Rage conservation and warriors' weapon choice

[Tarkonn]

Hey, just figured that I would pop in and share something that I learned through trial and error that I haven't seen on any of the warrior guides.

Up until last night, I have been using the Slayer of the Lifeless for my weapon, as it was the first epic tanking weapon I came across. Now, I never really though much about how our weapon really does help scale our rage costs when tanking. In single target, it isn't a big factor. In AOE tanking(Cleaving over and over), it is HUGE.

I picked up the Broken Promise last night, and got some time to blow through a heroic or two today. Previously, I had been having rage issues. Now, I have plenty of rage to play with while spamming cleave and thunderclap and shockwave. This is due to the slower weapon speed, as opposed to my previous sword being nearly half the speed. So is it a general rule that warriors SHOULD be using slow-speed weapons? It seems that if you're taking twice as long to cast cleave, but are doing the same amount of threat and damage, it sure as heck is worth it for the rage conservation.

Hopefully this has helped a couple of you guys who are dealing with rage generation issues. I'm sure it is common knowledge, but I hadn't read anything on it before, which is why I decided to post it here.

[Muffin Man]

HS and Cleave are non-normalized attacks. Meaning the add a flat amount of damage no matter what weapon you were using. So one cleave with Slayer of the Lifeless is does almost the same damage as one cleave with BP (almost because Slayer has lower dps).

To reiterate: what you're seeing is an illusion. Assuming the same dps - cleaving twice with a 1.5 speed weapon will give you twice as much bonus damage as cleaving once with a 3.0 speed weapon. But, the 3.0 speed weapon has a higher swing damage than the 1.5 speed one (since it has to do twice as much damage in half as many swings to match dps =p).

http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f97/4...red-sword.html for reference.

It is true that if you don't have the rage to spend, you may as well go with the slower weapon, especially if it has more dps like BP versus Slayer. When you have more rage through, you need to increase your weapon speed so you can spend it faster (either via cleave or HS).

So no it's not a general rule to use slow weapons. Rather you use slow weapons in low rage situations and fast weapons in high rage situations.

[Andenthal]

Also they are not doing the same threat for HS and Cleave.
HS and Cleave both have innate threat components to them. Using a faster weapon allows you to get more of the innate threat bonus per minute than a slow weapon.

[Tarkonn]

Awesome replies guys, that will help me a lot.

I'm not a huge math person, I just kind of play it by how I see it. I've been having serious rage issues helping guildies get geared up in heroics. In that particular sense, it seems the new weapon is a huge boon and I can actually maintain aggro better due to being able to cleave each time it comes up.

So rather than always have a slow weapon, use a slow weapon for raid trash and heroics, and then have a better, faster sword for boss fights? If that is the case, between the two swords I'm pack-ratting, would the slayer be better for boss fights, or would my new one?

[Muffin Man]

Look at the thread I linked. Faster weapons for bosses (even in heroics) because of the additional rage you'll have available to you.

The cost of using a slower weapon in those kinds of fights is that you aren't spending rage, which means using a slow weapon sacrifices special abilities.

Now that that's settled... I'll throw a small monkey wrench at you.
BP has a huge edge in terms of +20 expertise / -3 hit. Is that ever enough to warrent using BP in a high rage situation? Probably not, but food for thought I guess.

[shiz98]

If you're going after threat, Broken Promise is better when you have less than 50% HS uptime, assuming reasonable AP levels.

Damage wise, you're going to be better off using the Broken Promise from about 3k AP and upwards, assuming you have 75% HS uptime. If your AP is on the low side of that 3k, you're probably better off with the Slayer of the Lifeless.

Thus saith my spreadsheet.

[Kazeyonoma]

Also why you're probably seeing less rage issues is because with Broken Promise you're unable to cleave/HS as fast as you do with the 1.5 speed Slayer. This means you're cleaving/HS'ing less overall, which means you're dumping rage less, and hence, "saving rage" but in fact hurting your overall TPS/DPS.

[shiz98]

Yep, kaze nailed it. The basic issue is a catch-22 of sorts: you have more rage because you're unable to dump it.