Incompetent Warrior

Travel Update.

noreply@blogger.com (Stuntyone) — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 04:15:00 +0000

Here I am at 5 am waiting 2 hours after checking in to take a 1 hour flight, god but I hate airports. You wait for obscene length's of time bored out of your mind for what seems to be no good reason.

Speaking of being bored out of my mind, I found that shaving your head again (I had shaved it a couple of days ago so it kind of needed it kind of didn't) in an airport bathroom just because you are bored is not a good idea. Shaving your head should be done with a well moistened scalp, shaving cream and a good quality razor. It should definatly not be done with bathroom despencer soap and a cheep ass disposable razor.

Anyway I just popped on to post this as a way to kill time and and to try and keep myself sane.

Oh, and by the way, why is it that security people seem to want to undress me every time I go through security in an airport?

Anyway I might pop on again with another update if I get bored again.

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

Why so quiet?

noreply@blogger.com (Stuntyone) — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 02:16:00 +0000

I apologise for my recent silence, but I've had a bad case of writers block and raiding hasn't exactly been great lately. Also Tomorrow, I'm taking a little trip over to England where I will be meeting up with two priests, two mage's and a pally ... possibly also a Deathknight if he can make it. Preperations for this have also left me kind of busy.

I'll bring back some IRL screenshots, oh what do you call 'em ... photo's, that's it.

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

Arms DPS 3.1

noreply@blogger.com (Stuntyone) — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 22:10:00 +0000

Lately I've been getting a lot of people asking me about arms DPS, and it seems that my normal explanation of "Take your face, apply it to keyboard then roll like you mean it." just isn't enough for some people. So I thought I would write a better guide here . I will try and make it less of a "Wall of text crits you for 9000000" by highlighting important sections and linking appropriate talents, anyway here we go.

First lets talk about statistic caps. There are three of these that you should know.

Hit Rating.

This is 8% or 262.32 hit rating. After this point hit rating gives no benefit to your dps and is wasted itemisation. Please also note that if your at around 250 hit rating don't bother to gem for it as nobody gives a damn about such a small miss percentage, no really, it's not a big deal.

Expertise Rating.

There are actually two of these but there is only one you need to worry about since you should always be behind the boss, and if your not please take yourself out back and give yourself a sound thrashing, trust me you deserve it. The expertise cap for dodges (which is all you have to worry about) is 6.5% which is 26 expertise or 215 expertise rating. Again any expertise rating after this point is wasted itemisation. There are other things to consider when looking at expertise rating.

The first of these is that you will be specced into Strength of Arms, which will provide 4 expertise meaning you only need 181 expertise rating or 22 expertise (please note that the 4 points from SoA will be added to the tool tip on your character sheet so that it will read 26 expertise with 181 expertise rating).

The second thing is that for each 1% you are under capped by (refer to the tooltip on your character page for this), you can put a talent point into Weapon Mastery, up to a maximum of two.
This means 165 expertise rating with 1/2 WM and 148 expertise rating with 2/2 WM.

Armor Penetration (ArP)

This is probably the most complicated of them all so I will try to keep it as simple as possible. The cap for ArP is 100% after sunder armour and other debuffs have been applied. The only realistic way to reach this cap is with the help of a trinket proc, either Grim Troll or Mjolnir Runestone. My recommendation would be to go for the Grim Troll first as it is so easy to get. I want to keep this a easy to understand as possible so I'm not going to bombard you with a big list of numbers instead I want you to mouse over your hit rating on your character sheet and look at the percentage of armour ignored by your Armor Penetration.

This should be (when capped) about 41%. This is because you get 10% ignored by battle stance and 49% from your trinket proc.

If you are using mace spec ... go get an axe. If you can't get an axe it should read about 26%, as you will get 15% from mace spec.

Gems

First off a couple of rules.

1) Never gem for crit. Just no, ok?

2) Don't make me want to beat you, so go find those attack power gems in your gear and replace them with Strength gems. These scale with talents and with blessing of kings so go get 'em.

3) Once you hit 30% passive ArP from gear and battle stance (so that's 20% from gear) it's time to start gemming for ArP as it provides a greater dps increase than strength at this point. Once you reach the soft cap for ArP go back to gemming for strength.

4) The only time you should be putting anything but red gems in all your sockets is to activate your meta gem or if the socket bonus is really fricken awesome.

Ok that about covers it on gems.

Weapon Choices.

This is a simple one. When you look at the bonus from specialisation
Axe/polearm > Mace > Sword.
Yep that's about all you need to know on this section.

Talent Build.

This is unfortunately not as simple as take this build and own the dps meter. So I will start by showing you my favourite build then talking about the variations you can take.

Link to build here.

Now it's time to talk about the various changes you can make you your build based on personal preference.

The first is the three point's I've placed in Iron Will, these can be placed into Tactical Mastery if you find yourself changing stances a lot. And this is something I will probably change next time I respec.

The next is the 5 points I have in Commanding Presence. These points can be spent on Unbridled Wrath if your having rage generation problems or placed into Improved Demoralising Shout if your tanks are not specced into something similar.

Lastly are the two points I have in Improved Execute. One of these can be spent on Anger Management if your short on rage. Also you remember where I was talking about expertise? Well this is where you get the points from to put them into Weapon Mastery.

That about covers the talent build.

Glyphs.

These are the major and minor glyphs you should be using.

Some people prefer to use Glyph of Bladestorm but it provides a dps boost on only a few fights.

The Rotation (kind of).

Arms dps doesn't use a rotation rather it uses a set of rules to determine which ability you use next. So I will now go through each ability you use on a boss fight and the rules that determine when you use them.

Rend. This is the very first ability you use at the start of the fight. Let it run it's full duration and refresh it as soon as possible afterwards preferably within 2 seconds of it falling off.

