[6.0 Guide] Gladiator - More Furious than Fury

[Vonconrad]

Fistweaving (and Gladiator Stance) will not be joining us in Legion.

RIP. Good run.

[Bigbazz]

I am a sad man

[Dreyen]

Sad that gladiator is gone... I liked it more than arms and fury for dps. Also quick question, the guide looks out of date... is mastery still the worst stat even after the recent buff?

[Warriorsarri]

Crit>=Mastery>=MS>=Haste>=Vers. Assuming all the easy reached haste plateaus are reached. Also that's just a very broad generalized list, you'd need to sim it yourself if you want a list that is correct, for instance I sometimes see Mastery and MS going above Crit.

[Zasriel]

you'd need to sim it yourself if you want a list that is correct, for instance I sometimes see Mastery and MS going above Crit.

I'm a huge novice when it comes to SimCraft. Where would one go to see a list appropriate for my gear?

[Volardelis]

Haste to 700, crit to some random value, crit does lose some value with T18 4 set as you will always have enrage up for SC windows (as SC procs it), after that, its either mastery, multi or crit. Mastery tends to be better as its a growing scalar on your AP, which also goes up the higher ilvl your gear is.

[Blackjack]

edit: wrong thread

[Bigbazz]

I'm a huge novice when it comes to SimCraft. Where would one go to see a list appropriate for my gear?

Download simcraft and unzip it, load it up and go to the "import" section. You will have a web browser showing armory, find your character on armory and then press import. Go to options, select "scaling", tick "enable scaling" and "toggle all character stats". Press simulate, if you want to simulate different fight lengths or styles you can do that on the "globals page".

The results will show once the sim is finished, showing stat weights for your own character that you can use for pawn/ask mr robot etc. This is how we all do it, stat weights can change a lot just from 1 piece of gear and so it's never good to just stick to a single set of weights.

[Archimtiros]

Download simcraft and unzip it, load it up and go to the "import" section. You will have a web browser showing armory, find your character on armory and then press import. Go to options, select "scaling", tick "enable scaling" and "toggle all character stats". Press simulate, if you want to simulate different fight lengths or styles you can do that on the "globals page".

The results will show once the sim is finished, showing stat weights for your own character that you can use for pawn/ask mr robot etc. This is how we all do it, stat weights can change a lot just from 1 piece of gear and so it's never good to just stick to a single set of weights.

As Bigbazz said, Stat weights are a great overview of how to prioritize, but if you really want to get an idea of how your stats interact, that is to say what happens when you trade one stat for another; you want to use Reforge Plots instead.

It takes a bit longer, and has a few more steps, but it's pretty simple. Just go to the Options tab and select Reforge Plots from the second row, just like you would to enable Scaling.
*Note: It's a good idea to disable scaling (by unchecking the box) when running Reforge plots, just to speed things up. Also don't ever set more than 2 stats at a time when Reforging. Though the simulation will run, the results won't make sense.

Leave the reforge amount and step amount alone, simply check two of the secondary stat boxes and hit simulate! After a few minutes this will yield a graph in the Results which looks something like this:


What you see here is what happens when you trade one stat for another, in this case Crit <-> Mastery. Each dot is a Step (step amount from earlier), which by default is 50. That means as you move left on the graph, you're losing 50 Mastery and gaining 50 Crit, and each tick shows you the DPS result for that step. As you move to the right on the graph you get the same result, but trading Crit for Mastery.

In the example above, the 0 point is where I'm at with my (Fury) profile gear. If I move right, trading 50 Mastery for 50 Crit at each step, my DPS moves continually downward. If I move left, gaining 50 Mastery for every 50 Crit I lose, my DPS continually rises, until it plateaus between +250 and +350 Mastery, which we can consider about the "ideal" distribution of Crit and Mastery (for Fury).

