DPS Warrior Specs

[Concillian]

Some of you may remember I did some warrior hybrid spec comparisons earlier and I'm back to share my recent findings in comparing specs with some level 70 blue gear.

I have compared the following specs, hereafter referred to as Fury, Arms, and Fury / Prot:
Fury: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=pVMcdZVVzVTgoVuVoc

Fury / Prot: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=pZVV0VLxoVzZfVtoI0zox

Arms: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=pVMcdAioM0dioE0zVZc

My modeling methods aassume the following:
Arms rage is used for MS when possible. Additional rage calculated as giving 0.75 damage per rage compared to MS
Fury rage is used for Bloodthirst. Additional rage is funneled into keeping Rampage up. No additional rage goes into the model, so there is potential for upside here.
Fury / Prot rage goes into Bloodthirst. Additional rage is not factored, again upside is available. I'm considering moving some points here out of DW spec and into imp. slam because it is probably the next best damage per rage, but the modeling gest screwy with the resetting of the swing timer, especially when looking at WF totem too.
Modeling suggested that the extra damage from 1H spec is quite clearly better than additional +hit, hence the choice of 5/5 in 1H spec and 0/3 in precision for the Fury / Prot build

Gear assumptions:
DW: http://ctprofiles.net/5056406
2H: http://ctprofiles.net/5139784

These are all blue armor and grindable / craftable purples (mostly BS weaponsmith purples).

DPS estimates:

I'm estimateing DPS by adding MS / BT damage to white damage with no additional damage sources. Blood Frenzy is assumed to be on the target in the arms build. Rampage is assumed to be on so that the average AP gain is +150. The windfury damage assumes spamming a proc-able attack every ~1.7 seconds (global cooldown + some lag) and does NOT take into account the extra rage or damage aside from the white damage from windfury... the assumption is that rage gained is used in spamstringing to proc WF.

This also assumes being in Berserker all the time, something that probably wouldn't be the case, but that gets too complex to model when going back and forth to battle to keep up T-clap.

Damage listed in the format: DPS / DPS with WF

20% armor
F = 572 / 697
F/P=521 / 640
A = 497 / 650

30% armor
F = 500 / 609
F/P=456 / 560
A = 421 / 555

40% armor
F = 429 / 522
F/P=391 / 481
A = 323 / 438

A little surprising to me how close they were, but both the Fury builds should have a little more seperation from Arms due to not taking into account ALL the rage in my analysis.

Observations and Trends:
DW does more white damage and is less affected by armor. However, the damage gained from rage is less than 2H and the gain from Windfury totem is also less.
Assuming a WF totem is around, these builds are surprisingly close.
Without WF The Fury build pulls ahead, around 10-15% at this gearing level, but again, things get a lot closer if WF totem is around.

"Flavor" of the builds:
Fury / Prot is best of the 3 for threat in tanking. Having shield block means it's probably also most mitigation, even without the +5% parry from the arms tree. It essentially trades tanking points for imp. t-clap, so a little less raid friendly in a pure DPS role, where imp. t-clap really shines. Has a couple decent PvP skills... last stand, concussion blow and 1/2 shield bash, but misses out on improved intercept.

Fury offers the best individual damage, but has a lot of "ifs". If you drop berserker stance, the damage drops quite significantly... essentially equal to or below the Fury / Prot damage. It offers a little less in terms of PvP than the Fury/prot, with imp. intercept the only significant offering. Tanking is in the middle offering decent mitigation, and some better threat than arms, but not really anything special. Raid utility comes from imp. t-clap, which is somewhat at odds with the desire to stay in berserker for the full Fury benefit

Arms offers the most in terms of raid utility in t-clap + Blood Frenzy, but is a little lacking without WF totem. A huge plus is that there is very little lost if DPS is done in Battle Stance for keeping up t-clap... I'm pretty sure damage losses will be made up by opportunities to use Overpower on dodges. PvP has the second wind niceness (incredibly nice actually, given how much we are CC'ed) and the enormous group PvP buff of MS. Last stand might be better for PvP and tanking, but trades imp. battle shout, which I consider a raid staple of a DPS warrior.

