Arms PvE

[glo]

Quick question...

My 10 man group is missing 1 buff. Currently, in the group as a hunter, I can provide either 30% bleed damage, or 8% spell damage on target. However, if our fury warrior goes arms, they could provide the bleed debuff, and I could provide the spell damage debuff.

How far behind is arms in terms of dps after the patch? Would the loss in dps from our warrior be made up in the fact that he's providing himself and our prot warrior with the bleed debuff? I had a look at WoL and I see a slight loss compared to fury with the top logs, but not much. Also, I couldn't really find many threads relating to the current state of arms PvE.

Any insight would be appreciated!

[Tranquilitas]

How far behind is arms in terms of dps after the patch?

I´m playing a warrior in ilvl~356 gear (we´ve just started to do raids in cata). I tried out both arms and fury because I recently changed my maincharacter from priest (disc/shadow) to the warrior. So I may have small experience but as a good player I´m adapting fast and I think I perform well in both specs. I´m theorycrafting every now and then (because I like to do that).

In my current gear I´m lacking about 2k DPS as arms vs. fury TG (Dummy-Test, selfbuffed). I´ve done some simulations using simulationcraft "best-in-slot" and "my own gear/talentspec". The results show clearly Arms << Fury TG in terms of DPS for Patchwerk like fights (2.7k unbuffed and up to 4.5k DPS for BiS and raidbuffed) which is reflected by my personal experience.

Now assuming you have at least my gear (heroic+some crafted epics) the calculation is simple. Your warrior will lose up to 4.5K DPS at certain fights and the dps gain for the group is one additional debuff for casters.

Assuming you currently provide the bleeding debuff take "n=Number of Casters" and their average DPS (lets say 15k without the additional debuff).

DPS-Gain (8% buff) = n*(15000*1.08-15000) = n*(16200-15000)=n*1200
DPS-Loss = 1*4500 (he will still have a bleeding debuff this time applied by himself so there are just changes related to his spec)

[Deleted]

Arms seems pretty solid to me... it's not as much gear dependent as fury (with long miss streaks they get rage starved quite fast) but it could be really hard to track all the procs sometimes and spit-second decision making can cost you a good chunk of dps...
Just talk to the warrior and ask him if he feels like trying... maybe he'll enjoy it after all

[Alianthos]

Arms is still behind Fury. In my humble opinion, if the buff is only for him and a tank, its not worthy. You dont have much bleeds there.

Edit : yeah oops, thanks Thyr.

[Vintersol]

Arms is still behind Fury

/fixedtenchars......

[Deleted]

I've been arms all Wotlk and Cata, now i had to change to fury (what i hate), because Arms is worse then ever.

Since HS is worthless ur just spamming MS, OP and slam and CS when its up.
Raiding with my 9/12 normal-mode 10man guild was okay befor, i normaly was no.2-4 in dmg done after the patch i constantly was no.5 loosing 2k dps.

[Ealyssa]

Why do you absolutly need every debuff in r10 ? "Bleed class" can apply it themselves (feral, arms warrior, rogue), if your raid don't have the "mangle" debuff you probably don't need it.

8% spell damage is probably more usefull

[Deleted]

I've been arms all Wotlk and Cata, now i had to change to fury (what i hate), because Arms is worse then ever.

Since HS is worthless ur just spamming MS, OP and slam and CS when its up.
Raiding with my 9/12 normal-mode 10man guild was okay befor, i normaly was no.2-4 in dmg done after the patch i constantly was no.5 loosing 2k dps.

Sorry but I must STRONGLY disagree with you there. Arms worse than ever? Arms is at least somewhat viable for PvE these days. HS was just plain brainless, I am extremely happy they made this long promised change to HS/Slam. The patch was quite a buff for arms, so I must admit that I am not entirely sure what you are refering to in your post here.

Arms was bad in Wotlk, I was always arms, wotlk forced me to go fury. With cata changes it was possible to go arms again and I did. With this patch it is even more possible to go arms again. If the patch made you lose dps as arms, then, no disrespect here, you need to learn the new rotation. You will actually do more than before.

[Alonewarrior]

Sorry but I must STRONGLY disagree with you there. Arms worse than ever? Arms is at least somewhat viable for PvE these days. HS was just plain brainless, I am extremely happy they made this long promised change to HS/Slam. The patch was quite a buff for arms, so I must admit that I am not entirely sure what you are refering to in your post here.

Arms was bad in Wotlk, I was always arms, wotlk forced me to go fury. With cata changes it was possible to go arms again and I did. With this patch it is even more possible to go arms again. If the patch made you lose dps as arms, then, no disrespect here, you need to learn the new rotation. You will actually do more than before.

I have to agree with you. The difference in dps from before the patch 'til now is around 2-4k, depending on the fight. I've seen a significant increase, so anyone that is doing less now isn't doing something correctly.

[Coreva]

Yeah... im holding an average of 15-17k dps on raid boss encounters as arms and thats with still adjusting to the changes of arms, still trying to get used to not stockpiling rage for inner rage, tends to hurt me sometimes. However you do have to be geared correctly for it, im running at 13.5% crit, 17 mastery, 1.4% haste, 8800 attack power, with battleshout up. Still need to test whether grabbing some more haste now though is worth it as slam scales with haste now.

