Let’s face it, patch 2.3 is coming, and as always we have to adapt. There is of course a chance that nothing will really happen and builds that rule now will continue to rule in 2.3, but nothing is set in stone. Average 5v5 warrior is using either 35/23/3 (33/25/3) balanced build or 33/28 - 31/30 flurry build for better rage generation and dps. During the old days the bread and butter of every warrior was 31/20 build, it gave us the best of two worlds - Mortal Strike - for awesome burst damage and healing debuff, and Enrage for massive powerup when someone was foolish enough to attack us. Why I’m mentioning this is because of Enrage, it was always there, always at 20 points in fury, always ready to be picked up, and neither nerfing it to 25% from original 40%, nor moving Tactical Mastery, not even making it not stack with Death Wish has ever made us spec out of it (well, OK, I did not have enrage at level 60 after patch 2.0 arrived, but I knew I’ll get it again few levels later when TBC shipped), it seems however that patch 2.3, with imp. Intercept and Death Wish in Arms can make us leave Enrage to fury warriors (who have to get it in order to get flurry, even tho it’s useless in PvE).

Why 45/5/11? After all, Endless Rage and imp. MS is crap, right? In high end 5v5, life of a warrior usually have two scenarios:

1. You are ignored for the whole fight, no one will hit you not to fuel your rage and not to trigger Enrage, at which point Enrage is useless. In this part, you can find yourself rage-starving, I don’t care how awesome you are, how good gear you have and how skilled you are, you don’t have enough rage when ignored in PvP unless you are 31/30 and don’t have survivability. This is where Endless Rage comes to rescue, giving you the extra rage, while imp. MS and Blood Frenzy gives a boost in dps. Groundbreaking? No? Viable? My bet is - yes - not saying anything for sure before I test it on my skin.
2. You are attacked, being attacked in 5v5 usually doesn’t mean you are going to fight back happily while your rage bar pops to 100, being attacked in 5v5 means the opposite team wants to nuke the hell out off you, at which point you pop def stance, spam spell reflect macro and move the hell out of LoS. Enrage useless again. One of the biggest problems with warrior class on the arena is lack of ‘OH SHIT’ button, we have it in world pvp or BGs (how many times did shieldwall helped you to bring a flag to the base on WSG?), and this is where Last Stand comes to rescue. Sure it’s not Ice Block, but 30% more hp can buy your healer’s time to heal you up, especially when he was just silenced and is praying “come on, stay alive just a bit longer, just a bit…”.

The baseline of this build is obviously 41/5/11 which leaves you with 4 points free to spend. You can get defiance if you are PvE carebear and want to kill those nasty bosses in heroics or even raids, you can invest them in fury to get some extra rage from UW or better shouts thanks to booming voice (or even demo shout if you are up to this kind of stuff). 45 in arms lets you grab everything important, max 2h spec, max weapon spec, intercept and imp. hamstring are all yours, no compromise, and I like that to be honest, always missed those few points in mid-arms.

There can be problems with this build tho, while it can turn out to be terrific 5v5 build, it can be really bad in 2v2 (where Enrage does have a use, and is pretty darn good). Also you will be missing Piercing Howl, which is one of best talents warrior have, the ultimate ranged-aoe-hamstring that can’t be dodged. Having said that, imp. Blood Rage and Tactical Mastery makes you sleep well knowing you can use Spell Reflect, or Disarm (!!!) anytime you will need them… well… almost. The lack of Weapon Mastery can be easily compensated with adamantite weapon chain (damn rogues and their dual wielding, damn those offhand weapon chains). Sweeping Strikes are now going to be really good as well, even with shorter duration, being able to use them in zerker stance and having whole 10 charges is overall a buff, and then there is Slam (read below), all in all it gives enough reasons to stay hybrid specced for me, maybe not in 5v5, but in 3v3 or 2v2?

Terhix

In this topic.

Title says it all I guess. The way things are atm Slam is just useless without talents, which is a pity since it turns out to be really nice ability (at least it’s used now unlike pre-TBC). Situation here is pretty similar to Arcane Explosion problem mages had.

The baseline attacks a two-hander wielding warrior can have and use as effective damage dealing tools are Mortal Strike, Whilrwind (only in zerk) and Slam, there is Overpower for when the target dodge or Heoric Strike which is highly rage-eating with slow 2h, making it not so good of a choice. Slam allows warrior to chain more attacks in a row followed after an instant, and while it’s reseting swing timer, it requires some skill to use making a difference between weekend warrior and good warrior.

Improved Slam is pretty high in fury tree, it’s a two-handed benefiting talent, but if one go for 41 arms (which is the right tree for two-handed users) he can’t have Improved Slam, meaning you have to sacriface something from primary tree to offspec fury and become infamous ‘hybrid’.