Assuming you have 2-4 others in your group dealing physical damage, blood frenzy brings the total damage contribution from a full arms build right back on the level of Fury, and surpassing it in the event of a WF totem.

Surprisingly, gearing doesn't look too difficult for either of these. normal drops, some are quest rewards, and some are craftables. very little heroic mode loot was used for this comparison so that comparisons would be of relatively attainable gear.

The original purpose of this comparison is that I'm currently armorsmith and am definitely switching to weaponsmith. If I do so, a 2H build significantly favors the axe route and DW seems to signifiacntly favor the hammer route (under the assumption that you are under the effect of the proc 3% of the total time, which is likely a conservative estimate) I only want to make the switch once, and when I make the items there is no going back. I'm trying to decide on my spec moving forward right now. Any comments on this front are helpful. It's looking like I won't be needed for a ton of tanking (outside of 5-mans) which is why I'm entertaining full DPS builds.

At this point I'm a little torn, but Arms still seems like the way to go. It should be easier to control aggro by being lower damage, the damage comes up towards the other specs if there is a WF totem around, and Blood Frenzy allows distributing some of your DPS to those who can better deal with extra aggro (hunters and rogues) Any comments?

[Kevin]

Note: I think you have the wrong helm on the DW profile.

Not directly related to your question
Something I've wondered about just from a personal DPS standpoint is the "Bettle Stance Fury warrior". Where you do something like this build

I realize it doesn't offer a lot of utility to any group, you don't have stellar tanking and you don't have a lot in the way of group buffs other than imp battle shout. You are gimped in PvP without tactical mastery. But the idea is that you give up the extra damage you take and the extra AP and crit (from imp zerker stance) and stay in battle for the opportunistic attacks. Deep wounds likely won't add a lot of DPS because of the fact you'll keep overwriting it with other crits, but you will gain from impale. Not sure what the value of sweeping strikes would be though you could swap to a 2 hander for it then swap back, but I'm not looking at 2H fury that is yet another build. I went with mace spec for the extra rage but you could do axe or sword spec though the way the sword spec procs work I think you'd be better off with an axe or mace. The points in imp heroic strike are also floaters, but there isn't much else to put them in and it some lucky proc of mace spec and unbridled wrath could have you with extra rage that you might want to dump via HS.

I don't know how hard that would be to plug into your models but I've been curious about it.


Now onto your questions
As to your thoughts.

I'll start by saying that I'm still biased towards a 2 handed Conc, it feels right to me. :) But I'll try to not let that influence my thoughts. :)

We've got several warriors and druids and a few paladins coming up that want to tank and like to tank. We've got a few who are tanking now but might be happier changing to something else. Unless mitigation becomes a huge concern, and it might as we are starting to look at heroics and the early raid instances, you could still tank any five man just fine if we needed you too, regardless of spec. I don't think that will generally be needed though, so on the same page there.

So that being said I think I agree with you looking at something more focused than how your builds have been in the recent past. You do very well as the DPS warrior and sometimes off tank, but even then we tend to let the hunter pets take that off tank roll or put it on someone else and let you unleash your rage. There is also a pretty nice trinket in shadow labs that our group ended up DE'ing that is nice for classes that don't have good ways to deal with extra aggro. Something that you might consider.

I think all this rules out the fury/prot line as well. You can do better pure DPS with another spec and you aren't needed to tank. You certainly can if you want to and we'd embrace it if you did, but if you are looking for more DPS I don't think you need to worry about the more hybrid build, the biggest reason would be for PvP as I can see some of that starting up again and you may want that prot PvP utility. But on the PvE side I think you are better with something else.

So again that is back to fury vs arms. As you mentioned, and I agree with, the arms build would be better for the smaller group PvP and arena stuff of the 2 builds. Especially if we can do the 2 pally, 1 warrior 3 man team, I've always pictured that with a prot pally, ret pally, and arms warrior. It offers more to the raids as well. In the 5 mans we can't always say you will have a shaman, but in the raids if you are arms spec, you will get a shaman in your group and can expect windfury to be there. You will very likely be in battle a lot of the time and the imp T-clap will be there as well as the friendlier longer lasting improved shouts. But I'm in agreement on the utility to the group. As fury you are offering more damage (and as mentioned the upside could be more than you show) but you aren't offering a lot of other utility that the arms build also doesn't offer. Slightly stronger offtank but not as much group DPS boosters and as mentioned I don't think the off tanking is really going to be heavily needed. I'm starting to think that paladins are going to be the ultimate off tanks with the ability to keep a mob or 2 occupied and not taking extra healing from the primary healers. Or potentially keeping a mob occupied while offering spot healing as well. I actually played my paladin like this a lot pre 1.07. So that would mean even less need for the warrior to off tank for a bit then go DPS nuts.

