Slam

Uses global cooldown, but 'pauses' the swing. Makes it more button mashing friendly now :D

Heroinc Stirke... doesnt cost more rage than Slam

True, but keep in mind that Heroic Strike also has a hidden rage cost because it replaces your next melee swing. Since you don't generate rage through special abilities, you're forfeiting the rage you would have received from landing that "white" hit.

No, it does not.

Can't believe no one said this yet. Slam can be used while moving now! It now has a PvP use, even if it takes half a second to pull off! (when talented, of course) and it won't hurt as much as it did in PvE in high mobility fights!

War Academy talent = +15% damage to Slam

Improved Slam = +20% damage to Slam plus -1 sec cast time.

Also, in the latest beta build, Slam has had its rage cost reduced to 15. It's going to be pretty good for Arms now, I reckon. It will hit hard, you will be able to move while hitting hard and it's one of the cheapest abilities, rage wise.

Can anyone confirm if haste speeds up the cast time for this uh "spell"?

now its pausing it so: one second after attack you trigger slam and after slam you just continue not resetting your swing so its now a lot better, no need to perfect timing

Indeed. Patch 3.0.2 notes: "Slam now suspends the weapon swing timer rather than resetting it". Happy time!

I am sorry to jack this post, but I am pleased to say that as of Patch 4.0.1, slam is castable while moving!
(Please correct me if this changes)

Please don't put this on your bars. It will only delay Rampage (risking you losing your Frenzy stacks if you have that talent.)

Rampage should replace Slam at level 19.

best rage burning tactic I've ever used, spam slam mofo.

You said that it suspends your swing timer, does that mean it worked like pre 3.0 aimed shot where your timer was paused? Or is it more like Steady Shot where you can place these in between your auto attacks without messing up your timing. Sorry for having to refer to hunter skills, those are the only other skills that would be comparable considering most other physical attacks are either instant or on next attack.

haven't used this for a couple xpacs

No. Slam is not a melee swing, it's an ability.

In Cata you will be able to Run'n Slam. http://blue.mmo-champion.com/t/26262619577/warrior-changes-12644/

-Slam cast time is now affected by haste.

In addition to this, global cooldown on slam seems to be now modified by haste as well ( you can still chain unimproved slam with enough haste to lower cast to 1.2s levels )

Slam can be a great filler for dpsing in both PvE and PvP. The best way to use slam is when [spell=12294] and [spell=86346] are on cooldown and you just used a double [spell=7384] by timing your [spell=56638] buff. It is not worth using slam over any of the other abilities listed above but it "fills the gaps".

To see a video on how to DPS as arms in PvP you can check it out here: How to DPS as a Warrior in Arena Basically explains what I posted above in more detail.

I'm all for bringing back old abilities but why should fury warriors ever put this on their bar? Don't they want to spend their rage on Rampage exclusively? So weird.

In WOTLK slam will NOT reset your swing timer. Still: does haste or the windfury change affect slam?

This is usefull for rage dump. Arms warriors should use this after using Mortal Strike, apply rend and there's no Taste for Blood buff. Considering the GCD and talented skill cast, you can use twice Slam before next swing of a 3.6seg 2h axe. It's good for PvE, but in PvP is nice if your target is snared.

improved slam 2/2 reduces cast time of slam by 1 second. slam now has a 0.5 second cast timer and can be used easily on moving targets if u don't keyboardturn.

Heroic Strike ain't instant, it is cast upon the next weapon swing you do. And Slam gives you for 0.5 seconds (1.5 untalanted) casting time your normal weapon damage + some bonus damage. As you can see the slower the weapon the greater the benefit of using slam.

1) With War Academy and Improved Slam plus the buff it got in the latest patch, it does similar weapon damage (if not higher) than Mortal Strike. IIRC its plus damage is even higher than MS. With a 15 rage cost and taking into account lost rage from the pausing of the swing timer (which is minimal, let's be honest! 0.5 delay in the swing timer isn't THAT much!), is at least equal to MS in terms of rage cost. It will hit harder than MS, without the Lambs to the Slaughter, of course.

2) By cheap, I mean it has had its rage cost reduced by 5. It used to be 20. Relatively, its still one of the cheapest attacks. Also, the fact that it's cheaper means you can use it earlier than other instant weapon strikes (like Heroic Strike, Colossus Smash and Mortal Strike) which means you can burst faster.

3) Yes, I get delighted because you can use it while moving. Previously you couldn't. Now you can. It's a good step towards improving this rather useless ability in PvP. Isn't that enough to be happy about it?

