Arms < Fury Gear-Scaling Transition point?

[Tukaz]

I've read many times that Arms does better dps than Fury when you are in Nax level gear, but as you progress through Uldular-25 gear and beyond, Fury scales much better and becomes the superior spec in terms of max personal dps.

My question is, at what point is this shift in dominance considered to happen? Is there a way to quantify this transition point, aside from just making a fuzzy general statement like above? At what point should Arms warriors consider speccing over to Fury, in strict terms of maximizing their personal dps?

Battousai, can you help me out, pal? :-p

[Girfried]

www.elitistjerks.com > forums > class mechanics > warriors > DPS calculationspreadsheet. Download it and import the gear you have in both the fury and arms tab (in the bottom). Takes some time to 'master' how the sheet works, but believe me, it'll do you good and saves you a lot of questions .

Requires Excell '03 or '07 though

[jester.exe]

Armory link? Could probably glance at your gear and tell if you're ready.

[Tukaz]

I appreciate the offer to give me advice (it would probably be useful) but I'm trying to answer the general question so that the community has some knowledge to take away from this thread, rather than a 'help me' thread.

Moreso wondering, in general, what a warrior sould keep his eye on, and at what point you feel is a key transitional point from Arms to Fury. I know its not clear cut (eg. once you get x amount of AP, spec Fury), but I'm hoping we can come up with some helpful general comments of things to take into consideration.

[Vladislavius]

Im wold also like to know whats the trasition point so that i cold link this thread to my guild dumb ass warrior that run arount in 219 i lvl weapons in fury

[killabee]

The spreadsheet linked above actually doesn't have a point where Fury does more DPS than Arms. However, that spreadsheet doesn't model incoming raid damage, which translates into more HS using, which may allow Fury to do more DPS than Arms.

The general consensus is that with BiS Ulduar gear Fury does more DPS than Arms. Keep in mind that some fights favor Arms and some Fury, which shifts the default baseline in one way or another.

[Battousai]

I still beat most fury warriors with the same ilvl gear as me. And I consider myself a pretty well geared/chanted/gemmed Arms warrior.

However, if I was to switch to fury and change my gems and chants accordingly...I know for certain i wouldn't be as good.

I know how to arms very well, I'm ok at fury. Its really going to depend on your playstyle. My suggestion, try them both out. Unless your in a top guild whos clearing heroic ToC and farming Alagon to run non guildies through it for 50-75k gold a pop...then your spot shouldn't be in jeopardy...cause your guild doesn't deserve to be THAT elitist.

[Zophiel]

On the topic of the spreadsheet I have one major problem with it, I cant find anywhere online or in the threads of EJ how to get it to import my talents. It does the default import of my equipment from www.wowarmory.com but I can't get it import my talents no matter which way I try. Any suggestions on this?

[Battousai]

I honestly run Rawr instead. To me its a lot more user friendly. It does have its drawbacks, but it does what I need it to do.

[Tukaz]

Actually, the number-crunchers over at Elitist Jerks are predicting that the Armor Pen nerf won't affect arms warriors too bad... they said if your armor pen SEP is 1.01, it may end up being 0.97 (or someting like that).

Thanks everyone for the helpful advice. So I think what we learned is:
-there is no known transition point
-playstyle and skill count for a lot more in the decision making process

In fact, although I've heard about fury scaling better, I really haven't seen any proof of it. I've still heard many top Arms guys saying that they are matching Fury well (with variation on who gets a little more dps depending on boss fight mechanics).

[Kysimir]

I honestly run Rawr instead. To me its a lot more user friendly. It does have its drawbacks, but it does what I need it to do.

The expertise on Rawr for arms is ALWAYS off.

So, if you use Rawr... ignore the expertise counter - just do the math yourself.

[taat]

Kind of OT, but this will give you an idea of numbers between the two specs. As others have mentioned, they are pretty close, but fury scales and performs much better on most fights.

http://www.wowmeteronline.com/rank/c.../war/7/6/3/320

[Battousai]

The expertise on Rawr for arms is ALWAYS off.

