WTF Lycannon?

Yeah, I know. I don't forget to update so much as I get caught up doing other things. I'm a terrible person.

I could talk about the changes they're thinking about for warriors. I could rage about how rage normalization is scary, but I wasn't around when it was (if that tells you anything about how long I've been playing this game). I could talk about rend dancing, and how it actually gives you a DPS increase if you know how to use it. Don't worry newbies, that's not for you.

Instead of all the technical stuff, I'm actually going to talk about why I even like playing, and role playing, a warrior. What's so special about them? They don't use magic to defeat their foes. No shiny lasers or sparkles to heal people with. Warriors are nasty, gritty juggernauts. Some are more disciplined and refined in their practice, while others are mindless, berserking killing machines who tear through whatever, however. They are the most basic of fighters, and if you can pick up a weapon, you can be one too.

Warriors don't need to skulk around in the shadows to kill their foes. They are up front and in your face. Killing seems to come natural for them, and being covered in blood and gristle at the end of the day comes with the job. They aren't always noble, but they always seem to have a reason to fight and kill. (Even the berserkers). 

I've always liked the warrior class, no matter what game I was playing. Standing far away and shooting stuff at my enemy never appealed to me. I guess I could blame my mom for that. She's always had a thing for mythology, especially Greek mythology. Her favorite goddess is Athena (or Minerva, for you Roman lovers). Now, if you know anything about her, she's the goddess of war, wisdom, and heroic deeds. I knew this ever since I could remember, and I grew up with that. It's not surprising that I too like the idea of a female heroine who isn't afraid to get mean.

Enter: Lycannon. She's not a new character. In fact, I created her a long time ago for a forum based Sci-Fi RP. For this, though, we'll use her draenei incarnation. She used to throw sparkles at people (Paladin), then terrible things happened (Battle of Shattrath) and she turned into a vengeful, dangerous bitch (Fury Warrior). She's mentally unstable with a deadly lust for blood and battle. When she's fighting, she teeters on the edge of completely losing all self control and killing everything in sight, be it friend or foe. She's a good person (really), she just has a huge chip on her shoulder. Really huge. Like, sun huge.

Of course, I've developed this character since that original idea. One day, her friend invited her to go on a mission under the lead of a particular Corporal McSars. This old man was a grizzled war veteran who didn't give a damn about anyone. Lycannon eye rolled and wanted to show him up. In the end, they impressed each other. Throw in some playful jibes, flirting, lust, and general relationship progression, and you have two angry warriors who love each other very much. Awww.

Since then, I've gotten better at playing the warrior class, and better at what I wanted Lyc to be as a character. With the end of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion on the horizon, I figured that the release of Cataclysm would be the perfect opportunity to 'fix' all that I felt was wrong with Lycannon, both RP and game play wise. I never liked Titan's Grip, and I think that I've let her be psycho long enough.

So, she's dead. I'm not sure I'll bring her back. I may continue playing the character, but I may not role play her. I could also be saying this to bullshit you. Maybe. I dunno.

TL;DR version: I love warriors. I love role play. I love role playing warriors. So should you.

Cataclysm Class Preview: Warrior Follow-Up

Ouote Bornakk:

Here are some follow ups based on what is being discussed.

Q: Will the rotation for a Fury Warrior just be Bloodthirst and Slam with Heroic Strike to burn off rage?
A: We think Fury is going to end up needing another attack in there for single-target fights. Furious Sundering was intended more as having to Sunder being less of a penalty, but at only 3 stacks, it may not end up being a big deal and we don’t want Fury to feel like they have to purchase a talent that they may not always use. We don’t want Whirlwind to be a good button against single targets however. It essentially gets “free” damage against groups of targets when it’s effective at using against single targets. It’s okay if warriors still do more damage in fights where they can use Cleave and similar attacks often, but right now it’s too extreme.

Q: Are one-handed Fury warriors going to be competing with rogues for one-handed weapons?
A: This is unlikely. Rogues and shaman will want one-handers with Agility, while warriors and death knights will want them with Strength. I won’t be surprised when one of these classes picks up the other’s weapon as it could be an upgrade simply based on the damage, but it won’t be optimal.

