I promised, and here it is. Slightly delayed because of trouble on our main website, but here it is: The Warrior DPS stat focus guide. Some similarities are here between gearing as a DPS warrior and a Prot Warrior, but there are obvious differences in what you should be concentrating on.
Firstly, there is the choice of which talent tree you want to specialize in; Either Fury or Arms. Arms is generally regarded as the PvP tree with Fury being PvE, but either one can be viable in both situations. Fury is thought of as easier to play currently in patch 3.1 because of Arms needing to manage a debuff timer, watch for procs, and keeping one ability on cooldown. All that needs to be done for Fury is to keep certain abilities on cooldown while spamming one ability and watching for just one proc. Oh, they get a cooldown too, but Arms, instead of having a cooldown, brings a debuff that really helps other melee classes with bleed effects (which includes themselves). Overall, one's DPS isn't higher than the other, so just choose which one you want to play.
Anyway, as I mentioned in my Protection Guide, you want to concentrate on certain stats first, as they are the most important. For a DPS warrior, the stats you should concentrate on are as follows:
1. Hit Rating!: Trying to hit a big bad boss with your gigantic weapon(s) isn't very effective if you can't even hit him in the first place! For your yellow damage, the hit cap is always 263 hit rating, which translates into 8.00%. Semi-deep into the fury tree, there is a talent that, for 3 points, chops off 3% from that percentage, leaving you with 165 rating needed. Unfortunately, most Arms warriors will not take this as it is still relatively easy to reach 263. As for white damage, it is near impossible to reach the cap, so it is recommended that you just stay above this soft hit cap without going far over it.
2. Expertise!: Slightly less important than hit, but still recommended to have is your expertise capped at 6.50%, or approximately 26 expertise skill, which translates to 214 rating. Like the Protection tree, our two DPS talent trees have their own certain talents that allow us to lower this cap. The Arms tree has Strength of Arms while Fury has Weapon Mastery. Strength of Arms lowers the rating cap to 181, while Weapon Mastery lowers it to 148. Also, if you refer back to my Protection guide, certain races gain even more expertise through weapon racials. Any way it's looked at, being expertise capped means that all level 80 raid bosses won't dodge your attacks when you are standing behind them. Very helpful when you're trying to kill them, right?
3. (Arms Warriors Only) Armor Penetration!: All while you are gearing up as an arms warrior and trying to become hit and expertise capped, you want to have your armor penetration as high as possible until you have reached 100%. This is currently very difficult to accomplish, even with fully gemmed and enchanted gear, but being around the 40% range is fine through gear stats and gems (trinket procs work very well too, pushing you up into the 90%'s). Luckily, you get 10% from being in Battle Stance already.
4. Strength/Crit!: Once an Arms Warrior reaches a high enough Armor Penetration percentage, or once a Fury Warrior becomes hit and expertise capped, while maintaining these values as much as possible, they will start to focus their gear more towards strength and crit rating. Not only do you get 2 attack power per point of strength, but more crit means more chances for your procs to happen if you're Arms and even more damage for Fury. Please note that you should ONLY start focusing on strength and crit if your Armor Pen is high enough if you're an Arms warrior and if you are hit and expertise capped either way.
DPS Warriors can be very powerful forces to have in a raid, especially for Arms with their debuff. Fury is just as good as it is easy for them to interrupt spellcasting as well as bring immediate high dps with a cooldown and relatively easy priority rotations. Either way, a raid will always benefit from having a DPS Warrior because of their unique abilities and their impressive plate-armored survivability.
Next week, I guess I'll talk about some recent Patch 3.2 changes that have popped up since my last Patch post, and maybe more. Maybe. :) Until then,
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