Mortal Strike (MS). Keep this baby on cooldown as much of the time as possible. The only reason to delay using MS is to refresh rend, or to avoid wasting a Taste for Blood proc, more on that later.

Execute. When using Execute through a Sudden Death (SD) proc the only time you should delay using it is if you have less than 30 rage or if by using it you will then prevent yourself from using MS i.e. using it will put you on less than 30 rage while MS is off cooldown and an auto attack will not land within the Global Cooldown (GCD), a swing timer is a valuable tool in helping you manage your SD procs.

Overpower. Because you are using this through a Taste for Blood (TfB) proc you have a 6 second window in which to use it before you get another TfB proc and effectively lose the first one. This means that you can realistically use at least 3 other abilities before you have to use Overpower. This means that while it is one of your higher damage abilities it has a lower priority than most of them because of it's ability to be used anywhere within the 6 seconds without delaying the next one.

Slam. This is you "Fill the gaps" ability, you use this only when you have no SD or TfB procs and MS is on cooldown. As arms you should be using every GCD and this is what you use to fill up you "spare" ones.

Bladestorm. You should keep this on cooldown as much as possible, but there are a couple of conditions to fill before you use it. The first is to ensure that rend won't fall off your target in the middle of your Bladestorm. The second is to make sure that you have used your TfB proc before casting Bladestorm and that the next one wont occur for at least another 3 seconds. The third is that you have MS on cooldown, you will always delay MS by using Bladestorm, just try to minimise the delay as much as possible. The fourth is to make sure you not going to be hitting anything your not supposed to i.e. pollymorphed mobs or creatures that have to be killed at a specific time.

Heroic Strike (HS). You use this ability only to ensure that you don't waste rage also referred to as a "rage dump". What I mean by this is that when you are at high rage and you get another auto attack it will often take you over 100 rage. As you can only have 100 rage this means that most of the rage you would have gotten is wasted, this is not good, it makes me a sad warrior when rage is wasted. So what we do instead is when we are at over 75 rage we cue a heroic strike thereby boosting our damage slightly instead of wasting rage, this makes me a happy warrior.

Additional notes on Arms DPS.

The Execute Phase. When the boss get to 20% you can now use Execute whenever the hell you want to. This is a bad thing because just spamming Execute will actually lower your dps. So what you do instead is continue with your normal rotation, keeping rend up, keeping MS on cooldown, using your TfB procs, the difference is you no longer use Slam and never use HS, instead whenever you would normally use slam you use execute instead. Another tactic is to switch to two good one handers, keep Rend up, use your TfB procs and Execute the rest of the time as you should generate enough rage to Execute on every GCD. I haven't tested enough to tell you which tactic works the best so take your pick and hope for he best :)

Multi target dps. When you have several targets to hit that are close together continue with your normal rotation but switch out HS for Cleave and use Sweeping Strikes (SS) on every cooldown. On a side note to using SS make sure that it is off cooldown just before you use Bladestorm. Pop SS and Bladestorm at the same time and each Whirlwind attack will hit each target twice. To make the most of this turn off you auto attack just before you do this as each auto attack will eat up a SS charge but only generate 1 additional hit. This means you will need 50 rage before you stop auto attacking and use SS and Bladestorm. Start your Auto attack again as soon as the last SS charge has been used.

Addons.

Quartz - good for swing timer and nice target cast bars.

Power Auras Classic - use this to track you TfB and SD procs. Some people find it too flashy but I like it.

Auracle or Buttontimers - these provide an easy way to track your rend duration

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

The Picture Says It All.

noreply@blogger.com (Stuntyone) — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 04:15:00 +0000

Ok so maybe the picture needs a few words to back it up.

Last night we couldn't continue our progress on Yogg'saron in 25 man because of summer. Yeah you know that thing that happens where the sun starts shining and people stop raiding. Anyway we were short on tanks, dps and healers.

What do we do in this situation?

Go back to naxx? If we do I may have to shoot myself.

No, what we do is grab whoever we can and make as many 10 man teams as possible. In this case it happened that we could only make one team ... and I had to tank. I protested this mainly through force of habit rather than any other reason. Fortunately due to them running a 10 man on one of our off days earlier during the raiding week we only had Mimiron, General Vesax, and Yogg himself left. This meant that I only had to tank for Mimiron and the trash up to Vesax.

We one shot Mimiron, despite a healing screw up that caused Bloodthrust to die while tanking in phase one. I kept screwing up in phase three while on the scrap bots and bomb bots. kept miss clicking and failing to taunt the bomb bots (going to have to make a macro for that, although I should really just practice more instead).

We one shot the general, infact we almost entered hard mode by mistake.

Then it was time for Yogg. We were pretty confident since we'd had so much practice on 25 man, but we figured we would have to see phase three a few times before we got it right. The most we'd seen of P3 on heroic was a confusion of adds running around seemingly killing tanks at will.

We had Bloodthrust solo tank it and he did an amazing job, once I told him to stop tanking them so close to the damn clouds that the mobs were actually standing in them, but we managed to wipe in phase 1 by spawning too many additional adds.

Time for attempt number two. This time we didn't spawn too many adds, and the melee (me included) didn't try to commit suicide too much, so P1 went very smoothly. After the chaos of seeing it in heroic P2 was almost a joke, and we finished it in 3 portal phases, despite having one of the portal team miss the second one.

Then it was phase 3 and those adds that were wantonly destroying our tanks on heroic, were behaving themselves and eating mah axe like good adds should. Except for one who went and ate our lovely tree healer Ikna instead, I had to go remonstrate with him and show him the error of his ways. Bad add, Bad. STUNTY SMASH.

