warrior
Latest
Haste and the need for speed
There's been a lot of talk lately about the recent change to haste rating on the PTR. Melee classes are upset because the effects of melee haste rating has been nerfed by about a third, while caster classes are enjoying a buff to their spell haste rating.Many players are arguing that the haste nerf for melee classes is unnecessary -- and while I tend to agree, it's hard to argue when rogues like Furi (who completed his legendary sword set earlier this month), or a Fury Warrior like Svag are cracking 3000 DPS in some fights all on their own. These players are specced and geared to take full advantage of haste ratingI'm in a modest guild that's raiding Kara, and our total DPS output is usually around 2200-2500. When one player can crank out more damage than a 10 man raid (even if they're geared out and buffed), something seems to be wrong. Maybe this haste change is for the best -- but it's pretty devastating to any melee class that depends on white damage for DPS.
Trust me, everything is under control
Marilyn has an interesting point over at WoW Ladies: if you see her grinding Consortium rep and taking on three mobs at a time in Netherstorm, leave her alone-- it's all under control. I sometimes have this same problem as a resto Shaman-- onlookers don't always realize that even though my health is low and I'm almost out of mana, redemption for me is just a huge heal and a Mana Tide totem away. Things may look bad, but really, don't worry about it-- my Earth Shield just got refreshed, and I'm good to go for two more mobs, so no, I don't need saving.On the other hand, I'm not sure I really want to discourage people to help in this game-- I'd much rather have them help me fight than really be in trouble and have them /laugh as I die. So I'm not sure I'd tell everyone to lay off.Rather, the problem here is that when I pull a group of mobs, I don't want someone else stepping in and tagging them away from me in the name of help. So there are plenty of ways to help that don't include stealing my XP-- drop a DoT on something that's been tagged (I do this all the time on my Shadow Priest), or throw me a heal (always appreciated, even if my Mana Tide totem is off cooldown). And just paying attention is nice, too-- nothing burns me more as a Rogue than taking the time to sneak up on a mob, only to have them charged by an overzealous warrior who claims afterwards that they didn't see my Distract go off.If it's legitimate kill-stealing, the best option is just to ignore and move on to a less populated area-- there's no dealing with those people. But if you do see someone fighting a bunch of mobs solo, there are better ways to help than grabbing one of their kills, and chances are they'll be more than happy to help you the next time around.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Play Your Alts!
Every week Matthew Rossi sits down to write The Care and Feeding of Warriors because he cares. He cares as much as an old Faith No More song. He cares so much that he's writing the column even though he's stuck in the frozen hinterlands while everyone else gets to go to Blizzcon. But he's not bitter, oh my no. Well, okay, maybe he's a bit bitter.Speaking as someone who really loves the warrior class, at times it's hard to understand why anyone would prefer another. I mean, paladins can seem like a watered down priest grafted to a watered down warrior, druids are three classes stuck together (maybe four, even), I couldn't even begin to tell you what shaman are supposed to be... and that's just the hybrid classes. Why would you want to be a coward hiding until you can stab people in the back or a guy in a dress who blows things up from a distance and does everything in his power to avoid going toe to toe with the enemy?Well, besides the fact that those are biased and unfair generalizations, the reason you might want to play another class is to get better at your own.
A spec guide for classes that aren't yours
Nowadays, you lucky kids have the Armory, and you can, on demand, look up the point-by-point spec of any player in the game. You can see who's Fire, who's Affliction, and who's Resto at a moment's notice, and gone are the days where you had to guess what spec a player was from the spells they cast.Or are they? I'd hazard a guess that most players don't have the Armory on quick dial, and yet all players still encounter different specs of classes every single time they play. In an Arathi Basin, by the time you've looked up the other guy's spec on the Armory, the game is over.So it's still valuable to know specs just by glancing at the spells players are casting, and this is a guide to help you do that. Want to know at a glance whether your main tank laying down Mortal Strike is really specced Protection as he says, or if he's got a few extra points in Arms than he should have? Want to know if that Warlock who sent a Felguard after you in the battlegrounds is specced Demonology or Destruction?I've put together a handy guide to spotting specs of classes that aren't yours-- there are a few telltale spells in each class that will giveaway a player's spec at a glance, and save you the momentary trouble of having to punch their name into the Armory. I've also given you a short brief on what each spec can and can't do for you (so you're not asking priests in Shadowform to buff you with Divine Spirit). To check it out, hit the link below.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Please don't do that.
