Warrior DPS - 2h VS Dual-Wield

[Chaelexi]

In PVE though, would MS be useless, making it a better idea to go for Death Wish? Or would I be forced to go for BT to be viable in raids with the limited debuff slots?

The majority of the time it is useless, it only helps when there are bosses that have a heal or adds that heal.

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We had a two Handed Fury in our Raid and i remember fights with him something like this: for the first 20% Bosslife he stood in the back and danced, after that he started to dps. At roughly 50% bosslife he used his soulstone

You could start out DPSing at off the start you jsut had to be liberal with using heroic strike for the first 10-15% but after that you would get agro around the 30-50% mark unless the tank had thunderfury. If he had that he would hold threat till execute.

[Rehija]

@ Chaelexi

I didnt play warrior until late BC, so i never knew the tricks, do's and dont's behind warriors. But i, and the rest of the raid knew he was one of the top dps in our raid. In his case it came with a price

[potis]

Would something like https://classicdb.ch/?talent#LhhxdAboxZE0hVM0o work, or at least be okay for raiding? It definitely is more suited to AOE, but will its single target be acceptable as well?

There is no such thing as "Suited for aoe", just single target most things.

Vanilla was really simple no matter what people are trying to say.

As a Warrior you were only a tank until end AQ40 gear, otherwise simply play a Rogue for that raid DPS spot, if you really care that much.

After 1.11/1.12 aka the last 7 months of Vanilla where all the fuzz about Fury is about (And 10 years of private servers in 1.12 claiming its comparable to what actually Vanilla was).

Tons of things to type but i cant really bother, already typed it in other similar threads.

DW is more pure pure pure DPS oriented than 2hand also, remember that, also stockpile gold for them Edgemaster's.

[MMKing]

Patch 1.6 saw the change to bloodthirst, changing it from an ''on next melee'' ability to an instant cast ability. Prior to this patch, the go to Warrior DPS method was arms warrior casting slam between melee hits. This is why you see so many 2H warriors if you look up old world of warcraft videos.

The talent which increased off-hand damage was also added later in vanilla. By patch 1.9, the warrior abilities and talents are pretty much identical in function to how they ended up in patch 1.12.

The situation seen on 1.12 vanilla servers is pure fantasy compared to reality. The value of weapon skills was very poorly understood by everyone but a select minority that took the time to actually test how all the mechanics worked. Even when blood thirst was changed, the perceived buff to fury did not really provide enough incentive for Arms warriors to leave behind their Epic 2H weapon, and gather two new one-handers. Especially when Fury and Rogues go for many of the same weapons in Molten core. There is also the issue of pvp, which Fury is just straight up worse at.

[anon5123]

2h doesn't work because your rage generation sucks, so you'll just be autoattacking most of the time, whereas dual wield, you can use bloodthirst+whirlwind on CD and still have rage left over for heroic strike / hamstring. (hamstring procs weapon enchants and other things, since it counts as a melee hit)

You can get some cheeky DPS on horde side with Windfury totem and Bonereaver's Edge, but outside of that, 2h is garbo.

[Kralljin]

Generally speaking:

For levelling Arms is seen as the superior spec, your biggest source of damage is simply having a good two handed weapon and you're good to go.
Fury (or Dual wield) requires two good weapons and decent gear to deal decent white hit damage, hit is in particular important as your offhand has a massive miss chance.
(which is next to nonexistant on level gear).

2H dps is only a thing on Horde side, it's basically a Arms / Fury hybrid that goes for Slam, windfury is pretty much required to get extra rage due WF procs.

The bottomline is, being a Dps Warrior in the Vanilla / BC era requires a good raid, people willing to give you leather gear with Hit / AP and gold to craft certain items.
So unless you intend to join a guild for raiding and be serious about it, it is not recommended.
Dps Warrior without proper gear, especially fury just look like they're flailing at their target while nothing is happening because their white hits aren't doing anything and they're missing all the time=> no rage=> no styles=> no dps.

