field Dressing.
Either way, the motivation in the FAQ is a bit lacking imo, when it comes to Sudden Death.

Askada · 10/15/10, 9:24 AM

Originally Posted by Rysidion

Cataclysm Warrior Changes

I made this post earlier. As Arms, I think HS should be prioritized over Slam because it does far more damage overall, and damage per rage. Slam needs to be looked at, as it does not compete with any of the other skills in our arsenal as far as damage goes right now.

I think the same. Spent today over 2 hours on lvl80 training dummy and have noticed following results:
was doing about 8.5 - 9 k dps when slam>HS, considering I was rage starved for most of the time HS were very rare
then I completely removed slam from my normal rotation (except when under the effect of Deadly Calm) and had multiple tries with like 9.5 - 10k.

This of course need further testing but I believe HS is much more efficient, not to mention it doesnt stop swing timer.

Retn · 10/15/10, 9:35 AM

in regards to heroic strike over slam in fury, i do notice at least a 500 dps increase over 4 6 minute tests. However, bloodsurge still can be useful if you don't have a lot of rage to effectively use heroic strike without getting too low to bloodthirst. Can also slam when you have too much rage to prevent cap. I recommend using the BT > RB > BT > HS/shouts rotation, replacing HS with slam at extremely low rage levels so you don't starve yourself, and using slam WITH heroic strike at high rage levels so you don't cap yourself. You can also use your shout on cooldown with this and immediately have the extra rage for heroic strike since it's off the GCD

in other news, what do we do for aoe rotations? i can't figure out something that doesn't starve me

Warrok · 10/15/10, 10:29 AM

Originally Posted by Branar

Not true. It looks like warriors will be able to reach unhittable by the second tier or third tier of raiding. Avoidance may still be better depending on how healer mana/boss damage pans out, of course, but getting mastery-capped will probably be attainable.

While I wasn't aware that T12 will already suffice (though they are making some assumptions on how many items with specific stats will be available), in the thread it is also mentioned that it might not be that easy since bosses are said to scale in higher tiers, gaining Expertise for example, thus making the cap higher in the second tier possibly making it impossible for warriors to reach it. So right now, we know that in T11 warriors will not be able to blockcap, while paladins are. About T12 we can only speculate at this point, considering boss scaling and possible mechanic changes that are down the way.

Randywatson · 10/15/10, 11:01 AM

On a side note, Raging Blow is looking only very slightly better than slam for me as well. Slams were coming in at 4.7k damage vs. the 5k damage of RB and costs the same amount of rage.

Rysidion · 10/15/10, 11:08 AM

Originally Posted by Randywatson

On a side note, Raging Blow is looking only very slightly better than slam for me as well. Slams were coming in at 4.7k damage vs. the 5k damage of RB and costs the same amount of rage.

Don't forget that Raging Blow does two hits compared to Slam's one hit. It does about double what you are calculating it to be. Slam is just really underperforming right now. It's a waste of procs for Arms (Battle Trance) at least, and I'm sure its detrimental to Fury as well (if it has an Opportunity cost: I haven't played Fury post 4.0 so I can't really judge it). Execute is definitely always better than Slam in their current incarnations (just looking at the title page and seeing that Slam > Execute in some situations). Since Execute is so high, Warriors can probably pick up Sudden Death even without Colossus Smash and do more damage compared to any other fluff talents.

Now, some more Arms talk:

As for Slam's DPR compared to Heroic Strikes DPR, I calculated HS's to be about 20 damage per rage higher than Slam's based on my recount data posted earlier (1/3 Incite, all Slam talents). HS is around 250, and slam is around 230 at my current gear level. Again, it is also important to note that while HS does cost more rage, it also doesn't suspend the swing timer. So, over a long duration, the actual rage cost will go down in comparison to that of Slam (that is, it won't be 50% more).

