I've had a few people bugging me about 3.0.2 Arms/Fury builds, personally I'm going to go with an 0/53/8 build, I think Arms might be very strong, but I'm interested in how TG will perform, and I have the gear to support it fully hit-capped, assuming that the change to TG to be 12% miss penalty makes it to live. The style between BC Fury->WotLK Fury hasn't changed much at all, except now we don't have to keep Rampage up and there's an occasional Insta Slam(Which makes up 1-5% of your damage, buff please. -_-). If you were Dual Wield Fury before the patch, you need to make the transition over to TG, or stick to Arms, Dual Wielding your 1-handers will not net you the same result as it does on live, unless you're rocking Warglaives. :)
If you're going with an Arms build, you should know that the learning curve is much steeper then on Live atm with the Slam after Auto-attack. Slam no longer resets your swing timer, and just delays your swing, it's one of those abilities you can use when you have nothing better to do now. Keeping Rend up is important, might want to get yourself a mod to monitor that if you don't have one already. MS takes priority, Bladestorm on CD, Overpower when you can(pay close attention to when rend procs one), Slam when nothing else is up. If my order is off here, let me know. I've had limited Arms experience in beta outside of PvP(Which has been a nightmare).
Builds:
Titan's Grip 0/53(?)/8 raiding
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warrior=000000000000000000000000000000203300000000000000000000000305200005500312053120501351
This build has a free floating point in Fury, do with it what you want. You can also drop Blood Surge and pick up Furious attacks/Imp Zerker's Rage if you want for whatever reason. You shouldn't need more then 2 points in Imp Demo, unless your guild missed the memo that Faerie Fire > Curse of Recklessness. Everything else is fairly obvious for what you'd want in the build.
Arms 53/8/0 raiding
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warrior=052030212333510000201223131251000000000000000000000000000305000000000000000000000000
This is straight forward as well, pure PvE build, I hope you have an Axe ready given the state of Mace/Sword, nice 180 from Blizzard eh? More then 1 point is worthless in Unrelenting Assault. You may have noticed I passed on Tactical Mastery, you will NOT be stance dancing with this build. Sit in Arms, Rend, Overpower, etc, it is a headache to switch to Zerker just to WW, you will lose extra damage on your extra rage sudden death executes, it's not worth it. There is theorycraft on a Zerker Stance build where you just MS/WW/Slam/Slam, and this might be easier on some of you.
Patch Cliff Notes:
Berserker's Rage is available in all stances, adjust your binds accordingly.
You're getting a free 3% crit on top of whatever your crit is now, don't ask why, just smile/nod.
Arms Warriors, Blizzard has forced you to invite Battle Stance to your birthday party, be nice.
Fury Warriors, Blizzard has forced you to invite Hit to your birthday party, be nice.
If you like to World PvP/Battle Ground, don't attempt to do so Solo, you will cry and weep yourself to bed that night at the damage other classes inflict upon you.
If you like to Arena...GL with that.
Monday, October 13, 2008
Saturday, October 4, 2008
Warrior PvP: The return.
Many of you have been bugging me and asking me to do a new post on my blog! Well I can't just turn around and do a new post about nothing. When I post, it's to QQ dammit! Whine with a some flair that might make you smile, but also, and more importantly makes actual sense so you when you walk away from reading my rant, you might actually agree with me!
So what's the topic this time? WotLK Warrior PvP. First off, on beta I won't even lie about this, I've probably PvPed on a Death Knight far far more then my beloved Warrior class. Their survivability just makes for a far easier and fun experience when you're solo and without a pocket healer. It's like this: I run into a group of 5 people of the opposite faction, pop Icebound Fort to reduce all their damage by 50%. Then when that's over, pop Anti-Magic Shell, for runic power/spell damage reduction/cc immunity. Then before that's over throw down a Death & Decay, periodically fearing everyone who's beating on me(Rogues hate this especially), and right when they think they're about to kill me....I rune tap back for 20% of my health! Then they're like "omg that's down, now she'll die." No, wrong, now I'm gonna pop Vampiric Blood, and Death Strike one of them for 3k, which will then heal me for another 9k. Or maybe I had a Bone Shield up somewhere in that mess of slaughter, or maybe I popped Hungering Cold and froze half of them. Somewhere along the way a healer may show up and save me, but even if that doesn't happen I have the satisfaction of knowing I wasted a good minute+ of their time attempting to kill me(And I probably killed one of them too!). :P
You try to run into...a group of 5 people as a Warrior?...it's the wrong kind of enjoyment. I get stun locked, and one of those fucking mages sees me and starts drooling, so even though I'm already stunned by the Pally or Rogue, the damn mage uses Nova on me anyway, then the nuking comes, and I'm taking 10% more damage the whole time because you're stunned and you can't change stances, and by the time I'm free, I'm not free(Matrix reference), because SOMEBODY in that cluster-fuck of enemies threw a snare on me, and by this time they see I'm free and they're all running away from me while I'm snared, I sadly attempt to intercept and hit somebody before I die horribly, but at least I can take solace in the fact I wasted a good...10 seconds of their time, ahhh the Warrior class, how I love our dependence on a healer to function. At least I have the awesome that is Enraged Regeneration though!
