[shiz98]

First off yes, the guide is a little outdated. I've made an effort to keep it relatively up to date, but I've slipped recently (work is a killer sometimes). I'll hopefully have a chance to update it sooner rather than later.

Please keep in mind (other have said this as well) that the guide is meant to be a gentle introduction to Arms. It is not the Arms equivalent of Corb's Fury guide.

Anyways, I do appreciate the feedback, and I will keep making an effort to improve the guide. If there's something wrong, definitely let me know. Please post your math though - I try the base the guide off of solid math, and I really can't make a change because a couple people believe something to be true. I need to be able to objectively convince myself that something is right before I put it in.

Unless the two roll system for specials has been proven i was under the belief that specials still followed the one roll system as well for melee attacks

IIRC this was proven towards the end of TBC. A particularly good example (I'm not calling it proof) was actually the crit rate from warrior tanks. Their white crit rate would be lower than their yellow crit rate, most of the time (caveats about hit capping and RNG apply).

Poleaxe is always better now. -Always- better.

Always is a pretty strong word . Mathematically speaking, Mace isn't that far behind Axe. Axe is better in most real-world situations, but Mace is still an option. A higher DPS mace is probably going to be a DPS upgrade over an axe.

Some notes about hit (yes, the conversation is mostly over, but there are a few points I'd like to touch on).

I just said that it is not as important as for other classes or Fury since ArPen has higher SEP than other stats.

Maybe, but keep in mind that you don't stack stats in a vacuum. The question is not ArP vs Hit/Expertise. (Side note: I've never been one to jump on the Hit/Expertise capping bandwagon. A lot of people overvalue those stats by a lot, and it drives me nuts.)

I would not trust anything else than landsouls spreadsheet because he uptaded it yesterday and its accurate to 99,5%.

Even assuming Landsoul's spreadsheet can approach the level of accuracy offered by a simulator (which is really the only way to go with Arms - anything but a full simulation will be "off"), the numbers are still pretty meaningless. Regardless, I'm willing to take your word that it's accurate to that level. But 99.5% of what? Average DPS? Average DPS of what? On what boss? Does it simulate a perfect rotation? Does it simulate varying lag? Spreadsheets are a tool - they do not constitute proof. Don't put too much stock in them, because the simple fact is that they cannot do a good enough job. You should never base your playstyle off what mathematical modeling or computer simulation suggests; they are guides, nothing more. Take what they suggest and experiment with it, and then you'll find the way to highest DPS.

Edit:
I'm going to quote myself from the guide here, because I still feel the logic is correct. I'd love to have a discussion about if I'm wrong or not, if anyone's game

So yes, here's me on hit/expertise

Why do you want to cap these? First, they're solid DPS stats. I'm not going to say whether they're the best DPS stats for you, but they have one, huge, auxiliary benefit: guaranteed rage income. This is very handy to have when you've got the hang of your basic priority queue, as it allows you to watch a swing timer and plan based on that, safe in the knowledge that rage will be on its way.

[RPZip]

Always is a pretty strong word .

Not an inaccurate one, though!

The difference between Mace and Poleaxe is considerably smaller than the one between, say, Sword and Something That's Not Sword Spec, and any of them -can- be overpowered with enough of a stat difference (say, Voldrethar versus Colossal Skull-Clad Cleaver, or an answer with a bit less hyperbole for Poleaxe vs. Mace), but there is no situation in which Mace Spec is better than Poleaxe Spec. Poleaxe wins. Always.

[Krenian]

Source: RPZip ...what? That doesn't make any sense, at all. If you're sitting on 100%+ Crit rate (see: Loatheb) and have no +hit or Expertise, you're going to crit on 85.5% of your swings and whiff (dodge or miss) on the remainder. You can't push miss or dodge off the table with critical strike chance, they both have a higher priority (so does glancing blows for autoattacks, actually, so it'd be even lower... but just roll with it, the principle is sound).

That's pretty much what I meant but not properly worded. Go figure.

Source: RPZip Death Knights and Warriors aren't the same. Our specials go on cooldown when we hit them whether or not they connect. It doesn't throw off our rotation (exception: Rend, and that's pretty minor), it just means that attack does zero damage (or zero damage but opens up another, more damaging attack we can replace another attack with).

