Warrior 2H DPS Questions

[DrearyYew]

I plan on playing a Human Warrior for launch, and while I'm open to tanking for low levels, I will not be tanking for raids.

With that said, how viable is 2H Fury or Arms for early-mid vanilla raid content? I know DW Fury is stronger, at least into Naxx, but I prefer 2H, especially since it makes gearing quite a bit easier. Rolling against other Warriors and Rogues for 1H weapons is going to be a pain.

As I understand it, Arms is slightly less gear dependent than Fury due to the AP scaling on Bloodthirst while Mortal Strike scales from weapon damage, so would Arms be stronger than 2H or even DW Fury going into MC? I know Mortal Strike takes up a debuff slot that would only be useful in a few situations, which makes me lean towards 2H Fury. So, up until Naxx, is 2H Fury significantly weaker than DW Fury?

Given the Human racial for swords, would Arcanite Champion then beat out Arcanite Ripper for DPS? I can't seem to find a proc rate or internal cooldown for the proc on Arcanite Champion, but 120 STR is quite a lot, especially since the buff lasts for 30s.

Lastly, for 2H Fury, should I be speccing into Improved Slam? Slam would make the most out of the weapon damage from using a 2H, but I don't really know the math on whether or not I should be using Slam.

Thanks!

[Ardeith]

Srsly i would suggest you to play arm for MC as gear will be in pre 1.4 version and there are not much % hit gear back then.

Fury > Arm only if you got enought hit % to have a decent rage generation. If not i would say that arm it slightly better or atleast even.

Being human you will have the racial that reduce glancing malus and give you a reduced hit cap for PvE ( 6% cap ).
It would be better to play horde side if you want to dps as 2Hander for the benefit of the Windfury totem which is totally invaluable for 2 hand dps.

I see multiple choice for your spec :
1 - 20/31 or 21/30 : Flurry based spec with improved slam
2 - 26/25 or 25/26 or 28/23 : slam + death wish + sword spec + sweeping strike + 2H specialization
3 - 31/20 : Classic Arm spec, MS based.

The first spec being mainly based on mono target DPS, but you getting sweeping strike instead of Bloodthirth is a viable option i guess.

The 2 last are the best AoE specs in the game specially when you got some plate gear and you can offtank one trash to make you generate a lot of rage.
Sweeping strike combined with sword spec is awesome for ZG to clean pack of trash mob really fast or even run a dungeon 5/10 with you being both the tank and the 1st dps.
The mortal strike can be valuable to some encounter, but not mandatory, choose beetwen more dps or MS.

About slam if i m not wrong, in vanilla it delay your autoattack, in any case it is totally worth to use it specially if you are going for the n°2 spec as it your best abilities to single target dps over the time.
So if you have 5/5 improved slam, you will delay your next autoattack by only 1s instead of 1.5s.
You may consider not taking 5/5 slam and aiming a 28/23 spec with 5/5 sword spec and 5/5 2H specialization, i dont know if it worth the 5 pt on slam or not.
http://www.wowprovider.com/?talent=1121 ... 505d5c521v ( you can replace enrage by 3/3 cleave and 2/2 execute, if you are not planning to offtank a few mob to make it proc )

To start raiding i would go for a 28/23, because flurry is not really that good if you are lacking crit. So you will probably doesnt notice any difference in single target dps beetwen the 2 spec. But the 28/23 give you a good AoE potential.

[koelkast]

I plan on playing a Human Warrior for launch, and while I'm open to tanking for low levels, I will not be tanking for raids.

With that said, how viable is 2H Fury or Arms for early-mid vanilla raid content? I know DW Fury is stronger, at least into Naxx, but I prefer 2H, especially since it makes gearing quite a bit easier. Rolling against other Warriors and Rogues for 1H weapons is going to be a pain.

As I understand it, Arms is slightly less gear dependent than Fury due to the AP scaling on Bloodthirst while Mortal Strike scales from weapon damage, so would Arms be stronger than 2H or even DW Fury going into MC? I know Mortal Strike takes up a debuff slot that would only be useful in a few situations, which makes me lean towards 2H Fury. So, up until Naxx, is 2H Fury significantly weaker than DW Fury?

Given the Human racial for swords, would Arcanite Champion then beat out Arcanite Ripper for DPS? I can't seem to find a proc rate or internal cooldown for the proc on Arcanite Champion, but 120 STR is quite a lot, especially since the buff lasts for 30s.

Lastly, for 2H Fury, should I be speccing into Improved Slam? Slam would make the most out of the weapon damage from using a 2H, but I don't really know the math on whether or not I should be using Slam.

Thanks!

2H may be worth it if your horde, for WF procs. Video of Crackadia shows that.That together with swordspec and HoJ can output some nice dps. And I've played on feenix with 2H Night Elf and my DPS with untamed blade was significant lower then dual wield fury with Ironfoe and felstriker.

But perhaps someone else had better results with their tests.

[ironsides]

2H fury might be competitive alliance side with DW with regressed items, but to be perfectly honest, I'm not sure how much crit and AP you'll be rolling with in your BiS to give you an honest opinion on warrior dps even being worthwhile or not. My warrior on ED is more or less BiS geared and is sitting at below 28 in zerker stance. I can't imagine warriors running with anything more than 20-21 with pre 1.4 items, and maybe 5% hit (TS shoulders&helm&blackstone ring), although I haven't put any effort into a list for them.

If you can't hit cap your yellows, don't go dps is the general rule of thumb.

Slam is fucking awful, for what its worth. Unless its got default scripting where the AA timer continues while slam is casting. It might do well on horde side with a slow speed weapon if windfury procs off of it though, as it uses non-normalized weapon speeds.

[Ardeith]

Slam is still better than HS to deal damage.

Pretty much the same amount, but you loose 1.5s instead of an entire auto attack.

An instant strike is always better than Slam.

[Armilus]

I am pretty sure that you are way better off going MS or BT and spamming hamstring with excess rage for WF/Flurry procs than a slam spec.

You can get something like 10% hit pre-raid.

[mastermoe4]

I recommend 2hand fury. 30% attack speed is still way more important than MS. With these gear changes i think that with all raid buffs and all consumables you should be above 30% crit ,which is still a lot lower then where you want to be, but still decent. And since hit will be hard to find "maybe" 2hand will be the way to go. But also there may be bugs with flurry. If there are we should get them fixed asap.

[Zetox]

Looking at the the list we have at Exiled, even with any upgrades in MC you'll be hitting 20-25% crit fully buffed. Add Dragonslayer on to that and we're talking around 30%.

Fury will be much harder to do though I think without all of the hit. Just remember there are literally only 4 items that I can think of that give hit in BWL: Nef Ring, DFT, Prestor's (which I doubt will go to fury's), and Boots of Shadow Flame.

[Youfie]

Looking at the the list we have at Exiled, even with any upgrades in MC you'll be hitting 20-25% crit fully buffed. Add Dragonslayer on to that and we're talking around 30%.

Fury will be much harder to do though I think without all of the hit. Just remember there are literally only 4 items that I can think of that give hit in BWL: Nef Ring, DFT, Prestor's (which I doubt will go to fury's), and Boots of Shadow Flame.

And Chromatic Boots.

[rakei]

2h fury works well as horde due to WF, but I have my doubts of its viability on alliance. Heck, 2h fury in pvp works well and is very fun in pvp until someone starts healing your target then you're wishing right away you had ms.