Arms vs. Fury patch 4.3

Hey all! My questions concerns Arms vs. Fury as a Warrior. I've always spec'd Fury. However in the new patch I've heard from quite a few people that Arms is better. So now I have both Fury and Arms spec'd. I'm much more comfortable with the Fury rotation, though I do find Arms to be fun as well. My main question though is should I really just stick with Arms and practice it. Currently I haven't noticed an increase in DPS when spec'd as Arms (keep in mind I'm not used to it). And, if you all reccommend I stick with Arms, are there any tips/tricks that ya'll would suggest as far as maxamizing my DPS? And in Arms, should I stay in Battle Stance? I tryed out Stance Dancing between Arms and Fury but I found that staying in Battle stance seemed to be more effective? Anyways, I'm not looking for anyone to hold my hand here, but if there's any solid reccomendations and/or tips/tricks anyone can suggest it would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

most fights in DS your going to want to play whichever spec your more comfortable with, the dps difference isn't too great. Both specs are better in different areas, fury has better single target dps and burst in the execute phase and better survivability with mastery buffing our enraged regen while arms has better aoe dps and the buff to bleed damage. i stick with fury personally because we have a druid for the bleed debuff and im not needed to aoe down add's more than just cleaves, so i focus on maximizing my dps on boss.

Thanks for your input. And what you mentioned seems to be true for me. My fury dps is great on single target bosses, not as great compared to arms when it comes to aoe, but yah overall I agree with you to play whichever spec I'm most comfortable with. I suppose one of my main concerns up front was if I was missing out on a huge dps increase not playing in arms. Thanks again!

Actually single target Arms is stronger than fury right now. For example look at raidbots heroic ultraxion, that fight is single target and closest to a patchwerk style fight in this tier and Arms beats fury. Along with the fact that arms is better in the execute phase as most arms warriors will pick up executioner and they also have sudden death helping them out. Fury does have the better burst due to the synergy of death wish along with reck which make it ideal for something like heroic spine but outside of that one fight it doesn't really shine over arms on any other encounter.

In the end the importance really lies on what you're more comfortable playing, I know a lot of warriors who aren't as comfortable playing arms so their dps would be lower due to it and so they have just stuck out playing fury. The dps for both specs is somewhat close but given a scenario in which you can play both specs equally well arms will end up outshining fury.

Agree very much with Ragebark and I've just recently been in your situation Playmaker. I wasnt comfortable with arms - at first. However I stuck through it - and believe me, its not that hard(even stancedancing which can be macroed away) and it just took me a few raids to do better or comparable damage to fury. I still maintain my fury spec, primarily for Spine(bursting down the Tendons), but also because I feel that fury is my "real" spec - just wont let it go. It annoys me a bit that arms(the traditional PVP spec) is now superior in PVE as well, and I feel that Blizzard have made a mistake. However, as we know WOW-history, things will likely change again with the next expansion. But for the sake of min/maxing, Arms is as Ragebark mentions the better spec atm - at least according to the current logs, which is what we have to use as "evidence".

Top 40 WOL Ultraxion 25H
Arms: 47.9k - 55.1k dps range

Fury: 42.6k - 48.5k dps range

Ive been fury since the days of Ulduar, and as of last night I switched to Arms. The reason I reluctantly made the switch was in Heroic Yor my AoE dps isnt enough to down the adds fast enough. It was enough to where my raid group noticed a drastic change. I am currently 391 Ilvl and without much practice in Arms, I increased my dps by ~4k.

Tentacle proccs well? -> good rank. The difference from that weapon alone is easily 1.0 million damage, ranging from 500k on bad attempts, averaging on 1.6 mio and bypassing 2 mio on good attempts (saw 2.5 mio lately).

But anyway, if played correctly (utilising berserker rage for twilight instability) arms potential just looks better on this fight in particular. Colossus smash debuff's uptime is just so much higher thanks to the talent & setbonus (37% vs 53% simmed) and that easily makes up for deathwish being superior to deadly calm.

Just for the record, on heroic Yor'Sahj in fury I was pulling approx 25-26k dps. Last night on our kill in arms I pulled 33k. Being that we beat the timer by 15s and killed the adds in a timely fashion, I think it was worth the change.

No offense but your dps is strangely low for heroic Yor, did you not get many add phases?

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Originally Posted by Ragebark

No offense but your dps is strangely low for heroic Yor, did you not get many add phases?

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No I just suck. I can never seem to pull dps to my full potential. Probably mostly due to poor rotation and cooldown management. Remember, Ive only been arms for less than a week. I always feel I can only pull 85% of my full potential. Sadly enough on Eldre'Thalas, Im usually one of the higher dps charactors on realm.

That fight in reality is one of those fights where, "great dps" also includes padding meters a bit. Just remember generally you get 2 gcd's basically inbetween every mortal strike relatively. You want to generally use either slam or overpower depending on the situation in there with heroic strike as a rage dump. The 2 piece of tier 13 changes heroic strikes role with the additional use of inner rage and such but arms it's all about just getting used to playing it's rotation. It's not harder than fury at all just take a little time on the dummy and practice it.

One of the things I noticed that I do is I tend to put the OP procs ahead of MS and I dont seem to use slam enough. Going back to my old fury rotation where I would use HS over slam. Trying to break that.

Yeah, MS is king not just due to the damage but because of the benefit from possible procs, the general agreed upon priority is MS>Slam>OP>Heroic as a rage dump. Not to say you should just skip ops but they can be delayed in favor of other attacks with 4+ seconds left on the proc.

Regulary you want to use OP over Slam due to it's 55% higher critical strike chance (60% from TfB talent minus 5% for the Slam glyph), thanks to it it's about 7% more direct damage on average PLUS way better damage per rage PLUS more reliable deep wound proccs (munching!).

MS>CS>OP>Slam

HS if you have the rage for it or a battle trance procc

Next big thing is stancedancing IF you got the connection for it: About 3-5% more damage for hitting the same buttons in the same way with some macros doing all the extra work. All you have to watch out is a fight where you're rage capped all the time, you can only keep 75 rage while switching stances with 2/2 tactical mastery talent.

Again not saying to skip ops, but op can always be saved due to the reliability of knowing how much time is left on the proc. The use of prioritizing slam and saving op would be setting up for higher dpr during CS debuff time. With the 4 piece and sudden death it ends up becoming more common than you would originally think.

i am just starting out as a dps on my warrior, TG. what is the best rotation for single target dps?

There's a guide that's stickied to the top of this forum. it also happens to be in my signature too.