Posts with tag wow-warrior

The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Racial abilities and warriors

by Matthew Rossi Nov 11th 2012 at 2:00PM

The game's history shows us that racial abilities have always been a subject of contention. Since warriors are at present the only class that all 13 races can play (pandaren can't be DK's, worgen and goblins can't be monks) we're the only class that has to consider all racials. Some racials are stronger in PvE than PvP, and the inverse is also true. Still others (Arcane Torrent, Stoneform) are fairly good for both. I have over the years race changed between various options, usually for purely aesthetic reasons, but at least twice I became a night elf entirely for the night elf racial Quickness, which is astonishingly good for a tanking warrior.

Now, does that mean you can't tank on anything but a night elf? No, not at all. For one thing, in our active mitigation system, hit and expertise racials are also fairly solid, but more to the point, no racial ability is so good that it must be chosen for any role. This isn't to say that some racials aren't fairly dominant in PvE or PvP, especially the latter - Every Man For Himself is always going to have a high representation among PvPing warriors. It would be foolishness to argue otherwise. My point is don't treat racials as must haves and force yourself to play a human if you'd rather play a gnome, or a forsaken when you want to play a troll.

Let's take a look at all the racials and see where we end up.

Filed under: (Warrior) The Care and Feeding of Warriors

The Care and Feeding of Warriors: The trouble with Execute

by Matthew Rossi Nov 4th 2012 at 6:00PM

This is not going to be a post where I tell you that warrior DPS is bad. That would be absurd. Arms is performing well and even fury can put out respectable numbers. There are problems with DPS warriors, but the problems aren't the kind that lead to low numbers. The problems are more esoteric. Fury's main problem is how staggering the dual wield miss penalty is now that there's absolutely nothing we can do save stack more hit to try and negate it, but all DPS warriors have the Execute dilemma.

Again, before players of other classes come along and say "What problem? Execute hits like a truck" that is, in fact, the problem. Execute hits like a truck, all right. In fact, Execute hits like a truck full of angry bees that have just seen you crossing the street in your Winnie the Pooh costume. The problem is just how much of a DPS warrior's damage comes from Execute. It can be up to 25% of a warrior's damage, which considering it's only applicable during the last 20% of a boss fight, means that DPS warriors underperform during the learning portion of a fight, and overperform in the part of the boss fight that's at 20% or below.

Now, this has been an issue since early in the Mists of Pandaria beta, with warriors in the beta test constantly bringing this up. The ability was even nerfed once we went live with Mists itself, and yet the problem persists. Why is that? What's the trouble with Execute, and what (if anything) should we see done about it?

Filed under: Warrior, Analysis / Opinion, (Warrior) The Care and Feeding of Warriors, Mists of Pandaria

The Care and Feeding of Warriors: The redundancy of hit and expertise

by Matthew Rossi Oct 28th 2012 at 6:00PM

The problem with hit and expertise as stats in World of Warcraft is fairly simple: they do the same thing in practice, even if not in theory. The more hit you have up to the cap (i.e. the amount of hit needed to hit a skull level mob, which is effectively level 93 in Mists of Pandaria content since we're raiding at level 90) the less likely your attacks are to miss their target. This means that not only will they successfully deal their damage, but you'll properly generate the resources said attack would generate (if any), hold threat (if that's what you're doing) and so on. Similarly, the more expertise you have up to the soft cap (the amount of expertise needed to ensure that an attack from behind a skull level mob will not be dodged) the less likely that your attacks will be dodged, which means they're more likely to successfully deal their damage, generate resources, hold threat and so on.

Expertise' only real difference is that it also reduces the chance your attacks will be parried, at a much higher cost (the parry hard cap being almost twice the dodge soft cap) but, again, that just means that expertise does the same thing as hit twice. Since warriors don't need to worry about ranged attacks for the most part, we can be grateful that at least we don't really need to worry about spell hit caps and factoring both hit and expertise into spell hit chances. Since expertise caps out dodge chance and only then parry chance, it just becomes a very complicated means to determine whether or not your attacks do damage. In the end, while there's plenty of mechanical difference between hit and expertise, they do the same basic thing. The purpose to these stats is to give you something you can cap to add complexity to what would otherwise be a system where people figured out their best stat, then capped it. If crit is a warrior's best DPS stat, she'll stack crit until the cows blow up when she hits them, so by adding stats like hit and expertise you add a level where capping, reaching a certain level of X stat becomes a viable gearing strategy.

