Arms Warrior needs advice

[Maloch]

Hey folks, I've combed through thread after thread but it just makes me more confused as there's several different schools of thought on ArP versus Strength versus everything else. I'm a off-tank that has to DPS sometimes, and while my tanking's fine my DPS is abysmal. Right now I'm specc'd Arms as I've read that Fury isn't the way to go with cruddy weapons. My guild runs regular heroics and Ulduar 10 normal (up to Hodir) so that and purchased weapons are the limits of my upgrades.

Armory: The World of Warcraft Armory

Current priority rotation: Rend (if not up), Overpower, Mortal Strike, Execute, Bladestorm, Slam

Any advice would be greatly appreciated, as I don't want to be the sandbagger that holds my guild back from progressing in fights where I've got to DPS

EDIT: As a point of note, I'm also the only warrior in the guild, so responsible for sunders and improved commanding shout (no warlocks either). So please keep that in consideration too.

[Destruyen]

fury is the way to go when you have top-of-the-line weapons and near bis gear. you being offspec dps you probably dont have the gear to support fury, so you made the right choice going arms. however....

you are still way under expertise cap with 2/2 wep mastery, you need 18 expertise (26 without wep mastery). this is hampering your dps alot since arms is a gcd-locked rotation, and a miss or dodge will kill your rage and kill your dps. grinding heroics for emblems needed for t7.5 legs will be a nice upgrade.

you should also try getting as many conquests as you can get to buy the 2 t8.5 tokens, conquest neck and gloves, and then some valor items like the t7.5 tokens and possible boots. get the crafted ulduar dps belt if you have the gold, along with a nobles card (works good for a block trinket too).

until then, dont gem arp since you dont have the gear to support gemming for it. wait until you have 30% arp from just gear, not gems or stance. so replace all your arp gems with str.

[Maloch]

Thanks for the answers!

One question though: until I hit expertise 18, should I gem for that instead of strength?

[fargoa]

Can't see your gear with Arms spec at the moment
But a few suggestions from my playing Arms warrior:
Weapon a 2H lvl213 (or lvl219 now since they are easier to farm)
Stats priority: Hit, Expertise > Agility > Crit > Haste > Strength
Once you see about 35% crit unbuffed, your dps will go up quite a bit.
In your rotation, you don't use Heroic Strike, I would not put points into improving it either.
Some people argue expertise is not important because you should be always behind mobs. But in reality, especially in those very mobile fights with bosses, you may not be able to stand behind bosses all the time. Therefore my solution is to stack it up as much as I can and it is one issue less to worry about in a busy fight.
As for ArP, I simply don't worry about it, because when I stack up all other stats, ArP usually comes with the items and it is good enough.
A good way to evaluate your DPS is to run heroics because there your buffs are limited and your dps is more reflected by your playing style (what/how/when to push buttons). If you often push your threat over 90% of your tank (assuming a good tank), your warrior is as good as it could be.
And if you do have to use sunder armor often, yes, your dps will be lower, because that takes one special attack out, which could have been your crit execution!

[Destruyen]

Weapon a 2H lvl213 (or lvl219 now since they are easier to farm)
Stats priority: Hit, Expertise > Agility > Crit > Haste > Strength
Once you see about 35% crit unbuffed, your dps will go up quite a bit.
In your rotation, you don't use Heroic Strike, I would not put points into improving it either.
Some people argue expertise is not important because you should be always behind mobs. But in reality, especially in those very mobile fights with bosses, you may not be able to stand behind bosses all the time. Therefore my solution is to stack it up as much as I can and it is one issue less to worry about in a busy fight.
As for ArP, I simply don't worry about it, because when I stack up all other stats, ArP usually comes with the items and it is good enough.

i would like to say that this is alot of misinformation. agi, crit, and haste will never be better than strength or armor pen, for either arms or fury.

yes, you should be using heroic strike in higher gear lvls as arms, and spending points into imp. heroic strike is even better. what are you going to put those 3 points in, parry? no. you should be queuing heroic strike around 70-80 rage when you cant spend a global on slam to dump rage, usually because of back-to-back procs and keeping ms on cd. heroic strike also works great at the start of fights while you are stacking sunders if you are the only warrior in the raid. fights like hodir, xt, and kolo i am hitting slams in free globals and queuing hs right after due to all the rage i have.

expertise past the dodge cap? seriously? yes there will be some fights and times where you will be moving and dps'ing and probably in front of the boss for a little while, but stacking expertise past the dodge cap is seriously gimping your other stats.

armor pen, you are basically ignoring the best stat for an arms warrior. once you hit 30% arp from gear alone, arp becomes the best stat (assuming hit and dodge-cap expertise) to stack and gem for.


@Maloch: about your expertise, dont forget that the 40expertise/40stam food adds 5 whole expertise. so instead of just 7, you will have 12, which just doubled your expertise. then you will only have to gem 6 expertise, which iirc is 5x 16expertise gems. however, a better option is to try and get the crafted dps belt from ulduar made. it isn't that expensive (you can get emblems to buy them from heroics now) and should solve your expertise problem when you use expertise food. also, it will allow you to gem strength to get your ap up, since you dont have the gear to support arp gemming just yet.

[fargoa]

expertise past the dodge cap? seriously? yes there will be some fights and times where you will be moving and dps'ing and probably in front of the boss for a little while, but stacking expertise past the dodge cap is seriously gimping your other stats.

Not just 'a little while'
In very mobile boss fights, it is simply not YOUR choice as a melee DPS to decide where to stand. It is mostly determine by how your tank position and move the boss. Even in a relatively stationary fight such as Kel'Thuzad, it is very unlikely you can stand behind the boss all the time.