Rammy's Arms Warrior Guide - Part 2: Rage Management

Part 2 of my guildie Ramagos guide on how to play an Arms Warrior.

Hello students, and welcome to another class of L2P Arms. Today we are going to talk about Rage management.

So, to know how to manage Rage you need to know how it's generated. It follows the simple formula of 6.5 * Weapon Speed. To that we have to add Anger Management. Let us see what affects our Rage generation:

Melee Weapon Speed:

6.5 * 3.6 = 23.4 + 25% = 29.25 = 29 Rage per swing.
3.6 Weapon Speed over 1 minute = 16.666' = 16 swings per minute.
16 * 29 = 464 Rage per minute.

6.5 * 3.8 = 24.7 + 25% = 30.875 = 30 Rage per swing.
3.8 Weapon Speed over 1 minute = 15.789 = 15 swings per minute.
15 * 30 = 450 Rage per minute.

• Slam delays our melee swings, so every 7-8 Slams will deny one melee swing, that's about 1 swing per minute, or more, depending on how lucky you are with Colossus Smashes.
• Anger Management also produces 1 Rage every 3 seconds, that's 20 Rage per minute.
• Blood Frenzy would generate 20-30 Rage per minute statistically.
• Battle Trance would save us some Rage depending on it's usage. It's proc rate would be once or twice every minute.
• Tactical Mastery lets us keep more than 25 Rage when switching stances, up to 75 total Rage.
• If you Charge you get 15 Rage or 25 if you have Blitz.
• And the glorious Battle Shout.

That makes up for near 520 Rage per minute.

Our spells cost 5, 15 and 20 Rage. Our Rotation being mostly MS-CS-OP, MS-OP-Slam, MS-CS-OP-Slam, MS-OP-Slam-Slam makes them cost 45, 40, 60 and 55 respectively. In a 1 minute time spam you get to repeat the rotation about 11 times.

That makes it near 550 Rage usage per minute.

"OMG, we consume more Rage than we generate!" you might say. This is true. If you went to the dummies, you'll see doing your rotation leaves you OOR. But this are all unrealistic numbers, since they were made with 0% Haste. The more Haste you have the more Rage you'll generate. For example, I have 6.25% Haste, which makes my swings be 3.39. Let us see the same formula we used before and compare the effects Haste has on Rage:

0% Haste

6.5 * 3.6 = 23.4 + 25% = 29.25 = 29 Rage per swing.
3.6 Weapon Speed over 1 minute = 16.666' = 16 swings per minute.
16 * 29 = 464 Rage per minute.

6.25% Haste

6.5 * 3.6 = 23.4 + 25% = 29.25 = 29 Rage per swing.
3.39 Weapon Speed over 1 minute = 17.699... = 17 swings per minute.
17 * 29 = 493 Rage per minute.

16.25% Haste (with someone giving the 10% Haste buff)

6.5 * 3.6 = 23.4 + 25% = 29.25 = 29 Rage per swing.
3.01 Weapon Speed over 1 minute = 19.933... = 19 swings per minute.
19 * 29 = 551 Rage per minute.

And now we are talking. Add to that the fight's incoming dmg and you get more Rage. And to that add Deadly Calm at least twice a fight, Bloodlust and Executioner and you get some more Rage which you'll be able to convert into HSs.

Right now you might be thinking "All this numbers are pretty, but how the hell do I manage my Rage?", I was about to get to it.

Since we are Stance Dancing, our Rage cap is 75 instead of 100. This makes every single point of Rage that surpasses the 75 mark to vanish when you change stances. All Rage lost is Rage you didn't turn into a HS, which is lost DPS. Since our melee hits generate 29-30 Rage per hit means that you don't want to have more than 60 Rage at any given moment, so when you hit 55-60 or higher Rage, you hit your HS button so you get down to 25-30 Rage.

You also want to monitor you BT [Battle Trance] procs, since HS costs 30 Rage while CS and Slam cost both 20 and 15 Rage. Why make a spell that costs 20 Rage free when you can use it in a spell that costs 30.

The only exception is in the Execute Phase, where the only spells you use are MS, OP, CS and Execute.