This is the score… If you’re in a dungeon, don’t sunder unless it’s bosses and then only sunder on free GCD’s when you have nothing to press. Sunder is a massive personal damage loss and if the target dies quickly you will never benefit from it. If you have high rage and nothing else to press, then sure Sunder (specifically talking dungeons here).
If you’re in a raid it’s up to the Rogues and Warriors to figure out between themselves or for the raid leader to decide who has to Sunder/Expose. Again, it’s a dps loss for both classes to do it, but on a raid boss not having the debuff will result in more dps loss, so either way you do it, the boss needs sunder/expose. Generally speaking in higher geared raids unless there is a Warrior tank, a Rogue is preferred because the debuff is applied faster and benefits the raid more, but if you’re a lesser geared Warrior you should expect to take up the Sunder role.
Sometimes a raid leader in a good guild will call a 45s pull timer, this is for the Death Knights to do their pull rotation. If you’re sundering you can swap your trinkets around at 40s before the pull, triggering their internal cooldowns. That means for atleast 5 seconds after the boss is pulled your trinkets will not proc, you can use this time to Sunder the boss without having to waste your trinket procs.
Without this swap method you either have to eat the huge dps loss for the benefit of the raid, or prioritise your own damage and only sunder when Bloodthirst/Whirlwind are on cooldown, your choice to make in this situation.
Small pointless story:
Getting into ICC raids /4 “5200 GS Fury Warrior LF ICC25” is rough. Depending on what raid I join I could opt to not sunder at all, so I do more damage and the rest of the melee less. Then I will look relatively better on the dmg table. I doubt if average PUG raidlead will notice that I am not sundering, especially if they don’t specifically ask me to do it. But they do look at the dmg chart.
I’m not super familiar with how gearscore relates to ilvl, but I think that means you’re generally considered quite a bit undergeared for ICC and you’d have a very hard time.
Prioritise getting the T10 2 set, crafted boots, and run TOTGC10/25 to gear up, battered hilt for agility + arp 2hand sword etc. Warrior isn’t a class that can have an easy ride at lower gear levels, particularly on the single target bosses in ICC.
Regarding Sunder - Even if you’re trying to avoid sundering to look better on the meters of a pug, if the boss has no sunder at all your dps will be even worse, so at the very least you need to weave a Sunder every free GCD and maintain it at 5 stacks for your own benefit.
I managed to gear up and my avg item level is now 256.
I have a question about the rotation this time: do I not use execute if it would disallow me from using a Heroic Strike, and in general use execute as little as possible unless I have absolutely nothing else to press and a HS already queued up?
BT > WW > Slam > Execute prio list. Spam heroic strike, try to get an instant ability for every GCD. There is a small risk of rage starving, and some nuance with when you press heroic strike (you want it queued when your offhand is about to hit to ensure offhand lands). You can be liberal with this though, and actually the optimal play is to cancel heroic strike before it consumes rage and cast the Execute instead, if you think it will fully rage starve you.
Throwing the nuance aside, the majority of what you’re doing at ICC play level is just spamming HS non stop while using an ability on every single GCD, that means if Execute is the only instant ability available, you use it. Due to the set bonus giving 2x Slam there is a good chance you might not cast many Executes, but it’s still a button you should press if nothing else is up.
Heroic strike you should be spamming alongside this, whether you want to go into the gameplay of cancelling the casts is up to you, but at ICC gear levels it’s almost entirely irrelevant anyway, just bash away and focus on maximising your total ability casts over a fight.
Execute is more important than HS, if you had to choose between the two. I had some conflicting information about this, as it was also being told at some point, that even while EXE does more dmg, the added value of not being able to glancing blow a HS empowered normal melee attack as opposed to normal melee attack, which can still glance, is more important.
I will follow what you said though.
You should use HS when your offhand weapon is about to land. Great, I didnt even know that HS could even be consumed by the offhand. This makes SPAMMING heroic strike exactly what you mean. You merely say: if you have to choose between MH and OH, then prefer to OH to collide with heroic strike.
In terms of damage per rage, Execute has higher value, but that’s with the consideration that you can gain all of the secondary benefits of Heroic Strike without having to pay the rage cost, by cancelling the HS cast before the mainhand lands in the situation where using the rage would rage starve you (unable to cast next ability or maintain HS queues).
If we throw nuance aside, it’s very possible and common to be able to just spam heroic strike while using an ability on every GCD and filling the empty slots with execute, even at very low rage, and get away with it. Sometimes this will cost you though, then it’s about whether you’re able to practice and get comfortable with cancelling heroic strike during execute.
Remember to get the secondary effects Heroic Strike only needs to be queued up when the offhand lands, and as long as it’s cancelled before the mainhand hits you can prevent the rage loss (only if needed). This is obviously using and getting comfortable with the swing timer, with desyncronised weapons.
HS can’t be consumed by the offhand, but HS has the side effect of giving your offhand a special attack hit chance, that being if you have 8% hit it will never miss, making Heroic Strike cast on the offhand a reliable way to ensure you get rage, without it ever spending rage.
Of course when the main hand lands then you consume the rage, but you’re also prevented from generating any rage on the main hand, so it has a massive rage cost. This is generally still ok and you still want to use it, but if you can master having it queued up while the offhand hits and then cancelling it if needed, you can maintain very consistent rage income without ever having to hold off on using a main instant ability.
The larger question is whether you’re willing to practice this gameplay or if you find it fun. By and large most players just smash their buttons mindlessly without regard for rage management, and by and large that’s actually a viable gameplay method 90% of the time at ICC gear levels.
Thanks for the answer, I now understand that a cancelmacro on HS will increase the hit percentage of my OH and cost nothing, as long as I cancel HS again before the MH lands.