Tactical Mastery vs. Flurry
Flurry, Talents March 25th, 2008Gladiator Leh from Tichondrius BG9, an American server. I transfered over during season 3 finishing top 10 in 2s/3s in BG1 during season 2. Been playing warrior since WoW came back, but arena was an on and off thing for me. I wanted to share some of my experiences and knowledge since Warriorpwns.com’s post were inactive.
Flurry:
DPS – More white swings = more rage = more specials = more dps
Well not really. Getting 1.5 swings every 10 swing isn’t THAT big of a dps upgrade.
Warlocks and Priests are the only classes where flurry can be good against, but then if there’s a paladin, hunter, or druid on their team flurry becomes irrelevant again. There’s also too many factors against flurry because warriors either get CC’d to death or we get blown up on a quick swap. Factors include: getting stunned, snared, immobilized, target getting freedomed, hunter traps, target swapping, switching to board/1hand, etc.
Imp Execute – Good, nothing wrong with it.
Easy to play –What’s difficult about staying in berserker stance and spamming Mortal Strike and never switching stance?
Not difficult.
Tactical Mastery:
DPS – Some would argue that it produces just as much or even more dps than flurry in most cases as a result of more usage of overpower, blood frenzy, or frequent target swaps. The ability to retain rage retains dps/utility. A team of 2 or more physical dpser would greatly benefit from 4% blood frenzy.
Utility – The ability to disarm and spell reflect is crucial for success. Disarming the warrior to keep MS off for a second or disarm rogues for 10 second could bring their target from death to full health. Spell reflecting that sheep or cyclone can be game breaking.
Harder to play – Anyone can play flurry because it doesn’t require any stance changing… but not everyone can play tactical mastery “effectively.” It just opens a lot of option in arena compared to flurry.
I agree that both specs have its advantages and disadvantages, but in “most cases” tactical mastery is more useful than flurry, which is why most of the top warriors are spec’s 35/23/3.
2s – You’ll probably be facing against a druid plus something. Spell reflecting a cyclone or root can be game breaking while reducing pressure on the druid’s CC as a result of fear of reflecting. Intervene healer into hamstring and disarm melee then intercept and hamstring back on your target works wonder.
3s – Druids druids druids. Read above. This time you can “bounce” around more often. 4% blood frenzy is wonderful in a two physical dps oriented team. Instant spell reflect saves lives against RMP on a swap. Intervening on a sheep cast when pummel is on CD is quite satisfying.
5s – 2345 (warrior priest paladin shaman mage) and 2346 (warlock instead of mage) are the most common make ups according to SK-Gaming. These make up tend to “warrior gib” and instant spell reflect saves lives. Warriors are usually on these make up and target swaps are very common.
Duels – Tactical Mastery owns more except against classes you’ve already lost before the duel starts… priest and warlocks (which flurry is best against).
Answer - Spec Tactical Mastery and learn how to play it effectively. You can always go back to flurry vs optimized make ups or you’re feeling lazy. Anyone can play flurry “effectively”, but not everyone play with tactical mastery “effectively.”
I was flurry since season 1 came out on BG1 and when I transferred to BG9 (most competitive American Battlegroup) during season 3, I spec’d Tactical Mastery and stuck with it because of its utility.
Leh
March 25th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
Totally agree.
March 25th, 2008 at 12:55 pm
I never seem to have enough rage as 35/23/3, 41/17/3 Is my favorite spec for arena (yes disarm is bad etc.)
March 26th, 2008 at 3:12 am
I know the feeling of being short on rage. So often I’m sitting at 26 rage with a full swing timer due, and MS is about to run off or something. Or no rage for a pummel, watching as a priest gets 3 mana burns in because he has a shield up you can’t get through..
Geh.
I agree on the OP though, I prefer 35.23.3 to 33.28.0
March 27th, 2008 at 7:31 am
I think Leh has stated some pretty good points in his entry.
I have tried all the Talent builds in the book and I must say 35/23/3 is my favourite. Although I am yet to try ER since 2.4 (I heard it actually lowered Rage generation).
I switch stances for: Spell Refelection/Intervene/Disarm and Overpower, that is enough to tell me that I NEED TM. For those of us that actually change stances to use these skills can appreciate TM as a useful talent.
