Monday, August 18, 2008

I's Been Doin Some PvP

First off I should talk about why I've been doing a lot of PvP lately. It's because I wanted a sword. In this case the Merciless Gladiators Greatsword to replace my axe.

For a long time I've been told that the best weapon for arms dps is a two hander sword, but I'm one of those strange people that just cant take something at face value. Oh no, I'm one of those annoying people that wants to know why something is better before I change. Also is a seeming downgrade in weapon really going to increase my dps?

So I sat down and did a little comparison of the bonus for using axes and the bonus for using swords.

Axes: 5/5 In Poleaxe Specialization gives you a bonus 5% critical strike chance. With 2/2 Impale this is the same as saying it gives you a 5% chance to do an additional 120% damage and with my meta gem this is increased to 123%. Pretty cool eh?

But lets take a look at swords.

Swords: 5/5 in Sword Specialization gives you a 5% chance to make an extra attack. This is the same as saying it has a 5% chance to do 100% extra damage.

But thats not all, these bonus attacks also has a 30% chance (my unbuffed crit) of doing an extra 123% damage. You do the math and you'll find that this already puts swords ahead of axes.

But yet again thats not all, this added bonus actually scales with raid buffs. In a raid my crit is ~5% higher meaning these bonus attacks have an increased chance of doing 223% damage instead of 100% damage. Pretty spiffy right?

But whats this? Theres more?

Darn tootin' theres more. This ability procs off any attack you make, this includes Pummel and Hamstring. These low damage attack also benefit from axes ... but seeing Pummel crit just makes me sad (Oh yay I just hit an 80 damage crit /cry), but with swords you just made at the very least another 100% weapon damage.

This is really cool because there are times you will be asked to interrupt spells and if you play a raiding arms warrior you will know that there is that spare rotation where both Mortal Strike and Whirlwind are on cooldown. Normally you would use this to refresh your Battle, Commanding or Demoralizing Shout. But what if these still have plenty of time on them? Throw in a hamstring for good measure, it costs bugger all rage and your doing nothing better with that time so why not chance an extra attack.

I don't know if it procs off intercept, but it would be really really cool if it did :)

There is just one problem with using swords that I'm having big problems getting used to.

Image.

Before I was all like "STUNTY SMASH!!1!1!eleven".

Now I'm all like "STUNTY ..... slice ??? o.O".

I'm telling you it's just not the same and I don't know if I'll ever recover.


Anyway back to PvP.

It all started a while back when a warrior on my server Khir found out about my blog and has been pestering me into being a better warrior ever since. In fact just today he found the one + attack power gem on my gear that I had somehow forgotten to replace with + strength.

Anyway a while back he found out that I suck at PvP, and very kindly took me into a few battle grounds to show me the right way to do it and later on he led a few premades for my guild (who for the most part only PvP when necessary). Ever since then every time I go into a battle ground I'm starting to enjoy it more and more (mage's still scare the pant off me though). Infact I started enjoying it so much that when I had my think about swords and decided I really wanted one I went out and ground twice as much honor as I ever have in one day.


I'm telling you my brain nearly exploded. And do people you ignore on other servers stay in your ignore list? If so mine must be damn near full ... again.

The thing is I'm starting to enjoy PvP so much I might even start taking arena seriously.

So until next time this is Stuntyone the Incompetent Warrior signing off.

1 comment:

Pixelated Executioner said...

Not that big of a change, really - you go from STUNTY SMASH!! to STUNTY SLASH!!!


Even throws in a nice little Chrono Trigger reference for you, too. ;)