I think you would kick much ass with any build, but from looking at what I'm expecting you to end up doing most often I think the arms build is going to be the way to go.

Just my thoughts on it.

[Concillian]

I updated for the helm... it made a pretty huge difference, for a single piece of gear, with +20-30 DPS

That doesn't make the decision any easier. I kind of wanted to stay arms, and previous gearing comparisons showing little damage difference the decision was easy. With this kind of specialized gearing showing growing differences, it's tougher to say definitively that arms is the way to go.

For your spec, I chose axe and switch the weapon to the blacksmithing 1H axe. This helps twofold... lots more rage through crits and it increases the "flurry factor"

20% -- 550 / 670
30% -- 482 / 587
40% -- 413 / 503

If I do battle stance instead, and assume 5% dodge rate (I had assumed that already, but now if I do overpowers on 65% of these dodges... to accoutn for some timing issues with bloodthirst), then DPS is actually higher than zerker:

20% -- 559 / 676
30% -- 489 / 591
40% -- 419 / 507

It also has the most rage of any of the other builds, with over 3 rage per second unused in my analysis, this is slightly ahead of the pure Fury build in terms of rage... but Fury needs to use slightly less than 1 rage per second on keeping rampage up, and this build doesn't. I moved 2 points from DW spec to imp. slam for using the rage, so the analysis assumes 3/5 DW spec. This build is a little behind the Fury build because of the rage-to-damage conversion... this is where the bottom part of the Fury tree really shines. Perhaps the biggest advantage of the build for me is that it has a strong axe option, so I could go axesmith and make both axes, then use the 1H if I went DW and the 2H for full arms, but then I'd also have to take primal nethers to upgrade both if I wanted to stay current, and that wouldn't be fair at all to other crafters.

I have a tendency to believe that this build may actually be better given the chance to take advantage of overpower opportunities, as well as being able to re-apply thunderclap a LOT easier than a full fury build. It does have the rather severe disadvatage of 0/3 in tactical mastery, but I may try it out anyway. This is a spec I overlooked, thanks for bringing it up.

Sweeping is useful in 5-mans but rarely in raids. It's also REALLY nice for destroying old instances when helping someone with a new toon.

Modeling mace spec proc, it ends up being VERY close to the rage gained by UW or anger management... that is about 0.33 rage per second, assuming a WF totem is around so you are using a proc-able attack every ~1.7 seconds.

Also, improved Heroic strike is pretty junky now. They buffed Improved Thunderclap so much, that you are better off dumping the rage through thunderclap and not losing the rage on the next hit. Counterintuitive, but true. 12 rage + rage on the hit for 208 damage or 16 rage with no loss for 246 damage. for these weapons and this high AP you're looking at about 10 rage per hit, so heroic strike is really looking trashy.

Compare improved slam which is weapon damage + X for a partial loss in white swing due to delaying the white swing. you only lose say ~1/2 a swing (or less, depends on how good your timing is, it's not an easy thing to time if WF totem is constantly resetting your white swings) instead of the full swing from HS, which makes the overall damage gain and rage loss significantly better.

Kind of amazing, but they changed the paradigms dramatically. I'm pretty confident that improved slam is the 2nd best way to add damage for DW. WW may be right up with it, but I'm not 100% on that. But yeah, Tclap and slam are now better than HS... definite paradigm shift.

[Kevin]

Yeah I just didn't know where to go with those 2 points. I needed 2 more to get the specs unlocked and since a 2H weapon wasn't really in the cards I just slapped them into imp HS. I hadn't even looked at the damage on imp T-Clap, I only picked that up for the debuff improvement but it does actually do damage now. Not bad.