Q: Why are warriors not getting some kind of AoE tanking tool?
A: We think the newly buffed Thunder Clap plus Shockwave are sufficient abilities for AoE tanking. The design of Vengeance should make sure that threat generation doesn’t start to slip behind as the dps characters gear up. It’s not our intention that tanks face a constant struggle to generate enough threat, even in group situations, but we also don’t want threat to be totally irrelevant either. The danger for tanking too many creatures should also be tank death not threat management.

Q: Is only Sunder Armor being changed?
A: Rogue Expose Armor and other abilities that apply a similar debuff are being changed accordingly. They will all provide the same debuff at 12% armor reduction.

Q: What about rage loss when changing stances?
A: We still want the act of changing stances to require more consideration than just clicking two buttons to use the ability you want. One idea we are going to explore is that you don’t lose rage when you change stances, but you won’t gain additional rage for a short period of time after changing. This lets you say swap to do an Execute without losing your rage bar, but still keeps the idea that shifting constantly comes with inherent efficiency risks.

Q: Is the intent of Gushing Wound that warriors constantly ask for targets to be kited around?
A: No, it’s intended to be a bonus when you’re in an encounter where the target either moves around a lot (Ex. BONNNNE STORMMMM-ing Marrowgar) or just has to be moved around a lot (say Lich King). Warriors shouldn’t have the expectation of forcing every PvE opponent to move but it would be entertaining to watch this (from a third party perspective). :)

Cataclysm Class Preview: Warrior

Our favorite class was just posted over on the Blizzard Cataclysm forums not too long ago. I'll post the preview and the Q&A, then /discuss. Quote Bornakk:

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will bring with it several changes to class talents and abilities. Here you will get a glimpse into some of the changes we have in store for the warrior. The information you're about to read is not complete, and is only meant to act as a preview for some of the exciting new things to come.

New Warrior Abilities

Inner Rage (Level 81): Whenever the character reaches a full 100 Rage, he or she will gain a buff that causes attacks to consume 50% more Rage and do 15% more damage for a short amount of time. This is a passive ability so it won't need to be activated by the player. The goal for this ability is to provide a benefit for hitting max Rage instead of it feeling like a penalty. However, we also don't want warriors to feel like they're supposed to pool Rage and do nothing until they hit 100, so we'll be closely monitoring how this plays out during the beta testing, and making adjustments as needed.


Gushing Wound (Level 83): This ability will apply a bleed effect to the target. If the target moves, the bleed gains an extra stack and refreshes its duration, up to a maximum of three stacks. The ability is currently planned to have no cooldown, cost 10 Rage, and have a 9-second duration. Gushing Wound is designed to be weaker than Rend with one stack, but better with three stacks, which will be reached when fighting a moving target.


Heroic Leap (Level 85): This ability makes the character leap at their target and apply the Thunder Clap ability to all enemies in the area when they land. Heroic Leap will be usable in Battle Stance and shares a cooldown with Charge, but the Juggernaut and Warbringer talents will allow Heroic Leap to be used in any stance and possibly while in combat. The cooldown for this ability might be longer than the Charge ability, but it will also apply a stun effect so you can make sure the target will still be there when you land.

Changes to Abilities and Mechanics

In addition to learning new abilities, you'll see changes to other abilities and mechanics with which you're already familiar. This list and the summary of talent changes below it are by no means comprehensive, but they should give you a good sense of what we intend for each spec.

