Woe betide me

Tried zerging Sarth +3D on late Friday evening/early Saturday morning with me tanking. Almost had him a few times, best attempts were 100k HP remaining, or 3%. A few wipes caused by me, some by others, kinda normal for a learning raid. Called it a day and decided to try another time.

Did Ulduar-10 on Wednesday evening again with me tanking. Wasn't so bad; cleared FLV, Razorscale, XT, Kologarn and Auriaya with a few wipes here and there. Bear in mind this was an impromtu raid with people who have never played with each other before, and with undergeared people and people who have never stepped into Ulduar before.

Continued Ulduar-10 Hodir, Thorim, and Iron Council yesterday evening. To say that it was a fiasco (on my part) was probably an understatement. Some wipes caused by me, some by others; a bit more than I would have expected, but then again its a learning raid for some of us. We ended up calling it at 4am. We started at 10.30pm, and only killed one boss in all that time. Not good. Someone called me a bad tank. Maybe I am, maybe I am.

Note to self 1: Don't ever try to tank when exhausted/sick. Bad for me, bad for everyone.

Note to others 1: Don't ask me to tank when exhausted/sick.

Note to self 2: Never agree to tank when exhausted/sick.

And the list goes on...

Parry, or rather, Parry-haste

Since you people have been so good, I decided to reward you with another post :)

Here's all you ever wanted to know about parry. What I'm interested in talking about, is this hidden mechanic all tanks used to know and fear (ok maybe not all, there will be some scrubs who choose to remain in the dark about important things): Parry-haste.

What Parry-haste simply means, is that when you parry an attack, the remaining time on your current swing is reduced by 40% of your weapon speed, unless this would result in a reduction to less than 20% of your swing time remaining.

For example, I'm using a 3.00s speed weapon, and have just started my weapon swing. At the same time, I parry a mob's attack. My swing speed for this next particular attack, will now be reduced by 40%, leading to a new speed of 1.80 seconds.

As another example: I'm using a 3.00s speed weapon, and I am 2.00 seconds into my weapon swing. At the same time, I parry a mob's attack. The remaining time on my swing timer is now 1.00s, and according to parry mechanics, this is reduced by 40% of my weapon speed which is 1.20 seconds. However, this violates the rule "unless this would result in a reduction to less than 20% of your swing time remaining," and therefore, my new remaining swing timer is instead reduced to 20% of my weapon swing speed, which is 0.60 seconds.

As a third example: I'm using a 3.00s speed weapon, and I am 2.50 seconds into my weapon swing. At the same time, I parry a mob's attack. 20% of my weapon swing speed is 0.60 seconds. Since I have gone beyond 20% of my weapon swing speed remaining, I will instead continue to land my attack 0.50 seconds later. It's like the game says (and I quote Disquette from EJ here): "Hey, parry can't reduce you below 20%, so just let the swing land like it's supposed to."

This has been extensively verified, especially at EJ here, starting from post #7, and I hope that clarifies it a little for you people new to this.

Lets reverse the situation a bit, and imagine you were swinging at a boss, and the boss parried your attack. (Yes I can hear many of you going "Aha!")

If the boss is one with an infamously fast weapon swing speed, such as Prince Malchezaar in phase 2, or Morogrim Tidewalker in SSC, you could find your main tank dead very very fast even without crushing blows, if you constantly attack from the front and aren't expertise capped. Now, in Wrath, crushing blows no longer exist, but raid bosses are hitting harder and harder. Imagine having your main tank take 12k 5 times in two seconds from XT-002 in Ulduar. Bad, isnt it?

I can't stress it enough: Never ever DPS from the front of a boss unless you absolutely have to, such as in Kologarn or Mimiron in Ulduar. You lose DPS, and risk killing your tank. If you absolutely have to do so, any extra expertise gear you have lying around will be doubly or even triply valuable.

As a tank, trying to reach the expertise cap of 13% for Parry is unwise and ill-advised, because it will more than likely gimp you in other areas. Strive for as high a number as you can get, without compromising other stats. Parries are to be expected, so try to minimise them as much as possible. Your healers will thank you for it.

Unorthodox tanking

A while ago, I mentioned that Unrelenting Assault was something of an unorthodox tanking talent. Matt Rossi has tried it out not so long ago in a spec something like this, and I can't seem to find his post again, but I vaguely remember what he said. According to him, it was fun, but the rage coming in didn't seem to be sufficient because his Revenge was stunning almost everything in sight.

Let me explain. What he basically did, was combine UA and Improved Revenge, such that he would be basically spamming Revenge every GCD.

Fast forward abit: I was in my second warrior, X, DPS'ing a Naxx10 raid, just killed Grobbulus, and about to proceed to Gluth. Since it was a raid mostly composed of friends, I volunteered to kite tank the zombies that Gluth spawns. Throwing on my tank gear, I realised, to the horror of horrors, that X has dual specced into PvE Arms and PvP Arms. "Oh well, how hard can it be, right?" was what I thought to myself. In we go, and to my surprise, I actually had a lot of fun spamming Revenge on the zombies.

