A different approach: 33/28/0
Arena, Slam, Talents April 11th, 2007When you look at top arena rated warriors there is one thing interesting (well, two if you count a prot warrior), there is a fair amount of warriors with 0 points in protection - no Tactical Mastery. I’ve already discussed 35/23/3 build vs 33/25/3 build, but those stats really got me thinking, and some people bashed me in comments for labeling 31/30 as not-really-arena build.
I’ve been thinking about Slam a lot, and I’ve been thinking about Tactical Mastery, as the arguments that you don’t actually stance dance a lot on the arenas are, duh, pretty sensible. I’ve tried 31/30 before and I didn’t like it, now I know I did some things wrong. I’ve tried to test Slam with 31/30, but I did it all wrong, I tried to use it as a main attack, timing it after white hits, so I had to be really focused about my movement, hamstrings and skill timing, while loosing the bigger picture, I’ve respecced back to 35/23/3 as Slam sucked for me. But I’ve changed again, this time to 33/28 to prove myself I was right that you can’t do arenas without TM and that Slam is shit, but after playing some 2v2 practice it made me smile.
Before I go into Slam however, I’ll point out two other things I’ve changed in my build. First thing is - I dropped Booming Voice for 5/5 Unbridled Wrath. I’ve said a lot of shit about UW in the past, but I ended my post with “so if you are finding yourself to be rage-starving, it’s something you can pick” - and that’s what I’ve done. I don’t have improved charge, and often I simply can’t charge on the beginning of the arena forcing me to bloodrage -> intercept. With 35/23/3 such start was often a tragedy, it took me precious seconds before I could gain rage to use MS so our dps wasn’t mitigated by 100% undebuffed healing. Now with flurry and UW I build up rage much faster. UW is not a huge bonus, even after the recent change it generates low rage/second, but it’s better to have that 5 more rage after some bashing and being able to use abilities faster. Flurry is also a big factor when it comes to rage generation. The problem with flurry is, after rage normalization, it’s effect on rage generation was toned down, so now you generate less rage per swing with flurry on, but you still generate more rage with flurry then you would generate without it, and it increases UW’s performance as well. I obviously doesn’t have full flurry with just 28 points in fury tree, but 3/5 is well enough, having 30% speed boost vs 20% speed boost and second wind is no competition to me. I just like second wind too much to drop it, there is a gazillion of situations when u are immobilized or stunned on the arena, if you are being focus fired or not, and even if that healing isn’t a life saver when there are 3 people on you, that extra rage makes my warrior soul fly, especially since now I’ve something to do with it…
SLAM! Forget about using it every white hit, forget about using it all the time, forget about killing someone with just a slam spam, this is not freaking PvE. Just because it doesn’t have cooldown doesn’t mean you have to use it all the time, it was something I couldn’t accept first time when I tried it with 31/30. With loosing TM I lost some utility, however Slam gave me some more utility I didn’t have before, but the key part is learning how and when to use slam in PvP situations. There are two situations when you might want to use slam: a) Your instant attacks are on cooldown; b) You don’t have rage for your instant attacks and you need to deal damage right now; In both situations it might not always be a great increase in actual dps, you might hit it just before a white hit lands, making your auto attack reset in the worst possible situations, but you shouldn’t worry about that. Of course, some timing is necessary, but it doesn’t have to be perfect, the point is not to try making Slam as much effective dps tool as it can be, the point is using it as a missing chain link in your burst damage combo. There are situations when you are standing with full rage, both MS and WW on cooldown and your enemy has like 22% hp, a single Slam followed by Execute before the poor guy gets healed can drastically change the situation, and get you out of the deepest shit. It’s something you have to train, theory crafting isn’t good enough, using Slam effectively is pure practice. I took my time at 2v2 practice arena with gimps to master it, had to loose couple of 1v1 fights with rogues and had to miss it a couple of times when enemy run out of melee range to learn my lesson, and while I might not turn into the most awesome Slam user in WoW, I then played couple rated 5v5 with my team and it didn’t fail me. More dps, more rage, I think I’m going to stay 33/28 for a while…
Terhix
April 11th, 2007 at 7:07 pm
Welcome to the 33/28 club! Slam sucks, though. Heroic Strike > Slam. Put the points somewhere else, like Improved Execute!