[Alonewarrior]

Yeah... im holding an average of 15-17k dps on raid boss encounters as arms and thats with still adjusting to the changes of arms, still trying to get used to not stockpiling rage for inner rage, tends to hurt me sometimes. However you do have to be geared correctly for it, im running at 13.5% crit, 17 mastery, 1.4% haste, 8800 attack power, with battleshout up. Still need to test whether grabbing some more haste now though is worth it as slam scales with haste now.

I'd still think that haste is going to be a much lower stat priority over hitting the hit cap, expertise cap, and then going for strength, crit, and mastery. I run at 7.56% crit (9.81% with battle shout), 19.81 mastery, 1.2% haste, 8251 attack power (9403 with battle shout). I'm more focused with getting my crit up over haste since it effects many of our abilities. Your crit is fairly high as Arms. What's your character name and realm?

[Coreva]

Ramorrah of baelgun, yeah im thinking at most 5% haste. I currently havent regemmed my gear to strength yet, i had almost all purple str/hit gems to use the old metagem but now i should be able to gem full strength and reforge other stats into hit rating. You should be valueing crit very highly as arms though as it gives you a better chance for 10% damage buff from MS, i generally as a rule of thumb keep my mastery and crit pretty close to each other.

[Alonewarrior]

Ramorrah of baelgun, yeah im thinking at most 5% haste. I currently havent regemmed my gear to strength yet, i had almost all purple str/hit gems to use the old metagem but now i should be able to gem full strength and reforge other stats into hit rating. You should be valueing crit very highly as arms though as it gives you a better chance for 10% damage buff from MS, i generally as a rule of thumb keep my mastery and crit pretty close to each other.

I'm working to get them more balanced out, but my issue lies with hit rating at the moment. If I try and reforge/regem too much I'll be below the hit cap, since I'm at 8.14%. It's kind of a pain.

[smartAXE]

would you keep your 5% crit buff from a rogue/druid? if not then hes gotta stay fury for the raids dps to stay up
losing it to give the tank minimal threat and himself a 1k dps loss doesnt seem like it would help imo

[Coreva]

Yeah its not much of a problem for me, i have some huge pieces that are being reforged at the moment like my hit trinket, but first thing i can say is to replace your boots for the love of god lol. That would give you some more flex for sure. Heck id definitely take the blue ones im using over the epic ones your using even if it is a gain of strength to use yours. Id honestly sacrifice some of your mastery right now.

[Deleted]

Rule of thumb for Fury vs. Arms in a 10 man group:

If your raid has a Feral Druid, go Arms, if it does not, go Fury.

Feral is the only spec that gets a substatial amount of damage from bleeds and it brings the same raidbuff as rampage.

[Alonewarrior]

Yeah its not much of a problem for me, i have some huge pieces that are being reforged at the moment like my hit trinket, but first thing i can say is to replace your boots for the love of god lol. That would give you some more flex for sure. Heck id definitely take the blue ones im using over the epic ones your using even if it is a gain of strength to use yours. Id honestly sacrifice some of your mastery right now.

Yeah, I despise my boots right now. They're just awful. The strength gain is great, but the wasted parry stat sucks. I've been hoping to get my hands on the valor boots (not enough gold), or the Chimaeron ones, or the boe ones from BWD trash. Any of the three would be awesome to have.

Rule of thumb for Fury vs. Arms in a 10 man group:

If your raid has a Feral Druid, go Arms, if it does not, go Fury.

Feral is the only spec that gets a substatial amount of damage from bleeds and it brings the same raidbuff as rampage.

I would have to agree with this. I play Arms in raid due to the lack of interest in Fury, but Fury definitely would be better for the run than Arms if you're without any other melee classes to gain any benefit from the the increased bleeds.

[Kankipappa]

I've been raiding 25mans as Arms for a while now on Cata, and i've been enjoying it fairly well. Plus I'm in that way buffing my fellow fury guildie. The last patch actually buffed my dps for ~5k on average with raid buffed, since the rotation is more forgiving when not using mortal strike every possible cd (especially on execute phase!).
However since the HS got nerfed and the slaughter buff has to stack for 3 times, you have like 12 seconds ramp up time to get your fully working dps rotation, what indeed eats your starting burst with deadly calm compared to pre-patch (so better not use it on start)!

Even my Dummydps jumped for at least 3k dps, since before the patch I was only able to do sustained 13.5k dps on a dummy with burning my cd's on the rotations. Now I can keep the dps around 17k when dps'ing dummy for 8 million dmg. If you're interested what kind of gear I have, here is my armory link: eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/ravencrest/harlin/simple

(I have 8.02% hit but the armory doesn't understand that Cloudburst ring so it won't show the reforging)

As in Arms vs. Fury... Fury is indeed at least 2-4k dps better depending on the fight, and Fury got insane burst cd's now aligned with Recklessness. However Fury got really weak AOE because of the cleave nerf and it kinda got "double-nerf" on aoe since you'll use less hit now, so you also got less free rage for spamming cleave if you need it. So it loses big time to everyone else on fights like Maloriak. But since single target is the most important thing...

However I love the new recklessness with bladestorm at berserking stance, shame it's always a aggro stealer no matter what if you won't get salvation...

[Nume]

Lol that sounds fun, bladestorm with reck :P. I'll have to try that with my guild pally tank who thinks he can hold threat through anything, or at least keep things from klling me :P.

[Shelly]

With PvE arms my "gut" feeling is to go for enough mastery for 50% strikes of opportunity. Once you reach that point I think you'll get a lot more out of crit and haste since just about every single attack will trigger a 2nd attack.