2.0x Warrior Hybrid builds

[lemekim]

Your RPS conversion seems strange. Can you please post the formula you used to convert from White damage to RPS? For example, I assume your White DPS already accounts for your miss rate, which would then make the formula go for DW noncrits from:

rage per second (DW) = ( 1.875 + total_DPS/61.5) * miss rate

to:

rage per second (DW) = 1.875 * miss rate + White_DPS/61.5

Crits will scale accordingly of course, and provide even more rage. So when I try to follow with that formula, it doesn't seem to work. Not only with Fury numbers, but with Protection numbers as well. Am I missing something?

[Concillian]

Your RPS conversion seems strange. Can you please post the formula you used to convert from White damage to RPS? For example, I assume your White DPS already accounts for your miss rate, which would then make the formula go for DW noncrits from:

rage per second (DW) = ( 1.875 + total_DPS/61.5) * miss rate

to:

rage per second (DW) = 1.875 * miss rate + White_DPS/61.5

Crits will scale accordingly of course, and provide even more rage. So when I try to follow with that formula, it doesn't seem to work. Not only with Fury numbers, but with Protection numbers as well. Am I missing something?

It's not quite that simple... I noticed a mistake with Fury that will give it a little more rage. I'll outline it completely in a couple hours while I work on it between doing some actual work at work.

The rage normalization formula is here:
http://www.lurkerlounge.com/forums/index...topic=8823

For the prot DW I used that formula to calc rage on a main hand hit. Main hand crits are x2. rage for off-hand hits/crits are main hand damage * 0.5. I multiply by the % chance of hit and % chance of crit and add it all up and divide by 2.9 (weapon speed) for a per second average.

crit chance I'm using is 26.25 (including berserker stance bonus).

miss rate I'm using is assuming the 24% normal miss rate (minus the 7% on gear, 10% for the Fury build) and an additional 5% for dodge and parry, these give a small amount or rage too, less than a hit, but they should be a total of 10% of all attacks... unless you're in a raid situation where you won't see them, but then you'd get glancing blows... too many variables, my head hurts, I picked an in-between value. Since all builds are using the same assumptions, they should be reasonable enough to compare with each other. You can at least see significant trends here. 2H miss rate is a flat 95% since +hit% on gear is enough to assure hits.

Fury needs some additional calcs since the speed difference due to flurry and the accompanying change in the rage normalization formula that gives a slight benefit to rage gen while flurried.

[Concillian]

Okay, you were right, I found several errors in my DW rage formulas. Everywhere weapon speed was a part of the rage calc I had not linked to the weapon speed cell, I had copied a formula that had the value used in the 2H. This had one place where it hurt rage gen and one place it helped it, for an overall increase... oops. I was also counting the 1H spec bonus twice on crits... I'm correcting it and DW rage is looking much better.

looking at Prot, which is a simple case:

weapon average: 172.5
Damage from AP: 1288.8 / 14 * 2.9 = 267
Final damage is multiplied by 1.1 (1H spec bonus) so 483.45 average main hand damage
We'll do 40% DR for this example because it comes out to a nice round 290 for main hand and 145 for off hand

crit% is 26.25 and hit% is 51.75... so white DPS the average amount of damage per hit divided by weapon speed:
((290 * 0.5175 + 290 * 2 * 0.2625) * 1.5) / 2.9 = 156.4 DPS

rage for main hand is:
(290 * 7.5 / 230.6 + 2.9 * 2.5) / 2
that's 8.34 rage per main hand hit and off hand crit. Off hand hits are half that and main hand crits are double that.

So RPS is going to be calced just like DPS:
((8.34 * 0.5175 + 8.34 * 2 * 0.2625) * 1.5)) / 2.9 = 4.50

It still doesn't match anywhere near your formula:
1.875 * 0.22 + 156.4/61.5 = 0.4125 + 2.54 = ~3 RPS which is very, very low.

