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The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Gearing for Kara, Prot Warriors part 2
Last week, for our fiftieth post, we spent so much time talking about prot gear to get ready to tank Karazhan that everyone went mad and the moon cracked open and rained fire upon the Earth. So get ready for part two! (Note, it's possible that didn't actually happen. But it felt like it did.)This week, we're going to be covering gloves, boots, helms, capes and tanking weapons. Last week's column and this column from a while back cover the other slots you'll need for tanking gear to allow you to step into Kara and begin annoying mobs with your irritating taunts while not dying immediately when they start punching you in the face.Without further ado, let's get down to business.
WoW Insider Weekly
We've got a special guest for you this week on WoW Insider Weekly (our roundup of the best regular content from the past seven days). Ladies, gentlemen and Gnomes, it's our pleasure to introduce to you the former Lord of Outland, straight from directly underneath Hellfire Citadel, Magtheridon! The Pit Lord is going to talk about all of our most popular weekly features, while your faithful author is going to step out for a much-deserved drink. Later. Guildwatch: Drama, but the good kind"Nothing gives me more pleasure even in my weakened state then watching you verminous swine squabble amongst yourselves, and Guildwatch covers every minute of it." Ask a Lore Nerd: You're how old?"Older than the birth of sin, mortal. You think you know the history of the universe, lore nerd? You know nothing when faced with the existence of a Pit Lord!" New Players' Guide: Your life as a Hunter'Hunters, Priests, Shamans or even those vermin of the Light, Paladins, none matter -- all will fall before the wrath of Magtheridon! Learn what you will, new players -- no mortal shall face me and survive!" The Light and How to Swing It: Holy Paladin gear enchants, part 2"Adorn your gear with whatever pithy enchants you like, vermin. I will dress it with your blood and entrails when you dare to face me." Hybrid Theory: Is it too much?"My blood is my own! Also, this look at group utility is strangely fascinating -- it almost makes me wish I had some support classes other than these lousy Channelers. But no matter -- the great Magtheridon, Pit Lord of the Burning Legion, buffs himself!" Boy, that Maggie sure is grouchy. More cantankerous whining about his blood and power, along with a look at our other most popular posts, after the break.
Phat Loot Phriday: Rod of the Sun King
It seems to me that this proc is pretty singular -- after a little bit of searching, I can't find any other weapons that have anything like it. If you can, let us know in the comments below.Name: Rod of the Sun King (Wowhead, Thottbot, WowDB)Type: Epic One-hand MaceDamage/Speed: 189-352 / 2.70 (100.2 DPS)Abilities: Increases attack power by 52. Chance on hit: gain 10 energy or 5 rage. This is the proc (short for procedure, from the programming world, though it's come to mean a number of other things) that really makes this mace stand out as a choice pic for Rogues or DPS Warriors -- the proc rate seems to be around 3 procs per minute, which is a substantial amount of energy and rage coming back to the user. Unfortunately, it also seems there's a short cooldown on the proc, which means you can't have a bunch of procs in a row, and get a bunch of free energy or rage back to back. Still, this weapon provides a pretty steady source of extra Warrior/Rogue fuel, and it's exceptional for that reason. How to Get It: Drops from Kael'thas -- the Tempest Keep version, not the Magisters' Terrace one. The drop rate is somewhere between 15 and 20%, but the proc on this weapon makes it pretty specific -- only Warriors or Rogues would ever be able to use it to its fullest, and even then, it's definitely not a tanking weapon. Rogues may be tempted to switch to a Mace spec just to use this, but Warriors would only need it for a DPS set.Druids, unfortunately for them, have no use for this weapon, even the bear kinds. Since the proc requires a "chance on hit," and bear Droods don't actually hit anything with their weapon (just their paws), it'll never proc for them. Blizzard might have been a little more giving on that one, but as it is, this weapon doesn't help bears at all.Getting Rid of It: Sells to vendors for 14g 59s 25c, disenchants into a Void Crystal. There will be other, better weapons you find on your way up the raiding ladder (and while the DPS on this is nice, the high-end Arena gear beats it), but the proc on this weapon is almost enough to keep it anyway.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Gearing for Kara, Prot Warriors part 1
