So I have already talked to my guild leadership, who has told me that I can be the token arms warrior in our TBC raids. My next question is, should I make the BS sword or mace?
In original TBC I almost exclusively did arenas. I only got to play for a few months, left 3/4 of the way through season 1 to join the military. I used the sword back then and I found it effective. When I left I had an 1850 arena rating in 2s. Not the best, I know, but myself and my pally teammate where rather undergeared (and obviously, in retrospect, slightly out of meta). So I was pretty proud of that rating. Might have been able to go higher if I’d had the mace, but coming from Vanilla, the previous meta of swords > all drove my choice.
Now I’m hoping to do a better mix of pve and pvp, as well as do other arena brackets besides 2v2. If I was 95 or 100% pvp, obviously mace is clear winner. For 100% pve, swords seems like the clear winner.
Does anyone have an opinion on doing both PvE and PvP, and assuming I have a pretty solid raid slot (and for context, my current guild has been clearing Naxx since mid-January, and we have always had a ret paladin — so we’re a good guild, but not so hardcore that we don’t take a few meme specs) which would gimp me less, the sword or the mace. Essentially, will using the mace in raids gimp me more than using the sword in arenas.
At the moment I’m slightly leaning toward the mace, mainly for the added stam, which I feel will have more value in PvE than the fear resist from the sword will have in pvp. But certainly willing to be told why my initial feeling is wrong.
Any thoughts?
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Well, Sword Spec gets nerfed hard in 2.0, so it may not matter all that much. Best thing you can do is jump into the warrior discord and HOPE that someone with more knowledge about Warriors in TBC cares to respond to the questions. I haven’t heard good things about the warrior discord community other than that they know their stuff but are said to be quite elitists, although that was not the experience I had with them, but just carefully craft your questions and do some research before you ask so that they are more likely to take you seriously.
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What is the sword spec nerf in 2.0?
If you want to do both pvp AND pve, I would say go mace. My reasoning is that in raids, often you just need to be “good enough” (unless you are chasing logs). But pvp on the other hand? Every advantage matters
Sorry to ninja your thread but I have a question. Can ret paladins also benefit from Stormherald or is it a warrior only weapon?
Paladins can also make/use it if they have the requisite blacksmithing.
Anyone know if crusader strike is considered a melee attack (and thus can proc stormherald) or if its magic and can’t proc it?
So a little research revealed that mace spec not sword spec got nerfed in 2.3. Is that what you’re referring to?
Mace spec chance of proccing was reduced per the patch notes, but improved from generating 6 rage to 7 rage. It was 5% chance to proc before nerf, right? Anyone know what it was after?
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Patch 2.2
[Sword Specialization]: This talent’s free extra attacks can no longer trigger additional extra attacks.
I was wrong about the specific patch in my previous post, but I remembered the nerf and the QQ about it. Basically what they did was make it the same as Rogue sword spec.
Basically it boils down to this …
PVE = Sword
PVP = Mace
Pick which is more important to you as you can use them both in either. Mace stun is an incredible annoyance in pvp though.
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It is melee, it can be dodged, blocked and parried. And as of 2.3.2 its now physical damage.
[Crusader Strike] (Retribution) now causes 110% of weapon damage and no longer gains any bonus from spell
It indeed can proc SH.
Oh yeah. I think that’s a pretty small nerf. I do remember back in vanilla while I was questing in ungoro some hunter about 5 levels higher than me tried to gank me though and my first melee attack triggered 3 sword spec procs in a row, deleting that poor guy. 1 in 1000 chance but was fun when it happened.
Surprisingly it proc’d quite a lot, and that’s why it was formerly so good in PVP and PVE alike. Its still edges out mace spec obviously, but not by so much that its gonna be a massive DPS nerf.
Are you in a speed clear guild? Run a swords or Axe.
Are you in a normal guild? Run whatever you really like and just play good, the difference is not enough to write home about.
Essentially, if you take Sword Spec and run with a Shaman you can either get a Sword Spec proc or a Windfury proc, never both.
I’m like 90% sure even if Sword Spec is nerfed Swords will come out ahead of Maces in PvE just because of the extra rage you get off Sword Spec attacks.
My opinion, if your raid slot is already secured just go Maces. As long as you’re not a slacker looking to get carried and actually perform well the DPS difference shouldn’t be large enough to kick you from the raid.
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As a ret paladin, with seal twisting the slower speed of the mace will make up for the lack of proc (due to SoC PPM). The extra stam will also let you live where you otherwise would have died. Sword is still better, but not by a game breaking amount. In PvP the mace is king for ret, so make the mace if you’re going to take it seriously.
Sword is best for pve, mace for pvp. The rest is up to you. It’s whether or not you care about total min max’n in pve, if you don’t make the mace, if you do make the sword
Pretty sure someone did some testing in pre-raid gear and deep thunder vs lionheart (2nd stage weapons). Mace was doing around 800-900 dps while swords would do 1k-1.3k (depending on crit/sword proc RNG).
For Rets I would make the argument it is almost better than for warriors. Rets depends a lot on the weapon speed for their spells.
Stormherald is 3.8 so it is absolutely insane.
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Really, so somewhere between a 10 and 50% DPS increase? The low end of that would be astonishing, the high end stretches credulity.
Go swords.
Simply because you can pick up maces in raid better than the season you’re playing upto S4.
Your job in a raid is to do as much damage as you possibly can and since that’s where 24 other people need you to be chunking I’d be sword speccing asap.
Side benefit is you get a passable tanking weapon aswell.
They’l be using SoB which while using similar mechanics to SoComm values more consistant hits higher in pve.
Who? link to this massive data inequality please.