I did wonder about the value of imp slam for really any build actually. Slam is a lot like steady shot for the hunters now (though steady can still be stuttered). So I actually have some practice with that, but don't have to deal with WF procs either.

The whole reason I thought about that one fury arms build is that my L44 warrior still does more DPS in battle than in zerker, and I wasn't looking forward to the management of Rampage so I decided to see if there was a spec other than the fury/prot that might help emphasize that. Even without tactical mastery I can still do stance switching for intercepts and such without a huge rage loss. So I looked at mace spec initially because if I did have to dump some on a switch faster building would be nice and random stuns while grinding, while potentially costing rage from damage, are fun. But the value of axe spec should simply increase as gear gets better. A pure 5% crit for 1H and the 2H weapon if you want to put one on (and there would still be reasons, I still wonder about a rage build in a raid to say 60 or 70 and then a slam spam dump, I used to do this on my prot warrior pre 2.0 all the time when I wasn't tanking, build rage DW then swap in the 2H and spam slam wasn't any better way really).


So on the battle stance fury build where is the best place to put the 2 HS points? Iron Will? 2H spec? I can see the value of imp slam and taking from DW spec seems the best there.


Oh on that note on your pure fury build, is imp zerker rage any good? I know it only maps to .33 rage/s (which seems to be what a lot of the talents map to, hmmm) and the points are once again very likely to be sucked out from DW spec, but that build would be in zerker pretty much all the time you would have that generation. I would think from a gameplay perspective it would at least help with the management of rampage a little since you could help insure you have the rage to keep that up a little. I know it has pretty good value in PvP to get you some rage right now as well. But from a DPS standpoint will .33 rage a second beat out 10% more damage from the OH even for rage generation? You could take the points form imp execute as well I suppose but that talent is very nice for raid DPS where you will get in more than one execute, and helps a bunch on the solo front too when you are a bit low on rage and want the mob dead now.


The new numbers do make things harder though. Arms is less clear cut, but I still think it offers more group benefits than just the extra DPS. I know there are some pseudo-DPS check fights and it might be worse in heroic mode but so far we've beaten them all and hit several of them under leveled, but we'll see, the extra DPS might be the best thing for the group.

[Concillian]

I still wonder about a rage build in a raid to say 60 or 70 and then a slam spam dump, I used to do this on my prot warrior pre 2.0 all the time when I wasn't tanking, build rage DW then swap in the 2H and spam slam wasn't any better way really).

With Imp. slam, it's not about slam spamming. It's timing slam right after a white swing. There is still a global cooldown of 1.5 seconds, even though slam takes 0.5. The appropriate usage is swing --> slam --> swing --> slam. Fitting this in amongst using GCDs for spamstring for WF maximizing becomes more interesting. You aren't going to be perfect with getting it right after a white swing, which is why I had it with a lot of margin in there.

as far as those two points go, I don't really know where they belong. I guess Iron will. They don't have a whole lot of value anywhere really.

Oh on that note on your pure fury build, is imp zerker rage any good? I know it only maps to .33 rage/s (which seems to be what a lot of the talents map to, hmmm) and the points are once again very likely to be sucked out from DW spec, but that build would be in zerker pretty much all the time you would have that generation. I would think from a gameplay perspective it would at least help with the management of rampage a little since you could help insure you have the rage to keep that up a little. I know it has pretty good value in PvP to get you some rage right now as well. But from a DPS standpoint will .33 rage a second beat out 10% more damage from the OH even for rage generation?

At the level of gearing I'm discussing keeping up rampage is not an issue, except for timing it with the crits. Berserker rage is situationally useful. in PvP it's nice and while grinding where you will have rampage less. In a raid situation it's not so useful, primarily because it eats a global cooldown every 30 seconds. You get the rage, but you give up a hamstring and a chance at WF proc, or a slam opportunity. It's great if you need the rage instantly, like in the beginning of the fight or for filling in droughts. It's also very nice for "in and out" fights like Chrommie... so is anger management.

As far as beating out the OH damage, my model currently isn't using any rage aside from Bloodthirst, so in the model no, but in actuality you'd still probably be better off with the off-hand damage... that gets you rage AND damage.