------

Now for Fury there are some other modifications that need to be made.
MH damage is lower because imp. BS doesn't make up for vitality + 1H spec. OH damage is a bit higher due to DW spec
MH hits on 40% DR is 266.7 and OH hits are 160

The front half of the rage equation is the same in all cases: damage * 7.5 / 230.6 = damage * 0.03252
the back half changes depending on flurry or not...
weapons speed / 2.5
= 2.9 * 2.5 = 7.25 no flurry
= 2.9 * 2.5 / 1.3 = 5.58 under flurry

Main hand (flurry) will be (266.7 * 0.03252 + 5.58) / 2 = 7.12 rage per hit
Main hand (normal) will be (266.7 * 0.03252 + 7.25) / 2 = 7.96 rage per hit
Off-hand (flurry) will be that amount scaled by damage (160 / 266.7 = 0.6) off hand rage will just be scaled as a percentage of main-hand rage.

RPS is going to be 65% of hits flurried (weapon speed 2.23) and 35% normal (Weapon speed 2.9) so use both to get RPS and you get:
(0.65 * (7.12 * .5125 + 7.12 * 2 * 0.2625) * 1.6) / 2.23 + (0.35 * (7.96 * .5125 + 7.96 * 2 * 0.2625) * 1.6) / 2.9 = 5.03 RPS

I'm now going to go back and re-edit all my junk... Okay, the second set of posts is now edited.

Thanks for continuing to question things. I had made several mistakes.

[lemekim]

Okay, you were right, I found several errors in my DW rage formulas. Everywhere weapon speed was a part of the rage calc I had not linked to the weapon speed cell, I had copied a formula that had the value used in the 2H. This had one place where it hurt rage gen and one place it helped it, for an overall increase... oops. I was also counting the 1H spec bonus twice on crits... I'm correcting it and DW rage is looking much better.

looking at Prot, which is a simple case:

weapon average: 172.5
Damage from AP: 1288.8 / 14 * 2.9 = 267
Final damage is multiplied by 1.1 (1H spec bonus) so 483.45 average main hand damage
We'll do 40% DR for this example because it comes out to a nice round 290 for main hand and 145 for off hand

crit% is 26.25 and hit% is 51.75... so white DPS the average amount of damage per hit divided by weapon speed:
((290 * 0.5175 + 290 * 2 * 0.2625) * 1.5) / 2.9 = 156.4 DPS

rage for main hand is:
(290 * 7.5 / 230.6 + 2.9 * 2.5) / 2
that's 8.34 rage per main hand hit and off hand crit. Off hand hits are half that and main hand crits are double that.

So RPS is going to be calced just like DPS:
((8.34 * 0.5175 + 290 * 2 * 0.2625) * 1.5)) / 2.9 = 4.50

It still doesn't match anywhere near your formula:
1.875 * 0.22 + 156.4/61.5 = 0.4125 + 2.54 = ~3 RPS which is very, very low.

------

Now for Fury there are some other modifications that need to be made.
MH damage is lower because imp. BS doesn't make up for vitality + 1H spec. OH damage is a bit higher due to DW spec
MH hits on 40% DR is 266.7 and OH hits are 160

The front half of the rage equation is the same in all cases: damage * 7.5 / 230.6 = damage * 0.03252
the back half changes depending on flurry or not...
weapons speed / 2.5
= 2.9 * 2.5 = 7.25 no flurry
= 2.9 * 2.5 / 1.3 = 5.58 under flurry

Main hand (flurry) will be (266.7 * 0.03252 + 5.58) / 2 = 7.12 rage per hit
Main hand (normal) will be (266.7 * 0.03252 + 7.25) / 2 = 7.96 rage per hit
Off-hand (flurry) will be that amount scaled by damage (160 / 266.7 = 0.6) off hand rage will just be scaled as a percentage of main-hand rage.

RPS is going to be 65% of hits flurried and 35% normal so damage each way:
(0.65 * (7.12 * .5125 + 7.12 * 2 * 0.2625) * 1.6) / 2.23 + (0.35 * (7.96 * .5125 + 7.96 * 2 * 0.2625) * 1.6) / 2.9 = 5.03 RPS

I'm now going to go back and re-edit all my junk.

Thanks for continuing to question things. I had made several mistakes.

My formula listed above was only for nomal hits, not crits, so that should be taken into account separately. And I did a mistake in saying "Miss Rate", which in fact should be "1- Miss Rate", or "Hit Rate" at least.

