[Arms Warrior - PvE] - Stance dancing for aoe?

[Hokahey]

1. You take TM so you can pop to zerker stance to Pummel. Otherwise, none of the talent options you have at that portion of the tree are terribly exciting, particularly for PvE.

My understanding is that your DPS suffers less by simply equipping a shield and 1hander for 1 gcd and shield bashing, instead of stance dancing, pummeling, and stance dancing back.

Probably true. As I said, Arms isn't my strong suit. That being said, you're basically reduced to 3 talent points early in Arms that aren't terribly useful for DPS that you have to spend to get further in.

[fafhrd]

1. You take TM so you can pop to zerker stance to Pummel. Otherwise, none of the talent options you have at that portion of the tree are terribly exciting, particularly for PvE.

My understanding is that your DPS suffers less by simply equipping a shield and 1hander for 1 gcd and shield bashing, instead of stance dancing, pummeling, and stance dancing back.

Well, the stance dances are on their own non-gcd cooldown, so you're only spending one GCD doing it, just like switching into battle to rend as fury. But weapons swapping incurs the weapon swap cooldown first when you equip 1H+shield, then again when you equip your 2h. All you end up saving is the rage for the swap, which may not outweigh the extra time incurred by the weapon swap.

More important to me would be the fact that weapon swap macros are unwieldly to use since they disabled mods being able to switch weapons in combat, meaning a swap->pummel->swap macro is trivial to macro into one button you spam till you see your stance change twice, while an equip->bash->equip macro is afaik much clunkier.

As for whether to cleave as arms or not, you definitely want to cleave in multi-target situations if you can support it, just like you definitely want to HS in single target situations if yu can support it - but you can't spam either of them as freely as fury can, so it demands much more attention to your rage bar to do it.

[Chicken]

More important to me would be the fact that weapon swap macros are unwieldly to use since they disabled mods being able to switch weapons in combat, meaning a swap->pummel->swap macro is trivial to macro into one button you spam till you see your stance change twice, while an equip->bash->equip macro is afaik much clunkier.

This doesn't take away the other downsides you mentioned, but it's still macroable.

Code: Select all

/cast [stance:3]Pummel;[equipped:Shield]Shield Bash
/equip [noequipped:Shield,nostance:3]One-Handed Weapon
/equip [noequipped:Shield,nostance:3]Shield;[nostance:3]Two-Handed Weapon

That should cause you to swap to a one-hander and shield when hit the first time, then shield bash and swap back when hit the second time, it also just uses pummel if you happen to be in berserker stance. The two equip lines are on purpose, as otherwise only one item gets equipped at a time, and you might as well just swap in a one-handed weapon for a second if you're shield bashing. Swapping back to the two-handed weapon is on the second equip line so you don't run into any issues where you're stuck with just your shield or one-handed weapon equipped.

Not sure how Shield Bash interacts with the GCD caused by weapon swapping though, it's not normally on the GCD but weapon swapping could be a special case, if it doesn't get a GCD due to weapon swapping it's worth trying putting the /cast line below the /equip lines. It's also the case that swapping weapons will reset your swing timer, which you might not want as Arms.