I just checked it out, and yeah, it takes a better damage per rage conversion than Bloodthirst to make up an EQUAL amount of damage to the white damage lost from DW spec with the 0.33 rage per second gained minus the small amount of rage lost from the damage of DW spec.

[WimpySmurf]

I think this belt is an upgrade over Deathforge Girdle for both profiles. It's a quest reward from Shadowmoon Valley.

Also, did you account for sockets? The DW helm contains 2 yellow and 1 blue socket and a socket bonus of 4STR. Of course you've got many combinations of gems to fill out those sockets with.
I'd think 16HR + 4Str or 8HR + 8Agl + (4CR|4Str) would be the most likely selections.

Same with the boots which have 2 yellow sockets. Plus a 3STR socket bonus.

-WimpySmurf

[Jester]

Now that Geldauran is 70, I'm definitely considering where I want to go with him.

His current build is 11/5/45, which I think is my favorite Prot build, although feel free to comment if you think I've misspent a point or two.

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=LVMczZVZcitoIMzctst

What I'm considering is respeccing him to an arms/prot hybrid again. As much as I love shield slam, which is a lot indeed, I wonder if I wouldn't be more useful and versatile with a more rounded spec. Plus, I miss having Mortal Strike around.

This is what I'm thinking for that, with the points in the weapon specialization being flexible to whatever weapon I have.

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=pVMcdAwoM0dioVZfVzoh

I could squeeze out an extra 1% damage bonus by ditching last stand, but I find it's such a bargain at 1 point that I might as well keep it. I also prefer shield specialization to toughness, for the crushing blow factor as well as the rage generation.

Whaddaya think?

-Jester

[Concillian]

I think this belt is an upgrade over Deathforge Girdle for both profiles. It's a quest reward from Shadowmoon Valley.

Also, did you account for sockets? The DW helm contains 2 yellow and 1 blue socket and a socket bonus of 4STR. Of course you've got many combinations of gems to fill out those sockets with.
I'd think 16HR + 4Str or 8HR + 8Agl + (4CR|4Str) would be the most likely selections.

Same with the boots which have 2 yellow sockets. Plus a 3STR socket bonus.

-WimpySmurf

The gearing was just kind of quickly looking at decent gearing, after looking more at it there are some other problems... like the DW chestpiece is a reward for an Aldor quest line and the gloves are a reward from a parallel Scryer line ( you can actually do both without too much difficulty if you do them before you choose one or the other, but that gearing is not really "practical") I was mainly trying to look at a decent blue gearing level and compare damage. I'm not claiming totally ideal gearing

That said....

On socketing I assume green gems, I mine a fair bit and have a nice stockpile of gems (about 5 of each type of green gems on an alt) for sending to GG to cut for me. If I get a new item with sockets... green gems are in them the next day.

Belt:
Deathforge is better after socketing:
Quest reward:
26 STR = 52 AP
26 AGI is about 0.82% crit

compare to Deathforge:
22 STR = 44 AP (inferior)
20 Crit rating is about 0.90% crit (superior)
put a 6 STR gem in the red socket and anything in the blue and you are up to:
28 STR = 56 AP (directly superior)

so regardless of what the "best gems" are, you are able to make it directly superior.

As for gems, I modeled the basic melee damage enhancing gems in my current gear and got the following results...
2H:
If you don't have enough hit to cap it, hit is always best (missing really hurts a 2H build)
STR / AP trumps Crit in the event that you have enough hit, but the difference is small.

For the DW builds the order changes around:
Hit is most important up to the point where you are hitting all yellow swings (I've estimated these at 5-8% depending on what you're fighting)
Beyond that Crit > STR > Hit at the itemization values given to the gems (+6 STR or hit rating or crit rating on a single gem them)
This is probably a dynamic order, in that it will likely change depending on what the current AP , crit%, and hit% are. when I checked I was looking at ~1230 / 22.6% / 11.2% and with less than ideal level 70 weapons (Terokk's Nightmace and Amani Venom-axe)

[WimpySmurf]

Belt:
Deathforge is better after socketing:
Quest reward:
26 STR = 52 AP
26 AGI is about 0.82% crit

compare to Deathforge:
22 STR = 44 AP (inferior)
20 Crit rating is about 0.90% crit (superior)
put a 6 STR gem in the red socket and anything in the blue and you are up to:
28 STR = 56 AP (directly superior)

Ooops, I missed that there were 2 sockets on the Deathforge belt. That definately makes it superior.