Either way, let's see if we can adapt it a bit...

So we can construct a formula to convert our white DPS into RPS by combining the crits and normal hits formulas:

Normal hit RPS = 1.875 * (1 - [miss/dodge/parry penalty + Crit Rate]) + White_Hit_DPS/61.5

Crit RPS = 3.75 * (Crit Rate) + Crit_DPS/61.5

Combining the two...

RPS = (Normal hit RPS) + (Crit RPS) = 1.875 - 1.875*(Penalty) - 1.875*(Crit Rate) + White_Hit_DPS/61.5 + 3.75*(Crit Rate) + Crit_DPS/61.5

Now, White_Hit_DPS + Crit_DPS gives us total White_DPS. Simplifying...

RPS = 1.875 * (1 + Crit Rate - Penalty) + White_DPS/61.5

Plugging in your numbers...

RPS = 1.875 * (1 + 26.25% - 22%) + 156.4/61.5 = 1.955 + 2.543 = 4.498

That's pretty much the same thing you did, I just wanted to redo the initial *extremely* rough equation to account for all factors.

I won't even touch fury, I just want to say good job on doing calculations for it. It's weird, but Fury has only a little bit RPS advantage over DW with Protection spec. But that's just the result of rage normalization.

[Concillian]

I won't even touch fury, I just want to say good job on doing calculations for it. It's weird, but Fury has only a little bit RPS advantage over DW with Protection spec. But that's just the result of rage normalization.

Fury will only be a small amount more. In my cases it was about 4% more RPS than without flurry. It's a small enough number that using 4% more for flurry shouldn't have very large errors anyway.

The nerf to rage from flurry is pretty significant, given that the damage increase from flurry in that gear config was about 20%, and previously that would have given about 20% more rage, not just 4%. 2H fury looks like it may be really tough to keep up on the rage now. 2H is looking like PvP / arms only at this point. I guess that's good for paladin, but between shaman going DW and the rogues and warriors, 1H weapon drops might start getting much more valuable.

[Concillian]

Calcs for WF vs. GoA, with the following assumptions:

WF cannot proc flurry (it may be able to, the calcs get prohibitavely complex though)
GoA crit rate increase is included in % of hits that are sped up by flurry
no rage gain off WF procs

There are two WF calcs:
WF1 = yellow hits like MS / BT / Devastate can proc WF
WF2 = only white damage can proc WF

I'm not positive, I've heard that procs only happen off white damage as they had planned to impelment earlier, then pulled after the massive outcry. I've included both cases because I have no idea which is the actual case.

Code:

DW Fury

          NoT      GoA       WF1     WF2
20% DR    356      373       400     388
30% DR    308      322       347     336
40% DR    261      273       294     285

MS

          NoT      GoA       WF1     WF2
20% DR    323      337       371     352
30% DR    273      285       314     299
40% DR    226      236       260     248

DW Prot

          NoT      GoA       WF1     WF2
20% DR    291      305       355     319
30% DR    249      261       302     280
40% DR    208      218       252     233

All cases still favor WF, though if it can't proc from yellow damage, the margin is getting pretty narrow.

[Kevin]

How hard would it be to model 1H prot (with the the same spec) and putting in shield slams for some of the damage/aggro? If the difference is even smaller (as I suspect) for damage GoA might be the way to go all the time with the tank now. Since 88 agi = 4.4% dodge at L60 and if you are still looking at nearly the same basic aggro generation (since rage generation is closer and DPS is closer between the two). I guess to gauge that you just need a RPS calc for the too, don't really need to worry too much about DPS other than white since aggro is more about skills than damage. At least that would help gauge it.

[Concillian]

How hard would it be to model 1H prot (with the the same spec) and putting in shield slams for some of the damage/aggro?

Give me an idea what STR and crit you want me to use before vitality is taken into account. I assume the same weapon (R14 1hander @ 2.9 speed)... keep in mind that the gear I've been using on the DW devastate build has been DPS gear and nothing even close to resembling tanking gear.

I already have a spreadsheet setup for 1H with that spec. I can report just white damage + rage for the various cases since rage isn't necessarily ideal to turn into damage when tanking.

