The Fate-Cyntex Alliance Guild Forums - Warrior FAQ/TIPS

Arms DPS Info (4 replies)

Gokumusprime — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 00:04:57 -0500

Hey Guys and Girls,

I thought I would provide some information as to Arms DPS from things I have learned and expeirenced with it in PVE. Arms PVE DPS, if you have tried it out, is much like a Wak-A-Mole process as Alathor once said to me. You look for cooldowns and your hit them when up, but also keep in mind there is a priority on the order of this and imagine your swing timer in the process. One other thing to note is that Heroic Strike will not benefit you in any way in Arms. For example, when I first switched to Arms, I was trying to figure out what should be used in my rotation. I read some articles about applying a heroic strike after a slam to make sure it goes off on your swing time. Before I realized it when testing, Alathor had pointed out to me that this is a rage expense with no income to refund it back. He is right because Heroic strike was nice in fury since your OH would swing every other hit and give you some of that rage back. If you use heroic strike in Arms, you are basically using your only swing as an ability that takes up rage not giving you any rage back to work with your other abilities. I found myself still hitting HS sometimes by accident when trying to get use to the Arms Rotation, so I removed it off the action bar.

So let's talk about rotation. Though the pve spec is designed as a "Wak-A-Mole" theme, there is still an effective priority list to the abilities that are up at any given time. Here is what I use but doesn't mean it has to be the way you would like to do it.

Rotation:

1. Rend always first. (Refresh when down, must be up at all times)
2. Sweeping Strikes then Bladestorm. (This can still be effective on a single target but best used on 2 or more. If more then one target, try to wait a sec before doing this to let tanks build threat on the adds. You will most likely die if not, even after waiting, you still have a good chance of dieing. Use this to your own descretion.)
3. Execute when up. (If both Overpower and Execute, when a mob/boss is over 20% health, are up at the same time, I use Execute first then Overpower.)
4. Overpower when up
5. Mortal Strike.
6. Slam Until one of the cooldowns above is up.

Rotation when Boss/Mob is under 20% health:

1. Rend should always be up still, this will help you on a boss to aid in giving you Overpowers inbetween Executes. Refresh possibly 0-1 times during this time.
2. Overpower (I know you would think Execute Spam first which will be what you most likely will be doing but if Overpower comes up, use it first as it will hit hard and refund an immediate swing timer following it with rage with an immediate Execute. Almost 3 nasty hits in effectively about 2 seconds.)
3. Execute Spam of course :)

Strategies for leading into your rotation:

1. Use Charge off the bat to give you some initial rage.
2. Rend immediately to provide a light hit rather then Mortal Strike Juggernaut which could lead to you pulling aggro off the bat since Arms Wars have a threat problem as you probably have noticed.
3. Now use your juggernaut Mortal Strike and begin your rotation.

Also if multiple targets and sweeping strikes is up, always use it even if Bladestorm is still down since it has a much longer cooldown. Can't confirm with combat log but I swear I have seen sweeping strikes also work on single targets with an extra number ticking off.

Gear:

If you have been raiding pre Ulduar and have started getting Ulduar gear you will prob notice that there is less crit appearing on the gear now. Yes, your crit is going down which would be a problem in fury but in Arms, this is fine since some abilities have crit built in and you will get plenty from raid buffs but possibly not enough if you are not using an Axe or Polearm. The dam spec is restricted in some ways as Axes and Polearms give us the best talented return in DPS. Maces are second to this.

Keep your gear balanced with hit and expertise first, possibly around 240-270 hit rating is nice in what I have experienced and about 20-24 Expertise total not rating.

Next look into armor pen first. One of the most valuable stats to our DPS as Arms. The goal as I have read and can't confirm from experience but what seems to be what all high end Arms Wars do, is to achieve 30% Armor penetration passively from gear alone. Just the percentage total from your gear which you can see by hovering over your hit rating on the character screen. Once we obtain the 30% passive Armor Pen, supposebly we regem our gear with armor pen only. Before that, Strength. This ideally is suppose to push our armor pen as high as it can go where diminishign returns starts to take place but does take a while to hit, then you can skip over the diminshing returns with any provided percentage bonus like mace spec or just being in Battle stance. This will pile ontop of diminshing returns. Again, this is what I have read and is what I am aiming for.

