Arms, 4.01

[Breakthoven]

Well 4.0.1 will be released next week, and i'll prob go arms. I've done a little bit of research about it( I know colossus smash is missing), and i've been wondering whats the rotation we'll have to use for it w/o CS and what spec? How much hit will we need?

[someoneelse]

was wondering about the state of arms as well, as far as hit goes u only need 8%. i did some dummy tests to try out mastery and its proccing as much as it should. tried reforging all my hate to mastery and with base mastery. here is a ss of 501 auto atacks with base mastery



stats for my toon for the tests above is below, 4 p t10, painful death, and had the haste trinket on instead of my hc fanged skull, ill switch it depending on what stat has more sep value (have not seen any stat info for arms around) gemmed str on red and str/crit on yellow, and hit on blues to reach hit cap



as far as rotation goes, ill stick with rend, ms, op on proc and maybe just spamming slam in between and hs when i got more than 60 rage or something.

i really hope someone has a good rotation for arms, id like to know if its worth using execute in the rotation when its available as well

[Breakthoven]

Yeah, thats what I thought. Going for t10 glove, painfuldeath as pants. Theres a guy who's has been doing a research, sounds interesting:
Version 4.0.1 13164 (release)
Oct 6 2010

I have been looking everywhere for constructive arms warrior discussion. Not PVP but PVE, and yes I am one of the few who have loved arms pve from the beginning and never turn back. Now my guild is still raiding ICC25 2 nights a week and will continue to after 4.0 hits. I am sure many others are in the same boat.

My questions and notes come from 2 weeks on the PTR trying to prepare for 4.0 Live and this is what I have come up with. Please if you have any thing to say keep it on topic and aimed towards Arms PVE

First off lets look at mastery for Arms.

Bonus Swing: This is similar to the Sword Specialization talent that is currently in the game, but Bonus Swing will work on all attacks and with all weapons. You have a chance to proc a free, instant weapon swing that hits for 75% damage.

EJ has reported this "Bonus Swing" does not generate rage

Jumping on the PTR the first thing I did was changed all my +20Crit gems to STR.

The rotation has not change to much,
Maintain Rend, OP on proc, Slam! timed with Auto Attack, Heroic Strike on 80+ rage.
Colossus Smash is not available tell level 81 which will replace our Execute on our Sudden Death procs.

I have soooo much haste.... is this good? Yes and No... my experience resulted in adjusting my stats to the below section in bold.

Haste is good for keeping that weapon speed short but it also makes timing slam that much more difficult. I am positive someone will come out with a suggest haste for optimal dps sooner or later.
Get to your hit cap - anything over reforge to mastery (keep in mind we are not fury warriors)
Get to your exp cap(26) - anything over reforge to mastery

Now we have the priorities covered what about all that haste.
(Keep in mind I have not weighed in haste to crit on dps gains)
In full sanctified, mix of 277 off pieces and Shadows Edge I ended up change every piece with haste to the 40% turn over to Mastery.

Ended up with
8% hit, 26 exp, 34% crit, 4800 AP, 11% haste, 26% Mastery and a weapons speed of 3.3 with a white swing generating 30 rage.

My guess is it would be optimal for us to utilize haste for a 3.0 weapon speed. Reforge haste to mastery until you hover just above 3.0 weapon speed. Not including raid buffs

My dps was 6.3k DPS on the ?? dummy in Exodar. In comparison to Live I'm doing more single target dps on the PTR and more dps then other suggestions like; stack hit, stack haste.. etc..

Keep in mind since Mastery swings only generate a white swing of 75% damage Crit may be a better option. I will post my results when I get a chance to test it.

[Deleted]

Arms warrior is nerfed BIG in 4.0.1 =/

[Troyzilla]

Arms warrior is nerfed BIG in 4.0.1 =/

No worse than fury.

@beakthoven & the OP, I'd suggest going crit/str instead of pure str, and not to bother capping exp. Dodges don't hurt arms at all, it just allows another overpower which is 100% crit for deep wounds uptime, which is our top damaging ability.

[Strafir]

Im running with pretty much the best gear possible when 4.0 hits, and if arms is the
way to go, id get 8% hit, 26% expertise (need to tweak some numbers) and then just
convert all your haste to mastery.

Before the ICC buff when arms could kind of compete with fury in damage, some people
theorycrafted that taking only like 12% expertise would end up being a DPS upgrade,
but if im totally honest, I think thats a bunch of bulls.. and would much rather
play with a stable set of stats, especially now when overpower isnt as critical as before.

Some people are probably going to speculate that haste is worth more now that your
mastery procs another 75% swing, but trust me, if you want to do any kind of damage
with arms, you need crit. Get yourself above 40% that overpower will have a 100% chance
to crit, and then maybe start thinking about haste.



What people must start to realize is that no matter if your Fury or Arms, heroic
strike is the ability you do damage with. Bloodthirst and Ragingblows
do terrible damage compaired to it, arms Mortal strike is above the priority
of heroic strike because it might increase the MS/OP by 30%. Use it
as much as possible.