Also, "the target still has to be in melee range and in front of you, which makes it a lot trickier to actually pull off even if you are moving." really applies to ALL melee attacks for ALL melee classes. This point is invalid.

4) Technically speaking, the only abilities that hit harder than Slam are Mortal Strike and Bladestorm; if fully talented, it hits harder than anything else, except maybe Execute.

But yes, I agree that other abilities have a higher priority over Slam. However, Blizzard wants to give us choices this expansion (they've said it all the time during Cataclysm development) and I believe Improved Slam could be a useful "choice" talent for PvP. You can take it and have another attack at your disposal, or leave it and pick something else.

5) Furthermore, when you think about it, an Arms warrior only really has 3 attacks* (that are not cooldowns, like Bladestorm). Mortal Strike, Overpower and Heroic Strike/Cleave (and Colossus Smash, but on a rather lengthy cooldown). What if Colossus Smash and MS are on cooldown, Overpower still needs a few more Rend ticks to be usable and maybe you don't have enough rage for a Heroic Strike while needing to burst down a target ASAP? Or what if you don't have rage for your HIGH RAGE COST abilities?

You Slam the crap outta that annoying mage, for a cheap 15 rage.

*I left out Rend for obvious reasons.

Why give this to Fury and not Prot? It just disappears from the universal Warrior spellbook when you swap to Prot, defeating the purpose of a universal spellbook.

Slam will never ever be a satisfying spell.

The amount of times devs try to force it onto my warriors action bars with buffs and talents or clever interactions ....NOPE!

I'd rather take the DPS loss, thanks.

Now if Slam actually SLAMMED instead of making that torn piece of A4 paper sound. Or perhaps when you SLAMMED you got a SLAMMING graphic effect... Maybe.

tl;dr

Slam is unfun to press, stop trying to make us press it.

Warrior GCD is 1.5 seconds.

To get the most out of this ability, you should activate it immediately after each autoattack. With the Improved Slam talent, doing so almost doubles your DPS (You get 2 attacks for your regular attack speed + 0.5 sec). Of course, the higher your weapon's max damage, the better, so look for slow 2-handers. When you have a bunch of rage built up, spam it for insane damage!

You seem to misunderstand how it works, Shinsei. The reset meant that if your swing timer is at 3.6, and you were 3..1 seconds in, and then cast a Slam when the slam was done you'd have to wait another 3.6 seconds (resetting the timer and starting over again). By suspending instead, in the above scenario your slam would hit and then .5 seconds later your auto attack would hit, not simultaneously. This is why Fury Warriors only use Slam when they get a bloodsurge proc and make it an instant attack, and not as filler on their spare GCDs.

ok im planning a 39 twink arms warrior, and sadly my lvl falls short of being able to spec into imp slam... My question is this: Does the slam casting break while moving, or is it like an explosive and will continue to cast until it finishes or is interrupted? If it doesnt break while moving, i could pop bloodrage, charge, cast slam while charging reach my target slam hits, than auto hit, and ect. Does that sound about right?

Solid post, except for this:

... and causes a high amount of threat..
if you WANT to pull agro while not even being that high a dps, go ahead and use Heroic Strike.

You don't seem to understand that tanks generate far more threat than DPS due to stances/auras/etc. When a tank does it, yes -- high threat is high threat, and it's very powerful. But when a DK uses Death & Decay or Runic Strike in their normal rotations, they're getting more DPS -- high threat, yes, but nothing the tank can't outmatch. If this was a situation where it was an AoE, I'd understand your sentiments, but this is a single target move. A moderately geared tank will beat a high geared DPS in threat any day, because while DPS only have this as a high threat generator, tanks have a large variety of high threat moves in addition to the threat buff.

With 4.0.6 on the way and a whole mess of HS nerfs coming with it, this ability MAY actually become useful to arms warriors again, which seems to be what Bliz is trying to do. Main problem in my eyes is that for that .5 sec that you're casting slam, you're not doing white dmg, which means you're not generating rage, which is obviously bad, especially from the stance of a PVE arms warrior.

4.0.6 will give: Slam weapon damage percent (at level 80+) has been increased from 125% to 145%. Lambs to the Slaughter: Instead of granting 10/20/30% damage to the next Mortal Strike, Overpower, or Execute, it now grants a 10% buff to any Mortal Strike, Overpower, Slam, or Execute that stacks 1/2/3 times. as LttS didn't buff Slam before and is now not limited to a single skill (the buff gets 15 second duration), and considering Heroic Strike is being nerfed.. I think an arms warrior will want to talent for improved slam even if it does reduce rage income by a bit. Very quick

this is insane... Arms' Slam should do over 300% weapon damage now, with all the buffs.

