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The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Leveling from 1 to 60 after Cataclysm

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Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Care and Feeding of Warriors, the column dedicated to arms, fury and protection warriors. Despite repeated blows to the head from dragons, demons, Old Gods and whatever that thing over there was, Matthew Rossi will be your host.

I am often a little surprised at how often leveling guides and leveling advice is requested by readers. It’s easy for those of us working on raids to forget what it’s like for the new player, just starting out of Silvermoon or Mulgore for the first time. With the changes to the 1-to-60 game made with Cataclysm, it’s never been easier to level. While Mists of Pandaria is bringing a whole new talent system, the 1-to-60 game is most likely not going to see another revamp, so we’ll go forward assuming that getting to max level will take the same path. In order to discuss it, I went and rolled yet another warrior. It’s for science, people.

For people rolling a new warrior, be it an alt or a new main, there is one thing I like to keep in mind: Know how you intend to level. Whether you’re a new player or an old hand trying a warrior out, it’s really helpful to know what you intend to do to get to max level. Each talent specialization is viable for questing and PvP (player vs. player), for instance, but if you’re intending on tanking instances or flag running in WSG, protection is the clear winner. Arms may be the easiest to level, however, without the stress of tanking and fairly easy to gear up for.

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The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Leveling from 1 to 60 after Cataclysm originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 10 Dec 2011 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Leveling from 1 to 60 after Cataclysm

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Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Care and Feeding of Warriors, the column dedicated to arms, fury and protection warriors. Despite repeated blows to the head from dragons, demons, Old Gods and whatever that thing over there was, Matthew Rossi will be your host.

I am often a little surprised at how often leveling guides and leveling advice is requested by readers. It’s easy for those of us working on raids to forget what it’s like for the new player, just starting out of Silvermoon or Mulgore for the first time. With the changes to the 1-to-60 game made with Cataclysm, it’s never been easier to level. While Mists of Pandaria is bringing a whole new talent system, the 1-to-60 game is most likely not going to see another revamp, so we’ll go forward assuming that getting to max level will take the same path. In order to discuss it, I went and rolled yet another warrior. It’s for science, people.

For people rolling a new warrior, be it an alt or a new main, there is one thing I like to keep in mind: Know how you intend to level. Whether you’re a new player or an old hand trying a warrior out, it’s really helpful to know what you intend to do to get to max level. Each talent specialization is viable for questing and PvP (player vs. player), for instance, but if you’re intending on tanking instances or flag running in WSG, protection is the clear winner. Arms may be the easiest to level, however, without the stress of tanking and fairly easy to gear up for.

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The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Leveling from 1 to 60 after Cataclysm originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 10 Dec 2011 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Talents in Mists of Pandaria

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Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Care and Feeding of Warriors, the column dedicated to arms, fury and protection warriors. Despite repeated blows to the head from dragons, demons, Old Gods and whatever that thing over there was, Matthew Rossi will be your host.

Last week, we talked about the Mists of Pandaria talent calculator and the class and spec abilities it reveals. This week, we’ll be discussing the new talents and their general design philosophy.

One of the design changes for Mists that I’ve found compelling is the removal of “idiot talents.” These are the talents that you simply have to take. A protection warrior without Bastion of Defense isn’t really a prot warrior; at the very least, he or she is a bad prot warrior. Now, while I applaud the intent of the talent changes, that doesn’t mean I love each and every one of them. However, since it’s still patch 4.3 and we won’t see these talents in game until patch 5.0 at the earliest, it’s hardly time to panic (or applaud, for that matter).

These talents are divided into six tiers, one at each 15 levels from 15 to 90. Three talents are available at each tier, meaning that you can take any one of each three per tier for a grand total of six talents at level 90. Unlike current talent specializations, none of these talents are restricted to a role; an arms or fury warrior can take Shockwave, for instance, or a protection warrior could take Bladestorm.

Oh, come on. Tell me you’ve never wanted to pop Bladestorm while tanking.

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The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Talents in Mists of Pandaria originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 03 Dec 2011 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Class and specialization abilities in Mists of Pandaria

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Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Care and Feeding of Warriors, the column dedicated to arms, fury and protection warriors. Despite repeated blows to the head from dragons, demons, Old Gods and whatever that thing over there was, Matthew Rossi will be your host.

Continuing the discussion from a month ago, we look again at the three specializations for warriors in Mists of Pandaria. We can do this because Blizzard itself has released the talent calculator for the expansion, and it has loads of information for us to go over. The calculator lists class abilities and specialization only abilities in addition to talents, which means we now have more details to examine in terms of what’s coming.

One thing I noted immediately was that yes, arms is going to be the only tree with Colossus Smash. It will be an ability gained at level 81, and the redesigned CS also applies the current Blood Frenzy debuff rather than its being applied via bleeds. Since this is what we expected would happen with arms in Mists back when we talked about it in October, I think it’s OK if we pat ourselves on the back here, fellow warriors. We saw this coming.