Then suddenly it was all over.

WTF?!? Weren't we supposed to like spend the better part of the night wiping on this guy?

We gave a brief cheer and then milled around a bit. I think Bloodthrust summed it up when he said "well what are we supposed to do now, there's like 2 hours left on the raid?". It was a very half hearted victory. We were all pleased, but I think everyone would have like him to have put up a bit more of a fight before dieing. Ok I know we out gear it being decked out in mainly 226 ilvl gear, but still it was like he just rolled over and gave up. Oh well now to do it on heroic.

The rest may have gone and done something else but I called it a night there, having no inclination to go back and do older content.

Anyway here we are taking our victory pose after the surprisingly short struggle.

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

That Fuzzy Feeling Of Hysteria.

noreply@blogger.com (Stuntyone) — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 23:32:00 +0000

Today was not a great WoW day for me as I kept having technical issues. It started when I was doing my dailies before the raid and a friend of my housemate was over with his kids. They kept running around a knocking the cable out of the router. Now you cant get angry with them because they are just doing what kids do, which is run around, and the cable stretches right across the living room perfectly positioned to catch little feet as they rush by. Fortunately the latch on the connector is loose so it pull's out before it can trip them up. I'd much rather get DC'd than have a child get hurt. So I patiently got up from the PC room and plugged the cable back in every time they knocked it out. It was no big deal, barely even worth mentioning, except that this disguised a problem that would become apparent later on.

The friend and his kids leave about 20 minute before the raid starts and everything is hunky dory ... for a while anyway. Then I start getting strange lag spikes and random DC's, being unable to log back in, being unable to establish an internet connection. All kinds of strange problems. My frustration at this was compounded by the fact that we failed twice on Mimiron, a boss that should be on farm status for us, and I caused something like a 15-30 minute delay while I tried in vain to get online/remain online for any length of time.

It's a good thing the kids had gone because I had just become a raging, frothing, malcontent gamer with the strong inclination to take a hammer to both my router and my PC. The language was not at all suitable for little ears.

I manage to get back on in phase 2 of Mimiron on our kill attempt (fortunately I had been DC'd inside the room before the pull) only to have my game crash in phase 3 while I was on Magnetic core duty (why is it that I always get core duty?) fortunately Nyziu (my gnomish melee confederate) covered for me while I restarted WoW. I managed to remain online long enough to finish the fight after that.

That done with I asked Elix, our raid leader if they could clear trash while I ran some tests to see what was wrong. Normally I would have asked to be replaced but we were running under the full 25 already as it's summer and people have suddenly found summery things to do instead of raiding (damn them and their real lives, don't they know I've got yogg to kill?) .

Anyway I started by checking the router connections, nothing wrong there. Then moved on to the router settings, nope all is well there too. I then preformed a ping test and suddenly got a conflicting IP error. Hang on a moment. Right now my PC is the only one active on this network. A bit of frantic checking later and yes my suspicions have been confirmed, for some god forsaken reason my PC had decided it would be a great idea to try and open two connection to the router with the same IP. Damn computers, they'll never catch on. Obviously I had told it to do this somehow since PC's will only do what they are told to. But damn it, they should do what I want, not what I say!

I got back after they had only cleared one trash pack on the way to General Vesax. My technical problems however had thrown me way off my game and it took all the remaining trash to get remotely back on track.

Then I had the problem that, while normally I would be one of the main interrupters on this fight I didn't want to have another round of technical difficulties cause a wipe. So I asked for volunteers to take over ... I had to ask 3 times before I got one. Eventually I got a response and we sorted the rotation and it was time to pull. The annoyance at having all the tech problems then sorting out a replacement caused me to not realise that I hadn't switched over to my fury spec until I hit an in combat charge.

But you know what? At that stage I just didn't care any more, I wanted to release my frustration and unleash the beast that is a dwarf warrior packed with rage and hyped up on coffee on this guy.

I promised myself that if they missed even one interrupt I would switch over to berserker stance and add mine to theirs, but they didn't miss a beat, and I got to unleash. I managed to keep my head enough to stack Sunder Armor for the other melee, but not enough to check if anyone else was doing the same so I could stop. It didn't help my control that I was the recipient of, not one, but two DK's Hysteria's. In fact when one landed right at the start of the heroism I announced over vent that "I love you guy's".

Yes I am that easy, one Hysteria during heroism and I'm all yours baby.

My brain got into the swing of things as well and started doing some pretty nifty rage calculations allowing me to maximise my Sudden Death procs and heroic strikes. So even with stacking sunders and the melee haste debuff which gimped my rage generation I was still able to pull out (as I found out when I had wiped enough foaming, dps frenzy, spittle of the screen that I could check my recount) the second highest damage in the fight.

Then I did a little double take when I saw who was above me and by how much.

What kind of sick, twisted, sadistic abuse had that man done to his keyboard. Surely there is some kind of society to prevent that kind of cruelty.

All I can say to the other casters is, Be Like Lau. Sure the man's a sick, twisted, keyboard hating animal. But any man, no matter how much of an animal he may be, who gives my recount that much of a headache deserves some kind of respect.

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

Is It Still A Mistake If You Didn't Know Until You Were Dead?

noreply@blogger.com (Stuntyone) — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 01:09:00 +0000

Well of course it damn well is. An avoidable death is an avoidable death no matter what. I should know I've died in almost every way imaginable on a boss fight. I've died form over aggroing. Died from aggro dumps. Died from standing in the wrong spot. Died from standing in the right spot, but standing there too long. Died from standing too close to someone. Died from standing too far away from someone. Died from moving at the wrong time. Died from not moving at the wrong time. Died from mind control. Died from AoE. Died from big, glowy, spiny, damn obvious AoE. Died from moving in the wrong direction. Died from moving in the right direction, but too far. Hell, if there was a boss where you could only die by standing on your head whilst reciting nursery rhymes I'm sure I'd manage that too somehow.