Every week Matthew Rossi brings you The Care and Feeding of Warriors, the column dedicated to help bridge the gap between our classes with sharing, caring, and an incredible amount of incoherent screaming on Vent to stop pulling aggro before a blood vessel pops in our brains and we spray blood from our noses all over the monitor. Seriously, the other day I actually lost my voice.Of course, no one is perfect. We all make mistakes, be they small, trifling ones or huge, 'Oh my God did I just manage to pull Golemagg all the way up here' errors that can wipe runs and breed hard feelings and/or merciless ribbing for eons to come. Sometimes, like when you forget to bring a shield to an instance and discover this while charging in on the boss, all you can do is just hope to get through it. However, there are mistakes that can be avoided and things that might not seem like mistakes at all from the vantage point of another player, but which make a tanking warrior want to strangle the entire world with his or her own entrails, just to gross people out while they're dying. (Some of these things might apply to tanking bears and paladins, too, but I've never tanked as one of them and won't presume to speak for them.) Here are a few things that parties can do to help their beleaguered warrior not reach 'I've been trapped in this coal mine with nothing but the sound of the water dripping on my helmet for three weeks while the radio that I cannot reach because I am pinned under the bodies of my best friends keeps play my wife's favorite song' levels of insanity. I'll also try and mention a few mistakes warriors often make while tanking that makes the rest of the party have to work harder.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: The Holy Trinity?
Every week Matthew Rossi writes The Care and Feeding of Warriors, the column dedicated to the class everyone can aspire to except blood elves. Why can't blood elves be warriors? Because giving Taunt to blood elves would be redundant. The common wisdom is that there are three roles in an instance. You have your DPS, who kill things. You have your healers, who keep things from killing you. And you have your tanks, who keep the things you intend to kill from killing you first. It's a concept so simple and widespread in WoW that most people refer to it as 'The Holy Trinity'. The only problem with this beautiful theory is, it's wrong. When I first thought about it, the glaring omission was CC, or Crowd Control. You have CC to help the group by deciding which mobs you're going to try and kill first and prevent other mobs from trying to kill you while you do it. Eureka, I shouted from my bathtub (almost dropping my laptop), there are four lights! But the more I thought about it, I realized that I'd fallen into a subtle trap. There aren't four roles, there are still only three.CC, DPS, and healing. And that's it.
Let my Orc shoulders grow
Change comes a lot in this game. Some changes are small, and some are big. Some changes players hate at first, and then they learn to live with and even like them. But some changes are simply and totally unacceptable. And of course when I say that, I mean the change to the male Orc shoulder size.We male Orcs are especially proud of our powerful, broad shoulders. I love my shoulder pieces-- I once ran UBRS countless times (and I do mean countless times-- just ask my guild, who I dragged through with me) just to get the Pauldrons of Elements. We have broad, towering, expansive shoulder armor, and we are respected, loved, and feared because of it. Your male Orc Warlocks, your Warriors, your Shamans, Rogues and Hunters all stand proud knowing that each of our shoulder pieces is as big as our head.Or at least they were. Now, after the patch, they're small, a fraction of their former size. They're diminuitive, tiny, and a paltry shadow of what they should be. They're-- dare I say it-- puny and pathetic. We are male Orcs! Like Thrall, we are the real heroes of Warcraft. We're the ones who rage into battle at a moment's notice. If anyone deserves gigantic shoulders, it's us. We are true heroes, sung and unsung-- we are Orc males, and our shoulders must be large, majestic, and befitting of our muscular stature. Blizzard has acknowledged the bug, sure, and they say it'll be fixed in the next major patch.But this-- this, my friends, is a true injustice. The next time you see your favorite male Orc, don't make jokes about whether size matters or not. Resist the urge to mention "shrinkage." We are our shoulders, their size, their width, their girth-- when they suffer, we suffer as well.[ Thanks to all who sent this in-- I feel your pain, my brethren! ]
Confessions of a Warrior Noob [edit]
How well I remember the day I that created my warrior. I had seen a gnome walking around with an adorable name, a cute hat, and all that plate armor much too big for her, and I was suddenly inspired with a character idea that I just had to make real. As a roleplayer, I was fiercely excited to play this undauntedly brave gnome who would proclaim in an adorably child-like voice: "I am NOT cute! I'm the most fearsomest warrior you'll ever see!" The character was wonderful fun to roleplay for a long time, and brought plenty of laughs with my friends, but after finally reaching level 40 and getting my cute mechanostrider mount, I realized I was getting killed way too often, killing monsters way too slowly, and just not having that much success at the actual "war" part of being a warrior. I had heard of a number of warriors complaining in the forums and it seemed that the class was just way too weak. So I gave up and blamed Blizzard for my bad experience -- but oh, how I was wrong...
