2.0x Warrior Hybrid builds

[Concillian]

I just did a quick runthrough some calculations of a couple possible hybrid warrior builds. My results were a little surprising, and I thought I'd share for informational purposes and maybe someone can point out potential mistakes.

For the sake of simplicity, I used the same gear for the two builds, despite one being DW and one being 2H (click on the profile of Conc in my sig... gear is 'main' + Rank 14 weapons).
MS / Prot: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent-bc=LVG0dNioM0dZVZcbt0b
Devastate: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent-bc=TVZVZcytof0zzxst

Then I modeled white damage for 20%, 30% and 40% damage reduction and got RPS and white DPS for the two builds (assuming DW build for Devastate).


-----------

Edited to remove erroneous data from this post. refer to the branch of the thread later where I replied to this post... I think it's post #20 for you freaks who don't use Outline view.

[lemekim]

What are your goals?

Devastate is there pretty much do add some DPS back to full Protection Spec Warriors, so if you are a main tank, it's good to have. 2 handers/MS will still be better for PvP. And Dual Wield Fury will be the spec for grinding/DPS, given base higher rage generation than that of 2-handers, and various new damage enhancing goodies.

[Delc]

Not sure how you counted it in your calculations, but WF is being changed to a special attack in the expansion, ie no rage from it.

Also doesn't devastate generate a bunch of extra threat? Pulling aggro and getting yourself killed won't help your dps much. :whistling:

[Concillian]

Not sure how you counted it in your calculations, but WF is being changed to a special attack in the expansion, ie no rage from it.

Also doesn't devastate generate a bunch of extra threat? Pulling aggro and getting yourself killed won't help your dps much. :whistling:

I did not include WF in the rage calcs. Rage is strictly calculated from white damage. DW hit% penalty (for devastate), 1H / 2H / poleaxe spec, AP, crit rate, etc... have been taken into account.

Extra threat for Devastate is not a bunch. Kenco's tests are showing about 47 static threat per devastate, regardless of number of sunders. A hybrid warrior generally isn't doing enough DPS to worry too much about pulling aggro, especially with the rage nerf and extra aggro given to protection warriors in 2.0x I think it will be very difficult for a DPSing warrior to pull aggro at average gearing levels.

[Concillian]

What are your goals?

Devastate is there pretty much do add some DPS back to full Protection Spec Warriors, so if you are a main tank, it's good to have. 2 handers/MS will still be better for PvP. And Dual Wield Fury will be the spec for grinding/DPS, given base higher rage generation than that of 2-handers, and various new damage enhancing goodies.

It's not necessarily about my goals, but I have traditionally been a 'jack of all trades' type warrior who has been the "DPS" warrior primarily because I outgear most of the other warriors in the guild (Jester has caught up and maybe passed me). My goal is to be above average at DPS and tanking, hence the focus on a 'hybrid' build.

Rage normalization seems to hit DW harder than 2H based on this example. The DW white damage was higher than the 2H white damage, yet rage gain was similar. I'm not fully convinced that Fury is going to be miles beyond the MS and devastate numbers if you're going to spend ~18 points elsewhere (deflection+ 13 in prot).

[Jester]

This is my worst fear for warriors in the expansion.

Devastate, in trying to fix the prot tree and make it attractive to non-MT warriors, will instead just break Arms and Fury. I worry we will be left with two options:

1) Build an essentially pure tank, with around 100% of optimal tanking ability, and 90% or so of optimal DPS.

2) Squeeze out the extra 10% DPS at the cost of the vast majority of tanking ability.

That's coming up on Hobson's Choice right there. Prot spec should not even be close to Arms or Fury in terms of DPS. That's why those two have separate trees. That's what makes building a warrior interesting. Wreck that, and you suddenly have one "right" warrior for nearly everybody: 5/5/41, plus a floating 10 points to put where you like.

They can't buff the Arms or Fury trees much without treading on Rogue territory too much. So I think Prot needs to be scaled back, damagewise. It *should* be a tree where only dedicated tanks want to invest, and where only full raid tanks absolutely require heavy investment. It *should* come at a cost elsewhere.

I hate to complain about buffs to my class, but I think in the end this change will make Warriors dramatically less interesting.

-Jester

[Concillian]

2) Squeeze out the extra 10% DPS at the cost of the vast majority of tanking ability.