The problem is really that hit and expertise, because they do basically the same thing, don't serve us well. This especially becomes true when considering these stats alongside the other stats warriors will be using in their various specs. An arms warrior's relationship to hit and expertise is different from either fury or protection. This becomes even more complicated when considering SMF versus Titan's Grip, or hit/expertise/mastery tanks vs. mastery/dodge/parry tanks.

Filed under: Warrior, (Warrior) The Care and Feeding of Warriors, Mists of Pandaria

The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Mists of Pandaria Reputation gear

by Matthew Rossi Oct 21st 2012 at 8:00PM

I owe you all the reputation gear guide I promised weeks ago, and so, here it is. Never let it be said that I completely procrastinate on stuff I said I would do for weeks on end. I mean, it's true but you don't have to say it. The various quartermasters for the factions can be found here, if you're trying to figure out where to spend your precious points. They are precious, aren't they? Much like your torso. While there's ilevel 458 justice point gear, I'm going to be focusing on the epics, as those will last you longer overall. By the time you earn enough JP's to buy anything, you often have better gear from the dungeons you're running anyway.

Each faction has different items - some helms, others bracers, etc - and so, ultimately, it's most rewarding to work on Golden Lotus first in order to unlock the August Celestials and Shado-Pan, since that will get you access to the most items. The Klaxxi are a good faction to work alongside the Golden Lotus until you get the Shado-Pan and August Celestials unlocked, since you'll probably unlock revered with them before you finish getting Golden Lotus to revered, and can then focus on Shado-Pan and August Celestials. We'll cover Golden Lotus and Klaxxi rewards first, since you'll have access to them first, and then the other two.

It should be pointed out that if you are raiding 10 or 25 man normal Mogu'shan Vaults, you may already have access to gear on par with these rewards. That's intentional - Blizzard wants raiders to gear up from raiding, with valor points more serving the role of consolation prize if you just can't get that drop you need. But if you primarily run heroic dungeons or LFR, then these reputation rewards will be upgrades.

Filed under: Warrior, Analysis / Opinion, (Warrior) The Care and Feeding of Warriors, Mists of Pandaria

The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Tanking in Mists of Pandaria

by Matthew Rossi Oct 13th 2012 at 8:00PM

I tank a lot. I moved back into tanking around March or so of this year, because a tank was needed, and I know how to tank. I've stayed a tank in Mists of Pandaria so far because the last thing anyone needs is another melee DPS, because I generally like tanking, and because the new tanking system has actually given me something to learn. What have I learned tanking so far? Well, lots of things, actually. Here's a few highlights.

People will always want to be told what stat to stack. Saying "You should try and balance your mastery, dodge and parry, while keeping hit and expertise reasonable" is possibly the least popular thing you can tell people outside of telling them who to vote for.
Shield Barrier is a lot easier to use than Shield Block, and especially in five man dungeons where you may not have a lot of rage to throw around on a pull. In a raid, you can usually time your rage acquisition to use Shield Block followed by Shield Barrier to smooth out incoming damage, but in a five man you're often tabbing around, gathering up adds, and in general using Revenge as your main rage acquisition move so you'll end up hitting Barrier for a cheap and easy damage absorb over Block. When I find myself with enough rage to hit Block, I do, but even then I usually follow it with a Barrier as soon as possible.
I like the Glyph of Unending Rage a lot more than I expected to. Sure, it's a major glyph, but that extra 20 rage can actually come in handy. I like having the ability to bank rage in situations like Feng the Accursed and using it to blunt big damage spikes with a full rage bar Shield Block/Barrier combo.
One of the biggest changes to tanking has nothing to do with the tank classes at all. The change to healer mana pools fixing them so that healers can't stack up a bigger mana pool means that we have to be more reactive than ever to incoming damage. The active mitigation system cannot be ignored: the more difficult the encounter the more you need to be on the ball with your Block and Barrier use and paying attention to cooldowns and mini-cooldowns like Demoralizing Shout and Demoralizing Banner.

So let's talk about tanking in Mists of Pandaria.

Filed under: Warrior, (Warrior) The Care and Feeding of Warriors, Mists of Pandaria

The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Running Scenarios

by Matthew Rossi Oct 7th 2012 at 5:00PM

I love scenarios and I just figured out why.

