Yeah, the AOE direction seems confusing as well. Slam is very VERY situational. 2 yards? LOL ... you can't take the bigger math, use that logic and think you are going to come out on top. You lose so much DPS counting on those 2 yards that at the end of the raid night, you're left with a lot lower over all dps had you just used whirlwind with its 8 yard range to begin with.
And apparently I am not alone in this logic / common sense. Icy-Veins, Toxxic, EJ, the community at large, etc etc etc all point to a different rotation than what's being presented to us. Basically, Fury Unleashed is taking a completely different approach and doing it's all new / different.
BUT, I am open to trying out different rotations. Ideally it would awesome to have the ability to switch between a few different AOE rotations along with selecting the amount of mobs that trigger AOE, etc within the routines UI. My contention is, let's prioritize the best rotation and get it in front of us first. That's all.
I've raided Siege of Org, 1 heroic / 14 normal, Garrosh down, etc etc, I know the fights, all the trash evolved, the mechanics of those fights and we have tanks that are some of the best I've ever seen. There is absolutely no stacking up anything that you can effectively count on slam and 2 yards. Lets me clear on that. There is just too much running around and following and the majority of mobs along with the boss fights all end up being within 8 yards, not 2. Are some of the mobs / bosses within 2 yards? Of course they are, but that number is A LOT lower than if they were within 8 yards. Just apply common sense / logic to any scenario and right away it's easy to determine whirlwind is going to bring you bigger numbers. More importantly, consistent numbers.
Do we appreciate the effort and hard work? Of course we do.
Also, the best thing any Warrior can do here is pay attention to dps trends. Go to the biggest servers, look at top warriors, go look at their dps records, like I have. What do you see, ARMS ... Bladestorm ability ( with the Evil Eye trinket ) and no where, NO WHERE are they counting on slam for AOE. It's right there in black and white in all of those guys dps log breakdowns. If you soak in the bigger picture of the entire Warrior community, the dps logs, all of the how-to warrior enthusiast web sites, the players and their battlenet profiles that list their abilities, the forums, even their gear can be telling, you come away with a very clear picture of what the majority of everyone is doing. This rotation is not representative of that in terms of AOE.
Slam is situational only during AOE. Use the math to count the mobs, their distance from the player and if it's within 2 yards, use slam if the math makes sense. But the rotation really just needs to be popping bladestorm / whirlwind, etc in most cases for max dps as that seems to be the feedback the community is giving in regards to patch / raid 5.4.
Thank you again Nom for all your hard work. We love you, we appreciate everything you've done. You've made this game awesome for so many people. Please believe that.