What does all this rambling about me failing have to do with anything?

Well I like to think of it as a list of credentials as to why I'm specifically qualified to talk about this subject. It may not always be as obvious as those I listed but a mistake is a mistake, no matter the situation.

Let me tell you a story.

Our raid leader did me a favour, for which I promised him that I would worship the ground he walked on and not die for the next 10 bosses we downed. I was in luck as it was the beginning of the raiding week and that the first 11 bosses in Ulduar can be classes as on farm for us. I survived the Flame Leviathan with ease. I survived Razorscales adds and flame patch's. I survived being put into Ignis The Furnace Masters pocket twice in a row. I avoided being deconstructed by XT-002 Deconstructor. I survived being DC'd twice on the Assembly of Iron. I survived the AoE of Kologarn. I survived the adds and void zones of Auriaya, even the death of our main tank on that fight didn't stop us or cause my death. I survived 800-900+ lag on Hodir.

(As a side note I had asked to be replaced because of the lag and DC's that had been plaguing me but there was realistically nobody online to replace me)

I did all this by doing my utmost to minimise my damage taken and maximise my positioning and self healing. Then however it was time for Thorim and I got sloppy.

The first attempt I was in the gauntlet and did everything I could to stay alive, but the arena team died from being overrun by adds and the big sparkly ball of death came for me. Our raid leader kindly said that one didn't count. The next attempt I was put in the arena so that our raid leader could "keep an eye on me", and for extra dps on the adds. I kept a damn close eye on my health and my aggro and survived long enough for Thorim to join the fight. We finished of the adds that were left and started on the big man himself.

This is the point where I make my mistake. I know that he does chain lightning, and I know that it gets stronger as the fight progresses. So why in gods name did I stand so close to two other melee? Ok so it's hard to judge how hard the lightning is hitting unless your keeping a close eye on raid damage. And yes the other melee should have been spreading out as well. And yes we do get forced closer together by that ground level lightning stuff he does. All this however in no way excuses me from just standing there and face rolling my way to the floor. Even if the others were not, I at least should have been maximising my distance from the rest of the melee group. I did not, I paid the price and broke my promise. It was a hand up, my bad, mistake with no excuses allowed.

What's the point of all this nattering?

Well the point is that a whole lot of death's are avoidable and next time you die take a good long look at your combat log and the sequence of events that lead up to your death and see if there was any possible way to avoid it, or even to just reduce the chances of you dieing. I'm not saying you have to play perfectly, god knows I don't. All I'm saying is realise you made a mistake and try to learn from it.

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

What I Did While AFK.

noreply@blogger.com (Stuntyone) — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 14:35:00 +0000

In this post I am going to completely deviate from the norm on this blog and talk about Real Life... you know, that thing that happens when you go afk or log off.

Yesterday I had myself a little adventure. You could, if you wanted, liken it to your, say level 20 alt that hasn't gotten his mount yet, getting a quest that takes him right across Kalimdor through unexplored areas. But that's a horrible analogy so lets pretend I didn't say it.

Anyway I had some business that I absolutely had to take care of, and to take care of it I had to be in a certain town by 10 am. Ok so what's the problem with that you ask?

The problem is that this town is ~45 km away (taking the rout that guarantees I wont get lost, something that happens very easily) and I live in the middle of nowhere and don't have a car.

Ok so take a bus.

I'm sorry but public transport sucks in this country and the earliest I could get to this town by taking public transport would be 1:15 pm, way way too late. Also taking a taxi was out of the question as I had a grand total of 6.40 Euro on me (this being the reason that I absolutely had to sort this out that day).

My solution to this problem was to leave the house at 6am. This caused it's own little problem as at 3am sleep was still nowhere in sight so I ended up pulling an all nighter just to guarantee that I would leave on time. I had calculated that that if I maintained a decent speed I could cover that distance on foot in 4 hours and 30 minutes. Those of you with half a brain will realise that this would end up with me arriving half an hour late. Do not be alarmed, I had a plan, if you can call sticking my thumb out and relying on the generosity of the motoring public a plan. Usually you can stick you thumb out on any major Irish road and get a lift to the next town in fairly short order.

I think I must at this time talk a little about the rout I was taking to get to where I needed to be. I was taking two main roads to avoid getting lost, like I said before this is something that happens quite frequently. One road straight up the other straight across. Simple right? Well I thought it was, and taking two main roads was also supposed to increase my chances of hitching a lift.

Well the first road was actually a main road and one I'd walked a good few times before. The problem was that it was 6 am, traffic was scarce and those that might have been inclined to give me a lift probably hadn't had their coffee yet, poor buggers.

After an hour of walking traffic had picked up, but I was making good time, better than I had originally hoped, and it hardly seemed worth getting a lift the (relatively) short distance to the turn off. So, foolishly, I stopped trying to hitch and just walked the last half hour to the next main road.

Finally seeing this "main" road was quite a shock. I've never taken it before, but it was the one direct rout between two (for Ireland) fair sized towns. I must say I was expecting something ... bigger. This so called main road was barely large enough to accommodate two cars passing each other and had no hard shoulder for me to walk on, in fact if two cars were coming in opposite directions near me I had to find a gap between the hedge's around me and squeeze in there until they had passed. I really should have guessed, while it was marked as a main road on the map it looked like the cartographer had drawn in this particular road during an earthquake.

