5.2 Arms vs Fury PVE

[Nova Swaggins]

With all the buffs and nerfs Blizzard is throwing our way, I'm curious what people think.

Now let me just clarify, I'm no huge theorycrafter. While I am good at math I'm better at everything but math. However the point of this thread isn't to get a ton of math going (there's tons of those already). I just want peoples cold, hard, honest opinions of what they think will be the #1 DPS spec in raids come 5.2.

So tell me, fellow warriors, Arms or Fury. Which is it? (Include why too!)

[Deleted]

arms, well atleast this is what I hope will come out on top.

Whenever I dual wield 2 weapons I feel like a thug holding a gun sideways.

[Kaljurei]

These nerfs won't be putting Arms on par with Fury. Fury will still be top dog.

[Deleted]

With my recent testing on PTR (Playing Arms and Fury for 3 years), I managed to do about 1m more damage with Arms than Fury.

Tested both under the same circumstances.

[Justignoreme]

With my recent testing on PTR (Playing Arms and Fury for 3 years), I managed to do about 1m more damage with Arms than Fury.

Tested both under the same circumstances.

Are you counting execute phases? While arms isn't RNG linked like fury, it can put up more consistent numbers on a dummy which can be higher sustained, when you reach execute phases, fury executes blow arms away by a huge margin.

[PuPs]

arms, well atleast this is what I hope will come out on top.

Whenever I dual wield 2 weapons I feel like a thug holding a gun sideways.

Same for me. A DPS Warrior must have a single 2 handed weapon. Dual wielding is for Rogues or Shamans.

[Video Games]

I highly doubt arms will catch up to fury this expansion because nothing can save that train wreck of a spec.

[Deleted]

Are you counting execute phases? While arms isn't RNG linked like fury, it can put up more consistent numbers on a dummy which can be higher sustained, when you reach execute phases, fury executes blow arms away by a huge margin.

Well that's not true. Due to the Arms passive (Seasoned Soldier), Arms does bigger Executes than TG Fury. SMF Fury is ahead though, as their passive is even better.

Edit: On topic... Arms and TG Fury were looking veeeery close in recent data with SMF slightly on top. Given the very recent RB nerf, I think Arms MAY end up being superior to TG Fury.

<3 Arms.

[Justignoreme]

Well that's not true. Due to the Arms passive (Seasoned Soldier), Arms does bigger Executes than TG Fury. SMF Fury is ahead though, as their passive is even better.

I've never seen Arms out do SMF executes in MoP, gear for gear. I should've clarified.

Edit: On topic... Arms and TG Fury were looking veeeery close in recent data with SMF slightly on top. Given the very recent RB nerf, I think Arms MAY end up being superior to TG Fury.

<3 Arms.

I like arms too, I like its consistency and its feel; can't stand TG but I enjoy SMF quite a bit because of its strong damage. I think a big gain to arms is the double deep wounds damage. That will increase its damage significantly over the fight, even if its trailing a bit during the execute phase.

[Deleted]

Ah yes, indeed. SMF Execute is top dog.

Deep Wounds buff will improve Strength scaling so Arms doesn't get left behind towards the end of the tier.

Arms' Mastery and Haste also got a pretty big scaling buff - a recent slightly incorrect sim in another thread suggested that Haste was actually more valuable than Crit for Arms, which is pretty astonishing. At the moment I'm waiting for the dust to settle.

[Justignoreme]

Ah yes, indeed. SMF Execute is top dog.

Deep Wounds buff will improve Strength scaling so Arms doesn't get left behind towards the end of the tier.

Arms' Mastery and Haste also got a pretty big scaling buff - a recent slightly incorrect sim in another thread suggested that Haste was actually more valuable than Crit for Arms, which is pretty astonishing. At the moment I'm waiting for the dust to settle.

I dunno about being more valuable than crit but then its not like you *need* to crit to proc an ability like RB with arms. I heard haste getting double value was for both warrior specs though, the white hits alone from SMF will see a big benefit. They have a str polearm in ToT though so that alone is enough to have me play arms, even if it's not doing as much as SMF

[Felarion]

But explain me why we get nerf to cs,bt and rb. They buffed alot sure, but it was buff for arms only or i missed somethin ?

[Heptium]

I did a bunch of testing, and it really seems like for Arms, Haste is extremely good. I found myself ignoring Overpower completely with enough haste, because of the way it plays with your rage gain, and your mastery, to proc Sudden Death. Basically, CS > MS > Slam > OP @ 80+ Rage and Heroic Strike @ 100/CDs up. It was more effective to wait for a Sudden Death proc then to use Slam without CS up. I found out I could only burn about 60 Rage during a CS, thus OP was only a snappy Rage stabilizer, rather then a Rage dump. Heroic Strike would still remain the dump.

