Yet Another Cataclysm Arms Guide

[marklar]

Count me as a skeptic but the fact if you can get Executioner which will give you added haste, which will give you a chance to proc your Mastery and give you more rage to Execute at a higher amount of rage used...I'm a lil curious. I saw your math Shiz and let me be the first to say that math is my weaker point, however I still am not convinced and I'm trying to figure out what you're not accounting for.

I know Haste is a bad stat for Arms. Fine, I get that. But it's not the most terrible stat on the sole fact it'll allow you to throw out Executes sub 20% that hit way harder.

haste is a bad stat because it would take a ridiculous amount of haste rating to make much difference, and you're sacrificing better stats to get it. however, executioner is 2 talent points that give you an enormous amount of haste all at once. as kaz pointed out, opportunity strikes do not give rage; BUT, haste does mean more opportunity strikes (due to more white hits), so the talents actually boosts the value of your mastery as well. it's not just a white damage increase.

check my quick math, but if white damage is 12.8% and mastery is 7.6% of my damage, executioner means 5.1% overall dps increase for two talent points? and that's not counting the extra rage generation at all.

execute in my logs hits far harder than anything else. what i've been playing with is swapping to zerker stance at 20%, letting rend drop off, and simply CS > MS > execute. yes, i lose some rage efficiency due to losing OP, but i gain 10% damage on absolutely everything else.

[Kazeyonoma]

you gain 5% damage, not 10% because battle gives 5% also.

[marklar]

you gain 5% damage, not 10% because battle gives 5% also.

good point. but 5% damage to all white damage, all mastery, all CS, all MS, and all executes plus the added benefit of not having to use a GCD to refresh rend, i think makes up for losing OP.

at least that's what i've been trying out lately.

[Krenian]

swords of opportunity don't generate rage.

we don't have 2 weapons to generate as smooth rage as execute

we have 2 abilities that are more important than just spamming execute while you only have 1 (we both have CS, but we have MS for lambs buff as well)

we have a super rage efficient high damage high crit chance ability that you don't (OP)

really we could squeeze out slam from our rotation but that'd only work, as something we do with our core rotation isn't up, AND only if we have 30 rage, at 10 rage, execute is not damage/rage efficient at all from what my logs tell me.

Alright, so it doesn't generate rage, but it doesn't meant that SoO isn't extra damage and by getting more swings in, you won't proc it which could bring up your DPS on that basis. I'm not saying it's a HUGE gain, nor am I even saying it's a good gain. It's a marginal gain at best and I can understand the idea behind the fact that you're getting little to no benefit, but that doesn't remove the fact that there is a benefit. I'm just saying, if we're here to maximize dps, why not?

From what i've seen so far playing Arms, Rage is hardly an issue to be honest with you. The only complications that I've seen when playing Arms is having to fit all my attacks before i'm GCD locked. Maybe that's just me but there are times I just sometimes forget that during my dead times, I'm supposed to Slam. Go figure. But anyway, the point is that I'm sure you can shove Execute in there instead of slam which is still a cast and still stops your swing timer for that cast for something that's instant and prolly stronger in damage.

I'm not saying you should not use OP either. I'm just saying, keep MS for LttS. Keep OP because it's a high crit attack. Rend needs to be up, and CS whenever it comes off CD...but I would probably wanna analyze Execute vs Slam. And figure out how much of a 25% increased haste could proc other things such as my mastery etc etc etc.

But again, I'm just extrapolating certain ideas.

[Kazeyonoma]

well the key thing will be that once the patch rolls along, slam will hit harder, and hs will suck, so we'll probably spec out of incite, which means we'll have free points to move around, which means, we'll probably pick up executioner, which means we'll probably want to execute instead of slam during the final 20% to utilize that buff.

[marklar]

And figure out how much of a 25% increased haste could proc other things such as my mastery etc etc etc.

didn't i just do that?

check my quick math, but if white damage is 12.8% and mastery is 7.6% of my damage, executioner means 5.1% overall dps increase for two talent points? and that's not counting the extra rage generation at all.

