Fury
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'Fury' coming to WipEout HD
PS3's downloadable antigrav racer, WipEout HD, is getting its first bit of DLC. Attendees at E3 will be able to try out "Fury," the first expansion pack for the game. Included in the upcoming pack are 8 new tracks, 13 new ships and 3 new game modes. A patch will also add new trophies, a "re-styled front-end" and improved multiplayer functionality.One of the new modes being reintroduced to WipEout HD is the "Eliminator" mode, last seen in PSP's Pulse. This combat-centric mode gives favor to killing instead of racing. It's one of our favorite modes from WipEout Pulse, so we're glad to see it make a comeback.In addition, the upcoming Fury DLC will add "Zone Battle," a multiplayer twist on the classic "Zone" concept. In this new mode, players will be able to acquire zone pads and choose between a speed or health boost. Opponents will be able to drop zone barriers, a deadlier WipEout interpretation of Mario Kart's banana peel. Finally, the "Detonator" mode has players shooting at mines while trying to try through 14 different stages. We'll be giving you a full hands-on report on "Fury" later this week.%Gallery-64658%
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: The strange case of rage generation in 3.1
Since 3.1, DPS warriors (including myself) have been complaining about a lack of rage. To the point where Ghostcrawler himself chimed in recently (in a discussion of the nerf to Titan's Grip and the effect it had on warrior DPS) to inform us that the claim that warrior rage generation was hurt by the changes was a myth created by warriors upset with the nerf. Now we have the following post by Landsoul. I freely admit this is the kind of math that makes my eyes cross and roll up into my head. But Landsoul's well known as a contributor to the EJ forums and frankly, his math-fu's good enough for me. (I should also mention Hellord, the original poster who saw things were hinky.) What this means is, while it's very possible that yes, the developers took Titan's Grip's decreased damage into account when they were making the changes, there was somehow another change made that cost warriors some rage generation. 25% of it, to be precise.Bornakk posts later in the thread that they'll take a look "as we didn't make any intended changes recently to rage generation". So the good news is, for warriors, if this change did happen (and again, I'd tend to trust the math from the people behind the best warrior spreadsheets) then it wasn't a deliberate loss of 25% of our rage generation.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: More Ulduar gear
One of the things that keeps messing with my head as we progress into Ulduar is, loot actually drops here. Gear that I want and, even better, that I actually get. I still look back with horror at our weekly Naxx clears and how, every single week, we could kill everything in sight only to have no weapons drop at all. Now, the danger of talking about Ulduar gear is that it keeps changing. Older items get revamped and newer items get discovered. This is the nature of the beast, so to speak, all you can really do is keep going.As an addendum to last week's post about DPS warriors, I've now switched to fury full time for DPS. My numbers are better now than they were as arms (most likely due to my greater sympathy for the spec and my upgraded dual wield set, 2 Rune Edges) and I'm happier. I do find it somewhat galling that I need two weapons better than a Betrayer of Humanity just to break even with an arms spec that used Sword Specialization, possibly the worst choice for arms DPS in PvE right now. I'm still not quite where I should be in relation to other melee hybrids (after all, their gear is improving too) but once fury gets its incoming buffs I should be very competitive with DK's and Druids and Retribution Paladins. (Now all we need is for shamans to get a health buff.)Rather than pile on more or changed weapons which we'll probably have to go back and update, this week I figured we'd talk about our Tier 8 sets from 10 and 25 man. We'll begin with the Valorous (10 man) Siegebreaker Battlegear and the Valorous (25 man) Dreadnaught Battlegear, then compare the Conqueror to the 25 Dreadnaught. I'm not going to compare the Heroes Dreadnaught because it's never even a question of an upgrade at that point.
Unspecified Warrior damage buffs in the works
The devs have been promising some buffs to warrior DPS for a while, but there haven't been any specifics. Today is no change. There are "buffs planned" for Arms and Fury, but there are no details announced yet. Ghostcrawler does mention that "there is almost no chance of a Titan's Grip change at any time in the near future," so don't hold your breath about that. My guess would be they're simply tired of making changes to that talent. The only other piece of new information in the post is that the impending DPS buffs "might come with PvP nerfs," since they're seeing a ton of Warriors in the arena right now. The Juggernaut nerf that went live today might address that some, as well. What do you think Blizzard should do to buff warriors in PvE, without making them (more) overpowered in PvP?
