All good things...

Let’s face it internet peeps. I haven’t been writing about Arms or Fury lately and it is time for a change. Also, it looks more and more likely that I will be playing my dwarf in the spare time as none of my peeps are all the interested in seeing Alliance side again.

I read a lot of blogs. Even more than I have linked in my blogroll and have come to like several different styles. As I get used to blogging dailyish, I find myself wanting to do different types of blogging and think I will try them out. I very much like Team Ratshag style and would love to try my hand at blogging from a specific toons point of view. In all regards, writing as a toon will probably convince me to write those 2 short stories that my lovely wife encourages me to do.

Another thing I would like to do is talk about the different classes I play a la Out of Mana. Currently, I have a 43 Mage, 56 Shammy, 71 Boomkin, 34 Hunter, 30 Pally and I still haven’t done the Death Knight starting zones. I would like a chance to talk about all of those toons and different classes.

So blogging under the banner of ArmsandFury is starting to stifle and it is time for a change. To add to my new endeavor, I have enlisted the help of some friends/family. Namely, I will have contributions from my wife, Sugars and Dodger to start. I would love to get some Dammerung in it but he is quite the busy atm and I haven’t seen him online to ask/nag him about it.

The name’s the rub. I settled on Kelmar’s Blog. I chose it for 2 reasons. 1) I will be the primary writer on it and 2) It is not WoW centric which is an idea Tobold gave to one of his readers. If I quit playing WoW or wish to talk about non wow related stuff (i.e. weighlifting, anime, books, movies… trying to get my wife into something skimpy) than the title has not misrepresented the contents in anyway.

I will be working on setting it up this weekend. Sunday will see a post with my new link to Kelmar’s Blog. Hope to see you all there. Also, if you have any suggestions for content, I am more than willing to try them out.

Tanking VS Healing

So as the banner on the blog shows, I have two warriors I run. Herk most assuredly got the more love in Burning Crusade. For Wrath, I plan on playing them equally. I am busy leveling Kelmar/Brewhammer now. I need to change Kel’s name but haven’t done so because I accidentally used my placeholder “Brewhammer” dwarf for a bank alt. I’ll get around to it. So I am running Kelmar as prot right now because it is the easiest way to get an instance group. The Arms and Fury will come more into play as I get him to 80. I will then have Herk and Brewhammer running BGs for Arms and Fury fun talk. When dual spec hits, I will have tons of stuff to blog about.

I know what’s coming. “You leveled Herk as prot! Give us your name sake back!” Well, I can’t just yet. See, my wife has decided to play her priest with me. We will be tag teaming the instances somewhat sooooo prot just makes more sense right now.

Speaking of her priest, I ran her some last night taking a look at her spells and what not. Now, her poor toon was even less gear than Kelmar. How bad? To the name of about 540 spell power at lv 70. The nice thing is the gear reset! Say what you want but wanting to play a toon and being able to pick them back up after a hiatus is all win in my book. Hipnatizd will take a bit of work but she can be just as geared as any when she hits 80. The wife’s plan is to level Holy which I already trounced for a weekend so I can get her caught up to Kelmar. Kelmar is within 200k of 72. I have to get Hipper to at least 71 and some gear and then we are good to go from there.

She still loves her hunter though. I am not sure why she is playing with me on Drenden. Perhaps she didn’t think I would play him this soon? I have Herk where I want him for prot gear because I don’t plan on playing him until my friends are ready to run instances for gear. I am content to let Herk lounge around doing Hodir rep while they level to 80 because I a have Kelmar to play. However, if my wife is playing her priest solely to not be left behind my leveling butt, then I need to not play Kelmar right now. Decisions decisions… maybe we will see her comment and tell me what she wants to do!

Now that I have rambled enough, to the point of the title! I ran Hipnatizd at 69 through Utgarde Keep. Party was… 69 Holy Priest (Moi), Arms 2 1h warrior, Unholy DK, Blood BK and a rogue. Sweet monkeys!!!! We wiped 4 times on first boss because they would not help my little butt with the skellies (they killed me) and the ice blocl ( it killed me)… it was a MESS. My greater heals were hitting for 4500 and critting for 7k. My healing was there… group dynamic WASN’T… again. As my son used to say when he first started talking… MELP MEH.

A couple of requests for my email have been heard. I will update the site with it. For now, it is ArmsandFury - @ - gmail.com.

Sometimes goodbye is a second chance

Then there's the threat issue. My favorite tank blogger has gone from "you can't pull aggro offa me if you try!" to "well, they just have to be more careful with threat..." and "you know, you generate a lot of threat asa healer!" – Renoobed

Did he just try and make me sound like a Melvin where tanking is concerned? Specifically this crap statement "you know, you generate a lot of threat asa healer!” Lets talk about this internet.

Ya, none of that is accurate. I have never said you can't pull aggro off me if you tried. What I did say is I generate a lot of threat. Specifically, I can generate between 3k to 3500 on a single target now. BRK could always pull aggro off me in nagrand in blues but then again that is BRK. I ran with a ret Pally on Brewhammer last night and we did Nexus. He grabbed EVERY single bit of aggro off any add we had because he kept using his AoE first thing instead of letting me lay some Shockwave and Thunderclaps down.

Parties DO need to be more careful with threat in Heroics. Heroics are NOT the AoE fest of latter day Burning Crusade. Time to learn to play your DPS class again you DPSers you. Listen, sometimes you can CC and sometimes you can not. If you can’t CC and it’s a Heroic and you and your party are at gear level or slightly under or above, you are to DPS the tank’s target and switch to HIS next target. Period. If you want to lay down some AoE or start tacking 2-3 mobs with your AoE damage spells, you had best wait for some sunders on said extra mobs. Thunderclap and Shockwave are good but they will not stand up to random execute crits as the better threat generator.

Side note for warriors: If you have a group like this, it is time to start doing the old tab, threat build, tab, threat build, tab, threat build rotation. It helps.

What I said about your healing threat was that it JUMPED exponentially from other healers I had seen, notably priest and druids. To which you said you had skipped the aggro reducing talents in favor of more healing talents. Right, because Blizz makes it where you have to choose between better healing or aggro reducers. However, I'll let that slide because I know crap about Shaman healing but I suspect there is some fat in your Healing spec that could be trimmed for aggro reducers. Not that it really matters because I don’t run with your EPeening crazy heals ZOMGBBQSAUCE leetness much.

So here's what I had folks on the above Heroic Azjol Nerub run with Noobed. A mage who was really decent on the DPS, a deathknight who wasn’t above 900kdps and a lock who I was doing more DPS than. We wiped on the first chain pull about 5 times. One of those things would always get loose and smack someone while I was webbed. I would type WEBBED and no one would hit me. Also, they do have a stunlock that is web based that makes you run around like a moron. There were two main problems. First, kill order. The other 2 DPSers decided to kill what the felt like or would stat on Skull and then pop AoE talents. Second was DPS vs my gear. I am at entry level Heroic tanking gear. Nothing great really.

24.5 health unbuffed
23k armor
542 def
19.67 Dodge
15 Parry

I do NOT overgear Heroics which means I can not take up the slack of crap DPS or bad healing. The healing was not bad at all cept for the threat generation he was getting. When your first heal hits 1700 TPS on my omen, there is a problem. I can pull 3500 TPS on a single target and am not too sure what gets pulled on the add targets with TC, Glyph sunder and Shockwave. I am going to set Omen to show me 4 targets tonight and see what that looks like.

I am really going to quit running things with Noobed for two reasons. 1) He outgears me and needs to run with his own crowd and 2) I just don’t like playing the game with him anymore. If I make a mistake or don’t perform the way his “non tanking class ever played” thinks I should have he turns into kind of an ass. I know he is going to be an ass and it gets me jittery and I yell if I make a mistake. This upsets my son and my wife because they don’t like it when I get loud. So no more with Noobed other than in game conversations… he is taking the fun out of my game.
So this will be the last post for any Arms vs Noobed; It's just getting old and not worth my time.

Craziness

Guys and Gals,

Work is officially insane today! I will try and give a better post. Probably after I get home today.

On a side note, anyone see that Alabama v Florida game? WoW, that was FOOTBALL!

Bumps and Bruises in Heroics

The “too funny” of the night was when I was in LFG and spy a mage and ask him if he is above 1500DPS. The response? “Do you mean spellpower?”

I did Halls last night with a good DPS group. Noobed healed on his shammy. Good heals. My tanking was a bit jittery starting off. It didn’t help that the group decided to never burn down my main target until the very end of the instance. I had only done the instance one time before and got into some LOS issues that I am sure aggravated the healer and hunter.

The main problem I had, the group would NOT let me pull anything back. They always fought on top of me where I charged. We managed to get one pushy rogue who my wife warned me about when she saw his name. “That run isn’t going to be fun” she warned. She was right. Sigh.