• Heroic Strike will no longer be an "on next swing" attack, as we are removing this mechanic in Cataclysm. To keep the niche of Heroic Strike as a Rage dump, it will become an instant attack, but will cost between 10 and 30 Rage. This ability will not be usable until you have 10 Rage, but if you have more than 10, it will consume up to 30, adding additional damage for each point of Rage consumed above the base 10. Other abilities, such as Cleave, Execute, and Maul (for druids) will work similarly. The goal is to provide players with an option where if you can't afford the Rage, you don't push the button, but if you have excess Rage, you can push it a lot.
• Battle Shout, Commanding Shout, and possibly Demoralizing Shout will work more like the death knight's Horn of Winter ability. Specifically, these shouts will cost no resources, generate rage in addition to their current effects, and be on a short cooldown.
• Whirlwind will hit an unlimited number of targets, but only for 50% of weapon damage. The intent is for this ability to be used in multi-target scenarios and not on single targets.
• Overall, heals cast by players in Cataclysm will be a lower number relative to players' health than the current game. So to make the Mortal Strike debuff less mandatory but still useful in PvP, Mortal Strike will reduce healing by only 20%. All equivalent debuffs, including the Shadow priest and Frost mage debuffs, will be for 20% less healing. At the moment we aren't considering giving this debuff to anyone else, though we will certainly consider PvP utility for historically under-represented specs that use other mechanics.
• Sunder Armor will be reduced to three stacks instead of five, and still provide only a 4% reduction in armor per stack. We want to make this debuff easier to apply and less of a damage swing when it falls off.

New Talents and Talent Changes

• The Furious Sundering talent in the Fury tree will make the Sunder Armor ability cause 25/50% weapon damage and reduce the threat generated by 50/100%.
• The Mace and Poleaxe Specialization talents in the Arms tree will be removed. These provided just passive stats, which are not the kinds of talents we want to design in the future. We will keep the Sword Specialization talent, but it will be changed to a talent that applies to all types of weapons.
• As a Fury talent, Booming Voice will increase the Rage generated by shouts.
• While we like how Titan's Grip plays, we recognize some warriors liked the Fury tree because of the really fast swings that dual-wielding one-handed weapons could provide. Therefore, we're planning to try out a talent called Single-Minded Fury that is parallel to Titan's Grip and will provide a large boost to the damage of a pair of one-handed weapons.
• Several talents that reduce the Rage cost of abilities will be changed to focus on increased damage for those abilities instead.
• The new Arms talent called Disarming Nature will make successful disarms cause the target to cower in fear for 5/10 seconds.
• Another new Arms talent called Blitz will make the Charge ability hit for extra damage. The amount will possibly vary depending on the distance travelled.
• Improved Pummel, a Fury talent, will cause a successful interrupt to generate 10/20 Rage.

Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses

Arms

• Melee Damage
• Armor Penetration
• Bonus Swing

Bonus Swing: This is similar to the Sword Specialization talent that is currently in the game, but Bonus Swing will work on all attacks and with all weapons. You have a chance to proc a free, instant weapon swing that hits for 50% damage.

Fury

• Melee Damage
• Melee Haste
• Enrage Intensity

Enrage Intensity: Every benefit of being enraged is increased. This includes doing more damage/healing/ etc. from abilities like Bloodrage, Death Wish, Enrage, Berserker Rage, and Enraged Regeneration.

Protection

• Damage Reduction
• Vengeance
• Critical Block Chance

Critical Block Chance: As we mentioned in the stat changes preview, block rating is changing to a chance to block 30% of a melee swing's damage. Protection warriors have a chance that the block will be a critical block and block for 60% of a melee swing's damage instead. There will likely be talents available to push the amount blocked even higher.

Vengeance: This is a mechanic to ensure that tank damage (and therefore threat) doesn't fall behind as damage-dealing classes improve their gear during the course of the expansion. All tanking specs will have Vengeance as their second talent tree passive bonus. Whenever a tank gets hit, Vengeance will give them a stacking attack power buff equal to 5% of the damage done, up to a maximum of 10% of the character's un-buffed health. For boss encounters, we expect that tanks will always have the attack power bonus equal to 10% of their health. The 5% and 10% bonuses assume 51 talent points have been put into the Protection tree. These values will be smaller at lower levels. Remember, you only get this bonus if you have spent the most talent points in the Protection tree, so you won't see Arms or Fury warriors running around with it. Vengeance will let us continue to make tank gear more or less the way we do today – there will be some damage-dealing stats, but mostly survival-oriented stats. Druids typically have more damage-dealing stats even on their tanking gear, so their Vengeance benefit may be smaller, but overall the goal is for all four tanks do about the same damage when tanking.

We hope you enjoyed this preview, and we're looking forward to hearing your thoughts and feedback on these additions and changes. Please keep in mind that this information represents a work in progress and is subject to change as development on Cataclysm continues.

Why Are They Pigs?

