by Proudrasil » Wed May 20, 2015 5:10 pm
I've been playing warriors for about 10 years now so bear with my depth. There's a short TL;DR at the bottom
First I will say that I think Fury is by far the better leveling spec and that Arms is overall rather weak in Vanilla WoW.
There are a variety of reasons for this.
First you need to look at what talents you get. Fury gives you 5% crit from the onset, then down the next couple tiers you get minor buffs to shouts, a little more rage generation, and some regen when you get crit. Whereas in Arms you get a slightly better Heroic strike, Tactical Mastery which is one of the best warrior talents in the game (though not necessary for leveling really) and then imp Overpower, Anger Management, and Deep Wounds. All of these are very good talents.
Fury then gets Enrage which is obscenely good, and then Deathwish, Flurry, Bloodthirst. Arms gets Impale, chooses a Weapon Specialization, Sweeping Strikes and then does whatever until it gets MS. 2h Specialization is pretty decent as well.
Choosing a Weapon Specialization is limiting for leveling, as you have very little control over instance drops. You'll likely get the Whirlwind Axe, but there's a good chance you'll do Uldaman later and get either the 2h Mace or 2h Sword off of that boss, and then you've got 5 talent points doing nothing for you. It's fairly sad. Also I hear Sword Spec and Sweeping Strikes aren't working perfectly here, but someone else probably knows a bit better.
MS and BT are just a question of your stats vs your weapon. If your weapon is way better than your attributes, MS will be better, if your gear is outscaling your weapon, BT will be better. Overall a wash.
Arms is a bit better overall in a vacuum once you get impale and you have a lot of crit, but without cruelty you don't have quite enough crit to make impale and deep wounds matter much when leveling. Overall though, Enrage + Flurry + Cruelty is extremely powerful, not to mention Piercing Howl is one of the best skills in the game. I can't count the number of times I've escaped death AoE slowing and running away, or groups I've saved by Piercing Howl kiting when my healer ran oom and I still had threat. Really a great tool, I couldn't play a Warrior without it.
Then you look at if you want to 2h, 1h + shield, or DW.
To decide that you have to look at your skills. Early on your only real damaging abilities are Heroic Strike and Cleave. Both of these attacks make your next auto attack give you no rage and increase their damage.
If Heroic Strike costs 15 rage, gives you +50 damage and you're using a 2h at 3.5 attack speed and it gives you 20 rage a hit, then your Heroic Strike is actually costing you 35 rage only dealing +50 damage.
(15 rage + 20 rage from an auto attack is not gained) = 35 rage [15 spent, 20 not gained] 50/35 = 1.4 damage per rage
If Heroic strike costs 15 rage, gives you +50 damage, and you're using a 1h dagger at 1.5 attack speed and it gives you 6 rage a hit, then your Heroic strike is costing you 21 rage giving you the same +50 damage.
(15 rage + 6 rage from an auto attack that is not gained = 21 rage [15 spent, 6 not gained] 50/21 = 2.4 damage per rage
Obviously this illustrates that if your auto attacks are more broken up and less front loaded, faster weapons will turn rage into damage more efficiently.
Cleave is a bit harder to optimize like that. (Assume you do 50 DPS, so 175 damage with a 3.5 speed swing and 100 damage with a 2.0 speed swing)
If Cleave costs 20 Rage, gives you +10 Damage and a second strike, and you're using a 2h at 3.5 attack speed that gives 20 rage a hit, then your Cleave is costing you 40 Rage giving you +185 damage (across two targets) for 40 Rage at 4.6 damage per rage (175 bonus cleaved attack + the 10 damage bonus on your main target = 185)/40 Rage = 4.6 damage per rage.
With a fast weapon that gives 11 rage per swing and does 100 damage at 2.0 attack speed (same overall DPS) your Cleave costs 31 Rage and gives you 110 damage giving you 3.5 damage per rage.
So with Heroic Strike, fast weapons are optimal. With Cleave, slow weapons are optimal.