I love scenarios because I can queue up and run them as DPS, and when I do, I end up DPS tanking everything. Whether or not there's a healer, it almost always goes the same way. I queue, get in, wait to make sure everyone else is there, and start charging into things. The damage I take I mitigate with Die by the Sword, the Draenei racial and my ridiculously high parry chance. Finally, after eight years, I can get a sense of what arms tanking would be like and it's glorious. It's exactly what should have happened after Wrath of the Lich King, instead of DK's losing tanking spec versatility, warriors should have gained it. Let's rename protection into juggernaut spec, and all three trees should be able to tank or DPS!

No? Just me? Ah well. At least in scenarios, this is exactly what warriors do. I come in as prot and I wreck faces, I come in arms and I Bladestorm/Sweeping Strikes everything onto me. And I'm having a blast doing it.

Scenarios are perfect content for the warrior just getting used to level 90, finding your feet and trying to decide what role you want to play in instances. They're like danger room practice sessions and you get to be both Colossus and Wolverine, throwing yourself at the mobs. I find them excessively satisfying. For some, though, they might be a little daunting. So we're going to talk about how to approach the scenario as a warrior.

Filed under: Warrior, Analysis / Opinion, (Warrior) The Care and Feeding of Warriors, Mists of Pandaria

The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Pandaria and us

by Matthew Rossi Sep 29th 2012 at 4:00PM

It really struck me when running dungeons with fellows like the Sha of Violence and hunting down the Sha of Hatred in the Townlong Steppes that the warrior class is to the Sha what the Hulk was to Loki in The Avengers. Sure, they're monsters of pure emotion, but we eat emotion. We are rage. Go ahead and fuel that furnace, see where it gets you. In fact, let me tell you where it gets you - it gets you dead and it gets me loot. Or it gets me spirit plate, which is all that seems to drop.

So far we've had a week to explore active mitigation tanking in a leveling setting, so it's time to talk about how the changes to Vengeance and the switch to the new system affect us in leveling content.

Filed under: Warrior, Analysis / Opinion, (Warrior) The Care and Feeding of Warriors, Mists of Pandaria

The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Gearing up in Mists of Pandaria Part 1

by Matthew Rossi Sep 23rd 2012 at 6:00PM

We all know this one's going to take a while.

Every expansion brings with it the gear reset - without it, we'd just keep wearing our previous gear, and there'd be little point to running dungeons. Whether you're decked out in Heroic Dragon Soul gear or haven't quite hit level 85 yet, there's going to be a whole new gearing cycle, repeated with every patch. We remember it from the original game, from The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King and Cataclysm and we'll soon get to know it again in Mists of Pandaria.

There have been a few changes this time around - the reputation gear has been changed so that there's justice and valor point gear on each faction vendor, for instance. There are no level 90 dungeons, instead going straight to heroics as soon as you hit level 90. Therefore, there's gear you'll collect as you run dungeons, and gear you'll collect when you hit level 90 and start collecting the heroic dungeon versions of that gear. There's also a few epic pieces sprinkled through the dungeons.

This week, we're going to talk about gearing up through dungeon running. Going from 85 through 90, dungeons remain a viable way to get gear to make leveling easier, even though I suspect attempting to level purely through dungeons will be extremely onerous. I wouldn't recommend it. We'll list each dungeon's drops both on normal (for when you're getting to 90) and heroic (once you're there).

Filed under: Warrior, Analysis / Opinion, (Warrior) The Care and Feeding of Warriors, Mists of Pandaria

The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Issues and Concerns

by Matthew Rossi Sep 15th 2012 at 6:00PM

Okay, let's talk about some things that are concerning me as far as the future of warriors in Mists of Pandaria. These are things that are bothering me about the design of the class going forward, and I think it's worth discussing them in some detail. These issues are as follows:

With warrior tanks relying so much on Revenge, dodge and parry end up working as both avoidance and threat stats, and hit and expertise end up devalued. Of all four tanking classes going into Mists, warriors are the least likely to want hit and expertise at the 7.5% caps. Theck's stat weights indicate that mastery is king for prot, with dodge and parry just behind it, and hit and expertise well below them. Well below them, to the point where in the most recent set of numbers you don't need any.
Warrior tanks get nothing at all from haste. So when abilities like Bloodlust/Heroism/Time Warp get used, warrior threat doesn't go up and neither does warrior resource generation.
With stance-switching on a 3 second cooldown, it seems unlikely to me that most DPS warriors are going to switch to Zerk stance except in extremely specific high damage situations. At this point, PvE warriors have two stances, and PvP warriors have two, since I expect both Defensive and Zerker Stance to be the PvP flavors of choice. This depends on how well Battle Stance's rage generation works in PvP.
Warrior DPS seems heavily AoE dependent, even with changes to Sweeping Strikes to cut back on Arms' cleave. Warriors have a significantly higher bite when AoEing, until you get into Execute range, and it makes warriors feel weak on any fight where you can't get a significant chunk of Executes off.

None of this means the class is broken or unplayable. The rage redesign, stance redesign and tanking redesign are all complex, and having multiple such changes occur at the same time invariably leads to issues.

Filed under: Warrior, (Warrior) The Care and Feeding of Warriors, Mists of Pandaria

The Care and Feeding of Warriors: 5.0.4 prot warriors and the looming shadow of Cataclysm

by Matthew Rossi Sep 8th 2012 at 8:00PM

The Care and Feeding of Warriors The 504 discussion for protection warriors

It's hard for me to write about protection right now, because it still doesn't feel finalized to me. I've been tanking on the side lately, since raiding is on hiatus until Mists, and I have mixed feelings about it. The thing is, I don't think it's because the current state of protection is bad, so much as I'm spoiled a bit.

See, here's part of my problem in terms of being fair to patch 5.0.4 for protection. The protection warrior talent specialization was the best designed talent specialization in Wrath of the Lich King, and it was the best designed talent specialization in Cataclysm as well. And it was better in Cataclysm than it was in Wrath. In short, not only was protection the best spec in the game for four years (2008 to 2012) but it managed to be the best spec in the game without being overpowered, in fact being a better spec than specs that were overpowered. You can keep your paladins, your druids and your DK's, all of whom had their moments of being blatantly too good for this fight or that fight. Warriors were never that. The tanking warrior was the best designed spec because it managed to have tools for every single possible potential tanking situation you could imagine without ever once being considered the only possible option for the job.

Filed under: Warrior, Analysis / Opinion, (Warrior) The Care and Feeding of Warriors, Cataclysm, Mists of Pandaria

The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Mists of Pandaria Arms 101

by Matthew Rossi Aug 25th 2012 at 8:00PM

Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Care and Feeding of Warriors, the column dedicated to arms, fury and protection warriors. Despite repeated blows to the head from dragons, demons, Old Gods and whatever that thing over there was, Matthew Rossi doesn't want to tame your animal style.

If there had been any way in the world that I believed it possible that ye olde editors would have let me name this post "Shooting at the walls of heartache," that's exactly what it would have been called. However, since this is week four of our 101 guides to Mists of Pandaria for warriors, I felt constrained by the already established naming convention. Nevertheless, what is true is true, and heart to heart you'll win, if you survive. Bang bang.

Anyway, I really have to stop referencing that song and give you an article about arms in Mists.

Arms is one of two DPS specs the warrior class will have available in Mists of Pandaria, and it's a storied specialization with a lot of history. The arms spec was the premier PvP and PvE spec in vanilla World of Warcraft. It was not only the most-played spec for PvP, it was the most-played spec for both DPSing in raids and for tanking. The 31/5/15 arms/fury/protection spec ruled the class.

Filed under: Warrior, Analysis / Opinion, (Warrior) The Care and Feeding of Warriors, Mists of Pandaria

The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Mists of Pandaria Protection 101

by Matthew Rossi Aug 18th 2012 at 2:00PM

Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Care and Feeding of Warriors, the column dedicated to arms, fury and protection warriors. Despite repeated blows to the head from dragons, demons, Old Gods and whatever that thing over there was, Matthew Rossi will be your host.

Last week, we covered fury; this week, we're moving to protection. Before I do, yes, I saw the most recent beta patches. This is what we have to expect and to some degree endure from the beta, continuous patch cycles that can follow hard upon each other. All we can do is wait for release, ultimately, and see where we stand then. The Vengeance changes will have an effect on several abilities including our scaling ones like Shield Barrier, but that doesn't really change their intended use, which is what this post will be covering.