His great moment was aggroing the first boss after we all had pulled back away from him. I pull back and check Noobed’s mana which is at 5k or less if memory serves and I see the rogue /throw a dagger at the boss. After that it was all rage. I don’t play well when I am mad. I’d rather spend 3 hours in a Heroic than 1 ½ with a smeghead.

We wiped 2 ½ times on the first boss. One due to no one pulling out of hit patrol area… this one included me. I was paying attention to the hunter who kept attacking HIS own FLIPPING target and pulling aggro over to the healer. I really hated that hunter. Anyways, boss walks right into us and BLAM. Sigh

Second wipe was with us pulling the boss and the DPS not killing the adds >.< Now, MrOMGIMSOUBER rogue, who came in waaay second from on outrageously middling gear DeathKnight who brought the pain and made me want to actually play the class, says he was on an add. As far as I could see no damage had been done to one. Claimed I wasn’t tanking >.< I hate that.

The half wipe came when the rogue threw his dagger at the boss with Noobed at the 5k mana. I picked him and the adds up and after a bit say the boss was at ½ or so health with adds gone and the rogue LONG dead. We just didn’t have the heals much and I bit it. The DK takes over and Noobed finds some mana or regens some and starts healing him. I release and run back in time to see Noobed die the DK die and to charge into the boss to keep him from the hunter with about 10-15k health left. Down he went. It was interesting to say the least.

A little bit later, I went to clear Drak’Tharon with the group from The Nexus cuz HEY an emblem is an emblem and I need 35 or 25 for my tanking neck. We get to the first boss and wipe and wipe and wipe again. They ask if I am uncrittable (again) I say YES I am. We try various tactics and I notice that the pally healers heal are Flash of Lights for 2500 reg and 4-5k crits. The boss is white hitting me for 5k. Well, this math don’t add up do it? Also, the shadow priest was below me in damage when we called it. I had roughly 900 DPS for the run and he was at 830. I may have to start turning down runs with them 

Starting Heroics

So Herk got a group for the Heroic Daily of Utgaarde Keep. The following was the group make up… Boomkin, FRF Mage, Rogue, Resto Druid. We trounced that place. The fun thing is that with Heroic Throw and Charge, Warriors can now front load threat like a Pally tank. The Boomkin never even got close to taking aggro off of me. The mage tried to take his own targets away from me. Realizing it was the “Fold” doing it, I decided to show him he couldn’t no matter which target he chose. The story for this instance is really boring. We caked walked through all of it. No one died. I did nothing special to save the entire group because they didn’t need it.

Heroic Nexus on the other hand is a different story. They were 4 guildies who needed a tank. I had run several instances with this guild before and rarely every the same people twice. However, I have made a reputation with several guilds about being a really really good pug tank. Last night, I had to turn down 3 Heroic run offers because it was my wife’s turn to play. Still felt great to see the offers rolling in especially since they were from healers! Tanks, love your healers, take of your healer cuz the rest is filler sorta.

The guild had me log onto vent and because of a incident (my son ripped my mic plug in half) I am that guy who doesn’t have a mic. These guys are laughing and having a good time ribbing each other. They were pretty decent. Healer was a pally. Pally healers need some loving Blizz. Group make up was… S.priest, Holy Pally, Deathknight, Hunter and me. We went through the flower petals like nothing until I pull one tree guy back… and back and they party moves forward into the pat. Sigh. I charge get control of everyone and start pushing cooldown buttons to give the healer an extra moment.

An aside, Taurens are the best tanking race period. Why? Extra health? Somewhat. It comes from that whole extra AoE stun happiness called WARSTOMP. An extra second of not taking damage from 4 mobs in a heroic is HUGE when the smelly hits the fan.

You have to remember not hit all your O CRAP buttons at once too guys. If you pull 5 mobs to yourself in a Heroic then I suggest the following O CRAP sequence. Shield Wall, Wait for it go before hitting Block. Use Last Stand AFTER the block is up if you can as I think this gives the healer the most time to get up to speed. Now remember this the O CRAP sequence that is interspersed with the regular damage reduction sequence.

Thunderclap for aggro on all… back up and Shockwave em… Shield Wall… Demo Shout… Thunderclap, Shield Slam, Devastate, Revenge and what not but remember your main focus on the O CRAP is not DPS or trying to kill a target. It is damage mitigation and AOE threat. Also, after all the above, remember Concussive Blow for one, tab target to any caster for the a Shield Bash against their spells and if Heroic Throw is up then you Gag Order their ass again. You can chain stun casters without them getting a spell off. After all that? Warstomp their ass if you are a Tauren.

Tanking 5 oops pulled to many in a Heroic after they kill one of your party is awesomesauce in anyone’s book and will get you invited back. In this case, it got me a guild invitation for anytime I wanted.

I would love to say we finished the instance but we did not. We couldn’t get Anomylus down. There was too little DPS to drop the rifts fast enough. What was the DPS like you ask? I hesitate to say but according to recount… it was abysmal for a Heroic.

The hunter topped off at 1000
DK 900
S.Priest 850

So, does that make my tanking more leet?

Tanking and some tankingcraft

EDIT* The kid to the right is not mine!


So my son is a little older now and my wonderful wife tanked him quite a bit last night as I got all into Heroics. I was going to run a Heroic damn it all! I first get into a pug that was advertising for a “good” tank. Well, you know what? I am better than average thank you very much.

Heroic Halls of Stone here I come. /w the lead and give him the baseline 23k unbuffed, 542 def, 22k armor. Given a good healer these are ample stats to start Heroics. However, from what I hear for Halls of Lightning on Heroic I will need at least another 2k hp and some more armor. If I can start getting some socket gear with the same Def on it, I can start gemming block and parry and dodge and what not. I’ll start doing posts on that when I get to it.

Right now, I am gathering mats for the Titansteel Treads/Sabatons whatever the hell they are called. Anyways, I am getting some help with the Titansteel smelting from Noobed and am very appreciative. I should have the helm and boots made for Friday night and I already have the shield.

Goodness here we go with theorycraft. Mind you, this is for nub tanks with nub gear like mine. If you have cleared Sunwell, BT, Naxx and spanked Malygos already, this is NOT for you. This is for my own and all the other peoples insight. If you can offer a better opinion, please do.

How to get to the Def cap and gem for Stamina before gemming for miss rates… or why I like Blacksmithing.

If you are going for the Def 540 cap, you are going to need some enchants. Depending on your gear and professions, you will either need a lot of enchants to get 540 or you will need to gem for it or both. What you do not want to do is give up a gem slot when you can get an armor piece enchanted.

You can grab the following chants.

Greater Defense to Chest
+ Defense to cap
+ Defense to Shield

Use them. Save any and all sockets for +sta gems. There is absolutely no reason you should be running around with Greater stats to chest while you have a Def gem anywhere on you. Now, if you need the gem AND had the Def to chest then we understand.

Blacksmithing as a profession still helps tanks out the most. You thought every item is BoE now? It is. But not the socketing options. Blacksmiths at 400 and over can socket their own gloves and bracers. That’s a difference of roughly 500 HPs you can drop in there. Would you turn down an extra 50 sta on a tanking item? Thought not.

Chants for Def cap first and then use sockets if absolutely necessary to hit the Def cap. However, if I didn’t have to do it then you shouldn’t either. All of the gear when I hit Def cap was questing and a red letter run through CoT Culling. I picked up the tanking boots and cap out of there. I need to do a gear list for starting out and I will eventually get to it I promise.

Next post is about how the Heroics went. How we owned Utgarde and couldn’t quit drop Anomylus in Nex.

Asshattery personified

So far I haven’t had too many of BBBs /facepalm moments. I had few here and there but nothing to write about really. This past Sunday, I tanked Utgarde Pinnacle on Herk along with this Pally (Traey from the guild Misery.) Yes, I am calling him out. Feel free to whisper bomb “U @$$hat” at him if you are on teh Hoof. I’ll tell the story of the instance and lead up to the complete asshatery by sharing the little stuff.

He kept leader and marked. I was ok with that because he had been there before and I hadn’t. The pulls were nothing to worry about really. He marked pats which I found odd but meh. It aggravated him that I charged mobs. Listen up, that was old school thought people. It is more than acceptable to charge into a mob for rage or to pull them back with a heroic throw and back up a step and then charge at the right moment.

I will often pull with Heroic Throw and start backing up past the party only to charge ahead of them and hit the mob with charge at the pull back position I wanted them. The rage I get is a happy thing as it provides the DPS with immediate GO GO GADGET DPS capability. Why? Because I have the rage to pull off thunderclap, Shield bash and then back up for the Shockwave.

I have been using the following sequence.

Charge
Thunderclap
Shield Bash main target
Back up
Shockwave
Devastate
Demo Shout
Thunderclap (I do this again because I find with the DPS lately that everyone is going to AoE in some fashion)
Shield Block
Shield Bash, Devastate, Revenge or Heroic Strike as they pop up.

