Should i use Slam rather than Overpower in Colossus Smash?

[Deleted]

What title says.

[Valech]

Somehow I knew that you cant have that many posts once I read your thread. Aren´t there a ton of guides for Arms, PvE and PvP?

[Larynx]

http://www.icy-veins.com/

[Deleted]

If I were to follow that i should never use slam because I should save rage for the CS window.
And in that widnow i should "Use as many abilities as possible in the time that the debuff is active" which means Overpower+Heroic strike equals as many abilities as possible.
Due to how often CS procs i should never use slam then outside of recklessness because the rest of the time im pooling rage for heroic strike usage inside CS.
However i should also use slam whenver i have 40 or more rage.

I admit that I do not understand the guide on Icy Veins, hence why I am asking for help in a Warrior forum.

[Deleted]

You only want to slam when you've reck up or there's nothing else left to push while you're at 40+ rage, it's a priority list on IV from top to bottom priorities.

[Strafir]

The Arms cycle is abit confusing and irritating from time to time, but the following way is how to dish out the max amount of damage. You'll still be below fury and most other classes in the game, but playing mechanically well and waiting for a base damage buff is the only thing you can do for now.

Generating rage as Arms is alot slower than Fury which makes it that much more important to not mess up at any point of the fight because it will alter the end result greatly. Everything revolves around Pooling rage and reacting appropriately when you see a Sudden Execute proc. Obviously you need to fill all empty globals even outside Colossus smashes with something, and the abilities with the lowest cost are:

Colossus smash Inactive

MS => OP => SLAM => OP

Colossus smash Active

MS => SLAM => OP => SLAM

Using heroic strike is completely out of the question unless you've recently used a glyphed charge for extra rage.

[Warriorsarri]

I'll post what I said in an earlier thread.

When you see CS light up there are a few things you'll have to check. First off, how many Taste for Blood stacks you have. Secondly, how much rage you have.
If CS comes and you have 4-5 stacks of TfB, then you'll have to use OP until you have 3 or less stacks remaining.
If CS comes and you have 4-5 stacks of Tfb and you have 80+ rage, make sure you have 3 or less stacks before the next MS. If possible, use slam to eat some of the rage. if you can't use slam, make sure you don't ragecap by using Heroic Strike.
If CS comes and you have 3 or less stacks of TfB, and you have 40+ rage, use as many slams as you can afford.

[bigbad]

Arms doesn't pool rage as fury does it only converts extra rage into HS when CS is up while keeping enough rage to fill every gcd with slam/op/ms/cs.

- If reck+4set are up you use 3xslam+1xms
- Else you either use 3xOP and have 0.6 sec to use your last MS/CS/slam or you use 2xOP and have 0.1 sec to use your last MS/CS/slam

[Strafir]

I'll post what I said in an earlier thread.

When you see CS light up there are a few things you'll have to check. First off, how many Taste for Blood stacks you have. Secondly, how much rage you have.
If CS comes and you have 4-5 stacks of TfB, then you'll have to use OP until you have 3 or less stacks remaining.
If CS comes and you have 4-5 stacks of Tfb and you have 80+ rage, make sure you have 3 or less stacks before the next MS. If possible, use slam to eat some of the rage. if you can't use slam, make sure you don't ragecap by using Heroic Strike.
If CS comes and you have 3 or less stacks of TfB, and you have 40+ rage, use as many slams as you can afford.

Instead of ignoring my post, could you this time perhaps answer how a rotation like this will ultimately result in the best output possible? It makes sense if you're trying to do something that FEELS fluid, but that definitely doesn't give the best results.

Arms doesn't pool rage as fury does it only converts extra rage into HS when CS is up while keeping enough rage to fill every gcd with slam/op/ms/cs.

- If reck+4set are up you use 3xslam+1xms
- Else you either use 3xOP and have 0.6 sec to use your last MS/CS/slam or you use 2xOP and have 0.1 sec to use your last MS/CS/slam

Heroic strike hits a little harder than an overpower for three times the cost, it is probably the worst ability in our whole arsenal for a build that generates rage as slowly as Arms, you simply cannot afford it unless you get a huge chunk of it like charging and using battle shout before pulling the boss. A spec that generates more and more rage with gear (more crit, more mortal and cs crits, more rage) takes it even further away from a fixed cycle. Pooling for colossus smashes is the only accurate description I can think of to describe the functionality of Arms.

