Arms Warrior needing some tips and advise

[Develish]

I haven't played in a few months and am just now getting back into full time raiding. I have been doing a lot of reading to see what my next step should be (both with my Arms spec and Prot spec), I am not sure if I should change my gems over to ArP at this point or if I am ok with Str for now. I am currently pulling around 3.5k dps in dungeons and 4 to 4.5k in 10man (depending on fight obviously). My guild is getting into ICC now and I want to be sure that I am contributing when I go, so if someone could take a look at Character and give me some pointers/tips I would greatly appriciate it.

Armory - http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...+of+Excellence

Heroes - http://wow-heroes.com/ - US/Windrunner/Edok

Thanks in advance for your assistance!

[Muffin Man]

One general gearing tip, especially for the 10 man raider. Is that Arms is all about ruthlessly cutting out the stats you don't want for the stats you do want. What I mean is you want to get rid of all your haste and just barely meet the hit cap and don't even care for expertise at all.

So... your first task is to fix those trinkets. Mirror of Truth is an immediate upgrade on the expertise trinket.
The next one will be harder, but DMC :G or Banner of Victory are better than the Mark of Supremacy. You can make up the hit by getting the http://www.wowhead.com/?item=47697 and matching a yellow socket or two, with the added upshot of dropping some haste.

Needle Encrusted Scorpion is the ideal trinket here, but it's not really grindable. If you have options, then Needle + DMC/Banner/Mirror is going to depend on your gear level, but generally DMC, Banner, Mirror is the order.

Go from there, any piece of gear that has haste on it... you want to replace. Sometimes that means even going down in iLvl (like with your trinkets) if it means getting a better stat balance.

[JollyWarrior]

ArP begins to scale better than strength at 50% I believe. Your hit is really high so you can drop that hit trinket in favor of NES. Grind up some 55k honor and get the Wrathful Neck of Sundering.

Drop Glyph of BS for Rend and Drop SS for Execute.

Take points out of Second Wind, Iron Will, Weapon Mastery and Deflection. That frees up 10 talent points that are either wasted or have no role in PvE.

Pick up Imp HS, Imp Charge, Imp Slam, Flesh out Imp Cleave and Imp Execute. So you should have something that looks like this: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#LhrcbfIt00bRdGuioGxc0bb

What above poster said with trinkets, if you have gold purchase Darkmoon Card: Greatness. I've not replaced it in 6 months (simply can't find a better trinket to drop.)

[Develish]

Thanks for the tips, they are all greatly appriciated. I will start with getting my spec cleaned up and swapping those Glyphs and then work on getting the Trinkets recommended. I honestly never thought of going down in iLevel to rebalance stats, hit rating has been high for a while (used to be specced Fury) but it was all in the gear so I just didnt worry about it. Muffin Man, you mentioned not worrying about expertise at all, yet everything I have read says that it needs to be at 26 (maybe I am just way confused, always possible). I realize that currently I am higher than that so going for the trinkets you suggested is no problem, I am just curious as to why you say don't worry about it...??? Just curious. Is Landsouls spreadsheet still the best or is there something else out there now for Arms Warriors? Need to get something so I can start getting the numbers right. Thanks again for all the input, I really appriciate it, as does the guild!!!

[JollyWarrior]

RAWR is a good tool for melee dps in general.

Expertise is one of those stats which is nice, but not required by an Arms Warrior due in part to your ability to Overpower a dodged attack.

Someone did numbers once (somewhere on these forums) which showed no gain or loss from being exp capped as Arms.

[Develish]

Ok, I appriciate it, so it is one of those...if it is on gear cool but dont go out of my way for it...Thanks!

[Muffin Man]

Exactly what Develish said.

To me, it's another stat that can be ruthlessly purged in favor of the power 3 stats of ArP, Crit and Str (of course I do have 21 expertise from 3 pieces of gear...)

[Deathsupply]

ArP will scale better than STR right around 30-35%, Expertise is not needed, like stated above, and should be scoffed off of your gear unless you are losing valuable dps stats in addition to the expertise. ArP is king as arms. dropping str, agility, crit, really anything that doesn't set you under the hit cap, is more beneficail, as ArP will start seeing SEP Values of over 1.1-1.4 once you get even higher in ArP lvl's (+80%)

[Develish]