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Warrior DPS Blues
If you've been reading this column over the past few weeks you know I've been threatening to rant about fury DPS being too low. I've stopped myself because I dislike mindless griping and rant posts (I've done them in the past, that doesn't make them any more palatable to me) and I wanted to wait and see how things shook out with better gear.By now I have some of the best gear you can get before hard modes in 25 man, and my general opinion is that both arms and fury DPS is too low. I linked to that post because, despite the fact that it states that fury and arms will see buffs, it not only has no specifics to offer yet but it also fails to address why such staggering nerfs were implemented in the first place.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Weapons from Ulduar
Ulduar has brought over 800 items within our grasp. While toying with specs (I'm actually raiding switching between arms and fury depending on the fight, although last night I actually tanked clearing up to Vezax) to try and squeeze the most DPS out I find myself wearing the half-and-hald set you always get when content is progressing. Naxxramas gear tends towards a screaming skulls motif while Ulduar gear has a more construct simulating appearance. As you can see in the screen shot, I've ended up looking somewhat like the gothiest Power Ranger ever. I don't mind the look myself, although I know some people really do. Then again, as I've said many, many times, I'd wear the Conqueror's Clownshoe Raiment if the stats were right.This week we're going to discuss the weapon drops for warriors in Ulduar - 10 and 25. This basically means tanking 1handers and 2 hand weapons. While I personally love fist weapons myself, The Masticator is not a tanking weapon, although it's certainly true that you could tank with a 2.7 speed weapon with no defensive stats. Heck, I tanked with a 3.4 speed weapon last night. I'm going to try and keep focused on the drops with the most utility first.Of course, more loot is being discovered even as I write this. So please keep that in mind.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: The Luck Of The Drop
It's been a remarkably grueling month for me, so I can't say I'll be sorry to see April finally end. As much fun as the new content is, a lot of personal issues (including a sick rabbit,vet trips and the like on the top as a kind of panic frosting to everything else) have made it hard to squeeze in the time to do anything but raid nowadays. I fell asleep trying to do the Argent Tournament dailies. I picked up the saddest ring ever last night (let the search for a sadder ring commence) and got to thinking about the peculiar way warriors have to rely on loot luck. (Yes, I'm aware all classes have to rely on luck for drops.) Since frankly I don't want to write the often threatened nerd rage post over fury (and I'm starting to be discontented by arms' performance, as improved as it is) I thought talking about gear less from a 'here are the stats of every drop you want in Ulduar' way could be interesting.We all know eventually I'll be doing that, too. But since the instance still hasn't revealed all of its goodies, Ulduar loot discussions are always an exercise in finding out you missed something. It seems worth it to me to wait for more things to be discovered before tackling that job.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Dual Spec Salvation
Another week, another series of raids into Ulduar.I'm not going to talk about it this week... I'm waiting for more T8 level gear (just got my pants last night) but in general, I'm moving from 'mild discontent' to 'frothing nerd rage' at the state of fury right now. The main reason isn't even my own DPS, which is going up... it's that other classes and specs that aren't 'pure DPS' are now bumped up to where my spec was before patch 3.1, when the reason for my spec's nerfs was stated as that level of DPS being 'too good' for a class that had options besides DPSing. If a class can tank, heal and DPS why is it okay for them to do the damage I used to do when I can only tank and DPS?But that being said, I've discovered a unique joy in the past week, and that's the Dual Spec system. Ironically, I still respec about twice a week. In fact, I may even respec more now than I did before dual specs were available.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Three nights in Ulduar make a strong man humble
What can I say, I enjoy musical theatre as long as I don't actually have to go to it. (Did you know that was Murray Head, Anthony Stewart Head's older brother? I didn't.)So for the past few days I've spent my in game time divided between 10 and 25 man Ulduar. I've almost moved into the place, really: save for the first day the patch dropped, I pretty much only log on to pick up consumables and flasks and head back to Storm Peaks. In part this is due to my personal life, as I actually have slightly less time to play now than I did before so almost all of that in game time has to be concentrated, and partly it's just been for the fun of seeing new boss fights. My guild is a 'learn as you go' kind of guild, so we're not worrying about PTR runs or prepared boss strats, we're going in and seeing what works for us, which so far has killed the four bosses in the Colossal Forge section. Razorscale died with three people up, but hey, a kill's a kill.So far in Ulduar from a warrior perspective, I can say certain things.
