WoW Insiderhttp://wow.joystiq.comWoW Insiderhttp://wow.joystiq.com/media/feedlogo.gifWoW Insiderhttp://wow.joystiq.comen-usCopyright 2012 Weblogs, Inc. The contents of this feed are available for non-commercial use only.Blogsmith http://www.blogsmith.com/WoW Insider ShowEvery week, the WoW Insider Show brings you news and views from the World of Warcraft and the site that covers it all, WoW Insider. We introduce a panel of rotating guests, including bloggers from WoW Insider and other WoW blogs, and many popular personalities from around the WoW community. From the live listener chat and polls during the show, to the emails direct from listeners (reach us at theshow@wow.com), right on to the "meat" of the show -- in-depth discussion of the most popular news and posts on WoW Insider -- the WoW Insider Show is a terrific source of news and entertainment about what's going on with Blizzard and their World of Warcraft. Listen live every Saturday at 3:30 pm Eastern on our Ustream page (http://www.ustream.tv/channel/wow-insider-show) or subscribe to the feed and let us know what you think by reviewing the show right here in iTunes.The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Practical talents in Mists of Pandariahttp://wow.joystiq.com/2012/05/05/the-care-and-feeding-of-warriors-practical-talents-in-mists-of/http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/05/05/the-care-and-feeding-of-warriors-practical-talents-in-mists-of/http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/05/05/the-care-and-feeding-of-warriors-practical-talents-in-mists-of/#commentsFiled under: , , , ,

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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.

Before I get into this week's topic, I talked about War Banner this week (in case you missed it). If asked for my opinion of the ability, it would be good but not yet great. Each banner needs a little love -- perhaps a longer duration or more of a powerful effect -- before I'm totally sold on it. But I did enjoy playing around with it.

This week, however, I want to talk about the content we have, not the content we're going to have. The reason for that is because it will help me illustrate what I like and dislike about the current talent paradigm and how we're losing things at the same time we're gaining them with the new talent system. I am not calling out for the new scheme to be scrapped. On the whole, I am a big supporter of it. But that doesn't mean the current talent system doesn't have things to teach us. So let me begin with the following statement.

I deliberately specced fury for heroic Spine of Deathwing because I wanted to do less damage.

No, I'm not explaining that here. You want to know why? You come with me past the jump. Them there's the rules.

Continue reading The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Practical talents in Mists of Pandaria

WoW InsiderThe Care and Feeding of Warriors: Practical talents in Mists of Pandaria originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 05 May 2012 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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]]>featuredguide-to-warriorsmists-of-pandaria-talent-changesmists-of-pandaria-talentsTalentswarrior-guidewarrior-infowarrior-talentswow-warriorwow-warrior-infowow-warriorsMatthew RossiSat, 05 May 2012 18:00:00 ESTThe Care and Feeding of Warriors: Rage forever changes in the Mists of Pandariahttp://wow.joystiq.com/2012/04/28/the-care-and-feeding-of-warriors-rage-forever-changes-in-the-mi/http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/04/28/the-care-and-feeding-of-warriors-rage-forever-changes-in-the-mi/http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/04/28/the-care-and-feeding-of-warriors-rage-forever-changes-in-the-mi/#commentsFiled under: , , ,

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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.

Remember when I argued that rage should work more like the Diablo 3 barbarian? Well, it totally will in Mists of Pandaria. Battle and Defensive Stance will mean that your rage is purely determined by your active use of rage generation abilities. Your shouts and active rage generation attacks like Mortal Strike, Bloodthirst, Shield Slam and Charge will be how you generate rage, along with normal melee attacks. You will only generate rage from damage you take by switching into Berserker Stance, which will reduce your rage generated by attacks since you'll lose the new bonus to rage gen Battle Stance provides (100% more rage from normal melee attacks), and you'll lose threat and your 6% critical strike removal from Defensive Stance.

This means that you won't switch to zerk anymore for AoE; you'll switch to zerk if you expect to take a lot of damage and want to generate rage for it. My greatest fears are that this will render zerk almost unused except for when we're running from point A to point B and expecting to take a lot of damage while we do, since Battle Stance doubles the rage generated by auto-attacks. I'm also concerned that warriors have absolutely no direct damage increases anymore. Stances don't give damage multipliers; enrage just increases rage generation. While these caveats concern me, I do think I enjoy the idea of rage being built up by your actions rather than just being a sponge for incoming damage. I do seriously worry about tanks, however.

Continue reading The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Rage forever changes in the Mists of Pandaria

WoW InsiderThe Care and Feeding of Warriors: Rage forever changes in the Mists of Pandaria originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 28 Apr 2012 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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]]>featuredguide-to-warriorsMistsMists-of-pandaria-betamists-of-pandaria-rage-changesmists-of-pandaria-talentsRageRage-Changeswarrior-guidewarrior-infowarrior-talentswow-warriorwow-warrior-infowow-warriorsMatthew RossiSat, 28 Apr 2012 20:00:00 ESTThe Care and Feeding of Warriors: A simpler and more variable arms spec for Mistshttp://wow.joystiq.com/2012/04/21/the-care-and-feeding-of-warriors-a-simpler-and-more-variable-ar/http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/04/21/the-care-and-feeding-of-warriors-a-simpler-and-more-variable-ar/http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/04/21/the-care-and-feeding-of-warriors-a-simpler-and-more-variable-ar/#commentsFiled under: , , ,

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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.