Good luck with this information and if anyone knows anything else that would be nice or useful to add, let me know or respond here.

Buff Arms Warriors pL0x (2 replies)

Anonymous User — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 00:17:08 -0500

New Fury Warrior Setup (1 reply)

Gokumusprime — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 00:22:50 -0600

I know we do not have many warriors in general in the two guilds but if you want some information on what seems to be working well for fury warriors including myself and others, here it is:

1. Stack Crit and when concerning yourself with this, know that you will get more value out of pure crit rating then agility when comparing one for one numbers on level 80 items only. Crit is essential so that your bloodthirst crits which thus triggers an instant slam in your rotation. Unfortunately when you do not crit on bloodthirst, you are left with waiting on heroic strike which is on a swing timer (Swing timer will be slow with 2H weapons) and also your whirlwind may not be up as well to use. But if you had crit on your bloodthirst then had hit slam, by the time that is done, you swing timer is going off with a regular swing or heroic strike which then leads into your Bloodthirst CD coming back to repeat the process making you constantly hitting with 2H's with barely any gaps between.

2. In the beginning at level 80, do not concern yourself with the hit cap which is something heavily debated and argued between the elite and non elite players. Hit cap is too large to obtain without sacrificing so much AP, haste and most importantly crit. This does not mean ignore hit. I as well as others I have seen as fury warriors survive in raids with only half the hit cap. In a raid situation, you are mostly hitting targets from behind which means you most likely will not be missing and having half the hit cap is even landing most hits with a front to front attack on a mob. I am currently at about 280 hit, give or take a little with some gear swaps sometimes during different fights. I have found by staying balanced constantly around 260-280 is what is working out and then filling in the rest with crit. Concern yourself with the hit cap maybe after you are all decked out with gear way in the future and you are trying to prime your char out.

3. It is hard to find good plate gear at 80 with agility on it but if you see one, go for it! It is more valuable to a fury warrior then any other class/spec. DK's and Ret Pallys need and use crit but it is not as much as a dependant on them as it is for a Fury Warrior. Without crit, bloodthirst does not trigger slam which in turn = lower DPS.

4. Specing your fury warrior at level 80 seems to be similar to the way that most would spec at level 70 with 1H's back in the day. Try to obtain impale and deep wounds in the arms tree. The rest of your points should be in the fury tree. If you are mostly focused on raid DPS then design the spec to max damage out. You can prob avoid getting the talents for expertise as well as the talent that reduces heals on the target. Though, it is up to you to decide what is good for you so spec as you like here.

This is a hard class spec to compete with other DPS and is just as much gear dependant, if not more gear dependant then skill. Feel free to ask ask any fury warriors what they think if you have any questions. I can try my best to answer your questions as well, though this isn't something I could be an expert at yet. This is just from what I noticed and from what I have seen with other fury warriors. Good luck :)

Weapons 70-80 (1 reply)

cyndreka — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 12:36:31 -0600

[www.wowinsider.com]

Thought maybe some might be interested in this =)

Warriors unite! (2 replies)

Anonymous User — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 11:31:23 -0500

Ive gone through a million builds on my warrior for pvp and they all seem awesome- so many choices!

If you guys find something that works awesome im all ears.

Right now while i wait for the servers to come up im making some builds that Goku and i talked about and trying some combos that might work for my style of play.

I think titans grip and a shield is going to be awesome, maybe not the best but i want to try it for a little bit so ppl are like wtf?!

Mitigation macro (2 replies)

Moofausa — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 17:01:27 -0500

Hey, found a nice mitigation macro, works for any level.

/script DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage(string.format("Need 102.4 avoidance. Currently: %s",floor((GetDodgeChance()+GetBlockChance()+GetParryChance()+5+(GetCombatRatingBonus(CR_DEFENSE_SKILL)+UnitDefense("Player")-5*UnitLevel("Player"))*0.04)*100)/100))

Fury Spec (1 reply)

Anonymous User — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 12:53:34 -0500

I won't profess to be a certifiable expert on Fury warriors, but it's all I have seriously played since I got the game.

