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Cataclysm Beta: Warrior changes in build 12984
The beta patches are coming fast and furious now. Heck, I was still playing in the previous patch when our friends at MMO-Champion announced beta build 12984, and wow, does it have some changes for the only class that looks this good, our friendly warriors. (OK, sometimes we're not so friendly. It's part of our charm.) Let's look at the changes for our plate-clad, dual-wielding, extremely temperamental bundles of axe-cuddling joy. Arms Mortal Strike now has a 4.5-sec. cooldown, down from 5 sec. Blood Frenzy no longer improves your melee attack speed, gives your auto attacks a 5/10% chance to generate 20 additional rage instead. Mastery: Strikes of Opportunity additional melee attacks now deals 75% normal damage, up from 50%. The changes here are interesting. Looking at them, I find myself wondering if they're intended to make arms more responsive to melee attack speed increases and haste on gear. With slightly fasted MS and Blood Frenzy no longer providing the attack speed boost (but some much needed rage), haste won't be so terrible. Meanwhile, the arms mastery got the buff we all figured it needed to even remotely be viable. Fury and protection changes and discussion behind the break.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Patch 4.0.1 is a good thing
The Care and Feeding of Warriors is about warriors, who hurl themselves into the fray, the very teeth of danger, armed with nothing more than the biggest weapons and armored with the absolutely heaviest armor we can find. Hey, we're not stupid -- we're just crazy. Well, we know patch 4.0.1 will be upon us soon. When it comes, there will be that tendency to panic. It's understandable, as this is a huge departure for every class. We warriors are as subject to change as anyone else. But my trademark cautious optimism tells me that it won't be as bad as you might think. For starters, you'll still be a warrior and thus, the best class ever conceived (which goes without saying, really; that's why I typed it, so I didn't have to say it). Some bullet points from my experience on the beta: Arms warriors will be unhappy to see Mortal Strike's debuff decrease, but the rotation remains interesting with just enough complexity to reward smart play. In general, it should be viable even for raiding (yes, I said "viable for raiding"). Fury warriors who like one-handed weapons will love Single-Minded Fury. I took it out for a long test run through Hyjal and Deepholm on my worgen last night, and it holds up. It might be slightly behind TG right now; I couldn't get Skada to capture any data, but it didn't feel like it was at all. If, like me, you love fist weapons, then it's happydance time. In general, fury is inevitably going to see lower damage due to rage normalization and the changes to Heroic Strike/Cleave/Whirlwind, but Raging Blow does a lot to make up for those changes. Numbers aside, the new enrage mechanic is pretty interesting for fury. Assuming the current weird threat issues on the beta are solved by the time 4.0.1 is released (keep in mind that there hasn't been a damage pass yet), then the biggest problem facing protection warriors will be that it's a ridiculously solid tree filled with so many good talents that you might not even want to spend any elsewhere. Frankly, I'm thankful Safeguard is still bad. At least that's two points I know I can spend somewhere else.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Warriors in lore, part 2
The Care and Feeding of Warriors is about warriors, who hurl themselves into the fray, the very teeth of danger, armed with nothing more than the biggest weapons and armored with the absolutely heaviest armor we can find. Hey, we're not stupid -- we're just crazy. I decided to spend next week talking about protection in the beta in more detail, because between moving house this month and a bout of feeling sick, I haven't had time to push that last level to 85. I'd rather talk in depth about the spec after a few more runs, frankly, with as much improved itemization as I can get. I will say that as a level 84 warrior tanking his way through instances, threat seems wildly inconsistent. Sometimes it seems like Thunder Clap or Shockwave don't hit for peanuts, whereas on other pulls, I can glue things to myself. Part of it might simply be the shock of going from well-geared in ICC epics at 80 to poorly geared in quest greens and blues at 84, but I definitely think threat issues are pretty widespread for the class right now. Still, I'm going to reserve final judgment until 85. (Also, they went and dropped beta build 12942, but that doesn't seem to have many consequences for tank warriors.) So that means we go back to the lore. We had lots of votes for specific characters last time, so in an effort to give folks what they want, here are more famous or infamous warriors in the World of Warcraft. Rather than trying to hit both factions, this time we'll look at the notable warriors of the night elves. Feel free to suggest which race you'd like to see get the spotlight next; I'm leaning toward tauren or trolls, but I can be swayed.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Stream of Cataclysm consciousness