It actually surprises me when I see blogs or forum posts complaining about why the warrior Tier 10 shoulder plates are pigs, or more correctly, boars. It seems a lot more apparent than the talk about the Tier 8 ram shoulders, and that's probably because the design is much more simple (more or less), and not as 'pretty'.

Still, I haven't found one post that actually explains the reasoning behind this. Is it because Blizzard thinks warriors are supposed to be untamed and wild or something? Well, sort of. I'll start from the top.

In the actual World of Warcraft Roleplaying Game, there are such things as barbarians. Quote WoWWiki:

"The barbarian is a ferocious warrior. He is uncivilized and brutal, relying on instincts, anger and raw physical might instead of tactics or fancy swordsmanship. His rage is frightening to behold, and it allows him to smash apart his enemies while ignoring all but the most brutal blows. He has a connection with nature's primal elements; this class is most commonly found among races that dwell in the wild." 

Sounds a lot like a Fury warrior, right? Well, if you go to the actual WoWWiki page on Barbarians and scroll down a bit (Hopefully you'll read the information on the page as well), you'll notice it has links to 'notable' barbarians. The first one listed is Agamaggan. Does this name sound familiar? Those of you who played before the introduction of the instant dungeon grouping might remember having to fight through the gauntlet of Quilboars if you wanted to run Razorfen Downs. You may also remember the skull above the entrance to the instance. Of course, this is only speculation that it is even an actual skull, but it is thought to belong to Agamaggan.

Now, Agamaggan was a giant boar demigod. No, really. 

This same picture is on the WoWWiki page about him, and was taken from the Warcraft RPG books. If you read the page, it mentions how Agamaggan was "a juggernaut of raw strength", and that he "assaulted the stronghold of Azshara, the Eternal Palace, slaying thousands of Doomguards and Felguards with fury."

Is this the official Blizzard reason why warriors have pigs on their shoulders? No. It's just my theory, it makes sense to me, and I'm going to stick by it until they say otherwise. Lore for armor? Feels good.

Rage Normalization

How many of you Vanilla and early Burning Crusade warriors cringe when you see those two words together? How many of you end up saying "I really hope they don't normalize rage again" when you start talking about warrior mechanics? Well guess what. Via MMO-Champion:

We are going to take the opportunity in Cataclysm to try and fix some of the problems with the Rage mechanic for both warriors and druids. Some of these problems include:

• Warriors/druids in the lowest levels of gear can be Rage-starved.
• Warriors/druids in the highest levels of gear no longer have to manage their Rage when it becomes infinite.
• Warrior/druid tanks lose Rage income as they improve their gear and take less damage.
• The gameplay of warrior and druid tanks loses a lot of depth when massive boss hits means never having to manage Rage.
• Heroic Strike and Maul are effective, but tedious abilities for using up extra Rage.
• In general, warriors and druids don’t have enough control over their Rage.

To resolve these issues, Rage will be normalized in Cataclysm. This will make the Rage gained by characters more consistent and avoid drastic differences between low-end and high-end gear.

The concept of normalized Rage may leave a negative impression on some veteran players, as we tried it once before in The Burning Crusade and it wasn't successful, resulting in them feeling weakened. However, we think that the concept is still sound -- it was just that the previous implementation didn't balance the values correctly, leading to players being Rage-starved. That is not the goal. As part of the change, we want to give warriors and druids a lot of ways to control their rage, so even in the worst-case scenarios they won’t feel like they lack the resource to do their job.

Here are some of the ways the Rage mechanic will change in Cataclysm:

1) Rage is no longer generated based on damage done by auto-attacks. Instead, each auto-attack provides a set amount of Rage, and off-hand weapons will generate 50% of the Rage main hands do. This amount is based on a constant formula which factors in the base swing speed of the weapon. This means the Rage gained should be averaged out between fast and slow weapons. The constant formula also gives us the ability to easily increase the rage gained if it feels too low (or reduce it if is too high). We are also implementing the following mechanics, which will still allow rage to improve to some extent as you improve gear:



• If the attack is a critical strike, it will generate 200% Rage.
• Haste will accelerate swing times to generate Rage faster.