Adding in Improved MS and Endless rage, this looks to be about the right figure, I'm seeing 11-13.5% DPS increase depending on the factors... again, assuming all rage is spent on MS. But the loss of Toughness, defiance and Last Stand is going to be a noticeable tanking difference.

Oddly enough, on the hybrid build it looks better to ditch Cruelty, Last Stand and Defiance, to pick up Endless Rage. This gives about a 5% bump in DPS and doesn't hurt tanking quite so much as a "full arms DPS build" (42 arms / 5 fury / 3 in tac mastery + 1 floater) Fury is probably a better choice going this far in though, I need to do some modeling for flurry, but still don't know if rage normalization is going to be affected by flurry (is the weapon speed used in teh formula the same or (WS / 1.3) when you have the flurry buff?)

[vor_lord]

I've heard multiple anecdotes from the beta about Fury warrior DPS still being very strong. This also isn't the first place where I've heard Arms warriors are suffering.

Just read a thread about a ret pally with TUF competing damagewise with a Grand Marshal Arms warrior at level 60.

This is on PTR, not TBC beta:

http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?t...=84848569&sid=1

[Warlock]

Minor nit: You should have more rage than you've listed here. If you're soloing you'll have rage from getting hit, which will permit more special moves. If you're DPS in a group or raid you'll have more buffs and the target will probably be sundered.

[TheDragoon]

I would imagine from my experience and calculations that a fury build won't get hit quite as hard as an arms build with the rage normalization.

First some calculations:
I put together a rage generation spreadsheet and I saw my warrior losing about 20% rage, in fury mode, over what she has currently or about 25% rage in MS mode. The 20% rage drop when dual wielding would be annoying but probably workable as seen below. The 25% drop in MS mode probably will not work as well.

Here's some anecdotal evidence:
From my experience, I tend to gain more rage than I can burn with bloodthirst + whirlwind and so I end up dumping it via heroic strike. This change will mostly mean that I would no longer be dumping rage via heroic strike. However, in 2-handed mode I never seem to have the rage available for heroic strike/cleave unless I sacrifice an instant attack or generate rage via berserker's rage. That means that I would anticipate the rage nerf hitting the 2-handed builds a bit harder than dual wield.

---------------------

As for how flurry fits into the rage generation formula, I've heard conflicting reports. Some people have said that it appears that the base swing speed is what the rage generation formula uses, thus flurry only increases your damage output, but not your rage generation. Other reports have seemed to point to it still increasing rage generation as it does now.

Overall, I'm not very happy to see how sharply rage generation seems like it will fall off with the next patch. It really does make me feel like maybe going to a prot build in the expansion will be best for me. I had already been thinking about it because I don't particularly feel like trying to gear up both tanking and DPS gear, anymore, and having prot do DPS comparable to other DPS builds would really push me in that direction.

[lemekim]

It's not necessarily about my goals, but I have traditionally been a 'jack of all trades' type warrior who has been the "DPS" warrior primarily because I outgear most of the other warriors in the guild (Jester has caught up and maybe passed me). My goal is to be above average at DPS and tanking, hence the focus on a 'hybrid' build.

Rage normalization seems to hit DW harder than 2H based on this example. The DW white damage was higher than the 2H white damage, yet rage gain was similar. I'm not fully convinced that Fury is going to be miles beyond the MS and devastate numbers if you're going to spend ~18 points elsewhere (deflection+ 13 in prot).

Well, dual-wielding Warrior doing 100 DPS will generate a bit more rage per second in expansion/new patch compared to a Warrior with 2-hander. Before patch, rage generated would have been exactly the same. So no, DW was not hit harder by the change.

So for your purposes, a Devastate tank build might be best, inclduing doing some DPS with Devastates while Dualwielding - the damage is not that bad at all. If you are more DPS inclined, 31 Fury/15 Prot/ 5 Arms might be a good choice - your aggro will be close to that of 41 Protection thanks to Flurry (and Bloodthirsts, since they are based on AP), your DPS will be higher, with a slight dent in your survivability.

[Concillian]

Well, dual-wielding Warrior doing 100 DPS will generate a bit more rage per second in expansion/new patch compared to a Warrior with 2-hander. Before patch, rage generated would have been exactly the same. So no, DW was not hit harder by the change.

This is not the case in the gear and spec configuration I tested...