I believe, as mentioned earlier, that it would be both more damage efficient and more rage efficient to completely drop Slam from the Arms rotation as it is, except when under the effects of Deadly Calm. Priorities should be:

Rend when it falls off > Mortal Strike > Overpower > HS (with MS possibly coming in ahead of Rend due to Wrecking Crew and Lambs to the Slaughter, and Overpower over Rend if you are able to generate another TFB Overpower Proc when you apply Rend). I'm not quite sold on this yet though. Whenever Colossus Smash is available, that will of course be kept on cooldown and used when it procs.

I'll run some more tests and such to confirm a solid priority and efficiency system. I agree with the guy that said it may be time to seperate the DPS Warrior thread into an Arms and Fury component, as both seem to be viable for the future and have very different priorities.

Speaking of priorities, we have Strength ahead of Crit for Arms right now. As 100% of our damage is affected by Crit now (with Rend being able to crit, and Deep Wounds of course being based off of crits), would Crit not be better than Strength? Especially with Wrecking Crew relying on Mortal Strike critical hits, not to mention Heroic Strike and Incite. Of course, the factor that makes me doubt this assumption would be Overpower. Since the talent adds 60% crit, having a higher base Crit chance wouldn't affect it much. Seeing as how Overpower is around 20% of the damage spread for Arms right now, I can see Strength still coming out ahead. I think if they buff Slam, then Crit should be our winner due to the % damage increases and Impale. I'm not really sure how to go about Mathing this up though, so it's just a thought.

CarltonbanksYO · 10/15/10, 1:54 PM

I'm curious as to whether it would be a DPS increase to Slam when HS is on CD, or just wait for HS to come off CD. I'd imagine having a full rage bar would warrant the use of Slam.

During my tests I was able to manage rage quite efficiently so as to never rage starve/cap thus eliminating the need for Slam. Unfortunately, it looks as though talent points spent on Slam have marginal benefit until we see it's damage coefficient bumped.

Rysidion · 10/15/10, 2:17 PM

I've also experienced more DPS with Battle Trance instead of Incite. Right now, my best runs have been with 2 in Trance / 1 in Incite.

I believe haste may be a little undervalued right now when we look at stat priorities for Arms. Rage management is an issue right now, and with the addition of Colossus Smash it will become a real problem (assuming it stays at about 1 swing = 30 rage for a 2 handed, 3.7 speed weapon). As haste is the ONLY stat that will affect our rage generation (unless I've missed something fundamental about the calculation, and assuming the hit / expertise cap is achieved), it should increase in value as our free rage decreases. Using HS instead of Slam increases the rage needed for our priority "Rotation", so the value of haste has been increased in comparison to what was originally thought.

That being said, Negiva has suggested in the Warrior Forums that the mastery bonus attack may have been increased from 75% weapon damage to 110% weapon damage, which would in turn boost mastery's value. In that case, haste would still be last in line behind all of the other core stats (unless there is a breakpoint "get this much speed to not suffer from rage starvation" haste value).

hellord · 10/15/10, 2:36 PM

The discussions about Arms dps can't just be A>B>C because things change depending on the swingtimer more than on your cooldowns and rage.
HS and Slam are not traded off one for the other and the latter has a mechanic that cripples your rage depending on the usage over a longer timeframe than 1 GCD. If you have 60+ rage you can use HS with no risks of delaying MS, this doesn't prevent you from using Slam at all.

DPS numbers are quite meaningless until you get a very good sample that can reduce the rng factors of weapon damage ranges and crit/mastery/gcd downtime. Ideally you want multiple 5-6 minutes tests or a model using current mechanics.

Speaking of priorities, we have Strength ahead of Crit for Arms right now. As 100% of our damage is affected by Crit now (with Rend being able to crit, and Deep Wounds of course being based off of crits), would Crit not be better than Strength? Especially with Wrecking Crew relying on Mortal Strike critical hits, not to mention Heroic Strike and Incite. Of course, the factor that makes me doubt this assumption would be Overpower. Since the talent adds 60% crit, having a higher base Crit chance wouldn't affect it much. Seeing as how Overpower is around 20% of the damage spread for Arms right now, I can see Strength still coming out ahead. I think if they buff Slam, then Crit should be our winner due to the % damage increases and Impale. I'm not really sure how to go about Mathing this up though, so it's just a thought.

