Ugh....Horrible Arms DPS

[Flamekiss]

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...lent/secondary

So, first I know that my gear is seriously lacking and there is a reason for that. I stopped playing my warrior ~a year ago; when the fury and rage nerf made her almost unplayable. Too frustrated in trying to fix it with no luck, I retired her and considered deletion. Enter re-roll casters which I love. Well, I pulled her out of the dust closet, oiled the squeaky rusty spots, and decided to give the 80-85 a chance.

Well, as of Monday the 6th of February she is 85. Here is the hard part, and why in part my gear is cruddy. I run the random 85s that I can get into; however with only ~7k DPS (yup 7) I am often vote kicked before I even have a chance to get better gear from drops, or the collection of JPs. Unless I play with family/friends who understand what I am suffering through (respec to arms & dps nightmare); playing my warrior has become a nightmare yet again.

I know that warriors have always been gear dependent and I am assuming that a small part of that may come into play, as far as the rest....I just simply don't know. Learning the dungeons from a melee standpoint is quite different from standing back blasting arcane. The two things I hear hand in hand are....you should know the fights by now & your dps sucks....then the boot!

I have been doing a lot of research trying to figure things out and raise dps; better macros; stance-dance macros; gems & enchants; reforging for hit and exp; food buffs & pots; even trying to figure out priority instead of rotation. I am ready to throw in the towel and delete her (which would really be sad as she was my first toon).

I don't know if anyone here can help me figure out what I am obviously doing wrong; but I learned long ago if you don't ask.....you will never know. Thanks in advance

[Dreador]

Spec is doable, it has all the major components in it at least. Glyphs are fine. Hit capped, close to expertise. Noticing agility and int socket bonuses, which tells me those pieces really need to go. Ability priority should be open with Colossus, MS, OP, and if all those are unavailable, Slam. Above 60 rage, Heroic Strike. If you're not doing that, do it and it should improve. Make sure you're using sweeping strikes and/or bladestorm if there's more than one mob, as well as cleave. Are you keeping battle shout up as well? The groups must be going pretty slow, I thought you couldn't kick for 15 minutes unless the person was afk.

[Flamekiss]

Thanks Dreador, I will definitely give that a try. Also I looked over the gear again because I was confused by the agility & int socket bonuses that you mentioned. I am still confused..all the gems I have provide strength socket bonus. The gun does have agility but it was the best I could get for the equip bonuses plus it was run drop, still not seeing the int bonus you mentioned...but it wouldn't surprise me if I am overlooking it :-/ thanks again gonna go try that in a little bit.

[Bigbad]

I'm not surprised you're doing 7k dps your gear is really crap, specially your weapon. You need to farm some heroics for justice/valorpoints or since you say you have trouble with that get the crafted 365 sword. The sword alone should bumb your dps a few k.

As for rotations are you using rend/tc, bladestorm, sweeping strikes for aoe and deadlycalm, recklessness as cds? Should be able to do some decent aoedamage in heroics.

[klausi]

Easiest way to accquire gear? PvP because nobody can votekick you there. If you feel uncomfortable you can replace all your green and leveling gear with 377 "Vicious Ornate Pyrium ..." Items, those offer a neat amount of strength a decent secondary stat and some resilience for pvp.

Cost? 10-15 bars of elementium (20-30 ores = <50g on my server) + 10 volatile water or fire, that's about 150g give or take for every piece.

Then it's time to get into the random battlegrounds, eat some dirt until you get your 3400 honor (every tol barad win is 400ish easily + weekly) and buy a Ruthless Gladiator's Bonegrinder. With that you can either enter dungeons without getting votekicked or continue PvP'ing, buy 390 gear with sockets and smash some faces, change additional honor into justice points and buy some pve stuff as well.

Anyway if you don't like to pvp i'd still get those ilvl 377 pieces because it's a major bump to your strength. And get your professions up ASAP, you can get yourself a rather cheap 346/365 weapon with almost only truegold (one, two).

