Segment 42: Add-ons for Warriors

Warriors fall into that World of Warcraft category that can either tank or DPS; with that in mind, we’ll look at a few add-ons that lend themselves to these roles.

First up is TidyThreat, which is a plug-in for TidyPlates. TidyPlates modifies the nameplates you see over the heads of mobs, and TidyThreat makes it instantly clear, using color bars, which mobs are loose, which have aggro on you, and which don’t. It’s easy to switch the color scheme for Tank or DPS, and you can turn on a “detail” window which will tell you who has threat, and how much. If you only want to use one add-on for tanking,, it should be TidyPlates with TidyThreat. The default display is thermometer-like, and it’s incredibly simple; as stated by the author, “If you’re DPSing: Don’t go into the RED! If you’re tanking: Stay in the RED!”

SpellFlash: Warrior is a plug-in for SpellFlash which will flash above your ability buttons, to suggest your next move.

TankadinTps is a threat analyzer for several classes; this is especially useful for the theory-crafting players.

Nutty War Announce is a useful add-on with an unfortunate name; it will display chat text announcements of the warrior’s use of various abilities.

Please see the segment notes for links to the add-ons.

Music for this segment is the Dragon Warrior theme from Realm of Darkness.

Download the MP3

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[View This Fury Warrior Talent Build]

Rotations

With the inception of patch 4.0.1, I have come to love the fury warrior.  The rotation is more complex, and one can unleash some very solid DPS without being armor pen capped (since it no longer exists).  A few things of note right away… you will have a different rotation for single target and multi-target (e.g. trash).

The way things are working right now, the highest single target dps rotation is as follows.

Bloodthirst – Heroic Strike – Raging Blow (whenever it’s up)  – until the hot fix actually goes into effect we are ignoring Slam all together when Blood Surge procs (this will be fixed soon to make it cost no rage… which we will then likely reincorporate it back into our rotation).

In addition to the normal rotation, we want to hit Battle Shout on CD to generate rage.  Additionally, we want to use Berserker Rage often so we can use Raging Blow as much as possible since it is only accessible while enraged.

For multiple target we want to mash Whirlwind and Cleave, as this stacks our appropriately named buff “Meat Cleaver” which enhances those attacks damage by 30% at 3 stacks.  This makes the fury warrior one of the best aoe melee classes this build.  If you’re not having rage issues then you can mix in Raging Blow and Bloodthirst when Whirlwind and Cleave are on CD.

Gearing

I’ll highlight a few points for gearing I have found to be very successful in increasing my own dps.

• Reforge to hit – Due to rage normalization our hard hit cap is now 27% not the standard 8% it used to be for melee.  This means the more you hit the more dps and the more rage.  I’m currently at 22% hit and have seen my dps go up substantially and my rage issues decrease dramatically.  So far this seems like a good idea.
• Gems – Red Socket – Bold Cardinal Ruby (20 str) / Yellow Socket – Inscribed Ametrine (10 str / 10 crit) / Blue Socket – Etched Dreadstone (10 str / 10 hit)
• Make sure you have all plate equipped and no agility gear.  Due to agility gear not having attack power it is essentially worthless to us now with the exception of some crit gained, and with our plate specialization it increases our stats when we have all plate equipped.

Talents

• The talent build above is essentially standard for dps now.  There are 3 flexible points that you can distribute into the fury tree, which I placed 2 points into Blood Craze and 1 into Piercing Howl.
• You could distribute these anywhere you like as they might have situational use for you.  I personally like Piercing Howl as a raider for fights like Saurfang in which I can help the Kiters by quickly applying a slow.  Blood Craze helps the healers out some.
• Heroic Fury – which removes immobilizations and refreshes the CD of Intercept might be useful.
• Furious Attacks – if you’re inclined to do a little pvp might prove beneficial.
• Skirmisher – Also if you’re inclined to pvp will help you fly across the BG with ease.

Obviously not all of this is set in stone, but it has been what has been working for me in dungeons as currently I’m pulling 6-7k dps single target in Heroic 5 Mans with 3 pieces of 232 pvp gear, a worthless 232 agility weapon in my offhand, and a bunch of ungemmed and unenchanted gear due to my being broke.  As I fill out these slots I suspect my DPS will only go up.

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Last week the Twitter WoW crowd got started on talking about legendary weapons, due to the new legendary weapons that are being released in the new patch. The conversation of people’s attempts to get them, or their reaction after successfully getting them, prompted me with a bit of an idea:

I wonder how it would feel to have a single character that owned all of the legendary weapons…EPIC!