Sometimes, writing these columns, I struggle to find a way to encapsulate the experience I'm having in game. With the Mists of Pandaria beta, I've sat down and detailed how fury and protection warriors have played out, how they've changed and how they're the same. And so I wanted to do the same for arms warriors. For one thing, arms is the spec I'm currently playing on live, in heroic Dragon Soul, so I'm fairly intimate with the spec and its demands. For another, arms is right now probably the most played warrior spec in terms of its representation in heroic level raiding. So what of arms in the beta?

Arms in Mists of Pandaria is arms now, but simpler and more variable.

That's it. The changes to arms are the changes to all warriors. Rend's being gone and Mortal Strike's automatically applying Deep Wounds means that all you have to do to light up Overpower in Mists is use your main attack that generates rage, which you would be a crazy mad insane fool not to use.

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WoW InsiderThe Care and Feeding of Warriors: A simpler and more variable arms spec for Mists originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 21 Apr 2012 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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]]>Armsarms-warriorarms-warrior-the-care-and-feeding-of-warriorsfeaturedguide-to-warriorsMists-ArmsMists-Arms-WarriorMists-of-Pandariawarrior-guidewarrior-infowarrior-talentswow-warriorwow-warrior-infowow-warriorsMatthew RossiSat, 21 Apr 2012 18:00:00 ESTThe Care and Feeding of Warriors: How Mists of Pandaria exposes the warrior pasthttp://wow.joystiq.com/2012/04/14/the-care-and-feeding-of-warriors-how-mists-of-pandaria-exposes/http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/04/14/the-care-and-feeding-of-warriors-how-mists-of-pandaria-exposes/http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/04/14/the-care-and-feeding-of-warriors-how-mists-of-pandaria-exposes/#commentsFiled under: , , ,

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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.

I have been playing a warrior since early December of 2004. I started the game when my wife (well, my wife now; we weren't married yet at the time) introduced me to it. She'd been playing in the beta, really enjoyed it, and thought I would too, since I was a huge Dungeons & Dragons nerd. In a rare example of my listening to someone else, I rolled a paladin (I often played paladins) and played him for two or three weeks before realizing a few things.
  • I didn't want to heal. Not at all. Not even a little bit.
  • People kept assuming I would do so.
  • I loathed every aspect of playing a paladin, right down to the names of the abilities.
  • I could, in fact, fix all of this by simply playing something other than a paladin.
This led me back to the character creation screen, where I was faced with the decision of what to play if I didn't want to play a paladin. Since when I played D&D, my #1 choice was usually either a ranger or a paladin, I considered hunter, but they didn't seem remotely melee enough for my tastes. Plus, my wife was already playing one. Then while looking at the classes, I tried out a warrior and read a few lines. Next thing I knew, I was killing wolves in Northshire.

Almost seven years later, that character is still here. He's had four race changes and a faction swap, but he's still here. So is the second warrior I rolled (he's a worgen now) and the third (a draenei) and the fourth (a tauren). I fell wholly, completely, and deeply in love with the warrior class, and I've never fallen out of love with it, despite its ups and downs over the years.

Continue reading The Care and Feeding of Warriors: How Mists of Pandaria exposes the warrior past

WoW InsiderThe Care and Feeding of Warriors: How Mists of Pandaria exposes the warrior past originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 14 Apr 2012 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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]]>featuredguide-to-warriorsmists-of-pandariawarrior-guidewarrior-infowarrior-talentswow-warriorwow-warrior-infowow-warriorsMatthew RossiSat, 14 Apr 2012 14:00:00 ESTThe Care and Feeding of Warriors: Protection Warriors in Mists of Pandariahttp://wow.joystiq.com/2012/04/07/the-care-and-feeding-of-warriors-protection-warriors-in-mists-o/http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/04/07/the-care-and-feeding-of-warriors-protection-warriors-in-mists-o/http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/04/07/the-care-and-feeding-of-warriors-protection-warriors-in-mists-o/#commentsFiled under: , ,

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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.

Remember what I said last week? About how the beta is not in damage balancing mode? That goes double for protection warriors right now. Along with feral druids, protection warriors are doing substantially low DPS on the beta. How low? Low enough that threat's a real issue. This low, to be precise.

Ghostcrawler - Protection Warriors & Rage
As I mentioned recently, Prot warrior damage is probably 50% of where it needs to be. When we have that adjusted, your threat will be higher and those Shield Slam and Revenge hits in particular should feel meatier.


When they come right out and tell you you're at 50% of where Blizzard expects you to be, you know it's bad. But again, this is a beta and not one intended to balance our DPS yet. In fact, those prolific data miners over at MMO-Champion have already found signs in the next beta patch that the damage balancing is beginning.

