DPS warrior viable?

[Fame]

Hey hey, not much warrior experience here and I'm wondering if this is an option.

Just made what I hope to be a DPS warrior (Pref dps but I have have tank set too, also playing for FUN)

With my str gear I hit about 230-240, I'm not sure on warrior but on my rogue with this kind of str I was hitting for up to 46, commonly 33-36 pre lvl 20 dmg caps. Wondering if I can expect the same on the warrior?

I would ideally like to grp with hybrid tanks for spell agro and drop myself down to 35-40% hp for berserker status.

I have haste belt, wurmslayer and that other big pole-arm, forgot the name but its 17/39 I think. Also have staff of battle. Dual lamentations because I read something about hate per swing, hoping two fast weapons would work for agro if I have to tank. I have some proc weapons too but aggro generation is not my primary concern, I'm about landing those big hits and looking good doin it.

Am I better off going two hander? I really pref the dual wield look and picked up some nice dmg weapons for it, and I just don't really like swinging a big old staff, it just feels slow. My question here stems from my question about that 240+ str at low levels, I was hitting harder than most people I saw using two hand weapons with a one hand 10/25.

If ya have any experience in dps warrior mode please feel free to chime in.

I understand that the rogue is top melee dps. I'm rolling the warrior because I want to be able to break out my tank set when needed but also be able to tear it up on the dmg if the only grp in my area already has a tank.


Thanks

[Tecmos Deception]

Warrior DPS is legit, especially if you can manage berserk without dying. It just is the expectation that a warrior is usually the tank, but there's no reason you can't DPS as a warrior when you aren't forced into a tank role by necessity.

Until 30 (or very close to it), dual wielding will probably be better than a staff of battle. From 30-50ish, staff of battle is probably (just going on gut having player other melee before, but not really paying close attention or having played a warrior specifically) going to be better than DW. But once you're 50+, I've heard (Splorf) that DW is the way to go for threat AND for damage.

If you are DPSing and do not want aggro, you'll definitely want to be wielding the slowest stuff you can find without sacrificing weapon ratio too much. I'd think staff of battle would be less aggro over time, but you'll get big aggro spikes with it when you land some crazy double attack crips and whatnot. Two lamentations should be pretty solid aggro even without procs; still not enough to keep aggro off of epic monks or rogues or overzealous casters though.

[Whirled]

Well; you should be pretty indestructible since your lvl 1 warrior has better gear than me at lv50. LOL

I don't know about the DMG thing U ask tho but I doubt it'd make a heckuva lot of difference unless you're above all Damage cap levels .... which are ?

http://www.project1999.com/forums/showthread.php?t=152972&highlight=Damage
http://www.project1999.com/forums/showthread.php?t=152515&highlight=Damage
^couple links to discussions on STR & more

If you ever need me to warm up that haste item or make sure it works properly send me a /tell =P

[Yumyums Inmahtumtums]

Zerking is OP. Those double 400+ crips at 30 are devastating for an enemy with just shy of 1khp.

The onl downfall is that, as an ogre you have less Dex which means less crits/crips. It's not a huge difference but it's there.

[Fame]

Oh, I went Barb haha role playing game =D

[Fame]

Thanks for the info whirled I'll keep ya in mind for that haste item when I move back to red this winter.

[Whirled]

Hey thanks!
=D
see, even a maybe is enough to make a person smile.

[Yumyums Inmahtumtums]

Oh, I went Barb haha role playing game =D

Derp.

I can feel your manliness through my phone

[kaev]

Warrior DPS is legit, especially if you can manage berserk without dying. It just is the expectation that a warrior is usually the tank, but there's no reason you can't DPS as a warrior when you aren't forced into a tank role by necessity.

Until 30 (or very close to it), dual wielding will probably be better than a staff of battle. From 30-50ish, staff of battle is probably (just going on gut having player other melee before, but not really paying close attention or having played a warrior specifically) going to be better than DW. But once you're 50+, I've heard (Splorf) that DW is the way to go for threat AND for damage.