If anyone else uses Omen, the highest TPS I have been getting is around 4500 with the low being at 2700. I don’t lose threat. There is on person getting physically attacked and it is ME unless they have a random charge or shadowbolt spread.

Anyways, this ret pally is very partial to telling me how to tank but I let that slide. As long as the healer and I are jiving, I don’t give a crap about your DPS butt and what you think I should be doing. Did you get hit? No. Did anyone else get hit? No. Was there a wipe? No. Then STFU and DPS.

His other thing that annoyed me, whenever he had a chance to fear an undead he did and thought of it as CC. Even with 3-4 mobs on me the healer never lost more than 2k mana healing me unless it was a boss fight. Right before the gauntlet, he says he is calling dibs on the DPS plate pants that drop from Ymiron. I really had no desire for them and I am not sure about our pally healer. The fact remains that there were 3 plate wearers in the party who could use them. I chalk it up to him being a moron.

So we make it through the gauntlet when he starts running into mobs outta of the way and apologizing because he “wasn’t paying attention.” At on point, he ran into a room where we were sitting off to the side because he had to catch up and ran all the way into the room and mobs. I picked up all 7 and immediately started tapping cooldowns to give the healer some time to catch up to what we were about to get into. We didn’t wipe, no one died. Healer did have to drink after.

We get to the last boss and proceed to give King Ymiron a beatdown. At 10k health left I see Master Loot pop up. WTF?! We kill him. The pally loots and guess what? No plate pants for joo!!

I tell him that was a BS move and that I will never tank for him again. He asks what he did wrong? He was distributing loot fairly! Because YOUR pants did not drop! He says, “Well, I am tired of people rolling on their offset. “ Me, “You are a piece of trash.” The healer, “It was BS and I will never heal for you again.” The Pally, “ I didn’t mean anything by it.”

Yes, you did. You meant “I am more important than any of the rest of you whom without I would not have gotten here.”

Middle finger /salute right at ya.

Update

/wave


Sorry, haven’t been blogging because a) I’ve been playing and b) it’s the holidays which means busy at home and work!

Herk is 80. Brewhammer is almost 71. There are differences in the story from Horde to Ally! I suggest playing them back to back so as not to forget the other’s storyline. Herk is sitting at 22.5k Health with 23k armor and 542 Def. He is running Heroics when he can find a healer on teh Hoof. Herk is also grinding Sons of Hodir rep for the shoulder chant.

Brewhammer is getting quest reward gear as fast as the sling it to him. Upgrading is fun! Also, I’m sorry to have forsaken the name of this blog with Herk’s leveling spec or prot but will be doing it again on Brewhammer. Prot spec is just so much damn fun and soloable. There are only a handful of elites that I can’t drop solo as prot spec.

Wish I had time to write more.

/wave

P.S. Incoming post about the complete ASSHAT I ran with through Utgarde Pinnacle and how he master looted with 10k health left on the last boss.

Level 75

2 more until I get the flying mount back. I did most of Dragonblight last night. The area was ok but not as cohesive as Howling Fjord in my opinion. I am looking forward to the Grizzly Hills tonight. There are a smattering of quest that I have not finished yet but with doing the instances like I am and questing; I find myself still facing level 70-71 mobs at 75. I know it is supposed to be the faster way to level but it’s kind of boring.

I soloed every group quest in Dragonblight except the bird by Ysera. Speaking of! I’ve Malygos and Ysera so far. I know Alexstraza (Spelling) is in the expansion as well. Have we heard anything from Norzdormu? Also, other than the 72 leet dragon at Netherwing, we have not heard any rumblings from Deathwing. Anyone think he will be in this expansion? I hope not but since we are seeing most of the aspects you never know.

Herk made his other 2 pieces of tank gear for 75 and got the tanking ring from Azjol’ Nerub for a grand total of 18.5k health unbuffed which is higher than I have ever been. I am still pouring over WoWwiki and Tankspot for the tanking gear upgrades. There are several warriors who are 80 on Lightninghoof and I have been checking their gear on armory. There is a chestpiece and 2 tanking rings that are good enough to tank Heroics in and I’ll be going for those. There are 3 pieces of craftable for Heroic level tanking. Boots, Helm and Shield I believe they are.

All in all, I am looking forward to tanking again and am very excited about putting the gear together to hit all the caps. I promise a post of how/where I got the gear and how gemmed it and how to reach the caps. I will be doing it this weekend since I am closing in on 80. Anyone know where the quest line to kill Varimathras starts off the top of their head? I’d like to do that this weekend. The Wrathgate line maybe?

Happy BoE Tanking items, Drak’tharon Keep and BBBs facepalm moment

So anyone who’s been reading the blog lately knows I went Prot for Wrath. Grinding, questing and instancing are super fun. The wife is happy she gets to hit on the mobs some if we are questing together too.

My gear for tanking was some nice blues and half t4 with some crafted pieces when I started Wrath. However, I usually tanked in my arena/pvp gear for Utgarde when I went from 70-71. I was really hoping for upgrades to my tanking gear from the instances. Guess what!? There isn’t much from 70-75 in the instances. Every time I search for something off of the boss loot in wowwiki, I’d be kinda bummed at how little tanking gear there was.

Then I started leveling blacksmithing. Lo and behold, all the tanking gear is there! Did I drop BS off the dwarf to do double gathering?! I did! /facepalm! It’s ok tho! The items are BoE even the blue ones! Also, the blue ones you can make are THE tanking gear. I noticed this last night when I did Draktharon Keep. They have a pair of tanking pants in there that are not anywhere near as happy as my crafted tanking pants. I think, going off memory here, that there is at least a 22 stamina difference.

Also, with the blacksmithing, I can add gem slots to my gloves and bracers when I got the BS over 400. Slapped on some +12 sta gems… WHAT?! I was not an endgame raider last xpac. I don’t have gobs of the 15 ones chilling in the bank. Anyways, Herk is up to just under 18k for HP unbuffed. Replaced my Blazefury with the new 1h Blue Crafted tanking sword. (You really will have to excuse the lack of names as I am at work and have NO access to the item names.)

Overall I am very pleased with how accessible the tanking gear is. Tanks are still in demand since every single Deathknight I know is DPS. About 2/3 of the warriors I group with are Fury. Druids are, swear to all that is, all Balance and Pallys are all Ret. I did see a holy pally the other day though!

Drak’ Tharon keep was fun! Man am I loving all the new instances. Here’s a little trick for all you pugging tanks out there. There is a caster that looks like Kel’ Thuzad that shields himself when aggroed. His name escapes me. Surprised? Well, he summons mobs and you have to kill 4 crystal handlers before his shield goes down. This is an endurance fight. The problem comes in when you notice most of the mobs summoned are not elite. Not elite gives your party the impression that they can solo like they are questing. Don’t do it!

They absolute best place to tank the adds, since they come from both sides, is in the corner to you front left when you walk into the room. Plant your party there with your healer and you stand out front. All adds have to go through you before getting to them no matter if they come from the left or the right. It seemed really simply to me the next time I saw the layout and after some “gentle” rearrangement of pissing order for the group, they went and stood where I asked. It worked like a dream! We destroyed that boss.

BBB’s facepalm moment

I am running Utgarde with the same priest for the 3rd time and he is looking for a blue dagger off the first guy. We have a shammy running with us who is healing. The priest is Shadow. Now the priest and I had a good thing going until the dagger dropped and the Shammy rolled and won it. The priest lost his mind. Screaming it wasn’t a Shammy dagger. Then he kept /w me. /w Herk That stupid shammy. He is in outland greens! I could have used that so much more. My gear is from Kara and ZA and that would have boosted me over 1200 spellpower. I hate that guy. Sidegrade for spirit Vs True Upgrade for the healer? /facepalm

State of the Warrior

Spec talk time.

Herk has about 120k to go before hitting 74. The first level was spent in Utgarde and Nexus. I managed to do a total of 4 quests completed by the time I hit 71 minus the 25 I had saved up. Tanking is and always has been FUN.

If you have a class capable of tanking and you have never tried it then you need to start gathering the tanking gear just to try it out. Controlling mobs and making sure no one in the party takes unnecessary damage is the most fun I’ve had in the game.

Doing a /charge death from above from LM in AB while taking no damage, stunning that healer and lighting up Bladestorm in the group that was headed for was a very close second.

At 72, Herk went Fury. He had some very nice blue axes that were the epitome of cool double strapped to his back. It looked SO awesome. He was doing DPS like no one’s business. I was well and above the 200k mark while the hunter was at the 70k mark. No, this is in general on mobs while questing and not a boss or instance so I am not trying to state it like any empirical fact here. After about 3 hours of leveling Fury, I was bored. Very very bored.