Continue reading The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Protection Warriors in Mists of Pandaria

WoW InsiderThe Care and Feeding of Warriors: Protection Warriors in Mists of Pandaria originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 07 Apr 2012 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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]]>featuredguide-to-warriorsMistsmists-of-pandariamists-of-pandaria-talentsprotection-warrior-the-care-and-feeding-of-warriorswarrior-guidewarrior-infowarrior-talentswow-warriorwow-warrior-infowow-warriorsMatthew RossiSat, 07 Apr 2012 20:00:00 ESTThe Care and Feeding of Warriors: Fury in Mists of Pandariahttp://wow.joystiq.com/2012/03/31/the-care-and-feeding-of-warriors-fury-in-mists-of-pandaria/http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/03/31/the-care-and-feeding-of-warriors-fury-in-mists-of-pandaria/http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/03/31/the-care-and-feeding-of-warriors-fury-in-mists-of-pandaria/#commentsFiled under: ,

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.

Now that we've had a week to play around with the Mists of Pandaria beta, I've gone ahead and done some dungeons and played around with specs. This week, I'm going to look at Single-Minded Fury and Titan's Grip fury warriors as they're currently shaping up. Some caveats:
  • This is not a damage pass. The beta is not balanced yet, so aside from some general "This feels underpowered" or "This is brokenly good" if I think it warranted, I won't be talking much about DPS or damage.
  • Emphasis is on rotation, how the spec feels to play, and how hard or easy rage is to come by. Right now, I'm more interested in discussing how the experience is playing as fury in the beta, not trying to argue for buffs or nerfs when it's simply too soon.
  • With the new talent system, there's simply not a cookie-cutter build yet for either. Since all fury warriors can go TG or SMF depending on what weapons they have (both are baseline abilities fury warriors all get) and any warrior can take any one of three talents per talent tier, there's no right or wrong yet.
  • While familiar, there's enough changed to make the fury priority system require relearning. It's not alien, to be sure, but the addition of Wild Strike, the removal of Slam, and the changes to rage generation and stances have altered the spec.
So, let's talk about how fury plays out in Mists.

Continue reading The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Fury in Mists of Pandaria

WoW InsiderThe Care and Feeding of Warriors: Fury in Mists of Pandaria originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 31 Mar 2012 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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]]>featuredfury-warriorfury-warrior-the-care-and-feeding-of-warriorsguide-to-warriorsMistsmists-of-pandariamists-of-pandaria-betawarrior-guidewarrior-infowarrior-talentswow-warriorwow-warrior-infowow-warriorsMatthew RossiSat, 31 Mar 2012 16:00:00 ESTThe Care and Feeding of Warriors: Mists of Pandaria beta impressionshttp://wow.joystiq.com/2012/03/24/the-care-and-feeding-of-warriors-mists-of-pandaria-beta-impress/http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/03/24/the-care-and-feeding-of-warriors-mists-of-pandaria-beta-impress/http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/03/24/the-care-and-feeding-of-warriors-mists-of-pandaria-beta-impress/#commentsFiled under: , , ,

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.

Go ahead and hate me for being in the beta. I know how it is. But believe it or not, I'm running around testing out the new warrior talents, the specializations, and I've even leveled a pandaren warrior to 12 in order to see how the new rage scheme plays out at low levels as well as for my level 85s. I also imported two 85 warriors so I could spec one arms and one fury and then play with talent choices.

Before I get too mired in details, let me tell you about Dragon Roar. Dragon Roar takes the place of Avatar in the level 60 talent tier, with Avatar moving to the level 90 talents, replacing Deadly Calm. At level 60, you can spec Bladestorm, Shockwave or Dragon Roar, and Dragon Roar is fantastic. It's a 1-minute cooldown ability that hits everything within 10 yards of you, doing damage and knocking them back and down for 5 seconds. It does fairly solid damage, too.

What this means is that the level 60 tier is actually compelling now, and you're able to choose between different abilities that each do something interesting. It also means warriors have a knockback that also stuns after it goes off, if they spec for it. Man, I would have loved Dragon Roar when we were doing heroic Ragnaros.

At present, only the pandaren starting zone is open for testing, you can't go to Pandaria yet. So after taking my tauren out for a couple of spins through testing out the new talents and playing with stance dancing, I rolled a pandaren warrior and saw what it felt like to level.

Continue reading The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Mists of Pandaria beta impressions

WoW InsiderThe Care and Feeding of Warriors: Mists of Pandaria beta impressions originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 24 Mar 2012 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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]]>featuredguide-to-warriorsmists-of-pandariamists-of-pandaria-betamists-of-pandaria-talentswarrior-guidewarrior-infowarrior-talentswow-warriorwow-warrior-infowow-warriorsMatthew RossiSat, 24 Mar 2012 18:00:00 ESTThe Care and Feeding of Warriors: Toolkits and themeshttp://wow.joystiq.com/2012/03/17/the-care-and-feeding-of-warriors-toolkits-and-themes/http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/03/17/the-care-and-feeding-of-warriors-toolkits-and-themes/http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/03/17/the-care-and-feeding-of-warriors-toolkits-and-themes/#commentsFiled under: , , , ,

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.