After walking for another twenty minutes down this cattle track of a main road I had become slightly nervous and kept expecting to hear that banjo tune from deliverance, that's when I come across my most pleasant surprise of the day. I turned a corner in the road and stumble across this almost picturesque town, one of the few I pass on my journey even big enough to have a sign with it's name on it. The lovely architecture of the old houses, the scent of the bushes and flowers in full bloom and the dappled morning sunlight working it's way between the tree canopy. All this left me momentarily entranced, and my first thought upon arriving there was "So this is where all the hippies who got old went to.". It even, bless it's rustic soul, had a footpath for me to walk on.

I continue along this footpath for a while enjoying the scenery of the old houses, the classic Irish pub and church (mind you if you've seen one of these you've seen them all) and the look of the old dry-stone walls, only partially spoiled by the layer of concrete that had been put over the top of them to prevent kids from knocking them over. These walls were probably older than some of the houses around them and certainly much much older that the concrete footpath I was walking on. I'd expected the footpath to only extend for about 300 meters but it went on for nearly a kilometre, and as I progressed along it I started to wish it had only lasted for 300 meters. The further I went along the more depressing it became as more and more of the "new" houses appeared. God but I detest modern housing. It all seems to be on the principle of four walls and a roof with the only difference being in the size of the building, the catch phrase for these places seems to be "cost effective". They seem determined to take all of the individualism out of what is after all somebody's home.

Anyway I came out the other side of the town and started walking down the cattle track into banjo country again, and then the thought struck me. That had probably been my best chance of getting a lift as there was actually places for people to pull in and pick me up. Luck however had not been on my side as not a single car had passed going in my direction over the last kilometre. Cursing my luck I trudged on. I had now been walking for over two hours and the fact that I'm missing a tendon in my right knee was starting to show, as the mussels that I had conditioned to take over the job of the missing tendon were starting to burn with fatigue.

At this point I'm going to interject a little note on hitch hiking for those of you who may not have done it on a regular basis (Oh how I love to interrupt the flow of my own story -_-) . When you catch somebody's eye as they drive past and don't pick you up there are usually two types of look you get. The first type is the apologetic look, as if to say sorry there's nowhere to stop, or sorry there's not a free seat. The second type of look is the disdainful look. This look basically say, "Like I would let you into this car, you filthy pedestrian you.", god I hate that look. I'm probably more intelligent and better educated than most of those people and they look down on me just because I'm walking somewhere. Ok, so I may not be better educated as I tend to become bored and lose interest half way through whatever course I happen to be on.

Anyway as we rejoin my journey through the no man's land that is rural Ireland, I have been walking for 3 hours and my good knee, which hasn't been quite right since I damaged it when I was four, is stating to complain since it's been compensating for my bad knee for the last hour. I ran out of cigarettes just after leaving the house and I could almost kill for a smoke. Then as if in answer to my cravings I turn one of the many corners that looked just like the ones before and low and behold, there it is, the first shop I've encountered since leaving my house. I could have jumped for joy, except that my knee would probably have collapsed under me. I went in and spent the best part of my remaining funds on a packet of rolling tobacco and drink. Some of you might find 19 degrees to be a laughable temperature but it was enough to make me sweat and I had become damn thirsty at this stage. Having my thirst and cravings sated had now made me much less likely to throw a stone through the window of the next driver to give me "that look".

I walked for another twenty minutes despairing more and more of ever arriving on time, when I stuck my thumb out for what must have been the hundredth time. The car drove on past me and my heart sank yet again. But wait, what's this? Yes they are pulling in. Finally I had gotten a lift, just 7 kilometres from my destination, but that would have taken more than an hour to walk in my current state. I shall be forever grateful to that lovely couple for stopping to give me a lift when so many others would not, they even gave me directions to where I needed to go in that town after they dropped me off.

Anyway I got to where I needed to go and sorted my business out. Now all I've got to do is get back home. There's no way in hell I'm going to be able to walk back, my leg just wont take it. I know, I'll get a bus into the city and then back out to where I live. I'm under no time constraints now so this isn't a problem. So I'm there waiting for the bus to arrive when the heavens that this is the perfect opportunity to open up on me. Damn, I don't want to leave the bus stop because only god knows how often a bus leaves this place. I call the bus company in an attempt to find out the bus schedule so I can go find some shelter until then. It takes me 15 minutes to get through to them all the while standing in the heavy rain in case I miss the bus. As soon as I do manage to get through and find out that the next bus isn't for another 1 hour and 40 minutes the rain decides to drop off to a minor shower, leaving me soaked and thoroughly annoyed.

Ok so what do I do for the next 1 hour and 40 minutes? I doubt this place has an internet cafe. I know, I'll go buy a book and read for a while. After walking around the town for a bit and not seeing one I stop a person on the street and ask them for directions. To my absolute horror I'm told that if I want a book shop I'll have to go to the next town over. Now I'm starting to feel sorry for the people who have to live here, they've got fast food shops, fashion shops, a super market, hairdressers, and even *shudders* a solicitors, yet no book shop. To me this is a truly, truly depressing situation. I go buy a news paper and get a pint in the local pub (I justify this early drink with the fact that it's not mid day for me but very very late at night) to try and distract myself from this depressing realisation, and decide that if I ever come back here it will be too soon.

So you could say that I arrived to the raid on time, killed the boss and got some phat lootz. But you wont since that also is a terrible analogy and we will pretend I didn't say anything.

So until next time this is Morgan Walsh the Incompetent Pedestrian signing off.

It's On It's way.

noreply@blogger.com (Stuntyone) — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 16:12:00 +0000

Sorry people no real post today eiter I had a bit of a Real Life adventure today that has left me completely worn out ... but flying in the face of the Incompetent Warrior tradition I will actually be posting about this.

Annoying My Guildies Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Stuntyone) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 05:13:00 +0000

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.

SoL In-depth.

