Life Long Tank Needs DPS Offspec Halp!

[Bodasafa]

So I have been a tank for around 3 years. Not only that but the Main Tank for my guild. Well times have changed and that guild dissolved when the GM hung up his hat. Now I am in a new guild. They have an established MT so I am slotted as an OT.

As a good OT I feel I should have a DPS spec as my secondary spec (right now I'm duel prot, progression/threat) for single tank encounters.

Im looking for advice on a few things since I have never seriously DPS'd in a raid or kept up with the changes as they pertain to DPS. Like the title says Ive been a tank for life.

1) MS or Titan Grip? Any suggestions for a spec?
2) What are my primary goals for stats and in what order should I prioritize them?
- Reach hit cap? (is it more than 8% w/Titan Grip?)
- Reach exp. cap?
- Focus on Crit?
- Focus on AP?
3) What kind of rotation should I be working with?
4) Any helpful tips you would like to share?

I really appreciate any constructive feed back from the community here.

Thank you for taking the time to read this.
- Boda

[Destruyen]

1) MS or Titan Grip? Any suggestions for a spec?
2) What are my primary goals for stats and in what order should I prioritize them?
- Reach hit cap? (is it more than 8% w/Titan Grip?)
- Reach exp. cap?
- Focus on Crit?
- Focus on AP?
3) What kind of rotation should I be working with?
4) Any helpful tips you would like to share?

- Boda

1 - arms is the way to go until you have uld25 weapons and near bis gear to support fury.
arms spec: (Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft)
fury spec: (Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft)
some points in both specs can be re-arranged, but thats how i spec for arms and fury. i feel imp demo outweighs imp. shouts for raid utility for example.

2 - hit cap for arms is 265. for fury with 3/3 precision the cap is only 165, but 250 or so hit will smooth your rage gen out some at lower gear levels.

expertise cap is 26 for both specs, as arms you can grab 2/2 wep mastery and sacrifice 2 points in imp. execute so you only need 18 expertise on your character sheet for cap. arms gets 4 free expertise with strength of arms talent, but you will still need 26 on your character sheet to be capped (just reduces the amount of exp from gear needed).

dont focus on crit for either spec (dont gem for it). average dps gear using an axe should put you around 31-34% crit unbuffed as arms spec. but again, dont gem for crit for either spec.

you should focus on strength as arms if you are below 30% passive arp from gear (not counting battle stance). once you hit 30%, then you can gem for arp and stack that until you either hit 100% without an arp proc trinket or around 55-65% with one. this will still let your arp from your trinket proc be worth something instead of only using 25-30% or less of it.

for fury, strength all the way. an arp proc trinket is still very good (bis until algalon/heroic toc25) for fury, but gemming for arp soft cap (50% on your character sheet) really depends on the specific gear you are using.

3 - check out the two dps guides for both specs in the dps forum. they include the fury rotation and the arms priority list.

4 - download landsoul's spreadsheet (Warrior DPS Calculation Spreadsheet - Elitist Jerks) whenever he gets around to posting the 3.2-ready one over on elitistjerks and play around with your gear/gems/chants.


my personal opinion, if you want to have fun and do some massive damage, try out arms. i really love what blizz did to the spec after bc. i suffered from tank burnout shortly after sunwell was released on my warrior after tanking since vanilla, so i switched to playing slam spec. stuck with it in wotlk and i dont regret it.

[Ariedan]

1) As far as which spec you will go with, it's entirely up to you. Arms and fury are both very different styles of warrior dps, although if you don't have an arms warrior in your raid, trauma would be a nice buff to bring. Fury is more gear-dependent, so arms will outshine fury until you get decent gear. With that said, gear is almost a nonfactor, as you can get the gear to go fury through emblems and the new five-man instance.


I can't personally speak for arms as I have no experience with the spec, but I can help you out with fury.

2) As far as fury goes, we hardly need any hit as we get 3% hit from talents. Most gear should have enough to where you don't have to sacrifice stats to achieve hit cap. (and no, not more than 8% needed, although any spare hit on gear isn't wasted) After hit, expertise to dodge cap is essential.

Beyond that, strength is our bread and butter. Crit is good, but it is secondary to strength. ArP is a good stat for fury, but don't gem for it. If you're getting emblem and ToC gear, you'll have enough ArP on your gear.

Gemming-wise, you'll pretty much want to gem straight strength. Relentless Earthsiege Diamond is the meta you'll want to go with, and to meet its requirements, you'll use a 10 strength + 10 crit gem to meet the yellow requirement, and a 10 strength + 15 stamina to meet the blue requirement.

3) Rotation as a fury warrior is pretty simple and very similar to tanking, as more rage = more dps:
Bloodthirst and whirlwhind when they are up. If you get a slam proc, hit it, but don't prioritize it before your two main abilities.
The more complicated thing about fury is being intelligent about cooldowns and your rage dumps. Heroic strike if it's single-target, but be careful to not use your rage up for your abilities; cleave if it's more than one target. Use Deathwish and Recklessness when you feel you need cooldowns, as every fight's different. If there's a time where you need to burn fast (Heart on XT, for example), save it then. If it's a long fight with no special burn phase, I typically use them at the beginning so they will be up again later.

Be sure to use bloodrage and berserker rage every time they're up; more rage will mean more rage dumps.

The only other thing to really keep in mind as a fury warrior is the need for sunder armor if your tank isn't a warrior. It's a dps loss for you to keep them up, but a necessity for the raid. Try to weave your sunders in between your two main abilities, as you don't want to sacrifice more dps. However, if your stack of sunders is about to fall off, hit sunder first, as you will lose more dps in putting five back up again.

Hopefully my answers helped out. I too was a protection warrior for three years who recently started going dps sometimes, and to be honest, it's a blast. It's a fine change of pace when you play more than one role, and it's awesome to be able to contribute more to your raid.

/edit Oops, got beat in my reply! Oh well, hoped I helped. Gotta jet to work!

[Bodasafa]

You both answered my question better than I could have hopped for and with both of them I got a good perspective of each spec. I marked one as the best just so it would show up as my question was answered, but If I had the choice Id pick both.

Thank you both very much for your responses.
-Boda