2) Rage from damage taken will no longer be based on a standard creature of the character’s level, but instead will be based on the health of the warrior or druid. Again, there is a constant that is multiplied by the rage generated in order to allow for fine-tuning. This calculation ignores all damage reduction from armor, absorption, avoidance, block, or similar mechanics, so improving your gear will not reduce Rage gained.

3) We will provide warriors and druids with more instant sources of rage. For example, the warrior shouts are changing to work more like the death knight ability Horn of Winter. Instead of Battle Shout consuming Rage, it will generate Rage but have a short cooldown. Both classes will have additional methods to generate Rage in an emergency or bleed off Rage when they have too much.

4) All “on next swing” attacks in Cataclysm are being removed. Heroic Strike and Maul will be instant swings that cost a variable amount of Rage. For example, imagine Heroic Strike costs between 10 and 30 Rage. You must have at least 10 Rage to use the attack, but it will consume all available Rage up to a maximum of 30. Any Rage consumed above the minimum will cause the ability to hit harder, and in some cases much harder. We will tune the ability so that it’s generally not a good idea to hit it when you have low Rage (unless everything else is somehow on cooldown) but becomes a more attractive button the higher your Rage.

We understand this change may be scary for many players, but keep in mind that the constants in the formulas for gaining Rage will give us the ability to make quick adjustments if we feel Rage generation is too low. Our goal is for each character's Rage to not be always high or always low, but rather a resource that needs to be managed properly by the player.

They're doing it again. Let's hope what they get it right this time.

Patch 3.3.3 and Warriors

Long time, no see. I let a fair amount of time pass since I last posted, and this was to allow my guild a little bit more progression into Icecrown Citadel, as well as see where the finalization of Patch 3.3.3 was going to put warriors. So far, we've gotten every sub-boss down on 25 man difficulty, and have come close to downing Professor Putricide and Blood Queen Lana'thel. We have downed everything up to Sindragosa on 10 man.

That being said, I also managed to obtain quite a few gear upgrades since then. I finally crafted my Shadow's Edge, and I also got Cryptmaker to round out my BiS until we down the Lich King. Landsoul has what he considers the ICC BiS gear for both Arms and Fury up on Elitist Jerks, and he has included pre-Arthas and heroic loot as well. If you are progressing as a DPS warrior, take the time to stop and check it out. There is also a link to download his spreadsheet so you can figure out what gear will optimize your damage output with what gear you currently have, and can obtain.

I've also changed what was going to be my PvP Arms spec to Protection to tank for our ICC 10 mans. As it turns out, the recruits we've been getting have been extremely flaky, and I suppose those who are already a part of our core 25 man team that tried out their respective tanking specs just didn't like it enough to volunteer full time as a 10 man raid tank. To be honest, I completely understand that. In Burning Crusade, I leveled my warrior from 1-70 as a tank, and then tanked a few raids as both main and off-tank. It can be extremely difficult, as your actions decide whether or not the DPS and/or healers die or not. Dealing with DPS who explode out of the gate with as much AoE power as they possibly can before you get your Thunderclap or Shockwave down is indeed stressful, and requires a lot of focus and practice to keep your mobs from picking your raid members off like fleas. I've had a nice break from tanking, and seeing as how I have my roots in that role and enjoyed it for a long time, I'm ready to pick up the sword and board and have another go. So with that, let's have a look at Patch 3.3.3a and /discuss.

 
Arms

• Bladestorm: Warriors can now be Disarmed while under the effects of this ability.
• Trauma: The debuff from this talent now lasts 60 seconds, up from 15 seconds.

Fury

• Rampage: This effect is now passive instead of being a proc from critical strikes.

Protection

• Revenge: Damage done by this ability (base and scaling) increased by 50%.
• Thunderclap: This ability now counts as a ranged attack, granting it double damage on critical strikes instead of 150% and ranged miss chance, and still cannot be dodged or parried.
• Improved Revenge: This talent can no longer trigger a stun, and instead causes Revenge to strike an additional target for 50/100% of Revenge's damage.
• Vitality: Now boosts Stamina by 3/6/9%, up from 2/4/6%. Strength and expertise benefits have not changed.