I am tempted to try 41/17/3 but I’m not too keen on loosing out on WM and SS. Anyways I’ll give it a go to see if 2.4 really made a different to that talent. Let me know what you guys think of ER now….
Saresa
March 27th, 2008 at 2:16 pm
checking the site now and then resulted in a good read again. i like it to see some kind of guest writer like leh, maybe let some of your BG groups other warriors post some arena warr stuff too. we warriors are a big family arent we?
that would keep the site alive and providemore different sides of view instead of one owner.
points i’d like to read are:
-about the limited but useful warrior cc, including intercept-disarm combos vs rogues and stuff
-when do other warriors swap from their fokus target to pummel a paladin? when do they decide its worth those seconds?
-how do you manage interrupt rotations in arena, where you got less rage than in a duel.
-taunting pets, debuffing opponents, rebuffing team. the micromanagement while matches.
-deathwish/racial use dependant of burst/endurance setups and opponents.
-how to deal with being focus fired. i for myself am not going to kite. im keeping up MS while reflecting/shieldblocking and shieldslamming the main opponent caster i.e. ele shaman. interrupting the casts myself while we can keep up our pressure and MS serves me better than trying to flee with intervene and breaking LOS.
stuff like that i’d like to read about from other experienced guys.
greetings
March 28th, 2008 at 8:03 pm
You don’t gain extra rage from flurry white hits. Imp execute is garbage.
I sold my account and don’t play anymore, but this was just bad.
Is english your 2nd language btw? That might explain some of it.
March 29th, 2008 at 12:04 am
flurry grants more rage over time due to more hits over time.
pick some lev2 boars in durotar. hit them without flurry, and with active flurry. youll get the same rage per damage with and without the flurry haste.
do it and youll see.
flurry extra rage is equal to endless rage, but flurry also increases the damage done. the endless rage advantage over flurry is that youll get the extra rage per hit, while you got to stay on your target permanently for the flurry bonus. and thats exactly what our arena oponents try to avoid with cc roots snares whatever.
April 1st, 2008 at 7:14 pm
Veritas, English is my second language. English is clearly your second language too, judging from your response. I didn’t say flurry white hits generate “extra rage.”
When TBC was released, they normalized flurry rage gain so you wouldn’t get extra rage from the flurried white swings. Later they reverted the change and allowed flurry to generate more rage. Did you play the warrior class right when TBC was released? Surprised you missed it. Also, more white swing means more mace stuns or sword procs..
Improved execute is not garbage. If anything is garbage, it’s your posts and comments on warriorpwns.com.
April 3rd, 2008 at 9:58 am
Pretty sure rage generation is still normalized, flurry still grants no extra rage. They increased overall rage gen by ~20% in 2.1 iirc, that’s it.
April 3rd, 2008 at 6:08 pm
Leh - I wasn’t quoting you I was paraphrasing. L2p.
Flurry does not generate any more rage than attacking at normal speed, we discussed this a long time ago on here when looking at 3/5 flurry vs 2/2 Blood Frenzy. Unless they have changed this secretly since last December.
April 3rd, 2008 at 6:10 pm
Oh to be specific on what you DID say:
“DPS – More white swings = more rage = more specials = more dps”
That is saying flurry = extra rage.
April 3rd, 2008 at 9:09 pm
I agree flurry doesn’t generate more rage PER hit compared to a non flurried hit. However, flurry does generate more rage over time was which what I was arguing, which is what I’ve added to the post.
April 4th, 2008 at 8:25 am
“On testing rage generation per hit with flurry I did a little experiment
I took a holy priest into zangarmarsh where he gathered up a dozen or so mobs and tanked with with healing. I had my regular gear on, and only my 2.6 speed one hander. I had battle shout and rampage going (for the most part) to bloat the rage number as much as I could.
Controlled situations: I would only hit the mob in between anger management ticks, not taking any damage, one for each of a crit without flurry, a hit without flurry, a crit during flurry, and a hit during flurry.