Maximizing DPS as Fury is a lackluster process. Start in Battle Charge>BT if you got left over Rage>Bersker Stance> BT>WW>HS depending on Rage and cooldowns. It’s not worth waiting for the Execute because you should use that Rage for a BT on the next mob. You can throw in some DeathWish and/or Berserker Rage fun to push the DPS while taking a bit extra damage. After 4-5 mobs though, you have to stop and eat, rinse and repeat.

Protection spec, on the other hand, is WoW fun and dynamic. First, you get to charge whenever the charge is off cooldown. This is so fun and useful I am surprised it hasn’t been nerfed. Also, your DPS rotation is much more dynamic as prot. Did Sword and Board proc? Is Revenge up? Can I chain stun that mob in oblivion? Multi mobs? Shockwave and TC time with a stance swap for an easy WW. Pull 8-9 mobs and switch to Arms while Retaliation goes off. There are just great options for maximizing DPS as Prot while staying alive with no downtime. Am I out DPSing a Fury? Hell no! But I am sure having a lot more fun than when I was Fury.

Then there is the fun pvp aspect with the mages. As a Tauren prot spec, mages hate me. If my CDs are up, you can forget casting anything other than blink and you best believe if my charge is not up than my macro for stance swapping/intercept is.

I’m going to cast Pyroblast!

You like that double reflect?

Why am I stunned?

Charged ya,

Why am I still stunned?

Aye, that’s my Warstomp.

Why can’t I cast? Gag Order, sorry.

Why am I stunned again?

Concussion blow.

WTF now?! You got hit by Shockwave.

Haha! Blink!! WTF! Why are you here?

Charge was up again.

Is that Warstomp coming?

No, but spell reflect is up. Did I mention that I haven’t even touched Last Stand or Shield Wall? That Rend takes a toll after a while since you can’t heal eh?

In conclusion, there is nothing more fun for me right now than Prot spec. There are tons of classes I cannot kill 1v1. There are NO classes that can take me out without have to fight me using cooldowns and getting some serious downtime after they manage to off me. Also, I can almost outlast 2v1 for help to arrive.

Did I mention that I get to answer the LF1M NEED TANK?

I’ll talk about those tomorrow. I will outline Nexus, the spider place.

*Edited to change MS to BT. /facepalm

LSU vs Wrath vs Twentyfifthnovember

My lovely wife bought me tickets to a LSU game for my birthday about a month ago now. She bought the tickets for Nov 15th and only realized later that she had scheduled it on Wrath weekend. I like to watch LSU games so it was not a concern. Saturday was cold. We planned on meeting Dodger at the game but either we got there late or he ditched us for some kind of “box” tickets. Something about alcohol was said. I think we were late though. Tailgating is an all day affair for the football crowd and we got there about 2 hours before the game started.

We found our seats and watched the first quarter of the game fairly startled by how bad LSU was playing. At the end of the first quarter, there was a small accident that ended up with my wife’s drinking soaking her pants. Yes, it was horrible and quite funny as it was a good 30 degrees outside. We left about at the end of the 2nd quarter. The walk back to the car (2miles) was cold. We headed home and started Wrath up again.

I had not planned on leveling to 80 on day one and defeating Naxxramas shortly after that. You think I joined Twentyfifthnovember? Not my play style by any means.

If speed leveling floats your boat by all means speed level your little heart out. See, it’s all relative/subjective in the end. Sugars swears I speed level and don’t read any of the quests. I do read the quests by the way. I don’t use questhelper so I kind of have to. Twentyfifthnovember (GET A SHORTER NAME!) beat the PvE content in 64 hours. Hurray for you! You’re bored and wondering if blizzard miscalculated or were simply catering to casual players?

See there… I was all about relative until you put that last statement in on your website. 25 people finished the xpac in 64 hours! Now, they want more, better and harder content. Tap tap… the game has 11 million subscribers. You 25 people can go suck my balls with your worries and complaining now. Seriously, this game is beautiful, fun and intriguing. You can speed through it if that is your choice and by all means play how you want. But don’t for one second eat what someone has served, chow through all of it without any savoring and have the nerve to ask for seconds or complain that it wasn’t nuanced enough when you swallowed it whole.

Apologize for this…

Or is this Blizzard folding under the weight of a large casual player base that demands to be on equal footing with end-game raiders?

and we might be square. Folding under the weight indeed! Does your 25x52=1300 justify them catering to you? I think not.

Of course, my opinion means about as much to you as yours does to me. My two cents tho? Play your alts and enjoy the parts you blew through. Your unnerfed Muru encounter will come soon enough.

Wrath and Utgarde Keep

Dear Blizzard,

You have knocked this one out of the park. Thank you.

Herk/Brewhammer

Seriously, it is THAT good. Everything has an EPIC feel and scale. Utgarde is HUGE and impressive with a lot of detail. Howling Fjord is huge as well.

Herk, as thought, switched to prot after completing Utgarde keep the first time. As prot, I have NO downtime and kill the mobs 2-3 secs later than if I was Arms/Fury.

Let’s talk Utgarde.

Every pull almost is a multimob pull. I am writing this at work so I don’t have the names of things but I will explain the instance.

Runecasters: One would think, “CASTER burn em down! They are squishy!” Ya well, these guys have Rune protection which apparently is really spiffy. CC em and leave em til last.

Then you have your heavy hitters, your dragons and your distance types. Do not get the druid to root the distance type but the melee type.

First boss (whatever his name is)

Tank em, he summons skeletons 4 or 5 not really sure. CC em and burn em. Also, he has some kind of ice coffin or some such. He tagged our healer twice with it. You can actually attack the trap and get it off your guy. You need get off quick to because it will do some major damage.

Second boss (Whatever their names are)

Romeo and Juliet redux. Burnt the melee to 10% then kill caster and kill melee within 10sec. This was not a hard fight except that our healer had 8k life >.< and the caster randomly shadowbolts the party. Lots o death for that 8k health Druid in this instance which made me think about poor little undergeared Brewhammer. Going to make sure I have enough Cobalt on him when I start playing him to make that set so I can tank properly.

End guy (What’s his name?)

Tank and spank with giggles and resurrection. He has several abilities. One called “Smash” that dropped Herk for about half his life (He was full at about 16k) so be careful for that one. He has an AoE that hits the entire party too.

You kill him and Arthas resurrects his butt and turn him nastier. Same fight sorta only he hits harder and has a random blade that appears and smacks people around by itself.

We wipe once each on the bossed which I thought was pretty good for not knowing the fights.

I am stuck at work for a half a day then I will be back tanking. I am halfway to 71 and there is already a 73 on the server by 10am this morning.

More updates to come!

STOLEN!

I stole this from Herc's blog. It made me laugh sooo much tho. Regardless of who you voted for... it is funny!

Orgrimmar sacked!!

I have a few happy screenshots that I will post when I get home.

Was anyone else confused by Garrosh beating Thrall?!

Stormwind was fun as well.

Thanks to everyone who voted on the new name. Kelmar will be Brewhammer when I get home. Brewhammer pugged MrT last night with 3 warriors, mage and a priest. It was interesting. By “interesting” I mean tons of wipeage.

I am excited for Wed night.

Final tally for Herk’s preparedness is…

25 quests completed
71k honor
100 AV tokens
69 AB
74 EotS
67 WSG
With 5k gold for giggles.

Brewhammer is less prepared. He didn’t have any quest left undone and since he will be second, he will be soaking the rested anyways. It may very well turn out that one is destined for PvP and the other for PvE.

Let the leveling begin.

First run and run again will be Nexus for the new shoulders they have in there. I am very tired of the batwings.

Let me run something past you guys. I was thinking about doing a first person blog kind of like Ratters on here. I would use Brewhammer’s perspective with Herk’s and create a little story between the two. Any interest in such a concept?

What are you guys going to be doing first in WOTLK?

Picture show

Hey Megs,

How is my AV participation looking?


You may have heard of a little blog called BigRedKitty. He needs to change it BigRedApe apparently. I suggested a macro /em of Grape Ape Grape Ape but he said his ape is white. Ah well.
Group em up and tap Barkskin and layeth the AoE smackdown. Starfall is a nice grinding spell.

I'm dead. You're 5 capped. I win.

Fear the Herk.
Again... I ain't playing around AB. I will kill joo!

Levitate gives some nice pic moments!

Back to this guy... I think we should break code and turn that thing from white to a purple? Anyone know how to do this?

[[[-----]]] < this is what 315 looks like!

As those who read the blog know, I have been going to the gym regularly for about 6 months now. I have lost 2 pant sizes going from a tight 42 to a snug 38/39 depending on cut of pant and what not. Also, my weight has dropped from the dreaded 285 to a better 245-250 depending. The 245-250 throws me because I thought it was fat but ended up being muscle gain.