Now why is this important? Well Stat weights only show you what happens when you add raw stats, but it doesn't show you what happens when you lose one stat and gain another, such as when you should change from Crit Enchants to Mastery Enchants. At 30% crit, your stat weights will show Mastery higher than Crit, but it doesn't tell you that Crit will rise past Mastery again once you lose 5% of your Crit by changing those enchants. This is also how we get breakpoints, such as figuring out where Haste plateaus. If you are continually gaining gear, such as progressing from Normal to Heroic, the tool isn't quite as useful; but when you are optimizing your best pieces with equal ilvl sidegrades, it becomes a very powerful tool to figure out your idea stat distribution.

Finally, another thing you can do to directly compare two pieces of gear is simply edit the Simulate tab manually. You want to be very careful changing anything in this tab, as incorrect syntax can crash the simulation, but if you scroll down to the bottom, you'll see your imported gear which looks like this:



Again, you must be careful to keep the syntax intact, but if you mess up you can simply re-import your character again. Go to wowhead and find another piece of gear, and you can input it's information in place of your own, and simulate what the results would be using that piece of gear instead.

To give you an example, I'll change my main hand weapon from Mythic Hellrender to Mythic Warforged Calamity's Edge off Archimonde. First I'll pull up the item on wowhead and set the bonuses I want using the selectors underneath the weapons tooltip:


Now I'll replace the data in SimC with the information in Wowheads address bar (http://www.wowhead.com/item=124389/c...&bonus=562:567). I cant stress enough that some of the syntax is weird, but you should be able to infer what should go where. id= instead of item=, / instead of : beneath bonuses, leave out apostraphes in the name, and use an underscore (_) in place of spaces. Actually you can just leave the entire name out if you want and start with main_hand=,id=124389. End result should look like this:


Finally, just hit simulate and you can compare the results without even having the item!

TLDR: SimC is a very powerful tool, if you know how to use it properly. Don't be afraid to experiment, and if you have any questions, ask!

[caervek]

Decided to test out the Gronntooth War Horn on last nights mythic Gorefiend kill and results were impressive, it managed 46.63% uptime which meant with +10% dmg during the feast it was a nuke on a nuke. Unless I suddenly got much better at playing the difference was noticeable over a 2/2 Heroic EDH.

[Soulforger]

I recently started using SimCraft myself, and was wondering if there was a way to get an item from wowhead into my profile. Thanks for the info on this Arch!

I also was wondering if you guys use macros for the majority of your rotation, or do you do it all manually? I've found that a lot of Gladiators use macros (myself included) but I'm wondering if I'm losing a significant amount of dps by using them? My wrist still gets sore after a long night of raiding because of the high APM, but I love the spec and want to make sure that I'm playing it as best as I can, so I'm always looking for ways to improve.

Really hope that Blizzard reconsiders and keeps Gladiator in for Legion.

[Deleted]

I also was wondering if you guys use macros for the majority of your rotation, or do you do it all manually? I've found that a lot of Gladiators use macros (myself included) but I'm wondering if I'm losing a significant amount of dps by using them? My wrist still gets sore after a long night of raiding because of the high APM, but I love the spec and want to make sure that I'm playing it as best as I can, so I'm always looking for ways to improve.

Depends on what macro you're using.

Really hope that Blizzard reconsiders and keeps Gladiator in for Legion.

Sadly, that is not gonna happen : (

[Bigbazz]

I recently started using SimCraft myself, and was wondering if there was a way to get an item from wowhead into my profile. Thanks for the info on this Arch!

I also was wondering if you guys use macros for the majority of your rotation, or do you do it all manually? I've found that a lot of Gladiators use macros (myself included) but I'm wondering if I'm losing a significant amount of dps by using them? My wrist still gets sore after a long night of raiding because of the high APM, but I love the spec and want to make sure that I'm playing it as best as I can, so I'm always looking for ways to improve.

Really hope that Blizzard reconsiders and keeps Gladiator in for Legion.

I've always just used Ask Mr Robot to import, since you can enchant/gem/upgrade however you want with the item and it auto generates the text for importing to simcraft.

