Arms AoE Rotation Discussion

[Deleted]

Can anyone bring some light to Arms AoE rotation?

From what I read you should always use MS and CS on cooldown with MS > CS.

Next to those we have "filler" abilities until MS/CS come back. How do we fill those spots?

The AoE options are:
- Sweeping Strikes for 30 rage which can be glyphed to regen 1 rage per target hit
- Thunder Clap for 20 rage
- Whirlwind for 20 rage
- Next to that we have Bladestorm, Shockwave and Dragon Breath

I would like to discuss the topic based on certain scenarios that have different pack sizes.
Additionally...is there a sweet-spot at which Thunder Clap will be better dps than Whirlwind? Or is Whirlwind always > Thunder Clap or the other way around?

Do you use Sweeping Strike on cooldown as long there is another mob around? Every time there is more than 1 mob?

What do you do with your CS window? Will you just keep spamming AoE spells even if your current target has the CS debuff?

Another quite important question. How do you handle rage starvation? Do you wait for rage to come up? What do you do in the meantime? Because OP and SL cost rage. Using those instead of your AoE will not bring your rage up.

So lets set up pack sizes from 2-5+ mobs.

I will edit in your suggestions so my current list are just my incompetent guesses.

Pack-size: 2
MS > CS > TC (no DW) > SS > OP > SL

Pack-size: 3
MS > CS > TC (no DW) > SS > WW > OP > SL > TC

Pack-size: 4
MS > CS > TC (no DW) > SS > WW > TC > OP > SL

Pack-size: 5+
MS > CS > TC (no DW) > SS > WW > TC > OP > SL

What is the best AoE talent? BS, SW or DR?

Remember you can DR+Bloodbath every minute. No delay. You can only BS+Bloodbath every 1.5 minutes but delay BB by 30sec. If you do not delay BB you can use it every 3minutes only.
You can DR+Avatar every 3 minutes. You can BS+Avatar every 3 minutes aswell.

Of course you should HL on CS debuff but that applies to single target aswell.

Hopefully you guys can help bringing some insight on Arms AoE. Thanks.

MS  - Mortal Strike
CS  - Colossus Smash
BB  - Bloodbath
DR  - Dragon Roar
BS  - Bladestorm
TC  - Thunder Clap
DW  - Deep Wounds
SS  - Sweeping Strikes
OP  - Overpower
SL  - Slam
WW  - Whirlwind
HL  - Heroic Leap

[bigbad]

MS also applies deep wounds so using thunderclap on 2 mobs isn't needed. For 2-3 targets I recon regular rotation with sweeping strike, almost no HS usage since you need the rage for sweeping strikes and you can swap targets so MS applies deep wounds to all 2-3 mobs.

There is no reason to thunderclap if deep wounds is up since WW&TC both cost 20 rage. CS usage is also a bit questionable when aoeing. I suggest MS>TC(no deep wounds)>dragonroar>WW>battleshout if lacking rage.

What I did on tortos was stick on the boss while the 4 ranged got the turtles, conservative with HS so that I was at high rage when the bats came then TC, dragonroar and whirlwinding while doing MS. MS>3xWW>MS costs a bit more rage then normal but rage is usually fine this wayif you start high, I had to use battleshout once or twice. Using reck/dragonroar/bloodbath at the start dragonroar was up for the first bats and could rotate reck and dragonroar for all the waves.

[Berthold]

latest simc has better aoe support, might want to give it a try

[Senen]

I haven't done that many testing on multitarget so I'm not sure of my results yet (I may be slightly overestimating the DPE of WW.) Also, I need to compute the DPE of Execute.

If we're looking at damage:
At 3+ targets, WW>OP>Slam outside of a CS window.
At 4+ targets, WW>OP>Slam during a CS window.
At 5+ targets, WW (outside of a CS window) > OP (during a CS window) > Slam (during a CS window).

If we're looking at DPR:
At 4+ targets, WW>OP outside of a CS window.
At 5+ targets, WW>OP during a CS window.
At 6+ targets, WW (outside of a CS window) > OP (during a CS window).

So, the question is what to do between 3 and 5 targets.
As far as I understand these results:
At 3+ targets you should replace your Slam outside of a CS by WW.
At 5+ targets you should use only MS and WW.
At 4 targets... I'm not really sure. You shouldn't use Slam at all. I think you shouldn't use OP outside of a CS window, try to stack rage before each CS and spam MS/WW during each CS, if you have several CS in a row and begin to be rage starved, you may have to use OP to stay gcd cap.

As far as TC is concerned, I think it's important to keep Deep Wounds on every target, at 2 targets you should target swap to keep both the dot on both your target. At 3+ targets, use TC outside of a CS window instead of a WW to refresh the dot.

For SS, I don't know, I haven't done any computation yet. It's a dps gain at 2 targets, but I'm not sure until which number f target it is still a dps gain.

Edit: I've messed with my math. I just redid my computation, that should be more correct.

[Deleted]

I never used thunder clap before, isnt it a waste of rage?

[Senen]

The damage of Thunder clap are very low, but Deep Wounds deals a lot of damage. Over 15 seconds it's more or less a critical Slam.
So yeah, you want to have Deep Wounds on every target. When there are 2 targets you can multidot by target swapping but with 3+ targets, TC is the way to go. Even if the enemies don't live the full 15seconds of the dot, the damage of Thunder clap and one or two ticks should be enough to have TC+DW>WW.

You shouldn't spam TC, though. Just use it every ~13 seconds, instead of a Slam/WW and if possible not during a CS.

[Darkfriend]

After a certain add set size, glyphing TC is a DPS increase over other glyph options, but I'm not sure how many adds that number is.

[Veyne]

I never used thunder clap before, isnt it a waste of rage?

You should use Thunder Clap to apply Deep Wounds when there are more than 3 adds. Thunder Clap's own damage plus the damage from Deep Wounds out does Whirlwind pretty easily. Once Deep Wounds is up, only Thunder Clap to refresh Deep Wounds.