Even if you are going 41/20, don’t look at this build. No anger management, no piercing howl, 3/3 Improved Rend, I mean, REND. No, just no.
Sorry Matthew, you know I had to do this.
Terhix
I’ve done some math earlier today regarding this issue. 33/28 (blood frenzy in arms, not second wind) have improved slam, 3/5 flurry and weapon mastery while 41/17/3 provides Improved MS and ER. With 33/28 you do damage cycles like this:
Swing, Slam, MS | Swing, Slam, WW | Swing, Slam, MS | Swing, Slam | Swing, Slam, MS (WW is ready at this point, but can’t be used due to GCD conflict) | Swing, Slam, WW…
For the sake of simplicity, let’s assume that with 3.6s weapon and 3/5 Flurry your swings are done at the speed of 3.1s, when you add Slam to that swing, with perfect timing and 0 latency (never in reality) you will swing at the speed of 3.6, which is same speed as without Flurry. Because you have to time abilities between Slams and white hits, you are not using them every time they are ready, but rather every 2 swings = 7.2s for MS and every 4 swings = 14.4s for WW. With 41/17/3 you don’t have such problems with timing, you are using MS every 5 seconds and WW every 10 seconds, no GCD conflicts either. Here is the math done on those assumptions:
2000ap
130 weapon dps
3.6 speedWhite dps: 272.8
MS damage: 471 + 468 + 210 = 1149
33/28 MS dps: 1149 / 7.2 = 159.6
41/17 MS dps: (1149 / 5) * 1.05 = 241.1WW damage: 471 + 468 = 938
33/28 WW dps: 938 / 14.4 = 65.2
41/17 WW dps: 938 / 10 = 93.8Slam dps: 272.8 + 140 / 3.6 = 311.7
Total 41/17 dps: 272.8 + 241.1 + 93.8 = 607.7
Total 33/28 dps: 272.8 + 159.6 + 65.2 + 311.7 = 809.3
And so 33/28 can produce up to 25% more dps then 41/17. That “up to” is the key here. First, using Slam every swing is huge rage eating. How much rage can you generate per swing? 20? 30? Sure you can Slam every swing, but you need to produce rage for using MS and WW as well. 41/17 will produce much more rage then 33/28 in this scheme of things. Also, this is assuming perfect reflexes and 0 latency, Now let’s do same thing assuming being 0.5 sec late with Slam, in this case your Flurried swings go up to 4.1second:
2000ap
130 weapon dps
3.6 speed33/28 White dps: 272.8 * 3.6 / 4.1 = 239.5
MS damage: 471 + 468 + 210 = 1149
33/28 MS dps: 1149 / 8.2 = 140.1
41/17 MS dps: (1149 / 5) * 1.05 = 241.1WW damage: 471 + 468 = 938
33/28 WW dps: 938 / 16.4 = 57.2
41/17 WW dps: 938 / 10 = 93.8Slam dps: 239.5 + 140 / 4.1 = 237.6
Total 41/17 dps: 272.8 + 241.1 + 93.8 = 607.7
Total 33/28 dps: 239.5 + 140.1 + 57.2 + 237.6 = 674.4
Something as simple as being 0.5s too slow with Slam every swing is lowering your ideal dps with 33/28 by ~17%, slower swings means slower Slam and slower MS/WW cycles. Now god forbid you will have any rage issues with white hit every 4.1 second, comparing to 125% rage giving swings every 3.6 with 41/17. In normal instances and heroics I’m pretty sure 41/17 can easily compete if not beat 33/28 for dps, raidbuffed however the rage issues of 33/28 can be gone (windfury totem and whatever can you get), which allows you to use all your abilities to it’s fullest. Theorycrafting is fun, but we will have to wait a bit and see how it really works out in game, people will get right conclusions after few days.
edit: Oh, yes, you should also add ~2% more dps form WM to 33/28, which I haven’t done here.
Terhix
In this topic some people are wondering about a build for 2.3, they are considering different builds, even such crazy stuff like 23 in prot for stun and improved shield bash, but no one is considering putting more then 5 points in fury but less then 20. It’s like black hole, there is a psychological barrier that stops people from going for like 11 in fury to grab piercing howl, without looking at Enrage. Reason? Enrage is just too good. Let’s face it, no other class has a talent comparable to Enrage, 25% damage boost that can be perma up in many PvP situations, paladins got Vengeance which got nerfed few times, sure it triggers on dealing crit and not taking it (thus it’s usable in PvE), but it’s only 15% and it has to be stacked 3 times to those 15%. When Enrage was nerfed from 40% to 25% I was upset about that (not long tho, as my warrior did very fine after the nerf), now I’m actually hoping Blizzard will nerf enrage to 15%, that would make builds like 44/14/3 viable without looking gimped in various situations where Enrage can be used, and after all that time with 33/28 I want my TM, especially now when Disarm will become such a critical tool in PvP.
Yes, I’m a warrior and I want Enrage nerfed, throw your stones now.