This week, in a discussion of War Banner, some interesting points were made. In his response to the discussion, Daxxari said something that really made me think about the warrior class and where it is going -- more importantly, where it can go.

Daxxari - War Banner
Ultimately, we wanted to try and expand the design potential for warriors a bit. Increasingly, it seemed that any new ability had to be another type of movement, a weapon strike, or shout, or it wouldn't feel like a warrior ability. We wanted to try something new, and we're hoping that warriors will give them a shot once we're in beta and let us know how it feels.


What I really found worth examining is this idea of what feels like a warrior ability, exactly. So many people objected to War Banner based around the idea that it's a totem, and totems are shaman-only. War Banner isn't going to be implemented like a totem. But the idea of trying to design new abilities that broaden the feel of warrior abilities leads us to ask what, exactly, does feel like a warrior ability. Should all warrior abilities be shouts, movement-based abilities or weapon strikes?

Continue reading The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Toolkits and themes

WoW InsiderThe Care and Feeding of Warriors: Toolkits and themes originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 17 Mar 2012 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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]]>AbilitiesDesignfeaturedguide-to-warriorsTalentswarrior-guidewarrior-infowarrior-talentswow-warriorwow-warrior-infowow-warriorsMatthew RossiSat, 17 Mar 2012 16:00:00 ESTThe Care and Feeding of Warriors: Buffs and debuffs in Mists of Pandariahttp://wow.joystiq.com/2012/03/10/the-care-and-feeding-of-warriors-buffs-and-debuffs-in-mists-of/http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/03/10/the-care-and-feeding-of-warriors-buffs-and-debuffs-in-mists-of/http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/03/10/the-care-and-feeding-of-warriors-buffs-and-debuffs-in-mists-of/#commentsFiled under: , , , ,

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 talked about incoming statistics changes. This week, we're going to talk about the details to changes in buffs and debuffs and which classes can provide them. This will of course center around the warrior class and which buffs and debuffs we'll specifically bring to the table. We're also going to hopefully get more into the concept of why buffs and debuffs matter.

When World of Warcraft debuted, warriors tanked primarily by their debuffs. Sunder Armor, Demoralizing Shout and Thunder Clap were considered essential for progression tanking. As time has progressed, debuffing mobs and bosses has diversified so that many DPS specs have access to these debuffs. Meanwhile, buffs grew in importance to the point that warriors (DPS or tank) also gained access to a few of those. As the game evolved from The Burning Crusade to Wrath of the Lich King and now Cataclysm, buffs and debuffs were consolidated so that various classes offered access to them to prevent any class from having a monopoly on them. Now, with Mists of Pandaria on the horizon, we're seeing more of this evolutionary process.

What does this mean for warriors? Let's talk about that.

Continue reading The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Buffs and debuffs in Mists of Pandaria

WoW InsiderThe Care and Feeding of Warriors: Buffs and debuffs in Mists of Pandaria originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 10 Mar 2012 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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]]>Buffbuff-debuff-designdesignfeaturedguide-to-warriorswarrior-guidewarrior-infowarrior-talentswow-warriorwow-warrior-infowow-warriorsMatthew RossiSat, 10 Mar 2012 16:00:00 ESTThe Care and Feeding of Warriors: Stat changes and youhttp://wow.joystiq.com/2012/03/03/the-care-and-feeding-of-warriors-stat-changes-and-you/http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/03/03/the-care-and-feeding-of-warriors-stat-changes-and-you/http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/03/03/the-care-and-feeding-of-warriors-stat-changes-and-you/#commentsFiled under: , , ,

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.

This week, we have statistics and how they will work in Mists of Pandaria to talk about, thanks to our metaphorical friend Dr. Greg Street. (I've never met the man; I can't in good conscience call him my friend, although I have appreciated his work over the years.) These are some big changes to how stats work for every class. I don't write about every class, of course. If you don't wear plate, tank with a shield, and have Bladestorm or Titan's Grip in your talent trees, then someone else is going to have to explain what this all means for you.

One of the really big changes is the change to the Block mechanic. Currently, World of Warcraft operates on a single combat roll system, wherein an attack is made and either succeeds or fails based on factors like dodge, parry, block and outright chance to miss. In Mists, things will be very different.

Continue reading The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Stat changes and you

WoW InsiderThe Care and Feeding of Warriors: Stat changes and you originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 03 Mar 2012 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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]]>arms-warrior-the-care-and-feeding-of-warriorsfeaturedfury-warrior-the-care-and-feeding-of-warriorsguide-to-warriorsMistsmists of pandariaMists-of-Pandaria-StatisticsMists-StatisticsMists-SystemsMistsOfPandariaprotection-warrior-the-care-and-feeding-of-warriorswarrior-guidewarrior-infowarrior-talentswow-warriorwow-warrior-infowow-warriorsMatthew RossiSat, 03 Mar 2012 16:00:00 ESTThe Care and Feeding of Warriors: Keep yourself alivehttp://wow.joystiq.com/2012/02/25/the-care-and-feeding-of-warriors-keep-yourself-alive/http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/02/25/the-care-and-feeding-of-warriors-keep-yourself-alive/http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/02/25/the-care-and-feeding-of-warriors-keep-yourself-alive/#commentsFiled under: , ,

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.

