[5.4 Guide] Arms PVE

[Underskilled]

Sounds good, thanks for clearing that up!

[bigbad]

A small question regarding the 2-piece single target rotation...Does it change how you prioritize your rotation outside of CS, due to how often you use OP inside of it now?

For example, during my rotation outside of CS, and having just used MS and are waiting for it to come back up, I'd normally OPx2 and then use a shout or HT, or I'd just use OPx3. Now, however, with using OP inside of CS, I'm never getting higher than two stacks of OP, as I'm using it all the time, either in or out of CS. This is causing me to need to MS inside of my CS, to regain stacks of OP and continue using it.

I guess what I'm asking is, is this the normal flow with using the new rotation? Constantly using my stacks of OP, and rarely having more than two at a time?

You don't really use shout or HT as arms that's for fury, use slam as filler. You MS on cd, I don't like delaying it for CS cause with back to back sudden death procs you'll be delaying MS constantly. I only delay MS for CS if I'm at high rage, not sure it's optimal but it feels good. When starting the fight with reck you end up with 5 stacks of tbf and it usually takes me quite a while to get rid of those with a high amount of CS procs, once you're down to 2 stacks you can MS-OP-slam-OP-MS so you'll be able to use 3 stacks if CS procs just before MS.

@Archimtiros
There is a lot more wrong with the post usually collision math is awesome but I think he had a late night too
OP=105% not 110% like in the post the MS bonus 175%/6=29.16% per second not per 0.5 second he only adds a 55% mastery proc to OP.
Done correctly it should be OP=105%+14.6% Slam=275%
6xOP=717.6
4xSlam=1100
You can add 55 to OP to account for 2 more chances for mastery procs assuming 50% mastery.

[Darkfriend]

"Use slam as filler"

...

no.

[meteo]

What happened to the thread about BB being bugged if you land a style right when it was supposed to tick? (on my mobile phone... searching mmoc with it is a nightmare).

Assuming it was reproducible, wouldn't that make slam spamming better again due to a lower chance of blocking bb ticks?

[Darkfriend]

What happened to the thread about BB being bugged if you land a style right when it was supposed to tick? (on my mobile phone... searching mmoc with it is a nightmare).

Assuming it was reproducible, wouldn't that make slam spamming better again due to a lower chance of blocking bb ticks?

It wasn't reproducible.

[Horror]

Hate to ask this, but can't find any definite proof as one says this but another says that.

Which is better on single target: Thok's and Skeer's, or Thok's and Evil Eye?

[sjsctt]

Hate to ask this, but can't find any definite proof as one says this but another says that.

Which is better on single target: Thok's and Skeer's, or Thok's and Evil Eye?

Thok + Evil eye. Collision did the math. I can link if you really need proof (takes a little digging)

[Horror]

I'd appreciate it if you did. I went through Collision's posts but couldn't find anything relating to Skeer's + Thok's. Could have overlooked it.

[Archimtiros]

I don't think we ever did the sims for Arms, just as Fury. Two reasons:
1) Fury is superior ST dmg (and Thoks is far superior for Arms multi target dmg)
2) not enough difference between Arms and Fury stats for Skeers to pull ahead, even on ST. Skeers is not a bad trinket, Thoks is simply better, especially if there is any multi target portion of the fight.

If y'all don't believe us it's really easy to sim for yourself which is better, I'll even import my toon and do it when I get home.

[sjsctt]

Ok, here is the sims of the trinkets (stolen). Looks like any trinket beats out non TF T15.

As usual, I must warn that the information below is based on unrealistic aoe situations that do not exist in game, however, we can gain useful insight on when certain trinkets/abilities may be worth using.

What these pictures show:
These trinkets are the BIS FURY TG T16H profile, stripped of both trinkets, and then replaced with only the one trinket shown in the picture.