Hello and welcome to SoL In-Depth, I'm your host Dirty McMuckraker and today we have a special treat for you as we'll be discussing Bloodthrust one of SoL's regular raiders.

We also have our main source with us today, but he has asked for anonymity so we have disguised his writing and we will be referring to him by the code name ST1.

Let kick things off shall we?

ST1 how would you describe Bloodthrust?

Well that's a bit of a hard question to answer as he's such a ... composite ... personality. I'll have to break it down into a couple of descriptions. First off Imagine a monkey.

Ok.

Now place that monkey in a very small cage.

Right.

Now add about 15 gallons coffee and 100 packets of jelly tots to the monkeys system.

Riiiight.

Finally add a large supply of ... monkey product ... for him to fling at unsuspecting people near by, and you have the general impression of Bloodthrust.

You paint a startling picture of one of your core raiders ST1.

Not as startled as our new recruits when he starts flinging his monkey product, I can tell you.

I can imagine ... I'd rather not, but I can.

Now for a more defined view of Bloodthrust. You've probably been to one of those casual get together's that people have right? You know the ones, they start about 4pm, bring the kids kind of affairs. Usually out door eating if the weather is good.

I know the ones.

Well you know that one kid right?

That one kid? I'm not sure I follow you.

You know the one, there's always one, about 4 or 5 years old, cheeky little bugger. By the end of the night he's probably running around in nothing but his T-shirt despite his parents best attempts to stop him. This kid will usually do something horribly disgusting during the party, along the lines of finding some dog doings, placing it on a paper plate, then presenting it to a table full of adults in the middle of eating, with a big ass "look at what I found" grin on his face.

Okaaaaay, I know the one's ... maybe not to that extent, but I know the one's.

Yeah, well that kids Bloodthrust.

Wow ... just wow, I knew I'd be living up to my name tonight but this is just amazing. I think we have a general impression of Bloodthrust now, so lets move on to the next question. How did you meet Bloodthrust?

Well he just kinda turned up in our ventrilo server one day. All quiet like. Just sitting there saying hi to people as we logged on to do instances or whatever. At the time nobody suspected he was a raging monkey hyped up on caffeine and sugar with a pile of product at his disposal. Apparently he was a guildie from way back when SoL was Sentinels of Light, who stopped playing before I joined the guild.

So he just kind of turned up, rolled a deathknight, and got into the raiding team?

Well it was with the release of Wrath of the Lich King, so we were all at the same level when we hit 80 ... but basically, yeah that's right.

Well, what can I say? With all this information it brings us nicely to our next question. For the love of god Why do you keep him around?

A couple of reasons, he tanks so I don't have to, he does good dps when not tanking. But mainly it can be summed up in two words ... Entertainment ... Value. There is nothing quite like watching a new recruit try to raid for the first time with a new guild while dodging monkey product.

My final question is one that as a good muck raker I would normally never ask ... but do you have any proof about his personality?

I have some light documentary evidence. At the time of this screen shot we were discussing his new best in slot tanking boots, and he turns it down hill as only Bloodthrust can.

Then as if to prove his superiority he comes out with this little gem less than a minute later.

There has been a lot more but unfortunately I cannot screenshot vent where most of it happens.

Compelling evidence I must say. There you have it folks one of SoL's regular raider laid bare for you all to see.

That's all from me and our source ST1.

So until next time this is Dirty the Muck Raking Reporter signing off.

I may have gone a little over board with this one, but it's Bloodthrust, he can take it ... at least I hope he can or I'm going to be doing a lot more dodging from now on.

Ghostcrawler v.s. Warriors.

noreply@blogger.com (Stuntyone) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 15:08:00 +0000

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.

noreply@blogger.com (Stuntyone) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 13:03:00 +0000

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.

Annoying My Guildies Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (Stuntyone) — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 13:57:00 +0000

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.

noreply@blogger.com (Stuntyone) — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 23:00:00 +0000

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.

Patch 3.2 Blues or 3.2 Benefit?

noreply@blogger.com (Stuntyone) — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 09:32:00 +0000

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.

Tanking Builds For 3.1

noreply@blogger.com (Stuntyone) — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 15:56:00 +0000

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.

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:

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.

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:

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.

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:

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.

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:

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.

noreply@blogger.com (Stuntyone) — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 11:46:00 +0000

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.

Why You Should Dual Spec Titans Grip.

noreply@blogger.com (Stuntyone) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 10:09:00 +0000

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.

noreply@blogger.com (Stuntyone) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 10:09:00 +0000

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.

WotLK Recap : Day 6 (I think)

noreply@blogger.com (Stuntyone) — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 06:17:00 +0000

Is it 6 days since WotLK came out I'm just not sure anymore.

Anyway today when I logged on I did the daily cooking quest and farmed some kooking mats just for a change of pace.

After that I got stuck into the last of the quests I needed to get the Zul'Drak achievement and dinged to 78. An epic flying mount makes so much of a difference it's not funny, I don't know how I did without one for so long.

Anyway with Zul'Drak out of the way I went into Sholazar Basin again, but this time I had a flying mount, Yeah Baby! Can't get me now you damn nasty crocolisks!

But I digress, of I went on the epic creature grind that is the Nessinwary quest line, yes that crazy dwarf hunter is back, and I don't mean Bigredkitty.

This zone was by far the easiest of the zones to quest in that I've been in so far (the epic flier has something to do with it I'm sure). I stormed through that place pwning everything in sight, as usual. Unusually this turned out to be a good thing, since just about everything I saw was part of a quest I was on making my normal progression through a zone an effective leveling strategy for once.

But whats this? He's here again!?! And he's calling me the stalker. Yes thats right I ran into the warrior Khir several times again today and he's starting to get quite paranoid about it.

