Warriors in 3.2.2

OK, I didn't mean this to sound like reminiscing, but as you'll all agree that this update is long overdue, I shall make this a long good one :D

As you might have already realised, patch 3.2.2 brought with it very few changes to warriors, notably, Sword Specialization in the Arms tree and Critical Block in the Protection tree have both been buffed. That notwithstanding, Sword Specialization is still far inferior to Axe Specialization, as previously mentioned. The Critical Block buff is nice though, bringing it more in line with the intent of Blizzard to make block a more useful stat.

Having now had more time to do more testing on my various tanks, I am forced to conclude that I was, am, and always will be a Warrior at heart. The plethora of snap aggro abilities, along with the wide range of various situational single-target and AoE tanking abilities make this class my first and foremost favourite. Anyone can play a warrior; but it takes skill to truly master the warrior.

3.2.2 also brought along with it a new and revamped Onyxia encounter, that unfortunately, unlike the encounter in vanilla WoW, precludes melee DPS from hitting her in phase 2, the air phase with Deep Breath. Evaluation of the drops are still in progress by various higher authorities (read: Elitistjerks), so we shall wait and see what they have to say. The gear is ilvl 245, but a quick scan of the loot table tells me that some of the item budget is wasted in the fire and shadow resistance, so their true value may lie somewhere around 232 or so only. Still, it is an easy encounter for loot, providing you have enough ranged DPS.

The new fire boss in VoA, however, is a whole new ballgame. Not only do his abilities hit really hard, they hit even harder as his HP drops lower and lower. An unmitigated Meteor Fists attack is roughly 50,000 fire damage in 10-man mode, split between two targets (the tanks, naturally). After factoring in resistances, that should be roughly 10k-15k damage per tank. Armour wont do much here, so bring HP (and fire resistance, if possible). Lots of it. He is rather easy to kill with a seasoned raid, though.