The Care and Feeding of Warriors is about warriors, who hurl themselves into the fray, the very teeth of danger, armed with nothing more than the biggest weapons and armored with the absolutely heaviest armor we can find. Hey, we're not stupid -- we're just crazy. Having spent the last few weeks more or less avoiding talking about Cataclysm, I'm now going to dive back into the discussion of our "soon" to come expansion. While the most recent beta push didn't do much at all to our talents from previous beta builds, we did see some significant changes as the new glyph system was implemented. We also got actual plate models for a lot of green and blue quest drops so that my warrior now looks like he's wearing a classic Roman-style gladiator helmet and chest in the screenshot above. At this point, there's a lot to talk about in terms of how things are shaking out.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: A farewell to armor penetration
The Care and Feeding of Warriors is about warriors, who hurl themselves into the fray, the very teeth of danger, armed with nothing more than the biggest weapons and armored with the absolutely heaviest armor we can find. Hey, we're not stupid -- we're just crazy. After some careful thought, it seemed like as good a time as any to say goodbye to that most controversial of stats, armor penetration. As of this writing, it's not even going to be baked into Battle Stance any longer once Cataclysm hits, so we can essentially call an end to warriors' bypassing or ignoring armor the way other classes do with magic damage. Like it or hate it, all warrior damage save bleeds will now be mitigated by armor. Yes, even Thunder Clap. So what, you may ask? What's the big deal about armor penetration, anyway, and who cares about its not being around anymore in Cataclysm? Well, the short answer is, it lets our damage penetrate armor better (that is to say, it reduces the amount by which armor mitigates our damage) and warriors (and feral druids, and some rogues) care because our damage is overwhelmingly physical and thus reduced by armor. The long, strange trip of armor penetration in this expansion started at launch with ArP being a somewhat undesirable statistic. It had been converted to a rating following its rollicking high in The Burning Crusade, due to the way it became such a devastating staple of warriors in PvP.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Arms report card for Wrath
The Care and Feeding of Warriors is about warriors, who hurl themselves into the fray, the very teeth of danger, armed with nothing more than the biggest weapons and armored with the absolutely heaviest armor we can find. Hey, we're not stupid -- we're just crazy. And so we come to this, the last in our report card series for warrior specs in Wrath of the Lich King. In some ways, arms warriors saw the greatest amount of changes this expansion. The addition of Taste for Blood and Sudden Death making arms a far more proc-reliant spec than it had been previously, while the improvement of Rend saw the bleed damage of the spec (already somewhat of a staple of the arms playstyle in The Burning Crusade) emphasized. Arms started off in Naxx as lower in damage but competitive with fury, while it remained a fairly dominant PvP spec (but saw a challenge to its popularity from protection by about the middle range of the expansion's life cycle) throughout. Arms' damage and raid viability saw its high point in Ulduar, and unfortunately (for me, as a PvE-specced arms warrior) then entered a slow decline that continues to this day. I said last week, "I considered writing the arms report card instead, but considering the PvE state of arms, I just got depressed. 'Still OK for PvP' doesn't seem like enough for a column." While that's a fair statement, it is extremely oversimplified. Arms is a very solid leveling spec, as it outperforms fury until a certain gear threshold is met and requires less expertise (since Overpower, one of its bread-and-butter strikes, cannot be dodged, and arms has an expertise talent), and arms can generally be sure that Overpowers will critically hit due to the higher crit rate from Improved Overpower. Arms' main PvE limitation is based around the fact that as a bleed-heavy, proc-dependent spec that makes little use of Heroic Strike, it simply doesn't scale in the same berserk manner as fury once rage becomes less of an issue. Let's look at what arms does well and what keeps it a potent PvP force while preventing it from matching up with fury in PvE.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Warriors in lore