My goal for the end of the year was to bench 300lbs. Well, last Friday, I did bench 300lbs and did it after several heavy sets. Yesterday, I achieved a new 1 rep max of 325lbs. I was ecstatic! Really, if I went to fit into a pair of 38s that weren’t the right cut and didn’t fit, I would tell them to F off because I bench over 300. Now, I know this isn’t the right attitude and I can and will do better, but for right now I love it.

I started in on 2 workouts a day with the noon being cardio and the evening being weightlifting. I did this all last week. This week I have the opportunity to work out with a guy from work is in “alpha” shape. He presses 350, weighs 215 and looks like a comic book character. He told me after we worked out on lunch that I wouldn’t be doing the cardio that night… he was right.

I’ll outline some…

Warmup

Flat Bench

325x1
10 crunches on workout ball thingy
315x2
10 crunches on workout ball thingy
295x4
10 crunches on workout ball thingy
275x5
10 crunches on workout ball thingy
255x6
10 crunches on workout ball thingy
225 to failure
10 crunches on workout ball thingy

Then we went to incline and repeated it. (Less weight tho)

We did chest ups and butterflies back to back with crunches in between. We topped it all off with decline bench and no crunches. Decline bench was 225lbs of “I have never done that much on decline before!” I managed but the reps were NOT high.

All in all, it was a crazy mega workout and I kept up so I was happy.

So I guess with the 8 weeks I have left in 2008 that I will try and get up to bench pressing 350. Next year’s goals should be interesting.

For Shaminja on Drenden

Occasionally, I will get the /w “You write ArmsandFury right?” This is actually much cooler than I would have thought. I started getting more lately when I really started talking more about the warrior class changes and talents. Well, I intend to do that a lot more come Wrath. I have several drafts of posts with (looks around nervously) math involved. I am no mathematician by any means but the math seems straight forward and I will rely on the flamers to keep it correct.

Shaminja wants a post on the early levels of warriorness. I have done several posts about talents specs and abilities before. What I SHOULD have done is what BRK suggested a year ago and give the grouping on the sidebar entitled warrior 101 like he used to have. I will be doing this tonight when I get home. This won’t be all though. I intend to play a new warrior with the new talents and give my impressions of the overall changes made since Vanilla.

Of course, being the lovable moron that I am. The changes will be STEEP. I am sure that for level 1-30 on the dwarf back in 2004 he was talent in all 3 trees and I played like a moron who doesn’t read anything on the game he is playing. I have changed that since.

So with that in mind and to give you and Shaminja the new hotness on warriors it only makes sense for me to play one again from at least 1-30. Now, I have an Orc, Tauren and Dwarf. I leave it to you guys to let me know which race for the next one. Undead? Human? Dear god, don’t let them make me play a spacegoat. Let me know which in the comments and a name for the new one and you guys will get the daily updates until he hits 30 or wrath comes out.

Halloween

Happy Halloween Guys!!

-♥- Herk & Sed'

New Banner

See, when I made it with PsP at home it seemed more than bright enough. When I get to work I can't see ANYthing hardly.

Anyways, I took off the armory links of the alts because I won't be playing them after 13th of Nov. I plan on being pretty detailed with my warrior's journey through Wrath and have most if not all the tools to do so.

I will be outlining gear choices and questlines for gear. I will be using different websites and will link to them when I use them. I plan on doing on my blog for people who can't catch the good sites at word and for my own edification when it comes time to play the dorf.

Is the banner dark for everyone else?

BRK is sad that Kelmar is a changing... will need to send him an email of boobs with the new name on them so he can feel better about it. Yup, that should do it.

What's in a name?

As I will be playing the dwarf second this time around, I have not been grinding grinding grinding like I have on Herk. I want to get the dwarf to at least 1k gold and am not really worried about gear. He is in Blue rep gear which will be fine and fun to replace. I am also finishing Sony’s last two levels on her priest. I am not quite sure if she is sworn it off all together because I know she likes to play healer and is damn good at it.

Question for you on the internet! I need help picking out a new name for the Dorf. Currently it is Kelmar which is an amalgam of my real name Kelly Martin (cwhaIdidthere?) The following are my new choices that were not taken and that I have saved. I am going for something Dwarvish in nature btw.

Stoutheart
Stoutbeard
Stoutbrew
Brewhammer
Giantslayer
Middendorf
Tibbledorf


I am leaning towards Brewhammer.

Scourge Invasion

I LOVED IT

I had a whole lot of fun turning into a zombie, killing zombies and running for a healer when that timer got down to 1-2 minutes. Unfortunately, I did not get a chance to do the Doom quests as much as I would have liked. Every time I was on and would go to do it; 5000 other people had the same smart idea to do it as well. I was not getting up early to do the event because while the gear was not half bad, it was more sidegrade than upgrade.

If I was going to make time to do it, I should have done it on Kelmar who could’ve really used the happy gear. I have been splitting my time on Kelmar and Herk learning the ins and outs of Fury and Arms respectively. I really see why Blizzard decided to nerf the debuff (is that oxymoronic?) that comes with Titan’s Grip. Kelmar is in 70 rep blues and dual wielding Crystalforges. He has about 1500ap unbuffed. He hits fairly hard IF he hits. That 15% miss on specials is a beast. Looking at recount, the miss rate for Kelmar was at 17% for my 35min on the isle.

Side note: I managed to catch BRK online. He was surprised to see me and asked if I remembered how to play a dwarf. I snorted at him but got no response. It would almost be worth it to level Kelmar first just to beat him with the new Prot spec. Have you encountered the Prot spec that can beat the BM hunter yet BRK?

Herk, on the other side, is bleed happy and will rip through the isle in 30-40min depending on PvP gankings and the what not. He doesn’t miss. He obliterates. Even the frost mages have to be wary. If I am at a full rage bar and can hit Recklessness and get an Execute proc, they are dead Popsicles walking.

BGs are still pretty interesting. I am dying to go back to Prot for a little while but the way Blizzard changed honor given makes it a no go for right now. I like the fact that you can get decent honor for a WSG (About 700 with top damage and some flag captures) but what about the prot warrior stunning people? What about the skills the healing/damage numbers don’t show? Gonna keep grinding honor as Arms for now because retaliation + Bladestorm in the middle of the ally flag attempt = honor points.

Herk is sitting at 62k honor and will be at 75k honor for Wrath. I still plan on leveling as Protection just to hit up all of the instances with ease. Nothing will level you as fast as instance running and I plan on doing a lot.

I am not planning on farming honor on Kelmar but he will be my second toon leveled. What can I say… the only thing better than one warrior is two. Also, having them on two different sides means I get to see both sides of the story. Blizz is trying for a better Alliance leader in Varian Wrynn. No on is going to take Thrall’s spot but Varian might carve out a place of his own. Alliance side really needed that too. I likes ye Magni but that whole crying over your daughter thing? Sigh.

Gym Archetypes

So I have been in the gym for about 6 months now and have noticed several archetypes. Here are my observations so far.

The skinny guy doing too much weight.

This guy will try and bench press 165 because he used to be able to do 135 back in high school and he must have gotten stronger since then right? After lifting the 165 off of his chest, he asked for a spot so he could try again. Oo

The lean guy doing too much weight but using bad form.

You must have seen this guy before at least once. This is the guy who is doing 165 on the lat pull down and hooks his feet under some plates as well as his knees and proceeds to wrench his back backwards using all his body weight to lift the weight half as far is it supposed to go.

The teenagers who resemble the Jonas brothers and don’t take their hats off.

They exist. The perturb me.

The teenager who is a lot more fit than you.

/smack

The old guy who is a lot more fit than you and grabs the 50lbs to bicep curl.

/Hamstring

The lady who is a 3 in the face and a 10 in the body but works out in the guy section doing the laydown hamstring curls.

/wth

The screamers

No matter what they are lifting be it 2lbs or 200lbs, they must scream when lifting.

The runners

The people you see there and all the do is treadmill. They are very serious about it too. When you look at the mileage it is at least 10 no matter if they started 5 min ago.

The pregnant lady.

Sure she might be 8 months along but she is in there kicking ass. Most of the time these are not the 3/10 ladies but the 9/9s. You KNOW why they are pregnant.

The “my doctor told me to get some exercise or I will die “ peoples.

These pop up sporadically and are usually the morbidly obese. You see them on the treadmill staring daggers at the “runners” next to them if they are 10 min in. Anymore than that and they are too tired to look at anything. Oddly enough, these people give me an immense amount of motivation.

The “greek god aint got nothing on me!” guys

One word: Chiseled

I have more but need to get back to work.

Welcome to 53/8

Sorry Pix! I just started playing 53/8 last night so I don’t have a great deal of Recount data yet. Here is a post on Arms from the games I played on Sunday.

