DPS as a Warrior (Part 1)

Warriors have two DPS specs: Arms and Fury.

A long time ago, Fury was THE PvE spec, while Arms was for PvP. That mostly changed in patch 2.4, with the advent of Titan's Grip and Bladestorm and numerous other changes to both trees.

Along comes patch 3.1, with the nerf 10% damage reduction to Titan's Grip. Many warriors, including yours truly, have respecced countless times into both trees, and, dismayed at the state of Fury DPS at sub-optimal gear levels, switched to Arms instead. To be fair, after reading Landsoul's post, one of the most revered warrior number crunchers out there, I am still at a loss to answer where all my Fury DPS went to. Now, with patch 3.1.3, Arms received a slight boost while Fury seems to be significantly boosted, with the rage and cooldown change to Bloodthirst.

The primary difference between the two trees as they stand now, is that Fury provides a constant damage output with a few highly explosive peaks, while Arms feels more bursty and requires more concentration to watch out for skill cooldowns, debuffs, and procs. All in all, Fury excels at fights with little to no movement, and with adds (think Whirlwind), your typical stand-still-and-bash-the-boss'-skull-in kind of fights. Arms probably has an edge in fluid fights with lots of movement.

Next posts: More in-depth discussion on Arms and Fury DPS.

What it means to be the main tank

Of a progression guild, that is.

As the main tank, more often than not, you will be leading the 10- and 25-man raids. That, in itself, is honestly sufficiently stressful. Leave the DKP to some other officer or the guild leader (if you are not already the guild leader). Your main concern is the successful completion of the particular raid dungeon you are attempting. This means that you will be assigning tanks, healers, and sometimes DPS, to specific roles. This means that you have read strategies for the upcoming boss fights. This also largely means that you will be the main tank on every boss until it finally bites the dust.

Why did I say that you'll be tanking a boss only until your guild gets a first kill? The reasons are very simple.

1) Assume you have been main tanking the same bosses day in and day out for the past month. One day, you burn out/decide to quit WoW/are not free. BAM. None of the other offtanks know what to do, and its back to wiping on a farm boss.

2) Sometimes, being in an offtank role helps you see things in a different light. Why was my offtank the other day taking so much damage? Is it reasonable to have only 2 offtanks catching x-number of adds? So on and so forth.

Basically what I'm trying to say is: As a guild main tank, you should never main tank every single boss every time, but instead, give your other tanks a shot at it. Trust me, it works wonders in boosting their confidence. And, if you were the main tank by virtue of skill, you will be able to let the guild know, after seeing different tanks on the same boss, that you have earned your position by true merit.

Don't pull when your healers are dead

On my old server, we used to have this feral druid. Excitable little SOB guy he was, loved pulling before people were obviously ready, i.e. pulling when 1/3 of the raid was dead, and most of them are healers. This druid also seldom read raid chat, so many a time, we would have something like:

Druid: Pulling.

Raid: Wait. WAIT!! STOP!! xxx ISN'T HERE YET!!!

*The Menagerie is for guests only.*

Raid: Oh shit.

To... minimize this "friendly fire", I never ever put him in a raid leader/main tank position whenever possible.

Unfortunately, this druid also had the nasty habit of rolling on most, if not all, gear that said "cloth" and "leather", which naturally resulted in a lot of misgivings from the officer corps. I mean, come on, do everyone a favour, and don't roll on something you wont use. That poor recruit priest wont ever see any gear upgrades when he's in your raid.

Of course, this little story wouldnt be complete without a mention of -2000 points. -2000 points used to be all that too, with the exception of the lootwhore part. In his defense, he now reads raid chat more and thus causes less wipes and it is easier to get vital information across to him.

Warrior AoE tanking in Wrath

Here's how I usually do my AoE tanking for a pull consisting of 3-5 mobs:

Mark skull, X. Charge skull, Thunder Clap, Shield Slam skull, back up a couple of steps, Shockwave the pack, tab target to X, Revenge X, tab to 3rd mob, Concussion Blow, Thunder Clap, Shield Slam skull, Revenge 4th mob (if any), and all the while spamming Cleave.

Assuming you have Warbringer, 2/2 Damage Shield, and a decent Block Value, you should have no problems holding a pack of 4 mobs. A pack of 5 tends to be too hectic, and a pack of 6 (elites with high HP) will border on mildly uncontrollable. 7 would be quite unmanageable.

Oh and as previously mentioned, if you have Greatness, use it to tank. It works wonders.

OK here's what we'll do

Back in TBC, there was one time where I remember PUGging heroic Shattered Halls with a prot warrior, holy pally, hunter, mage, and me on my rogue. If I remember correctly, some of them were friends and for some reason, they were using Ventrilo, although it was quite beyond me to figure out why at first.