The purpose of what I meant to compare both classes was to say that missing sucked. Period. It wasn't to say the dynamics were different. It was to say it sucked. You missed the point entirely when I said it because I was relating my views on Expertise, which are similar to Warriors simply to the fact that you will not like missing. You can miss a Rend. You can miss an Auto Attack. You can miss a Mortal Strike. You can miss a Slam. All of these skills missing even once can have some consequences to your damage. Whether in the form of 0 DPS or in the form of an overabundance of Rage on a rotation, you will end up losing DPS.

Sorry but that's twice you've attacked rationality on my part and I feel like I have to explain my points now because you don't seem to 'get it'.

Source: RPZip You could use the same logic to justify never having crit unless it's at 100%, because you could get screwed by RNG. You should instead only get gear that increases your Haste instead, since that's not effected by the RNG. The damage difference between going from a hit to a crit is larger than the difference between going from a miss/dodge to a hit; it also takes more rating to pull off the hit -> crit than miss/dodge -> hit, but there is no inherent rule that makes the RNG on one any worse than the other. DPS is calculated as an average effect, not in terms of Effective Health in reverse where you're looking at the worst-case scenario and what would happen then..

Er...really? Reread what you wrote for a second here.

You're saying a hit to a crit is higher dps than a miss to a hit. One you're blatantly not doing any dps at all, and the other you're losing a bit of dps but still doing DPS. That makes no sense.

Hitting with a Critical Strike will always be a DPS increase. In this case, it is a good RNG because it's an increase in DPS. Missing with a strike is a 0 DPS increase, and a BAD RNG to deal with because you're not adding any DPS or damage to your target because you blatantly missed. I'm astound that you would even consider stating that there's a bigger damage increase going from a hit to a crit than there is from a miss to a hit.

You stated that it's calculated as an average effect. Guess what, the 0 DPS you did by missing/dodging 15 times in a 5 minute fight? They get wrapped up into that. They will ultimately lower your DPS because of it. They will also lower your damage ratio.

No offense but you're really not convincing your point at all and frankly I'm getting slightly irritated by your attitude about having to try to prove me wrong by either blatantly disregarding some information and blowing it completely out of proprortion or giving absurd reasoning such as the above about Hit/Crit being bigger in DPS increase than Miss/Hit. The single sounding foundation of DPS is to ensure you hit often, and you hit as hard as you can.

With this said, I'm done arguing these points. To each their own but honestly, I'm not going to argue silly semantics with people who fail to understand the concepts. Case closed.

[shiz98]

Arguing whether hit is a DPS increase or simply making up for DPS that's already lost is really just a semantic difference - bottom line is that it's DPS increases/losses are just relevant on what you define as you base DPS. If you view hit as making up for a DPS lost, you've defined your "0 DPS" point as what your DPS would be with 100% to hit. If you define hit as a DPS increase, you're defining "0 DPS" point somewhere lower than that.

Regardless, I can definitely agree with the sentiment that misses suck

[RPZip]

Source: Krenian All of these skills missing even once can have some consequences to your damage. Whether in the form of 0 DPS or in the form of an overabundance of Rage on a rotation, you will end up losing DPS.

You also lose DPS by having all of the skills hit, if the difference in overall damage between the cost of making all of your skills hit is larger than making them potentially do zero damage but otherwise hit harder. This really isn't that complicated of a concept, nor should it be that controversial.

DKs can lose more out of misses because they need to run a tight-rotation, although it's somewhat spec-dependent they typically lose more damage out of a miss than a Warrior would in a PvE rotation (most notably Blood suffers from this) due to the way in which rune refresh timers work. Warriors just flat-out lose the attack, which is bad, but it doesn't cause cascading issues with the rest of your attacks either.