Can’t emphasis enough how Imp. Execute’s benefit is not 105 more damage (thats not good), it is all about the spam value when you need it the most…when you are trying to finish off a target.
If you are dual wield where the rage generation “gaps” are less pronounced, meh. If you use big slow 2hers…awesome. Execute after every white hit is $$.
April 11th, 2007 at 9:31 pm
> Heroic Strike > Slam
On what planet?
April 11th, 2007 at 10:29 pm
about UW:
when mediate hits deliver 15 rage, 1 rage more (almost) every swing is a 7% increase of total rage generated from noncrits. not that bad. and its working every single fight you perform every second. i dont care if my shouts have a longer duration that wont make aloose or win. neither does imp demo shout that i dont even use against all opponents (big point for me, im not willing to skill for things that i dont always benefit from, or only against some classes), but gaining 1 rage every swing adds up. and you need that rage always.
about imp charge:
i cant charge every opponent, they might put me in combat or ambush me. however as long as i cant perform it every encounter its a 2 point waste for me. ESPECIALLY without TM as i (if i dont plan to start sweepings)immeadiatly switch to berserker WHILE charging, gaining only the base stance shift 10 rage from it but having the 3% more crit + fear break + pummel option from the very first second on.
about slam:
how i said, the occassions to use imp slam are rare, but its just damn good to have it in the backhand if you can work with it. i mostly use it dueling warriors where rage is unlimited and everythings on CD. one more hit often wins warrior duels, and slam hits really hard. another use is when rage is rare, beating on a shielded priest i compeltely skip WW and stick to MS+Slam, or really the moments you need the damage NOW FFS, no matter what happens to swing timers or if its efficient or not. but slam spam? i never did it. if i get crowded in battlegrounds (not arena) i usually cleave/ms/ww spam releasing georgeus aoe damage while feeling the end is near.
and finally about flurry and rage generation:
someone wrote down what i tested outside orgrimmar the first 10 minutes after i gained my first flurry talent point while leveling to 70:
http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=242264257&postId=2420724609&sid=1#0
the rage formula considers pure weapon speed. not the final swing speed. 5/5 flurry = 30%(real 25% due to rating mechanics)whitedamage AND rage increase.
April 11th, 2007 at 10:51 pm
heroic strike IS good in pvp, around 20% more damage than a normal hit AND if critting it benefits of impale increasing the crit by another 10%. so 20% more noncrit damage and 30% for crits, thats a lot when you dont care about the rage.
but heroic strike in pvp is as situational as slam.
April 11th, 2007 at 11:13 pm
HS is just boosted white hit, Slam allows you to finish your current swing with, bit lower but still much increased damage almost on demand, there are situations where u can’t wait 3-3.8 second for a swing to do damage, nailing someone with 0.5 sec Slam is then priceless. It IS situational, but it is worth it, 2 talent points is not a big price for having an extra attack when u need it.
April 11th, 2007 at 11:18 pm
“On what planet?”
On the planet of “I chase around frost mages, druids in travel form, frost trapping hunter, and other folks that know how to use movement as a form of mitigation.”
You should visit sometime, my planet also has a moon called “Slam resets swing timer and it is very hard to control it with micro in Arena.”
April 12th, 2007 at 12:09 am
On my planet nothing stops you from usint both HS and Slam when you need them.
And when Slam resets swing timer, HS completly remove a swing, talking about effectivness, duh! Slam is hard to control, but just like spell reflection - the benefits when used right are priceless. Warrior was actually pretty darn easy class to play before imp. Slam and spell reflection.
April 12th, 2007 at 8:42 am
Intercept (3sec stun) = 2 slam instead of 1 MS or whatever = doubled critchance with the same price (30 rage)
For this the 2 points are worth it! And obviously, it’s not the only situtation when slam indeed pwns!
April 12th, 2007 at 2:56 pm
“Intercept (3sec stun) = 2 slam instead of 1 MS or whatever = doubled critchance with the same price (30 rage)”
I’ll just LOL rather than respond. heh.
April 12th, 2007 at 3:31 pm
if you hit twice instead of once, the chance that you’ll get one crit is doubled
I’ll just LOL rather than explain any further.
