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.