[Kevin]

Give me an idea what STR and crit you want me to use before vitality is taken into account. I assume the same weapon (R14 1hander @ 2.9 speed)... keep in mind that the gear I've been using on the DW devastate build has been DPS gear and nothing even close to resembling tanking gear.

I already have a spreadsheet setup for 1H with that spec. I can report just white damage + rage for the various cases since rage isn't necessarily ideal to turn into damage when tanking.

Dunno something like this: http://ctprofiles.net/4709142 or maybe just a full T1 gear set.


Or if you just want str before talents, something like 240 (full T1) to 270 (T2/T1 mix). Crit would be around 10-11%.

[Concillian]

using Gnolack's stats...

Assumptions:
1) battle shout up the whole time
2) for WF1 it was assumed instants are used that can proc WF 2 out of every 3 global cooldowns, this may be a little optimistic on any rage starved encounters. Can't really model it because it will be dependent on rage from taking damage.

Code:

White damage or white damage + WF damage

          NoT      GoA       WF1     WF2
20% DR    119      124       173     143
30% DR    104      108       152     125
40% DR     90       94       131     108

rage with & without GoA

20% 2.48 / 2.99 RPS
30% 2.30 / 2.79 RPS
40% 2.11 / 2.60 RPS

GoA looks to give a significant boost to RPS from dealing damage, but this is probably only a small portion of your total rage.

Course, who knows with WF being yellow, maybe flametongue totem is viable on high DR encounters:wacko:

[Icebird]

I tried a 41 point Rampage build on the test realms with the remaining points in Parry, Tactical Mastery and Anticipation. I'll probably the extra 10 points from the expansion into the Protection tree for a DPS-oriented hybrid, suitable for tanking 5 mans and maybe off-tanking in raids.

With that build, dual wielding just *felt* better than using a 2-hander. Dual-wielding I could keep Rampage up almost all the time. With a two-hander, the wait for the criticals that allow Rampage to be triggered seemed to take that much longer. By the time I popped Rampage, the mob was half dead just from white damage.

I tried one warsong match, and Rampage was tricky to keep up in PvP, since you need both a critical and 30 rage. It's going to take some tactical adjustments on my part not to use up all my rage on Hamstring-spam.

Chris

[WimpySmurf]

Give me an idea what STR and crit you want me to use before vitality is taken into account. I assume the same weapon (R14 1hander @ 2.9 speed)... keep in mind that the gear I've been using on the DW devastate build has been DPS gear and nothing even close to resembling tanking gear.

I already have a spreadsheet setup for 1H with that spec. I can report just white damage + rage for the various cases since rage isn't necessarily ideal to turn into damage when tanking.

So, +10% STR for Conc is ~60AP which is very close to +25% BS bonus. So, I wonder how 1-Handed Specialization plus Dual-wield Specialization do? I guess HS would become your Rage dumper then, which is slightly more dmg/rage than Devistate, but would throw off some of the calcs for white dps.

A spec like this

Another thing to note is that Unbridaled Wrath looks much more inviting for climbing the Fury tree. Something like ~0.25 RPS.

-WimpySmurf

[Concillian]

So, +10% STR for Conc is ~60AP which is very close to +25% BS bonus. So, I wonder how 1-Handed Specialization plus Duel-wield Specialization do? I guess HS would become your Rage dumper then, which is slightly more dmg/rage than Devistate, but would throw off some of the calcs for white dps.

I haven't calc'ed it out, but I'd be surprised if HS is all that close to devastate in terms of the damage you get from rage. 1H spec and DW spec should synergize nicely and net you more overall rage, but you blow your rage per damage efficiency in doing so.

In my example, devastate was hitting for around 210 in GG's gear and around 222 in the DPS gear

Assuming you have the AQ20 rank of HS, it's only 157 per hit (173 with 1H spec), plus it steals the rage on that hit. Less damage, and if you consider that it makes a hit that would have generated rage a hit that doesn't, it costs more rage too. Devastate ends up being over 50% better in damage per rage when you account for both those factors.

I suspect this kind of a build might be close on DPS to a devastate build when DPSing, but probably slightly behind, and it would certainly be behind on tanking too.