Top 3.1 specs so far from 3D Armory
Not to be outdone by TalentChic, the folks at 3D Armory also sent us their lists of what the most popular builds are in the game after patch 3.1, and since everybody seems to be build-hungry lately (and why not -- we each get two!), here they all are.Warrior: Fury 18/53/0.Paladin: 0/0/0, which means you need to log in, Paladins! Also 51/5/15 for Holy.Hunter: 0/0/0 wins here, too, but Survival (6/14/51) comes in next.Rogue: Combat 15/51/5.Priest: 14/57/0 for Holy.Death Knight: 17/0/54 Unholy.Shaman: Elemental 57/14/0.Mage: 0/53/18 Fire.Warlock: 0/41/30 Destruction.Druid: 14/0/57 Restoration, which surprised me.Keep in mind that these are from only a small sample of the game, so they're not the most popular specs in the game, just the most popular among those surveyed by the 3D Armory. And unfortunately, unlike TalentChic, it doesn't look like there's any way to see where the points are going, just the distribution of points among the trees (though that reminds us that Blizzard probably has some amazing point-by-point stats on how popular talents are).
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Waiting for the patch
I had originally intended to talk today about changes to protection in patch 3.1, especially since we're coming closer and closer to it (I wouldn't be surprised if it dropped this week) but then I actually stopped and thought about it, and honestly there's really not all that much to talk about. Last Stand gets a reduced cooldown, which is good. Defensive Stance reduces the damage you do by 5% instead of 10%, which is also good. Glyph of Shield Wall will let you use Shield Wall every 3 minutes instead of every five (every 2 minutes with Improved Disciplines) which again, is nice. But none of this is going to change the way tanking works, so it seemed kind of odd to try and go in depth with so little to go in depth on. We could talk about how Deep Wounds will no longer gain bonuses from effects like the enrage from Improved Defensive Stance, but it still doesn`t change the fact that a lot of prot warriors are going to take Deep Wounds for the DoT when their Damage Shield, Cleave, Thunder Clap or even Shockwave crit. In the end, protection saw the absolute least changes of any warrior spec and for the most part, there`s almost no reason for prot warriors to alter their playstyle or gearing significantly.So then, if we`re not going to talk about that (well, I guess we just did) then what are we going to talk about?
The Queue: Somebody has a case of the Mondays!
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky will be your host today.<Insert witty opening remarks here.> Boltzmann asked..."Has Blizzard ever said anything about the prospect of allowing Bind on Account items to be transferred to different servers? It'd be sweet to be able to level a Death Knight on a friend's server and start out with the good gear."
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: You Will Be Forced To Conform
If you've been paying attention to the latest PTR changes, you know that among them is a change to fury that alters the talent Improved Berserker Stance. Instead of providing 10% of AP, it now will provide 20% of your Strength. (It's been buffed since it was first introduced, it was 15% then.) When I saw this I thought it was the greatest change ever... until I remembered there are no strength enchants to gloves in Wrath level content, but just AP. Massacre? AP enchant. Berserking? Provides AP. Blessing of Might? AP. What about most of the rings and almost all of the cloaks and neck pieces available in current Wrath raiding? AP. And of course, what about leather gear you may have been wearing because it's the best in slot, like say the Frosted Adroit Handguards? No strength on those.In short, I went from ecstatic to that sinking feeling you get when you realize that lovely Everglades condo is in fact just swamp. I'd just told everyone how awesome this change was, and here I stood on test with less AP than I had on live. Was it a huge loss? No, about 70 AP or so. But I still felt that lovely combination of chagrin and slight anger that comes from not only being wrong, but being wrong and finding yourself worse off than you'd been. To be fair, the change to 20% has brought the AP back up to close to where it was. My warrior on test is lacking a couple of best in slot items that I've picked up since transfering him, which means that to compare them I have to take off bracers and neck and look at the AP from there, but we're talking a 20 AP drop now. The real issue is buffs like Blessing of Might/Battle Shout and procs like Berserking. On the other hand, Blessing of Kings, Gift of the Wild and Horn of Winter/Strenth of Earth just got better for us.Now Ghostcrawler has waded into the fray, and what he says confirms it: this change is purely meant to force warriors away from wearing leather.