If you are DPSing and do not want aggro, you'll definitely want to be wielding the slowest stuff you can find without sacrificing weapon ratio too much. I'd think staff of battle would be less aggro over time, but you'll get big aggro spikes with it when you land some crazy double attack crips and whatnot. Two lamentations should be pretty solid aggro even without procs; still not enough to keep aggro off of epic monks or rogues or overzealous casters though.

Actual melee damage done doesn't affect agro (or at any rate it didn't on live), melee agro is (was) calculated on a per swing basis separately from resolving hits/crits/crips/damage.

Two handers have a negative agro modifier, a two hander will get less agro than a dual-wield combo that has the same damage output. In general, avoid weapons with stun and DoT procs if you don't want agro, but straight dd procs don't add much.

[Loke]

For leveling I would argue that gearing for DPS is actually the route most people should take. You're going to find yourself in very few situations were a couple hundred HP is really going to matter when grinding, and the faster you can kill mobs the faster you can level. I wouldn't pigeon hole yourself as strictly a DPS warrior though - play to all your strengths. By this I mean, if you've got a knight or some other class that can take, throw on that 2hander and drop down to zerker range and go wild, however, if you're far and away the best player in a group to be tanking, you can still do that while geared to DPS.

In terms of gearing yourself, I haven't done any parses, but I'd wager that your wurmmy is going to be quite a bit less damage than faster weapons under normal circumstances (again, I haven't parsed a wurmy, and zerker could affect that as well). For a cheap-ish DPS weapon for a warrior I feel it is kind of hard to beat a Lammy in the main hand, and then the best ratio weapon you can afford in the off hand. Thinking back to live I always thought dual lammy's looked pretty cool though, can you can probably pick a pair up for <5k that will be respectable damage.

In the higher levels, warrior do excellent damage. My warrior is only rocking an RBB (5-10% less than what he probably should be wearing) with epic and is often fairly high up on parses. On average monks and rogues are still going out DPS you, but it isn't uncommon at all for me to out DPS rogues who get unlucky with their backstab dice or lazy monks. With epics the 1handers do more damage than the 2hander when you're not zerking, but that probably isn't something you're gonna have to worry about in the immediate future.

Also, even if you go strictly DPS warrior, don't use offensive discs. They're garbage outside of highly situational instances.

[Tecmos Deception]

Actual melee damage done doesn't affect agro (or at any rate it didn't on live), melee agro is (was) calculated on a per swing basis separately from resolving hits/crits/crips/damage.

Two handers have a negative agro modifier, a two hander will get less agro than a dual-wield combo that has the same damage output. In general, avoid weapons with stun and DoT procs if you don't want agro, but straight dd procs don't add much.

Yeah, my bad. I know that threat is based on swings, not sure why it slipped my mind for a minute there.

Is there actually a specific penalty to 2h aggro though, or is it just that the 2h damage bonus isn't big enough compared to 1h damage bonus to make up for the slower swing speed?

[kaev]

Yeah, my bad. I know that threat is based on swings, not sure why it slipped my mind for a minute there.

Is there actually a specific penalty to 2h aggro though, or is it just that the 2h damage bonus isn't big enough compared to 1h damage bonus to make up for the slower swing speed?

The 2h agro malus is there, can't recall who posted it but there's been some testing done.

What I found with my warrior in his 40s, was that I could not hold agro worth a damn with staff of battle unless the other melees in the group were actually good at managing their own (not a common talent amongst pickup group melees on p99). But, with jade mace and silken whip of ensnaring I could hold agro just fine in an average group and near-flawlessly with good groupmates. Note that the jade mace + silken whip combo has somewhere around 80% the damage output of the staff of battle for a mid-40s warrior and none of the weapons had procs (whip doesn't proc 'til 50.)

[captnamazing]

Tecmos is pretty much right. Staff of Battle will give you some sweet cripps 30-50. Get an oggok cleaver if you can, though. That shit is insane.

With the right gear you can definitely stay on par with monks, and if you have a healer who is able to keep you in zerker rage, you'll fucking wreck.

[kaev]

Tecmos is pretty much right. Staff of Battle will give you some sweet cripps 30-50. Get an oggok cleaver if you can, though. That shit is insane.

With the right gear you can definitely stay on par with monks, and if you have a healer who is able to keep you in zerker rage, you'll fucking wreck.