One of the first things you notice in PvP in Wrath as a Warrior, and I mean first things is Hamstring has lost some of it's flare, I'm not going to say EVERY class has a snare reduction talent, but it certainly freakin feels like it. If a Death Knight specs for PvP it's almost a 100% certainty they'll have it, it's the first tier of their Frost tree. Other classes have to go deeper, Warriors have it Tier 3 Protection(Face-palm), Shaman have it Tier 4 Enhancement, Rogues have it Tier 5 Assassination(If you can ever hit one to begin with), etc. Your original anti-snare nemesis the Druid/Paladin have their snare removals. You spend an awful large amount of time keeping Hamstring up.
The hamstring problem kind of leap-frogs over to the Taste for Blood problem. Keeping Rend up in PvP is about as much fun as keeping hamstring up in PvP, which is to say it's not really fun to keep up in PvP, it's downright annoying, and the proc isn't as obvious in the heat of PvP as when a target dodges, so it takes some getting used to before you can master the art of Taste for Blood Overpower procs. I think more advanced Warriors who have faster reaction times and the pro gamer crowd would enjoy this talent better then Joe Average Warrior, who will become frustrated every time they realize it proc'd and they missed their window of opportunity for whatever reason.
I do like that they're at least trying to make Battle Stance more viable so I can sit in it instead of Zerker(At least when I'm Arms). By adding Berserker's rage to all stances I don't have to worry about fear as much as before, if they made pummel available in Battle would also be awesome as well, but then you start running into reasons why you ever want to pvp in Berserker save the occasional intercept. I still feel I should never be discourged from switching to one stance from another because I fear the downsides of going into said stance, the only thing that should be going through my mind is "I'll miss taking 10% less damage but.., I'll miss having 3% more crit but...I'll miss rend/overpower spam procage but..." It's sad that if Battle Stance becomes the cat's meow PvP stance it'll only be because it allows the Warrior to do damage and take the same amount of damage as the 9 other classes in the game.
You can choose Axe or Mace or Sword Specilization!.....or just Axe. Sword specilzation is just in a sad state, 6 second cooldown, can't proc off hamstring, it saddens me, I was a career Sword Spec Warrior since WoW Classic...ok I was a tank in WoW Classic, but when I went Arms I was sword! I was sword at the start of BC, yes I admit it, I crafted a bloody Lionheart Champion, I loved swords. I cannot justify using a sword over an Axe at the moment. Axe has far too much consistency and Sword Spec's random sword procs are limited by it's cooldown. Yes, back to back sword procs are rare in BC, but they COULD still happen, now that's an impossibility, and your biggest sword-spec procer in Hamstring is gone. Mace is a bit more consistent, but it's obviously weaker against anything lower then cloth/leather, and arguably equal or greater to the mail->plate crowd(and cuddly bear tanks). It's rather hard to test at the moment because Mace is a bit bugged at the moment and allows me to hit for a cool million+ damage on occasion, but I'm sure there's some math on the subject somewhere out there where at what point Mace or Axe is better, but again Axe is consistent against all 4 armor types, Mace may only be better against 2, so once again Axe is wins out. -_-
This rant actually is alot bigger then I had anticipated, so I'll stop here, and touch up on Bladestorm/Fury in another post soon. :)
So what's the topic this time? WotLK Warrior PvP. First off, on beta I won't even lie about this, I've probably PvPed on a Death Knight far far more then my beloved Warrior class. Their survivability just makes for a far easier and fun experience when you're solo and without a pocket healer. It's like this: I run into a group of 5 people of the opposite faction, pop Icebound Fort to reduce all their damage by 50%. Then when that's over, pop Anti-Magic Shell, for runic power/spell damage reduction/cc immunity. Then before that's over throw down a Death & Decay, periodically fearing everyone who's beating on me(Rogues hate this especially), and right when they think they're about to kill me....I rune tap back for 20% of my health! Then they're like "omg that's down, now she'll die." No, wrong, now I'm gonna pop Vampiric Blood, and Death Strike one of them for 3k, which will then heal me for another 9k. Or maybe I had a Bone Shield up somewhere in that mess of slaughter, or maybe I popped Hungering Cold and froze half of them. Somewhere along the way a healer may show up and save me, but even if that doesn't happen I have the satisfaction of knowing I wasted a good minute+ of their time attempting to kill me(And I probably killed one of them too!). :P
You try to run into...a group of 5 people as a Warrior?...it's the wrong kind of enjoyment. I get stun locked, and one of those fucking mages sees me and starts drooling, so even though I'm already stunned by the Pally or Rogue, the damn mage uses Nova on me anyway, then the nuking comes, and I'm taking 10% more damage the whole time because you're stunned and you can't change stances, and by the time I'm free, I'm not free(Matrix reference), because SOMEBODY in that cluster-fuck of enemies threw a snare on me, and by this time they see I'm free and they're all running away from me while I'm snared, I sadly attempt to intercept and hit somebody before I die horribly, but at least I can take solace in the fact I wasted a good...10 seconds of their time, ahhh the Warrior class, how I love our dependence on a healer to function. At least I have the awesome that is Enraged Regeneration though!