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: If you build it...
Every week Matthew Rossi brings to life The Care and Feeding of Warriors, a column meant to help our friends and even sometimes our enemies, the women and men who don't know which end of a prayerbook is which, couldn't backstab you if you turned around and wore a target on your spine, and who think Arcane Brilliance really should make them glow in the dark.Last week, we talked about builds. This week, we'll look at a few first hand. I do think, in general, that many warriors are feeling the pinch between speccing for as much tanking viability as possible and having talents and abilities that allow them to grind and solo/quest in a timely fashion. I definitely think there's an entire column to be had in discussing this factor, but for now I'll just say that I am attempting in selecting these specs to err on the side of overall viability. I may have skipped a few obvious talents for ones that I thought helped provide more general ability, and I especially welcome commentary and suggestions.
Breakfast Topic: Three cheers for warriors!
Someone's gotta tank, and it's often warriors. The class most famous for standing under the nose of the most dangerous enemies in the World of Warcraft and taking everything such monsters can dish out on them sometimes just want a break, to sit back and just kill things like rogues get to do -- and they do that well too! Today is Warrior Day in this breakfast topic, and it's time to show all our warrior friends out there what we love about what they do for us. So if you play as a warrior, with a warrior, or against warriors (and good ones!), shout it out how much you love it! [gorgeous art by Pulyx!]
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: We are the champions... of the world!
Every week Matthew Rossi brings you The Care and Feeding of Warriors, a column dedicated to that guy who keeps Mortal Striking you in the arenas, Whirlwinding in Alterac Valley, popping Intimidating Shout in Arathi Basin, and standing there rooted, sheeped or sometimes Death Coiled in Warsong Gulch. Yeah, we all know you hate that we get to wear plate. We hate that you get to set us on fire, if it helps any.This week, instead of talking more about tanking (although you can expect a tanking article covering Protection spec in more detail soon, covering the abilities unique to that talent tree like Shield Slam and Defiance) I've decided we should talk about two related, but not identical, aspects of the warrior - PvE DPS and PvPing. There are some myths to dispel, and some good and bad news for those of us who enjoy the idea of gearing up in the heaviest armor and smashing things with a great two handed whacking stick. There's so much to cover that I expect I'll have to come back to each subject again in the future, but you have to start somewhere.First off, as most experienced warriors will tell you, PvE DPS is actually better if you dual wield. I say this as a devotee of the two hander, mind you. When I raided, I stayed Mortal Strike and used a Sulfuras as my weapon of choice, and I still put out very respectable numbers even in Naxxramas. But I could never match the damage of a dual-wielding fury/arms warrior. I sacrificed that damage for big crits and whirldwind damage which saw me top the charts in places like the suppression room where I could compete with the mages and at the same time I had much less threat than friends who used a Crul in one hand and a Thunderfury in the other. Granted, the proc on TF meant that we had some spirited debates about whether or not you should offhand it in a DPS role at all, or just tank with it, but I won't bore you with that specific and outdated a debate.
Pandemic wins again at WSVG Louisville
WSVG's Louisville event took place this past weekend, and the results say that Pandemic has done it again, winning the 5v5 3v3* tourney and taking home the big prize of $10,500. Nice work if you can get it!Pandemic, you'll remember, won it all in China as well. They definitely look like a winning arena team-- Warrior, Paladin, two Priests, a Shammy and a Mage. Strangely enough, both Priests are Disc/Holy, which might not surprise you arena vets, but it surely surprised me. Their Paladin is Holy, too, while the Shammy is a more reasonable Elemental, and their Warrior is specced Arms.Grats to Pandemic for that one-- the next WSVG WoW arena event will be in Dallas on July 5-8 (and if you haven't signed up yet, they're giving away Blizzcon tickets to a few lucky participants). Will Pandemic three-peat? Considering their arena season 2 score is 22-1, it seems a pretty safe bet.Full list of this weekend's winners and their prizes after the jump.*Update: My fault, this was a 3v3 tourney, not a 5v5. The team on the Armory may or may not have been the team that played, or if it was it's likely they switched players in and out. Thanks, commenters evo_dragon and Den!