Naturally, being the curious sucker person that I am, I joined their chat channel. We clear the entrance hallway and first room without too much trouble, but it went downhill from there but the real fun only started at the first pack of 5 mobs. Listening to their conversation in Vent made me want to kill someone with my bare hands laugh, sigh, and shake my head at the same time. Here's roughly how it went (details are a little fuzzy):

Warrior: OK uh lets see, we have Sap and Sheep. Sap the star, sheep the moon, and I'll pick up the rest.

Pally: We have a hunter that can CC (crowd control) too.

Warrior: Oh right. (changes raid symbols around abit). OK (insert hunter name), you trap the square, we have the rogue sap the star and the mage sheep the moon.

Hunter: No no, don't let me trap that, if it breaks I'll die. Give me a ranged mob.

Mage: Actually it would be more efficient to kill so-and-so mob after the Legionnaire dies.

(After two more minutes of discussion...)

Warrior: OK we'll stick with the original plan.

Mage, Hunter, Pally: What was the original plan again?

At this point I got so bored I had already pickpocketed all 5 mobs and was continuously sapping my assigned mob over and over again. Somehow, we manage to get through the first pack of mobs and get to the second pack, which has 6 mobs now.

Warrior: Lets do it this way...

It went on for another 5-10 minutes, and by this time, it wasn't funny anymore. I bailed out and found something more productive to do went to do dailies.

Lessons we can learn:

1) You're the tank, the group leader. Assert your authority, listen to opinions and be open to ideas, but ignore rubbish. It would have been easier to say: "Here's what we'll do, yada yada yada" and throw any nonsense aside. Saying that takes about a full 10 seconds, maybe 20 to type it out. Was that so hard?

2) Slow pulling is inefficient and makes everyone fall asleep. OK maybe not everyone, maybe just me.

I can't stress point number 1 enough. If you know your job well enough, then by all means go ahead and do it. Of course, there's a fine line between thinking you know what you're doing, and doing it the proper way. Famous last words: "Don't tell me how to tank, u fucking noob."

Add me if you think I'm good

Couple of days back, two of my friends ask me to heal heroic Violet Hold (my druid is dual-specced resto), so I says ok. One of them (a hunter) just hit 80 the day before that.

Group was ret pally friend, hunter friend, PUG mage and PUG warrior tank in 4/5 T7.25.

Warrior starts when hunter is still outside, ergo he is locked out. Hunter asks in channel for rescue, but as I am busy, he is only let in when somebody else opens the VH door. Hunter comes in in greens, blues, and two illegal epics, manages to overaggro once or twice in a couple of pulls.

Warrior (during the short break after second boss): "If you think my tanking is good, do add me to your friends list, and let me know so I can add you too."

As a sidenote, his tanking so far was so-so.

We come to the last boss. Cyanigosa has a couple of nasty abilities, including a Blizzard spell, and a frontal AoE breath attack that deals damage to all targets in a cone. Normally, when I tank her, I will always make sure to tell my party members to not stand behind me.

Said warrior picks up the boss, and the rest of the party quickly position themselves to the side or at the tail. When the boss used her magnetic pull ability, said warrior was not fast enough to build more threat, resulting in hunter getting melee'd two times. Said warrior then proceeded to turn the boss in order to avoid Blizzard, resulting in at least 3 other people, including yours truly, eating the breath attack. In addition, said warrior did this twice, resulting in the death of the ret pally.

It was only later that I learned through the chat in trade channel, that said warrior was a reject of an endgame raiding guild, apparently because he wasn't smart enough to master certain boss fights.

No, I don't think I'll be adding you to my friend's list anytime soon, or any other time in future, for that matter.

Quick bites

Things you probably never knew about a warrior in Wrath:

1) Avoidance stats now are subject to diminishing returns (DR)
2) 4.9185 Defense Rating = 1 Defense at level 80
3) 39.348 Dodge Rating = 1% Dodge chance at level 80 (pre-DR)
4) 49.185 Parry Rating = 1% Parry chance at level 80 (pre-DR)
5) 16.395 Block Rating = 1% Block chance at level 80 and is not subject to DR
6) 32.79 Hit Rating = 1% Melee Hit chance at level 80
7) 32.79 Expertise Rating = 1 Expertise at level 80
8) Berserker Rage is now usable in all stances
9) Shield Wall and Last Stand are now OFF the global cooldown
10) Almost all of your tanking abilities are now boosted by Attack Power
11) Every point of armour increases your time-to-live (TTL) by exactly the same amount as the previous point, i.e. your TTL-armour graph would be linear
12) Shield Block is now more of an "oh-shit" button
13) Absorbed damage now gives you rage
14) Shockwave and Shield Slam are the best things to ever happen to protection warriors, in that order
15) The recent nerf to Titan's Grip affects warriors who don't have best-in-slot gear the most
16) Armored to the Teeth is a talent every warrior must have, regardless of spec

N.B. Points 1-7, 10, 11, and 13 are not exclusive to warriors