While Bladestorm got a nerf, it's not something all that unexpected. Arms warriors can be shut down by rogues and other warriors. Well, what else is new? The Trauma buff is nice, especially for Arms warriors who are still leveling and are that far down into the tree who might not have a decent amount of crit to keep the old 15 second 'duration' (fixed for McSars, omfg) up constantly. It also helps out druids and some rogues in high mobility fights where the DPS need to leave the boss in favor of survival, allowing their bleed damage to keep ticking. (Lady Deathwhisper and Prince Valanar come to mind.)

The now passive effect of Rampage is nice, but still useless in a raid where there is a feral druid. Since it is passive, you can't proc Enraged Regeneration anymore off of Rampage.

Warrior tanks are a bit beefier with the increased damage and second target hitting ability that Improved Revenge now gives, as well as the flat stamina increase to Vitality. Of course, the Revenge buff only applies to warriors who take the talent in the first place. A lot of raid tank builds, including mine, pass up Improved Revenge and grab Improved Disciplines for the Shield Wall cooldown. Either way, Imp Revenge is still something to consider if you are generally tanking heroics, and/or leveling a Protection Warrior.

The Lich King is Dead

That's how its starting to look on many servers now that the last wing of Icecrown Citadel has been released. We have a year now, more or less, to wait for Cataclysm to come out.

So what do we do in the meantime? For many people, this involve getting the best gear possible for their class, and doing their part to help clear ICC, then farm it over and over. All in all, the usual when it comes to the end of an expansion.

As for me, I will be doing that, but I want to make sure I get the most out of the content as well. To be honest, WotLK wasn't as exciting to play as BC, even if it revolutionized the way we play the game (at least to some extent). Tanking in BC as a warrior was more fun, because the instances were harder, and tanks weren't homogenized as they are now. (Heroic Shattered Halls, anyone?) I enjoyed dual-wielding one handed weapons as opposed to two ridiculous two handed somethings. The instances just seemed harder, and gear was indeed harder to get. Playing Wrath and looking back on the past year, I can say that it felt like I slept through the whole thing.

It really helps that I role play when the gaming aspect of WoW gets old. Thinking about and acting on how my characters would react to to the exploration of Ulduar, the Argent Tournament, and the fall of the Lich King have all been a lot of fun, especially when you have other people to do it with.

Whirlwind and Emberstorm Battlegroups are Boulderfisted

They went down over an hour ago, and Blizzard says the ETA is 7:30 PM Eastern, so 6:30 server (Moon Guard) time, if I have my regions correct. 

Tuesday, I managed to get Rotface's Acidic Blood for my Shadow's Edge. I also won the Blood-Soaked Saronite Stompers, which is, I believe, our first drop for those. Interestingly enough, I got rather lucky with the win, because the other two people who rolled were also absent for a day or two when I was. In any case, they are a big upgrade to the Grinning Skull Boots from the chest in Heroic Halls of Reflection. When comparing the two, I recieve:

35 Stamina
27 Strength
186 Armor
20 Armor Pen (1.43%)
16 Crit (0.35%)
2 Sockets

And in those two sockets, I gemmed +20 strength each, and finished them off with Icewalker, putting me back at just over the 8% hit cap I need as a DPS warrior before talents and heroic presence. The Stompers are the best plate DPS boots in the game currently, and I wish every warrior good luck with getting them. They are almost too good for their ilevel. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they got nerfed. Really.

We finally downed Festergut this go around, and have only Professor Putricide left before trying the Crimson Halls. Hopefully the servers will be up for tonight for the raid, but if not, that's okay too.

Warrior Threat

This is actually taken from a post I made on my Furious guild forum regarding tanks having to deal with DPS not letting them do their job properly. My companion (McSars) who made the post was completely right about how he felt, and this isn't a rant at him, but more at the fact that warriors are at the bottom of the totem pole when it comes to threat (amongst other things).

"I don't know about the rest of you guys, but I actually explode into retarded amounts of DPS usually under three conditions.