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Tanking 101
Each week, Matthew Rossi will be bringing you a whole new column about our clanking friends, those men and women who managed to learn how to say something profoundly foul in dragon, undead, even the clackity speech of giant bugs. Amazingly, 'so's your mother' will offend a giant statue enough that it ignores being lit on fire and frozen at the same time, if you say it in the right tone of voice.If you've been tanking forever, have done all the 60 and 70 endgame instances, and are wearing purple and orange all over your 'toon as if you were the offspring of a traffic cone and Grimace, then this installment of The Care and Feeding of Warriors is going to be telling you things you already know. It seemed important to spend at least a little time going over the basics of tanking, however, for all those people who have picked up the warrior class and now find themselves strapping sword and board on and heading into an instance for the first time. I promise, we'll get to issues of PvP balance, DPSing, and other fun stuff in the future. But the main role of the warrior is to tank. If you're in a five man, you're usually there to tank the instance, and if you're in raid, you will probably be asked to tank from time to time even if you're a full DPS spec. Tanking is neither everything nor the only thing warriors do, but it is the most common and the role we're most associated with, and all warriors need to be good at it.Warriors are unique among the classes in World of Warcraft due to the rage mechanic. While druids sometimes find themselves using rage, warriors are the only class that hasn't an option to switch to something that starts at full like mana or energy. As a result, a warrior starts every fight at his weakest and gets stronger as he takes and deals damage. While this difference is essential to just about every aspect of the class's performance, it is in tanking that it becomes the most crucial. In effect, a warrior tank starts out with less rage to use his abilities, while everyone else in the party starts out with their gas tank full, so to speak.
Sir Howard proclaims with PS3's help, Sony "is on a comeback"
The always cheery Sir Howard Stringer awoke from his six-month hibernation tossed a few nuggets of positivity to investors at the annual shareholders meeting in Tokyo. First, he announced the company is on the road to recovery and held the PS3 in high regard as "vital" for a successful Sony future. Pronouncing that "production problems have been solved" he went on to ease investors likely nervous from the last earnings report by reassuring them of the cyclical nature of console profits. "We always lost money in the hardware, initially and recover that money gradually," he said. And in downplaying his non-Japanese citizenship, he beat his chest and exclaimed, "I am not a foreigner. I am a warrior." Uh-huh. Perhaps if he wore a headdress and performed a tribal dance, his warrior statement would've been more compelling instead of just ... silly.
Constructive criticism with the forums and the Armory
Some European players recently posted topics to their forums which focused on giving constructive criticism to whoever was above them in the thread. As the draenei author of the hunters' "what does the hunter above you need?" post put it:This isn't another "Rate my armory" thread. But rather a thread to give constructive criticism and directions for the above hunter. Like when you see a hunter in peril running around with a 2H Sword of the Bandit you could point him towards the Sonic Spear in Shadow Labyrinth. Or when a confused survivalist spends 2 of his precious talent points in Imp. Feign Death you could tell him to spend them on something more useful like Clever Traps and so on. May the Naaru bless you all.Not only is the idea tremendously useful, there's something about the humility and camaraderie in the attitude of this sort of post that gives me a pleasant surprise. Usually the forums (and anonymous Internet communication in general) have of all sorts of nastiness, and it's refreshing to see people using everything that the forums and the armory provide in such a cooperative way.I found "what does the player above you need?" posts for Hunters, Warlocks, Rogues, and Warriors. If you have found similar forum posts for other classes, or posts with remarkable constructive criticism of another sort, please mention them in the comments below.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Ooops!