Before I get into 53/8, let me say that 8/53 (Prot) was great fun for PvP BG style. The only classes I really seemed to have a problem taking down 1v1 were Ret Pallys (Surpised?) and Frost mages (again?) I could way outlast the little mutilate rogue and kill them. 8/53 was capable of very respectable burst damage and added with the survivability factor should be looked upon wearily by anyone running up the sword and board warrior.

53/8 is what I went for in Arms. Yes, I got Bladestorm. Like I have said before, Bladestorm is great for PvE. Well, you can think about BGs the same as PvE grinding most times. BGs are objective based and not the same as arena. You can go have fun in a BG and not have to play your class for control like you have to in Arena.

For example, there are few things as fun as running into the other team and tapping Sweeping Strikes, Retaliation and Bladestorm and watch the numbers flying off of SCT. I played roughly 10 BGs last night as 53/8 and not one of those was I out of the top 3 damaged done from both sides. Pallies and Mages were usually my competition.

The more I played 53/8 the more I realized I may very well have been wrong about its burst capabilities. The random procs for Execute and Overpower made my burst really random but the old burst I was able to do was still there as well if I needed it. Also, the hits I was capable of doing had greatly increased. Crits were normally in the range of 2300 now. I even had an execute crit of around 7-8k.

I have not done arena with 53/8 it yet though. I see it working the same as 31/28 minus the Piercing Howl goodness which we’ll have again at 80 just in time for new arena season. A 53/8 warrior could truly shine in 5v5 with the SS,Ret,BS combo provided he had a pally with BoF handy. The DPS is done to everyone and the bleed pretty much gets put on everyone. I don’t think it would be an easy thing for a healer to keep up with that kind of DPS if all 5 of his team got hit.

Get the Bladestorm rotation off while focus 1 toon and having a second backup toon as another focus? MS the healer and then kick it in? He has a choice of healing himself or healing the other 4 members of his team that are taking the same damage. Not great options eh? I will be playing 53/8 for the rest of the week and will do a follow up post but for right now, consider my foot in my mouth about the state of arms not being able to burst well.

Just like with Prot being more dynamic with random Shield Slams and Revenges being available, Arms requires you to pay close attention to procs and not the random button mashings of relied sequencing. Time to wake up and play again warriors!

Books and specs

I finished reading Drachenfels from this omnibus today. It was absolutely fantastic. You will kind of see what is coming at the end but there are a few really cool moments that I didn’t fully expect. The writing was superb and the characters nicely done for a short story.

I am not sure how they do it but the very best short story writers can display a person for what they are without having to explain why they are and still the character feels three dimensional as opposed to the archtype they happen to portray.

Robert E. Howard was fantastic at this! Conan is portrayed as so many different types that to explain why he was all of these types would lead to a series with a word count that would make Robert Jordan envious. Howard didn’t need the massive arcs for the story to work and yet the arc was definitely there if you were to read the Conan stories listed in their proposed chronological order.

So thumbs up for Drachenfels and on to the next one.

Protection is really as fun as I thought it would be. I am beating people in duels thanks in large part to judicious use of spell reflects. I went full PvE healing on druid spec. Sony and I will be in MC again tonight to try and get her core hound. We almost had him twice but someone pulled prematurely both time causing me to overheal. Tonight he is ours! Rawr!

Patch time

I admit it! The patch has me excited! For Arms and Fury trees? SHUT IT you!

I am actually looking forward to changing my Dwarf’s hairstyle because I have had him the longest and it is time for a change. The Dorf will be fun to mess around on because he is on a carebear server and can go happy little Bladestorm or Titan’s whenever he wants. I will be experimenting with him quit a bit.

As for Herk, he will be the awesomsauce that is the updated Protection spec! I look forward to frustrating Allies at every flag/tower or cap they try! I look forward to tanking instances for Dogs of Rawr while still being able to grind dailies for G. Honestly, I don’t know if I’ll be doing anymore arena until lv80. I can get the 38/23 build and continue on as normal and I might just to pick up the S4 pants but meh.

Aerthson has the options tho! With the spellpower change, he can go either balance or resto. I will be trying both out for fun.

Now, I know Herk is first to 80. I am really thinking Kelmar is 2nd and Aerthson last. Of course, we probably have 2 years before we see anything else and shouldn’t I have quit playing by then?! Seriously?! Who knows? As long as I am having fun and am not “addicted” to it then I don’t see the problem.

Patch tomorrow and QQ fest in progress.

So tomorrow is when ArmsandFury goes Prot spec. I have been playing the prot Spec on PTR and wowza fun! It is by far and away the better completed of the 3 trees for a warrior right now.

What’s the problem with Arms? Look 33/28 was about burst damage while keeping MS up. Going deep Arms wasn’t that much of an option for arena because the burst you gave up for more rage which was supposed to give you… more burst didn’t work. The same problem again… you have to go deep in Arms and you don’t get anything but Bladestorm which is STILL crap Blizzard! I have to have control over my F($king toon. Blizz won’t let me Taunt another player because that player should be in control of their actions… sigh Blizz sigh.

The other problem with Arms is that they are making you damn near stay in Arms. If you want to base Arms tree around Rend and bleed, make rend available in Berserker stance! Arms should not = Battle Stance and Fury = Zerker stance just to have Blizz claim we can still stance dance. Grrr.

Fury is nice tho! Well, sort of. Until you start hitting on people or mobs your level or greater with Titans Grip and you start missing with all those burst abilities. You will not be able to effectively burst while in Fury unless you gem for max hit cap. You will have to pray your debuff of healing is on target instead of having the steady MS rotation. So hear is your DPS warriors, you wear plate for survival except you can’t survive longer than a rogue! What? We don’t have the CC options of rogues, we do less damage because of the TG hit chance, we have no evasion that allows us to still DPS while surviving (Our DPS is gimped to hell if I sword/board through a shield wall even if it is now on 5 min cd.)

Now, for grinding or leveling… both trees are massively fun. Bladestorm is a hoot to light up after gathering mobs and taping S strikes, retaliation and then Bladestorm is just warrior nastiness. Can’t you just do that in arena? Can’t! Warriors are to easily Crowd Controlled. You may be able to get it off on the unexpecting but soon it will get old hat to see me start spinning and simply move outta my way or CC me

Fury leveling/grinding is just as fun. You are really kicking the snot out of stuff and your misses do not count like they do in PVP. Another thing to think about when you start off PvPing after patch is the following. Most toons (Read: any toon under 17k Hit points) simply do not have the Hit Points to keep up with the new abilities in damage dealing. It makes the BGs much more frenetic and frantic though which is fun for a while but will get old very very soon.

More QQ to follow

Paladins should not be OUT BURST DPSing a warrior. PERIOD. I can not bubble/heal/stun in my DPS mode. Let’s run this list down here. Both wear plate, both can tank. I am fine with them being every bit the tank a warrior can be because they can’t really heal themselves while doing and they can’t bubble during it. They are using their mana to get aggro like I use my rage. What about in PVP? Both wear plate, Pallys now have higher controllable burst damage than Warriors, Pallys can still bubble/stun/heal if needs be.

Warriors have no Burst damage any longer as Arms is designed for Bleed style and Fury has an enormous hit miss gap. Do you see the utility problem here Blizz?! What is it that I am capable of doing better than a pally now? Where is my niche that they can’t uber own me in? Anyone have an answer for this?

Look it the trees. Arms = DPS/ Fury = DPS/ Prot = tanking for warrior. Then you got Pally with Holy = Healing/ Prot = tanking/ Ret = OMGWTFBBQPWN DPS while still being able to bubble/ heal and stun. Tell ya what! Why not give them a healing debuff!

Sigh... talent specs

http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=Li0IdbIzxbrR0foxhxbo

The above is Arms arena... sigh

The below is Prot for PvP and Badge farming

http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=LZhxZVIzrMcdidIdsGo

The last would be TG build if Prot wasn't so amazing. I have 2 different variations of each of the above but I think I might be using the ones listed more. I'll have to wait until I actually play them to see.

http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=LZhxxsViubxRikAo

More Books

So like everyone else who reads the blogosphere having to do with WoW and what not, I read a lot of books. I am not doing that list of what “banned” books have you read. I have read some of them but meh… other people have answered that post. Let’s talk about the everyman’s books and the greats you can find.

Note: Noobed reads tons. He can read much faster than I and maybe as fast as my wife. Since I have known Noobed going on 12 years now (How have I lasted you ask? Breaks!) he has recommended a few and they will assuredly make this list of mine. I am going for stuff that I am reading now as well as throw backs to yesteryears and staying simply in Sci-FI/ Fantasy/ Horror realm. I will go in no particular order and will not vouch for entire series runs.

