Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Ghostcrawler v.s. Warriors.

Before I start I just want to say that I know this is completely unfair towards Ghostcrawler on my behalf. But you know what? It's my blog and I'm going to do whatever the hell I feel like.

Mid Wrath of the Lich King 3.0.

Warriors: I want to play arms in PvE and PvP ... But I do love this titans grip thing mow that they removed the hit penalty.

Ghostcrawler: What's the state of warriors at the moment?

Forum Browsing Lacky: Well they want to play arms but they are reasonably content at the moment.

GC: And the other classes? Are they complaining about warriors?

FBL: No not to any great level.

GC: Ok then my job here is done.

Late Wrath of the Lich king 3.0.

Warriors: GOD I LOVE TITANS GRIP. But I wouldn't mind playing arms in PvP and PvE.

Other Classes: Warriors do too much damage. QQ

Forum Browsing Lacky: Ghostcrawler sir, the other classes are complaining that warriors are doing too much damage.

Ghostcrawler: Are they doing too much damage?

FBL: It does seam that way sir. They are topping the damage meter's on most fights.

GC: I will not stand for this injustice!!! Bring me my nerf bat!

FBL: The normal one sir?

GC: No I think this calls for the special "Paladin edition" nerf bat.

FBL: But Sir, the Paladin edition was designed to nerf through bubble. Isn't that going a bit over board?

GC: No it's not! Topping the damage meter's, we'll see about that. Muhahahahahaaaaa!

Early 3.1 Warrior Changes Are Announced.

Warriors: NOES NOT MY TITANS GRIP!!!!! QQ

Other Classes: Serves you right, stupid warriors. Hehehehe.

Forum Browsing Lacky: Sir the warriors are QQing at a massive level.

Ghostcrawler: Are the other classes happy?

FBL: They do seem to be ... but those warriors are really going at it. I haven't seen this much QQ since my last visit to the mage forums.

GC: That does seem bad. I'd better throw them a bone. Hmmm, now what were they wanting a while ago?

Wrath of the Lich King 3.1 Live.


Warriors: My titans grip is still nerfed. But I can play arms now ... and Oooooh look at that Juggernaut talent man thats nice for PvE and god does it rock in PvP. I can PvP again YAY.

Other Classes: Warriors can charge in combat. QQ. After they charge they get an auto crit. QQ.

Ghostcrawler: What's the state of warriors at the moment?

Forum Browsing Lacky: Well the fact they can PvP properly again has distracted them from the TG nerf. And the fact that they can do some decent damage as arms in PvE seems to have placated them in that regard also. There are still some die hard TG QQer's though.

GC: And the other classes?

FBL: They hate Juggernaut in PvP.

GC: Time for a "Ghostcrawler Special" I think. *goes and releases a statement that they are not going to nerf juggernaut into the ground because it will cause warriors to collapse in PvP again.*

GC: That should do the trick.

FBL: Sir the other classes are still QQing ... and pretty hard.

GC: Time to put the "Special" into the "Ghostcrawler Special". *introduces a 75% reduction on the Juggernaut crit bonus*

Warriors: Ok so mabe it was a little overpowered. I still don't like the change though.

Other Classes: But but but ... they can still charge us. QQ

GC: How are the warriors taking the news?

FBL: Surprisingly well sir.

GC: And the other classes?

FBL: They still don't like the constant "in combat" charges Sir.

GC: Time to make this special a double. *goes and introduces a 5 second penalty on the charge cooldown*

Warriors: *Squeal *

GC: Working as intended.

Please note that this is a product of my caffeine saturated sleep deprived mind and these view are not those of Ghostcrawler, the SoL guild, or have anything to do with reality in any way (except that the nerfs happened).

So until next time this is Stuntyone the Incompetent Warrior signing off.

Meta Gem Fail.

Well I just realised that I've been playing with the wrong meta gem equipped for the last week or so. /facepalm. I was looking over my armoury profile re-evaluating which upgrades to go for when I spotted this.

Yep, as you can clearly see that's a 21 agility and 3% crit damage meta instead of the 21 crit rating and 3% crit damage. Oh well off to regem I guess.

So until next time this is Stuntyone the Incompetent Warrior signing off.

Monday, June 29, 2009

Annoying My Guildies Part 1

This is a brand new section to my blog. Occasionally I shall be doing a completely fictitious expose on, guide by, or interview with, one of my guildies. I have of course asked them if I "can use your ingame name so that I can take the piss out of you on my blog". I asked they said yes they only have themselves to blame.