Thanks for the tips everyone, made the recommended changes, at least the ones I could afford to make at this point. Got Mirror of Truth and DMC-Greatness, made the talent changes, got some new pieces of gear and regemmed a couple in accordance with RAWR. Must say I was pretty happy with the DPS increase, was pulling an average of about 4.5 to 5k in dungeons (didn't get a chance to run any raids) which is an increase of about 1k. I am still a little confused about the ArP though, not so much that I dont understand what you all are saying but more so in that I am having a little trouble determining what exactly my ArP is currently at and if I am at a point to go ahead and gem for it. The reason I ask is because I get a different number depending on what I am looking at. I have looked in RAWR, Landsouls, WOWHEAD, Armory etc...; and I get anywhere from 30% to 50% and I currently have no ArP gems at all. What is the best place to get a good number? Does that really matter as long as I use the same place every time? If I look at RAWR it shows that my DPS would be lower if I stack ArP but Landsouls says it will increase... So, if someone wouldn't mind taking a look at my character (link in first post) and let me know what you think I would greatly appriciate it.

[Deathsupply]

You can look at your toolip, under your hit rating on your charcter sheet. Take the IN-GAME number, and add 10% for Battle Stance, and +6% if you have the Tier 9 2-piece set bonus. That will give you your total ArP. You should start regemming around 35% ArP from gear only. Do not include battle stance.

[Tansit]

Since when do Arms warriors use next-swing attacks? At what point would that ever happen during an optimal Arms rotation?

[Cartz]

Although I agree with most advice in this thread, I'm hesitant to suggest taking 3 points in cleave.

Part of arms is bringing a strong set of buffs to the table. I think 5/5 Imp Demo is the way to go for a non-Incite raid spec. You won't be cleaving very much during boss encounters, but helping out your tanks and healers by trimming 2-3k off of each of Festergut's hits quickly adds up.

To add to the ARP discussion. The second you start regemming ARP (and you should use landsouls to tell you when) go pick yourself up a Banner of Victory from ToC5 regular. It's ilvl200 so it makes your GS terrible, but its an amazing DPS increase if you're sitting at around 60-70% from gear + gems.

[Develish]

Thanks for all the input everyone, have made some huge gains in dps, I really appriciate it. I did end up going to ArP gems last night, mainly as an experiment because RAWR was saying that STR gems were better and Landsouls was saying that ArP was better. Turns out that Landsouls was correct, changing gems plus getting my frost cloak got my dps to about 6.2k in 25 VoA on boss fights.

Thanks to everyones input, I have basically doubled my dps output in the past week. AWSOME and THANK YOU so much!

I will get to grinding ToC5 for the Banner tonight as I am now at 63% ArP without it and have no other places left to gem.

Cartz, thanks for bringing up the point about the points in cleve. I was wondering about that myself last night when we were raiding. It seems really nice when clearing trash but when we get to the boss I never used cleve so I wasn't sure if there was a better place (more benefit to raid) to put those points. While having the points in cleve may help my overall dps I try to focus almost as much on benefits to the raid, so I will do some more research on this to see what kind of dps decrease I would have by switching points. I have no problem sacrificing some dps for an overall raid survivablity increase.

Could some post a link or explain to me the "Incite Raid Spec" that Cartz mentioned please? Would like to research better spec's if possible. While I am happy (and grateful) for the current dps increase, I am always looking for new and/or better options.

Thanks again to everyone!!!

[Bung]

I wasn't really stated above but you may want to test out fury. I run ICC25 weekly and I'm duel specced arms/fury. I find that for trash and all the fights with the exception of festergut and saurfang that fury is much better. Arms is awesome for fights in which you don't need to move at all. It's mostly due to slam being canceled when you move.

[Cartz]

Incite Spec

This is it in a nutshell. It's a moderate dps increase over the standard imp. execute build. It's a little tougher to use, if you overspam your heroic strike you can rage starve yourself. If you let yourself rage cap too often, it's also a dps loss.

Strike a balance though, and you can see 100-300 dps increase depending on the incoming rage during a fight.

Edit: Again 'respec' yourself inside landsouls spreadsheet first to see if it's an increase. I believe there is a gear threshold before it's actually any good, but I have no idea where that point is.

[Develish]

Thanks Cartz, will look into and do some experimenting to see what I can come up with. Greatly Appriciated!

Bung, I had thought about switching to Fury (actually used to be Fury) but we currently have a really good Fury Warrior. However, with that being said, I'll do some playing around with current gear and swtich my spec around in Landsouls to see what comes out of it. Better DPS is better DPS regardless.

Does anyone know off hand if the stats (Hit, Expertise, ArP, etc...) required for Fury are basically the same as Arms or would it require regemming and new enchants??? Havent played as Fury in forever so I have not kept up with it at all.

[Bung]

Fury requires less hit (164) and more expertise (26)