I miss old Slam.. It was cool to cast it and wait some epic crit. Of course it´s now better when there is no cast time but still.

Yeah gotta love old school swing reset+no movement Slam!

Does slam reset the attack timer now?

You should not spam Slam repeatedly, but interleave it between autoattacks so the GCD is not a factor (unless you have a really fast weapon). Thus two points in the talent will result in more attacks in the same amount of time than just one point.

Get a swing timer such as "Quartz" in order to maximize dps with this ability. Use it after each swing.

You should start "casting" slam 0.4 secs before your autoattack hits, this way, you only get 0.1 sec added to your swing timer, but get an extra attack + slam bonus dmg, for only 15 rage.

Can Slam cause a Windfury proc? Now that would be awesome.

If, say, there is 2 seconds until the next swing, and you cast this, do you wait 2 seconds after the slam for the next swing or does the timer continue to go down during the slam?

If there is 2 seconds until the next swing, then casting slam (with improved slam 2/2) will make you wait a total of 0.5 sec cast + original 2 second wait = 2.5 seconds until the next swing.

Just want to point out, it's not certain from that post that Slam not require you to stand still in Cata. Ghostcrawler basically just said that it's usable while moving which could mean that he considers a 0.5 sec casting time to not a be a significant stand still.

Okay, I read all these comments and I still dont really understand what I should be doing. I am a Warrior, intending to use a 55/8/8 spec. Right now, Im level 35. Should I be using slam instead of heroic strike now? All I really do is cycle through rend, TC, OP when it comes up, and heroic strike. Would slamming over heroic strike improve my DPS? And even so, once Im at max level, I intend to glyph for Heroic Strike, and use it and OP to keep Deep Wounds on my PVP targets up at all times. So at level eighty, should I even bother slamming?

Don't use the 53/8/8 incite spec - until you have VERY good gear, it is not worth it. The 53/8/8 incite spec requires you to use heroic strike a great deal to make use of it. Not only does heroic strike account for a TINY proportion of your dps (around 5%) but you sacrafice improved execute for it, so you lose execute damage. The arms rotation is much heavier on rage than the fury one. This is because you have no off-hand swing. You are, therefore, entirely dependant on your main swing for rage. So you can't use heroic strike more than once every 1 in 3 swings or so, or you will instantly ra

can this move actually cast while running cause last time i played a warrior u had to stand still and it silenced the target for a few seconds...by the looks of it, its changed alot.

"The target still has to be in melee range and in front of you, which makes it a lot trickier to actually pull off even if you are moving." Those were your own words. You didn't say a thing about having to stay in range during the cast to land a Slam. But now you did and I can agree with that. Also, the fact that Mortal Strike is the best attack the warrior has (healing debuff, Lambs to the Slaughter buff, Wrecking Crew, huge weapon modifier) doesn't change the fact that Slam has its uses and can still be a useful attack considering the following: (According to patch 4.0.6 PTR patch notes)

Read point number 4 above. And please read my whole two posts while you're at it. You ignored them both! I was just answering to bluewyvern's, in my humble opinion, fallacious post (most of his points, anyway). Just to make it clear, TL;DR for my two posts is "Slam is much better now (for PvP) than before, might be worth picking up this time around."

This is one of the few melee attacks in the game that is not normalized based on weapon speed. It does straight weapon damage+modifiers.

For Arms, this often is the hardest hitting ability outside of [spell=5308] phase.

It still has lower priority than [spell=12294] because of reliance on [spell=56611] uptime and maintaining [spell=84588]
It has a lower priority to [spell=86346] because, well its C. Smash.

All other Arms damage abilities have lower priority than Slam except unless you are about to loose your [spell=56638] proc.

Argument for Overpower as requested below:
With Lambs to the Slaughter you don't need to waste globals on putting up rends, and honestly if u can't watch 1 simple proc which is timed evenly every five seconds then play a different class. Overpower is up to 185% + nasty crit levels with 3/3 Lambs to the Slaughter and Glyph of Overpower. If anything you should be fitting your slams into your rotation of overpower and MS instead of fitting overpower into your slam rotation. This move is essential to fighting rogues in pvp too.

What I figured is that when you're emergency tanking as a Fury warrior if you equip a shield you cant use Rampage, Onslaught, or Raging Blow. They are replaced by Shield Slam, Shield Block, and Slam.