My build style was Str > Haste > Mastery > Crit (To the point of neglecting it). Crit doesn't play around with Mastery and Rage gains as effectly as Haste does, at least Str with always increase everything, thus, I think it's most valuable. Now, it's only a matter of time before there's a "soft" haste cap, because it does seem like there HAS to be a point where you can't spend rage quickly enough (To many Heroic Strikes), and it would be more effective to dump into Crit or Mastery (I have trouble finding out what's better at this point). The most difficult part was getting a accurate reading on how Haste will effect Execute phases, and my hypothesis is that it will be GREATLY more effective then Crit. With CS consistently up, one can only imagine that Execute dealing ~40% more damage every hit (due to CS) would be better then getting a 200% Execute 1/4th of the time. Assuming CDs down.

However, I haven't determined if it's better then SMF/TG yet, SMF enjoys the passive haste benefits even if it doesn't prioritize them, and TG has always been a very violent scalier. With the weapons given on the PTR (I use them as a standardized test gear, to make it equal among all the specs), it's hard to say. My thoughts are that TG will win overall in 5.2. Not because it's going to scale immensely, because I feel like it will only match SMF throughput, but because it has more upfront damage then SMF, making it ideal for adds. Lumping all our DPS into Execute feels awkward sometimes, TG and Arms don't utilize it as much, and have their damage more evenly spread out.

[Recke]

Are you counting execute phases? While arms isn't RNG linked like fury, it can put up more consistent numbers on a dummy which can be higher sustained, when you reach execute phases, fury executes blow arms away by a huge margin.

Arms is receiving enough buffs to make it within a percent or two of Fury. Fury is receiving a few percent's worth of nerfs (which hasn't been compared yet). Arms will probably be the better spec unless something good happens to Fury between now and Patch 5.2 hitting live.

---------- Post added 2013-02-20 at 05:33 AM ----------

I highly doubt arms will catch up to fury this expansion because nothing can save that train wreck of a spec.

Arms was never far behind Fury, maybe 5%. It just wasn't optimal, which made the top players pick Fury, which in turn made most players piggy back off the top players playing Fury. Arms has already received enough buffs to make it easily viable.

[Opeth69]

The changes make smf pull ahead of tg even further which already pisses me off, plus with the dk changes trying to win 1h over a dk isn't likely to happen, trying to take haste gear too over a dk again isn't likely to happen, I really wish they just tried to fix how lopsided fury is, smf next tier is going to be retarded on dmg breakdown with this change they should have nerfed execute by 5% for fury and nerfed smf by 5% on top to even things out keep the fury specs more even and making it so I don't have to play arms which is beyond boring ATM on ptr.

[Juni]

http://hci.rwth-aachen.de/~moellers/...r52_feb18.html

Tg fury is barely ahead, while smf is a bit further ahead. The very recent nerfs to cs, rb and bt will hit fury pretty hard putting arms even closer. At this point I think u can play exactly what u want to, and whatever u get gear for. Rejoice, fellow warriors.

---------- Post added 2013-02-20 at 06:03 PM ----------

But explain me why we get nerf to cs,bt and rb. They buffed alot sure, but it was buff for arms only or i missed somethin ?

Cuz they felt fury was doing too much damage.. Fact is: we scale soooo well with crit and this tier seems to have alot of it. I guess that's why.

[Recke]

Cuz they felt fury was doing too much damage.. Fact is: we scale soooo well with crit and this tier seems to have alot of it. I guess that's why.

It's likely to nerf the damage Fury will get with bonus Mastery from higher gear (and higher weapon damage), but it's looking to make Fury less than Arms.

[Nova Swaggins]

Compelling arguments from all. I guess we'll have to wait and see when the patch finally goes live. Personally I'm hoping for Arms. I just can't stand fury, it's too... clunky.

[Sodka]

It has been a LONG time since I played my Warrior and I am just starting to play this toon again. Right now my character is only lvl 86 and I am fury, but I a enjoying it so far. I am not really concerned with DPS right now because honestly I cannot DPS for the life of me, but am interested to see how arms will be.

[Noctus78]

Cuz they felt fury was doing too much damage.. Fact is: we scale soooo well with crit and this tier seems to have alot of it. I guess that's why.

Thing im a bit scared for, that this might very well be. but me as a casual raider might need some time to get that gear.