Necroscope – Brian Lumley
The Eye of the World – Robert Jordan
The Lions of Al-Rassan – Guy Gavriel Kay
The Black Company – Glenn Cook
Neuromancer – William Gibson
Tigana – Guy Gavriel Kay
I am Legend – Tim Matheson
The Dark Tower – Stephen King
The Mis-enchanted Sword – Lawrence Watt Evans
Deed of Paksenarrion – Elizabeth Moon
H.P. Lovecraft Short Stories
Robert E. Howard Short Stories (Conan imparticular)
Elric – Micheal Moorcock

Well, there are ten for you. I need to be able to look at my books on a shelf to get a better idea but those are standing out right now as some of the best I have read over my 18 some odd years of reading the stuff. Kay actually made it on there twice. I remember these books vividly.

I have just read Gotrek and Felix Omnibus 1 and I really dug it. It was close to Howard’s writing style with the grit, grime and hopelessness for the main characters. I have started on The Vampire Genevieve set in the same Warhammer universe and really like it as well. Anybody besides Noobed read any of these or have some more suggestions?

Goals... Gonna need new ones for Wrath

Almost time for 3.0 folks and I have work to do.

Let’s see…

Get Noobed a list of Glyphs I would like. As much crap as we give each other, he really helps me out with stuff in his professions. Thanks guy! (This thanks will inevitably be ridiculed on his blog but it’s to be expected.)

Get Herk’s Cooking to 375 so I don’t have to send everything to Aerthson. Update (got this to 372)

Get Aerthson’s fishing to 375. Currently 360

Play with talent calculator more for my Arena Arms spec (Seriously, quit laughing. It is not my fault Blizz has f(#ked the warrior for PvP.)

Play on PTR with the Prot spec some more (Least you got this right Blizz!)

Hit honor cap. Currently at 45k

Hit mark cap. 99 AV, 45 EOTS, 30WSG and 12 AB

Help Damm and Beo level.

Lets talk runthroughs and Noobed. We do a Blood Furnace run in record time last night and he is bored. I chain pulled the entire instance and he doesn’t drop below half mana and never drinks. This is the same guy who through a fit about me not sword and boarding Ring of Blood. Then we have to run back to Ramparts for Garglamar and I chain pull the boss and adds and he is still bored.

Noobed, unless we are in a Heroic or some such, you are hereby put on notice to shut up about me strapping a shield on for help me quests.

New adds and the weekend

The Dogs or War add two new members. Well, Two and Half Orcs to be precise! Damm and Beo both came over to have a bit of fun over the weekend and ended up transferring their lv60s over. They have been great fun. Ozzy and I ran with them through Hellfire Ramparts. I don’t think they got 1 piece of loot that was worth going for but the experience was nice and they got the quests done.

Sunday, I think Noobed and I split up and helped Damm and Beo respectively. Beo and I ran around getting the Cruel’s Intentions line done. An odd thing happened to Beo and I as soon as we hit the Pools of Agrannar, she was hanging way back and I was way forward. I thought she didn’t want to be an aggro monkey. Then I thought she had an afk kiddo. The good thing about playing with other parents is the understanding of the random afk. So I sit there and guard her when I see /p You afk? Erm… No, thought you were? Not me she says. It was some kind of weird server lag that last a little while. Her toon did not show up on my screen where she was.

Arena…

My god… 100 point drop in rating… I played like crap first 3 games… last ones were just murder. It was a F(*king nightmare. Now Megs tells me this kind of stuff can happen every now and again. Don’t make it sting any less.

Sugars!

He won the fishing tournament on Sun! Booya! No one I know has ever one that thing. Grats bro!
Ozzy!

Hit lv 70 on her lock!

Dodger!

Was on vacation but he is lv67!
Battlegrounds

Friday night I could not win a WSG to save a newborn kitten. I was playing with complete idiots. Saturday morning, I could not lose a WSG. I won 10 straight before retiring for the day. BTW, to Rawrmedic (Dwarf Priest) and Dwarfenator (Dwarf Pally), I started feeling kind of guilty seeing you guys after match 4. Sorry about all those recurring Herk nightmares :D

Honor

I am sitting at 40k honor so a little over halfway to honor cap. Question: Has anyone heard if the marks are going to disappear now that we get to keep the honor?

Weightloss Update

I am holding steady at 242. I plane on losing 10lbs this month. I need a lot more cardio with my weight training and diet so I am planning on start 2 days starting Sat. I am going to do cardio in the morning 30-45 minutes and weight training later in the day. I am closer to my goal of 1 rep max of 315 by the end of the year. I am able to bench 215 10 times which puts me in the 1 rep max of 300 range. I need to be able to push 245 10 times to go for 315.

Pant size is a very loose 40. I call them comfy, my wife calls me a plumber. It looks like it might be time to go for a loose fit 38. 38 people! Haven’t seen that since college! Someone told me I looked good in the pants I was wearing yesterday and I was quite happy about it! I couldn’t reciprocate cuz the lady was wearing a bright gold outfit which reminded me Bunny Wigglesworth’s final costume in Zorro the Gay Blade.

If I can hit 232 by the end of the month, it will make 50lbs in roughly a year. I am still looking to hit 220 by the end of the year so I definitely have some work to do. I need to give you guys some pics. My wife has one of a really really bad belly pic… sigh.

By the way, go ask Ozzy about the Huntard who ganked us last night and his ensuing deaths.

It never fails with Noobed

Guys and gals,

If you liked the Dune post about Dodger, he added some stuff to it on his blog. Including a pic of why he reminds me of Dune. Go check it out.

Before Noobed gets to you people…

I tried out the Prot spec via PTR on Herk last night. I had been mostly playing Arms and Fury because… Look at the blog url for God’s sake! That being said, the buffs the finally put into Prot are very welcome and very nice. Prot + DPS like a Feral for a warrior tank?! Whoda thunk it?

Now, I hit the PTR in my full scrub Arena Gear and went sword and board. After I got past the mosh pit of duelers 20 declines later, I hit the zep for a ride to Undercity and went to Stratholme. Nothing there could bring me down except that unlucky chain pull of 9. Other than that, I cake walked the place. Tapping the new and much buffed/talented Thunderclap netted 500-600 dmg to everything around me. Revenge hits like a BRICK now. Shield Slam is a rocking.

I start looking more and more how I would play prot in PvP and realize that YES it might actually work. This to that… the DPS is much better and the tanking is still sick cept for that 40 sec CD on shield block now. Overall, I am very happy with the prot stuff and could really see myself leveling prot for the entire expansion. I’ll be back on the PTR tonight to actually try out some duels and BGs. I’ll give an update tomorrow.

Now, I log on to regular realm and talk to my peeps. Ozzy’s bro Keprin joined Dogs yesterday! Welcome Kep! Glad to have you back with us. So I start telling the peeps about the new Prot spec and how it really is spectacular.

Here come Noobed!

“I told you that already DAMN it!”

Flashback to 2 months ago

Noobed, “I hear they are going to buff prot and it might actually work for PvP.”
Arms, “I heard that too but won’t believe it until I see it though.”

Flashforward

Noobed, “You never listen to me! I told you!”
Arms, “They hadn’t buffed it yet you tool! How the F*&K are you running on at the mouth that you told me?!”

Blizz can talk a good game but I don’t get excited about something until I play or see it in action.

Arthas's cousin?! I'll never fogive you for that.

So let’s see. Our guild is just a hopping along these days. Dodger hit 66 and is probably halfway to 67. Ozzy is on her way there as well. I like being able to hang out on the server and farm or help the peeps. Helping friends > /w Can you help me with this kill quest?

I never really help with kill quests cuz a) they are easy b) they are an XP grind and I would just cut into the XP and c) Just no. Group quests tho! Now those are fun. When I first met Dodger (Who’s real name is Paul) we went around calling him Mau’dib. Yes, we are dork like that. I’m not saying it was his permanent name but when he would make an entrance we’d hit him up with it.

I haven’t gotten to play with Dodger as much I like because a) been sick and b) he plays late on weekdays when I am either in full blow G farm mode or am about to log. So last night I decided to go hang with him and get some stuff done. We were doing quests when Noobed logs on. /w Noobed “You gots time to do Ring of Blood?” and he says sure.

I get Dodger over there while I am /w the wife if she would like to help. She doesn’t answer either whisper but accepts the group invite. I don’t think anything about this because she could be fighting alliance. Also while doing this, there is a warrior named Freeway (Shout out) and I ask him if needs and he says yes. This is how one builds good Karma.

So we start up and I make a point of asking Noobed if he WANTS me to shield up. What’s he say? Nah he says. See people… Noobed LIKES to complain. It doesn’t matter that he didn’t use anymore than 2k mana of his 10k in healing me. I am waiting on his next whine post about me not using a shield AGAIN on Ring of Blood.

Right after ring, Noobed minds me about the Bone Worm quest for another blue dagger. Let’s go get that for Dodger… wait a tic… Hai’ Shulud!!! Dune references!! With Dodger!!! Damn I should taken a pic. Sigh

And one of my all time favs in the game…

“I mean really Arthas’s cousin?! I’ll never forgive you for that.”

