Could some knowledgeable PvP players please share their thoughts on this subject?
What I found out so far is that the majority seems to clearly favour maces. However, I never read a real evaluation of pros and cons though; the opinions appear to be somehow undifferentiated in my perception. True, the utility of the stun is also obvious to me, but is there something, the random player, as I am, misses?!?! The only argument in favour of swords I found is that the additional damage is oftentimes considered as more useful in 5vs5 arena than the stun chance.
Hence, I wonder if mace > sword is just a narrative which is frequently repeated, rather than grounded on real knowledge and experience…
For the damage it is sword, which has a chance to proc double hit.
When people are talking about maces they are thinking about the infamous stormherald or deep thunder as the version available in first phase is name which gives a chance to proc a stun combined with the maces talent which gives you another chance to stun. Which is why it is the best for PvP in general, since you can occasionally stunlock people with these random procs
Stuns are for sure the best way to stop a player. They’re so strong that a percentage of players who prefer the aesthetic of Trolls aren’t playing Trolls. Just as an example.
Indeed, I forgot to mention that I am not a blacksmith. I wondered if the mace preference exactly established because of…
…which for a random player and non-raider like me is unobtainable.
Probably, it is also obvious that I prefer sword just due to their look, but if there is a notable disadvantage, I guess, I would swallow the pitter pill and go mace…
If you aren’t planning on playing sweaty just play what you want. But if you want to push higher ratings a mace will definitely help you. Depends on your ambitions
The actual proc-rate on Deep Thunder is extremely low, most of the procs you will get while running the mace is just from the mace specialisation in Arms tree. In the old days you would run mace for 2v2 and sword for 5v5 with a good split of both in 3v3.
Sword obviously does more damage, decide based on your arena comp if you need more RNG control or more RNG damage.
Personally if I was playing a warrior id be playing Sword for a couple of reasons. The macestun itself, while useful and can be gamewinning, is very RNG and inconsistent. You cant rely on it proccing and winning you the fight. Because of the inconsistencies you can also end up DRing stuns quite often with a teammember which by itself could lose you the fight.
With the abundance of orcs in arena as well, macestun starts to lose its value even further.
Swordprocs on the other hand give you that unexpected damage burst which can completely delete people. Im playing a warlock right now, and when I see a rare swordspec warrior my PTSD activates. Many times Ive been completely deleted by them in just a matter of seconds without any way to survive.
Macestun warriors as a warlock dont bother me at all, since I know I can just trinket the macestun if it procs. From a mage’s point of view, the warrior’s worst matchup, macestun offers 0 threat to them, whereas playing as swordspec you have that odd chance of unexpectedly deleting a large chunk of their HP.
Considering that horde have insanely long by queues they will mostly be undergeared making the sword burst even better, and for T4 you can probably use the same spec for PvP and pve because of the DPS advantage without anyone complaining
