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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsThe Care and Feeding of Warriors: Destroyer
by Matthew Rossi 
Jan 15th 2010 at 6:00PM
Dev Chat Update: While today's post is about fury, it's worth mentioning that in addition to nerfing Shield Block's contribution to Shield Slam, we will supposedly see a threat buff to the ability. Hopefully it's a scaling, and not a static, threat buff, something that adds X threat for every Y block value or something. They'd also supposedly like to add sustained damage to prot for PvE without PvP burstiness, which would be nice if it happened..
Lately I get plenty of tanking action in raids, to the point where I honestly don't want to do it in PuG's. When musing about it the other day I realized that I'm too used to hard modes and progression when tanking: I demand perfection of myself to such a degree that I get tense and stressed over the smallest error in execution. This is possibly admirable (when not taken too far) in a raid setting on a new boss where strategies are being tested and modified constantly and everything's on the razor's edge between being able to pass the checks inherent to the content.
It's not when you're PuGging Halls of Lightning for a couple of extra Emblems of Frost.
In fact, what can help you get past Rotface is downright madness causing when heading down to Loken. At this point, Loken holds no surprises, and neither does the trash. Being a tanking perfectionist just leads you to tend towards freaking the heck out over stupid crap bored people do, and that's turning the game from fun to a drag for yourself. (It probably does for them, too, but they can look out for themselves.) Lately, I've taken to running the random daily and any 10 mans I PuG on my own as DPS, just to get a break from my own self-imposed desire to try for flawless execution. (I'm not saying I ever accomplish that, by the way, just that I want to.)
And I have to say: fury got good again when I wasn't looking.
Part of it is that I finally went out and stacked the ArP I was resisting for so long. I knew it was good, mind you... I've been saying that they were going to make us want ArP since before Ulduar came out... but I resisted it myself because I have always liked stacking strength. It's kind of annoying to admit that to myself now. Then again, it's a lot easier to get a lot of passive ArP now: before a trinket I can be at an easy 75% ArP if I wear every piece I have (which I won't because it drops my expertise too low, mind you, but even at 26 exp I'm at 60% ArP right now).
Part of it is also the weapons. Current weapons have more raw DPS, better stat spreads, and in the case of Bryntroll an absolutely savage proc. (Now, I tank almost exclusively in 25 man raids so I'm not getting a Bryn until everyone who DPS's with a 2h gets one, mind you, but truth is truth and Bryn's proc is a solid 4% of a fury warrior's DPS.) Set pieces for DPS warriors seem pretty solid to me but it's really 2h's like Ramladni's and the Citadel's having really nice spreads that helps jump the DPS up quickly. (Upgrading from the Sharpened OEB and Reckoning to the two ICC 10 2h saw close to 700 DPS almost immediately.)
To be honest, some of the non-set plate has been underwhelming so far, at least in 10's. Comparing the Deathspeaker Zealot's Helm to the Helm of Thunderous Rampage is somewhat underwhelming for a fury warrior. (I know very little about ret paladins but I'm told the haste on the DZH is better for them than ArP.) It's certainly not a bad hat, mind you, but it doesn't stand out as astonishing the way the weapons do. Still, this isn't meant to be a gear list piece (I should do one of those, mind you) and for the most part a mixture of TotC/TotGC and ICC gear will serve a fury warrior just fine. For that matter, there's some very nice pieces in the new ICC 5 mans for those of us coming in late, so to speak: solid trinkets, good weapons, even solid DPS plate. And of course Emblems of Triumph (and Frost if you're raiding and/or doing the daily random) for tier and non-set pieces like the aforementioned Helm of Thunderous Rampage and its Horde equivalent, which my tauren is grinding for when I get the chance to run on him.
All of this is really beside the point, however, and deserves (and will get, I promise) a full column or more to really explicate. The point is simply that, at this point in the expansion's life cycle there's plenty of gear for you to equip your fury warrior in order to get serious about putting out DPS, with options to help you customize your stats without desperately waiting for Malygos 25 to drop a pair of boots he'll never drop. Up until TotGC I saw warriors still trying for those bloody Melancholy Sabatons, man. You can argue that the Grinning Skull's aren't quite as good (which is debatable depending on your other stats) but man, they're a lot easier to get.
You can get iLevel 232 or better gear just by sticking out the grind and move into raiding pretty easily, and in general the fights (especially the trash) in the new 5 mans and the ICC raid itself are pretty fury friendly. Well, okay, Deathwhisper's a PITA and Rotface makes you run all over the place, but fights like Deathbringer Saurfang and Festergut are pretty solid DPS fights for fury. You'll probably not be number 1 on the meter if you have a good solid rogue in your raid, but you can definitely contribute. As for heroics, a lot of that depends on how much threat your tank can put out, how much moving he or she does, how much AoE there is, etc etc but I'm not having any trouble as DPS in them so far. Threat's my only real limiter (I really, really wish I had a threat dump). How much of this is just the spec once again proving that it scales ridiculously well with the right gear and insanely poorly without it... well, there's always been that aspect to playing fury.
I'll also admit to dusting off one of my warrior alts I abandoned months ago on another server and occasionally PuGging with him just for giggles. He's level 77 now after a couple of days of dungeon finder madness, and while I'm hardly setting any DPS records on him in my mismatched blues and greens, it's been pretty fun so far.