The Care and Feeding of Warriors is about warriors, who hurl themselves into the fray, into the very teeth of danger, armed with nothing more than the biggest weapons and armored with the absolutely heaviest armor we can find. Hey, we're not stupid -- we're just crazy. Good morning. I had said at the end of last week's column that this week would most likely be more about Cataclysm. Why, then, the sudden switch? Well, three reasons. I want to give the beta a chance to drop another patch. Without a numbers pass, most of what I've said in previous columns more or less holds true. But discussions of changes to the way rage generation will work definitely have me in a holding pattern as far as actually discussing the nuts and bolts of any spec. Quite frankly, my worgen warrior leveling to 60 already needed to use Battle Shout and Bloodrage on cooldown to generate rage; if they change rage gen so that critical hits don't generate more rage, he'll be looking at complete rage starvation. Rage will need to be tweaked upward quite a bit to give the "you can do your rotation and occasionally a Heroic Strike" feel; right now, it's more of a "please give me some rage, sir, I'm ever so rage-starved" feel. I also want to give the people who complain we talk too much about the beta a week off from writing angry emails. I personally love talking about beta issues and the way they show us the progression of the class, but I get that not everyone feels that way. I considered writing the arms report card instead, but considering the PvE state of arms, I just got depressed. "Still OK for PvP" doesn't seem like enough for a column. With this all swimming in my head, I wanted to talk about the lore of the warrior class and who it derives from in the setting. We know who the paladins are (Turalyon, Uther, Arthas), who the hunters are (Alleria, Sylvanas, Nathanos, Shandris), who the mages are (Medivh, Khadgar, Jaina, Kael'thas) and who the gigantic demon-tainted night elves are (seriously, I wonder if we're ever going to get demon hunter as a class) -- but who are the warriors? Well, it's called the Warcraft setting for a reason. There are quite a few of them. (So many, in fact, that this could end up being a series of posts.) Today we'll look at three: one Alliance, one Horde and one who could be claimed by both.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Fury report card for Wrath
The Care and Feeding of Warriors is about warriors, who hurl themselves into the fray, the very teeth of danger armed with nothing more than the biggest weapons and armored with the absolutely heaviest armor we can find. Hey, we're not stupid, we're just crazy. A couple of months back, I had intended to start a series reviewing each of the warrior specs as they are in current endgame. While I freely admit I got distracted by all the shiny bells and whistles of the beta, the time has come to step away from the looming apocalypse and instead look again at the class as it is right now when you log on. As we established last time, there are no major changes incoming for any of the classes until Cataclysm ships. The way your class plays right now is the way it will play until the pre-expansion patch drops and changes everything. So how does fury rate overall? It's had its ups and downs ... from top of the DPS in Naxxramas to middling in Ulduar and Trial to (finally) near the top again in ICC (at least if you're in the best possible gear, much of which is still leather). Even if you're in merely solid gear, however, fury can put out a serious hurting. I have yet to be less than No. 1 on the DPS charts on any 5-man I've run since I started collecting my 264/277 DPS set. I'm hardly any great shakes as DPS; it's the nature of the spec and how rage, talents and gear all intersect for the fury warrior. A talented fury warrior (again, I make no claims to be particularly talented) can lead the DPS on any fight halfway friendly to him in ICC. Wrath saw fury gain and lose on talents -- for example, the change to Rampage (although a late one) that made it a passive crit aura was a very positive talent change -- and ebb and flow with new gear as each raid dropped.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: 1 to 60 the Cataclysm way
The Care and Feeding of Warriors is about warriors, who hurl themselves into the fray, into the very teeth of danger, armed with nothing more than the biggest weapons and armored with the absolutely heaviest armor we can find. Hey, we're not stupid, we're just crazy. Good morning and welcome to this week's column, an overview of how the talent specialization changes affect leveling a warrior in the Cataclysm beta. Before I started this project, I made sure to keep to the following self-imposed rules. No heirlooms. This is 100 percent quest rewards and random drops. (Yes, the Wyrmslayer Spaulders dropped randomly for me while questing in Felwood.) I didn't run any instances because after level 30 or so it got really hard to find an instance group at the levels I was at, but that wasn't a hard-and-fast rule. Try and exhaust a zone before moving on. This means doing as many quests as I can, no skipping around, and experiencing as much of the new versions of old zones as possible. Turns out you can actually do fairly well that way. There are a lot of quests out there now. Switch talent specialization every four or five levels. There was no real rhyme or reason to this, I just wanted to see how talent specs felt at different levels. Blood Craze is very strong now. Combined with Bloodthirst and the heal from Victory Rush, a fury warrior can easily take on groups without falling over dead or running away. The old warrior strategy of "kill them before they kill you" is actually somewhat viable now. So let's discuss the experiment. What did I find were the pros and cons of the new system? What's good for warriors and what's bad?