You can choose between fitting 3 Overpowers, one Slam and a Mortal strike or three Slams and a Mortal strike into one Colossus smash and when seeing that Slam has a chance to almost quadruple the damage of overpower when used with armor penetration I don't see how you could even argue about this.

PS. The tier set is garbage and you shouldn't be wearing anything else than the pants, maybe gloves if you cant get your hands on the double socketed ones.

[bigbad]

The rotation is not based on lucky crits, slam crits higher then OP but with 60% higher critchance and 1 sec gcds OP does slightly more dps on average. Last time I hit the dummy and did some quick napkin math (30% crit) slam hit for 84.6k on average and OP hit for 58k on average, comparing 2xslam=169.2k to 3xOP=174k. That's why you use 3xOP during CS.

You only need 40 rage after MS to maintain the rotation any additional rage can be put into heroic strikes nothing else to put it in anyway. Arms generates less rage then fury but still enough to HS once in most CS its not like fury where you pump 4x HS in every CS. Im not sure why you think you can't afford it?? Check some logs from jinrokh or some other single target fight about 4-5 HS per minute on average.

[Strafir]

Last time I hit the dummy and did some quick napkin math (30% crit) slam hit for 84.6k on average and OP hit for 58k on average, comparing 2xslam=169.2k to 3xOP=174k. That's why you use 3xOP during CS.

When doing math you can't have a ridiculous bias like that. Your example is three critical Overpowers (taking two globals worth of space) doing just a smudge more damage than two non-critical Slams. Your scenario describes the best possible case for Overpowers and the worst case scenario for Slams, and still Overpowers just end up slightly above. With a 35-40% crit chance atleast one of those Slams WILL crit ever so often literally doubling the output compared to Overpowers. If both crit you've quadrupled the damage. I don't understand how someone can argue against this.

You only need 40 rage after MS to maintain the rotation any additional rage can be put into heroic strikes nothing else to put it in anyway. Arms generates less rage then fury but still enough to HS once in most CS its not like fury where you pump 4x HS in every CS. Im not sure why you think you can't afford it?? Check some logs from jinrokh or some other single target fight about 4-5 HS per minute on average.

How can I say that you simply can't afford heroic strikes without charge, battle shout or berserker stance soaking? From experience. Heroic strike is an ability that does equivalent damage to Overpower, for three times the cost. Everything you do should work towards having as much rage as possible to dump into the next Colossus smash + Bloodbath and during the 50 second downtime something extremely drastic has to take place for you to score so much rage that you would consider dumping a heroic strike worth of it just for fun.

[bigbad]

The DPE values in my example have 30% crit for slam and 90% crit for OP that's why I said AVERAGE and put 30% crit in brackets, the values will vary with gear but I don't see the result change unless you go over 40% crit. Might be just your playstyle but with back to back CS procs you will definitely cap rage before your next bloodbath is back up, just out of curiosity do you use CS on the last gcd of the CS-debuff if it procs? It results in slightly higher CS uptime and a small dps gain but also uses less rage.

[marklar]

You only want to slam when you've reck up or there's nothing else left to push while you're at 40+ rage, it's a priority list on IV from top to bottom priorities.

i also use slam as my last keypress before CS ends. other than that, it's just a filler that i use in between CS to maintain 1-2 TfB stacks.

[Wazooty]

The DPE values in my example have 30% crit for slam and 90% crit for OP that's why I said AVERAGE and put 30% crit in brackets, the values will vary with gear but I don't see the result change unless you go over 40% crit. Might be just your playstyle but with back to back CS procs you will definitely cap rage before your next bloodbath is back up, just out of curiosity do you use CS on the last gcd of the CS-debuff if it procs? It results in slightly higher CS uptime and a small dps gain but also uses less rage.

Yes, if there are < 1.5 seconds left on your CS, use CS again. I'm not sure if it is > MS if you were in a situation where MS is up before CS runs out, but yeah.

[Warriorsarri]

If you have to choose between MS and CS, do MS.