I really don't like the hybrid options warriors have until 70 when you can get 1H spec + Bloodthirst. Jester has decided to go full prot for devastate to try that out. I'm going to go full arms at least until TBC while I PvP for some of the last few upgrades before the expansion. I'll probably switch to the Fury / prot hybrid once TBC is releaased as that should be better than the arms build both for leveling and for the 5 manning we will be doing at that time.

[WimpySmurf]

I haven't calc'ed it out, but I'd be surprised if HS is all that close to devastate in terms of the damage you get from rage. 1H spec and DW spec should synergize nicely and net you more overall rage, but you blow your rage per damage efficiency in doing so.

In my example, devastate was hitting for around 210 in GG's gear and around 222 in the DPS gear

Assuming you have the AQ20 rank of HS, it's only 157 per hit (173 with 1H spec), plus it steals the rage on that hit. Less damage, and if you consider that it makes a hit that would have generated rage a hit that doesn't, it costs more rage too. Devastate ends up being over 50% better in damage per rage when you account for both those factors.

I suspect this kind of a build might be close on DPS to a devastate build when DPSing, but probably slightly behind, and it would certainly be behind on tanking too.

I really don't like the hybrid options warriors have until 70 when you can get 1H spec + Bloodthirst. Jester has decided to go full prot for devastate to try that out. I'm going to go full arms at least until TBC while I PvP for some of the last few upgrades before the expansion. I'll probably switch to the Fury / prot hybrid once TBC is releaased as that should be better than the arms build both for leveling and for the 5 manning we will be doing at that time.

I forgot to add in the AP bonus for devastate, oops. (Flawed thinking of: 172/2+25 = 111 < +137 dmg for Rank 8 HS)

I'm thinking of going back to Dual-Wield and going 0/37/14 tomorrow. Since my guess is that 2-H Fury just won't cut it, even with a 0.5s cast Slam. Though, I really need an off-hand upgrade.

-WimpySmurf

[Concillian]

One more thing that is very interesting

Okay so I started thinking about rage mechanics pertaining to the normalization formula... white damage gained from +%crit seems to be not normalized... or rather, normalized the same as if you have less +%crit... at least until resilience rating on PvP gear becomes a factor.

So DW is good for rage gen and so it +crit. This means that one of the better builds for rage generation should be one that 5/5 Cruelty and 5/5 Poleaxe spec and Dual wields. What kind of screwed up build takes Cruelty and Poleaxe spec for dual-wielding? Well I would presume a dual wield MS build that went 41 arms...

Oddly such a build isn't as bad as 'common thinking' in the warrior community might have believed... here is RPS, white DPS and total DPS:

Code:

DW MS (41 arms)
           RPS     WDPS    TotDPS
20% DR    7.05      201     372
30% DR    6.54      176     323
40% DR    6.03      151     275

Compare that to what I get for a 2H full arms build with the same gear but a R14 2H weapon instead of 2 Rank 14 1H weapons...

Code:

2H MS (41 arms)
           RPS     WDPS    TotDPS
20% DR    7.28      174     383
30% DR    6.73      160     324
40% DR    6.17      137     268

It was interesting to me that the two builds came out so close to one another, as conventional wisdom says that DW MS is a no-no. The new rage mechanics mean that a DW MS build isn't so terrible, but you are very limited on weapon used as the damage range on the main hand weapon here is much more critical than it would be in a Bloodthirst build.

[lemekim]

One more thing that is very interesting

Okay so I started thinking about rage mechanics pertaining to the normalization formula... white damage gained from +%crit seems to be not normalized... or rather, normalized the same as if you have less +%crit... at least until resilience rating on PvP gear becomes a factor.

Yea, I noticed that too. I think to put this in different terms, if you stack your Str/AP to hit harder, you encounter diminishing returns for rage generated, so 10 points of strength will give less and less additional RPS as your DPS increases. But if you stack crit, you get identical increase in RPS for each point of crit you gain.

So DW is good for rage gen and so it +crit. This means that one of the better builds for rage generation should be one that 5/5 Cruelty and 5/5 Poleaxe spec and Dual wields. What kind of screwed up build takes Cruelty and Poleaxe spec for dual-wielding? Well I would presume a dual wield MS build that went 41 arms...