The Care and Feeding of Warriors embarks on a massive multi-part exploration of how to gear your new level 70 to tank and DPS in the 10 man raids. Matthew Rossi begs your forbearance, as this sucker is going to be insanely long when it is all said and done.Karazhan is fast becoming the new UBRS. The ten man cap on the raid and the fact that the gear from Kara was necessary to begin thinking about 25 man raids (now, the badges from Kara are - Karazhan is the rough equivalent of five heroic dailies in a two to three hour run once you've gotten the place on farm status) makes it the gateway through which both serious endgame raiders had to progress and a dandy place for smaller guilds to clean out, and were it not for the raid timer I'm sure we'd see guilds running Kara repeatedly in a week, and the only thing that stops daily Kara PuG's is that same timer. Now you've reached level 70, and you want to tank or DPS in Karazhan.Well, first things first: I'm going to have to disappoint you a little. If you're a DPS warrior, there's not a lot of DPS plate in Karazhan. There are some nice weapons, yes, and you're going to want the badges to buy gear with, but you're not going to find much in terms of plate in here for your DPS needs aside from some boots and the Tier 4 DPS options, which in many cases you will replace as soon as you have the badges or the Gruul/Mag runs to do so. Still, the weapons are nice. For a tank, Karazhan has more goodies in store. But first, you have to get into the instance.The minimum tanking requirements for Karazhan (literally, for stepping in the door and tanking Attumen) are 490 defense, 12k health and armor. It would be nice to have at least 400 shield block value and you should be uncrushable with shield block up. This is achievable with drops from the 70 five man instances, heroics, and reputation rewards. I'm not going to list a lot of badge gear here because, frankly, if you have 100 badges to spend on a breastplate you probably are already tanking in Karazhan. Likewise, while I will list the tanking drops in Karazhan, I won't do that until after I've listed the options outside it first. Those drops will be considered as upgrades you'll probably need before tanking Prince Malchezaar. Before we get started, here's a list of rings, trinkets and necklaces that will still be of use to you.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Are we barbarians?
The Care and Feeding of Warriors is written by a human being. That human being is weak, and flawed, and does things like read forbidden patch notes from leaked alpha clients. That human being (old Matthew Rossi, you all know, lives in that crazy haunted mansion atop Death Hill... which, by the way, is a perfectly pleasant little town, it's just unfortunately named) knows it is verboten to host any files or take screenshots from said alpha, but he still wants to talk about the future. The future, Conan?Now, if I knew how the Azerothian calendar worked, I'd have a joke here. But since I don't, let's talk about talents and abilities that may or may not actually come to pass. (Fear not, Shaman enthusiasts, your regularly scheduled Shaman column will be coming to you tomorrow) You know how alphas are, they tease you with abilities that later are removed, changed or totally revamped due to feedback, but there's still lots to talk about. For instance, the image that heads up today's picture might well be waiting for you to meet... or even to be... in Northrend. Man, that's so awesome it makes my brain hurt. I really hope these talents aren't just a lot of hoaxish blue sky, but please make sure you keep your grains of salt handy in case you have to take a few.
How to convince tanks to PuG
I'm getting back to WoW Insider after a month's real-life-related absence and have been spending some time playing catch-up on the site. One of the articles that caught my attention was Matt Rossi's popular "One reason tanks won't PuG," in no small part because I play a tank and my own PuG runs have been few and far between of late. My main, a Tauren Druid, respecced from balance to feral at level 69 because there were so few tanks on my server, and I literally spent months and months tanking PuG's to get experience and gear. During that period I saw everything from rogues rolling on +healing maces to warlocks needing on tanking cloaks, and I learned that you never can tell what you're going to get from a PuG. Yes, you'll get hunters who can't trap, mages who never resheep, rogues who mistakenly believe they leveled a warrior, and priests who Power Word: Shield you straight off the pull -- but you'll also find people who know their class well, or are in the process of learning just like you are, and who are fun to be around. I have now killed Illidan with a contingent of people who showed up to my PuG's back when I was a wee lolbaretank in quest greens and Heavy Clefthoof, so as a matter of personal experience I think PuG's are a somewhat underrated way to meet people who will later turn out to play crucial roles in how you experience the game.I don't PuG as frequently anymore due to time constraints and increased time spent leveling alts, but I still hang out in LFG from time to time for the pure enjoyment of meeting new people. Yes, it is often difficult to PuG tanks and healers (I would submit, as someone who typically tanks or heals in dungeons, that it is also difficult to PuG skilled DPS), but a lot of people could make it easier on themselves than they do. If you're having problems finding a tank or healer for your PuG's, try these.