On another note, when I hit 68 I ended up grabbing Rampage to "see" how it works. What I've found is that I'm refreshing it with 5-10sec left on the timer to keep it up and not have wait for a crit to start re-gaining the x5 stack. I haven't extensively tested it out to see if my DPS is higher when I keep it up versus waiting for it to run out and then start over. I'm just guessing that it'll be higher if I don't let expire.

I'm currently running about 1050AP and 17% crit and find I've got enough rage in general to BT every CD and fit in a Rampage or WW between. I don't use HS unless I've gotten several crits in a row and I'm swimming in rage since the loss of rage on next hit sucks.

-WimpySmurf

[Artega]

Ooops, I missed that there were 2 sockets on the Deathforge belt. That definately makes it superior.
On another note, when I hit 68 I ended up grabbing Rampage to "see" how it works. What I've found is that I'm refreshing it with 5-10sec left on the timer to keep it up and not have wait for a crit to start re-gaining the x5 stack. I haven't extensively tested it out to see if my DPS is higher when I keep it up versus waiting for it to run out and then start over. I'm just guessing that it'll be higher if I don't let expire.

I'm currently running about 1050AP and 17% crit and find I've got enough rage in general to BT every CD and fit in a Rampage or WW between. I don't use HS unless I've gotten several crits in a row and I'm swimming in rage since the loss of rage on next hit sucks.

-WimpySmurf

My Warrior has 1110 AP and 16.58% crit in Battle Stance with 11.8k unbuffed HP, 10k Armor, and a block value of about 200. I haven't touched any instances since Mana-Tombs back when I was 64.

Are Fury Warriors really hurting that much?:(

[Artega]

Now that Geldauran is 70, I'm definitely considering where I want to go with him.

His current build is 11/5/45, which I think is my favorite Prot build, although feel free to comment if you think I've misspent a point or two.

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=LVMczZVZcitoIMzctst

What I'm considering is respeccing him to an arms/prot hybrid again. As much as I love shield slam, which is a lot indeed, I wonder if I wouldn't be more useful and versatile with a more rounded spec. Plus, I miss having Mortal Strike around.

This is what I'm thinking for that, with the points in the weapon specialization being flexible to whatever weapon I have.

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=pVMcdAwoM0dioVZfVzoh

I could squeeze out an extra 1% damage bonus by ditching last stand, but I find it's such a bargain at 1 point that I might as well keep it. I also prefer shield specialization to toughness, for the crushing blow factor as well as the rage generation.

Whaddaya think?

-Jester

I can't envision using a shield without Improved Shield Bash. It locks out one school for six seconds, silences all schools for three seconds, and dazes which sets them up for the Heroic Strike combo (my HS rivals my Shield Slam, and I use a 1.60 speed weapon.) I suppose you could skip it if you're purely PvE, but even then the silence is useful for dragging caster mobs a little closer or preventing them from casting some kind of nasty spell (like an AE fear) just before death.

[bonemage]

I can't envision using a shield without Improved Shield Bash. It locks out one school for six seconds, silences all schools for three seconds, and dazes which sets them up for the Heroic Strike combo (my HS rivals my Shield Slam, and I use a 1.60 speed weapon.) I suppose you could skip it if you're purely PvE, but even then the silence is useful for dragging caster mobs a little closer or preventing them from casting some kind of nasty spell (like an AE fear) just before death.

The daze aspect of shield bash has nothing to do with the talent, that is the skill, but your other points are valid.

[Concillian]

FYI

I am doing a major re-vamp of my Excel file I have been using in anticipation to making it available on the Lounge.

I found a couple of errors and have made some refinements, but the majority of what I've been doing is cleaning it up and making it have some semblance of user-friendliness.

If anyone is interested in being an Open Office version guinea pig, please PM me an email address to send to.

Assuming it works in Open Office, I shoul dbe able to make something available within the week so everyone can try their own scenarios.

[Concillian]

(my HS rivals my Shield Slam, and I use a 1.60 speed weapon.)