One of the first things you notice in PvP in Wrath as a Warrior, and I mean first things is Hamstring has lost some of it's flare, I'm not going to say EVERY class has a snare reduction talent, but it certainly freakin feels like it. If a Death Knight specs for PvP it's almost a 100% certainty they'll have it, it's the first tier of their Frost tree. Other classes have to go deeper, Warriors have it Tier 3 Protection(Face-palm), Shaman have it Tier 4 Enhancement, Rogues have it Tier 5 Assassination(If you can ever hit one to begin with), etc. Your original anti-snare nemesis the Druid/Paladin have their snare removals. You spend an awful large amount of time keeping Hamstring up.
The hamstring problem kind of leap-frogs over to the Taste for Blood problem. Keeping Rend up in PvP is about as much fun as keeping hamstring up in PvP, which is to say it's not really fun to keep up in PvP, it's downright annoying, and the proc isn't as obvious in the heat of PvP as when a target dodges, so it takes some getting used to before you can master the art of Taste for Blood Overpower procs. I think more advanced Warriors who have faster reaction times and the pro gamer crowd would enjoy this talent better then Joe Average Warrior, who will become frustrated every time they realize it proc'd and they missed their window of opportunity for whatever reason.
I do like that they're at least trying to make Battle Stance more viable so I can sit in it instead of Zerker(At least when I'm Arms). By adding Berserker's rage to all stances I don't have to worry about fear as much as before, if they made pummel available in Battle would also be awesome as well, but then you start running into reasons why you ever want to pvp in Berserker save the occasional intercept. I still feel I should never be discourged from switching to one stance from another because I fear the downsides of going into said stance, the only thing that should be going through my mind is "I'll miss taking 10% less damage but.., I'll miss having 3% more crit but...I'll miss rend/overpower spam procage but..." It's sad that if Battle Stance becomes the cat's meow PvP stance it'll only be because it allows the Warrior to do damage and take the same amount of damage as the 9 other classes in the game.
You can choose Axe or Mace or Sword Specilization!.....or just Axe. Sword specilzation is just in a sad state, 6 second cooldown, can't proc off hamstring, it saddens me, I was a career Sword Spec Warrior since WoW Classic...ok I was a tank in WoW Classic, but when I went Arms I was sword! I was sword at the start of BC, yes I admit it, I crafted a bloody Lionheart Champion, I loved swords. I cannot justify using a sword over an Axe at the moment. Axe has far too much consistency and Sword Spec's random sword procs are limited by it's cooldown. Yes, back to back sword procs are rare in BC, but they COULD still happen, now that's an impossibility, and your biggest sword-spec procer in Hamstring is gone. Mace is a bit more consistent, but it's obviously weaker against anything lower then cloth/leather, and arguably equal or greater to the mail->plate crowd(and cuddly bear tanks). It's rather hard to test at the moment because Mace is a bit bugged at the moment and allows me to hit for a cool million+ damage on occasion, but I'm sure there's some math on the subject somewhere out there where at what point Mace or Axe is better, but again Axe is consistent against all 4 armor types, Mace may only be better against 2, so once again Axe is wins out. -_-
This rant actually is alot bigger then I had anticipated, so I'll stop here, and touch up on Bladestorm/Fury in another post soon. :)
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