The weekend part 1

Wow, I had a busy weekend for feeling like wet toilet paper. So Friday during the day my cold or whatever is in full swing and I can’t swallow without it feeling like razorblades can’t breathe out my nose and my eyes feel swollen. Also, it was my wife’s bday weekend so things are not looking great at this point.

Friday night, the ladies of Dogs (Sederasha (my wife) and Strovia (teh DcOe) hit the isle for some much needed G! Those alliance folks were very bored and 2 whole guild were trying to control the isle. It was very rough on us. We corpse ran more that night than in a whole week. Well, there is this NELF druid who stalks the isle name o Decapitated. /wave Decapitated. He really isn’t that bad of a ganker just your normal jackass and all. Him and Aerthson have faced off several times and I think we are still hitting about 50/50 on each other.

He part of the gankfest that was the Dogs’ bane on Fri night. Low and behold if we don’t see him killing a Shadowpriest. See Teh Ozzy The problem was these two were “dueling.” Ok, first off, you are dueling in the middle of the isle o death and expect people to leave you alone? Second, you are in a guild that’s main purpose in the game is to be hated by the Alliance and you go and spot us for them?! /salute Deathsenemy from Polymock for being a prick bastard! Sorry we interrupted your duel with your ally friends. One more thing, I ain’t your son and S2 shoulders were just as scrubbalishes as mine.

While this going on, my temper is just rising and rising. I keep getting /w from Deathsenemy with the whole “son” crap. Renoobed is /w with his whiney yet insulting “You aren’t talking?” No, I am FIGHTING MOTHERF(*&$KER give me a sec and quit /w bombing me too. “That’s what you get for going to the Isle of Death cuz you suck.” 934 death of the night happens and here it come in RL… “F(*K YOU PUTER!” /w from wife “Don’t do that! The baby is sleeping!” /guiltridden. I hadda log.

Hey Turtlemilk,

Do you know you got peeps in your guild spotting for alliance? While this might not be a big deal, from when I have played with you it just don’t seem to be your style.

Rock out with your lock out

Sugars don’t get enough respect sometimes!

Here is a screenshot of him rocking a WSG. The problem with me giving him proper props most of the time is simple… I just do not know locks well enough. As a SL/SL lock, I mostly notice when his fears are resisted as opposed to how much DPS or help he is at other times. Sorry about that guy! Taking a look at this pic tho will give a good impression of him doing some of his very own pwnage in a BG.

He is around 80k DPS more than the other top! Which means he is doing his dot job rather well because I can’t tell you how many time I have seen locks run past allies and not dot them up. It happens often. I mean even if you are running past a warrior fighting an ally and you are going for the flag… DOT the ally! Geez

He also rocked a flag return. Of course, him being at 14k life probably did not hurt anything! Truly, I have not seen him run a flag when I am with him cuz I play a warrior and a druid… most times I am flag runner ya see.

Sugars and Herk gonna put some PAIN on wrath when it comes out. Also, we have one nasty group guild. If we are all online questing together we have…

Warrior
Lock
Rogue
Hunter
Shaman

In other words, unless your whole guild is there… leave us the F*#$ alone and let us quest. Take that back… you just need to run cuz my wife doesn’t let an ally pass without becoming a pincushion.

Vacation

I was going to keep reviewing the talents trees... til they changed again... sigh

BTW, I went on vacation to Destin, FL. The wife and I brought the boy and played on the beach. NO sunburns!! Woot! We are back and having the usual fun again.

We got Sony her Epic Flyer thanks to some 1kg help from Sugars. Sony owes him that and just realized it last night. She finally returned to her dailies.

As for me, WoWinsider just posted that I will not be taking any badgs, honor points or arena points with me which makes it time to level something else since my wife won’t let me play Warhammer.

I float back and for between my mage (Frost) and my shaman (Enhance). I think leveling the shaman is more fun for me and being able to DPS or Heal will certainly get me more groups in Outlands. He dinged 50 last night so he might actually make 70 before xpac.

Short one.. but meh.

Putting the Arms back in Arms and Fury

I think it is getting close enough that I can review the new talents without them changing too much on me. After I go through all of the trees, I will start posting specs that I am playing around with. Also, I need to do math on the bleed damage happiness Arms is going for and I should be able to get that done over the weekend. Please comment on anything and everything. If you think I am miss thinking a use for a talent or spec, I would love to here about it.

BladestormRank 1
11
2
Instantly Whirlwind all nearby targets and for the next 6 sec you will perform a whirlwind attack every 1 sec. While under the effects of Bladestorm, you can move but cannot perform any other attacks or abilities but you do not feel pity or remorse or fear and you cannot be stopped unless killed.25 Rage, Instant, 1.5 min cooldown

Ok, can we get a decent end talent in arms tree?! Seriously >.< I can see where grinding would be made humorous from this and that’s it.


Wrecking CrewRank 5
10
2
Your melee critical hits Enrage you, increasing all damage caused by 10% for 12 sec.

This is a straight bread and butter talent for increasing DMG. It is nothing too special and not to be past over when going deep in Arms.


Sudden DeathRank 3
9
1
Your melee critical hits have a 30% chance of allowing the use of Execute regardless of the target's health state.

This could be a happy thing since execute these days is really just another Mortal Strike and not the killer of yesteryear.


Blood FrenzyRank 2
9
3
Your Rend and Deep Wounds abilities also increase all physical damage caused to that target by 2%.

A reason to use Rend? Prbly not. However, you will probably maybe still have Deep Wounds… maybe not. In any event, an extra 2% damage for 2 talents isn’t horrible.


Unrelenting AssaultRank 2
8
3
Reduces the cooldown of your Overpower and Revenge abilities by 4 seconds.

Not so much for revenge in my opinion but how many times would you just eat that rogue or warrior from having faster overpowers? Daddy like this one.


Strength of ArmsRank 2
7
3
Increases your total Strength and total health by 4%.

Not great, not shabby… I’d pick it up.


Improved SlamRank 2
7
4
Decreases the swing time of your Slam ability by 1 sec.

Same ole thing… I am still wondering why they put the insta slam in Tier 9 Fury… bastiches. Can you imagine the rotation arms could have had?


TraumaRank 2
6
4
Your normal melee critical strikes increase the effectiveness of Bleed effects on the target by 30% for 15 sec.

They sure are trying to get you to bleed something aren’t they? Makes that Dwarf racial nice in PvP versus Deep Arms warrior with Bleed talents out the hooha. I need to run some math and see what the new Bleed Damage can add up to for what Rage cost. I’ll do that shortly.


Taste for BloodRank 3
4
1
Whenever your Rend ability causes damage, you have a 30% chance of allowing the use of your Overpower ability for 5 secs.

Did I mention them trying to get you to bleed something? With the reduced overpower talent and the extra bleed damage… it may be something to look into.


Justified KillingRank 2
4
3
You gain 6 rage every time you parry an attack.

Crap talent? Looks like.

That’s it for the new Arms tree stuff. I am not overly impressed but I do like the Bleed bit. Seems like they are leading us into a make sure the dot is up tree. Bladestorm is dreadful though. If they wanted me to use that in PvP they can suck it. The only thing worth it is the fear break since they took it out of Death Wish. I break the fear… sorta… at least I am capable of doing damage while not in control of my actions? Was that the thinking? I’ll be back shortly with the new Fury stuff and my concerns that Fury still has not replaced Arms for PvP even with the new healing debuff.

I wish I had gotten into the beta so I could test this stuff better L

We still haven't fogotten. We never will.

Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the Pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Bogarter of Warp Burgers and Being beat by a Warlock

Dodger is stealing Warp Burgers from the Gbank! We have plans to stop him… more to come.

Sugars beat Herk 2 out of 3 last night in duels! How you are asking yourself? Well, every time he has “wanted” to duel me he rips a new trick I haven’t seen. The last time he beat me in a duel he phased the Imp! I charge the imp and after 2-3 hits was like wtf?! Now, locks don’t phase imps in PvP I think but as a duel tactic, it worked once.

Sugars new trick was sticky glue and netherweave nets. Say it with me everyone! Warriors hate CC!! Also, he had another trick I had not seen. His succubus which I usually eat first if he pulls her out went invisible on me. WTF? I thought it was phased and kept on Sugars until the Succubus got a charm on me >.< Then I had a net thrown on my butt.

Grats to Sugars on great tricks! You are learning bro. Can you repeat it after I have thought about the counters is the question!

On an even happier note than a lock beating a warrior, we upgraded my wife’s computer and she no longer lags anywhere. Not on isle, not in shat, not on tile and not on a bat. She is very happy. Now, we have to get her an epic flyer cuz I know she will make the gears changing noise if she gets it. Really who wouldn’t think a flying manticore thingy isn’t funny sounding like a Hayabusa?