Leather on a Shaman and cloth on a Druid
Obstruce brings up a topic that seems obvious to some people but can drive others crazy: healers wearing less sturdy gear than they can just for the stats. I won't lie -- I've got a few pieces of leather on my restoration Shaman for the stats, but in general, I don't think it's a bad thing that healers and casters sometimes wear cloth for the stats, given of course 1) that they're not taking it from someone else who needs it, and 2) that there's not a better piece of normal gear for them to be wearing (it's an upgrade).Obstruce's aunt disagrees, especially with Shamans and Druids -- if for some reason they pull aggro, wearing leather or cloth will only make things harder on the group. Which is true -- if I'm wearing leather (or even cloth) on my Shaman, I'm not going to have near as much armor as I would wearing the mail I'm supposed to wear. But in a group where all members are doing what they should be, I should never get hit anyway. If a healer's getting hit, it's a good 80% of the time not their fault -- it's the tank's or DPS' fault for not keeping aggro where it belongs.So no, I don't see any problem with a Druid or Shammy (or even a Paladin, though there's a lot of nice healing plate out there anyway) wearing less than they're meant to. Warriors are definitely not in the same situation -- while yes, some of that Hunter mail may have lots of Agility on it, and that will help out your crit percentage, you get so much more bonus from Strength and Armor that it's just not worth it. Casters can steal Mage and Priest gear (as long as they're not actually stealing it from actual Mages and Priests) if it's an upgrade, but Warriors almost never have a reason to slum it up in mail.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Show your expertise
This week, The Care and Feeding of Warriors talks about Expertise. There's going to be a lot of math talk. It will probably have an error or two in it. Mr. Rossi needs to get some int gear for writing these columns. Expertise is useful for tanking and melee DPSing, so it seemed time to discuss it. Also, I've recently realized I can't actually hit the 'expertise cap' as a tank with the gear I can get. Sad but true.We live in interesting times since patch 2.3 here in warrior land. Whereas previous to this patch, we had good old fashioned bonuses to our weapon skill (remember the old Edgemaster's Handguards? Admit it, you wore these at 60. Some of you wore them at 70. You don't have to lie to us, we know.) we now live in the magical world of expertise rating and expertise. What is expertise, and what isn't it?Well, for starters, expertise is not chance to hit. Expertise can help you hit more often in an indirect manner... it reduces the chance for a mob to dodge or parry your attacks. so technically yes you'll be hitting them more often. But + hit items directly reduce the chance an attack will miss, which in World of Warcraft is entirely different from a dodge or parry (just ask any warrior trying to hit the Overpower button). Furthermore, expertise is not weapon skill. The expertise system replaced bonuses to weapon skill on items, but it did not actually replace weapon skill: weapon skill up to 350 (at level 70) still exists. Expertise is just (just, he says) a direct reduction of your chance to have your attacks dodged or parried. Unlike the old days with weapon skill bonuses, as far as I know there's no relationship between expertise and glancing blows. (If anyone out there has information that contradicts me here, please share it.) So if expertise isn't going to raise your chance to hit, why am I so excited about it?
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Aftermath
The Care and Feeding of Warriors plays catch-up this week with Patch 2.4. Matthew Rossi has been tanking the new five man, doing badge runs, and being obscenely lucky on drops this week, to the point where he's almost embarrassed about it. The word 'almost' was used advisedly.So this week I've been running around doing as much of the new content as I can, dailies, the new five man, an abortive run into Sunwell Plateau (no matter what your friend in the Illidan guild tells you, you cannot heal that instance in Karazhan gear, not that I really expected to survive) and of course the usual raiding, which includes our badge runs into Kara and ZA. As primarily a tank, I usually pass on DPS gear unless no dedicated DPS players need/want them, so while i have a few good pieces it hasn't been my main focus.This week, however, the loot fairy came along and just threw gear at me. On Wednesday night, our usual SSC clear netted me World Breaker, a mace I've always stared at with wonder. First off, I've always loved the model. Check it out, that thing is wicked. I never expected to get the weapon... like I said, prot spec... but nobody else who could use it wanted it. So I snatched it up greedily and made cooing Gollumesque noises about it and went on with tanking. Since I have some decent pieces for my chest and legs but lacked any plate helmet, shoulder or glove option for whackery, I ran out and picked the new Savage Plate gear for those slots and enchanted/gemmed them up. I knew I wasn't going to set the world on fire but I thought I could have some fun in BG's.Amazingly, it turned out that I was right.