Protection is the warrior tanking spec. Of the three warrior specs, it's the most "ready to go" spec in terms of how it feels to play on the beta right now, and I suspect it will launch with patch 5.0.4 feeling pretty good to most warrior tanks. It's not completely unchanged -- far from it, in fact, as rage for protection warriors has been fundamentally altered and new abilities have been introduced -- but warrior tanks in Mists of Pandaria will still be charging in combat, still using Heroic Leap to drop a huge burst of threat on certain pulls, still pinballing with Intervene and still slapping bleeds on multiple targets with their AoE. Some of it will even be easier now.

A lot of the stuff that's changed is under the hood change, stuff that will affect the game fundamentally but not in immediately obvious ways.

Filed under: Warrior, Analysis / Opinion, (Warrior) The Care and Feeding of Warriors, Mists of Pandaria

The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Mists of Pandaria Fury 101

by Matthew Rossi Aug 11th 2012 at 2:00PM

Filed under: Warrior, (Warrior) The Care and Feeding of Warriors, Mists of Pandaria

The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Mists of Pandaria Warrior 101

by Matthew Rossi Aug 4th 2012 at 8:00PM

Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Care and Feeding of Warriors, the column dedicated to arms, fury and protection warriors. Despite repeated blows to the head from dragons, demons, Old Gods and whatever that thing over there was, Matthew Rossi will be your host.

For the next few weeks, I am going to break down warriors in Mists of Pandaria for you. This will be an absolutely basic article, covering stat caps, basic rotations, and how the new talent system works. It's aimed to be accessible for the new player but still useful for long-term players. In following weeks, we'll cover tanking and DPS specs in more detail, but this post is intended for general use. As a result, it will touch upon offensive and defensive stats as well as talents.

The warrior has seen a lot of change, yet that change doesn't alter the class by adding a new resource system. We still use rage. We just generate it differently now. A lot of work has done into the new rage system, as well as changing our abilities and making a lot of former talents baseline abilities. This week, we'll cover what you need to know to start playing a warrior or take up playing one again in Mists of Pandaria.

One thing that absolutely needs to be said, though. Warriors are still the class that hits things and yells at them. We still don't use poison, divine magic, arcane magic, nature magic, the elements or the shadow. We hit things, yell at them, sometimes drop a banner on or near them. We have remained the most brutish of the brute force, the screaming, bellowing, weapon against shield-pounding, two-weapon-whirling, single-weapon-mastering, metal-wearing maniacs of World of Warcraft. And long, long may it remain so.

Filed under: Warrior, Analysis / Opinion, (Warrior) The Care and Feeding of Warriors, Mists of Pandaria

The Care and Feeding of Warriors: A Cataclysm postmortem for fury

by Matthew Rossi Jul 28th 2012 at 4:00PM

The Care and Feeding of Warriors A Cataclysm Postmortem Fury

SMF fury surprised us by being very competitive, even sometimes better than Titan's Grip fury, in the first tier of raiding and the heroics that launched with it. This was before the mastery nerf, so SMF could get enough mastery to make Raging Blow worth hitting, while its Bloodsurge slams still hit like angry, angry trucks driven by swarms of bees that mistook you for a bear. Trust me, that's not fun.
After the mastery nerf, TG fury climbed ahead, especially once Firelands launched in patch 4.2. I don't think it's hyperbolic to say that TG fury was quite firmly ahead of SMF (which never recovered) or arms in Firelands. As you all remember from literally hundreds of screenshots, I was a tauren fury warrior in Firelands, and I freaking loved it.
Dragon Soul ended the hegemony of fury and moreover, pushed it down below just about every single melee DPS spec. There was nobody doing as poorly as fury. The combination of directly nerfing the spec's break and butter Dual Wield Specialization and indirectly nerfing Deep Wounds by fixing a long-term bug pushed fury under the water and held its head under until people just plain gave up on the spec for progression raiding.

To a degree, it's a shame that fury became no one's choice of specs in heroic DS, because once a fury warrior starts to accumulate that heroic DS gear, a familiar pattern starts to reassert itself. A fury warrior in full heroic DS gear is once again an effective fury warrior. Especially on certain specific fights, fury can actually be very very competitive. So let's talk about fury -- specifically, fury right now at the end of the expansion.

Filed under: Warrior, (Warrior) The Care and Feeding of Warriors, Cataclysm

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