Slam does terrible damage and costs lots of rage, so its really low on
your priority list. The only time I really care to cast it is when Deadly
calm is up and I have to pretty much throw out everything I possibly can
when MS/OP/HS is on cd. I simply dont have enough time or rage left to spend.
Also do remember that if you have good enough gear to start pumping haste,
slam might just gimp your damage because its resets your auto attack swing.

[Breakthoven]

Arms warrior is nerfed BIG in 4.0.1 =/

Nerfed? Tbh I believe it's getting somewhat buffed. It's true that it's missing 1 attack, but arms looks pretty cool right now.

[Strafir]

Nerfed? Tbh I believe it's getting somewhat buffed. It's true that it's missing 1 attack, but arms looks pretty cool right now.

I like that your positive, but if were completely honest, arms wasnt any good in PVE
in the first place, compared to many others at least. Its just that blizzard wants haste
to be "the thing", and haste just doesnt benefit arms that much.

A great spec for PVP, but im afraid the potential for PVE just doesnt seem to be there.

[Troyzilla]

I like that your positive, but if were completely honest, arms wasnt any good in PVE
in the first place, compared to many others at least. Its just that blizzard wants haste
to be "the thing", and haste just doesnt benefit arms that much.

A great spec for PVP, but im afraid the potential for PVE just doesnt seem to be there.

Not to totally rain on your parade bro, but if you never thought arms was viable for pve, why are you contributing to a thread dedicated to it's evolution?

Also, I see you're still using a bunch of leather/agility pieces, may I ask your reasoning for doing so?

EDIT: Also once you reach enough mastery (I forget the %), raging blow does indeed do more damage than heroic strike, HS still just has a ridiculous crit % due to incite, which won't be spec'd at 85.

[Strafir]

Not to totally rain on your parade bro, but if you never thought arms was viable for pve, why are you contributing to a thread dedicated to it's evolution?

Also, I see you're still using a bunch of leather/agility pieces, may I ask your reasoning for doing so?

EDIT: Also once you reach enough mastery (I forget the %), raging blow does indeed do more damage than heroic strike, HS still just has a ridiculous crit % due to incite, which won't be spec'd at 85.

I played arms untill 25m normal lich king, which after fury just becomes a better spec. A warrior using one
two hander cannot possibly compete with a warrior using two at the same time while he has an equal percentage
of crit as the arms warriors does when fights last around 1½min. You cant form a set of items for arms that
would cap you with all stats needed which is quite irritating too.

Im currently using 3 agi items because at the time I copied the character, I did not have items to compete
with. You have probably not tested it yet, nor done the research of fury, but if you harcap yourself with hit,
you will end up doing the most possible damage in raids because of your hastevalues. While I agree that
mastery is a nice way to up the damage of fury warriors, with the current gears we have, its just not possible
to reforge enough hit and mastery at the same time, so you have to choose hit.

PS. why would you not spec 2/3 incite at lvl85?

[someoneelse]

you can have 2/3 incite with deep wounds for fury at 85

i started raiding arms and was quite ok but it was just stupid how fury scaled in 25 man raids with higher tier gear making arms obsolete imo

[Troyzilla]

I honestly believe that drums of war is overall better than incite, simply because in the grand scheme of things not having to spend rage on shouts or interrupts will save you more rage/dps, this is situational of course.

Rather than continuing arguing, may I ask what dps, and in what setting/environment, you were pulling using your HS top priority rotation?

[someoneelse]

as far as haste goes for arms, i believe as we get higher mastery ratings we will see the benefit of more procs cos of increased swing speed

just went to the dummy again and it does seem like hs and op are going to be the main sources of damage with ms giving us 30% more damage on next ms,exe and op

rage cost and cast time on slam does not make it very attractive to use unless u got nothing else to throw in the rotation at the time. also, got my crit up to 38% changing my hwt for the hc wfs and my swing is at 3.03 getting min 40% crit for 100% op crits seems to be ideal (not taking into consideration crit buffs from raid here)

need to do some execute testing to see if its better than hs with the increased damage from ms to throw it into the rotation

[Breakthoven]

Meh, remember this is Cata, not LK. I do believe that Arms can be pve spec just like hunters,warlocks,druids, who have trees with multiple uses(one for pve and the other for pvp). It would be too stupid that "we" are the only class that has 2 dps spec and that one of 'em is only for pvp, instead of both being ´pve/pvp like the classes I mentioned above. I believe it's time that blizzard makes arms pve viable, and I think its going to happen with Cataclysm.

[Troyzilla]

Meh, remember this is Cata, not LK. I do believe that Arms can be pve spec just like hunters,warlocks,druids, who have trees with multiple uses(one for pve and the other for pvp). It would be too stupid that "we" are the only class that has 2 dps spec and that one of 'em is only for pvp, instead of both being ´pve/pvp like the classes I mentioned above. I believe it's time that blizzard makes arms pve viable, and I think its going to happen with Cataclysm.