One of the most important lessons I was forcibly reminded when killing heroic Yor'sahj this week was that dying makes you useless. Even if you can be given a battle res, that's not only lost damage time for you, it's lost damage or healing time for the person bringing you back from the dead. It means that battle res won't be available for a tank as the fight progresses, it's just a big mess. This was further reinforced by our Ultraxion kill. Killing Ultraxion on heroic means not only does everyone need to hit a minimum DPS threshold of about 33k sustained throughout the fight, they need to do this while performing nearly flawlessly on Hour of Twilight and Fading Light.

Having tanked the past couple of weeks, it was a lesson I needed to relearn. DPS players can't rely on being the target of a dedicated healer -- there's usually two or three healers at most in 25 man raids (and less, perhaps just one in 10's) focusing their attention on the raid as a whole. Even if they break the healing up into assignments and don't deviate, there's still several people at any given time needing the healers attention. While they certainly usually do their best, if we don't help them out we're only hindering ourselves. The days of 'meh, they'll heal me through it' are long gone.

Continue reading The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Keep yourself alive

WoW InsiderThe Care and Feeding of Warriors: Keep yourself alive originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 25 Feb 2012 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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]]>arms-warrior-the-care-and-feeding-of-warriorsChargeDPSDPS-WarriorEnraged-Regenerationfury-warrior-the-care-and-feeding-of-warriorsguide-to-warriorsHeroic-LeapInterceptInterveneJoystiqRallying-Crywarrior-guidewarrior-infowarrior-talentswow-warriorwow-warrior-infowow-warriorsMatthew RossiSat, 25 Feb 2012 16:00:00 ESTThe Care and Feeding of Warriors: Considering the Mists talent calculatorhttp://wow.joystiq.com/2012/02/18/the-care-and-feeding-of-warriors-considering-the-mists-talent-c/http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/02/18/the-care-and-feeding-of-warriors-considering-the-mists-talent-c/http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/02/18/the-care-and-feeding-of-warriors-considering-the-mists-talent-c/#commentsFiled under: , , ,

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.

We now have a new version of the Mists of Pandaria talent calculator to discuss. While we've covered the Mists talents and abilities before, every new iteration of the design process brings us new elements to consider. What we're effectively being presented is a snapshot of the future through the lens of current design, giving us a chance to muse about what warriors will be doing and not doing.

One of the things that jumps out immediately when considering the new talents is that the current capstones Bladestorm and Shockwave (as well as Avatar), which had been gained at level 90 before, are now level 60 abilities. I'm not actually surprised by this change, but I am pleased by it. Those are abilities people can currently get by around the end of Outland, so making them level 60 talents means they'll be useful for leveling characters again.

Let's go over what can be gleaned from the calculator update and discuss what it all means.

Continue reading The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Considering the Mists talent calculator

WoW InsiderThe Care and Feeding of Warriors: Considering the Mists talent calculator originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 18 Feb 2012 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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]]>arms-warriorarms-warrior-the-care-and-feeding-of-warriorsclass-helpfuryfury-warriorfury-warrior-the-care-and-feeding-of-warriorsguideMistsMists-of-Pandaira-Talent-Calculatormists-of-pandariamists-of-pandaria-talent-changesmists-of-pandaria-talentsprotection-warriorprotection-warrior-pvpprotection-warrior-the-care-and-feeding-of-warriorstalenttalentswarrior-guidewarrior-infoworld-of-warcraft-class-guideworld-of-warcraft-guidewow-class-guidewow-class-helpwow-guidewow-talent-guidewow-warriorwow-warrior-infoMatthew RossiSat, 18 Feb 2012 20:00:00 ESTThe Care and Feeding of Warriors: Single-Minded Fury reduxhttp://wow.joystiq.com/2012/02/11/the-care-and-feeding-of-warriors-single-minded-fury-redux/http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/02/11/the-care-and-feeding-of-warriors-single-minded-fury-redux/http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/02/11/the-care-and-feeding-of-warriors-single-minded-fury-redux/#commentsFiled under: , , ,

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.

In my first draft, I started this article off with a detailed explanation of what my main problems with Single-Minded Fury are. I still want to talk about those. But first, I want to say this about the talent.

It's crazy-fun. I've been raiding, Raid Findering and 5-manning with it all week, and frankly I love how smooth the rage generation is. If you ever played fury back in The Burning Crusade or even vanilla, before TG was a gleam in a designer's eye, SMF will be familiar and yet different to you. What's changed? Well, you don't use Whirlwind as your second attack anymore; it's purely a trash ability now. Raging Blow and Bloodsurge instant-cast Slams give you more to do but take the concept of rotation and shake it up, meaning that you're watching for procs more than ever. Colossus Smash gives you a very-long-cooldown ability that you're always going to prioritize. But for all those changes, the talent is still you dual-wielding smaller, faster weapons.