When you add Dual Wield into the mix, it gets a lot hazier. Basically, DW is balanced around having a 24% miss chance. Heroic Strike and Cleave, and all other special attacks are not affected by this miss chance. So not only do Heroic Strike and Cleave buff your attack, but they also give them a greater chance to hit. In addition, your offhand is still generating rage for you, so a move like Heroic Strike is not reducing all of your rage from auto attacks for a cycle, just your main hand.
Heroic Strike is insanely good with dual wielding, Cleave is also better with dual wielding. Cleave is a far better damage skill than heroic strike when you have the option to be Cleaving, so it's better to use a slow weapon in your MH to optimize cleave damage, and Heroic Strike when Dual Wielding can funnel all your rage from your auto attacks into giving your mainhand a better chance to hit, meaning on average it will also increase your mainhand damage by something like 20% when it is used.
TL;DR, Heroic Strike works with fast weapons, Cleave works with slow, Dual Wielding scales extremely well with "On next strike" attacks like Heroic and Cleave because they eliminate the dual wield penalty for your MH.
Once you get skills like Whirlwind, skills that do instances of your MH damage in a vacuum, slow 2h's begin to come back to relevance. WW does your MH weapon damage to 4 guys surrounding you. Having a slow weapon means your MH damage is higher. WW does not do any offhand damage, so having two 1h weapons does not do any more damage than just having a single 1h weapon as far as WW is concerned. The same applies for MS. Bloodthirst is independent of your weapon damage, it just cares about your AP.
So it's viable to switch from Dual Wield to 2h once you get Whirlwind, and then MS. However you could also just wield a 2h as Fury when you get Whirlwind, and BT is just as good with a 2h as with DW, so if you wanted to 2h, you could still just be Fury.
Flurry also works better with 2h weapons than with DW. Flurry gives you 3 white swing attacks at increased AS when you crit. If you're just doing white damage, that will even out as being roughly equal whether you use a fast or slow weapon. However when you add in a Whirlwind, Bloodthirst, or Cleaves, you're looking at roughly 2 chances to crit between each weapon swing. So you have roughly twice as many attacks as you do weapon swings, meaning you have twice as many chances to refresh Flurry vs how many times you reduce its charge count.
With DW, you may have a 2.0 speed OH and a 2.5 speed MH, meaning you'll expend your Flurry in a few seconds. Flurry is ~30% more white damage while it's up. If you attack quickly, Flurry will only be a short DPS increase, while with a slow weapon it's the same DPS increase, only you get it for a longer time. This is balanced because fast weapons get it more often. Attacks like BT, WW, and Cleave which are independent of your attack speed throw an X factor into that balance, shifting your "# of attacks that can crit : attacks that remove Flurry" ratio in favor of slow weapons.
Once you finish out Fury, you also still have enough points to go into Arms to get Tactical Mastery, Improved OP, Anger Management, Deep Wounds, and Impale, all the best parts of Arms that Fury doesn't have, Fury can get later. Arms can't get Flurry however.
Also with Dual Wielding, if you have a 1.0 speed offhand and a 2.7 speed MH, your offhand can basically fish for dodges, which turn into oveprower procs for your main hand. So you can turn 1.0 speed 20 damage loss dodges into 100 damage 2.7 speed attacks. With a 2h overpower just negates the damage you lose from dodges, with DW overpower turns the damage you lose from a dodge into more damage that the dodged attack could do.
Arms' improved overpower also turns that dodge into a crit, so DW fury overpower is not strictly better than Arms 2h overpower, but it's worth knowing about.
Mega TL;DR: Fast weapons are best when you're just using Heroic Strike, Slow when you're moving on to Cleaving, which you must do until you get Whirlwind at lvl 36.
DW is the best way to optimize Heroic Strike and Cleave, which again are some of your only tools until lvl 36.
Arms provides some cool benefits if you crit before MS, which you won't because you don't have Cruelty. Arms is weak until it gets a Weapon Specialization which just limits your weapon options as you level, not worth respeccing every time you get an upgrade. MS and BT are roughly equal, Sweeping Strikes is a bit weird on this sever and Deathwish is similarly incredibly good.
There's little reason to not DW up until lvl 36, and then once you do hit 36, if you want to 2h there's little reason to go Arms over Fury.
Go Fury.