Things are not so easy. How much WC uptime is going to be granted by 1% crit? The more crit you have the less it's worth, same for strength, but with different magnitudes.
STR is our best stat by a quite large margin at high levels of crit and is stackable with a good return until very high, probably impossible high values. You just don't trade STR for crit in any situation but yellow gems and that depends on socket bonus.

You can do very few comparisons with a shallow view of the mechanics. For what concerns arms the only stat that is clearly behind the other secondary is haste. The difference between crit, exp and mastery changes depending on the gear level far too much. Str IS the only "no-brainer" at least until we reach last tier at 85.

My suggestion is still to reforge haste to hit until cap, then to crit until 30%sh and then to mastery since it scales rather well (or exp instead of crit/mastery if you prefer more consistent dps). You can't simply fine tune stat values more than this until you have a working model so don't base any assumption on your 5 minutes on the dummy. The results are too anecdotal and too tied to a certain gear level to be useful.

Hellawaitz · 10/15/10, 2:43 PM

I have read many opposing views to this debate, but is there a clear answer yet...

--Should we be reforging our haste into hit, or our crit into hit?
--Should we be using 10str/10haste or 10str/10 crit gems to maximize dps?

I went with stacking haste and atm, I have about 27% haste, hardcapped hit and exp. My crit is sitting at about 39% and roughly 5500ap with shout. Though still getting used to my rotation I can pull steady 8.5k on the boss dummy.

I have yet to reforge/regem everything to stack crit to test otherwise but with that much haste my rage regen is pretty smooth and fast, and I don't have much of a problem using HS/BT/RB on cd, with an occasional slam (tho it seems not worth it to even bother).

Pretty much I am asking, stack crit or haste (once you are hit/exp capped of course)??

And if the answer is haste, is there a "softcap" to haste in which you should start stacking crit?

Thank you in advance :P

Jerrald · 10/15/10, 3:38 PM

Now that all ArP has been turned into crit. where does that leave us for trinkets? Is what I've come up with.

Heroic Deaths Choice > Heroic Sharpened Twilight Scale > Sharpened Twilight Scale > Heroic Deathbringers Will > Deaths Choice > Heroic Whispering Fang Skull > Reg Deathbringers?

Reg Sharpened Twilight Scale over H DBW while you lose 4 static crit you always proc AP everytime compared to the proc chances of haste crit or str from the H DBW

Heroic WFS over Reg DBW while you lose the static 7 crit the 600str from dbw=1200 ap and the 1250ap from H WFS is constant again compared to the chance to proc the haste crit str from the dbw.

anyone else look into this?

Agallochh · 10/15/10, 4:28 PM

Now that I've gotten a little more experience as 4.0 prot I can chime in with some things that have been on my mind.

First of all, snap aggro isn't nearly as existent as it was before. I find it rather difficult to keep threat on initial pulls sometimes. Sometimes as soon as I charge in, mobs are attacking other players and thunderclap alone isn't enough all the time.

Anyways. I usually open up on my main target with a shield slam, then rend, then TC to get my rend on all targets. Rend does help me keep a substantial amount of threat. After that, I shockwave. In the process I also start getting some sunders on some targets, and am always using revenge. I keep Shockwave on c/d, with 3 thunderclaps in between shockwave cooldowns for 30% more damage (+more from 2pt10) and it's critting for like 9k+ which causes a substantial amount of AE threat.

So far I really like the changes. There have been a few pulls that were crazy right off the bat, I don't know if this is just hasty DPS not giving me a few GCD's before opening up, or a healer getting healing aggro right off the bat. Either way, despite that, I find that my AE DPS is generally 7k+ depending on the amount of mobs. Single target seems a bit low, doing ~1900-2100ish and pre 4.0 i was able to do 2.5+.