Single target:
http://gyazo.com/22fb80b8798fa59ea00db77c4bbd2b1c
Two Target:
http://gyazo.com/7b551287d156df9b3a08da4106ca49d8
Three:
http://gyazo.com/58ebc4bd4c2a69cb1444484c50e542b7
Four:
http://gyazo.com/571aae702f6262a34c105f998d44512a
Five:
http://gyazo.com/b2e6bce8e271ede12e4ae3fa6e3f4af9
Six:
http://gyazo.com/046df62133b94d0b35901bdbe496e59e
Seven:
http://gyazo.com/72555f37b1a3b6fb06080a925ceed924
Eight:
http://gyazo.com/bed4d31c0e886c203ad6aa6c2d86d022

Bonus picture, TG Fury vs Arms 8 target BIS with both specs using 2 best trinkets.
http://gyazo.com/15d5a919fd19af824803a9131b6ccefc

Summary on when to use certain abilities/trinkets:
Single target:
Galakras + Thoks + Storm Bolt + Dragon Roar

Two Target:
Galakras + Thoks + Storm Bolt + Bladestorm

Three:
Fusion Fire + Thoks + Bladestorm + Bloodbath

Four:
Fusion Fire + Eye of Galakras + Bladestorm + Bloodbath

Five+ targets
Fusion Fire + Eye of Galakras + Bladestorm + Bloodbath

Fusion fire kind of came out of nowhere. I had done most AoE testing with SMF, where FF was a very meh trinket, but for TG it’s pretty damn good on consistent aoe.

The only problem is, any time spent with 1-2 targets will negatively impact the use of it. This trinket will likely be used on fight A,B +C that happen to have high AoE uptimes, not the type of bursty AoE we’ve seen in most ToT encounters. It may end up being the padding trinket we use after progression, but honestly I haven’t done enough raid testing to tell at the moment, but I wouldn't recommend using it unless you're hitting 3+ targets 90% of the encounter.

As far as Arms is concerned, I was going to make a separate post but the findings are almost exactly the same:

[Alonzo33]

hey. does anybody knows if the cleave trinket got nerfed?
first few weeks it done to me 5-7% of my total dmg in a fight, now only 2.3-2.5%..
is it worth to go with that trinket playing arms on cleave fights ? ( spoils , galakras ) ?
any bis trinkets for cleave fights?

[Zaffre]

You have to consider that as your teammates get gear, their AoE is going to get better over time, too. When things die quicker, your burst AoE will start to look lower.

[Darkfriend]

hey. does anybody knows if the cleave trinket got nerfed?
first few weeks it done to me 5-7% of my total dmg in a fight, now only 2.3-2.5%..
is it worth to go with that trinket playing arms on cleave fights ? ( spoils , galakras ) ?
any bis trinkets for cleave fights?

It's 100% RNG trinket. It has no ICD or RPPM protection, so it can vary wildly from pull to pull and week to week.

[Tmbryant91]

What do you mean when you say inside CS and outside CS?

[Deleted]

What do you mean when you say inside CS and outside CS?

Inside CS= When Colossus Smash is active on your target.
Outside CS= When Colossus Smash is NOT active on your target.

[Woodgnome]

You don't really use shout or HT as arms that's for fury, use slam as filler. You MS on cd, I don't like delaying it for CS cause with back to back sudden death procs you'll be delaying MS constantly. I only delay MS for CS if I'm at high rage, not sure it's optimal but it feels good. When starting the fight with reck you end up with 5 stacks of tbf and it usually takes me quite a while to get rid of those with a high amount of CS procs, once you're down to 2 stacks you can MS-OP-slam-OP-MS so you'll be able to use 3 stacks if CS procs just before MS.

@Archimtiros
There is a lot more wrong with the post usually collision math is awesome but I think he had a late night too
OP=105% not 110% like in the post the MS bonus 175%/6=29.16% per second not per 0.5 second he only adds a 55% mastery proc to OP.
Done correctly it should be OP=105%+14.6% Slam=275%
6xOP=717.6
4xSlam=1100
You can add 55 to OP to account for 2 more chances for mastery procs assuming 50% mastery.