Warrior changes in Patch 3.1 PTR build 9722
Well, the changes, they keep being incremental, but they are happening. This latest PTR patch has one change that proves even in these times of nerfing Titan's Grip damage that, some times, just some times, good things happen for fury warriors. Like what, you may ask? I'm glad you did. Improved Berserker Stance now increases strength by 3/6/9/12/15% instead of increasing attack power by 2/4/6/8/10%I honestly can't gibber at that change enough. It's flatly astonishing. If the change was merely AP to Str and the percentages didn't change it would make the talent twice as good. But by having it increase strength by 15% instead of AP by 10%, it's now nearly three times as good, and will be even better when raid buffed. (Note: without raid buffs, this will be an AP decrease unless you are very lucky with rings to have STR in both slots. Any AP gear you have will detract from the benefit of the talent, making it stronger when grouped/raiding but weaker solo.) I think I had a small squeegasm when I read this change. But wait, there's more! It's not all this good.The folks at MMO-Champion dug up the goods Let's take a look, shall we?
Warrior class changes in patch 3.1 PTR build 9684
From our friendly official patch notes for the PTR, we now have some news on new talents for Arms, which I complained about this morning: Improved Intercept and Weapon Mastery have once again swapped places in the talent tree. New Talent: Juggernaut: Grants the warrior the ability to Charge while in combat. Unrelenting Assault: Now also increases the damage of Overpower and Revenge by 10/20%, and causes Overpower (when used to attack a casting target) to decrease the effectiveness of all the target's non-physical damage and healing by 25/50% for 6 seconds. Tooltip and visual updated. Pretty obviously they switched Imp Intercept and Weapon Mastery because arms will not be expected to use intercept at all now that they'll be able to charge in combat, similar to the protection ability Warbringer. We've basically now seen two out of the three warrior specs given the option to dispense with Intercept altogether. In addition, fury warriors have lost the only 'expertise compensation' talent they had. While for warriors with sufficient expertise this is a non-issue, if you were using Weapon Mastery to fill a lower than necessary expertise stat, get some exp gear fast.Unrelenting Assault sounds like a promising buff. I won't know how promising until I get back onto the PTR tonight, but a damage buff and an anti-caster function? Yes please. It does PvP and PvE duty, can't complain about that. All in all, it's a trickle, but a trickle is better than nothing. Not too thrilled about the loss of Weapon Mastery for fury warriors, but it's survivable. Patch 3.1 brings us Ulduar, dual specs, significant changes to all the classes, and more! We've got you covered from top to bottom with our Guide to Patch 3.1.
