4.3 Arms Help!

[Synista]

So I've always been prot and fury since BC, haven't done Arms since back in Sunwell days.
My question is, whats the rule of thumb for arms?

Stat priority/Rotation/Macros/Gemming? Any help would be extremely appreciated!

[Tengenstein]

MH weapon DPS>Hit>expertise>crit>mastery>haste

1. Get rend up,
2. if colossus smash isn't up, put it up,
3. Execute if you have >30 rage,
4. Mortal strike
5. Overpower
6. Slam
7. Burn excess rage with Heroic strike

Ideally all done in Zerker stance except for OP and Rend which require Battle stance, if the constant stand dancing is too much for you, just sit in battle till the Execute phase and then swap to zerker. The only real thing to watch out for is your Rend/slaughter stacks both last 15 seconds and MS puts refeshes them, so make sure you've got enough Rage to MS before they fall off.

Gemming is identical to Fury: Reverberating Meta, Bolds everywhere, Hits/Str for blue's with a decent socket bonus and crit/str for yellows with a decent socket bonus.

[Synista]

Does fury still outdps arms or are they on equal playing grounds now?

[Tengenstein]

According to Simcraft TG is ahead of Arms which is ahead of SMF. According to raidbots they are incredibly close in DPS in Dragonsoul, on ultraxion, which is perhaps the least gimmicky of the fights Fury is ahead of Arms at 37,033 to 37,028 DPS

[klausi]

Ideally all done in Zerker stance except for OP and Rend which require Battle stance, if the constant stand dancing is too much for you, just sit in battle till the Execute phase and then swap to zerker.

- Regarding your regular rotation just NEVER delay MS.
- For stance dancing just use some macros, only downside of it: you'll have to track HfB proccs in some way. Thanks to the Tactical Mastery talent it's no real rage issue. The hard part is throwing out back to back TfB proccs constantly to reduce the time stancedancing and maximising your HS output.

Weapon: run LFR with all your friend's alts capable of yielding a strength twohander, that tentacle procc weapon is just insanely good.

Considering Simcraft: those simulations are without the tentacle weapons and for patchwerk fights. With bladestorm glyph and some rng luck on blob spawns you can get black phases back to back with blackstorm ready every time dealing insane amounts of damage (see #1 world rank for arms on the heroic fight). For those 6 minute enrage fights Fury is rather strong due to it's cooldown (Deathwish) being up three times. Souldrinker(s) on the other hand are only ~5% of my damage dealt while playing prot so it's rather save to assume it will be considerable less with a lower healthpool and more damage dealt overall.

[woodyman]

Ive switched back to Arms recently from Fury TG and think they are pretty much neck and neck on most thinks obviously dependant on fight.
Ive been staying in battle stance and do 29k dps in 10 mans (same as what i was doing as fury)
I have Found that Slam hits alot harder than anything else though and is always top of my Recount

Keeping rend up isnt half as hard as it use to be now due to it renewing off of other abilities so its really only keeping up your slaughter Buff and learning when to fit in your slams without harming your rotation

[PimpJuice4]

Weapon: run LFR with all your friend's alts capable of yielding a strength twohander, that tentacle procc weapon is just insanely good.

meh,not everyone feels like queueing with other people though.i usually just queue alone,if i wanted to raid with other people i wouldnt use lfr everyweek and just raid with my guild like ive been doing

but whatever.i told myself i wasnt gonna queue for the 2nd half anymore anyway cuz i can faceroll the first half and only wipe like once each boss.all the times ive lfr'd the 2nd half was basically wiping 20 times on warmaster,spine of deathwing and madness of deathwing,i am kinda wonderin how arms is doin in lfr though,im currently tryin to get enough item lvl to run lfr on my warrior and im arms

[Synista]

Ok so, stance dancing to get the extra 5%, could it make that much of a difference? There is that half second delay while switching stances that you can't use an ability so it's almost like half a global. Is it more beneficial to just stay in Battle Stance?

[leethaxor]

Ok so, stance dancing to get the extra 5%, could it make that much of a difference? There is that half second delay while switching stances that you can't use an ability so it's almost like half a global. Is it more beneficial to just stay in Battle Stance?

Stance dancing doesn't activate the GCD. So you can stance swap as you do the ability.

[Synista]

Thanks for all the help!

Biggest question now; from what I've read, the 2h sword off DW is amazing for arms, and the 4p is more generous to arms than fury. If that is the case; this is my question. I don't have 4p yet but I have my 410 ilvl axe, and the 397 version, would fury be able to pull ahead of arms or do they still stay around the same? It seems like a dumb question but I'm trying to maximize the dps I put out.

[Tengenstein]

That would almost certainly hinge mostly on your proficiency with either spec. th problem most people make when they see that spec x is more dps than spec y on such and such a fight is that they don't take into account both specs are being played equally and optimally. If you've been playing fury for 3 years, that quite alot of expierience to overcome with arms. Is 3% more theoretical damage going to be made up with 3 years of expierence.

[woodyman]

Having playd both Specs for a fairly long period of time one thing i do find is that Arms takes a little more of my brain power. ie keeping debuffs up etc (can also be an issue in heavy movement fights.
Id say it takes a little longer to go Fury>arms than the other way round.
Also i think the 2 piece opens itself to fury more than Arms as im pretty sure u fit more HS in as Fury

But as tengenstein said there is no Right or Wrong especially right now
I think the 2 specs are closer than ever

[Tengenstein]

I disagree. Personally i find Fury to be more the thinking warriors DPS spec. Of course I play arms being a pretty braindead dps myself. Keeping Slaughter up can be a pain, but its not hard to wait a few seconds to get an MS off before you spend 15 seconds swapping targets or keeping HL and charge available somewht makes it less of an issue.

I'd almost certainly agree the 2pc favours fury more heavily than arms