Er...really? Reread what you wrote for a second here. You're saying a hit to a crit is higher dps than a miss to a hit. One you're blatantly not doing any dps at all, and the other you're losing a bit of dps but still doing DPS. That makes no sense. Hitting with a Critical Strike will always be a DPS increase. In this case, it is a good RNG because it's an increase in DPS. Missing with a strike is a 0 DPS increase, and a BAD RNG to deal with because you're not adding any DPS or damage to your target because you blatantly missed. I'm astound that you would even consider stating that there's a bigger damage increase going from a hit to a crit than there is from a miss to a hit. You stated that it's calculated as an average effect. Guess what, the 0 DPS you did by missing/dodging 15 times in a 5 minute fight? They get wrapped up into that. They will ultimately lower your DPS because of it. They will also lower your damage ratio.

Stick with me for a moment; this is apparently a total failure to understand the term 'average' on your part. I'll try to explain it.

Let's say you do 1000 damage on a hit, and 2200 damage on a crit. For the sake of simplicity, in this thought experiment you have a 50% miss rate and a 0% crit rate. This means that currently 50% of your swings do 1000 damage and 50% do 0 damage. Which is then better option; converting all of the misses into hits (100% of swings do 1000 damage), or converting all of the hits into crits (50% of swings do 2200 damage, 50% of swings do 0 damage)?

Your posts seem to indicate you'd choose the first answer (100% of swings do 1000 damage), which is just flat-out incorrect. The second answer provides you with an average of 1100 damage a swing rather than 1000 a swing, and would lead to a large DPS increase on average, albeit one subject to spikes up or downwards in damage. This is, of course, dramatically oversimplified but it also serves to illustrate an apparently elusive point.

Your logic is unsound. Excluding overkill situations, where the important factor is to make sure any attack goes through at all (consider things like killing a Totem in PvP) what you aim for is the set of gear that will on average lead to the highest sustained DPS. This may, in fact, lead you to create a gear set that is subject to large damage spikes - that is typically not the case, at least historically, but there's no reason why it can't now or in the future be the correct gearing strategy.

Oh, and since it bears repeating;

I'm astound that you would even consider stating that there's a bigger damage increase going from a hit to a crit than there is from a miss to a hit.

Except there really is, and it's kind of astounding to me that it'd be a hard concept to grasp. Impale, Crit% Metagem, Deep Wounds all lead to the difference between a normal hit and a crit being larger than the difference between a miss and a hit, in the same way that 0 -> 1000 is a smaller increase than 1000 -> 2200. Unless what matters is landing any attack at all, which it almost never is in PvE, the second one is the better attack by far.

With this said, I'm done arguing these points. To each their own but honestly, I'm not going to argue silly semantics with people who fail to understand the concepts. Case closed. <snip> Sorry but that's twice you've attacked rationality on my part and I feel like I have to explain my points now because you don't seem to 'get it'.

Sorry, you're accusing me of not understanding the concepts or attacking rationality? That's... rich. Let's go with rich.

Arguing whether hit is a DPS increase or simply making up for DPS that's already lost is really just a semantic difference - bottom line is that it's DPS increases/losses are just relevant on what you define as you base DPS. If you view hit as making up for a DPS lost, you've defined your "0 DPS" point as what your DPS would be with 100% to hit. If you define hit as a DPS increase, you're defining "0 DPS" point somewhere lower than that. Regardless, I can definitely agree with the sentiment that misses suck

Oh, I really dislike misses. It's more of an emotional response than a rational one, though, for the same reason that humans are more worried about losing $20 than they are about picking up $40.

From a rational, mathematical standpoint there's no difference in where you define baseline DPS; if you define it as "my current DPS", and you'd get a better result on average by accepting potential misses but making each attack hit harder, or if you define it as 0 DPS and just see which one gives you a higher DPS number overall, the answer is the same. It's not only arguing semantics, it's arguing semantics when both the answers mean the exact same thing.

[Croebh]

Source: RPZip You also lose DPS by having all of the skills hit, if the difference in overall damage between the cost of making all of your skills hit is larger than making them potentially do zero damage but otherwise hit harder.

Say what?

Source: RPZip making them potentially do zero damage but other wise hit harder.

I understand that 100% of 0 is.... 0?

Also.... TLDR

[RPZip]

Source: Croebh Say what? I understand that 100% of 0 is.... 0?

100% of attacks hitting for 100 damage each is worse than 95% of attacks hitting for 110 damage each. Hard concepts are hard.