Welcome to 2.4, Warrior
The patch is coming. We all know this. We don't know exactly when it will be here, but will know it's coming. (Edited to add - okay, it's today.) What will it change? What will warriors have to be concerned about, what will we look forward to, and what gear can we get from the unlockable vendor on the Sunwell island?Well, for starters, at least so far as has been revealed on the PTR, warriors are seeing remarkably little in the way of changes. Imp Hamstring is now subject to diminishing returns, Cleave won't hit a CC'd target, and supposedly they're going to fix the bug that has led to flurry not proccing off of off-hand weapon strikes. This is not a huge laundry list of changes. The entire warrior section of the current patch notes is as follows: Cleave: This ability will no longer strike any secondary target which is under the effect of crowd-control spells that break on taking damage. i.e. Polymorph, Sap, etc. (Edited to Add - Hortus clarifies that this change was rolled back on live.) Endless Rage will now give the correct amount of rage as intended from damage dealt by a Warrior. Improved Hamstring (Arms) effect is now subject to diminishing returns when used in PvP. Stances: It is no longer possible to accidentally change into a stance you are already in via macros (resulting in a global cooldown and loss of rage). Whirlwind: Critical strikes with the off-hand weapon from this ability can now trigger Flurry and Rampage. Flurry will properly refresh if a crit occurs with 1 charge left. The Cleave change is nice, but is part of a larger attempt to fix non-AoE abilities that target more than one mob, and as such can't really be considered a warrior change. Endless Rage, Flurry and Whirlwind changes are all bug fixes. Improved Hamstring is seeing a PvP nerf that, frankly, it probably needed.I have to admit, I'm underwhelmed, and also a little relieved.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Because they're awesome
This week, The Care and Feeding of Warriors tells you warriors that you are awesome. Matthew Rossi has a Tauren, Orc, Human, Draenei and Night Elf warrior at level 70. So you know he means it. Seriously, the dude loves the warrior class. Don't make the mistake of mentioning it around him, because that guy will latch onto you like a facehugger and he won't stop until love for the warrior class has burst out of your chest and sprayed the acid blood of its delight all over the room.He's also incredibly, incredibly bad at metaphors.As we've seen a couple of times this week, I am an unabashed cheerleader for the warrior class. Objectivity is a good thing, of course, and like sincerity if you can fake it you've got it made. Quipping aside, however, objectivity has its time and its place, but there's no way you could bring yourself to read (nor me to write) 38 columns about warriors written with total objectivity. In my admittedly, gloriously biased view, each class column here on WoW Insider should be written with a love for that class, aiming to promote it, to praise it, to help point out where it needs love and otherwise champion the women and men who play it. This is made easier for me because, frankly, I'm nearly totally insane when it comes to warriors.I remember, after struggling to 30 or so on my first toon, rerolling warrior back in December of ought four. He was an orc, made mainly to test out the class. After five minutes and the arrival of level four, I was hooked. You see, you get an ability called Charge. It doesn't sound like much when you describe it... you zip over and stun a target for a second. Big whoop. But oh my word, does charge make a difference when you're actually playing that low level warrior! You feel like a god! At least until the first time you charge into six mobs and are promptly annihilated. It was in those first moments of play that my adoration for this class became manifest, and has kept me rolling along in WoW ever since. Some people feel more favoritism towards a specific class than others... some of my best friends in game like them all fairly equally, and while I was leveling five warriors and two shamans to 70, they were out there leveling a useful assortment of varying classes and gaining a very broad knowledge of the game.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Where are the warriors?
