fury is deadFollow

or at least braindead it seems. i cant, in good conscience, spec into a talent that immediately removes the bonus received by speccing into a talent immediately above it.

so that leavs me with arms, which i tried for a bit last night and was actually pleasantly surprised about. you can set up some good burst if you time your TfB procs right while an SD proc is up and follow it up with a juggernaught-crit MS. its actually less complicated than that makes it sound too, but the downside is its reliant on having the rage to do all of this as well as being able to kite away to get the distance to charge (which on casters may be a bad thing in general because theyll likely be able to get at least a 1.5s cast off.

as a counter to the bladestorm-and-TfB oriented builds, i found a build like this while tooling around in the DPS forums:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#LV0Izfht0rMRzhZGxbsoVzbxM

swap points in imp WW for imp zerker rage or intensify rage depending on your desires, and you can swap out imp HS for trauma if needed, or grab 2/2 imp charge for more rage gen instead of max iron will or max TM.

the idea behind it, as explained by the guy who came up with it, was an extension of the old 33/28 ms/flurry builds in BC. flurry gives you a big attack speed boost in pvp, and enrage is usually reliable enough to be up most of the time. the availability of juggernaught and imp intercept means your mobility is rather insane (15s intercept and 12s with glyphs, talents, and 4-pc pvp set bonus) and the addition of intensify rage, imp zerker rage, or imp WW increases your damage, rage gen, or cooldown uptime considerably.

it seems like this would be a playstyle thats very similar to the old MS/flurry builds, which is both good and bad. its good because its something we're all familiar with to one degree or another, but its bad because, well, i played that way for pretty much ALL of BC and im a little tired of it. naturally, the big question is whether or not its viable, something i cant support one way or another.

but, given the detriments to a deep fury build (titan's fail) as well as the problems with deep arms (namely bladestorm in all it's "too-long-cooldown-for-too-little-gain" glory, plus the RNG-heavy aspect of SD) it seems like this build might be something of a happy medium. we trade potentially higher damage for vastly increased mobility. given access to the proper support means we would be very very hard to truly lock down (even tho i still hate how we're so reliant on support to be effective). this is a problem of its own really, as it begs the question "what healer would give up being with a hunter/dk/rogue in order to play with a warrior?" but for those wars that have the support ready and willing to back them up, this build might be something to look into.

thoughts?

That build seems quite interesting, although my gut feeling (just a hunch, since I've not actually played in quite awhile) says that the extra mobility is somewhat overkill, and that it won't be worth giving up Endless Rage and Bladestorm. *shrug* In any case, this particular discussion is not why I'm making my post.

I've seen a LOT of ******** and moaning all over the O-boards about how TfB procs are going to be a crucial component to Arms DPS, and that sitting on a proc waiting for a cast will kill your DPS. Maybe I'm missing something obvious here in reading the relevant tooltips, but why wouldn't it work to just sit on the proc for 4-5 seconds if no cast bar, overpower, and then the proc is up and ready to roll again before your GCD is up? You're not actually losing any procs, since you'd be using your overpower at the end of the ICD instead of at the beginning, and you're still allowed to wait for a cast.

I was practicing in a dummy and the ammount of overpower and excecute procsI was getting was insane.



I found this also, they were just popping up too often for me to use lol

For a Warrior no amount of extra mobility can be too much. We already have enough restrictions with the stance restrictions and all that.


Edited, Apr 16th 2009 5:12pm by xorq

last i heard it wasnt, no. i.e. MS and OP UA debuff on a healer doesnt mean theyre healing themselves for 25% of what they would be without the two debuffs.

however, this does open up a niche for arms warriors as a "support pressure" dps with a focus on high armor. sunder + battle stance + mace spec gives you 45% armor pen, which is taking your 22kish armor hpally or 18kish armor resto shammy down to a much more manageable 11k and 9k respectively (give or take). with the proper supports (again, hate saying that but there it is), specifically the removal of buffs via purge and/or dispel, a warrior can effectively MS an entire team with the OP debuff. given that warriors have all this ArP going for them, that ups their damage significantly on these high armor healing targets who rely very heavily on casted heals (meaning theyre open to the OP debuff).

with proper coordination and CC, specifically a lock using the succy glyph, you can opt for target switches that can REALLY put pressure on a team and force the healer to make decisions that will ultimately result in a loss.

I find that going deep in arms and filling out the rest of the talent points in fury works really well for me. I have so many instant attacks through procs with a measly 28% crit that things die really quickly. Even without all the executes and over powers, there is MS and the .5 sec slam. Now with Juggernaught giving a 100% chance at critting a MS after charging, I find I have no rage issues. In addition to all the instant attacks, procs, and auto attacks I have, there is the bleed damage that is going on. Whem I'm not protect for tanking, I am Arms. I have not tried going deep into fury for TG since they changed things in the last patch, but I was not overly impressed.