Here's me stalking my pray.

After that I went and got a meal and chilled out in Dalaran for a while. Then the panic set in. It's weekly maintainance tonight and I'm only 400k away from and I have only an hour left!

I blitzed over to Storm Peaks and started popping off quests as fast as I could. Then I hit a wall I was rushing and that meant I wasn't reading the quests too well, which meant I was screaming things at the monitor like "Where the hell is that bomb dispenser so I can blow up the damn mammoth!!" and "Who thought a quest in the middle of a F###### mine field was a F####### good idea!!". That mine field quest turned out ot be great fun as you had to step on a mine to blow yourself to the quest item, this took several attempts with bandaging and eating along the way as you can imagine. You then had to step on a mine to blow yourself back out of the mine field.

Why wasn't I using my new fangled epic flier?

Because some damn wise ass decided that that would be too easy and put little turrets around the mine field that shoot you down 280% flight speed or no.

Anyway with all my getting lost and discovering places It turned out that I needed less quests to finish the level that I thought and I dinged to 79 with 9 minutes before server shut down, I even had time to go and train my new skills, and Stunty is parked and getting rested xp in Ironforge as we speak.

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

WotLK Recap : Days 4 & 5

noreply@blogger.com (Stuntyone) — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 16:38:00 +0000

I've added these together because I forgot to post because I became so wrapped up in the Lich King experience. The things I will share are in ne particular order as everything has run into one big blur.

One of the most memorable moments was when I get a quest at level 76 to go to Sholazar Basin, took the quest, got put on a little flying machine then got shot down in the middle of nowhere while flying over the new zone with my Hearth Stone on cooldown. I thought I'd share the G-chat that followed my question on how the hell I get out of there. Please excuse my spelling as I was tired and frustrated.

As it turns out you have to complete a quest chain in nessingway base camp that activates the flight master.

I've done various dungeons, all very late at night, but they are all fantastic, I don't know if this seems that way because they are or if because I'm just please to be doing new instances instead of running The mechanar or slave pens for the millionth time.

While questing I keep running into the warrior Khir. After about 20 encounters in one day he started refering to me as a stalker, and I started taking screenshots. Here are a few of us doing the more interesting quests in Zul'Drak.

I dinged to level 77 and got my cold weather training so I can fly again, then I borrowed 5k gold off friends and bought my epic flying mount and training. Thats right I didn't have one and now I wonder how I ever did without it. The only down side is that I now owe 5000 gold :(

Respecced into Titans grip for leveling ... just because it looks cool. There's something about wielding not one but two bis ass weapons that just appeals to me. I know at the moment I could do higher dps as deep arms both using a 2- hander and dual wielding ... but hey I'm leveling what does it matter.

I have started replacing my gear finally, so far I'm waring about 5 blue quest reward and dungeon drop Items.

Well that about wraps it up for days 4 & 5.

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

WotLK Recap : Day 3

noreply@blogger.com (Stuntyone) — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 07:54:00 +0000

Day 3.

Ok so I overslept again, instead of the 5 hour extended nap I had planned to take I had a nice 9 hour slumber. Not going to sleep today so that I stop going to bed in the morning, otherwise I start getting drowsy in natural light and god only knows what kaind of weird situations that could lead to.

Anyway after grabbing a coffee I got stuck into the last part of level 74, dinged grabbed more coffee, quested, more coffee, quested, changed things up with a cup of tea, quested, more coffee, rinse and repeat.

Did The most epic quest ever devised by blizzard. If your on the alliance side you absolutely have to do the "Battle for Undercity" quest it's made of pure win.

Visited Dalaran and boy did they ever go to town on that town. Get there ASAP and take in the sights people.

Learned how to make an engineering parachute lining for cloaks, which I'm going to make the moment I log in again after suffering one too many death's by cliff. Pretty soon I'm going to be able to make the turbo boosters for me boots as well, giving me a "Get me the hell out of here" button.

Did Uthguard Keep today or however the heck you spell it and I'm loving going into dungeons not knowing whats going in. It's all new and it's all interesting, and best of all it all looks fantastic.

Finished all but 2 group quests in the Dragonblight and moved on to Zul'drak. People kept asking me why I didn't head to the Grizzly Hills and the reason is that I don't decide where I'm going next I just follow the quests and I had a quest in Zul'Drak and not in Grizzly Hills.

Ran randomly around Zul'Drak doing random quests and killing interesting (but unnecessary) mobs until I hit level 75. Realized that I couldn't understand the quests I had even with the help of 3 addons and decided to take a break and do anything at all but play wow for a few hours.

That about covers it for day 3.

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

WotLK Recap : Day 2

noreply@blogger.com (Stuntyone) — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 04:47:00 +0000

Day 2

Having never made it back on after the server restart I got a bit of sleep, I over slept, then a friend called round, but after that I went back to the confusion that is me leveling in a new zone.

Having finished ALL the quests in Borean Tundra I moved on to The Dragonblight where if anything my leveling confusion became even greater, so I downloaded yet another quest addon making 3 of them in total and between the three I can now just about make sense of the quests.

Learned an important lesson about group quests, when it says "suggested players 2" thats only a suggestion, but when it says "suggested players 5" you'd damn well better bring some back up. Oh well at least I got to lie face down in a new spot.

I learned another important lesson about reading the quest when after 2 attempts I realized that I wasn't supposed to solo the level 74 elite and all the non elites, apparently what I was supposed to do was to get the NPC's involved then hit bladestorm.

Bladestorm Does not save you when you pull 10 level 73-74's at once ... I was a bit disappointed when I found this out :(

Got to level 73.6 before server restart then wrote this post. And that just about wraps it up for day 2.