The Care and Feeding of Warriors is the column for warriors. And apparently this week at least one warrior, ol Matthew Rossi, has a burr up his saddle and is going to rant about it. We try and let him have these little episodes from time to time so that when we point him at Tidewalker's crotch he obligingly whacks it with a sword.It's interesting playing a warrior in these times. When people aren't demanding we tank their PuG for them, they're demanding we be nerfed in PvP because we dominate it. Except we don't. According to Blizzard's internal numbers, Warriors are under-represented in every single bracket except 2x2, and then only in ratings about 2200. In other words, there are less warriors in every single bracket of Arena play than one would expect by the number of warrior players save for the higest ranked level of the 2x2 arena game. In every single other possible arena combination at either 2200 or 1850 rating, warriors are far from dominant.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Damage Per Second
The Care and Feeding of Warriors takes the time this week to discuss putting the hurt on things. Whether you are fury, arms, or even sometimes prot (stop laughing) there will be times when it's less important that you keep a mob occupied and more important that you bash it's head in, chop it's arms off, or otherwise bring the unpleasantness. Matthew Rossi has been bringing said unpleasantness for a long time now. Oh, right, yes, in game, certainly, what else did you think we meant?Before we even get started, yes, that is a warrior in Tier 1 with a Terestrian's Stranglestaff equipped. For some odd reason the staff only drops if we have no druids on the run, so there you go. Why is he in Tier 1? Because Tier 1 still looks freaking awesome, that's why. And that's not the lookalike 70 blues, man, that's the old school set. You can tell by the coloring. (You know you've been playing a warrior for a very long time when you can look at a piece of gear and know by its color what it is.)I've talked a lot about how I mostly tank nowadays, so it's kind of ironic that I'm talking about DPS today, considering that I mainly DPS'd for months and months and seemed always to be talking about tanking. Maybe I should start running around bandaging people. Or I could make a whole lot of food before the raid and pass it out to folks while making weird gestures beforehand.Anyway, warriors as DPS are, as always, melee. We don't have much in the way of spell damage (no, Thunderclap doesn't count) and even our debuffs generally make for up close action. Basically, all warriors (be they tanks or DPS) hit and yell at things. That's about all we do, really, we hit things and we yell at them, either making them feel bad (Demoralising Shout) or good (Battle and Commanding Shout), and sometimes we break wind so powerfully that they can't attack us as fast (Thunderclap). Okay, so the tooltip doesn't actually say that we're flatulent when we use Thunderclap, but I've yet to see any other explanation as to why I can explode periodically for physical damage when I have no magic. Yes, it counts as a spell, and yes, it's mitigated by armor, so I'm totally in the dark as to what else it could possibly be.The Care and Feeding of Warriors may just have had its first fart joke. I'm sure we're all very proud. Now that we've all gotten that out of our system, so to speak, let's get on to what a warrior DPSing is and isn't, and what they can and can't do. I'm not going to dwell too much on things like weapon speed or if dual wielding is superior to a 2h weapon because that will really ultimately depend on your build, and I won't know what that is. There are DPS builds in both arms and fury that use 2h weapons and dual wielding (although I have to admit that I don't understand a dual wielding DPS arms build very well) so such a talent choice will be up to you.
WoW Insider Show live tomorrow afternoon on WoW Radio
Yes, it's that time of the week again. Our illustrious podcast goes live tomorrow afternoon at 3:30pm EST on WoW Radio, and while it probably won't be as crazy as last week, we've got another fun-packed show for you. This week, Matthew Rossi will be on with Turpster and I, so we'll hear what he has to say about warriors and shamans in 2.4. Plus, we've got Love is in the Air news to cover, as well as Brutallus running rampant (and M'uru going missing), and what an official version of mobile WoW might mean. Log in to WoW Radio tomorrow at 3:30pm EST, and log on to IRC at irc.mmoirc.com in the #wowradio channel to chat with us and all the other listeners. See you then.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: What's not broke
The Care and Feeding of Warriors is our weekly foray into warriors. This week, we discuss good things about a class in World of Warcraft. I know, I was as shocked as you are, but it's apparently possible. Matthew Rossi seems to enjoy them a great deal. I was planning to talk about Warrior DPS specs this week, but then I saw yesterday's moviewatch and started thinking about class balance. Specifically, warriors and how they balance against other classes. The issues mentioned there... static threat vs rising DPS, shout duration, better tanking gear actually hurting your threat generation....pretty much work for me as issues. It would be nice if those got fixed. There are a few others that bug me, but watching the various lists of class woes made me realize that, basically, I love my warriors. What's so great about a warrior? Is it the thematic unity of a class that's all about the heavy armor and weapons, that doesn't use mana at all, that wades into the thick of combat and turns loose untrammeled martial expertise and inner fury? Is it the thrill of a 1k shield slam crit turning a mob back to face you? Is it managing to get that last big MS hit off on a warlock to drop him before dying yourself, knowing that you're not playing an escape class? When warriors use our fear we're doing it to buy a few more seconds to kill someone, not to run away. Warriors don't run away. We'll take the beating and come back for more. Is that what's so great about us?