[reasonyousmile]

You CAN cap hit & expertise 100% no problem; you can't currently hope to cap crit.

You advocate giving up consistency in favor of higher DPS, and quote numbers way out of proportion. Real WoW examples don't support giving up consistency for a little more crit.

Even if you could top 50% crit, what would you have to give up to get it? How much hit & expertise would you sacrifice to crit on half the hits you actually make? Why give up your consistency in a raid? How do you deal with rage starvation and rotation-screw? What do you tell your raid leader? "I'm sacrificing consistency so I can crit more!"

Not in my raid pal.

[Daavos]

Questions:

ArP or Str gems using the Axe spec? I haven't been able to find answer here or at EJ.

Is 30% unbuffed ArP (20% gear/gems + 10% arms stance) using an axe too low, too high?

[RPZip]

Source: Daavos Questions: ArP or Str gems using the Axe spec? I haven't been able to find answer here or at EJ. Is 30% unbuffed ArP (20% gear/gems + 10% arms stance) using an axe too low, too high?

Too low. The rough number is 40% ArP including the stance bonus, gear and talents before you make the switch.

You advocate giving up consistency in favor of higher DPS, and quote numbers way out of proportion. Real WoW examples don't support giving up consistency for a little more crit. Even if you could top 50% crit, what would you have to give up to get it? How much hit & expertise would you sacrifice to crit on half the hits you actually make?

1) As I addressed in my post, historically they usually haven't justified stacking, say, STR over hit-capping but that hasn't always been the case.

2) It's a highly exaggerated example to prove a point, because more subtle ones were apparently far, far too hard to grasp. There is no universal rule that makes hit/exp-capping always superior to the alternatives, just what has conventionally been true; it needn't always be that way, either.

If Fury didn't suffer from Rage starvation issues (say, they changed the way Heroic Strike works so it no longer prevents Rage generation on that attack) and buffed Imp. Zerker to 30-40% Fury would probably stack STR over hit-capping as well. That's currently not the case, of course, but it's more than a little silly to state that hit-capping is always going to be best because there is no way it could give less damage than just stacking another stat... something that is patently not the case, as the little thought experiment demonstrated.

[Cronaldo]

Hey I have one question.

You dont talk about swords...

I had [The Jawbone] but yesterday I got [Rune Edge]
What should I do.

I know that may be a silly question but the top 4 weapons are 3 swords and 1 mace...

[Tatt]

Go fury?

[Cronaldo]

LOL! I thought about that, but I CANT.

I have dual spec.

1) Arms PVP (and I do PVE with the same spec)
2) Tank PvE (and I do, sometimes, PVP with this spec)

I have no room for Fury hahaha

[Daimon]

I'd say try fury or wait an axe drop but.......... why is polearm > axe?
have you considered the str/crit component in axes vs polearms agi/AP?

Ignis25 drops a nice one.

[Tatt]

I would think an arms warrior would drool over Nobles deck plus grim toll until mjolnir thing dropped.....

[Dubzil]

AFAIK it still is, 90 str + 300 str on proc, haven't seen anything that gets close to it yet.

[Daavos]

Source: RPZip Oh, I really dislike misses. It's more of an emotional response than a rational one, though, for the same reason that humans are more worried about losing $20 than they are about picking up $40.

I can prevent myself from losing $20, but I can not guarentee I will find $40.

[Firath]

The World of Warcraft Armory


A little over hit cap with the new bracers and ring, can anyone help me know what drops I should be looking for?


Also, I've been told that my armor pen is too high, could use a little help on that

[influxreptile]

Source: RPZip 1) As I addressed in my post, historically they usually haven't justified stacking, say, STR over hit-capping but that hasn't always been the case.

To help you out a bit here, strenght is currently the best stat you could wish for as a protection warrior to increase dps while tanking on the average. Choosing to gem over strenght is in fact a dps gain. The only problem with tanking is obviously that you can't really go for bursty threat as you might just end up failing to land your first 5 attacks. For a dps warrior this isn't really much of an issue.

[Gillbertwarrior]

Whats so bad about gylph of bladestorm...i was concidering buying