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

WotLK Recap : Day 1

noreply@blogger.com (Stuntyone) — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 06:47:00 +0000

I haven't posted lately due to a severe case of the Xpac blues. We trounced bosses in BT but there was no real pleasure in it. I got my Hand of the A'dal Title but I was ashamed to ware it. But all that is over now and I shall be giving you day by day updates on my experience in the new expansion.

Day 1.

Day 1 started with me standing outside my local gaming store waiting for the doors to open at midnight (along with the two other wow players I live with and about 60 other people). We get back to the house in record time and have a race to install the game. I lose due to having to restart my PC after every patch or it has a fit at me.

Anyway I log on and Stuntyone is ready and waiting at the boat to take him to Northrend, with 3 and 1/2 empty bags and empty quest log and an almost empty bank. I take the boat over with a couple of people I know and we are screaming at each other, "Where's this trainer?", "where's the flight master?", "Where do I pick up that quest?" and "Where the hell am I?", that last one from me. We train up in our professions and start to make a mess of northrend's leveling areas.

I soon split off from the others as my normal style of leveling is to grab every quest I can find and head off in a random direction killing things along the way until one of my quest counters starts ticking, and occasionally actually reading a quest when this becomes boring.

Several hours later (I really don't know how many but it was light outside) I was within spitting distance of level 71 but I was so tired that no matter how many times I read the quests I still couldn't figure out what the hell they were about, I kept getting lost and I seemed to have an aggro radius 10 miles wide. So I decided to call it a night, or a morning, or whatever.

Several hours later (again I'm not sure how many) I'm back online and making short work of my paltry rested XP. I ding to level 71 in short order now that I know what those guys with the ! over their heads actually wanted me to do. Questing continues until half way to level 72 I get an invite to run the Nexus instance with a few buddies ... we spend 2 hours getting lost in that place but managed to one shot every boss but the last since we didn't know you had to move or jump to remove the stacking chill debuff. From the quest I had to read a book in that place (read or pick up I can't remember the haze of leveling has clouded my mind) I got a reward of some tanking shoulders that are better than T4. This leaves me wondering how much longer my T6 level gear will actually last.

That over and it's back to my unique style of questing which gets me to level 72 shortly before the server goes through it's restart. Which continued for so long it gave me the opportunity to write this post. It's 715 in the morning and the realm is still not up so thats about all I have for you at the moment.

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

Patch Day Blues and New Spec Loving

noreply@blogger.com (Stuntyone) — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 17:40:00 +0000

I was going to write this post yesterday but yesterday was patch day, and as some of you may know I'm addicted to addons.

Patch day + 155 addons = headache of massive proportions.

So no post got done.

Anyway after busting my B###s getting my UI sorted, yes I know you can play perfectly well with 0 addons, but I look at it this way, you can live on bread and water, but I'd rather have a steak with all the trimmings.

Anyway after getting my steak back in working order I went looking at specs for the new talents we had just got. My first build was so so and lag of 1200 didn't really help my get a feel for the build. But after a bit of experimentation on the target dummies, damn but I love those things, they just stand there and take abuse while I sit at my PC, screaming "STUNY SMASH!!1!" at the monitor.

Whoops back on track again, after beating on the practice dummies for a while this was the build I settled on. I'm still not convinced about using Rend even in combination with Trauma but further experimentation may prove me wrong, but It's definitely not worth it in heroics as the fights are over so fast it's not funny. Also Sudden Death didn't turn out to be the massive rage dump I thought it would be as Endless Rage leaves you with more rage than god. As it turns out I love Bladestorm. It is simply sexy and I want to have it's babies ... did I just type that last bit out loud?

Today I got my butt into a few heroics and was shocked at the result. Here see for yourself.

This is the report for the entire run in heroic Hellfire Ramparts. The poor rouge missed out since he's all single target dps and I was hitting EVERYTHING and loving it.

On single target fights I was still pulling over 1000 dps, but I guess the true test of the build will come when I get to run it in a raid environment.

Oh and before I forget, monday we went into Black Temple for our last pre patch run and downed Naj'entus, Supremus and Akama. For my first Shade of akama fight we had the strange situation where both akamas died so I didn't get to see the bit where all the broken come out and chat with Akama ... and I didn't get any loot /sulk.

On the Plus side i did find a new patch of floor to inspect.

Oh and after a visit to the barber shop stunty's got a brand new look.

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

Stunty's Back!

noreply@blogger.com (Stuntyone) — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 03:05:00 +0000

I have returned!

My enforced wow and Internet hiatus has ended. My apologies at my long absence but RL kicked in with a vengeance and didn't really give me much choice in the matter, don't ask. Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies, or at least, Ask me no questions and I wont ignore you and send you dirty looks for asking me questions.

Anyway back to wow. It turns out that my guild can kill new bosses without me. This came as a bit of a shock considering that since the day I got my "Raider" rank in the guild I have been at every guild first kill. Hydross, Karatherass, Vashj, Rage, Anetheron, Kaz'rogal, Azgalor, Naj'entus, Supremus, I was there for them all the first time we killed them. The few times I could not raid on a progression night either due to being left out due to player rotation or just not being able to make it, things tended to go poorly for the raid, sometimes just not making the final few percent, sometimes bringing a "Bucket'o'Fail" with them (something that has been known to happen even when I'm there) or in one famous case, an unscheduled server shut down. Even though they were suffering from the lack of stunty they managed to down the Shade of Akama in BT. Now that I have returned just think of what we can accomplish.

At the moment my internet connection is just not stable enough to raid, or even do heroics properly due to having to use this piece of #### USB wireless adapter, I wont mention brand names that not how I roll. But tonight this should be by passed through the use of one long ass Ethernet cable and I will be back in tip top shape.

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