[Thunderball]

Fury. 2H or DW as Horde in MC/BWL, DW after. DW only as alliance.

[Highwhale]

If you asking about Arms then no. Because Mortal Strike debuff and bosses having limited amount of possible debuffs on them.

[Grimreaper]

2h doesn't work because your rage generation sucks, so you'll just be autoattacking most of the time, whereas dual wield, you can use bloodthirst+whirlwind on CD and still have rage left over for heroic strike / hamstring. (hamstring procs weapon enchants and other things, since it counts as a melee hit)

You can get some cheeky DPS on horde side with Windfury totem and Bonereaver's Edge, but outside of that, 2h is garbo.

2handed fury with imp slam is hands down the strongest dps spec in all of vanilla, with or without windfury. From Molten Core to Naxxramas. All you need is a decent slow 2hander and enough crit to reliably use Slam on auto-attacks. It was doable in pre-raid gear, it's generally better than dual-wield for the sole reason that you wont be using heroic strikes at all and as such will be doing a lot less threat per dps.

[Storfan]

2handed fury with imp slam is hands down the strongest dps spec in all of vanilla, with or without windfury. From Molten Core to Naxxramas. All you need is a decent slow 2hander and enough crit to reliably use Slam on auto-attacks. It was doable in pre-raid gear, it's generally better than dual-wield for the sole reason that you wont be using heroic strikes at all and as such will be doing a lot less threat per dps.

With 1.12.1 Talents yes. And I too believe classic will release in a 1.12.1-eque version.

[Gavll]

1. Early vanilla had 8 debuff slots TOTAL on any mob or boss. With BWL patch that was increased to 16 (which is still low). This means you had to keep a strict dicipline in the raid for what buff slots you used on boss and MS debuff was something you didnt want to have taking up a slot on the boss.
2. Arms is alot worse than 2h-fury when it comes to single-target raidboss DPS.

tldr: You'll never get to raid MS/Arms in any serious guild.

Except maybe on the Green dragon that heals. Think it's the one with the shades? I had to do MS duty once on that. We were about 20-25 ppl though

[Soxoffender]

In this raid I was 6th on total dps and 1st of all warriors. This raid was the 13 first bosses of Naxx, some of which I had to tank.
https://legacyplayers.com/Raids/Viewer/?id=13132&exp=0

Those Locks with 80% damage from SB. I'd genuinely forgotten I pressed so few buttons.

[Chaelexi]

Those Locks with 80% damage from SB. I'd genuinely forgotten I pressed so few buttons.

If there was no room for Corruption it could get as high as 90-100%(if you had soulshards for Shadowburn)

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Except maybe on the Green dragon that heals. Think it's the one with the shades? I had to do MS duty once on that. We were about 20-25 ppl though

A few others too, Gluth being one of them

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@ Chaelexi

I didnt play warrior until late BC, so i never knew the tricks, do's and dont's behind warriors. But i, and the rest of the raid knew he was one of the top dps in our raid. In his case it came with a price

Yeah you would rage dump with Slam early going. Most warriors were top DPS in Naxx, them or the mage that got the first crit(rolling ignites). It was the Norm that the DPS warriors got the soulstones. On progression it got to the point where alt Locks would SS the warriors on pulls.

[anon5123]

2handed fury with imp slam is hands down the strongest dps spec in all of vanilla

then why does nobody use it?

Maybe because Slam resets your swing timer and you won't be doing any autoattacks in between Slams, and you run out of rage and then sit there autoattacking for 10-15 seconds before you get high rage to start slamming again.

Also, Imp Slam is not required because Slam causes a GCD anyway. No matter what you're going to be doing 1 slam every 1.5 seconds.

I'm not sure why people keep making these ridiculous claims of "(bad, unviable crap) is the best DPS spec ever!!" when the game has been out for almost 14 years and every little aspect of every class has been thoroughly studied already.