That too. My warrior had a lot of fun zerk-duoing with YumYums (shaman), starting in our 20s. Shaman is awesome partner for zerking because slows on the tougher mobs makes it far safer to swap out some of your tanking gear for more DEX. (AC is (was?) not "broken" until high level, swapping out plate for jewelry in your 20s/30s/40s is painful when you're the guy getting hit.)

[amateur]

Actual melee damage done doesn't affect agro (or at any rate it didn't on live), melee agro is (was) calculated on a per swing basis separately from resolving hits/crits/crips/damage.

does this mean bladed thulian claws(5/19) for 100pp will hold agro as well as a lamentation(9/19) for 2.5k pp?

[Daldaen]

does this mean bladed thulian claws(5/19) for 100pp will hold agro as well as a lamentation(9/19) for 2.5k pp?

The calculation factors in damage. So 5/19 will generate lets say 10 hate per swing. Whereas a 9/19 will generate lets say 18 hate per swing.

[Frug]

Actual melee damage done doesn't affect agro (or at any rate it didn't on live), melee agro is (was) calculated on a per swing basis separately from resolving hits/crits/crips/damage.


The calculation factors in damage. So 5/19 will generate lets say 10 hate per swing. Whereas a 9/19 will generate lets say 18 hate per swing.


So does damage (potential OR actual) count, or not? These 2 quotes directly contradict each other.

[leezard]

He meant specifically damage of the weapon in that post. Perhaps it helps to think of it like this..hate is factored by the damage potential before the actual damage is calculated. Each swing generates x agro, separate from how much it actually does in terms of damage

[kaev]

So does damage (potential OR actual) count, or not? These 2 quotes directly contradict each other.

There is no contradiction, although my comment was incomplete. I referred to "actual melee damage done", i.e. the number of hit points subtracted from the target after resolving hit/miss and randomizing damage withing the allowed range and applying stats, skills, spell effects, & etc. What I failed to mention in the post you quoted is that the agro calc uses potential damage as represented by the weapon's damage stat.

Unless I'm hopelessly confused and out of touch here, the melee agro calc is based on 2x weapon base damage and is applied each swing regardless of hit/miss/etc. IIRC, the only adjustments that apply to the agro calc are the level-based primary hand damage bonus (all melees/hybrids except bards get this at L28+) and the two-handed weapon agro penalty.

Some examples (assuming that I'm right about primary hand damage bonus applying):
L55 melee/hybrid, rusty dagger main-hand, (3*2)+((55-25)/3) = 16 agro per swing
L40 melee/hybrid, rusty dagger main-hand, (3*2)+((40-25)/3) = 11 agro per swing
L27 melee/hybrid, rusty dagger main-hand, (3*2) = 6 agro per swing
any melee/hybrid, rusty dagger off-hand, (3*2) = 6 agro per swing
any bard/caster, rusty dagger any-hand, (3*2) = 6 agro per swing
L55 melee/hybrid, jade mace main-hand, (9*2)+((55-25)/3) = 28 agro per swing
L40 melee/hybrid, jade mace main-hand, (9*2)+((40-25)/3) = 23 agro per swing
L27 melee/hybrid, jade mace main-hand, (9*2) = 18 agro per swing
any melee/hybrid, jade mace off-hand, (9*2) = 18 agro per swing
any bard/caster, jade mace any-hand, (9*2) = 18 agro per swing

There were some pretty interesting tests run on live back in the day, and afaict the melee agro on p99 is based on what was learned & posted about then.

The above is only referring to melee agro, spell (and proc) agro is different.

[amateur]

for agro would a pair of jade maces be preferred over a some yak clubs at lvl 40?

[kaev]

for agro would a pair of jade maces be preferred over a some yak clubs at lvl 40?

It depends. How's fast is your group killing? Is your group stacked with healing or are you getting by with a druid and no clarity? How fragile are the non-tanks that might draw agro, and how competent are they at dumping it? How many rogues are in the group? How competent are your groupmates at dumping agro? What's your (buffed) dex?

IIRC the numbers from live, dex of 105 gives an average of 2 procs/minute in main-hand and 1/minute off-hand. If fights last less than 20 seconds the yaks don't offer much benefit. As fights get longer, your dex gets buffed higher, and mob facing gets more important (rogues!), agro procs become more valuable.