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: The constantly evolving beta warrior
The Care and Feeding of Warriors is about warriors, who hurl themselves into the fray, into the very teeth of danger, armed with nothing more than the biggest weapons and armored with the absolutely heaviest armor we can find. Hey, we're not stupid, we're just crazy. This week, we shift gears a little. We have to talk about the constant evolution of the talent trees and class design in the beta test. The first thing we must keep in mind when we discuss the beta or PTR patches or anything like that is that the design is always evolving, and what's currently on test may or may not make it to live. We saw a new patch with a whole host of abilities drop or change. We'll see more of them. The purpose of looking at these patches is never "look, here's what you will look like when you play in Cataclysm" but rather "look, here's what they've done so far to the class and what we can learn from it." What we can see from the new talents is that more variety in terms of rage consumption and conservation is being worked into the system. As an example, Unbridled Wrath (never a particularly popular talent in the past couple of years) is gone, replaced by Battle Trance. This is indicative of the continuing paradigm shift on how rage should work for DPS players away from a simplistic "do anything you can to get more" design and towards a more nuanced, perhaps even complicated, way to look at rage, rage generation and rage consumption. The arms talent Deadly Calm is an example of a talent designed around the oft-mentioned "disciplined, soldiery feel of arms," one that seeks to give the spec that cool-under-fire sense, to contrast it from fury's barbaric direction. With Deadly Calm, I see the beginning of strategy in terms of how and when to use rage as an arms warrior. If you're close to activating Inner Rage, using Deadly Calm will let you still unleash that flurry of Mortal Strike, Overpower and Executes without preventing you from gaining the 50% damage increase for your special attacks.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Cataclysm beta first impressions
The Care and Feeding of Warriors is about warriors, who hurl themselves into the fray, into the very teeth of danger, armed with nothing more than the biggest weapons and armored with the absolutely heaviest armor we can find. Hey, we're not stupid, we're just crazy. This week, we look at the Cataclysm beta from the inside. If that's not something that interests you or you're looking to avoid spoilers, boy howdy, is this not the column for you. Seriously, you probably shouldn't even look at that screenshot, really. The first thing to report is, leveling a warrior from scratch in Cataclysm is probably the easiest it has ever been. Part of that is of course the new leveling experiences for the worgen and goblins, but I also started a blood elf warrior to see what that is like, and the streamlining inherent in the new talent and ability system made itself felt there as well. As of the most recent build, warriors start with Heroic Strike instead of Slam. It functions more or less exactly as you'd expect, and it basically serves the same role when leveling that it always did until you get Mortal Strike, Shield Slam or Bloodthirst.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Kill Halion, take his stuff
The Care and Feeding of Warriors is about warriors, who hurl themselves into the fray, the very teeth of danger armed with nothing more than the biggest weapons and armored with the absolutely heaviest armor we can find. Hey, we're not stupid, we're just crazy. Never fear, we'll be doing more leveling posts and more report cards in the future. (I've been messing around with arms again lately on my night elf warrior -- having some fun with it, too.) But this week, we'll be talking about the Ruby Sanctum instance. The storyline of the Ruby Sanctum links Wrath of the Lich King's storylines with those of the upcoming Cataclysm, but the encounter mechanics and loot are still pretty solidly Wrath. First we'll talk about the minibosses and Halion himself from both a DPS and a tanking perspective. Since much of that work has already been done by Michael Gray, we'll then go on to talk about loot. Then I'm gonna go eat something. I'd invite you, but by the time you read this I will have already eaten. The bane of the internet: I can't share my jalapeno-flavored chips with you. (Nor, to be honest, would I. They're mine. MINE!) The first thing to talk about in Ruby Sanctum are the trash pulls. As a DPSer, you really just need to know what the kill order is and to stick to it, but I also suggest to be aware. Remember Ulduar on the way to General Vezax? Yeah, it's like that. There most likely will be CC, and it's a bad idea to Whirlwind/Bladestorm in the middle of it. So pay attention and use your abilities responsibly. As a tank, you should likewise watch your AoE threat moves and make sure only to break CC when you need to. Make sure to use Charge to get right back on the Charscale Invoker when it punts you, and in general, use your stuns and silences to keep the casters locked down as much as possible when tanking them. If you're tanking the Charscale Commanders, pull them out; don't let them use Rallying Shout. There's no reason to let a five-or-so-mob trash pull get a 25% DPS increase. Once you get done with the trash, it's on to the mini-bosses.