PvE Specc: http://www.wowhead.com/talent#LGMccRMRurkcbZhb
Drop executioner from fury tree for both incite and blood & thunder in prot tree, it's only really interesting for raiding while those talents will help you everywhere.

Other than that: get either power auras or tell me when addon and use it for battle trance, not waisting overpower proccs and helping you when to use heroic strike in general. You should be able to pull off > 9k dps without any buffs from other classes and that 15% LFD buff singletarget on a dummy. For dungeons: just make sure you spread rend, use sweeping strike on cooldown on trash with <1 mob alive and get used to your three cooldowns (deadly calm, recklessness and BLADESTORM!!)

I wouldn't bother with stancedancing for now, start with getting your gear together and don't bother with it until you've completed your first lfr

[swelt]

Gear, gear, gear.

There are upgrades for you in quest lines, let alone dungeons and LFR. For example, your Herkumi War Token should have been vendored ages ago, you must have passed by some green trinkets on your leveling up that are better (tip: in this expansion, look for strength not AP). You can go do a rather fun (but long) quest chain for Uldum for this: http://www.wowhead.com/item=65803 (basically start and follow the harrison ford chain to the end). Your sword could be replaced in the arena in twilight highlands. You could replace that tank cloak with a dps one just by visiting the Ramkahen faction vendor: http://www.wowhead.com/item=62437 (although somehow you manage to have avoided getting much reputation with any other factions?). If this were back at the start of the expansion, I'd be telling you to do a few more quests, get a bit more faction to gear up a bit before heading into heroics. At the very least, you'll want to work on your reputation with Wildhammer in twilight highlands for head enchants and therazane in deepholm for shoulder enchants.

However, as klausi points out, this late in the expansion you also have the option of getting pvp gear (even if your goal is pve). The starter pvp gear beats almost all your current gear, which you can craft/get crafted/buy on AH. The rewards from doing battlegrounds are much better again, especially the weapon. If you would have fun doing that, then do it.

[Flamekiss]

Wow, thanks everyone! I will definitely be making changes.

@swelt: I remember that quest chain from my mage...it was fun; and how I completely forgot about the arena challenge out there is beyond me, I had a blast doing that too. As far as Ramkahen...well, the camel man (need I say more). Still don't have it on any toon....but it could happen! Wildhammer and Therazane, I honestly forgot about Therazane since my mage is an inscriptionist the shoulder enchant is better and I was just getting to Wildhammer. thanks for reminding me about Therazane.

@klausi: I honestly thought about PvP as I do enjoy it with my mage, I'm not the best nor am I the worst, but sometimes I just enjoy a good killing blow and watching my opponent faceplant. I was still debating if I wanted to eat dirt for the point grind, plus you are correct in that no one can votekick me there. I just remember when leveling with my mage busting my butt to get what I needed, then someone would inevitably come in with full pvp gear in order to get ilevel needed to get in...I just didn't want to be "that guy" yanno? thanks for the advice, encouragement...and the reminder that I love to "smash some faces". I am going to get the 377 gear...smash some faces...hit some random battlegrounds and dungeons..and just grind out the points. Also, I am going to take your advice and get the crafted weapon and the pvp one (until I can get a better one for pvp). I will redistribute talents, thanks for the link. I had actually gotten PA and TMW downloaded and was reading up on how to configure them to decide which was better or if I needed both (still working on figuring out how to set them up. saw something about youtube video on it). A big thank you for telling me not to worry about stancedancing until after first lfr. I have enough to figure out without that.

@Bigbad: I warned you guys my gear was poopy at the start. Since I could only get into regular randoms (before getting kicked), heroics isn't really the issue. Thanks for the rotation/priority/cd tips though. I appreciate it.


Again.....thank you all. I have many things to try so I can kick serious booty . This really is a great community, and I can see why. Will let you know how it goes.