Every week Matthew Rossi will be writing The Care and Feeding of Warriors, a column dedicated to the lumbering, clanking, mana-deprived folks who spend a lot of time yelling at monsters to ignore the people in dresses and that guy stabbing them a lot in the back.Introductions are always hard, especially when you're about do something ludicrously arrogant like presenting yourself as an expert on something. Still, it's better to do something all the way then it is to tenderfoot it, so here goes. I'm Matt Rossi, and I'll be writing about warriors for WoW Insider. I've played two to 70, have another to 68, a Draenei I'm letting rest at 51 for now and another who I left on an RP server at about 60. Basically, I love warriors, always have. Every time I play my pally or shammy alts, I keep muttering but where's my charge gone in my best Johnny Depp lamenting the loss of his rum voice. Warriors have had their ups and their downs... who can forget when we lost all rage on a missed execute? But I've played since my wife brought her copy of the game to move in with me, and all that time warriors have usually been my mains.I wanted this first column to break the ice a little, so instead of writing a deep treatise on tanking basics, or the merits and drawbacks of various tanking specs, or how playing another class can help your tanking, or the mythology that's built up in players from other classes about how amazingly awesome plate armor is in game, I decided today would be a good time to humiliate myself in public with one of the biggest screw-ups I've made as a warrior. This way, we can all laugh at what a cretin I am together! Since I'm sure I'm going to post something that will convince you of that sooner or later anyway.
Arena Season 2 item stats (Warrior) [u]
MMO-Champion comes through again with concrete details on new content. As listed in the patch notes, 2.1.2 on the PTRs contains the Arena Season 2 items. The set names are apparently "Merciless Gladiator's [Whatever]." Most of the sets do not seem to be activated yet, but we have the full stats and appearance of the Warrior set, Merciless Gladiator's Battlegear (pictured at right).Thanks to a helpful commenter at Wowhead, I have the following comparison between this set and the Season 1 equivalent, Gladiator's Battlegear. The new set has, as compared to the old one:+639 armor+36 strength+31 stamina+22 crit rating+18 hit rating+6 resilienceThe gem slots and set bonuses remain the same. It would be nice if you could mix and match between Season 1 and Season 2 sets in order to get set bonuses, but I'm not sure whether this is actually the case.Hopefully stats on the other sets will come to light soon; if that happens, I'll update this post.Update: skins and set bonuses for all the classes' sets are now available.
This week on the Japanese Virtual Console: Golden Kung Fu Adventures
Hey, a Japanese Virtual Console update we don't have to be jealous of! Usually, Japan gets all kinds of great stuff, and we get, at best, Japan's great stuff from a month ago. This week: nothing to fret about, really. Front Line (Famicom, 1-2 players, 500 Wii Points) Adventures of Lolo (Famicom, 1 player, 500 Wii Points) Golden Axe II (Mega Drive, 1-2 players, 600 Wii Points) The Kung Fu (PC Engine, 1 player, 600 Wii Points) We like Golden Axe II, but we feel confident it'll be here soon. We already know we're getting The Kung Fu this month (as China Warrior). We've never played Front Line, but it looks very ... proto-NES. That leaves Lolo, which, as a HAL Laboratory title and an okay game, is no doubt the subject of a lot of frothing demand. It'll come out here eventually!
Shifting Perspectives: How fun is a druid?
Welcome to Shifting Perspectives! This is a new feature here on WoW Insider, which will bring you various perspectives on shifting forms as a druid, from David Bowers one week, and Dan O'Halloran the next.I'm here kick off our little druid feature for this week with a simple pair of questions to answer: "Is playing a druid fun?" and "should I play a druid?" I reply to both with a resounding yes, of course. "But why?" you ask. "What has the Druid class got to offer me that other, so-called 'superior classes' haven't got?" The answer is, naturally, everything! Well mostly everything. You see, more than any other class, druids have such a variety of abilities and can specialize in these abilities to such a degree that there are many very different play styles available to each druid player. The Druid is the ultimate class for the player who wants to tank sometimes, stealth and kill sometimes, heal sometimes, and then sit back and nuke things from a distance for a few months in order to get a change of pace. A druid can alternately be very good at healing, tanking, dealing up-close melee damage, or dealing far-away nuking damage, filling the roles of a priest, warrior, rogue or mage -- all in one class!
Square-Enix remakes just keep on comin'
Not content with releasing eighty remakes of popular Final Fantasy titles and making an obscene profit from said actions, a recent online interview with CEO Yoichi Wada revealed that the company has plans to remake an unknown number of their other mega-popular franchise, Dragon Quest (also known, for earlier iterations, as Dragon Warrior here in the states).Which titles and how many are as of yet unknown ... the information seemed to just slip right out of Wada-san's vocal cords ... but we'd imagine a compilation similar to Final Fantasy: Dawn of Souls. Also, while not officially confirmed for the DS, we can't really imagine these titles going anywhere else. Does this news excite you guys, or are the old-school DQ titles just a bit too old-school?