Cataclysm class and mastery system for warriors
Let me first just say, "Woah." Perhaps even "Ho-lee carp!" Pretty much everything we've seen so far in the beta is nothing compared to this change, which will essentially halve the amount of talent points you'll be spending. Whereas a level 80 character right now has 71 points to spend, under the new system, you'll have 41 points at level 85. Furthermore, at level 10, you'll be asked to pick a talent specialization and you will not be able to spend talent points out of that specialization until you've spent 31 points in that tree. Considering you'll only have 41 points to spend in total, this means that there will be very little talent overlap between, say, an arms and a fury warrior and as such, much less risk of an arms warrior trying to cherry-pick fury for DPS talents. Likewise, tanking warriors won't be going up arms to pick up Impale (unless it is very, very low in the arms tree), and you'll have to be level 72 before you even get to spend points outside your main tree (tour 32nd talent point). To say this is "monstrously huge" is to dabble in understatement. The very method by which we choose talents is changing -- how we can choose them, and how often we get them. Many abilities that are currently class- or spec-defining talent choices will be linked to the talent tree you choose to specialize in, and passive abilities that currently exist as talents will simply be applied by making the choice between talent trees for your specialization.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: How we change in Cataclysm
The Care and Feeding of Warriors is about warriors. This week, we look at where the class is going in Cataclysm. Sorry if you were desperately hoping for a discussion of leveling, but with the new Cataclysm beta and the lifting of the NDA, we have details -- Finally, glorious details! It's been so long! -- to discuss about where the class is going. While there are not actually a lot of new talents to discuss, a great many talents have been altered in order to fit with the new design elements. Safeguard, for instance, isn't useless; it's practically mandatory. You're not going to want to take it ... That intervene effect more or less fits the definition of "useless" still ... But you'll need to take it for the crit immunity. This is the way of things for quite a few changes with Cataclysm. You may like them, or you may hate them, but you have to deal with them either way. I'm going to drop my usual attempt at detachment and be up front going into this. I like some of the changes a lot. I hate others. I am not unbiased about what's coming. How could I be? I've been playing warriors for over five years now. I love the class, and I'm never giving it up no matter what comes down the pike. So let's take a look at what's coming down said pike. Yesterday we covered talent and ability changes. I'm not going to repeat too much of that here; no reason to reinvent the wheel and all. Supposedly, Inner Rage is trainable in the latest beta build. They're also moving crit immunity from Safeguard to Improved Defensive Stance. As always, beta means constant changes.
Cataclysm Beta: Warrior talent and ability changes
Well, we finally have some insight into how warrior talents and abilities are changing in Cataclysm. While it's fair to say that we're not getting a ton of new abilities, what we are getting are worth discussing, and some of the talents have changed pretty dramatically from their current implementation. Just one example to start us: Shield Slam no longer uses block value in any way, shape or form, since block value is going away. Now, Shield Slam is purely dependent on attack power, which is of course derived from strength. The stronger your warrior is, the harder he or she hits things with a shield. In other words, if you want to hit hard with your Shield Slams? Stack strength. It really shouldn't be all that hard to do. Frankly, removing the whole shield block value conversion to this ability is welcome from my perspective. It should be noted that several abilities mentioned in the Cataclysm warrior previews are not here. Either they won't be, or they're not implemented yet, I have no idea which. Please don't stone me. Masteries appear to be exactly as they have been related to us, but Gushing Wound, Inner Rage and Heroic Leap do not seem to be implemented yet.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Wrath report card -- protection
The Care and Feeding of Warriors is about warriors, who hurl themselves into the fray, the very teeth of danger armed with nothing more than the biggest weapons and armored with the absolutely heaviest armor we can find. Hey, we're not stupid, we're just crazy. With patch 3.3.5 upon us and the absolute last raid instance of Wrath of the Lich King set to go live in a week or two, we're finally at the end of the roller coaster of class design for this expansion. Whether you love your class (i.e., play a warrior) or hate it (play one of those other classes like mages -- that one's for you, Dom), it's fair to say that barring any last-minute surprise redesigns, what you see is what you're going to get until Cataclysm. So where are warriors as a class right now? Since we're a tank/DPS hybrid with two roles and three specs (if you count PvE, anyway; if you include PvP, then we effectively have four roles and three trees to fill them), how well does the class do in each role, and how do our specs shape up? This week we'll discuss protection, the dedicated tanking tree for warriors. At the beginning of Wrath of the Lich King, warrior tanking saw a pretty significant shake-up in terms of its talents and abilities. Tanking in general was redesigned to be more fun, and a new hero class that was a tank/DPS hybrid was introduced. All of this changed the playing field for warriors pretty significantly. Warrior tanks found that for the first time, protection was possibly the most viable leveling build.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: To 40 and beyond