Lau's Guide To Mage DPS.

Hi there Incompetent Readers, this is Lau and today I'm going to tell you my secrets to topping the damage meters and making the other, lesser classes look silly.

Step one, gearing. Go to sites like the Elitist Jerks Forum and either find a list of, or demand someone tell you the best gear, stats, gems, glyph's, enchants, and Spec. Go get them. Alternately you can find a mage who's destroying the dps meters Armory him and basically copy paste.

On a side note to gearing, as alliance always remain 1% under the hit cap and demand to be put in the same group as a Drenai. Don't worry follow this guide and your dps will be high enough that they will give in without a fight.

Step Two Keybindings. Take your fireball spell and bind it to your mouse wheel.

Step Three Scorch Buff. Always ensure that this is applied by another player, be it one of those wannabe mages ... oh what do you call them ... thats right, Warlocks. Or if that fails have a less experienced/more gullible mage do it for you. Never do it yourself if you can help it as this will mess up your rotation.

Step Four Rotation. This is a highly complex seven step rotation.
1) Target boss.
2) Spin mouse wheel.
3) Go make yourself a cup of coffee. Don't worry your mouse wheel will do everything for you.
4) Drink the coffee.
5) Return to your PC and collect your loot. Remember that this loot is rightfully yours by virtue of your dps.
6) Target silly melee players who have done they're hilarious prancing act around the boss.
7) Laugh at your target.

There you have it folks Lau's guide to mage dps.

So until next time this is Lau the Wheel Spinning Mage signing off.

Please note that this guide was a work of fiction devised by my caffeine saturated, sleep deprived mind and these views have nothing to do with Lau, the SoL guild, or reality in any form.

I Need To Tank More.

This post will show you that the Incompetent part of the Incompetent Warrior is alive and well.

On Saturday A bunch of us got together to go do 10 man Ulduar. Nothing new about that usually there will be at least one group going on one or two of our non-official raiding nights. However this time, for the first time in a while they needed me to tank.


Now I was less than thrilled at this prospect, not because I don't like to tank, well ok you got me I'd much rather be waving my axe around and yelling "STUNTY SMASH" than waving my (whatever M says, and you can see what he says if you read the chat) ugly green glowy sword around shouting "NOT THE FACE, NOT MY BEAUTIFUL BEARDED FACE!".

Back on track now, I was less than thrilled at the prospect of tanking mainly because I hadn't tanked anything in about a month. As it turned out yes you could tell. For one I forgot to re-glyph so I was running around tanking Ulduar 10 man with glyph of execute, heroic strike and whirlwind. Not exactly what you would call optimal.

Another thing was that I was having constant panic attacks about "What did I keybind that too again?". This lead to several mistakes the largest being me getting so confused that I simply stood in a void zone until I died while tanking Freya. You see the problem is that I used to be (mostly) a clicker, but over the first month of the expansion I taught myself to use keybindings. The unfortunate side effect is that I lost my ability to click anything unless they are in a really big ass button or I take my time. This means if it aint keybound it's not getting used. :(

The last problem is my UI. Now I like my UI and it's optimised for my DPS play style, it however really sucks for my tanking play style. There are not enough keybindings for major abilities, and any abilities I might have to click are way down the bottom on really small buttons. This makes me a saaaaad tank. I was literally tanking Razorscale with my spell book open half the time swapping in and out abilities I couldn't put on convenient keybindings. This is not good. I'll have to make a tanking specific UI now. Well I don't have to, but I am going to.

All this means that I'm going to have to do a bit of tanking just to stay in practice in case I end up letting 24 other people down, instead of just making 9 other people laugh at me.


Oh by the way this is what happens when we only need one tank for a fight and I switch back to dps but don't let the healers know about it.

Yes that's me face down again, and what's more I'm the only person face down. Guess I should have told them I was going dps for that fight. Oh and sundering the target for the melee and hunters generates quite a lot of threat at the start /facepalm.

So until next time this is Stuntyone the Incompetent Warrior signing off.

Friday, June 26, 2009

Patch 3.2 Blues or 3.2 Benefit?

I'm not going to be talking about the Warrior changes in this post, because there aren't any. Well that's not really true, there is the slight buff to Armed to the Teeth where we now gain 40% more attack power from it. Also there is the buff to block rating, but that's just a poor band aid fix to a lack lustre tanking mechanic. Just by mentioning these I've said all that really needs to be said about them.

