What the hell does "slam" do?

[Sarios]

I mean, it's like the nerfed version of heroic strike?

I'm a 40 level warrior, and this attack seems useless to me.

Can you tell me why shoud I use it? 1,5 second cast and 15 of rage and does almost the same amount of damage as heroick strike

[Euq]

It gets instant if specced and proccs.

[Sarios]

yes but, heroic strike is still almost the same

[kliffharry]

use slam while you wait for weapon swing >_>

[Jeina]

Main Entry: slam
Function: verb
Inflected Form(s): slammed; slam·ming
Date: circa 1691

transitive verb 1 : to strike or beat hard : knock
2 : to shut forcibly and noisily : bang
3 a : to set or slap down violently or noisily <slammed down the phone> b : to propel, thrust, or produce by or as if by striking hard <slam on the brakes> <slammed the car into a wall>
4 : to criticize harshly
intransitive verb 1 : to make a banging noise
2 : to function (as in moving) with emphatic and usually noisy vigor <the hurricane slammed into the coast> <slammed out of the room>
3 : to utter verbal abuse or harsh criticism

[Patty]

yes but, heroic strike is still almost the same

But its not a next swing ability..

+ The fact that if specced for it.. You get them instant !

[Anduin]

And what's the deal with airplane food.

[Sqeez]

It doesn't consume the white hit like heroic strike does, you have to consider only the additional damage that heroic strike does, which is not "very" much. It does delay the white hit by 1.5sec, so not totally worth using if you dont have imp.slam.
For fury you get a talent as mentioned that makes it instant when you proc bloodsurge.

[iootnega]

I like airplane peanuts.

[Opeth69]

Its really just a filler ability like HS and in cata when HS becomes instant and uses a GCD itll likely replace slam completely. Atm arms uses it to fill GCD between MS OP nd SD procs, and Fury uses it to fill gaps between BT WW while using HS along side it

[ecca2]

I thought that too when I got it, the long swing time made me question the hell out of it but then I started reading further down the talent trees and realized it gets alot better. As said, Arms gets talented to reduce the swing time and Fury gets talented for it to be instant when proc'd. It's basically just filler between cd's.

[Orcishpride2010]

Short answer
Slam is the only actual weapon strike ability with no cooldown available to you. Everything else is an Augment(Heroic strike sucks arse), proc, or has a cooldown

If you want to know more about your class, keep reading, but there is your answer.

---------------------------------------------
its an attack, Heroic strike is an augment. At higher lvl (I.E. when heroic strike isnt the only strike you have)Heroic strike its a "rage dump". You expend a whole 15 rage to add 10-20-50-100 or so EXTRA dmg to the attack (that dmg is also further augmented by your attack power, crit, ect).

The downside is that you do not gain rage from that one "white auto attack" weapon swing, thus its (currently) best used when you have "extra" rage.

In other words your spending a whole 15 rage(or 20 to 30 rage if you include the rage you lose from not gaining rage with that weapon swing) simply for a few extra dmg points.

Further more Heroic strike i believe turns it into Yellow(ability damage). So if your dual wielding this reduces that single strikes chance of missing from like 25% to 5% (or 27% to 8% on a raid boss).

Roughly
-------------------
Slam is an "extra attack" that deals weapon dmg +extra damage. In other words its the same thing as heroic strike yet it doesnt eat away at your auto attack....

exept it does. In the fact that its a 1.5 second cast. If your dual wield you probably miss out on 2 offhand and one mainhand swings during this cast time, making it normally not worth it.

but.

Fury tree has a talent that reduces it to a free instant proc. This is equivelant to Arms' overpower proccing Rends([Taste for Blood]). So as fury your attacks consist of Bloodthirst, procced instant slams, whirlwinds, and if you have time and extra rage (only, or if you have no other attack ready) heroic strike.

Arms has a different talent. for 2 points it reduces the cast time to .5 seconds. now they already have more use for it leveling up. since they use 2 handed weapons, most of which are 2.9 second swings to begin with, you can get in a Slam strike without even screwing up your auto attack if you do it right (If your only using Slam when you have extra rage and want to pump it out, you could macro Heroic strike to trigger when you cast Slam).

Either way when leveling when you time it right you can get in an extra hit, since you pretty much only have overpower and Mortal strike as attacks, one of which is a proc and one is on a cooldown.

Now if you have it talented and alot of extra rage , with the .5 second cast time you could even cast it several times between swings.

[smokeydown]

From what I've read you shouldn't even use slam because casting it pauses your swing timmer and will lower your dps. The exception of course is when then instant slam procs (fury talent).

As far as what the character is doing, who knows. I always thought it was a body slam, but the animation doesn't show that.

[ToolOfWrath]

its an ability...

but it has a helluva use in trade chat ability spam... 8)

[Orcishpride2010]

and i could be wrong but i dont think it delays your swing time unless it overruns its time.

as in if your weapon swings happens every 1.4 seconds and you cast a 1.5 second Slam your auto attack will happen at the end of the rend. but if your weapon swing is 2.5 seconds and you cast slam right after then your slam will be done before you swing again

I did test this and it seemed my slams did happen normally in between swings. but i did not use a stop watch or hack the game or anything so i could be wrong.

[Sarios]

;D thanks everyone, now I understand how stupid this question was

[omglazor]

and i could be wrong but i dont think it delays your swing time unless it overruns its time.

as in if your weapon swings happens every 1.4 seconds and you cast a 1.5 second Slam your auto attack will happen at the end of the rend. but if your weapon swing is 2.5 seconds and you cast slam right after then your slam will be done before you swing again

I did test this and it seemed my slams did happen normally in between swings. but i did not use a stop watch or hack the game or anything so i could be wrong.

It pauses swing timer:
3.6s weapon
0s swing -> 0.5s start slam (3.1s left) -> 1.0s stop casting slam (3.1s still) -> 4.1s swing
Used to actually reset the timer, so if you got up to 3.5/3.6s on swing timer and cast slam you were back to 0/3.6!

[Twoflower]

What does it do ?

Damage !

[Sinea]

It's part of the completely specced Fury rotation.... Bloodthirst/WW when off cd, heroic strike if ur high raged and slam whenever bloodsurge buff from talent appears...
Bloodsurge makes it instant, other then that not much of a use

[Mammoth]

It pauses swing timer:
3.6s weapon
0s swing -> 0.5s start slam (3.1s left) -> 1.0s stop casting slam (3.1s still) -> 4.1s swing
Used to actually reset the timer, so if you got up to 3.5/3.6s on swing timer and cast slam you were back to 0/3.6!

It pauses the swing timer these days. You used to have to time it between your white attacks, but not anymore. Generally its used as an instant cast by fury warriors.