The most common misconception I have seen of DPS toons in general is that there seems to be some confusion as to just what the purpose is.

For me, the purpose is simple:

Kill stuff faster

Because this is a warrior toon, I find that there is more then enough armor that to gem for anything bent on survivability takes away from the real purpose of a DPS warrior.

The motto is: It's not my job to stay alive longer. It's my job to kill crap faster.

Leave the survivability issue to the healers

Also, hit rating, and this is something I learned over time in that people see with Warriors and Rogues these unGodly hit caps of 300+. What some fail to realize though, that this hit cap applies only to auto attack.

If you were just so sit in front of an NPC and use none of your special abilities like Whirlwind, Bloodthirst, Sweeping Strikes, etc., that hit cap applies. But because a Fury warrior should always have bloodthirst and Whirlwind (Whirlwind when AOE is permissible) on cooldown, making sure to spam Heroic Strike as a rage dump while waiting for the main abilities to recharge, auto attack isn't nearly as relevant.

What's the difference in hit cap with abilities versus not?

Well, I am glad you asked, because the difference is considerable.

For ALL melee, if you aren't using your special abilities and you have no points in your precision talent, your hit cap is 442.

If you do have your precision talent maxed out, but are still NOT using special abilities, warriors have a hit cap of 395, while Rogues' hit cap goes from 442 to 363.

But check out the difference between auto attack and using specials:

A fury warrior dual-wielding with max points in precision has a hit cap of 395 auto attack, but a 142 hit cap using special abilities. A Rogue goes from their cap of 363 to an unbelievable 64.

For anyone who gems for hit at 70, which goes against many cardinal rules for true DPS configurations, think about what gear you have or what gems you have used for that and how much more you could benefit from changing those out for crit gems, strength gems or if you PvP, pure AP.

For my own curiosity I went into the armory and brought up the top fury warriors from the top 15 or so guilds in the entire game. They ALL had hit ratings under 170. Call it a proof of concept or just real life examples of how the hit cap, if you haven't studied it and how it works, can be very misleading.

Now, there are still other variables which have to be taken into account like expertise to avoid dodges and parries and haste, which doesn't increase the speed of your weapon, but it does decrease the amount of time in-between strikes. That's why for Fury warriors, the slow weapon is best, because while DPS is the label and it's the sexy stat, top end damage means much more in the end than the damage you are inflicting per second.

DAMAGE vs DPS

One of the biggest questions for me and which I have been asked many times is what the difference is between damage and DPS. If you are doing 800 DPS, why isn't that as good as such and such amount of damage?

For myself, I have many times not ranked even in the top 10 in an instance in DPS, but ranked top five in overall damage.

The difference, at least for me, is the fact that for a Warrior, RAGE, is the primary focus. Like mana is to Priests or Energy is to Rogues, Rage makes all things possible for warriors.

If you are a tank, your talent points are such that you gain more rage from being hit versus hitting.

If you are a DPS-spec warrior, your rage comes from your hits, how hard you hit and critical strikes.

That's why for warriors, power trumps speed, because rage will be generated more consistently from one powerful strike versus lost of strikes which hit for less damage.

So, think SLOW weapons for Warriors and no, I am not one of those who think that you should alternate philosophies, main hand versus off hand, going for the faster off-hand to compensate for the drop off in damage. I believe both weapons should have a speed of around 2.6. To me that is ideal.

MUST READ FOR TANKS (2 replies)

Anonymous User — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 13:03:43 -0600

[www.theoryspot.com]

for some reason i cant make that a link but take the time to type it in AWESOME SITE!! really breaks down all the mechanics

Arms Specced Warrior (4 replies)

Anonymous User — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 11:15:41 -0500

As most people should know Belias is my main alt character- currently hes lvl 52 and swiftly on his way to 53. Reason why? Im a bad ass warrior on high demand by all instance runners! For most of my career I had gone with nearly all arms spec, it wasnt til right before BC came out that I tried defense spec...at any rate I'm back to arms!