2H R14 Axe or Polearm:
294 avg damage
1212 AP = 329 damage per swing at 3.8 speed
= (294 + 329) * 1.05 (2H spec) avg damage per swing = 654.2 damage per swing * 0.8 (20% damage reduction) = 523.4 damage per swing (137.7 DPS assuming no crits, for this comparison I will just look at base DPS for simplicity, there is already a bit of math to follow...)

Rage for that is
(523.4 / 230.6 * 7.5 + (3.8 * 2.5)) / 2 = 13.26 rage per swing / 3.8s = 3.49 RPS

DW R14 1H weapons:
172.5 avg damage
1212 AP = 251.1 damage per swing at 2.9 speed
= 172.5 + 251.1 * 1.1 (1Hspec) = 466.0 avg per swing * 0.8 = 372.8 damage per swing (main hand) and half that for the off hand (186.4)

Rage for that is
(372.8 / 230.6 * 7.5 + (2.9 * 2.5)) / 2 = 9.69
(186.4 / 230.6 * 7.5 + (2.9 * 1.25)) / 2 = 4.84 = 14.53 rage per 2 swings, or 5.01 RPS, but miss rate is 17% (24% base + 7% on gear) so 4.16 rage per second.
DPS in this case is 160.0 (372.8 * 0.83 + 186.4 * 0.83)

So the DW case is 160 / 137.7 DPS difference (16% more damage)
and rage is 4.16 / 3.49 = 20% more rage for DW... so yes, DW gives a very slight rage benefit... on the order of 5% more rage for the same damage

However, in the builds I outlined, the 2H case allows Anger management, which is 0.4 rage per second (1 rage per tick... 2.5 seconds). When you add that in, the 2H case is actually higher rage per second, which is why the DW case had more white DPS but similar RPS (or lower overall rage generation efficiency).

So yes, while in a vacuum DW is slightly more rage per DPS, the Arms build allows anger management, by far the single best rage generation talent a warrior has. That should help balance some of the discrepancy... in this case it tips the efficiency to favor the 2H in terms of RPS per DPS.

Keep in mind that what is live on the test realms is something that Kalgan has noted is not right. Crits are giving too little rage and off hand hits are giving too much rage. Using the PTR may not be the most accurate, as DW should see a significant amount of rage lost on the next PTR patch.

[Concillian]

Overall, I'm not very happy to see how sharply rage generation seems like it will fall off with the next patch. It really does make me feel like maybe going to a prot build in the expansion will be best for me. I had already been thinking about it because I don't particularly feel like trying to gear up both tanking and DPS gear, anymore, and having prot do DPS comparable to other DPS builds would really push me in that direction.

Well, to be fair, you'll only be able to do DPS comparable to DPS builds if you are using DPS gear. Devastate seems to be reasonably close to an MS "hybrid" build that picks up some tanking talents... in DPS gear.

It just means, more than ever, that gearing will be the largest factor in the role you're best at.

[lemekim]

However, in the builds I outlined, the 2H case allows Anger management, which is 0.4 rage per second (1 rage per tick... 2.5 seconds). When you add that in, the 2H case is actually higher rage per second, which is why the DW case had more white DPS but similar RPS (or lower overall rage generation efficiency).

So yes, while in a vacuum DW is slightly more rage per DPS, the Arms build allows anger management, by far the single best rage generation talent a warrior has. That should help balance some of the discrepancy... in this case it tips the efficiency to favor the 2H in terms of RPS per DPS.

Keep in mind that what is live on the test realms is something that Kalgan has noted is not right. Crits are giving too little rage and off hand hits are giving too much rage. Using the PTR may not be the most accurate, as DW should see a significant amount of rage lost on the next PTR patch.

The rage benefit for dualwielding is not really a percent, it's more of a flat number, independent of your DPS, only variable with your +hit. The higher +hit, the higher the flat rage per second bonus is.

The formula is *roughly*

rage per second (2h) = ( 1.25 + DPS/61.5 ) * miss rate
rage per second (DW) = ( 1.875 + total_DPS/61.5) * miss rate

Talents really should not be considered here at all, neither 5% damage increase to 2-handers, nor 10% damage boost for Protection spec. You say Anger Management is passive rage generation, yet unbridled wrath also can provide close to 0.1 RPS increase for each point, giving 0.4 RPS overall approximately. Sure, Anger management is just 1 point, but honestly, you have to chose some pretty mediocre talents to get there. And Focused Rage is just as good, saving 1 rage per point on all your offensive moves. I won't even mention dual-wield specialization and what it does for DW builds.

