Has Arms warrior gem priority changed?

[Accaris]

Every top Arms warrior I see is gemming straight crit and crit/hit. Why is that? What benefit does crit give over strength for Arms? I understand it's important for Fury, but what's going on here?

[enjay]

simming your character will give you exact stat weights for you. with that said, if you find that crit is within 50% of strength (str 2 and crit >1 for example), then that would give a secondary stat gem of either crit, hit or expertise priority over strength in that slot. obviously the socket bonus should also be taken into account here.

for example, gemming crit/hit would give you 160 crit and 160 hit. in the past gemming hit over strength for arms when the hit cap is attainable by reforging would be laughable, however, because of the doube secondary stat points on gems this now allows you to amass a greater number of secondary stat points and allows you to put more crit on your character than stacking str or crit/str gems would. this also works for crit/expertise.

ex#2. lets say you have 2 red, 2 blue and 2 yellow sockets on your gear. an average stat weight for arms would be 2.25 for str and 1.25 for crit.

so by gemming pure crit in yellow, crit/hit in blue and crit/exp in red and reforging excess hit/exp to crit it gives you 160x12 or 1920 stat points rated at 1.25 per point which gives a dps increase of 2400 points.

if you gemmed crit/str in yellow, straight str in red and str/hit in blue and, again, reforged access into crit, it would give you 640 str and 640 crit. str rated at 2.25 and crit rated at 1.25 would give you 2240 points. (640 x 2.25 + 640 x 1.25)

hope this helps and isn't too jumbled.

edit for spelling