[Grimreaper]

then why does nobody use it?

Maybe because Slam resets your swing timer and you won't be doing any autoattacks in between Slams, and you run out of rage and then sit there autoattacking for 10-15 seconds before you get high rage to start slamming again.

Also, Imp Slam is not required because Slam causes a GCD anyway. No matter what you're going to be doing 1 slam every 1.5 seconds.

I'm not sure why people keep making these ridiculous claims of "(bad, unviable crap) is the best DPS spec ever!!" when the game has been out for almost 14 years and every little aspect of every class has been thoroughly studied already.

I guess you didnt know that you could use a swing-timer addon and reliably use Slam with very very little loss to the auto-attacks. The idea is to only use Slam as soon as possible after a white hit lands, not to spam it untill you're out of rage. The trick is to hit the Slam button just before the white hit lands, when the animation for it starts. Because the white hit is going to land then no matter what, and you'd very often see Slam and the auto-attack land at nearly the exact same time. Thats why you need to get imp slam. With full raid gear, all buffs and whatnot, and enough crit, you're also going to get enough rage from each white hit to use Slam on pretty much every single auto-attack.

[MMKing]

@Grimreaper

2H Slam is only the strongest warrior DPS specc until patch 1.6 when Bloodthirst is changed to instant cast. It's also insanely weapon dependent since all your attacks derive from weapon damage. Unlike fury warrior, whose blood thirst damage only derive from attack power. If you can get Bonereaver's edge, this is not really an issue as far as weapons go. However, once you got Bonereaver's edge, you've already finished all the pre-1.6 content so it's not really a progression weapon. In fact, your best bet is probably Arcanite reaper going into Molten Core.

That is if Blizzard opt for going from patch 1.0 to 1.12. If they just launch 1.12, Fury will be king in PVE while Arms will be king in PVP.

[RickJamesLich]

In PVE though, would MS be useless, making it a better idea to go for Death Wish? Or would I be forced to go for BT to be viable in raids with the limited debuff slots?

While leveling or doing 5 mans at 60, MS will be fine, but yes once you're in raiding, you won't want to go MS (unless you want to piss off the raid leader lol).

At that point you do want to pick bloodthirst and it's mainly just because it doesn't put up a debuff.... fury of course is top tier dps, competitive with mages, rogues, and locks, the interesting thing is many geared arms warriors can do almost just as well, but it's that damn debuff slot that prevents people from going arms.

[anon5123]

I guess you didnt know that you could use a swing-timer addon and reliably use Slam with very very little loss to the auto-attacks. The idea is to only use Slam as soon as possible after a white hit lands, not to spam it untill you're out of rage. The trick is to hit the Slam button just before the white hit lands, when the animation for it starts. Because the white hit is going to land then no matter what, and you'd very often see Slam and the auto-attack land at nearly the exact same time. Thats why you need to get imp slam. With full raid gear, all buffs and whatnot, and enough crit, you're also going to get enough rage from each white hit to use Slam on pretty much every single auto-attack.

Still, you claim it's the "strongest DPS spec in the game", yet barely anyone uses it. 99% of DPS warriors are dual wield. Maybe because dual wield is better.

[Rehija]

Maybe because dual wield is better.

Those 99% didnt either use a swingtimer addon or made a cost / benefit analysis and came to the conclusion that dw was the better overall choice, less dps but also less headache while playing it.

For example: The strongest Hunter specc during vanilla was a spellpower oriented specc, but like with Ferals, the equip was really hard to get for a Hunter and you also needed to get a debuff slot reserved for you wich was not really good for the raid overall.

[Gavll]

Still, you claim it's the "strongest DPS spec in the game", yet barely anyone uses it. 99% of DPS warriors are dual wield. Maybe because dual wield is better.

Fury is less effort for similar output, that probably has something to do with it too. I have seen 2H furies topping metres though against similar geared DW furies.