Ironically, now that I'm a dedicated tank and pretty happy about it, DPS is finally fun again. I'm working on an arms set to play around with now that I have a decent axe and sword to compare against each other (you'll probably hear about that next week). I'm also contemplating writing about fury tanking some of these instances. No, I don't mean wearing tank gear, I mean in full DPS gear, in zerk stance, just going ballistic on everything in sight. It requires a tolerant, well geared healer, but it's not that hard to do at this point. (You can even slap on some PvP gear if you're worried about crits. I don't, but you can.) However, that does fall under the category of stupid warrior tricks and I don't want to encourage fresh 80's in quest gear to try it, so we'll see.
Also, yes, I avoided talking about prot PvP nerfs this week. Why? Well, because I'm waiting to see them in action, and also, I'm kind of torn between being afraid they wreck the class for tanking and hoping that they make prot warriors so incapable of doing anything but tanking bosses that we end up de facto main tanks because other classes are better for everything else. Rotface's oozes come to mind. Sure, a warrior can taunt spam one but with paladins and DK's having so much more options for ranged threat, why would you have the warrior do it? Put him on the boss.
Patch 3.3 is the last major patch of Wrath of the Lich King. With the new Icecrown Citadel 5-man dungeons and 10/25-man raid arriving soon, patch 3.3 will deal the final blow to Arthas. WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.Filed under: Warrior, Instances, Raiding, (Warrior) The Care and Feeding of Warriors
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 2)
Aedilhild Jan 16th 2010 12:59AM
"When musing about it the other day I realized that I'm too used to hard modes and progression when tanking: I demand perfection of myself to such a degree that I get tense and stressed over the smallest error in execution."
Which is mandatory for the mechanics of the class. It's funny: on the rare occasions that I run heroics as retribution (holy saves time), if I pull aggro from a competent tank, I assume it's my fault and move on. If I'm tanking on my warrior and I need to taunt an errant mob, I mentally check off a grade point.
Marita Jan 16th 2010 2:03AM
That starter guide would be awesome :D
my warrior is still lvl 20 T_T
maybe I'm really a healer and that's why I can't tank :/
Roberto Jan 16th 2010 6:27AM
My first char is a warrior and it is my main too. I've heard a lot of tales about mixing hit and expertise to do awesome damage and so. When I just change all my +10 hit+10exp to +20 Arp my dmg has jumped almost 1k and I am a very happy clanky elf now.
I did it inspired in one guy that I know who does 9k easily with his 80% of ArP. I wanna be like him when I grow up... :P
Big Shoe Jan 16th 2010 9:54AM
Paladin tanks have been the flavor of the month ever since WotLK shipped, and that is not likely to change until Cataclysm hits. They have been favored with a mix of easier class mechanics, powerful group buffs, self healing and great survivability, and superb AoE threat generation that makes them the tank of choice for all levels of content. Consider a warrior's Shield Wall or Last Stand abilites, which must be used manually at just the right moment versus a paladin's Ardent Defender, which comes on by itself and has a shorter cooldown to boot. The paladin tank also has many ways to heal himself, where the warrior has one ability (again with a fairly long cooldown) and a potion. Mitigation also seems to favor the paladin by a small margin. Druids and death knights are perceived as inferior tanks by many players, even if that may not actually be the case, simply because everything is so ostensibly easy for paladins to handle.
Is this good design? Obviously not. Is it fair? Not really, but when you consider how paladin tanks were neglected with regard to gear and utility all through TBC, they do deserve their day in the sun. However, it would have been better to simply make all tanks roughly equal in capability than to buff the underdog tank to the extent where it outshines all the rest. Hopefully, Cataclysm will address this issue.
With regard to The DPS comparison, warrior tanks are at the bottom of the list, while paladins stand head and shoulders above the rest. This is a combination of AoE damage and the fact that ICC (both dungeons and raids) are loaded with undead, which will always boost paladin DPS tallies. I'd like to see Prot warrior DPS boosted to similar levels, but only for PvE purposes. Nerfing any aspect of Protection (either warrior or paladin) for PvP purposes is sheer idiocy, as no spec in the game is more deeply rooted in pure PvE than Prot. Either nerf problem abilites for arena and BGs only, or let the PvP players move to PvP servers.
rkaliski Jan 16th 2010 3:44PM
I tank in 25 man raids. We tend to rotate between a feral, DK and myself as a warrior tank for bosses. Now, after doing progression runs the last thing I really want to do is the same thing all over again in a ten man. I've run TOC and we can clean it out and Vault and still get in the trash and some of ICC in one raid. This is the problem with blizzard and their heroics. You tend to run the same thing, over and over and over just in slightly different form.
Being a tank means you don't get to relax in the 10 man like everyone else does. In fact, some ways it can be worse because the dps tends to cut loose sooner and outdo each other. You as the tank also cannot make mistakes. So pretty much ten man is just as nasty as 25 man.
I too like to dps for the randoms and ICC 5 mans. Not only is it less stressful, but I get to see the world from the other side and try not to pull agro off the MT. Those who are just DPS should roll and run a tank to see how they like it when dps pulls or the healer is always never ready.