If you were the fury warrior with the Vanir's Fists in late BC, you'll recognize what this talent does for fury. If you leveled a fury warrior in Cata, it's exactly how levels 1 through 68 went. It's a fairly simple concept to grasp. You're not the warrior crushing everything in his path with raw power, and you're not the one using discipline and weapon control to make precise strikes, either. No, you're the one with speed and relentless assault over finesse.

Continue reading The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Single-Minded Fury redux

WoW InsiderThe Care and Feeding of Warriors: Single-Minded Fury redux originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 11 Feb 2012 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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]]>class-helpFuryFury-Warriorfury-warrior-the-care-and-feeding-of-warriorsguideSingle-Minded-Furytalenttalentswarrior-guidewarrior-infoworld-of-warcraft-class-guideworld-of-warcraft-guidewow-class-guidewow-class-helpwow-guidewow-talent-guidewow-warriorwow-warrior-infoMatthew RossiSat, 11 Feb 2012 14:00:00 ESTThe Care and Feeding of Warriors: Warrior mistakes to avoidhttp://wow.joystiq.com/2012/02/04/the-care-and-feeding-of-warriors-warrior-mistakes-to-avoid/http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/02/04/the-care-and-feeding-of-warriors-warrior-mistakes-to-avoid/http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/02/04/the-care-and-feeding-of-warriors-warrior-mistakes-to-avoid/#commentsFiled under: , , ,

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.

One of the interesting things about my current astonishing obsession with transmogrification and all things related to it has been seeing older itemization. You know, strength and agility plate. Warrior tier 6 is lousy with agility. That's a legacy of the past, of course, and as the design of the game moves ever onward, artifacts like that are left in its wake. After all, most level 70 warriors nowadays move straight to Northrend dungeons and are not likely to look at Black Temple until much later, when farming for transmog gear. The stats aren't important enough to go back and redesign the set.

What I really find interesting about this is seeing where the class has been, not just visually but also in terms of design. It's kind of like archaeology (the actual field of inquiry, not the in-game profession) or paleontology, reconstructing the class and its roots from the remainders of what it wore. Granted, I was there, so to a degree it's like excavating Pompeii with an immortal who survived the volcanic eruption of Vesuvius and keeps grumping about how people in his day didn't complain when they were buried in pyroclastic material. Which is a complete lie, by the way, we did nothing but complain about it. But I digress.

The warrior class has come a long way in seven years, and the artifacts of past design lie strewn about. New players and even old veterans can be forgiven for making a few mistakes based on the rubble. Let's go over a few.

Continue reading The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Warrior mistakes to avoid

WoW InsiderThe Care and Feeding of Warriors: Warrior mistakes to avoid originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 04 Feb 2012 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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]]>agility-plateclass-helpgeargearingguidelegacy-gearingmistakestalenttalentswarrior-guidewarrior-infoworld-of-warcraft-class-guideworld-of-warcraft-guidewow-class-guidewow-class-helpwow-guidewow-talent-guidewow-warriorwow-warrior-infoMatthew RossiSat, 04 Feb 2012 18:00:00 ESTThe Care and Feeding of Warriors: Let's get everyone tankinghttp://wow.joystiq.com/2012/01/28/the-care-and-feeding-of-warriors-lets-get-everyone-tanking/http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/01/28/the-care-and-feeding-of-warriors-lets-get-everyone-tanking/http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/01/28/the-care-and-feeding-of-warriors-lets-get-everyone-tanking/#commentsFiled under: , , , ,

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.

Now for whatever reason, I've been tanking lately, usually due to a connection issue or what have you. It's one of those confluences of my gear's being just good enough and my no longer being burned out on the role. While I still define myself as a DPS warrior and raid with that as my main spec, I was surprised to find tanking wasn't that hard to pick back up. In fact, it may be a little too easy.

I hesitate to make this statement because, in part, I know I'm not a typical player. I main tanked for years. I tanked in vanilla, in The Burning Crusade, in Wrath, and for the opening of Cataclysm. I was the undergeared tank trying to do heroics in greens when the expansion came out. I was the guy tanking heroic LK. I've tanked in all sorts of situations and gear and specs. I tanked when TC only hit four mobs and did not work in Defensive Stance. What I'm saying is, I've been tanking for so long there's almost no way for me to evaluate how difficult tanking is for other players. I have years of muscle memory. I've kited. I've done adds; I've done bosses. I've picked up murlocs and traded adds on Yogg.

