Arms DPS help?Follow

Had some trouble with an Arms warrior's DPS in Naxx 25 last night--the guild leader wants everyone 2k or higher and this warrior was at the bottom of the charts, 1650ish. I've been volunteered to help her out (on the grounds of having, er, a level 59 Protection warrior), but I am afraid that I really don't know much about Arms and even less about warrior raid DPS.

Looking at her gear there's nothing obviously wrong except that it's PvP gear--and she does have over 8% hit. The only thing that I would note as exceptionally low is her expertise. I suppose the problem could be her spec, she has Poleaxe Specialization while using a sword, and Armored to the Teeth seems like kind of a weird choice? It's not some freakish hybrid or anything, though, it just seems a little off.

I'm guessing, just because I can't find any obvious failures in gear/spec (and you guys may point something out that I missed), that it's an issue with rotation, so I'm planning to watch her on a target dummy and see what her usual rotation is. I'm really not sure what Arms should be using, though, so if you guys can let me know what works well/best that would be great.

Thanks in advance!

Whoa. Lots of things not optimized here.

They have gear and obviously have spent time on the character. But it looks like they pvp a bit more than they pve raid dps. I'm not sure if I'm looking at a pvp saved gear set or what. 473 resil?

But a few things right off the top of my head;

Gemming for AP > str is a bad thing.
Gemming for anything other than str and your meta minimum.
Wrong meta gem, use this one.

No weapon enchant.

Spec is all over the @#%^ing place. Just filling up the arms tree but ignore some basic arms talents that do something; alla imp rend (it should be taken, since it's gonna be on your targets 100% of the time.), imp overpower, wrong weapon spec for weapon. All this doesn't work. And 1/5 unbridled wrath and 1/5 booming voice?



I'm just unsure that they are speccing and gearing/chanting/gemming for dps only. But they should be doing 2k dps.



side notes, achievements; 25,000 HK's, 0 heroic wotlk 5 mans, some nax 10/25, they have had the player pre achievement patch since they have a bunch of them from 10/15/2008 when it was implemented. But they only have very little dungeon experience overall, which may just be because of how achievements were post-implemented.

::EDIT::

They have money, they are revered+ with all the bg rep factions (pvper), only revered with sons of hodir (get exalted with rep item turn ins...), and violet eye is exalted (kara much?).




So rotation should be; Stand in battle stance, keep rend up > overpower when capable > use MS when available > execute on procs > slam on free GCD's.

Edited, Jun 26th 2009 6:47am by devioususer

DPS posted was for bosses + trash, it's possible she's higher on bosses (but then she'd still have to be doing really crappily on trash). I don't run Recount myself, so I couldn't really check. Admittedly we were a little light on melee (no rogues or enh shammies to compare her to) but no one else was as low as she was, everyone else was solidly over 2k, most were doing 2.5k to 3.5k. And she was fully buffed the whole time, because warriors and pets share buffs and, being BM, I make a big fuss about pet buffs. xD

I'll talk to her about picking up a set of PvE gear with more offensive stats as well as looking at her rotation, then. Thanks!

Her spec is incredibly dumb. Imp. Rend is a pretty solid DPS increase, and putting points into Deflection is not a DPS increase at all, but Imp. Overpower is absolutely enormous and skipping it is almost criminally stupid. Second Wind also isn't a PvE talent - those points can be spent elsewhere.

Sword Spec is bad (like... really bad), but it's definitely better than no spec at all. Have her look into a good Polearm/Axe or potentially a Mace, both of which are far better than Sword Spec although Poleaxe is definitely king of the hill. She's also gemming for hit rating even when above the cap, which is... yeah.

Really, there's so many issues with the basic spec and gearing that giving more detailed instructions about which specific gems to switch is almost pointless. Fix the spec, fix the huge gearing issues first.

Oh, and she should use Glyph of Rending, not Glyph of Sweeping Strikes.

I'd also like to know a little more about the Arms spec. I just recently got my dual spec, and went Arms. Looking all over the internet, I think I finally have a decent spec down, but what stats are top priority? Also, I couldn't get a clear answer on what the hit/expertise/armor penetration cap is for Arms spec. I put points into Mace, but should I pick up a Polearm or Axe upgrade, am I pretty much going to have to respec between Maces and Poleaxe every time I get an upgrade?