As for Macros I don't use anything to deal with Heroic Strike since I have it bound to the mouse, with everything else bound to the keyboard (separated workload). I use this macro for Shield Charge though

#showtooltip Shield Block
/cast Bloodbath
/cast [stance:1] shield charge; [stance:2] shield block
/cast Shield Slam

Then I just have a separate keybind for it if I want to use Shield Charge without triggering Bloodbath, I do the same with Colossus Smash with Arms too, macro Bloodbath to CS and have a separate keybind for when I want to hold BB.

[Cyclonus-WOW]

SimC is a very powerful tool, if you know how to use it properly. Don't be afraid to experiment, and if you have any questions, ask!

This is how I got to the conclusion that after hitting haste plateaus, and getting enough crit, multistrike adds more value than crit for glad in BIS gear. AMR ended up taking my stat weights for BIS gear and putting them as an optimization option which was cool, but a little misleading, as you need a LOT of crit before multistrike starts giving you bigger gains like it does near 730 ilvl. I ended up editing the stat weights so it ranked crit like you were slightly lower in stat so it didn't mislead everyone. I haven't looked at optimization for glad in months but I think i might look today to see if Multistrike is still simming up there for me.

[Dominowood]

Hi guys. It turns out that in this spec is not worth playing ? And whether or not it is in a legion ?

[FrothyMug]

In current endgame at ilevel 730 or so, arms and fury are superior. Gladiator is not planned to make it in to Legion.

[caervek]

Hi guys. It turns out that in this spec is not worth playing ? And whether or not it is in a legion ?

It's still worth playing currently because it can do decent damage on most fights however it is 2nd/3rd of the warrior specs on ever fight never first. This does of course not factor in skill as it's also significantly easier to play/master and so can actually keep up with equally geared arms/fury specs on most fights unless they are really good players (it's also much better for solo play), however it is being killed off in Legion.

[Bytch]

Ive been Prot since classic. As of now Fury is really fucking hating me and it's getting very annoying of not getting any procs on Xhul Progression. Thinking of making the swap to Glad(which Ive never played) or go back to Arms. Im sitting at 730+ilvl. I have UeH2/2Heroic , Heroic WF Class trink, Mythic Plume,Heroic EDH with socket 2/2 and Knight's Badge 2/2

Have all 5 pieces of the set- All heroic- Chest is WF 2/2 - Rest are all just heroic 2/2

Head: Heroic tier, Mythic WF Casque of Foul Concentration,

Shoulders: Heroic Tier, and Heroic WF Doomcrier's Shoulderplates

Hands: Heroic Tier, Heroic Gauntlets of Derision, and Mythic Crimson Throatgrabbers

Chest:Mythic Stamped Felsteel Chest. Heroic Chestguard of Ill Fate , Crafted Truesteel Breastplate of the Savage (crit/MS) 2/2, Heroic WF Tier

Legs: Heroic WF Legguards of Grievous Consonances, Mythic Acid-Etched Legplates, and Heroic tier

Ring- Heroic Mannoroths Calcified Eye WF 2/2 and Tank ring.

Boots: Mythic Cruel Hope Crushers 2/2 and Heroic Treads of the Defiler2/2

Bracers: Mythic WF Hot-Rolled Iron Bracers with +144 avoidance

Weapon+Shield: Mythic Iron Skullcrusher2/2 + Heroic Fallen Defender of Argus 2/2

Since I hate Fury and it hates me, would it be wise to swap to Arms or a spec Ive never played -Glad?. Although Ive been Prot since classic, so Glad would be easily learned. This basically just for Xhul progression for now. Every piece of gear has been fully upgraded.

[Bigbazz]

Gladiator is not really a worthwhile spec for Xhul'horac progression. Gladiator sports good sustained single target and sustained aoe, but Xhul'horac requires burst AOE and benefits from burst single target during the end of the fight, so you should avoid Gladiator for progression. Either stick with Fury for the Bladestorm burst on imps or go Arms and benefit from higher priority target + cleave, Gladiator has no real advantages on Xhul'horac and you lose Rallying Cry.

[Cyclonus-WOW]

Gladiator best spec in legion = confirmed, right guys