I'm not sure what you're saying here. It looks like you are not seperating the portion of damage that would have happened anyway from the damage that hitting the heroic strike key actually adds. I'm a little confused by this comment.

[Artega]

The daze aspect of shield bash has nothing to do with the talent, that is the skill, but your other points are valid.

The 6 second lockout is unrelated to the talent too, but it's part of the skill:)

[Artega]

I'm not sure what you're saying here. It looks like you are not seperating the portion of damage that would have happened anyway from the damage that hitting the heroic strike key actually adds. I'm a little confused by this comment.

I'm saying that my HS on a caster that I just dazed and silenced hits at least as hard as my Shield Slam. Considering I can Shield Slam in between the HS spam, it can mean a very large amount of damage put out in a very short amount of time on a target that cannot get away from me.

[Frag]

Wow, spent 20m typing out a reply and lost it. Let's see if I can capture the essence of it:

Slam Good! We find lil' creatures and SLAM INTO GROUND, RAWR! :w00t:

Hrm... may need to be a little more explanatory.

You're far better at dps modelling than I am Conc, but with a Terrok's Quill this seemed to me to be the highest dps build I could find in beta. I didn't have a dmg meter, I just ground on the Skettis around Shatt and made some notes of how much time elapsed for one to die, how much dmg I seemed to take per kill, etc... Your cycle of swing-slam, swing-slam is a good idea and I'm interested to find out how it would work "in the field" for me as, like GG, I'm used to the build a bar, slam it down! "beer" philosophy of Slam.

In conclusion; Slam is good, Beer is good, let's all go Slam a Beer!

Cheers,
~Frag B)

[Legedi]

From level 68 to a week into 70 I was 26/32/3 with a 2Her, and I loved it. My current gear is even better when I switched to protection, but it looks like this: http://ctprofiles.net/3469214

One thing I liked about this build is I could do a ton more AOE damage than when DW. WW/cleave with SS was a lot of fun. Axe spec was also very very good synergy with flurry.

Imp slam is as good as people say. While I don't think spamming it is a good idea. (I tested it, and it does activate the GCD. So a .5 second swing plus waiting 1 second wait for before the next slam is no better than spamming un-imp slam) Slam also resets your swing timer. So what works best is to use it right after a normal swing.

Just some crappy theory-craft. With my current gear as seen on CTprofiles + gems that it doesn't show I'd have about 2000 AP self buffed, and 30% crit rating.

That makes a normal hit for about 800, slam for 940, and crits for 1600 and 2068 respectively.

Assuming you are just standing and DPSing a target forever you will slam after everyone regular attack. Chances of flurry ever running out are about .7^6 ~ 10%. So if you just assume flurry is going all the time an attack cycle is (3.5/1.3+.5)=3.2 seconds. Every cycle does (800+940)*.7+(1600+2068)*.3=2318 damage. So 2318/3.2=725 DPS against zero armor. Even if the mob is at 30% reduction that is about 500 DPS. Remember, that is all unbuffed. When you start adding things like blessings and WF totem that number climbs very very fast.

This is also very simplified. If I started building up extra rage I'd replace one slam with a BT and WW. And then you get trinkets to pop, death wish, and this is all on a single target. On multiple mobs using all my tricks a very good feral druid tank couldn't keep me from pulling aggro more than I should have;).

I also did a UBRS run (yes at 70, we where getting TD's druid that armor trinket) I didn't have to care about pulling aggro. I would have had over 900 DPS that instance if my internet ping would have been bellow 800 ping that day. Not that 900 DPS in UBRS means anything now, but it sure was fun :w00t:.

[Concillian]

Especially in light of the recent notes suggesting more rage availability, I'll make a 2H Slam and 2H BT sheets as well.

I'm not going to spend time trying out different things in my models and posting that right now, my time is going into something I can make more usable and distribute.

I have to add complexity to my version of the flurry model, but otherwise the DW Fury sheet is looking good. Since that is the most complex, using that as a template for the other builds will be relatively simple.

[Frag]

I think I convinced myself with my post to take Tiga from prot to 2h bt/slam and give it a whirl. Should make the 65-70 pill a little easier to swallow, and more entertaining.:)

Thanks for all the work Conc. Let me know if there's anything I can do to assist!

Cheers,
~FragB)