Edit: The changes to Heroic strike & Cleave are great. My finger is no longer in pain from constantly requeueing HS or Cleave. The 3 second cooldown gives me time to press it, do a couple other things, and press it again. Very much prefer this over the mindless spam of my HS button while tying in my abilities. HOWEVER, I am very upset that Sword and Board no longer is off the GCD. It actually causes more confusion for me. Then again, I kind of understand why, seeing as how I can crit on Shield Slam for 14K+. I just wish Sword n Board would be off the GCD, but have a semi-lengthy ICD.

Shha · 10/15/10, 5:22 PM

Im not sure if you guys noticed another buff for warriors (i think just fury, maybe arms is in the works). It hit just not, and affects warriors that relog. Our dmg coefficient went from 126% (1.1 from zerker*1.1 from dual wield spec*1.05 from plate mastery) to 156%. My dummy dps went up to 12k+, which given scaling would put us probably on par with top dpsers, or slightly behind.

While it seems a nice overall buff for now, it does feel like it would throw us out of balance at 85 - so maybe its a "temporary knob turn" to make us enjoyable at 80.

Edit: Not sure where the buff comes from, my guess is , its dual wield spec giving 40% now instead of 10%. However it stays even with 1h/shield (but it doesnt change at all, so i guess dual wield spec is just fury dmg boost not dependant on your actual weapons).

There is no sign of any buff for arms, which is completely not competitive now as a result.

manwe858 · 10/15/10, 5:24 PM

I've done a few hours of Arms rotation testing, taking in the information from previous posts, and this is what I've come up with so far:

My stats are (with BS):

Str: 2347
AP: 5253
Agi: 465
Speed: 3.29
Haste: 12.63%
Hit: 8.23%
Crit: 39.78%
Exp: 26
Mastery: 11.73

My current talent spec is: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

In my rotation I decided to forgo slam as slam delays the swing timer by 0.5 seconds as well as doing lower damage than HS. This is why:

Heroic Strike Vs. Slam
Slam's effective rage cost is 24 since 0.5 seconds off a 3.7 second weapon that gives 30 rage per swing is about 4 rage. It's harder to do extensive testing of slam with all coefficients as blizz seems to have updated them without correcting the tooltips. So the testing I've done is with several 5 minute arms rotations in my current spec.

To test HS, I used an HS heavy rotation slamming only during Deadly Calm cooldowns.

47 HS doing 458187 damage at 30 rage per HS:
HS had a DPR of about 325 with Incite

To test slam, I used a slam heavy rotation with HS only during Deadly Calm cooldowns.

56 slams doing 276500 damage at 24 rage per slam:
Slam had a DPR of about 230

I realize without incite HS would have a much smaller DPR:

Incite provides about 30% extra crit rate to HS since it is 15% increased chance to crit and a guaranteed extra crit after.
30% of 47 is about 14 extra crit HS.
The difference between a crit HS and a non crit incite on average is about 6100 damage.
So without incite HS damage would decrease by: 14* 6100 = 85400

Giving HS a DPR of (458187-85400)/47/30 = 264 DPR, which is still significantly better than slam.

Based on this data I've decided to go the HS route.

My rotation is then:

MS highest priority and always kept on CD. Rend second priority after MS and only refreshed after it drops. Heroic strike when above 45ish rage. Use slam when above 45 rage when everything else is on CD and next swing is incoming. Use shouts and Berserker rage for a 5 rage HS. Use extra Berserker rage for free OP. If MS is < 1.5 seconds away from CD but OP is up wait for MS before OP, this generally ensures that MS gets the LttS proc for much more damage than used on OP. In general if MS <1.5 seconds away from CD wait for MS before doing anything else.

The next question is which is the better talent Btrance or Incite?