1. When McSars is tanking.

2. When Marius is tanking.

3. When I'm in a raid.

Number one and two are simply because both of these two people are amazing at tanking, and I actually feel safe intercepting and then popping all of my cooldowns, plus cleaving and whirlwind-ing at the same time. Yes, there is a great chance I will pull aggro, and to be honest, it's okay. Really, it's alright. I say this because nine times out of ten, this happens on trash pulls anyway. Very rarely do I pull bosses off of my tanks (which in my honest opinion, is really what matters in instances), and even when I do give chance for some threat build-up on a group of mobs, sometimes I just pull. I (warriors) have no threat reducing abilities outside of clicking off the mobs and hoping the tank can pull them off of me while I stand there getting my face beat in.

Rogues have an innate 29% reduction to threat, and can Vanish and Tricks. Hunters can Misdirect and Feign Death, as well as have pets taunt for them. Priests can Fade, and Shadow Priests have a passive 20% threat reduction. Paladins can bubble and Hand of Sanctuary. Warlocks can Soulshatter. Mages can Iceblock and Invisibility (Not to mention the 40% threat reduction of Arcane). Shamans can use their Stoneclaw and Earth Elemental totems and Wind Shear. Death Knights have an innate 20% threat reduction modifier, untalented, when in Blood or Unholy presences. They can get an additional 24% reduction in those two presences with the Subversion (Blood) talent. Feral Druids can Cower, and both Feral and Balance druids have talents which gives a 30% threat reduction (and all Alliance Druids can Shadowmeld). Now, Battle/Berserker stances have a passive 20% threat reduction (With Improved Berserker Stance giving another 10%), and this is cool except for a few problems. Heroic Strike generates a lot of threat. Whirlwind is not affected by the passive threat reduction, and neither is Execute. Hell, even shouts generate threat, and I have to do them every 2-4 minutes. As I said before, warriors have no threat reducing abilities. Fury is so very explosive, it can be ridiculous sometimes. As of right now, with rampage up all of the time, I have a near 50% chance to crit, which means half of the time you will hear very loud gushes of blood coming from those mobs, and there is nothing I can do about it. That is without Recklessness, Death Wish, and Paragon.

*breathes*

Number three is really just obvious. A raid tank with full buffs should be able to hold a boss off of me.

Now, I'm not saying this to defend myself (okay, maybe a little), but really to say that I get it. I was a tank in Burning Crusade, the expansion where AoE tanking was a nightmare for warriors, and dungeons were full of AoE packs. (Shattered Halls, anyone?) I tanked heroics till my eyes bled, and I was a main tank for the lower end raid instances. That is actually the reason I switched to Fury, was because I was fed up with tanking.

Seriously though, I haven't seen any better tanks than McSars and Marius. They always seem to know what's going on, and they have eyes in the backs of their heads. They also probably have every possible shortcut to pulling aggro off of people bound to the easiest keys, and they probably know all of them, when to use them, how to use them and even when not to use them. By now, they've probably come to expect me and my exploding DPS, which in some ways I imagine makes tanking things in a group with me a bit easier. "Well, Lycannon's here, time to focus her and taunt, since she will most likely be the one sucking up threat." That's what I seem to notice anyway. When my Omen screams at me, I look over at my party frames and 90% of the time, I'm the only one with a red border. Also, Marius is a doctor.

What they might not know, is if in the rare occasion another party member pulls aggro, especially the healer, I will turn and hit that mob with everything I've got, pummel if I have to, and try to bring it to the tank, or they will pull it off me when they realize what happened. (Which goes with what I said earlier.) I will also Challenging Shout off of the tank if he is about to bite the dust, to give the healer time to get them up. If the tank is dying, the healer usually and should focus them first, and I've noticed that because of this, the concept seems to work. Yes, I might die, but that's okay because the tank might not. Believe it or not, I focus my tank all of the time, and I do my best to switch targets when they do. This doesn't always work when two of my top three attacks on mob groups are AoE abilities (Cleave and Whirlwind), but the fact remains that I do try. Also, as I become more geared because I raid, it may also become increasingly more difficult to hold aggro off me as the gap between gear widens. A tank who only does heroics and has badge gear to reflect that may find it hard to keep me off of the top of the threat meter when I'm sitting in ICC 25 stuff.