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Rage and how to use it
The Care and Feeding of Warriors is as always here for you, the reader, oh and also because Matthew Rossi is some kind of demented idiot who will do something like get out of tanking a raid and then spend two hours grinding on some Blade's Edge quests on his draenei warrior before logging onto his tauren for some PvP. We figure it's best to let him do all his rambling about the class in one place before he has an aneurysm. Reader Arnold Luschin emailed in recently with what seemed to me a worthy topic for this week's column. Rather than mangle what he said, I'll reproduce it here.Having played a druid to 70, and done a lot of tanking, I am familiar with aggro/rage etc, but I have a warrior specific question for you. Could you possible cover the basics of warrior tanking/fighting ability rotations (i.e. the names of the abilities, and the best time to use them in tanking and grinding/questing)? E.g. for warriors, one would use sunder whereas for us bear tanks the most equivalent ability is lacerate (which we incidentally don't get till about level 66 or so...).And the answer is, sure, I can do that. The first caveat is that warriors tend to be the twitchiest tanking class, especially as you first learn the class. It can often feel like you have to mash buttons constantly in order to hold onto your aggro lead, and even then adds will often peel away from you when they'd stay right in place for a bear or paladin tank. It takes time to really learn and get comfortable with the somewhat frenetic style of the class, and to a degree this translates out into soloing or questing, depending on what spec you're using. I'd suggest checking out Tankspot and browsing the forums, although the theorycrafting can get pretty thick over there. This article is one of my favorites, though. Bookmark it.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: When tanks aren't tanking
The Care and Feeding of Warriors comes to you again on the horns of a dilemma. Matthew Rossi has found himself playing his human warrior more often when he plays, and being sucked back into raiding again. This has led to him strapping on his DPS gear and dual wielding while still prot spec, and other anomalies he wants to talk to you about.It's one of the ironies of my time playing warriors in World of Warcraft that I often find myself doing exactly the opposite thing I expected. Recently, due to time constraints and personal issues I haven't been able to play as much at night, and have found myself online at a whole different time of day. As a result I've tended to play Alliance again because there's more people online on my Ally server, and my poorly geared human protection spec warrior has found himself somehow raiding again. It began with a few heroics that impressed some people, a guild tryout I didn't really think much about that consisted of tanking Black Morass over and over again, and now I find myself in Kara, ZA and even Gruul's or Mags as a pure prot spec warrior. I'm starting to remember it all again, how it feels to hold aggro against well geared DPS, the thrill of using your abilities to keep a mob stuck to you while properly keeping those crushing blows off of the table so that your healer whispers you after the fight and tells you he barely had to break a sweat keeping you up despite your horribly awful blues. Seriously, I'm still wearing a green ring here.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: This is the year that was
The Care and Feeding of Warriors strides forth like a colossus, possibly my favorite X-Man because he's the team tank (I also kind of like Cyclops because he can shoot people with his eyes, which is just cool) to present you, the reader, with an overview of the year in warrioring. No, warrioring isn't a word. Yes, Matthew Rossi knows he can't just make up words whenever he feels like it. Ah, 2007. A roistering, boistering year. What? No, I'm pretty sure boistering is a word. You can't find it in the OED, you say? Look again, I'm sure it's in there.So what can we say about what's gone on the past year for warriors? The big changes (to my admittedly jaundiced eye) were the total overhaul of the honor system, the addition of the Arenas, allowing Thunderclap in defensive stance (a tacit admission that warriors were deficient multi-mob tanks compared to druids and paladins), the nerf to Thunderfury's aggro (okay, not so much important as just kinda sad), and rage normalization.The change to the honor system (taking place in December of 2006) caused a flood of poorly geared warriors, my tauren among them, to flood the BG's looking to improve their gear. I know at the time I was fed up with running instances for marginal upgrades and then losing the rolls on those items (items I'd already collected twice on two previous 70 warriors) over and over again. While the old system forced you to grind for ranks on a ladder week in, week out, the new