Oddly such a build isn't as bad as 'common thinking' in the warrior community might have believed... here is RPS, white DPS and total DPS:

Code:

DW MS (41 arms)
           RPS     WDPS    TotDPS
20% DR    7.05      201     372
30% DR    6.54      176     323
40% DR    6.03      151     275

Compare that to what I get for a 2H full arms build with the same gear but a R14 2H weapon instead of 2 Rank 14 1H weapons...

Code:

2H MS (41 arms)
           RPS     WDPS    TotDPS
20% DR    7.28      174     383
30% DR    6.73      160     324
40% DR    6.17      137     268

It was interesting to me that the two builds came out so close to one another, as conventional wisdom says that DW MS is a no-no. The new rage mechanics mean that a DW MS build isn't so terrible, but you are very limited on weapon used as the damage range on the main hand weapon here is much more critical than it would be in a Bloodthirst build.

Yes, this is actually one of the things I found out the hard way through leveling. As we can see from your numbers, the higher RPS and White DPS offsets lower Special DPS. Also, Warriors will find this very important when leveling in BC, your weapon skill goes up much faster when you dual-wield, especially if it's 2 identical weapons. That might not sound that important, but when your weapon skill falls 10 points below what your current level, you will be getting glancing blows left and right against equal level mobs, reducing your DPS further. So in the end, you will actually end up doing more damage just dual-wielding with MS.

By the way, if you really want rage coming out of your ears with MS build, consider taking mace specialization - at 5 PPM for each weapon, you will get something like 30 extra rage per minute, not to mention stunning your targets to death.

[Monkey]

So DW is good for rage gen and so it +crit. This means that one of the better builds for rage generation should be one that 5/5 Cruelty and 5/5 Poleaxe spec and Dual wields. What kind of screwed up build takes Cruelty and Poleaxe spec for dual-wielding? Well I would presume a dual wield MS build that went 41 arms...

Hmm--would Sword Specialization be competitive? It has to roll for a hit twice, but it also gets a chance to crit twice. Maybe if I have some time today, I'll try to puzzle that out--there's a real dearth of fast one-hand or off-hand axes at the high end, but plenty of good options for fast swords.

[Concillian]

Hmm--would Sword Specialization be competitive? It has to roll for a hit twice, but it also gets a chance to crit twice. Maybe if I have some time today, I'll try to puzzle that out--there's a real dearth of fast one-hand or off-hand axes at the high end, but plenty of good options for fast swords.

I don't know. The rogues have some issues with sword spec when dual wielding because it resets your swing timer when it procs... so if it procs from your off hand right before your main hand would swing you can actually hurt your damage (supposedly, I haven't really looked into it in depth).

Some rogues insist that sword spec is only useful with a non-sword in the off-hand. Rather than try to figure this out I just did the poleaxe.

Mace spec does look pretty interesting for PvP and for grinding. Though against someone with second wind it might be less favorable. Because I have a TUF, I'm going to try mace spec initially, then make some decisions when I get enough honor to pick up some other weapons.

[Kevin]

Yes, this is actually one of the things I found out the hard way through leveling. As we can see from your numbers, the higher RPS and White DPS offsets lower Special DPS. Also, Warriors will find this very important when leveling in BC, your weapon skill goes up much faster when you dual-wield, especially if it's 2 identical weapons. That might not sound that important, but when your weapon skill falls 10 points below what your current level, you will be getting glancing blows left and right against equal level mobs, reducing your DPS further. So in the end, you will actually end up doing more damage just dual-wielding with MS.

Keep in mind this all changes too:

- Weapon Skill now does the following:
- Weapon skill will no longer reduce the percentage damage lost due to
glancing.
- The player will gain 0.1% to their critical strike rating per weapon skill
against monsters above their level.

Though I'm not sure what it means for ranged right now. Hunters never got glancing blows. For us 1 weapon skill was 0.04% crit and 0.24% to hit. Don't know if that changed, but it did change for melee. I don't recall what the crit reduction per level difference is for melee either so I can't really judge how big a deal this is, but it feels like a big nerf to +weapon skill.