Some people really are dense when it comes to instancing (hunters and their pets come to mind), and others, like myself, really do understand what is going on. Yes, it can be annoying, but such is the way of the tank, and of the DPS warrior."

It really got me thinking about warrior threat as DPS, and how we need some sort of ability like the other classes have to drop our threat in those 'oh shit' moments. If I have aggro, I usually pop Gift of the Naaru and sometimes Enraged Regeneration at the same time if I'm taking tons of damage, but then that doesn't help reduce my threat at all. If anything, it just adds to it.

The Crimson Halls, Quel'Delar and Shadow's Edge

Today is Tuesday, and we all know what that means. The servers are going to be down for 8 hours today, and the Crimson Halls will be opening in Icecrown Citadel. This wing consists of The Blood Princes (Keleseth, Valanar, and Taldaram) and Blood Queen Lana'thel. It is to my understanding that this week is the same difficulty as The Plagueworks, but I'm not sure on that. As of right now, my guild has only managed to down Rotface on 25 man, and we came close to getting Festergut. We haven't even touched Professor Putricide yet, but I imagine we will be able to see him this week, given we get more gear and such.

I also managed to obtain Quel'Delar, Might of the Faithful yesterday, and it replaced my Justicebringer as my mainhand. My Sharpened Obsidian Edged Blade finally gets put to rest in my bank with the rest of my old weapons. With the new sword, I saw my DPS jump up by about 1000 in heroics today, putting me at about 5.5k on average. I think this just goes to show exactly how important it is for warriors to have good weapons, more so than just good armor. The weapon is the single most important piece of equipment we can have, as it can make or break us in DPS and damage done. Don't get me wrong, better gear obviously means better performance, but I think the weapon comes first when it comes to upgrades for a warrior, especially one who is DPS.

That being said, since I already have my two-piece Tier 10, I plan on using the rest of my frost emblems for obtaining Shadow's Edge, or rather, the 25 Primordial Saronite required to make it. So far, I have about 3, and will have 4 after my druid completes one more daily random heroic. Yes, I am using my other level 80 characters to help me gather the saronite, as they are my alt characters and my warrior is my main (and the only one who raids). That being said, my warrior will still be my chief source of Frost Emblems, but I should be able to get Shadow's Edge fairly quickly anyway with the help of my alts. If you're seeking this axe on any particular character, I suggest thinking about using any other 80s you have to buy some saronite. It will speed it up!

Now if you'll excuse me, I have some RP stories to write up.

WoW Armory Updated

They did a good job with the Armory, I think. WoWhead already had a model viewer on their site, and you could see the stats of your gear there as well. Blizzard got the memo, and finally updated to match. They also fixed the character stats so that they would display correctly.

Mhm.

Protection warriors? Let's nerf them too.

Hah. First, I apologize for my long absence. As it often happens, the real world called, and I needed to come running.

Now, I did say I wouldn't mention much (if anything) about tanks here, but they are adding another blow to our favorite class. They are making changes to Warbringer, and essentially nerfing the DPS of Shield Slam.

Of course, as stated here, it will only really effect warrior tanks who stack block value. Now, who in the world does that for PvE? I mean really. Block value is even a stat? Can you tell how sarcasm doesn't transfer well in text? It was mentioned by the all-knowing Ghostcrawler, to boot. Yes, he really hates us.

In the name of PvP. My amazing tank of a companion is having a heart attack about Shield Slam, and all I can do is scoot over on the nerf bench and offer him a seat. Well, he's a warrior who played in vanilla, so maybe he was there before me.
Anyway, it's being tested internally, which means there isn't anything on the PTR on it yet. That also means that there is a 90% chance that they will go through with it, and put it on live servers (if I know anything about how Blizzard 'fixes' warriors.)

A poster on the blizzard forums commented about the state of Prot Warrior DPS, and how if it was higher, it could help make the difference in downing a boss or not. Blizzard's reply? Here. Read for yourself. The short of it is: "Um, make your DPS do their job better, hohoho." Yeah, minus the Fury and Arms warriors, of course.

On the upside, they are adding an Ashen Verdict strength ring in the next minor content patch...and that's about it.

Hang in there, my warrior friends. Cataclysm will be here soon enough. Let's just hope they don't normalize rage. Again.