Phat Loot Phriday: Armageddon
Spellpower maces and wands and bows are cute and all. But sometimes you just want a big sword.Name: Armageddon (Wowhead, Thottbot, WoWDigger)Type: Epic Two-hand SwordDamage/Speed: 554-831 / 3.40 (203.7 DPS)Attributes: First, just look at that thing. This is clearly a sword that, when swung in an arcward manner, brings all sorts of death and destruction. +101 Strength, and +108 Stamina, which is (definitely not the first weapon ever, but) the first weapon I've seen that has two triple-digit buffs. %Gallery-33600%
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: PvP is calling you home
Zach covered my dereliction yesterday, so let's all peruse his analysis of the warrior changes currently on the PTR. I've tested things on the PTR when and where I could (haven't been on since the new patch, RL difficulties and in game commitments have kept me off) and I've discovered a bug with dual specs that allows a fury warrior to effectively ignore the TG nerf by simply having a second fury spec that doesn't have Titan's Grip in it at all. I'm assuming this will be fixed to unequip your weapons when you switch specs, because if it's not, I know a lot of fury warriors who will pay 1000g to avoid being nerfed. (And yes, I'm wearing leather gloves in that screenshot.)I've been playing in arenas lately with a fully PvE oriented fury build and no resil gear whatsoever. My partner is a prot warrior. We actually win more than we lose, believe it or not, our only significant weak spot being if we hit a team that bursts me down before we can burst their DPS down. If I was to shift three talent points so I could get Heroic Fury and Furious Attacks, we'd probably win a lot more, so once dual specs go live I may go fury/fury instead of fury/prot like I'd originally planned. The fact is, I can count on one hand the amount of times I've not been able to find a tank for runs lately and have had to respec. Heck, I often just tank in my fury spec if it comes to that. So if the future starts to look better for warriors in PvP, I may just focus more on perfecting my fury PvP spec. On the other hand, there's always Arms to consider, especially if it gets more buffs in the future.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Scarce Change on the PTR
Yesterday saw me still without PTR access, followed by a massive cable outage and some computer problems that kept me offline until very late. Logging onto my Horde server (my alliance server was already dead thanks to it being on east coast time, plus I generally prefer Horde now anyway) I found myself needed to tank an Obsidian Sanctum run, which went fine. Then, I was needed to DPS in Naxx, so I respecced, but mistaken specced fury because I respec on autopilot now. So after the raid I had to respec back to arms. So basically, I dropped 150g to raid yesterday. You could argue that were I not an idiot I could have saved myself 50 gold.So for that reason alone, even with the big, big nerfs to fury, I want 3.1 to get here. Let's start the day with a fun quote from Ghostcrawler: "Fury warriors who think their dps will be too low after this change in PvE are probably comparing themselves to classes or specs with inflated dps who are also being brought down (even after the Deep Wounds fix). If you are worried about the PvP ramifications, I think we can probably agree that a 10% swing in dps is not what is going to determine whether warriors are viable in Arenas or not."Yeah, we can agree on that. People would have to be taking warriors to arenas in order for us to determine if warriors were viable in arenas or not. Since they are not... I guess lowering warrior DPS bt 10% (as Ghostcrawler has just admitted these changes intend) doesn't really matter. When no one brings your class anyway, it's unimportant if it gets nerfed or not. Good point, GC. Very good point.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Hit and Expertise for DPS Warriors
And so we finally return to our discussion of hit and expertise for warriors, in this case DPS warriors. Having finally gotten around to leveling my tauren warrior to 80 I've taken him arms for grinding reputations and running instances (I need a new weapon and several gear upgrades before he's ready for 10 mans, although he'll probably end up in a couple before he's geared enough to do much) which means I'm now looking at these stats from both a fury and an arms perspective.It also means I'm back to my old "you have how many max level warriors?" days. It's a shame I'm currently working on my DK and shaman horde side or I could level another warrior. Yes, I'm aware that with Dual Specs coming having more than one warrior per faction per server is kind of ridiculous. Luckily, this means I can have two warriors per server! Look, I don't love this class because I'm sane.So, we now have hit and expertise to discuss for Arms and Fury warriors. How much do you need? The short answer is enough to ensure you don't miss your special attacks and push dodges off of the attack table. The short answer is also remarkably less than helpful in terms of telling you how much you want on your gear.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Dual spec madness
Dual specs. What will they mean for warriors? The short answer is, we'll all have two specs. However, I'm fairly sure if I try and stop there and go get a sandwich that Dan will come to my house with an army of trained marmosets. I don't want that, you don't want that, and Dan doesn't like to travel with the marmosets, so let's just spare everyone the trauma. It is my opinion that when dual specs are implemented, almost all warriors will be expected to spec prot for one of their specs. We don't really have a tank shortage anymore with tanking generally more fun for everyone and there being four classes that can do it, but since warriors have one tanking tree and two dps trees, it's unlikely (possible, but unlikely) that we'll see a lot of deep arms/deep fury dual specs. Those of us with more than one warrior might try this on one of them, mind you. Of course this is all complicated by the state of warrior talent trees at the moment. Since protection is one of our strongest talent trees for both PvE and PvP content and arms is underperforming in both, it changes what specs you might select. I'm going into this analysis of the feature and its uses assuming that arms will be buffed to be a valid option for a dual spec.