So I did a little bit of thinking, asked a few questions there on Twitter, and did a bit of research via wowhead. Some of the legendary weapons can only be used in certain places or only last for a short amount of time once you leave the instance, so I took those items off of the list and just ignored them as I’m not about to put any effort into going for something that I can’t do anything with or that will disappear on me after I leave an instance.

There were two weapons still on the list that were specifically restricted to certain classes being able to use them, so I knew that in order to have a single character to wield all of the ones that would stick with me I had to choose between two classes: Warrior and Rogue. One of the other weapons though happened to be a staff, which immediately rules out the Rogue and left me with only one option, the Warrior.

So, as a sort of long-term side project, I intend to level up a Warrior when I have nothing else to do or feel like wasting some time in hopes of one day wielding all of the legendary weapons on the one character. My plan is to go ahead and level him up in the Prot tree, and have already done my preliminary research required to level the class with at least some idea of what I’m doing and what to expect.

Step 1: Character Creation
I already knew that he was going to be Alliance since that is my main server right now, so that cut half of the races out of the running. Out of all the races only one of them can’t be a Warrior though, and that’s the Horde’s Blood Elf, so that still left me with five options.

I took those and whittled it down a bit as follows: Screw gnomes, not a chance. Forget the Night Elves, a Warrior shouldn’t have to hide in the dark. Dwarf…not my thing. And that left me with Humans and Draenei.

Now, in the long run it doesn’t really matter what race you pick. Human Diplomacy goes a long way overall, but I have quite a few humans already. The Spacegoat doesn’t offer a whole lot, but that racial heal will certainly help a guy who likes to solo and is playing a tank that this time around is otherwise unable to heal himself.

So in the end, Spacegoat won the battle.

I needed a name, but didn’t feel particularly creative, so I stole my Horde Paladin’s name (Lexington) and modified it a bit – Lexzus.

Step 2: Pseudo-Twinking
If there’s one thing I hate about starting a new toon, it’s being broke and bagless. So after I created him I ran to the nearest town and parked myself in the inn so that I would be near the mailbox. I then logged over to my bank alt to throw some gold and some bags my way and did a quick scan for low level gear on the auction house. Nothing there really caught my eye except for a Copper Axe that any low level blacksmith can make which was being sold for 2 silver. It was white (common quality), it was cheap, and it only had a level 4 requirement.

I sent the axe over to my Mage, and the rest I sent to the Warrior. I had the Mage put a Fiery Weapon enchant on the axe and then sent it to the Warrior as well. A lot of people will say that the enchant is a waste on such a low level weapon, but first off I really don’t care since I can farm or buy the mats for it at any time, and second I made sure it was a white item so that I can pass it on to any low level toon that I roll in the future to help them level as well.

Since I’m new to the server and my highest toon here is only 71, there’s no option to send over BoA items, and I’m not about to spend the cash needed to both server transfer and faction transfer an 80 to the server. I’ll stick with my twinked out white items, thanks.

I also had a few green items that didn’t sell in the AH from a run through Deadmines, so I sent those over as well though he can’t use them until level 15 or so.

Step 3: Training
I logged back over to the Warrior, picked up his goods and then ran him into Exodar. There I found out that the space goats don’t start with axe proficiency, and the only place I can learn it is Ironforge. And in case you haven’t rolled a goat, that’s a bunch of traveling just to use a stinking weapon! But, since I knew I would have to have all of my weapons trained up anyway I went ahead and traveled to all of the major cities and got him trained in every weapon he can. In case I haven’t mentioned it already, Warriors can train every weapon except for wands (and relics), so I got all weapons opened up to me except for Polearms which requires a minimum of level 20.

The Draenei racial heal is great, but since I plan on soloing a lot of stuff I want another heal available to me, and that came in the form of the Herbalism profession which was next on my list. And since Inscription wouldn’t do anything for me in particular until way later in the game, I decided to tag Alchemy along with that so that I would have a strong supply of potions to help with the soloing as well. However, crafting professions require level 5 to learn them, so he doesn’t have it yet.

I then grabbed all of the secondary skills: Fishing, First Aid, and Cooking so that I have the option of adding them in as well. I’m not a fan of fishing, so it will probably go nowhere. FA will get raised to at least Runecloth, and Cooking we’ll just have to see where I give up on it with this toon.

Plans
I plan on leveling this guy as Prot and soloing as much content with him as I can. The lack of healing abilities and crowd control will make some things harder to do than I experienced on my Paladin, but we’ll see where I can take him.

