Interesting DPS discovery

[psychostomp]

Many of us here follow events/ trends on the wow warrior forums and a new one just came to my attention yesterday. Some of you may need to adjust your thinking (i was forced to) about raid DPS but I did learn some things.

When i ask 99% of warriors what the best Raid DPS spec is I expect to hear 17/44 or a slight variation thereof. Yesterday this dead horse came up for its weekly beating on the forums and being bored i decided to read the flames and saw WWS parsing proving that not only was 17/44 not the #1 raid dps spec in late end game conetent but in fact a MS build 33/28 to be exact is and it tends to add an additional 200 raid dps (which for many of us was the drawing point of this build) Wow Web Stats This is one of serida's average dps fights there were 2 wws shots on the boards of them topping 1800 dps

A few things I picked up while reading serida's responses and looking at their parse: 17/44 "may" have the potential for highest dps but as you approach threat cap 33/28 can achieve higher dps with less threat. (Less HS spam)
Conversely in a well setup melee raid grp ie shaman feral war HS can become a decent portion of your dps rotation as you should have a very full rage bar with WF and big freakin crits. A few other warriors sporting 33/28 in TK and Mt. hyjal use slam rotations suprisingly serida does not. (There dps wasnt as high as serida's max dps of 1800 and change but came in around 12-1400 )

[Paruhdox]

Oh yea, I don't think this was covered but ms has been a house for a while. The easiest way to compare it is to a hunter. If you want to get a general idea of how it scales think about how hunters weave steadyshot and multi shot between there auto shot. OK, now do that with your slam and ww cooldowns, a ms warrior can easily be in top the dps doing this. You also have to take into account the raid benifit of having a ms warrior too. 4% damage is alot when you have 3 rogues 3 hunters and 2-3 warriors, your looking at 30%+ bonus dmg.

[Mozman]

My spec is 33/28 MS blood frenzy - I did more individual DPS as 17/44 but blood frenzy adds 4% to ALL physical DPS including warriors, droods, enh sham, rogues, and hunters...

but the best part about it is the added threat the tanks get - more threat means the raid can go that bit harder and beat enrage timers..

& you don't need to respec for BG

edit: I've been this spec for a while now - you NEED windfury for PvE or you're starved for rage.

[psychostomp]

According to the a few of the warriors that were able to surpass fury dps stats it didnt generally occur til hyjal/eye and what should probably come as no surprise to most of you Sword spec was generally the easiest way to achieve 1600+ dps.
Most warriors knew arms could do decent dps and a 33/28 was a benefit to the entire raid dps what really surprised me was that the same build that cranks tanks TPS and all physical dps would actually be the number one warrior dps spec at true end game.

[Crimsonstorm]

33/28 is a better raid spec imo, primarily for the debuff which adds 4% to all melee dps. This provides more overall raid dps than the fury warrior.

The arms warrior also gets a bigger advantage from windfury than the fury warrior.


Now, it might be the case that 1 Arms and 1 Fury warrior is better than 2 arms warriors, if you have two dps warriors in the raid. But the first arms warrior that you add is definitely better than the first fury warrior.

[Daylanor]

What I've noticed and I still don't understand is why do dps warriors not spec and keep up Piercing Howl. Both for their added HS dmg and for the tanks threat, if Warrior.
Bosses are only immune to the slowing effect of PH. Plus with practice it's easy to weave it into the GCD.

[Berginyon]

I thought Piercing Howl didn't give the damage beneift of daze? Can anyone confirm?

[Daylanor]

I thought Piercing Howl didn't give the damage beneift of daze? Can anyone confirm?

I always see my dps increase when I weave PH in on any mob I'm HS dping on.
Now if anyone has parsed and seen that it no longer does so even though it was added and to my knowledge not removed. Like originally intended.

[Kazeyonoma]

Windfury is another reason why MS is much more viable for dps. I'm not sure if its just because there are more Shaman's now that Draenei exist, but definitely Windfury Totem + 2handers = insane amount of dps.

[Ardal]

What about 2h fury? I've seen some pretty crazy numbers popping up on that front. With WF today I out dps'd the other warrior on my BM run by a good 150k by the end and I had just hit 70 the previous day. 2h fury seems really nice with the 10% bonus to AP from zerk, hit 3660 AP on very basic gear during a WF.