Taking what Matt did a step further, using my same warrior X, I managed to tank the whole of heroic Gundrak in the cookie cutter PvE Arms spec. Threat output was slightly lower than normal, and damage taken was quite abit higher than I would have liked, but Revenge spamming was seriously fun (keep in mind that Thunder Clap and Cleave are essentials in holding mobs too, and even more so in this case). Kudos to B and Z and whoever else went with me (I can't remember, sorry).

As a final note, UA is NOT meant to be a main tank/progression tank ability. It can, however, provide tons of fun if you do choose to mess around with it in a 5-man or 10-man farming raid offtank (make sure your party members are sympathetic though!).

Midsummer Fire Festival

In case you're wondering where I've disappeared to for the past 6 days, I've been working on the Midsummer Fire Festival. Since this is the only holiday that I ever did, and probably will ever do, I decided to do a little something more this year. Last year, I only had 4 toons, that did most of the fires, while my rogue did all, inclusive of stealing the enemy capital cities' fires.

This year, I am proud happy to announce that all my 8 toons now have the achievement "The Flame Warden", along with the brazier and the pet from the vendor. It's taken awhile, but it was kinda fun while it lasted =D

Happy Father's Day!

Happy Father's Day to all you daddies and budding daddies out there!

I suppose I should have posted this earlier, but my 3rd warrior has been 80 for a full week now, and has already been sufficiently geared up from heroics (and Naxx10 to a certain extent) :)

For some reason, B has recently taken to taken to asking me to tank for heroic achievements, something I swore I would never do again after my first warrior, H, completed all of them and gotten her Red Proto-Drake. Looking through all my toons, I realised that most of them have had more than half of the heroic achievements done, and my third warrior, S, has had, as of this moment, 38/51 of them complete. I must say that the prospect of a second Red Proto is quite appealing...

DPS as a Warrior (Part 4)

Warriors are an easy class to learn to play, but are extremely difficult to master. It takes lots of practice, practice, practice, and then more practice. It involves a lot of reading up on class mechanics to really understand what's going on and why you need to press something at a certain time.

Admittedly, my Wrath experience has been limited to heroics, Naxxramas and certain fights of Ulduar, but from what I can deduce, Fury still has a slight edge over Arms at the highest of gear levels. Below that, Arms is probably a better choice if you want to maximise your DPS. Granted, the recent Fury buff has reduced the gap somewhat at lower gear levels, but truth be told, I had favoured Fury over Arms from day one. Arms did feel more dynamic, but it lacked a certain oomph that I felt while playing Fury.

To add on to all that I've said regarding both trees, one must note that there is absolutely no benefit for you to be hitting a boss from the front, and doing so WILL lower your DPS. Therefore, always make sure to hit mobs/bosses from behind, where they are unable to parry your attacks. They will, however, still be able to dodge attacks, and this is where your Expertise comes into play.

Also, for you budding and veteran warriors out there alike, DO note that warriors are one of the most, if not the most, gear and buff dependent class, to produce maximum DPS. The DPS jump from ilevel 200 blues to ilevel 200 epics is larger than that from ilevel 200 epics to ilevel 213 epics. Raid buffs like Might (Battle Shout), Kings, MotW, Trueshot Aura, Sunder Armour, etc etc, would almost double your DPS at most gear levels; credits for this go to Landsoul's warrior spreadsheet which can be found here. Go on, try it out on a heroic dummy, and then try it on a raid boss fully buffed. You'll see what I mean.

Having said that, it is easy to see why warrior DPS can seem so inflated on certain fights, because of the way the fight mechanics/buffs scale with the rage mechanic. This can be read here. Matt Rossi has kindly explained that with a white damage buff from fights like Thaddius or Loatheb, a warrior would have more rage to convert into specials, which converts into even more DPS. I can understand Blizzard's need to respond to all the complaints about warrior DPS being too high, but come on! You designed these fight mechanics, and didn't see this coming? And now you, in the interests of having to pacify all these other classes, are nerfing warrior DPS where it didn't really need a nerf. Warrior DPS WILL be exceptionally skewed on fights like these, and you need to explain that fact to other classes, instead of hitting us with such a bad nerf and then applying some band-aids over it because you thought warrior DPS was a tad too low.

Since I've almost always been a Fury/Prot warrior, I'm just going to put my trust in Blizzard again and hope they do something about it. I understand warriors are ridiculously difficult to balance, but I'm sure they'll come up with something.

As for you folks out there, my advice is: Try both trees out, find out which one you like more, and stick with it. After all, there's not much point in playing a style you dislike, is there?