All specs have some good skills that help either damage or rage generation. There is no reason why you can't use Anger Management while dual wielding. So really, you shouldn't include them in the direct comparison, but you rather have to look at them afterward, and decide whether certain benefits of one spec provide significant advantage over others for *you*.

[Concillian]

All specs have some good skills that help either damage or rage generation. There is no reason why you can't use Anger Management while dual wielding.

This statement indicates that you don't understand the topic at hand, unless you're suggesting I DW with an MS build... In a hybrid build there are simply not enough points to have a viable DW build with anger managemant AND the points in protection to justify it being called a hybrid build. If you want to discuss pure DPS builds, it's a different matter, and should probably be handled in a different topic than one titled 'warrior hybrid builds'.

Yes, I included talents in the calculation... because the discussion is about hybrid talent builds. Excluding talents from a discussion of talent builds would be quite pointless, wouldn't it? You'll notice that I did preface my calculations with a statement indicating it would be for the gear and talent specs I had already posted, AND I agreed that DW would give more rage than 2H when examined in a talent vacuum.

I've discussed why I haven't mentioned Fury builds... because I don't have a model that doesn't have rather large holes in it, but they should be viable and I don't think I ever indicated that they wouldn't.

[lemekim]

This statement indicates that you don't understand the topic at hand, unless you're suggesting I DW with an MS build... In a hybrid build there are simply not enough points to have a viable DW build with anger managemant AND the points in protection to justify it being called a hybrid build. If you want to discuss pure DPS builds, it's a different matter, and should probably be handled in a different topic than one titled 'warrior hybrid builds'.

Yes, I included talents in the calculation... because the discussion is about hybrid talent builds. Excluding talents from a discussion of talent builds would be quite pointless, wouldn't it? You'll notice that I did preface my calculations with a statement indicating it would be for the gear and talent specs I had already posted, AND I agreed that DW would give more rage than 2H when examined in a talent vacuum.

I've discussed why I haven't mentioned Fury builds... because I don't have a model that doesn't have rather large holes in it, but they should be viable and I don't think I ever indicated that they wouldn't.

If you really must include talents into DPS calculations, you should include ALL of them. Your calculations are meaningless, because you pick and choose some talents, yet ignore others. Furthermore, you don't have any even idea what percentage of what skills you are going to use, so you can't even begin to guess how they will stack up. You think you can just calculate RPS and base your decision on that? That's laughable.

Simple example - you did not even mention Focused Rage in your calculations, yet it will save you huge amounts of rage. How does it fit in?

However, I think I know what you are looking for.

http://forums.elitistjerks.com/viewtopic...d=7030&p=1

Simply put in your gear, spec, etc. I don't know how outdated it is. You should see some approximation of your DPS. I am sure you can decide the benefit of other skills not realted to DPS on your own.

[Jester]

It just means, more than ever, that gearing will be the largest factor in the role you're best at.

Sure, if you're going the one way, being a Prot warrior who puts on DPS gear to push out the damage.

If you're going the other, being an arms or fury warrior moving to tanking, you lose a *lot* of mitigation, the cheaper offensive abilities, the insta-reapply sunder stack, 5% stamina, last stand, the extra shield block, etc...

For 25% more rage and the deep wounds/rend debuff? Yeah, I'm not seeing how that's a good tradeoff even for someone who only tanks occasionally. Fury probably has more to offer, but even if it does, that just means 1 irrelevant tree instead of 2.

-Jester

[Concillian]

Simple example - you did not even mention Focused Rage in your calculations, yet it will save you huge amounts of rage. How does it fit in?

However, I think I know what you are looking for.

http://forums.elitistjerks.com/viewtopic...d=7030&p=1

Simply put in your gear, spec, etc. I don't know how outdated it is. You should see some approximation of your DPS. I am sure you can decide the benefit of other skills not realted to DPS on your own.

1) The devastate spec linked includes focused rage... therefore the calculations involving that spec assume devastate to require 12 rage (15 - 3). Of course I included that talent in the calculations for the devastate spec.

Blood frenzy and Deep wounds are the only talents I didn't take into account (these were part of the MS build). I did mentioned this in the initial post. Everything else is included, I did not "pick and choose". There are only some in the calculations for rage per second, but only talents that affect white damage will affect those calculations, so I can't very well include focused rage in that.