The Care and Feeding of Warriors is about warriors, those lovable, squeezable, strokeable bundles of pure joy who seethe with a burning inner fire, a rage that can only be quenched in blood. Matthew Rossi tries quenching it in delicious caffeinated beverages. You'd be surprised how often that works. So we resume our discussion of leveling from two weeks ago. Since that time I've worked another warrior to 80 as well as chugged along on my orc and leveled a new tauren warrior to 41. One of the great things about playing a warrior is, we don't have to write a lot about how awesome we are or how we do things better than other classes because we're cool with who we are. And when we're not cool with who we are, we slam shields or axes into things until we are. While we've covered levels 21 through 40 before, things have changed since those days in BC when that post was written. For starters, the big three warrior cooldowns (Recklessness, Retaliation and Shield Wall) are no longer linked and now only take 3 minutes to becomes usable, making them much more active and promoting their use over making the cautious warrior hold onto them for emergencies. While you won't have Recklessness in the 21 - 40 range, you will gain both Shield Wall and Retaliation in these levels, and you won't be forced to pick between them. Also, you'll get a mount at level 20. Cherish it. When I first leveled a warrior I had to run everywhere until level 40, and at 40 you got the 60% speed mount. Now at level 40 you get an epic! You kids today are spoiled.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Tank gearing as a fresh 80
The Care and Feeding of Warriors takes this week to look at what your freshly minted prot warrior will be doing at 80. Matthew Rossi has been 80 so long he remembers when Charlemagne first rolled prot. (Well, OK, he was arms for PvP.) No, we didn't get any fancy new talent trees to salivate over this week. But since I promised we'd spend some time looking at what each spec could expect as it dinged 80, that's almost just as well, and I in no way am just now recovering from three days of wailing and rending my clothing. I even played my mage for 10 whole minutes. Unfortunately, the mage class is still the single greatest atrocity ever committed by man, so I couldn't really bear to keep doing it for long. Not when I could be playing a warrior. It's simple logic. This week, we'll be looking at what to do once your prot warrior dings 80. We've covered the basics in our Protection 101 series, so if you need a refresher on things like "What stats do I want?" or what have you, that post is definitely worth going back and rereading. Like our previous "Fury at 80" post, this post will be aimed at helping a new protection warrior gear up as fast as possible when reaching 80, focusing on Emblem of Triumph gear and drops from heroic and normal 5-mans.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: A new fury at 80
The Care and Feeding of Warriors takes this week to look at what your newly 80 fury warrior should be doing. Matthew Rossi hit 80 back before you could pick up iLevel 232 gear by running heroics. Heck, it didn't even exist in game yet. Get off his lawn. While the intro is mock grumpy, the basic message is accurate enough. It's a good time to hit 80 with your aspiring fury warrior. The hit and expertise soft caps have never been easier to hit and with the dungeon finder; you can rapidly acquire solid gear that will allow you to begin raiding almost immediately, if that's what you want to do. You can also PvP ... Fury lacks in arenas but can solidly perform in battlegrounds. And PvP is both another source for solid gear and a reasonably fun pastime for a fury, with the playstyle meshing well with battlegrounds and Wintergrasp's chaotic melee tumult. Before we get started I'll point you at the Fury 101 post we did a while back. Since reinventing the wheel isn't what we're out to do, this post will be more definitely aimed at what to do when you reach 80 -- in other words, where to get the best gear you can as quickly as you can.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Behold the orc (1-20)
The Care and Feeding of Warriors is about warriors, those lovable, squeezable, strokeable bundles of pure joy who seethe with a burning inner fire, a rage that can only be quenched in blood. Matthew Rossi tries quenching it in delicious caffeinated beverages. You'd be surprised how often that works. Sometimes I lose sight of the fact that not all warriors are level 80. Quite a few of them are alts currently grinding their way through Dun Morogh or The Barrens or Silverpine or Bloodmyst Isle. So while I do plan on going forward with my fresh 80 guides for arms, fury and prot, I'm going to alternate them with an experiment I started this week, which was to level an orc warrior from scratch and see how far I get with her. (I have almost no female toons, so I figured I'd give a she-orc a try.) Yes, that's right, I rolled another warrior. In my defense, this week I've been really sick and exhausted, so what better use of my feverish time than to quest through The Barrens again? Look, the intervention didn't work, what makes you think your looking at the screen like that will stop me? Anyway, onward to discuss levels 1-20 as a warrior.