Well stated. 4.0.1 rotation will be roughly 90% of the rotation at 85 though, CS is easy enough to add to the top of the priority list. Off the top of my head I'd also venture a guess that inner rage would have it's ideal use right after you come out of a bladesorm at full rage. Again, I don't think many people, if anybody, has been in an ideal raid situation on PTR so come Tuesday much more will be learned.

[Strafir]

Rather than continuing arguing, may I ask what dps, and in what setting/environment, you were pulling using your HS top priority rotation?

By not forcing slam in on every 1s breaks when everything else is on cd, I would have enough rage to use
heroic strike pretty much any time. I keep getting a DPS between 7700 and 8300 depending on how long
I completely rage starve for because of no buffs or environmental damage. The sessions took around
3 minutes each.

Charge -> MS+HS -> rend -> wait -> OP+HS -> MS -> wait -> deadly calm + go insane with everything including slam.

I feel like an idiot for having to spec bladestorm (hits for 1100 damage -.-) but I guess you should use it
when its looking like you wont get any rage for a while.

Meh, remember this is Cata, not LK. I do believe that Arms can be pve spec just like hunters,warlocks,druids, who have trees with multiple uses(one for pve and the other for pvp). It would be too stupid that "we" are the only class that has 2 dps spec and that one of 'em is only for pvp, instead of both being ´pve/pvp like the classes I mentioned above. I believe it's time that blizzard makes arms pve viable, and I think its going to happen with Cataclysm.

Arms was actually better than Fury during most of ulduar, so I guess theres a chance.

[Mihalik]

I honestly believe that drums of war is overall better than incite, simply because in the grand scheme of things not having to spend rage on shouts or interrupts will save you more rage/dps, this is situational of course.

Rather than continuing arguing, may I ask what dps, and in what setting/environment, you were pulling using your HS top priority rotation?

Battle/Commanding Shout are part of your rotation now. They DO NOT use rage, they generate it. And large chunks of it too. Demo Shout/Piercing Howl/Pummle are the only abilities affected by Drums of War. This makes the talent alot more PvP then PvE.

And if you think you wont talent Incite at 85 you are horribly wrong. Currently at 85 you actualy talent Incite 3/3 and Deep Wounds 2/3 for fury. HS strikes are the primary damage dealing ability of both Arms and Fury. None of the other attacks even remotly compete with HS. Heroic Strikes after Colossus Smash can crit upwards of 18K at 85. Whit huge amounts of mastery the added damage of the two attacks of Raging Blow can hit for more, but as Fury you cant afford stacking mastery as much as you would like to.

As arms Colossus Smash has 3 or 4 times higher of an uptime then for Fury making HS alot more valuable. Basicaly you 3 primary buttons to go to for damage are Mortal Strike for the damage buff+enrage, Overpower for its crit rate and low rage cost and HS for damage. Slams dont hit for enough and you still risk getting rage starved by it.

[someoneelse]

Battle/Commanding Shout are part of your rotation now. They DO NOT use rage, they generate it. And large chunks of it too. Demo Shout/Piercing Howl/Pummle are the only abilities affected by Drums of War. This makes the talent alot more PvP then PvE.

And if you think you wont talent Incite at 85 you are horribly wrong. Currently at 85 you actualy talent Incite 3/3 and Deep Wounds 2/3 for fury. HS strikes are the primary damage dealing ability of both Arms and Fury. None of the other attacks even remotly compete with HS. Heroic Strikes after Colossus Smash can crit upwards of 18K at 85. Whit huge amounts of mastery the added damage of the two attacks of Raging Blow can hit for more, but as Fury you cant afford stacking mastery as much as you would like to.

As arms Colossus Smash has 3 or 4 times higher of an uptime then for Fury making HS alot more valuable. Basicaly you 3 primary buttons to go to for damage are Mortal Strike for the damage buff+enrage, Overpower for its crit rate and low rage cost and HS for damage. Slams dont hit for enough and you still risk getting rage starved by it.

how does execute fit in the rotation for arms and fury?

[Strafir]

how does execute fit in the rotation for arms and fury?

Execute hasnt been calculated yet, it crits for around 200 more damage than your
white attacks do. What makes this even worse is that your forced to spam it
when your target is below 25% to gain the significant hastebuff, and the duration
of the buff is short enough that you will only have time to blow one ability+hs
(because hs off global) before you again have to refresh your execute.

I really dont see why one would use execute as arms, keeping the armor penetrating buff
from colossus smash is more important, and HS/OP/MS just does more damage.

[someoneelse]

well since ms gives us 30% more damage on execute, thought it might be worth using it. im really more concerned about ms rotations for lvl 80 for the remaining time in wotlk. at this point we dont have acces to executioner talent from fury i belive.