[psychostomp]

2h fury while you would get the 10% AP bonus you either miss out on impale or 1% 2h damage weapon spec and BF so imo damage output would basically be a wash. On the other hand no BF means less utility.

doh was completely baffled by your ap being that high with wf started doing all kinds of math in this post and then realised duh he had SoE also.

[Kazeyonoma]

2hfury is nice as well, but I think Blood Frenzy is really what is making MS warriors viable DPS now. 10% to AP is sick though, especially with Shammy buffs you can Bloodthirst for more than MS at those kinda AP levels.

[Oakfire]

I agree and disagree with this thread:
MS is a very nice spec for both solo DPS and for raid DPS, but theres two things that REALLY throw off its usefulness. First off, if you dont have incredible MS gear (imo high crit) Your DPS wont be as sustained as it could be as fury. Secondly, in a raid with low melee, the bloodfrenzy is less and less important. Usually in our raids we have 1 rogue, myself, and enhance shaman, and a feral druid (who is the OT), thats it. The only other melee is the MT (minus multi tank fights, like FLK).
Though MS with the right gear can be incredibly good, but you also have to take into consider the fact of saying "If we stack the MS warrior with all the best gear and all the best party buffs, hell rape face on the DPS meters," The same goes for any other class and spec.

[Xhathor]

Secondly, in a raid with low melee, the bloodfrenzy is less and less important. Usually in our raids we have 1 rogue, myself, and enhance shaman, and a feral druid (who is the OT)

No Hunter?

We usually go with 2-3 Rogues, 1 Def, 1 Off, 2 Feral, 1 enhance Shamy, 2 Hunters and for the value of his personality a retribution Pala. It's obvious that here BF is valuable, as log as the boss is not immune...

Gear comparing my experience is: You need much better gear to be effective as a Fury Warrior than as a MS Warrior in raid.
As 33/28 you only care for 1. Crit and 2. AP. As FW you have to care for 1. Hit, 2. AP, 3. Crit.

[Stonehoof]

I definitly can atest to the value and DPS behind 33 points in arms.

Even though I speec into prot instead of fury (this allows me to be a tank and DPS on demand) I still can top the DPS meters in a raid that allows me to go all out.

Now a key factor in my DPS was spamming Hamstring in between cooldowns instead of slam. The reasoning for this was, Hamstring would proc sword/WF and fill up the rage bar, allowing me to keep up the HS and MS/WW each cool down. If I had a full rage bar and MS/WW was on cooldown I woudl slam the rage away.

I do not know if this strategy would work anymore with the nerfs to WF recently

[psychostomp]

honestly i havent noticed any nerfs to wf ( well 2-3 patches ago but it got fixed.) If your average weapon damage is high enough with WF down there are times now when you can literally slamspam and not even use a normal attack for 30-45 seconds assuming no long breaks in wf procs. The problem becomes when u achieve thru haste a roughly 2.2ish weapon speed then slam begins to slow down your dps.

[Oakfire]

No Hunter?

We usually go with 2-3 Rogues, 1 Def, 1 Off, 2 Feral, 1 enhance Shamy, 2 Hunters and for the value of his personality a retribution Pala. It's obvious that here BF is valuable, as log as the boss is not immune...

Gear comparing my experience is: You need much better gear to be effective as a Fury Warrior than as a MS Warrior in raid.
As 33/28 you only care for 1. Crit and 2. AP. As FW you have to care for 1. Hit, 2. AP, 3. Crit.

Our hunters are very bad at showing up. Our raid times are from 7-11 pm, one works 12 horus shifts in the military and is usually dead tired, and the other works until 7.

[Dreador]

Psychostomp, you mentioned in the OP that Serida does not do the slam rotations like others, I'm curious. Do you know what she does use?

[psychostomp]

from what i read she uses a heavy amount of HS and said with their dragonspine trophy and wf+ sword spec procs slam wasnt as viable an option for them. check my armory i ninjad her(?) build and noticed about a 80 dps increase from my earlier version of 33/28.

Something else that blew my mind was how much UW actually procs with a 2h now. While not swimming in rage tonight it was close enough for me. I didnt have WF and was pushing 600 dps fairly consistantly. The extra rage made a big difference (the new meta helped out too 3% crit damage FTW)