DPS as a Warrior (Part 3)

After a long bout with throat infections and flu, from which I still have not recovered, and some desktop problems, this is finally here. Enjoy.

Warriors have been around a very long time, so naturally it follows that Arms warriors have been around just as long. PvP veterans of old learned to fear and revere Arms warriors for their deadly Mortal Strike. In those days, Arms was THE warrior PvP tree, and PvE Arms was non-existent. Come Wrath, and especially patches 2.4 and 3.1, Arms was no longer a PvP only tree. Now, there isn't any one talent that really defines the tree, except maybe for Bladestorm, and even that is a point of contention among many warriors.

The tree has seen many changes, notably, the changes to Poleaxe Specialization, where it previously gave +5% crit, it now also gives +5% crit damage, the introduction of Taste for Blood, making Rend and Overpower now primary skills in the Arms arsenal; whereas previously Arms warriors had no defining stance for DPS, they now almost always use Battle Stance. There was also Sudden Death and Unrelenting Assault (UA is an interesting and unorthodox tanking talent too, more on that next time), Wrecking Crew, and Juggernaut, which provides much-needed mobility.

Previously, Juggernaut provided a +100% chance to crit, but patches 3.1.2 and 3.1.3 reduced that chance to 25%, and increased the cooldown on Charge by 5 seconds, respectively. Needless to say, this must have been an attempt to balance for PvP. Still, it is a great PvE talent, and that is what we are interested in.

The Arms DPS cycle is somewhat more complex than its Fury counterpart. In a nutshell, you simply Charge a mob, Rend, followed by Mortal Strike, while using Execute/Overpower procs when they become available, refreshing Rend when there is less than 6 seconds left, squeezing Slams in whenever possible, and using Bladestorm, combined with Sweeping Strikes if there are additional mobs around. It therefore naturally follows that you will be specced for Improved Slam and have the Glyph of Rending to go along with it.

It must be said that Slam, however strange it may seem, is essentially a large part of Arms DPS and cannot be ignored. Since Arms warriors generally have no rage issue without environmental raid damage, Slam is an effective way of burning excess rage. With the 2T7 bonus, which increases Slam damage by 10%, a 2/2 Improved Slam + a queued Heroic Strike after will provide some nice damage along with burning excess rage. What I've noticed people saying is to use Slam instead of Heroic Strike. I respectfully disagree... I use both! Its true that Slam>Heroic Strike for rage dump, but if you can somehow manage to get both to come off together, which I've been able to pull off on multiple occasions, that would increase DPS and burn more rage (for situations with extremely high raid damage).

Of course, there is also a question of prioritizing procs. This is where the fun starts. The Arms DPS cycle is so hectic that you'll probably never ever have a free global cooldown. So then, what happens when Execute lights up, Overpower lights up, Rend has less than 6 seconds remaining, and Mortal Strike is off cooldown at the same time? First things first, don't panic! Always prioritize it such that Execute is the highest on your list, since Sudden Death can proc off itself, then followed by Mortal Strike/Overpower in no particular order, then refreshing Rend, and finally Bladestorm. Bladestorm is last, because while it may be a nice DPS boost on paper, you are unable to do anything for that 6 seconds, save white attacks and moving around, which also means you will be unable to press Execute and Overpower... the list goes on.

All weapon specializations in the Arms tree were not created equal. Sword spec may look nice, but is very lacklustre. Mace spec provides more oomph, but the work done by Landsoul and many others over at Elitistjerks have shown that the ArP is insufficient to justify speccing into this, so we are only left with... Poleaxe specialization. 5% crit chance is big, but 5% extra crit damage is enormous, or so the experts say. I'm just going to trust their math on this one, and say that Poleaxe spec is THE 2H spec.

A standard Arms spec would look something like this. Note that the points in the first two tiers of the Arms tree are mostly fillers, as are the points in the second tier of the Fury tree. Also, it is VERY IMPORTANT to note that Trauma is provided by Feral druids in the form of Mangle, and Blood Frenzy is provided by Combat rogues in the form of Savage Combat. If you have those two in your raid, feel free to stick the talent points elsewhere; Anger Management would be a good choice. If you are intending to go it solo, or have neither of these in your raid (unlikely), I recommend you take the 2 points out of Improved Execute and stick them into the necessary abilities.

With regards to gear, there are two schools of thought: Armour Penetration and Strength. While the kind folks at Elitistjerks have already concluded that gemming (and looking for) Strength on gear is generally superior to ArP, it might have changed since this was written. 8% hit is the absolute maximum you should have, 7% with a Draenei in your party. Mix and match your gear with Weapon Mastery so that you'll sit at 6.5% expertise, which is the dodge soft cap.

Glyph-wise, never leave home without Glyph of Rending, Glyph of Mortal Strike, and Glyph of Execution. For minor glyphs, you can use the same as those for Fury, which are here.

Next: Conclusion!