IME, the stun procs were just eye-candy at 40. In groups where agro was significant it was just "please wait for assist" and go to town with my best damaging dual-wield combo. Jade Mace + FBSS is ~ 1.5sec delay, so with a two-beat delay before calling assist I was already getting my third round in with my main-hand by the time the rest of the melees engaged, mobs generally melted before they could turn unless somebody did something stupid (rogue doesn't bother to evade after BS, monk/ranger insists on using agro proc weapon, that sort of thing.) In groups with strong healing and/or heavily twinked dps melees I'd call assist on my engage and mash taunt when the mob turned because it was all about clearing camp before the puller got back with more.

At 40 by far the most reliable agro control is a caster with a couple levels on the mobs to make root stick and rogues/monks/rangers who have enough sense to fight from max melee range without using dd proc weapons.

[bleech]

i got a 384 crippling blow at lvl 24

[Tecmos Deception]

It depends. How's fast is your group killing? Is your group stacked with healing or are you getting by with a druid and no clarity? How fragile are the non-tanks that might draw agro, and how competent are they at dumping it? How many rogues are in the group? How competent are your groupmates at dumping agro? What's your (buffed) dex?

IIRC the numbers from live, dex of 105 gives an average of 2 procs/minute in main-hand and 1/minute off-hand. If fights last less than 20 seconds the yaks don't offer much benefit. As fights get longer, your dex gets buffed higher, and mob facing gets more important (rogues!), agro procs become more valuable.

IME, the stun procs were just eye-candy at 40. In groups where agro was significant it was just "please wait for assist" and go to town with my best damaging dual-wield combo. Jade Mace + FBSS is ~ 1.5sec delay, so with a two-beat delay before calling assist I was already getting my third round in with my main-hand by the time the rest of the melees engaged, mobs generally melted before they could turn unless somebody did something stupid (rogue doesn't bother to evade after BS, monk/ranger insists on using agro proc weapon, that sort of thing.) In groups with strong healing and/or heavily twinked dps melees I'd call assist on my engage and mash taunt when the mob turned because it was all about clearing camp before the puller got back with more.

At 40 by far the most reliable agro control is a caster with a couple levels on the mobs to make root stick and rogues/monks/rangers who have enough sense to fight from max melee range without using dd proc weapons.

Procs are 0 to 2 per minute as your dex scales from 0 to 255 for your mainhand, and half that for your offhand. It's a dev post, you can search it up if you want to I'm sure.

Roots to keep mobs at a tank at lower levels, and then the tank gets to just focus on higher DPS weapons instead of higher aggro weapons, is a solid idea imo.

[Colgate]

warriors do the most dps in the game with precision active currently

it will only get better in velious

[Tecmos Deception]

How much does no threat reducer affect warriors in a DPS roles on a boss target?

[koros]

Procs are 0 to 2 per minute as your dex scales from 0 to 255 for your mainhand, and half that for your offhand. It's a dev post, you can search it up if you want to I'm sure.

Roots to keep mobs at a tank at lower levels, and then the tank gets to just focus on higher DPS weapons instead of higher aggro weapons, is a solid idea imo.

.5-2

[Tecmos Deception]

.5-2

My mistake.

Here's the dev post: http://www.project1999.com/forums/showpost.php?p=303374&postcount=144

[planarity]

DPS warrior absolutely viable. Send a tell to imba for pointers

[captnamazing]

How much does no threat reducer affect warriors in a DPS roles on a boss target?

Shouldn't be an issue
If that main tank(s) are good they'll control aggro via threat tools so that all their DPS can go hog-wild

[kaev]

My mistake.

Here's the dev post: http://www.project1999.com/forums/showpost.php?p=303374&postcount=144

Thanks for the link. Re-reading that old TSW thread (after 10-1/2 years, lol) patched a few holes in my memory, wonder how long until it starts leaking again...

[Yumyums Inmahtumtums]

Thanks for the link. Re-reading that old TSW thread (after 10-1/2 years, lol) patched a few holes in my memory, wonder how long until it starts leaking again...

Not long at your age :D