Understanding improved MS and Flurry
Flurry, Mortal Strike November 3rd, 2007It’s been a while since I published and then fixed a few times my Axe vs Sword calculator. In the end of the day it just confirmed what all hardcore PvPers were saying for a long time. Some people were surprised when they’ve seen that having Flurry is not always favoring axe spec, as it seemed going 31/30 with anything but Axe was madness. By now I’m 110% positive that it’s not true and, as it turns out, for high crit chance Sword Spec works out better then Axe Spec with Flurry, and to prove my point, I give you this little toy - the Flurry uptime simulator, which is used by Axe vs Sword calculator from previous post. Flurry uptime to crit chance is a curve, much like mitigation is to armor - the more armor you have, the less impact every another point of armor will have on your mitigation, and as such it’s possible to reach a crit chance that will keep Flurry up for reasonable amounts of time without having to grab axe spec, and at that point having another 5% crit won’t have a big impact on the uptime, and in result, on the total DPS you can dish out.
Having said that, many people, when they calculate their DPS with Flurry assume they will have it up 100% of the time, that’s false assumption. When bashing your target, depending on your crit rate, you will have Flurry up on about 80% of the time, which while being quite a lot, is 20% less then what people commonly assume, meaning Flurry doesn’t produce as much dps as people can think.
There is one interesting thing you can test with Axe vs Sword calculator, launch it, test the damage done with 25% Flurry, and then test the damage done without Flurry but with improved Mortal Strike aka garbage talent. With default data set in the calculator Improved MS adds 50% more dps then Flurry! That 1 second of MS and 5% of it’s damage is vastly underestimated. There is however a fundamental difference between those two talents, Flurry will make you generate more rage, when Improved MS will make you loose more rage, so in the end, Flurry is better, right? Well, almost. There is another garbage talent that helps Improved MS a lot - Endless Rage. ER will produce more rage then Flurry, and will nicely help to fuel your MS spamming every 5 seconds. You need 20% more rage for MS to keep it up (less if you consider that’s not the only ability you use), and you get 25% more rage from ER, so in the end, you are still 5% ahead. Endless Rage is the 6th point of Improved MS, and as such Imp. MS should never be taken without ER. Now I’m not going to give you exact numbers with rage generated and lost, but when you put Flurry against Improved MS + ER, a value of every single point you put in either of those talents should be pretty much equal, if not favoring Arms talents over Fury ones. Patch 2.3 will be a very interesting one.
Terhix
November 3rd, 2007 at 5:18 pm
Finally, someone runs the numbers on 15%/25% Flurry versus Improved Mortal Strike and Endless Rage. Interesting results to say the least. And not the same conclusion many warriors would lead one to believe.
Personally, I’m more worried about sacrificing Improved Slam than Flurry in trying an Endless Rage build in 2.3. Why, oh, why can’t they just turn the base ability into the improved version?
November 3rd, 2007 at 5:31 pm
Yup, as said before, it’s the utility that will make offspeccing fury viable post 2.3, not raw power as it’s now.
November 4th, 2007 at 11:28 pm
Keep in mind that Flurry also reduces the time between your Rage dumps (Cleave, Heroic Strike), wich is a rather large damage buff. It also increases efficiency of trinkets and Enchant procs, in very much the same manner as crit scales insanely well with sword spec.
November 5th, 2007 at 5:37 pm
thanks for the math again i am happy to no that at least there both equal even if its a small amount.
November 5th, 2007 at 7:34 pm
I agree with Ard. If what you say is true…I’d much rather go full arms than 33/28. I can’t STAND not having Imp Slam.
November 5th, 2007 at 11:40 pm
> I can’t STAND not having Imp Slam.
And when I posted a suggestion to make Slam a 0.5s cast as base ability no one responsed :).
November 13th, 2007 at 12:54 pm
41/20 won’t be used even in 2.3 as for pvp 50% less disarm duration, sweeping strikes, TM and enrage is absolute must and a bit more faster/heaviner MSing won’t cut for loosing this. For pve lets see; 33/28 = 3/5 flurry provides us with lets say 10% white dmg increase, allows WF to proc more often, slam adding EXTRA HIT on every swing at a cost of 0.7-0.8 sec loss - again a bit more faster/heavier MS won’t cut it.
November 13th, 2007 at 1:22 pm
50% less disarm duration can be provided by weapon chain. Sweeping Strikes are no way a must for PvP, they can break CC and so some serious shit as you have no control over them. Enrage is also not a must for high end 5v5, you are either ignored or nuked to the ground. You can have ER + Imp. MS and TM without any problems.