From what i've seen so far playing Arms, Rage is hardly an issue to be honest with you. The only complications that I've seen when playing Arms is having to fit all my attacks before i'm GCD locked. Maybe that's just me but there are times I just sometimes forget that during my dead times, I'm supposed to Slam.

that's probably because you're skipping slam too much. when keeping slam in your rotation, there is very little rage to spare. during execute phase, there is none.

well the key thing will be that once the patch rolls along, slam will hit harder, and hs will suck, so we'll probably spec out of incite, which means we'll have free points to move around, which means, we'll probably pick up executioner, which means we'll probably want to execute instead of slam during the final 20% to utilize that buff.

oh, you guys are spec'd into incite? O.o i find that outside of DC, i use HS very little, so i'm saving those 3 points already.

[Muffin Man]

plus the added benefit of not having to use a GCD to refresh rend

Are you sure this is a benefit? You lose 6 ticks of rend which is easy 15k damage at least, and 3 OP procs. Which using Shiz's numbers out perform a 10 rage execute but not a 30 rage execute, but if I were more math inclined I'd guess is at least competitive with a 30 rage execute it on average damage (due to the huge crit chance bonus).

Plus, 3 OP procs incur 3 1-second GCDs, which nets you an extra GCD to do something that you couldn't do if you had Executed 3 times. Like Execute, which leads me too:

oh, you guys are spec'd into incite? O.o i find that outside of DC, i use HS very little, so i'm saving those 3 points already.

Even though we should still be slamming, HS still hits really really hard (why it's getting nerfed after all).

So with DC, Heroism, Blood Frenzy procs, Battle Trance procs there's still plenty of opportunity to use HS.

Still will be after 4.0.6, but it won't be worth speccing into anymore.

Which means, I do think Improved Execute will be worth speccing into. Execute range lasts a long time, longer than bloodlust most of the time, so why not give ourselves a nice buff for that duration? I just don't think it'll be worth it to completely alter our rotation for it (but I could be wrong).

[Krenian]

didn't i just do that?



that's probably because you're skipping slam too much. when keeping slam in your rotation, there is very little rage to spare. during execute phase, there is none.


oh, you guys are spec'd into incite? O.o i find that outside of DC, i use HS very little, so i'm saving those 3 points already.

Fair enough, didn't notice your math. Still a decent upgrade in the min/max area.

Also, I could be skipping slam, no doubt. But I figure that even adding slam in there, you could simply replace Slam with Execute.

I haven't played Arms since I hit 85 honestly so I don't know how it does in raid like situations. At this point, it's pretty much all stipulations. However with Slam's added buff, I can see where Execute would be less desirable.

[marklar]

Are you sure this is a benefit? You lose 6 ticks of rend which is easy 15k damage at least, and 3 OP procs. Which using Shiz's numbers out perform a 10 rage execute but not a 30 rage execute, but if I were more math inclined I'd guess is at least competitive with a 30 rage execute it on average damage (due to the huge crit chance bonus).

Plus, 3 OP procs incur 3 1-second GCDs, which nets you an extra GCD to do something that you couldn't do if you had Executed 3 times.

no, i'm not sure of anything, which is why i'm so interested in this thread.

however, looking at my logs instead of math, i notice my average OP is 19,829 and my average execute is 32,103. obviously, this is at various rage levels (10-30), but this is a raid log and so it's a realistic average. i BELIEVE the damage/rage scales linearly from looking at the formula, so i'm not sure it matters at how much rage i push it.

what i'm trying to perfect at 20% is this:
1) swap to zerker
2) stack 5x executes
3) CS > MS > ex until dragonkin trinket is at 5 stacks & CS is off CD
4) CS
5a) use trinket/DC/recklessness/golemblood pot
5b) MS > ex > ex (HS until DC is over, of course)
6) CS > MS > ex until dead

right now i'm seeing a pretty good dps boost at the end of fights, and i'm far from perfect on the order of things. i think it will get better as i get more disciplined at hitting this list properly. i need to come up with an "uber" macro to help me pop everything at once - right now i'm pushing all the buttons manually ><

another question is whether it's worth waiting for rage to hit 75 before going "uber" in step 5a and then adding IR to the list.