So, if you use Rawr... ignore the expertise counter - just do the math yourself.

Yea, I know. But its not hard to remember 26/22/18.

[Demog]

As someone said, fury and arms are good for different things. A warrior 100% dedicated to dps'ing in raids should probably have both a fury and an arms spec and switch accordingly between boss fights (and trash).

Generally fury is much better than arms if there's a good supply of adds to be killed. For instance on freya, thorim, and yogg final phase in ulduar... A fury warrior specced into improved cleave and cleave glyph just do sick DPS there. If an add phase lasts longer than bladestorm's duration, go fury.

Furthermore fury has the best "burst on demand" with deathwish and recklessness. Many fights have a nuke phase which require you to do a truckload of damage in a short duration of time to a single target... I'd say fury warriors are among the best for that (bladestorm is pretty meh on a single target, at least compared to fury's cooldowns). If there's a short burnphase with multiple targets, arms will probably come out on top.

For simple tank'n'spanks, arms might be better when the stars are alligned, but overall I certainly prefer fury (in ulduar gear).

Finally an important point is how fury seem to scale so much better than arms with raid buffs. If you're in a raid without proper raid buffs, arms will do way more dps than fury - unless you can spam cleave on multiple mobs 24/7. So basically in 10mans you are probably better off as arms... but many 25man raids have crap raidbuffs as well.

A good tip is to always be aware about what buffs your raid are supplying for you... I got addons telling me what I get so I can whine accordingly ... WF (or imp. icy talons from frost DKs) is without a doubt the most important buff for a fury warrior... If you don't get it, you just do crap dps. It's not that big of a buff for an arms warrior though. (personally I do like 1000 dps more as arms than fury when dps'ing selfbuffed only on training dummies... while in properly buffed raids I do at least 1000 more dps as fury than arms).

But yeah, learn to love landsoul's spreadsheet! My personal experience is that it's very accurate.

[Tukaz]

As someone said, fury and arms are good for different things. A warrior 100% dedicated to dps'ing in raids should probably have both a fury and an arms spec and switch accordingly between boss fights (and trash).

Generally fury is much better than arms if there's a good supply of adds to be killed. For instance on freya, thorim, and yogg final phase in ulduar... A fury warrior specced into improved cleave and cleave glyph just do sick DPS there. If an add phase lasts longer than bladestorm's duration, go fury.

Furthermore fury has the best "burst on demand" with deathwish and recklessness. Many fights have a nuke phase which require you to do a truckload of damage in a short duration of time to a single target... I'd say fury warriors are among the best for that (bladestorm is pretty meh on a single target, at least compared to fury's cooldowns). If there's a short burnphase with multiple targets, arms will probably come out on top.

For simple tank'n'spanks, arms might be better when the stars are alligned, but overall I certainly prefer fury (in ulduar gear).

Finally an important point is how fury seem to scale so much better than arms with raid buffs. If you're in a raid without proper raid buffs, arms will do way more dps than fury - unless you can spam cleave on multiple mobs 24/7. So basically in 10mans you are probably better off as arms... but many 25man raids have crap raidbuffs as well.

A good tip is to always be aware about what buffs your raid are supplying for you... I got addons telling me what I get so I can whine accordingly ... WF (or imp. icy talons from frost DKs) is without a doubt the most important buff for a fury warrior... If you don't get it, you just do crap dps. It's not that big of a buff for an arms warrior though. (personally I do like 1000 dps more as arms than fury when dps'ing selfbuffed only on training dummies... while in properly buffed raids I do at least 1000 more dps as fury than arms).

But yeah, learn to love landsoul's spreadsheet! My personal experience is that it's very accurate.

Excellent post, thanks very much. This is the kind of discussion I was hoping for..

