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The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Proc weapons and the future of itemization
Joystiq Proc weapons have a long and storied tradition in World of Warcraft but they've also somewhat fallen from favor, since they're never as reliable and predictable as pure stats. People would argue the Blackhand Doomsaw vs. Arcanite Reaper into the small … |
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.
For the first time since the brief period following the launch of the pre-Cataclysm patch, arms has achieved parity with fury as a PvE DPS spec. Granted, this required a painful mauling to fury’s DPS output and relies heavily on arms’ ludicrous AoE potential as well as getting your hands on a Gurthalak. The proc on the weapon can add as much as 15% of your current DPS; in raids and on heroics, I’ve seen the Tentacle of the Old Gods put out more DPS than Rend and Deep wounds combined. Even on a high-trash dungeon where you can use Blood and Thunder to spread Rend around, Tentacle can still put out a respectable 5% to 6% of your total damage.
The sword is just as good for fury (I did in fact try out a fury build with it off-hand to test if it procced, and it did, quite frequently). While it won’t make up for the nerf fury took, it does put me in mind of weapons like Bryntroll and Shadowmourne, proc weapons that did excellent damage in a warrior’s hands from the end of the ICC era. I’ll admit it’s unfair to use Shadowmourne as an exemplar here, as the weapon was a legendary, but that’s OK — this isn’t meant to be a pure comparison.
Proc weapons have a long and storied tradition in World of Warcraft but they’ve also somewhat fallen from favor, since they’re never as reliable and predictable as pure stats. People would argue the Blackhand Doomsaw vs. Arcanite Reaper into the small hours back then. But I think Dragon Soul’s two proc weapons (Gurthalak and Souldrinker) have me thinking a lot about where weapon itemization has been and where it’s going, and what that means for us warriors.
Continue reading The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Proc weapons and the future of itemization
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Proc weapons and the future of itemization originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 17 Dec 2011 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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.
Continue reading The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Leveling from 1 to 60 after Cataclysm
Filed under: Warrior, Analysis / Opinion, (Warrior) The Care and Feeding of Warriors, Cataclysm
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.
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.
Continue reading The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Leveling from 1 to 60 after Cataclysm
Filed under: Warrior, Analysis / Opinion, (Warrior) The Care and Feeding of Warriors, Cataclysm
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.
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.
Continue reading The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Talents in Mists of Pandaria
Filed under: Warrior, Analysis / Opinion, (Warrior) The Care and Feeding of Warriors, Mists of Pandaria
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.
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.
Filed under: Warrior, BlizzCon, (Warrior) The Care and Feeding of Warriors, Mists of Pandaria
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.
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:
Continue reading The Care and Feeding of Warriors: In arms’ way
Filed under: Warrior, Analysis / Opinion, (Warrior) The Care and Feeding of Warriors, Cataclysm, Mists of Pandaria
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.
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:
Continue reading The Care and Feeding of Warriors: In arms’ way
Filed under: Warrior, Analysis / Opinion, (Warrior) The Care and Feeding of Warriors, Cataclysm, Mists of Pandaria
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.
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:
Continue reading The Care and Feeding of Warriors: In arms’ way
Filed under: Warrior, Analysis / Opinion, (Warrior) The Care and Feeding of Warriors, Cataclysm, Mists of Pandaria
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.
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 BuffA: 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.
Continue reading The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Snapshots of tanking tomorrow
Filed under: Warrior, Analysis / Opinion, (Warrior) The Care and Feeding of Warriors, Cataclysm, Mists of Pandaria
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.