#0 - July 31, 2008, 8:04 p.m.
I wrote this guide for the DPS warriors in my guild.
Please correct me if anything is wrong :)
"Hey fellow warriors!
Since the last post was outdated I decided to make a new one.
This is about playing a damage warrior in PvE. First I will start out with some basic theorycrafting.
[title]Theorycrafting[/title]
The main abilities you should look at is haste rating (not for arms, will come back to that later), attack power, strength, armor penetration, critical rating, hit rating and expertise rating. These are then converted from rating to percentage after the following table:
Expertise rating 3.9 to 1
Hit rating 15.8 to 1
Critical rating 22.1 to 1
Haste rating 10.5 to 1
Expertise rating reduces the chance to be dodged and parries. Even though you should always DPS the boss from behind (all melee DPS like it from behind) since they can't be parried then. The cap for expertise rating is 91. If you spec 2/2 in Weapon Mastery you will only need 76 rating to cap.
Hit rating increases your chance to hit. The cap for a warrior using a two handed weapon is 142. The cap for a warrior using dual wield is 304. Even tho fury warriors have a soft cap on 95 when 3/3 Precision specced. Then you wont miss any yellow hits.
When capped it is impossible to miss an attack. Many people say that if you hit more, you crit more. That is not correct since crit is calculated on ALL attacks, including the misses.
Critical rating increases your chance to get a critical strike. Those attacks do more damage then normal attacks and also gives more rage. This should theoratically be over 33 % using a 33/28 talent specialization since that allows you to have Flurry all the time. Critical hits also creates more threat since they do more damage.
Haste rating increases your weapon speed. This is a good for fury warriors, but not that good for arms warriors since the slam rotation is impossible to complete if you have swings that is 2.5 or faster.
Then there is armor penetration.
I will quote this from Elitist Jerks:
Q u o t e:
Notice that all but 2 of the bosses have either 6200 or 7700 armor. A similar pattern occurs in the trash mobs: 5475/5700/5950 or 6800/7100/7400 for level 70/71/72 mobs. In terms of percentage reduction, these values result in either 34.15% or 39.15% armor reduction vs attackers of the same level as the mob.
Armor reduction of a level 73 boss attacked by a level 70 player is 37% for 6200 armor, and 42.17% for 7700 armor. Sunder Armor x5 is -2600 armor, Faerie Fire is -610, and Curse of Recklessness is -800.
For a boss with 6200/7700 armor, SA x5 gives a damage increase of 18.36%/16.61%.
If we assume now that the boss has SA stacked x5 on it, adding just FF gives a further 4.5%/4.05% increase, CoR gives 5.99%/5.38%, and with both on they give 11.06%/9.9% increase over just SA.
Armor Penetration is a bit more complex because it comes it varied amounts. If the boss has just SA x5 on it, then the effect of ArP is as follows:
100 ArP: 0.71%/0.64%
200 ArP: 1.43%/1.29%
300 ArP: 2.16%/1.95%
400 ArP: 2.91%/2.62%
500 ArP: 3.66%/3.3%
For a fully debuffed boss (SA x5, FF, CoR) the increase from ArP is:
100 ArP: 0.79%/0.71%
200 ArP: 1.59%/1.42%
300 ArP: 2.41%/2.15%
400 ArP: 3.24%/2.89%
500 ArP: 4.08%/3.64%
The normal stats like strength and stamina I wont bother to explain since I hope you all know what they do.
[subtitle]Different types of DPS warrior[/subtitle]
To the different talent builds now. As a DPS warrior there is two different types of specs you can choose. Fury or arms. As an arms warrior you typically use a two handed weapon dealing high crits and attack a bit slower then a fury warrior. You are also there to buff the raid with talents like Blood Frenzy and Improved Demorilizing Shout. This is probably the most challenging damage class in the game at the moment. Timing and brainz are everything if you want to lead the damage meter.
As a fury warrior you are more of a wannabe-rogue. You deal fast damage usually equipped with two one hand weapons. You deal more damage as a fury warrior then as a arms warrior, based on that you have equal gear in both specs. This specialization got more room for error, like braindrops ( ;) ) and lag.
[title]Arms[/title]
As an arms warrior there are two different specializations to choose from. The first one is the Improved Slam specialization, most commonly used, but now a days there is also people using an Improved Heroic Strike build. The point with that is to have more rage so you can then spam WW and MS as soon as the cooldown is over. I havnt tried this out myself, but the specialization looks like follows: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=LG0xkAbog0dZVx0VMxRc
Since I have not tried it and not found that much information about it I can't give any good hints or criticism.