system simply allowed you to collect honor and marks . While a lot of long time PvPers protested seeing the same gear they'd sweated for suddenly available to more people, in general it was a positive change allowing a lot of players to step through the Dark Portal with better gear than they otherwise would have had. In the time between 2.0.1 and the actually release of The Burning Crusade, I managed to get a whole set of PvP blues and a couple of epics, and I wasn't really running the battlegrounds all that much.Rage normalization, on the other hand, was a giant kick in the teeth. I'm still angry about it a year later. To me, rage normalization was the biggest change of 2007, the earliest screw up in the class balance, and is still felt the most almost a year later.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Weapons
The Care and Feeding of Warriors, in the spirit of Christmas, decides this week to talk about all the wonderful toys available to the warrior class. Matthew Rossi misses his Sulfuras. Well, he doesn't miss it, exactly, he still has it, he just doesn't get to use it much anymore.Warriors are the class who can bash, hack, slice, or even punch things. Rogues? They can't hack. Shaman's can't slice, hunters can't bash. Paladins can't use sticks for some reason. I've never gotten that one. There's a perfectly good stick right in front of you and you can't hit things with it? It's a stick! It's easier to use than a sword! But no weapon escapes the warrior and his or her relentless quest to find new things to bash, hack, slice or even punch with. The weapon can really define the warrior... to this day, the legacy of all those Arcanite Reapers can be felt in how people view the warrior class. Sure, paladins and hunters and shamans used them. But it doesn't matter. It's the fact that for many it was the signature warrior weapon, the choice for PvP, that to this day exerts a mystique over the way people talk about warriors. Warriors who have never seen a Reaper know what the weapon was and why it was so popular.When the Eye of Sulfuras dropped for my old guild and I got it, I was beyond excited. When I crept into BRD with a paladin and my wife on her hunter, loaded down with the mats to make the Sulfuron Hammer, I literally was as jazzed as I had ever been as a player. My guild only ever saw the eye drop twice, and we only had two Thunderfury creations in the time before The Burning Crusade - even as we were rolling into Naxx, these were special moments that helped cement a love for the game. I'm sure every warrior who tanked before the expansion remembers when he or she got Quel'Serrar. Now, post-expansion, there are of course new weapons that fill these roles, and as you level you'll gain and abandon any number of weapons, some for tanking, some for DPS, some just because they're cool. Admit it, you took Ravager because it looked cool.This week, we'll look at weapons from Deadmines to Black Temple. Some will be the best for their role for the level, others will be weapons that have managed to earn a place of prominence or in history, and some will just be cool or different. Because a warrior without a weapon is like a mage without magic.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Making life easier for your healer
The Care and Feeding of Warriors is all about your favorite meatshields. Matthew Rossi used to tank for people who called him that all the time, and honestly, he didn't like it all that much. He preferred 'Dislike Management Engineer', but folks are still gonna call you meatshield so you might as well get used to it.After a burst of frenzied PvP activity to get the Gladiator's set, I've found myself in a cooling off period towards it. My wife and I are exploring the arenas on the Alliance side, but as for the Horde, I have to admit I haven't been PvPing much at all lately. So the other day I went ahead and respecced prot to get back to my roots as a tanking warrior. As arrogant as I am, I was still a little worried that I'd be rusty, but a quick trip into Heroic Sethekk convinced me that yes, Virginia, I still know how to tank. As i gear up to start tanking in ZA and maybe SSC (crossing my fingers) I wanted to talk about the other half of the equation of tanking. The first half is making sure you generate threat. After all, you're there to keep the mobs focused on you instead of the rest of the party.The other half is in being hard to kill. You need to be as hard to kill as possible, because your healer has limits, and anything you can do to reduce incoming damage to a steady, manageable level is something you should do. In addition, anything you can do to make it so the healer has more health to work with is also something you should do. You must maintain threat, of course, or even the best healer can't prevent a wipe. But even if you're a genius at generating hate, if you only live for a few seconds once you have focus fire on you, then your healer is again unable to prevent a wipe.