What I want to talk about is the Emblem changes. Any dungeons that previously dropped Emblems of Heroism or Valor, will now drop Emblems of Conquest instead.

What does this mean for me? Well my first reaction was the classic "They iz stealing mah epics!!1!", and that they had just wasted all of my hard work. They I stopped thinking with my epeen for a moment and took a better look at it. What does this actually mean for me?

Well for one thing this can only be a benefit to my guilds progression. A lot of our players do have alts that they can play at a high level, but we can't use them because they are not Ulduar ready and not likely to be in the near future. These changes will greatly benefit any returnee players, rerollers or alts. Hell it's even a boost to off spec raiding. I've been pretty luck with grabbing off spec tanking loot but there are still a couple of items I would dearly love to replace but find myself having to horde my Emblems of Conquest for main spec gear.

There is also a salve for my ego as well since the non tier Emblem loot is all substandard to the Ulduar drops. It's over stacked on stamina and a lot of it has sub optimal dps stats like haste. There is not one peice of it that fits my BiS, although I am using the gloves until I can get my hands on the Tier ones.

An added bonus is that I can now get heroic groups again without pugging (god I hate pugging, it is without a doubt the one part of the game I hate the most) and get some frozen orbs for my Jewelcrafting.

Speaking of heroics I am really really hoping that the new 5 man instance they are bringing out is of a higher difficulty level, much like Magisters Terrace was with the release of Sunwell Plateau.

Well thats about all the rambling I have for today,

So until next time this is Stuntyone the Incompetent Warrior signing off.

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Tanking Builds For 3.1

As part of my revived Blog I shall be doing posts on all aspects of being a warrior, Tanking, Arms dps, Fury dps and if I have time also some bits on PvP (which I'm even less qualified to talk about than usual) and changes happen to these with every patch. Now being very lazy I'm going to start off by copy and pasting a quick tanking build guide that I posted on my guild forum and adding a few notes at the bottom.


Here it is.

In this post I'm going to give a brief overview of various tanking builds and their applications. For those of you who have actually seen me tank, don't worry my knowledge and understanding of tanking is better than my practice of tanking. :)

Max Survivability Build. (recommended for progress runs)

This is the 5/10/56 Build. This build is recommended for new or high damage encounters.

Image

This build, as you can see, concentrates on maximum survivability over threat. The 5/5 Demoralising Shout can be changed if you have a dps warrior or warrior off tank specced into it and keeping it applied.

The single target threat rotation for this build is (In order of highest threat)

Shield Slam > Revenge > Shockwave > Concussive Blow > Devastate.


This means that you only use Devastate when all of the other abilities are on cooldown. Heroic Strike should be used on every strike while you have over 30 rage.

The recommended glyphs for this build are:
Image

Advantages:
* This combination of talents and glyphs gives you both Shield Wall and Last Stand on 2 minute cooldowns.
* It allows you to apply the strongest damage reduction debuffs available to you.
* Allows for good mobility through the use of Warbringer.
* Has decent AoE tanking ability through Improved Thunder Clap and Shockwave.

Disadvantages:
* Relatively low threat, although if you maintain a good rotation this should not be a problem.
* Slow to apply Sunder Armour.
* Low rage efficiency.


Deep Wounds Build.

This is the 15/5/51 Deep Wounds build for threat generation. This build is recomended for encounters on farm or for threat sensitive encounters.

Image

This Build is only worth taking if you have 10% crit fully raid buffed. If you don't have 10% crit Cruelty provides better threat than Impale.

The threat rotation is the same as for the Max Survivability build.

The recommended Glyphs for this build are:
Image

Advantages
* High threat per second.
* Good rage efficiency.
* Allows for good mobility through the use of Warbringer.
* Decent AoE threat through Deep Wounds procking off Thunder Clap and Shockwave criticals.
* Fast at stacking Sunder Armour

Disadvantages
* Long cooldowns on Shield Wall and Last Stand.
* Weaker damage reduction debuffs.


AoE Tanking Build. (recommended for add tanking)

This is the 5/13/53 AoE tanking build recommended for encounters where you will be tanking large numbers of adds and should realistically only be taken as a secondary spec in on duel spec tank, or for specific encounters.

Image

Your Vigilance should be placed on the DPS with the highest threat assigned to dealing with your adds. You should know who this person is.