The other build is the classic Improved Slam build used by almost every Arms warrior. That specialization looks like this: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=LV0tzAbog0dZVx0V0gRc
The vital points are:
Do not skip the following talents for any reason:
- Death Wish (Needed for Mortal Strike in addition to on-demand damage improvement and fear immunity)
- Sword or Poleaxe Mastery (if using one of these weapon types, provides better than 5% damage improvement)
- Two-handed Weapon Specialization (5% damage improvement)
- Mortal Strike (Instant attack, one of the main sources for damage)
- Blood Frenzy (4% physical damage bonus to the entire raid)
- Cruelty (better than 5% total damage)
- Improved Demoralizing Shout (see below)
- Commanding Presence (Improves Battle Shout from 300 AP to 380 AP)
- Improved Slam (see below)
- Sweeping Strikes (You're this deep in the Fury tree for Improved Slam anyway, vastly improves your DPS on multiple targets)
- Deep Wounds (makes Blood Frenzy automatic on any critical hit)
- Flurry (15% attack speed reduction after a critical hit, has a high uptime)
- Weapon Mastery (Equivalent to 32 Expertise Rating, ok to skip if you can already cap experise without affecting other stats too much)
[subtitle]How to?[/subtitle]
So how should you play as a Arms warrior with a Improved Slam build?
You will follow a specific rotation, where timing is everything.
Auto attack, Slam, Mortal Strike
Auto attack, Slam, Whirlwind
Auto attack, Slam, Mortal Strike
Auto attack, Slam, Shout if needed (Demorilizing, Battle or Commanding)
Repeat!
If you don't have rage for WW/MS then don't double slam. That just takes time and makes you loose time to regenerate rage. If you can't complete the rotation, prioritate Slam before WW/MS.
Slam is an attack that resets swing timer. Therefor it is important you cast it in the beginning of the new cycle. To be able to do this you must use a swing timer, like Swing Timer or Quartz. I can recommend Quartz since it calculates your MS into the swing. When you cast Slam, check your MS on Quartz, if it says 200 MS for example, start casting slam 200 MS before the rotation is over. If you get the timing right the white hit and Slam should hit att the same time. A good video of this being done is: http://files.filefront.com/Killianz+HowtoDPSwmv/;9435743;/fileinfo.html
Demoralizing Shout
Then there is Improved Demoralizing Shout.
Many think that this is a waste of points, but if you use it right it can boost the raid a lot.
If someone in the raid have 5/5 in this talent and uses the shout it is safe for a Warlock to use Curse of Recklessness. This adds 800 armor penetration to all members in the raid.
Here is some important reminders:
Always have a Enchancement Shaman in your group, else you will lack rage and can't complete the rotation which will !#*% up your DPS.
Never go below 2.5 in swing speed. Will destroy your rotation. Don't stack haste, and ask shaman to burn Heroism during Execute time so you get more rage.
Give your RL a kiss if he places a Feral Druid in your group with Leader of the Pack.
It is better with another damage warrior in the group then a rogue, since you then can have both shouts up.
Remember that Slam resets swing timer, better that you delay a Slam then totally !#*%ing up the swing which results that you loose a white hit.
The stats you want is:
Hit rating, expertise rating, strength, critical rating, armor penetration and stamina.
Equipment
Look for the stats above when choosing your armor.
On trinkets and weapons there is other things to look for.
Weapon
The best PvE weapon for a warrior is a sword since the Sword Specialization talent is TEH best.
[item]Cataclysm's Edge[/item]
[item]Brutal Gladiator's Greatsword[/item]
[item]Jin'rohk, The Great Apocalypse[/item]
[item]Soul Cleaver[/item]
[item]Halberd of Desolation[/item]
[item]Trollbane[/item]
[item]Gorehowl[/item]
[item]The Blade of Harbingers[/item]
Trinkets
As with the rest of your itemization, you want trinkets that provide large amounts of attack power or critical strike rating. Your other ideal trinkets are (in no particular order):
[item]Shard of Contempt[/item]
[item]Solarian's Sapphire[/item]
[item]Madness of the Betrayer[/item]
[item]Berserker's Call[/item]
[item]Tsunami Talisman[/item] - Arguably best in slot for Hunters so be nice to them, but better for you than Rogues who should be taking a [item]Warp Spring Coil[/item] anyway.
[item]Bloodlust Brooch[/item]
[item]Hourglass of the Unraveller[/item] (This scales a lot better than you'd expect)
Your ideal trinkets are not:
[item]Dragonspine Trophy[/item] - Provides haste. Haste is bad for you.
[item]Ashtongue Talisman of Valor[/item] - Terrible. It's just bad.