2) That worksheet is very outdated. It doesn't include rage normalization and the talent trees are about 2 revisions behind. Deathwing has stated he isn't going to worry too much about things until after the patch. Considering the rather large impact of rage normalization, there isn't much value in that spreadsheet right now.

[Artega]

My goal is to be above average at DPS and tanking, hence the focus on a 'hybrid' build.

It seems to me like that shouldn't be possible. Shouldn't you expect to lose a little DPS in exchange for tanking and some tanking for DPS? If you want to be a jack of all trades, you should expect to be a master of none<_<

I can understand your frustration in how Devastate seems to outperform MS in your math, but it's not like it'd be a difficult fix; increasing Devastate's Rage cost could fix it, or maybe it's a bug in the Rage normalization calculations. Either way, I think it's a little early to be getting one's panties in a wad when the expansion is still almost two months away:)

[Concillian]

Okay I was able to use the DPS spreadsheet to get an estimate for Flurry.
It's also been confirmed that the rage normalization formula DOES take flurry speed into account (therefore more significantly nerfing rage for flurry builds).

With these two facts I was able to get some similar statistics for a DW fury build, using this hybrid build as a template:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent-bc=TmZE00VLxoVuZcbt0b

I also assumed that blood frenzy was always active on the MS build, which helps it quite a bit. once this happens the comparisons look like this when taking into account the appropriate talents (DW spec / flurry for the fury, 1H spec / Vitality for prot, 2H spec / anger management for Arms) For all of these I assume Berserker stance:

White DPS:

Code:

           MS      DW Devas       DW Fury
20% DR    179        209            253
30% DR    165        182            222
40% DR    141        156            190

Not very surprising, DW Fury tops the white damage by a fair margin thanks to Flurry, improved battle shout and DW spec.

Rage per Second:

Code:

           MS      DW Devas       DW Fury
20% DR    4.88        5.35           5.96
30% DR    4.52        4.92           5.50
40% DR    4.15        4.50           5.03

These rage calcs assume the model that Kalgan posted, which he has said is different from the rage model on the PTR, which gives too much rage on off hand hits and too little rage on crits.

The MS build is rage limited on MS. Fury spec has enough rage to do more than just BT in the 30% and 20% DR categories. I assumed a lower damage per rage than BT on rage that could not be used on BT due to cooldown.

overall theoretical DPS assuming berserker stance and all rage going to MS / Devastate / Bloodthirst respectively:

Code:

           MS      DW Devas       DW Fury
20% DR    323        291           356
30% DR    273        249           308
40% DR    226        208           261

So I guess things come out about in the expected order, but with narrower margins between them thanks mainly to the rage normalization and devastate's pretty nice amount of damage capability with a slow weapon and the 1H spec + vitality STR bonus stacking.

The MS build averages about 10% higher than devastate for the loss of quite a lot of tanking talents (shield slam, shield block, +5% block, +5% health, devastate)
The Fury build averages about 10% higher than the MS build, and is far less dependent on DR of the target. There is some loss of mitigation (1 point in deflection and 1 point in defiance), the loss of a raid +4% physical DPS debuff, but the gain of a slight increase to the BS buff for the party, and it should be significantly higher threat for tanking than the MS hybrid tanking.

While the Fury build should be slightly more personal DPS, I believe that the MS build should benefit the raid as a whole better with the Blood Frenzy debuff on the mob. Devastate may be a pretty decent for a hybrid type build just from the standpoint that you'll do quite a bit more DPS when tanking, less when you don't have to tank, but tanking warrior DPS is going to shoot way up for devastate builds compared with current tanking builds (provided they seek out an appropriately slow weapon) or 2.0x arms/prot or fury/prot hybrid builds when they are tanking.

The full DPS builds start getting really complicated to model. Rampage is an absolute bitch to model. I played some with it on the PTR and Rampage sucks. 2 minute buffs are short enough... 30 second buffs are total BS. I don't want to have to manage that crap, so I may never go 41 Fury. Also, for the MS build you start having enough rage to do MS every 5 seconds and still have rage left over. So a slight complication in whether to use the rage on hamstring spam to proc WF or doing whirlwinds.

Next up...
GG mentioned wondering if GoA is more viable now that WF is yellow damage... hmmm...