Since we have three specs to talk about, let’s get started. There’s a lot of ground to cover in Pandaria’s new talent scheme.

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The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Class and specialization abilities in Mists of Pandaria originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 26 Nov 2011 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Care and Feeding of Warriors: In arms’ way

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Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Care and Feeding of Warriors, the column dedicated to arms, fury and protection warriors. Despite repeated blows to the head from dragons, demons, Old Gods and whatever that thing over there was, Matthew Rossi will be your host.

Last month I was in the middle of discussing arms with you when I got sidetracked. Long-time readers of this column were not surprised that yet again something shiny caught my attention and I went crawling off to follow it like a cat with that stupid red bug that is in no way connected to that device the idiot human keeps waving around. At any rate, with patch 4.3 on its way, I thought it was time to start talking about why you should give arms a shot.

The first thing I did was dedicate myself to raiding and running instances and doing Battlegrounds as arms more or less exclusively, which I’ve done for the entire month of November to date. Having done this, I can report the following:

  • Arms is still lagging behind other melee in terms of DPS. It’s not terrible, mind — I don’t embarrass myself as arms — but on fights where fury can pull 28k, arms is lucky to pull 24k or less. What we saw in the state of Firelands DPS post holds true. Arms doesn’t perform as well as melee DPS specs that are getting buffed in 4.3, even though arms itself will see no such buffs.
  • However, it’s not all bad. Since arms has two bleeds (Rend and Deep Wounds) and a debuff that increased bleed damage taken (Blood Frenzy), if you have to move out of melee range to avoid splash damage or to switch targets, arms can actually fare better than fury.
  • Blood and Thunder means that when properly played, arms can hit a surprising amount of adds with Rend. Rhyolith adds, Rageface and Riplimb’s coming into range of Shannox, Majordomo Staghelm’s cat phase, and of course the various trash pulls all provide opportunities for arms to spread around bleeds and thus extra damage from Blood Frenzy.
  • Combining arms’ mobility and Throwdown‘s 5-second stun means that if you need to get to something and keep it from moving (Sons on Ragnaros, for example), you’re very suited to it.

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The Care and Feeding of Warriors: In arms’ way originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 19 Nov 2011 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Care and Feeding of Warriors: In arms’ way

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Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Care and Feeding of Warriors, the column dedicated to arms, fury and protection warriors. Despite repeated blows to the head from dragons, demons, Old Gods and whatever that thing over there was, Matthew Rossi will be your host.

Last month I was in the middle of discussing arms with you when I got sidetracked. Long-time readers of this column were not surprised that yet again something shiny caught my attention and I went crawling off to follow it like a cat with that stupid red bug that is in no way connected to that device the idiot human keeps waving around. At any rate, with patch 4.3 on its way, I thought it was time to start talking about why you should give arms a shot.

The first thing I did was dedicate myself to raiding and running instances and doing Battlegrounds as arms more or less exclusively, which I’ve done for the entire month of November to date. Having done this, I can report the following:

  • Arms is still lagging behind other melee in terms of DPS. It’s not terrible, mind — I don’t embarrass myself as arms — but on fights where fury can pull 28k, arms is lucky to pull 24k or less. What we saw in the state of Firelands DPS post holds true. Arms doesn’t perform as well as melee DPS specs that are getting buffed in 4.3, even though arms itself will see no such buffs.
  • However, it’s not all bad. Since arms has two bleeds (Rend and Deep Wounds) and a debuff that increased bleed damage taken (Blood Frenzy), if you have to move out of melee range to avoid splash damage or to switch targets, arms can actually fare better than fury.
  • Blood and Thunder means that when properly played, arms can hit a surprising amount of adds with Rend. Rhyolith adds, Rageface and Riplimb’s coming into range of Shannox, Majordomo Staghelm’s cat phase, and of course the various trash pulls all provide opportunities for arms to spread around bleeds and thus extra damage from Blood Frenzy.
  • Combining arms’ mobility and Throwdown‘s 5-second stun means that if you need to get to something and keep it from moving (Sons on Ragnaros, for example), you’re very suited to it.

Continue reading The Care and Feeding of Warriors: In arms’ way

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The Care and Feeding of Warriors: In arms’ way originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 19 Nov 2011 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Care and Feeding of Warriors: In arms’ way

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Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Care and Feeding of Warriors, the column dedicated to arms, fury and protection warriors. Despite repeated blows to the head from dragons, demons, Old Gods and whatever that thing over there was, Matthew Rossi will be your host.

Last month I was in the middle of discussing arms with you when I got sidetracked. Long-time readers of this column were not surprised that yet again something shiny caught my attention and I went crawling off to follow it like a cat with that stupid red bug that is in no way connected to that device the idiot human keeps waving around. At any rate, with patch 4.3 on its way, I thought it was time to start talking about why you should give arms a shot.