UPDATE: Well, I think I can add a bit before you start calling me an idiot in comments. Personally, I believe that Enrage is responsible for the way high Arms talents look. Let’s face it, Fury warriors (the ones that do PvE at least, are there any other?) don’t give a shit about Enrage, in fact, they want it unlinked from Flurry so they don’t have to pay 10 talent points for it. The mid-tree fury talents were extremely potent and still are such, Enrage with Death Wish next to each other along with Intercept. While MS is required to PvP for it’s utility and burst, the critical mass of our PvP offensive power comes from fury tree, well, used to be as Patch 2.3 should be here by now (tomorrow in Europe). Putting DW to Arms makes sense since it doesn’t stack with Enrage anymore. If TM was in Arms, everyone and his dog would be 41/20 in 2.3, with some people taking Sweeping Strikes instead of ER for some odd reasons. After patch 2.3 TM has to compete with ER and Enrage for our talent points, and it’s often loosing that battle, it’s not loosing a battle against ER, it’s loosing a battle against Enrage. Enrage is our curse, it’s powerful tool, but it’s a tool that’s not always usable (fighting shadow priests and warlocks), and when it’s not usable we can feel gimped. There are huge problems with balancing our class with Enrage in it’s current form, seriously, I’d rather like some independent stable dps without the ups and downs that Enrage is giving me now. Nerf enrage and the doors for new, fun and balanced talents, come WotLK, will open.
Terhix
From MMO-champion:
I’ve updated the Axe vs Sword calculator to include that. Basically 5 expertise is -1.25% parry and -1.25% dodge, which is, from dps PoV, better then then 1% crit. Caluclator now has an option to set if your enemy has parry or not, this is only needed to set if you are an orc, if your enemy has parry the calculator will reduce avoidance by 2.5%, if not it will just reduce it by 1.25% (if it’s not 0 to begin with). I’m going to give an option for human racials in near future.
Overall weapon racials were buffed, and having orc racials against a target that can parry is making Axe Spec much more desireable option. Sword expertise for humans is a killer, as avoidance is what is limiting the sword spec.
Patch 2.3 is planned for next week, and S3 in two weeks, which is basically when I expected it to go live. Not enough time for me to stack 5k arena points, but I’ll have 3/5 parts of S3 set within first week into S3 :).
Terhix
This is why I can’t be bothered to play on PTRs, constant changes and going from deep depression to happiness. Blizzard introduced DR on silence and spell interrupt mechanics just to revert it today.
After further discussion about the change in patch 2.3 which adds diminishing returns to silencing effects, we’ve decided to revert the change. Though we do feel that being chain school locked is a problem and plan to address it at some point in the future, we weren’t comfortable with the amount of testing this particular change received.
I’m really happy that they reverted that change, as I finally organized a warrior/rogue/pally 3v3 team just yesterday (yeah, not the best setup every, but skilled and geared players are not growing on trees, and I’d rather have a skilled rogue at my side then a newbie lock, frost mage or ele shammy). In this setup it’s all down to locking down a healer, we have to rotate those pummels, kicks, intercepts and kidney shots just right, with DR on interrupts it would make things much more complicated, to say the least. Sure healers should have survivability, but it doesn’t mean they should be freaking immortal. Blizzard see locking a school with spell interrupts as a problem, and that’s a good thing. I was talking with my rogue about this, and there are two pretty obvious solutions, the easiest way would be to keep interrupts on DR, but instead of making casters go immune, just make them interrupt the cast with 0 sec lockdown, this however still leaves a problem of short interrupts reducing the effectiveness of longer ones (”damn my counterspell is now going to last 4 seconds because you idiot wanted to earth shock before!”). The other way would be, simply, to put everything on separate DRs, that can be a bit problematic from technical PoV as far as I can imagine tho. Either way, we have to keep in mind that Blizzard will eventually do something with interrupts, and it’s not going to be a warrior buff.
From other changes on PTR, seems Blizzard is really trying to make Subtlety tree a viable one again. First they touched high tier talents such as shadow step (which is basically an intercept with bonus damage now) and cheat death, but it was not what people were waiting for, combat rogues were not giving their AR for shadow step. And so they took care of Hemo. First, the debuff was buffed (yeah, I know how that sounds) to whooping 36 damage (even for me bashing a Hemo’ed guy with 3.6 two-hander 36 more damage is 10 dps = 140 attack power, nothing to laugh at). Then rogues started to beg for slower maces from arena, as it turned out Hemo used to be not-normalized attack, thus benefiting a lot from having a really slow main-hand. And just when rogues started to QQ after figuring out that Hemo might be normalized on PTRs, Blizzard introduced the killer and made Hemo a 125% weapon damage attack, ouch!
I guess not all of you folks are Rogue experts (neither am I), but to explain those changes in the shortest possible way to “wtf are all those talents” warriors, Hemo can now compete with Sinister Strike, it turns out to be a really good and energy effective attack, and with preparation in the house, we are looking at double-vanish, double-sprint, double-AR Rogue killer. I can imagine Ming is still creaming his pants by now.
Terhix