Continue reading The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Let's get everyone tanking

WoW InsiderThe Care and Feeding of Warriors: Let's get everyone tanking originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 28 Jan 2012 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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]]>class-helpguideprotection-warriorprotection-warrior-the-care-and-feeding-of-warriorsresiliencetalenttalentstanktank-designtankingtanking-designvengeancewarrior-guidewarrior-infoworld-of-warcraft-class-guideworld-of-warcraft-guidewow-class-guidewow-class-helpwow-guidewow-talent-guidewow-warriorwow-warrior-infoMatthew RossiSat, 28 Jan 2012 16:00:00 ESTThe Care and Feeding of Warriors: Unleashing fury in the Dragon Soulhttp://wow.joystiq.com/2012/01/21/the-care-and-feeding-of-warriors-unleashing-fury-in-the-dragon/http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/01/21/the-care-and-feeding-of-warriors-unleashing-fury-in-the-dragon/http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/01/21/the-care-and-feeding-of-warriors-unleashing-fury-in-the-dragon/#commentsFiled under: , , , ,

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.

I love fury. I raided in vanilla WoW with a two-handed fury DPS spec and also tanked, because everyone who played a warrior tanked back then. I tanked with a fury spec that worked very well for threat generation, but I eventually switched to an arms/prot spec for the Mortal Strike debuff.

When Titan's Grip was announced for Wrath of the Lich King, everyone who knew me knew what my reaction would be. TG fury became my DPS spec of choice until I became a main tank for my Wrath guild, and it has stayed my favorite spec throughout the talent's existence. Even now that I raid as arms DPS, fury is technically my main spec and arms my secondary. I even applauded when Single-Minded Fury was announced for Cata because I knew a lot of fury warriors missed the one-handed weapon playstyle.

Continue reading The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Unleashing fury in the Dragon Soul

WoW InsiderThe Care and Feeding of Warriors: Unleashing fury in the Dragon Soul originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 21 Jan 2012 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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]]>class-helpfuryfury-warriorfury-warrior-the-care-and-feeding-of-warriorsguidepatch-4.3talenttalentswarrior-guidewarrior-infoworld-of-warcraft-class-guideworld-of-warcraft-guideworld-of-warcraft-patch-4.3wow-class-guidewow-class-helpwow-guidewow-patchwow-patch-4.3wow-patch-4.3-newswow-patch-newswow-talent-guidewow-warriorwow-warrior-infoMatthew RossiSat, 21 Jan 2012 16:00:00 ESTThe Care and Feeding of Warriors: How to tank for non-tankshttp://wow.joystiq.com/2012/01/14/the-care-and-feeding-of-warriors-how-to-tank-for-non-tanks/http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/01/14/the-care-and-feeding-of-warriors-how-to-tank-for-non-tanks/http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/01/14/the-care-and-feeding-of-warriors-how-to-tank-for-non-tanks/#commentsFiled under: ,

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.

So maybe you don't tank or perhaps have never tanked. Maybe you're new to the game, maybe you just haven't tried it out yet, maybe you used to tank but then stopped for whatever reason and aren't feeling comfortable picking it back up. Whatever your situation, the tanking game in World of Warcraft is available to you as a warrior.

A lot of guides tend to focus on gearing and speccing your warrior to tank, glossing over what you actually do as a tank. What buttons are you hitting and when? Sometimes that's because it seems self evident, or because specific fights call for specific things. This guide is written from an absolutely basic perspective: It will tell you what to do and when to do it, assuming you've no experience at all as a tank. Therefore, this caveat: No guide can make up for practical experience, and you may well learn different ways to perform the role that conflict with this. And that's fine. Learning the role through doing will help teach you what's suited to you; this is just intended to get you started out on that road.

This guide also assumes you are level 85. At least for the first 60 or so levels, you have few enough abilities that there's really no confusion and if you level as a prot warrior, you'll pick this up anyway. This is intended for DPS warriors and PvPers who have never tanked but would like to, as well as old hands who haven't tanked in a while.

Continue reading The Care and Feeding of Warriors: How to tank for non-tanks

WoW InsiderThe Care and Feeding of Warriors: How to tank for non-tanks originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 14 Jan 2012 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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]]>protectionprotection-warriorprotection-warrior-the-care-and-feeding-of-warriorstanktankingtanksMatthew RossiSat, 14 Jan 2012 18:00:00 ESTThe Care and Feeding of Warriors: The state of the classhttp://wow.joystiq.com/2012/01/07/the-care-and-feeding-of-warriors-the-state-of-the-class/http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/01/07/the-care-and-feeding-of-warriors-the-state-of-the-class/http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/01/07/the-care-and-feeding-of-warriors-the-state-of-the-class/#commentsFiled under: , , ,

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.

So, as of right now, at least for warriors, the following things can be said.
  • Warriors are still competitive as tanks. Two issues that are of concern for warrior tanks is that reaching total coverage for the combat table requires more work than, say, paladins (it's still doable) and once you reach it, stamina becomes far more potent than avoidance, and the tier 13 four set bonus basically puts you in an unenviable position of having to save your Shield Wall (a personal cooldown) to try and cover group damage. In general, warrior cooldowns are lackluster in comparison to other classes.
  • Arms is king of PvE DPS for warriors. It's not really because arms got better, but fury got a lot worse. Mastery is still lackluster for fury (bad for SMF, slightly less bad for TG), hit is still way too hard to cap, and the nerf to Dual-Wield Specialization combined with the fix to the Deep Wounds bug has hammered fury fairly hard.
  • In all cases, Gurthalak is basically the Band-Aid that keeps warriors viable as DPS. If you don't have one, you're doing less DPS even if you have a weapon with competitive stats. I'd replace a heroic Zoid's or Skullstealer with a Raid Finder Gurthalak and consider myself lucky.
  • PvP isn't a lot of fun on a warrior right now. We lack real survivability buttons outside of Shield Wall (which needs a macro to work due to stance switching unless you're prot) and don't put out enough damage or debuffs to stay competitive in the Dragonwrath/Fangs of the Father universe that is PvP right now. (I know, right now it's far more likely the rogue merely has stage 2 daggers. Those are enough.)