The threat rotation for this build, when dealing with adds, is:
Shockwave and Thunder Clap on every cooldown, replace your heroic strikes with Cleave and fill the gaps with Shield Slam, Revenge, Concussive Blow and Devastate.

The recommended Glyphs for this build are:
Image

Advantages:
* High AoE threat per second.
* Allows for good mobility through the use of Warbringer.
* Has one of the improved damage reduction debuffs.

Disadvantages
* Poor rage efficiency.
* Long cooldowns on Shield Wall and Last Stand.
* Slow to apply Sunder Armour.


Unrelenting Assault Damage and Threat Build. (Not recommended at all)

This is the 37/0/34 high damage high, threat build. This build is only recommended for encounters where survivability is not a huge issue but threat and DPS are. Again this should only be taken for specific encounters of as a secondary spec on a duel spec tank.

Image

The points in Last Stand or Vigilance can be spent in Juggernaut for added mobility, although I would heavily recommend keeping the point in Last Stand.

I'm not going to explain this one as tank spot does it much better than I could, complete with video.
Click Here!

The recommended glyphs for this build are:
Image

Advantages
* Very high threat per second.
* Insane damage per second for a tank.
* Insane rage efficiency as Glyph of Revenge + Glyph of Heroic Strike with the 1 second gcd on revenge can send you into infinite rage scenarios.

Disadvantages
* Low AoE tanking ability.
* Lower health.
* Low mobility.
* 3 min cooldowns on both Last Stand and Shield Wall.
* No improved damage reduction debuffs.
* Missing Critical Block.
* A damn nuisance to apply sunder armour.



If you managed to read through all that then good on you.

If you have any questions or suggestions I will answer them or amend this post as necessary.



Notes for new tanks.

Spec:
Starting off your usually better off taking the Deep Wounds build but removing the 3/3 deep wounds and taking 5/5 Cruelty. This will provide better threat generation at low levels of gearing.

Rotation:
If your having threat problems due getting confused over your rotation. the simple solution is just to cut out most of your abilities. Here is the simple yet effective rotation i use when I'm feeling lazy (which is most of the time).

To start with
Shield Slam > Revenge > Devastate

Then you use Shield Slam every time it's cooldown is up or Sword and Board procs, use revenge every time it's cooldown is up and fill in any spare global cooldowns with Devastate as this will proc Sword and Board. Finally use heroic strike every time your above 30 rage, this will be almost constantly at early gear levels.

There you have it, single target tanking with good threat and you only have to use four buttons :)

One final note, never ever use Taunt as part of your rotation. It does absolutely nothing for your threat when the mob is targeting you and wastes a global cooldown. Also Taunt suffers from diminishing returns so when a mob gets taunted 3 times in short order it becomes immune to it for 15 seconds, this can lead to trouble when somebody does pull aggro.

Well that about covers it, I officially and proudly name this my laziest post ever.

So until next time this is the Incompetent Warrior signing off.

It's One Crazy Fight.

Last night we had our first attempts at 25 man Yogg-Saron and we finally got to meet the screaming lady Sara who kept annoying us all through our progression through the watchers.


See those clouds in the pic? Well they are the bane of our raid leaders sanity in phase one. Every time someone stands in one and spawns a new add he loses a little in RL. Phase one for me consists of Hitting add interrupting add, stop hitting add so it can be kited to the centre and blown up near sara, hitting and interrupting new add, praying that the add finishing team don't suddenly spawn a bunch of new adds due to a sudden case of cloud blindness ... again.

Ok so the guys in the middle don't have it easy, having done a few try's on 10 man where we were all in the middle and the melee had to run out when an add was going to be killed I can tell you that those clouds are a right royal pain in the you know what. Not only do they move around randomly, new ones spawn and their range for spawning new adds is greater than their graphics indicate. *mutter mutter* stupid floating mash gas *mutter mutter*

Then comes Phase two. This is where I start losing my RL sanity. This consists for me of a mad panic of Interrupting corrupter tentacles making a mad dash to get to my portal around the brain of yogg-saron (10 of these spawn and only one person per portal can enter), madly trying to kill the adds in the brain room while not facing those floating skull thingies, dashing over to the brain after the adds are down, dpsing as hard as possible on the brain in the brief time we have, jumping out of the brain room before we all go insane and wipe the raid, interrupting corrupter tentacles, freeing people from constrictor tentacles, restacking my sanity (ingame my RL sanity is long gone at this stage the poor raid leader is probably sitting in a corner at home muttering to himself about "the damn clouds" and screaming occasionally, god knows whose playing his character for him), getting back into position to take my portal again, rinse and repeat and try to stop the nervous tic that I'm developing.