April 12th, 2007 at 4:29 pm
Repeat after me. Slam resets swing timer. Slam resets swing timer. Slam resets swing timer. Slam also triggers global cooldown of 1.5 seconds. Sooo, you effectively paid 30 rage (two slams), plus 15ish rage you could have gotten for the next auto for a slightly hasted autoattack. Oh, and you “paid” a 1.5 global cooldown following your second slam.
Mortal Strike doesn’t reset swing timer. You would have paid a net of 15 rage for Mortal Strike + Auto Attack. Oh and there is this whole healing debuff nonsense I keep hearing about.
Look carefully at Veritas explanation in his article. He understands that it resets swing timer and is advocating using Slam in a very opportunistic manner. Basically, if you cant “micro” your character to let the situation dictate when to use slam, you shouldnt even bother as 2 talent points in Imp Slam will not only not help you, but will hurt you.
The bottom line is that if you play it perfectly and attend to every aspect of Slam, it can work out to be a benefit. My personal opinion is that even if you CAN do the above, there are better uses of 2 talent points.
To give you an idea, Slam is only useful if, at the very least, all of the following are true:
1. You are “early” in your swing timer. If it is anything more than 1.5 seconds or so after your last white hit, you should not use slam.
2. You are not being kited and are within a range that .5 seconds of movement, with you standing still, will not put you out of range. Warriors spend a great deal of time trying to keep in melee range period, let alone trying to stay close enough in melee range that .5 seconds wont put you out of melee range.
3. Mortal Strike has been freshly applied, OR you have a lot of rage to apply both Mortal Strike and sneak in a Slam. There is no way a warrior should ever priortize Slam over Mortal Strike, unless, maybe, if all healers are dead. One unmitigated heal will take away an entire match of perfectly executed Slams.
4. Your opponent is over 20% health. If he is not, you should be spamming Execute, not Slam.
That is situational to say the least, and when you apply all of the above perfectly, the benefit you recieve is a hasted next autoattack. The amount of haste varies by your weapon’s speed.
Using BS Axe (3.7 speed), it varies between 3.2 second haste with tag along global cooldown for perfectly executed Slam that immediately follows an auto. Nothing to scoff at. More realistically, over time, you are looking at a 2 second haste for 15 rage and global cooldown.
Note there is also a potential “slow” if you time Slam incorrectly. If you click slam anytime after 3.2 seconds, you effectively “pay” 15 rage and a global cooldown for a “slow” effect.
In any event, clicking Slam two times in a row is never a good use of rage.
April 12th, 2007 at 4:30 pm
I NEVER slam more then once, Slam spam is ftl, instead of landing 2x slam after intercept, you can just land MS+WW or MS+Slam for that matter. With global cooldown being 1.5sec, 2 slams in a row stop your swing timer for 2 secons+, not cool considering my flurried swing is 3 seconds.
April 12th, 2007 at 4:32 pm
error in the above, sentence should read:
“More realistically, over time, you are looking at a 2 second haste for 30 effective rage and global cooldown.”
April 12th, 2007 at 4:37 pm
“When you look at top arena rated warriors there is one thing interesting (well, two if you count a prot warrior)”
Is it possible that these guys are just respeccing everytime they do Arena and then back to Prot for PvE? Seems awfully strange to me that they could be Protection and still so well.
Then again teamwork and team synergy might be way more important than spec.
April 12th, 2007 at 5:30 pm
Guaranteed respeccing. Teamwork is good, but mortal strike is better 8).
April 12th, 2007 at 8:38 pm
Please delete the above two….lrn2pastespecs…(copied from browser and not from bottom). My spec is here:
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/warrior/talents.html?330050013525100200012000505013102501203000000000000000000000000000
May 1st, 2007 at 2:19 am
I wouldn’t reccomend spamming slam and to say the least it is very opportunistic to pull it off; you’d better off putting your 2 bob elsewhere i reckon. and in reply to the above comment about prot warrs in arenas they can do okay paired with a holy pally. I play a holy pally in 2v2 with an arms warr and i know that Pallies can do unmitigated healing of about 100- 120,000 healing if we arent being ripped on. the warr just has too many stuns and casting shield block etc lol. it diminishes the arms warrs rage and saps the healers mana for a very long fight.