The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Too good and not good enough

Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Care and Feeding of Warriors, the column dedicated to arms, fury and protection warriors. Despite repeated blows to the head from dragons, demons, Old Gods and whatever that thing over there was, Matthew Rossi will be your host.

Okay, I'm just going to say it: Titan's Grip is ludicrous AoE right now. I switched to TG this week because I got a Zerat's off of a coin roll and another dropped, and so I'm still getting used to TG's more random proc based gameplay. On the whole I'd say my single target DPS was fair to middling, not awful, but not as good as SMF and not as good as I'm currently capable of as arms because, well, in part I'm still in that weird place gear wise where arms does really well and partly I'm very used to arms and can perform the priority of attacks without though, while TG still requires me to think about what I'm doing. This need to concentrate on Raging Blow procs actually got me killed a few times on Durumu, so that's embarrassing.

However, while my single target isn't where I want (or expect) it to be, my AoE was insane. You'd think I was a druid tank on some pulls. Bladestorm actually lowered my DPS on a few pulls because the stacking of Meat Cleaver with your Whirlwind feeds into Raging Blow hitting up to four targets, and the Raging Wind glyph means that Raging Blow buffs your next WW, which which you'll start stacking up Meat Cleaver again.

Standing as a storm of blood

This basically means that all you want to do is hit Whirlwind until you have Meat Cleaver stacked either to the number of targets you want to hit (if there are three mobs total, you'd WW twice, for one Raging Blow on your main target and two additional targets) or three times if you have four or more potential targets, and then you pop a Raging Blow that hits all four targets at full force. That's right, it doesn't spread damage like an AoE attack, it just hits each target with a Raging Blow. Why does this make for so much more damage for TG fury than SMF fury? Because Raging Blow hits with both weapons. Hitting up to four targets with both two hand weapons for 190% weapon damage is pretty amazing. Whirlwind, by comparison, hits all targets around it for 85% weapon damage with both weapons. In a situation where there are four or more targets popping those WW is less about the damage they themselves do and more about getting that beefy 2h weapon Raging Blow to hit four mobs for its full damage. And as always keep in mind that since you have to be enraged to get Raging Blow, you're also getting your damage on that attack buffed by Enrage and your mastery.

What this ends up with is that TG falls behind SMF on single target - sometimes to extreme levels - but blows way ahead of it on trash or adds. Even arms, with Sweeping Strikes and Blood and Thunder, cannot defeat TG fury in any sort of sustained AoE DPS situation. I find it a lot easier to sustain single target DPS as arms, frankly - I switch to arms on fights where I know I won't have to AoE because while TG can compete with some lucky procs, it's a lot easier to maintain that DPS as arms.

Does it matter?

I'll be watching this as gear improves - my impression based on sims is that once I've got full Tier 15 and am at or above 522 (I'm 514 right now) that TG will start to break even with arms single target as well as maintain its incredible AoE capacity. The real question is, does it matter? I'm not sure yet. Trash DPS isn't really very important, but having a very high AoE capacity matters on add fights (like Primordius, Tortos and Horridon) and is a lot less important on single target fights. As long as TG can stay in the ballpark on fights without AoE, does it matter if it's lower there and higher on others? Honestly, I don't have an answer yet. My gut feeling is that TG's AoE needs to be toned down a little and its single target beefed up, but it won't break the spec if it doesn't happen.

Of course, you always have to keep in mind your own personal best vs. theoretical best - since I can't get a pair of 2h weapons to save my life, I pretty much have to confine myself to 2h weapons and arms vs. TG fury, and consider what my best option is between the two. Right now, for any fight with any sort of AoE component, TG comes out ahead. As my proficiency increases it may also take over purely single target fights just due to the cost of gear customization (I can't reforge/regem between every fight). To be honest, I can't figure out how you'd rearrange TG's damage so it did about the same as it does now, but less AoE and more single target. So perhaps doing nothing is the best choice.

Next week, I'll tell you how this past two weeks of attempting PvP went for me.

At the center of the fury of battle stand the warriors: protection, arms and fury. Check out more strategies and tips especially for warriors, from hot issues for today's warriors to Cataclysm 101 for DPS warriors and our guide to reputation gear for warriors.