Continue reading The Care and Feeding of Warriors: The state of the class

WoW InsiderThe Care and Feeding of Warriors: The state of the class originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 07 Jan 2012 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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]]>class-helpguidepatch-4.3talenttalentswarrior-guidewarrior-infoworld-of-warcraft-class-guideworld-of-warcraft-guideworld-of-warcraft-patch-4.3wow-class-guidewow-class-helpwow-guidewow-patchwow-patch-4.3wow-patch-4.3-newswow-patch-newswow-talent-guidewow-warriorwow-warrior-infoMatthew RossiSat, 07 Jan 2012 18:00:00 ESTThe Care and Feeding of Warriors: 2011's warrior in reviewhttp://wow.joystiq.com/2011/12/31/the-care-and-feeding-of-warriors-2011s-warrior-in-review/http://wow.joystiq.com/2011/12/31/the-care-and-feeding-of-warriors-2011s-warrior-in-review/http://wow.joystiq.com/2011/12/31/the-care-and-feeding-of-warriors-2011s-warrior-in-review/#commentsFiled under: , , ,

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.

In the past, I've done Year in Review columns and liked them well enough. The first one I wrote was in 2007 and discussed rage normalization, which to my eyes was the biggest and worst change the warrior class had undergone in The Burning Crusade. Flash forward four years. Here we are in 2011, and rage normalization has been with us for a year and the sky didn't fall. This has me in a contemplative mood. The future is Mists of Pandaria and a new talent system, but right now, it's time to look back at what were the biggest developments for the warrior class.

I don't necessarily mean good or bad, here. These are simply profound changes, things that may have also affected other classes but which definitely affected us. While 2011 was a year we made contact (because we're melee, we have to make contact) it was also a year of a great many changes.

Mastery

I've talked about it before, but mastery really has been a game-changer for warriors this past year. Fury warriors got so much out of the stat before patch 4.1 that the amount of mastery they have at base was nerfed from 8 points to 2 points. It worked, after a fashion, because until patch 4.3, it became impossible for fury warriors to assemble enough mastery to make them interested in the stat again. It may be possible with Dragon Soul gear for TG fury, but with arms the dominant DPS spec for warriors in Dragon Soul raids right now, it's not likely to be tested exhaustively.

Continue reading The Care and Feeding of Warriors: 2011's warrior in review

WoW InsiderThe Care and Feeding of Warriors: 2011's warrior in review originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 31 Dec 2011 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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]]>class-helpguideLooking-for-RaidMasteryRageRage-NormalizationReforgingtalenttalentstransmogtransmogrificationwarrior-guidewarrior-infoworld-of-warcraft-class-guideworld-of-warcraft-guidewow-class-guidewow-class-helpwow-guidewow-talent-guidewow-warriorwow-warrior-infoMatthew RossiSat, 31 Dec 2011 16:00:00 ESTThe Care and Feeding of Warriors: Leveling from 61 to 80http://wow.joystiq.com/2011/12/24/the-care-and-feeding-of-warriors-leveling-from-61-to-80/http://wow.joystiq.com/2011/12/24/the-care-and-feeding-of-warriors-leveling-from-61-to-80/http://wow.joystiq.com/2011/12/24/the-care-and-feeding-of-warriors-leveling-from-61-to-80/#commentsFiled under: , , ,

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.

Leveling in Northrend was made easier with patch 4.3's reducing the experience necessary by 33%. In addition, many quests in Outland and Northrend were retuned from group quests to soloable, and the major quest givers for instance quests were moved inside the instances in most cases so that players using Dungeon Finder to level through them could turn them in more easily.

These changes make leveling through the oldest content in the game (with the Cataclysm revamps, Outland and Northrend are in fact older content than the 1-to-60 game) easier than it has ever been. That makes now the perfect time to talk about how to level through these 19 levels and get ready for the 80-to-85 content. Since we talked about 1 to 60 two weeks ago, we'll follow much the same format.

Continue reading The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Leveling from 61 to 80

WoW InsiderThe Care and Feeding of Warriors: Leveling from 61 to 80 originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 24 Dec 2011 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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]]>class-helpguideLevelingleveling-guidetalenttalentswarrior-guidewarrior-infowarrior-levelingworld-of-warcraft-class-guideworld-of-warcraft-guidewow-class-guidewow-class-helpwow-guidewow-talent-guidewow-warriorwow-warrior-infoMatthew RossiSat, 24 Dec 2011 22:00:00 EST