[marklar]

tried this last night - since almost all of it is off the GCD, the macro was pretty simple actually.
/cast recklessness
/use Fury of Angerforge
/use Golemblood Potion
/cast Deadly Calm
/cast Inner Rage
/cast Colossus Smash

my rage was not high enough for IR to be used, but my dps spiked to about 32k at this point, according to WoL

[Pek]

Can you link your logs please Marklar

[marklar]

yes, i thought i linked one earlier, but i can't find it now.
we don't have a lot of bosses down yet, but here's the one where i tried that macro i was talking about (it was not during a head phase, unfortunately). my personal dps could have been better this attempt, as i remember goofing up a few times. and of course, parries suck!
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/2...?s=3746&e=4142

here's an earlier BH, but i didn't chain cooldowns at all this fight:
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/2...e/?s=729&e=970

the guild is "clothing optional" on dragonblight if you want to see more. i haven't bothered spec'ing incite and using HS since it's getting nerfed.

[marklar]

i would love to see other logs to compare to, btw. higher or lower (but especially higher), with comments about your attack priority.

[gacktt]

I'm really bad at calculating spreadsheets so could someone give a general % increase in our DPS after 4.0.6? I'm doing 11,500 on a dummy without a metagem currently using a purely MS/OP/Slam rotation with no heroic strikes and no storm/calm/consumables.

I'm hoping with raid buffs, permanent lambs to the slaughter buff and +15%ms/20%slam damage I could do 16-18k sustained.

[woodyman]

isnt it more than 20% slam damage as now slam is buffed by war academy + the 145% ability damage?

i make slaam totally buffed and with lambs to the slaughter 210% wep damage
also cost of mortal strike rage is being reduced by 5 rage which altho sounds small will make a fair differance to the amount of spare rage we have to dump into abilities that are off the GCD ie HS

If you could look at % of damage done by your slam in ur overall test on dummy i woukld think u could guestimate what sort of increase we shud be seeing??

[gacktt]

slam is 145% x 1.2(imp) x 1.15(academy) = 200% weapon damage, 260% with lambs. Of course, that is assuming that the rumors of imp slam being additively instead of multiplicative is wrong.

[woodyman]

If that is true plus the fact that it costs a bucket load less rage than HS spamming did plus the reduction in MS rage cost.
Im starting to get quite excited about the possibilities here

Has anyone thought about still keeping incite build
My theory is that to dump rage (i think we will have alot more spare now) we will still only be able to use HS as its off the GCD
therefor Incite will still see us a DPS increase and i cant see anything else on the trees that would make better use of the 3 points to be honest

Also re reading patch notes nearly every buff given to arms helps fury as well (slam and war academy)

on the other hand all the buffs to Fury are fury specific, i think the chances of this helping us catch fury are slim

[gacktt]

My slam is now 234% weapon damage, 297% with lambs up. This is obviously a text error as my slams only do equal damage to a 187% weapon damage mortal strike with 232% weapon damage.

Of course, mortal strike is supposed to be 190% weapon damage by default and about 250% with lambs, so I really have no damn clue with blizzard.

Only doing 15.5k dps on argaloth, arms is still god awful.

[Muffin Man]

Also re reading patch notes nearly every buff given to arms helps fury as well (slam and war academy)

Our biggest buff was the Lambs buff though. The recklessness buff also helps any Arms warrior willing to stance dance for a nice burn phase as well (even if you don't have tactical mastery you can pair it with DC).

My slam is now 234% weapon damage, 297% with lambs up. This is obviously a text error as my slams only do equal damage to a 187% weapon damage mortal strike with 232% weapon damage.

Of course, mortal strike is supposed to be 190% weapon damage by default and about 250% with lambs, so I really have no damn clue with blizzard.

But I do.

MS - 150% base * (1.1 glyphed + 1.15 war academy) = 187.5%

So it looks like bonus damage is additive. Which makes sense, this means all the buffs are consistent when applied to all warriors at all levels / talents.

But that's for passive damage, notice that battle stance isn't factored into that? So I'm not assuming that Battle Stance and Lambs are additive to that.

[marklar]

Only doing 15.5k dps on argaloth, arms is still god awful.

got a log?