We haven't even seen phase three yet and god knows if any of us will be mentally stable enough to deal with it when we do.

So until next time this is Stuntyone the Incompetent (and mentally unstable) Warrior signing off.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Why You Should Dual Spec Titans Grip.

To get back into the swing of things I'm going to start with a self serving post justifying why I have two dps specs and not dps/prot.

Arms > Fury.


Lets start with the basics. If your raiding with max dps at the moment your raiding as arms, this may well change when you have most of your best in slot Ulduar gear, but until then, no questions asked, dps wise Arms > Fury ... deal with it.
(If this is not true your not doing it right, more on that in a later post)

Is Fury Still a Viable Raiding Spec?

Hell yes. Lets look at a few of the reasons why.

DPS: Yes Arms provides higher dps that fury but even as fury you can provide decent dps and the gap between the two specs closes the better your gear gets.

Buffs: A lot of the time as a dps warrior your main job is to provide good dps while filling in the buffs missed by other classes. Pretty much all our buffs can be supplied by other classes and our job is to, as it were, fill in the blanks. So lets take a look at the three main buffs you provide as a dps warrior (there are more but these will be covered in a later post). These are Blood Frenzy (Arms), Trauma (Arms) and Rampage (fury). Deciding which spec to use depending on buffs you have too look at your other raid members. A Feral Druid will provide a better version of Rampage and an inferior version of Trauma (although they will love you if you can provide it since they don't have to mangle). A combat rouge will provide the same buff as Blood Frenzy.

What does this mean for you? This means that if you have a Feral Druid but no Comabat Rouge you should go arms. If you have A Combat Rouge but no Feral Druid you should go Fury. If you have both or none do what ever the hell makes you feel happy :)

Fight Mechanics: Take a look at the nature of the encounter you are going into. Any high motion fight or a fight with haste buffs will better suit the Fury play style. Where as low motion fights or fights that require high burst damage will better suit Arms.

Interrupts: This is a pet hate of mine so be warned I'm going to be having a little emo rage while writing this section and it may come through in the post.

Firstly if your assigned interrupt duty that means the spell has to be interrupted now, if not it's normally a case of "Congratulations you just wiped the raid". This means that if the spell isn't on a timer that you can see you have to be sitting in Berserker Stance waiting to Pummel or in Battle/Defensive stance with a one hander and shield waiting to Shield Bash.

What does this mean for you as an Arms warrior? (This is where the emo rage happens) Well as an arms warrior this means you might as well just sit there auto attacking and relieving this itch on your genetailia while waiting for that all important spell to come up so you can interrupt it. This is not much of an exaggeration.

The first time I was put on full time interrupt duty I stated that I would (politely paraphrased) have to gimp my dps to do so. I was told by a hunter ... a mother loving hunter ... that we all would have to do the same. I nearly had a fit. There was no way in hell that other classes wasting one global cooldown per interrupt was the same as an Arms warrior wasting 1 glyph, 2 main rotation skill and 9 F###### talent points for the entire F###### fight (we don't waste the global cooldown since our interrupt is not linked to the GCD). If I have voice activation on vent instead of push to talk he would have heard me yelling and screaming about how he shouldn't for a god damn minute think he knows a god damn thing about my class or spec unless he god damn plays it. However he's an officer and I like my raid spot so instead of ranting at him I punched a wall then got on with interrupting auto attacking and relieving the aforementioned itch. (Emo rage ends here)

What does this mean for you as a Fury warrior?
It means that you can provide decent dps and you don't even waste one global cooldown per interrupt, all you need to do is ensure that you have 10 rage at all times (easy to do with a 40 second Bloodrage and Improved Berserker Rage).

In conclusion I feel completely justified in having Fury as my dual spec under normal circumstances, if there is a chance that I will need to tank I will of course switch it for protection but the rest of the time I'm DPS/DPS.

So until next time this is Stuntyone the Incompetent Warrior signing off.


Lets Pretend I Never Went Away.

Lets just say that apathy over the puggable raiding content and constantly changing class mechanics lead me to lose interest in writing about WoW. The new raid content, and seemingly stable class mechanics have revived my interest in Blogging. So without further ado, On With the Show.