[milkman]

This is probably the single best explanation of the difference between arms and fury in raids that i've ever seen. It's not mathy it just makes a hell of alot of sense if you think about the nature of the two specs. For instance faction champions, always go arms, razorscale, always go fury. The reason you don't want fury on faction champions is a) no healing debuff, B) they all have an aura that reduces the damage they take from aoe by 75 pct, meaning whirlwind and cleave are terrible on that fight.

As someone said, fury and arms are good for different things. A warrior 100% dedicated to dps'ing in raids should probably have both a fury and an arms spec and switch accordingly between boss fights (and trash).

Generally fury is much better than arms if there's a good supply of adds to be killed. For instance on freya, thorim, and yogg final phase in ulduar... A fury warrior specced into improved cleave and cleave glyph just do sick DPS there. If an add phase lasts longer than bladestorm's duration, go fury.

Furthermore fury has the best "burst on demand" with deathwish and recklessness. Many fights have a nuke phase which require you to do a truckload of damage in a short duration of time to a single target... I'd say fury warriors are among the best for that (bladestorm is pretty meh on a single target, at least compared to fury's cooldowns). If there's a short burnphase with multiple targets, arms will probably come out on top.

For simple tank'n'spanks, arms might be better when the stars are alligned, but overall I certainly prefer fury (in ulduar gear).

Finally an important point is how fury seem to scale so much better than arms with raid buffs. If you're in a raid without proper raid buffs, arms will do way more dps than fury - unless you can spam cleave on multiple mobs 24/7. So basically in 10mans you are probably better off as arms... but many 25man raids have crap raidbuffs as well.

A good tip is to always be aware about what buffs your raid are supplying for you... I got addons telling me what I get so I can whine accordingly ... WF (or imp. icy talons from frost DKs) is without a doubt the most important buff for a fury warrior... If you don't get it, you just do crap dps. It's not that big of a buff for an arms warrior though. (personally I do like 1000 dps more as arms than fury when dps'ing selfbuffed only on training dummies... while in properly buffed raids I do at least 1000 more dps as fury than arms).

But yeah, learn to love landsoul's spreadsheet! My personal experience is that it's very accurate.

[milkman]

Also what demog said about buffs is 100 pct true, make sure you get WF totem and icy talons if they're available, those 2 alone will make your dps go up 1k.

[Kysimir]

Yea, I know. But its not hard to remember 26/22/18.

Well, yeah - but others might not... or they may completely negate the thinking and assume rawr comes out correctly. >.>

[Mcbenchpress]

I played Fury thru BC and Naxx, and then went Arms when Ulduar launched. I played Arms as an offspec back and forth a little bit after the Wotlk talents came out, and Arms has been a more enjoyable playstyle to me. I stuck to Fury through Naxx and T7 because of the insane damage I would do, with less effort on my part.

Now I'm full time Arms, and dont see myself ever wanting to go back to Fury. This is for two reasons:

1. More enjoyable playstyle then Fury, in my opinion.

2. Raid buffs/debuffs. We have two very capable Fury Warriors in my guild, and at least one of them is there on any given raid night. So we have the 5% crit buff covered there. We also run with two Mut Rogues, so my constant bleeds make their life easier, resulting in more raid wide Dps.

Basically, play what you want to play. As far as the transition point goes, its kind of hard to say. My gear set is very solid for Arms, but not too great for Fury. http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...nels&n=Bartuck

As is stands now, 49% raid buffed Crit and 99.43% Armor Pen with GT proc. I pull around 6.6k on a perfect fight where I can just stand there and smash. My expertise is a little low, but I already have an item planned to get my Exp cap, and swap out those so-so boots from ToC 5man.

P.S. Kind of a long post. Just giving the OP and other readers and Arms Warrior PoV.

[Naydie]

Also what demog said about buffs is 100 pct true, make sure you get WF totem and icy talons if they're available, those 2 alone will make your dps go up 1k.

They don't stack.