Btrance Vs. Incite:

To test Btrance I did my standard arms rotation:

The best use of Btrance imo is to use it on HS as it is Off the GCD and since btrance can be consumed by any skill other than OP, HS is probably the best use of this talent. I'm going to go with this assumption and every btrance proc will be considered a free HS.

I had roughly 60 mortal strikes on average per 5 minute rotation:
This is about 60*0.15 = 9 Btrance procs.

This gives 9 free HS in my rotation since, although I use HS as the filler instead of slam, I am by no means spamming HS to the point where I can't fit in Btrance procs.

9HS = 9(.6*5700 + .4*11800) = 73260 Damage.
Where 5700 was the average non crit, and 11800 was the average crit.

So Btrance gives about 73260 damage during a 5 minute rotation = ~244.2 DPS

To test Incite I did the same rotation just without the free HS procs from Btrance:

After 5 minutes I had roughly 50 HS this time.
Since incite give 30% more crits for HS this is roughly 15 extra HS crits:
15 * 11800 = 177000 damage

To compare to btrance we have to subtract the non crit damage of 15 HS from the 15 HS crits:
177000 - (15*5700) = 91500.
So Incite gave me around 91500 extra damage which is roughly 305 DPS.

The difference between Btrance and Incite is:
91500 - 73260 = 18240 damage or about 60 dps favoring incite.

The potential difference is higher depending on rage intake since the amount of MS you can do is limited by its longer CD than HS. So there is a set amount of MS you can do in a 5 minute rotation which is 66.
HS can be hit more with only a 3 second CD; 100 times. The more you use HS the more Incite increases in value.
So my conclusions so far are to use HS only with slam only during Deadly Calm. I choose Incite over Btrance due to HS having far more potential and dps than Btrance can offer.

The next issue I thought about was the Execute range rotation:

I took Sudden Death so that Execute would have less rage drain during sub 20% boss phases. I took the points out of Field Dressing.

I took into account a few assumptions:
1. I would be using execute only after a Mortal Strike
2. I would continue to use Rend and OP
3. I would use MS on CD
4. I would use Execute after every MS before an Overpower to make the most of LttS
5. Execute range will last 2 minutes or 120 seconds.
Based on these assumptions we can calculate the amount of rage I can get while raid buffed.
I have a swing timer of 2.99 or ~3 seconds and each rage swing gives me 30 rage. This means I will get 1200 rage from white swings. Arms passive talent then gives 1 rage per 3 seconds, or 40 rage.
My total rage intake will now be 1240. However I also have Berserker rage and Shouts. I will get 2 shouts in giving 40 more rage and 4 Berserker Rages giving 20 more rage, bringing my total up to 1300 rage.

I would have enough time for:

26 MS = 650 rage
25 Executes = 30*26 = 780 rage
7 rends = 70 rage
20 OP = 100 rage

This is assuming a perfect rend OP MS and Execute rotation.
However total rage intake can’t accommodate for this output so basically I would only have enough rage for MS and executes during this phase unless I had incoming damage. Should I be able to generate enough rage however the rotation would look like this:

MS -> Execute -> Rend -> OP -> MS -> Execute -> Filler (shout) -> Filler->MS -> Execute -> OP -> Filler -> MS-> Execute -> Rend -> OP -> ….

Filler can be a shout for rage or HS if there is enough rage.

This is of course not taking into account deadly calm spam of MS and Execute. Odd thing I noticed was that although execute did not take full 30 rage per use it did take the 20 rage extra even during Deadly Calm. This could be a bug?

Stats:

As for stats I agree mostly with what’s posted on the front page but I question whether or not expertise should be valued lower than crit until cap. Since MS only procs enrage on Crits would it count a dodged would-be crit to proc the enrage? If not then I would value expertise cap above crit. Else crit seems is the way to go.

Taking a look at arms attacks only Execute and Heroic Strike are based on AP therefore crit has higher effect on the rest of our weapon damage based attacks such as MS, OP, melee, and slam.

Seran · 10/15/10, 8:54 PM

Deleted