The first thing I did was dedicate myself to raiding and running instances and doing Battlegrounds as arms more or less exclusively, which I’ve done for the entire month of November to date. Having done this, I can report the following:

  • Arms is still lagging behind other melee in terms of DPS. It’s not terrible, mind — I don’t embarrass myself as arms — but on fights where fury can pull 28k, arms is lucky to pull 24k or less. What we saw in the state of Firelands DPS post holds true. Arms doesn’t perform as well as melee DPS specs that are getting buffed in 4.3, even though arms itself will see no such buffs.
  • However, it’s not all bad. Since arms has two bleeds (Rend and Deep Wounds) and a debuff that increased bleed damage taken (Blood Frenzy), if you have to move out of melee range to avoid splash damage or to switch targets, arms can actually fare better than fury.
  • Blood and Thunder means that when properly played, arms can hit a surprising amount of adds with Rend. Rhyolith adds, Rageface and Riplimb’s coming into range of Shannox, Majordomo Staghelm’s cat phase, and of course the various trash pulls all provide opportunities for arms to spread around bleeds and thus extra damage from Blood Frenzy.
  • Combining arms’ mobility and Throwdown‘s 5-second stun means that if you need to get to something and keep it from moving (Sons on Ragnaros, for example), you’re very suited to it.

Continue reading The Care and Feeding of Warriors: In arms’ way

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The Care and Feeding of Warriors: In arms’ way originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 19 Nov 2011 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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6 reasons you should care about patch 4.3, even if you don’t raid

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Patch 4.3 is cruising down the lane toward us. It won’t be too much longer before we all get to update our mods and game clients, all the while cursing the inevitable server interruptions and instability. But when we weather that troubling Tuesday, we’ll all have the gift of patch 4.3 to keep us entertained for many moons.

The question is, why should non-raiders care about patch 4.3? After all, another raiding tier just isn’t exciting to folks who prefer 5-man dungeons, solo questing, and a little side PvP. The good news is that patch 4.3 contains huge stacks of cool stuff for casual players. In many ways, this new content patch is the most exciting addition to the game for non-raiders since Cataclysm itself was released.

Let’s talk about all the things patch 4.3 offers players … even if you don’t happen to raid.

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6 reasons you should care about patch 4.3, even if you don’t raid originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 17 Nov 2011 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Snapshots of tanking tomorrow

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Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Care and Feeding of Warriors, the column dedicated to arms, fury and protection warriors. Despite repeated blows to the head from dragons, demons, Old Gods and whatever that thing over there was, Matthew Rossi will be your host.

There’s been a lot of news about class balance lately. Not only did the devs do a live Q&A recently (here are the important — that is, the warrior-related — answers), but they’ve also been commenting and clarifying on the forums. There’s a lot of interesting stuff to consider, and so here we go considering it and the ramifications it all brings or will bring. Here’s just one example.

Daxxari – Mastery Raid Buff
Quote:
Q: “Currently block is a superior mastery to Blood Shield and Savage Defense. Are there any plans to bring the masteries closer together?”

A: Yes, in 5.0. Block capping and mastery in general is currently too good for warriors and paladins. We think tank balance is close enough in 4.3 that dramatic overhauls could make matters worse. In 5.0 we will change things.



Right now, mastery is decent for arms, terrible for fury, and very solid for protection warriors. Apparently, it’s too good for protection right now. While both paladins and warriors use block somewhat differently (Critical Block and Shield Block work together very well), it’s pretty easy for either to get pretty high block. Since the active mitigation tanking model didn’t manifest in time for patch 4.3, it seems likely that the mastery and block issue will be addressed when that rolls out. It’s frustrating, but right now all we can do is wait and see.

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The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Snapshots of tanking tomorrow originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 12 Nov 2011 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Best things about warriors

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Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Care and Feeding of Warriors, the column dedicated to arms, fury and protection warriors. Despite repeated blows to the head from dragons, demons, Old Gods and whatever that thing over there was, Matthew Rossi will be your host.

We talked about how specializations will work for us warrior folks in Mists of Pandaria last week, so this week I wanted to ground us. So I turned to the lovely folks on Twitter and asked them what they thought we should talk about. Some of the topics they suggested would make full-fledged columns of their own, but others can be handled in bite-sized chunks. That’s what I’m going to do today.

Please remember you can always find me on twitter at @matthewwrossi if you want to pose me a question. I’ll do my best to answer one way or another.

@Neener_nina asked: what race/gender combinations look best in plate? For both factions?

Well, it’s no secret I’m a sucker for Tauren. I generally think that big, blocky races look the best in plate because it allows for all the detail to really show. But to be fair, let’s do a best to worst ranking for both factions, completely and totally biased, and let you see what I think and why.

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The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Best things about warriors originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 05 Nov 2011 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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