The Warrior class still does not thrill me much at all, and it did get boring already even at level 4, so you can expect this guy to be leveled up slowly unless something happens to drastically change that. I don’t see it happening, but you never know.

I will blog about his leveling experience as it happens, as I do with any other class that I pick up.

Posted in World of Warcraft Tagged: Alt, Warrior

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I jumped at the chance to be one of the tanks. The other tank was going to be the alt of one of our Shadow Priests, playing none other than a Protection Paladin.

His Paladin out geared my Warrior. Just to give you an idea of the delta in our gear, he had about 4k more health than I did. He had only 535 Defense, so I actually got some Boss Tanking opportunities because I had 543 and our Alt Healers (also under geared) were concerned about him getting crit.

This was the most significant amount of Raid Tanking I had done on my Warrior.

As much as I hate to admit it, some of their concerns are legit. Now allow me to explain that statement a bit.

I keep up with Tankspot and I read the concerns of Protection Warriors. Their major concerns seem to be Heroic Strike Spam, Threat issues compared to other tanks, and DPS while Tanking. There is also this notion that playing a Warrior is ‘harder’ or ‘more work’. The idea is that the Warrior should be compensated by being a better tank because they have to work harder and it’s a tougher job.

Hogwash I thought.

Honestly, I didn’t want it to be true. If it was true, then Warriors could legitimately ask for buffs that would bring them back to top of the Tanking world. Lead Developer Ghostcrawler in his latest analysis of the tanking hierarchy, had stated that Warriors were about where they want all tanks. Druids were close. Paladins were behind (of course!), and DKs were ahead and needed an ‘adjustment’, which is just a nice euphemism for NERF!

I’d love it, if just for once; it was the Paladin that were ahead for a whole Patch cycle.

Naw, scratch that. Getting nerfed stinks. I’d rather be balanced and only need small tweaks. I remember the Buff-Nerf-Buff-Nerf ride Feral Druids took in early Burning Crusade and I can see the one Death Knights are on now. No thanks.

Threat

Now granted, I was under geared compared the Protection Paladin I was tanking with, but I couldn’t keep up with his threat. It wasn’t an issue for most of the night because we were usually tanking different things. But anytime we were on the same target, it was no contest.

I didn’t care if I was under geared. I really wanted to push my pixilated limits and see what this Warrior could do. Gear matters, but I still started wracking my brain to figure out how I could produce more threat.

Heroic Strike

That’s when I truly learned about Heroic Strike. Up to that point, I had been bad, and I mean epically bad, about using Heroic Strike. It was annoying, I didn’t need it, and so I didn’t use it. Now it was potential threat just waiting to be used. Now I needed it.

It didn’t take long for me to realize that Heroic Strike is the most annoying, aggravating thing in this game. The best way I can describe it to people who haven’t played a Warrior, is to imagine that you didn’t have ‘Auto Attack’. Every time you attack the mob, you have to click on him and your swing speed with a fast weapon and bit of raid haste from buffs is about 1 second. Every second for several minutes, you have to click on the mob. (That’s an exaggeration, I only had to click my Heroic Strike button (middle mouse!), but hopefully you get the idea.)

Harder To Tank

The threat issue also highlighted why Warriors say it’s tougher to tank with their class compared to others. It felt like a major decision each global cool down. Is Demo Shout still up, how about Thunderclap? What’s the timer on my Commanding Shout? Did Sword and Board just proc? Do I need the survivability from refreshing Demo Shout/Thunderclap, or do I need threat now through Shield Slam/Devastate?

Still a Good Night

Now I don’t want to make it sound like it was all doom and gloom. It was actually quite a good run.

One of the most fun moments was on Noth the Plaguebringer. I was assigned to the Adds while the Protection Paladin took the boss. Two Adds spawn in the 10 man. I would Charge one, drop a Shield Slam on him, then Intercept the second and Devastate. When I pulled that off, it felt really good, and it was a ton of fun.

We cleared three wings, and even got an achievement for a 3 minute Patchwerk kill (“Make Quick Werk of Him”). The other raiders said it was the smoothest Alt Naxx they had ever done.

I didn’t get any loot I needed to drop. It was a Caster night, if you know what I mean. But I had enough Badges at the end to get a Chained Military Gorget.

It’s clear to me now that the Developers have a daunting task ahead of them. How do you address the very legitimate Warriors issues, but still maintain a good tank balance so Warriors aren’t far and away better than every other tank class?

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