Improved Slam could be moved to Arms tree (which is not solving the problem that Slam is useless without talents into imp.), but that would most likely end in reducing the potential of arms tree by trading something to fury. Arms is also pretty-talent heavy tree at few tiers, making warriors do some tough choices there, adding Slam would make it even worse and not very solid without investing 45+ points into arms. On the other hand fury can recieve a talent that can benefit them, most likely for dual wielders not to make Arms warriors look at the 20-30 range fury talents as better then high end arms talents (like it’s now, and what patch 2.3 is at least trying to change).

Slam is one of the things that makes me feel forced to spec heavily into fury as an arms warrior, making the base attack 0.5 sec cast without talents and removing the talent as a whole would give me much easier time when trying 45/5/11 or 41/20 after 2.3.

Terhix

UPDATE: Forgot to upload fixed script.

EDIT: Quick update after finding a logical mistake:

ZOMG I found a mistake!!1!11one

I knew something is wrong when I increased avoidance. Must drink a coffee or something. I’ve to apply miss chance to sword proc estimation twice, because you can’t get the proc if original swing didn’t hit. With that, results using same numbers:

NO RESIL:
205689 - no spec
213916 - axe spec
213398 - sword spec

axe > sword

20% REDUCED CRIT DAMAGE
197461 - no spec
204043 - axe spec
204862 - sword spec

sword > axe

20% REDUCED CRIT DAMAGE + ORC RACIAL FOR AXE
197461 - no spec
205360 - axe spec
204862 - sword spec

axe > sword

and bonus:

20% AVOIDANCE, 20% REDUCED CRIT DAMAGE (NO ORC RACIAL)
175521 - no spec
181372 - axe spec
181369 - sword spec

axe ~ sword

35% AVOIDANCE (AVERAGE ROGUE DODGE+PARRY), 20% REDUCED CRIT DAMAGE (NO ORC RACIAL)
142611 - no spec
147365 - axe spec
146471 - sword spec

axe > sword

I’M SAVED!

Read the rest of this entry »

Terhix

# Humans: Sword Skill now increases the critical strike chance with swords and two-handed swords by 1%.
# Orcs: Axe Skill now increases the critical strike chance with axes and two-handed axes by 1%.

Source. Anyone find it funny they didn’t mention mace skill for humans? Anyway, 6% crit for having an axe, that’s pretty tempting, and more then that:

New decapitator looks BAD-ASS. Screw the puny swords, screw the maces, axes are THE MANLIEST ;).

BTW: Many opinions and some math (including the flawless mace vs sword spec math) in this topic.

Terhix

Sorry for the last post folks, but I just couldn’t stop myself.

Long time ago a friend of mine, who used to be sword spec advocate here, while I was the axe spec guy, wrote two great posts:

1. In defense of sword spec
2. In criticism of sword spec

Now since I’ve come back to WoW after quite long time, and my gear obviously suck, I’m going to finish my S1 set from honor next patch, while saving arena points for S3 weapon, which should give me a good point to start rocking again. Yes, I know Mace spec is the way, it was the way, and most likely will continue to be the way of true high end arena warriors, no question here. But I don’t like to jump into the bandwagon, and I really really don’t like maces (too much TUF I guess).

I’m not going to repeat what was already said, everybody and his dog knows how Axe Spec works and how Sword Spec works (if you don’t read the linked posts). Swords used to be the spec of choice before TBC, I guess it started with Maydie’s movie showing mega double-crits while fully buffed, on berserker and often with old, exploitable sweeping strikes. The biggest flaw of sword spec (which is pointed out in the second article) was that it wasn’t really giving a free attack, but rather finishing the current swing, it was hasting the attack. That flaw is now fixed, and I somehow missed that when reading patch notes that were implemented while I wasn’t playing WoW.

And so on the one side I’ve the awesome reincarnation of Zin’rokh (picture by mmo-champion.com), while on the other side, there is equal in stats axe. I’m an orc, a flurry specced orc (that’s not set in stone, especially with 2.3 around the corner tho), so the obvious choice for me would be an axe, right?

A topic about this case arrived on US forums, and it looks like noone is really supporting axes these days, even 31/30 specced orcs (another thing is that the topic turned into 31/30 vs rest of the world fight, usual sight on official forums). I’m not convinced enough to say that swords are better, yet - I’ll try to grab the sword and test it, theory crafting is never good enough when talking about low-rate procs. It’s not like I’m going to keep that S3 sword till the end of my days, If I ever decide to come back to an axe - WotLK is comming…

To end this little flash from the past, I’ll quote: “Ultimately I always say people should take the wep spec they personally enjoy more” and add “, unless you are really power hungry”.

Terhix