Down... But Not Out

If anyone plays a warrior in arena, you know how much it sucks if you don't have a Gurthalak, and even then it still sucks. If you play Fury in raids, you know how frustrating it is to have to depend on said sword for decent DPS. Do you play SMF? I'm sorry, here's a puppy to make you feel better.

Arms hasn't been able to keep up with Fury for a long while, not since the beginnings of Wrath when they were about equal. Finally, again, Arms is beating the shit out of Fury in DPS, and it's not because Arms got better, it's because Fury got worse. The nerf to Dual Wield spec punched us in the face, and the bug fix laid us out. Yes, bugs need to be fixed, but it left the Fury spec reeling with a sense of false accomplishment without compensation. Put that with starved Fury rage regen, terrible AoE (even when specced), the crap Tier 13 four piece for Bloodthirst, reliance on unreliable proc weapons, plus Arms' ability to hit the 24% hit cap where Fury cannot without further gimping itself, and you are left with the worst melee DPS spec currently in the game: Single-Minded Fury.

My old RP partner would probably laugh at me right now as he always favored Arms over Fury, and I could just swap specs and Bladestorm abuse my way back to the top, but I don't want to do that. I play SMF because I've always preferred the playstyle, and when I wasn't tanking in Burning Crusade, I was Fury. It's always been a constant cycle of up and down for every class in WoW, and this is no different. I enjoy my times at the top, and figure out what I can do better or what went wrong while I'm at the bottom. If you're lucky you'll have a raid group that understands and lets you keep your slot just because they love you... Either that or they're dumb and won't kick you out. In the end, if you love to play Fury and have enough alcohol skill and patience, the blow to Fury won't be so severe, and it won't really matter. You can still smash DPS against subpar players (unless it's a subpar Arms warrior... Then you just kind of smash them).

Pop your gum girl. Pop your gum.

Return of the Legion?

EDIT: Bam. Confirmed Eye of the Legion and Demon Hunter's Aspect are TCG items. Thank you WoW Insider.

Yesterday, MMO-Champion put up information they datamined from the upcoming patch (4.3.2), and some of the items they found really caught my eye.

The Feldrake, a flying mount (recolored black drake):

The Eye of the Legion, a companion pet (eye of Kil'rogg):

And the Demon Hunter's Aspect, which makes you look like a demon hunter for 5 minutes.

These three things are what I would expect to see in the best WoW expansion of all time The Burning Crusade. The Feldrake has the symbol of the Legion floating over its head and on its saddle, The Eye of the Legion is pretty self explanatory, and the Demon Hunter's Aspect screams Illidan. With Mists of Pandaria being the next expansion, supposedly focusing more on Horde vs. Alliance than any other expansion of WoW, what the hell are Burning Legion related things doing popping up in the files for the next patch?

Thone of Kil'jaden

Of course, when I saw these three things, I nearly had a heart attack. Burning Legion? Upcoming patch? Could this mean more Draenei lore? Seeing the Feldrake, I already started to come up with theories as to how it was possible. It's a black dragon skin, maybe it is one of the black dragons from Deathwing's clutch sent to Draenor? The Legion was pushed back, but not defeated in the Burning Crusade. After all, everyone knows Kil'Jaeden really slipped on a banana peel and fell back into the Sunwell. Sargeras is still floating around somewhere. Is the surfacing of this mount and the other two items along with it a sign of the Burning legion regrouping for another assault on Azeroth? WILL THERE BE DRAENEI LORE?!

Honestly? I don't think so. The mount, the pet and the use-effect seem like trading card game items, though usually the TCG themes follow what is going on in World of Warcraft. (Scourgwar for Wrath of the Lich King, Worldbreaker for Cataclysm, etc.) Perhaps the Legion will make a brief visit to introduce Mists of Pandaria, not unlike the scourge invasion and elemental events before the release of the previous expansions. If so, is that Blizzard's way of trying to tell us, "Hey, the Legion is still out there guys. Don't forget that while you're busy tickling pandas."? Perhaps. It may be part of the next Kil'jaeden or Halion raid that got released after the supposed 'end' of the expansion. (Though Halion was used as a pre-cursor to Cataclysm, followed by the elemental invasion.)

I'm excited to see where the Feldrake, Eye of the Legion and Demon Hunter's Aspect fit into the game currently. Hopefully it won't be stupid, but I'm prepared for a letdown. Blizzard did make a blue post about lore on the forums, and we'll see where it takes us.