It does seem like Collisions weapon damage numbers are wrong (I assumed they weren't, when I wrote my post). Your MS seems to be wrong too though, so I did a quick test on the dummies (no buffs/cancelling all damage auras) ingame and it seems to match up quite well with the respective tooltips:

MS: 215%
OP: 105%
Slam: 275%

The MS CD reduction +damage to OP IS per half second. Unless you can prove otherwise (not just claim), the formula is:
Extra damage to MS from OP: MS damage / (MS CD / CD reduction) = 215% / (6 / 0.5) = 17,9%


Regardless, I'd still say all the calculations are wrong due to too many simplifications (not accounting for crit and simplifying mastery proc to +55% damage), so here's my try at getting a more precise formula:

Assuming C = Crit (%) and M = Mastery (%)
MS damage: 215% * (1 + C) + 55% * (1 + C)
Slam damage: 275% * (1 + C) + 55% * (1 + C)
OP damage: 105% * (1 + C) + 55% * (1 + C) + MS damage / 12

Green = Weapon damage component
Orange = Mastery/Opportunity Strike component
Red = MS CD reduction component

With 6x OPs vs 4x Slams that gives the following graph:



Source: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...rive_web#gid=0
Spreadsheet formula for Slam (30% crit): = 4 * (275 * (1 + C$1) + 55 * $A3 * (1 + C$1))
Spreadsheet formula for OP (30% crit): = 6 * (105 * (1 + B$1 + 60%) + 55 * $A3 * (1 + B$1) + (215 * (1 + B$1) + 55 * $A3 * (1 + B$1))/12)

So basically Slam starts off being better than OP, but OP takes over at higher values of mastery (due to more Oppotunity Strike procs). This is even more true at high levels of crit, because OP doesn't scale as well with crit (since it gets closer to the crit cap).

However, we haven't taken into account that OP gives more rage for Heroic Strike, which makes OP stronger than suggested in the graphs. Stronger than Slam? Hard to say without backing it up with numbers, but also take into account that mastery scales much better for multitarget fights (Opportunistic Strike/Sweeping Strikes synergy) which also favours OP. And isn't multitarget fights exactly where we want to play arms?

Bottom line:
I'm very certain that OP spam will beat Slam spam on anything but single target (and even then it's debatable and relies upon your current crit/mastery values).

[Deleted]

Isnt OP Spam better on singletarget? (Outside CS) To fish for more sudden death procs. And Slam hits 10% harder inside CS, i thought that made it so that its better to use Slam in CS?

And for AoE, Sweeping Strikes makes Slam do 10%? additional AoE, so shouldnt Slam beat Overpower easily?

I dont quite follow your maths, yes they seem fine in a world where there is only crit, mastery, OP, MS and slam But theres alot more to it.

[Archimtiros]

Just got home, haven't read all your math yet, but yes, the original numbers pulled were incorrect, combination of some pre-buff and some late night math. It still doesn't really change anything. OP+HS is still very slightly better than Slam for pure ST as Arms because of its efficiency; but as Mortalomena pointed out, it really doesn't matter since the only time you want to even play Arms is on multi target fights. Currently Arms is only "better" for Galakras and perhaps Spoils.
Aside from that, if your playing Arms its because you enjoy the spec, not because you are worried about progressive damage, so in that case, do whatever you feel like doing.

The biggest part of Arms that people forget, is it really doesn't matter what you do with it. Its such a forgiving spec you can quite literally hit almost any combination of buttons and as long as you are filling GCD's you will pull very comparable numbers. The difference between full OP and full Slam was something like 3-5% at the time we simmed it all up. Uusing Slam inside CS and OP outside was something like another 1-2%. That's still an extremely small deviation.

[Darkfriend]

Just got home, haven't read all your math yet, but yes, the original numbers pulled were incorrect, combination of some pre-buff and some late night math. It still doesn't really change anything. OP+HS is still very slightly better than Slam for pure ST as Arms because of its efficiency; but as Mortalomena pointed out, it really doesn't matter since the only time you want to even play Arms is on multi target fights. Currently Arms is only "better" for Galakras and perhaps Spoils.
Aside from that, if your playing Arms its because you enjoy the spec, not because you are worried about progressive damage, so in that case, do whatever you feel like doing.

The biggest part of Arms that people forget, is it really doesn't matter what you do with it. Its such a forgiving spec you can quite literally hit almost any combination of buttons and as long as you are filling GCD's you will pull very comparable numbers. The difference between full OP and full Slam was something like 3-5% at the time we simmed it all up. Uusing Slam inside CS and OP outside was something like another 1-2%. That's still an extremely small deviation.

In 10m arms is great for heroic immersius.

[Deleted]

Hi,

got a question bout the CD reduce trinket. Since it also reduces the CD of Recklesness do you delay recklesness until the next skull banner or do you use it on cd?