Here are the results:
611 dam, 13 rage, hit no flurry
1162 dam, 25 rage, crit no flurry
1461 dam, 29 rage, crit with flurry
541 dam, 12 rage, hit with flurry
If we plug these numbers into the rage gen forumla using weapon speed instead of attack speed we get the following:
.01365 * (611) + 3.5 * 2.6 / 2 = 12.89 -> 13
.01365 * (1162) + 7 * 2.6 / 2 = 24.96 -> 25
.01365 * (1461) + 7 * 2.6 / 2 = 29.04 -> 29 *pre-flurried
.01365 * (541) + 3.5 * 2.6 / 2 = 11.54 -> 12 *pre-flurried
From what I know, then from these controlled tests and conclusions, that rage is rounded to a whole number and also the rage per hit formula uses weapon speed, and is not modified by any factor in any way if flurry is active or not to give less rage per hit.
I dont understand where the confusion from “flurry lowering rage per hit to keep it on par with other talents” comes from. Can someone find the blue post?”
Landsoul from EJ forums. Pretty reliable source I’d say.
April 10th, 2008 at 3:32 pm
Way back in the day I asked this question because I assumed if you were attacking 25% faster you would be getting 25% more rage from white hits (compared to normal). Every single person I asked said this was not the case, and that flurried hits had a rage gen nerfed proportional to flurry % (so if 3/5 flurry your flurried attacks generated 15% less rage - if 5/5, 25% less).
If it is NOT nerfed there would be no point ever to take endless rage, since flurry 5/5 would give you the exact same thing: 25% more rage on white hits - while also giving 25% more white damage which is huge compared to imp ms and ER.
April 10th, 2008 at 6:37 pm
Glad we shed some light on flurry and rage generation. I’m really surprised a lot of people were confused about it. Part of the reason why people get flurry is for the extra rage generation.
A short little explanation: Two weapons with the exact DPS/Stats with two different speed will generate the same rage per sec given time frame. With haste or flurry, you are attacking faster but doing the same damage per swing. With white damage going up, rage per second goes up.
April 11th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
Then why the hell would blizzard make ER since Flurry is the same thing with 25% more damage tacked on with it?
I don’t see anywhere else where they’ve made 2 identical effects in a classes talent trees. Which is a good indicator that in fact flurry rage gen IS nerfed by the same % of the speed increase.
April 11th, 2008 at 7:43 pm
ER and flurry serve the same purpose, but they aren’t the “same”. Think for a second before you post. Opinions don’t matter here, evidence does. Maybe you’ve been asking the wrong people or was too stubborn to test flurry or improved execute. I played flurry since TBC was released and just recently specc’d tactical mastery for about 3 months now and noticed the rage difference. Borrow a friends account and do the testing yourself instead of forcing your “opinion” or “people’s opinion you’ve asked” on others.
April 11th, 2008 at 8:37 pm
With your logic, we’d get more rage per hit if we were slowed…
April 15th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
zzz. By the way one of these “opinions” you’re discrediting is Terhix’s himself. I originally assumed 25% more white damage = 25% more rage, and he and others stated that it was normalized.
Nobody seems to know for sure but here are some more “opinions” that you can look at until someone finds a way to accurately parse rage.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=5720153053&postId=57196485375&sid=1#0
“Yes, this is what I remembered. 25% flurry doesn’t generate 25% extra rage, but it generates around ~10%?”
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=5720153053&postId=57196485375&sid=1#0
“15.3% increase in rage gained from a 25% haste increase.”
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=5835553885&postId=57837424516&sid=1#8
First off, it’s 25%. Second, rage is normalized, so if you deal 25% more white damage with flurry up, you’d only get roughly 12.5% increased rage. Because about half your rage comes from nothing but weapon speed.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=5835089712&sid=1
It’s still up for debate, I’ll be testing with with some help from Jathine for my upcoming fury guide.
My rough testing is showing ~.5% rage gain for every 1% haste. But we’re working on getting a mod to track rage gains.
By all accounts the nerf is not 0% additional rage, but more like half of what you would normally get. So 5/5 flurry gives ~12.5% rage boost (compared to 25% for ER).
So I was wrong but still kind of right.
April 15th, 2008 at 10:27 pm
I think the purpose of these posts were to answer the question “does flurry help with rage generation?” and that has been answered. The rage increase is there, but by how much? Comment 13 answers that question. I would suggests going to http://elitistjerks.com/f31/ and check out their calculators and theories. WoW public forums are hardly creditable sources.