My main role is that of tank, specifically protection warrior. I levelled up as one, took a secondary spec as Arms as that was the least loved PvE spec there was in warrior specs and stuck with it.
4.0.1 brought many changes with it. Most meaningful for me was the fact that the button mashing and responsiveness of the action buttons was replaced with skill queues and much slower paced, cooldown based gamestyle. I'm still fighting to be patient enough to wait for the skills to be ready, and usually end up banging the same skill twice due to queuing.
The whole issue I have with the current, slowed down action system is that of learning the new pace of play. In addition to this the AoE threat generation of protection warriors was lowered to almost non-existing, meaning that in multi-mob pull the over effective ranged DPS will steal one or more mobs from the tank even in the best case scenario. The only guidance I can give is to let them have it, as in 5 man heroics the DPS will kill any normal mob fast enough to survive the onslaught. The tanks responsibility in multi-mob pulls is to protect the healer nowadays, instead of protecting the whole group as it was before the 4.0.1.
With single target threat there is no such thing as aggro problem. Really. Shield Slam and Revenge take care of the needed aggro and if you take care and push that Heroic Strike there as your rage dump, you will fly high above even the most aggressive ranged DPS there is.
Mainly because of that sluggish feel to the protection play I have recently been playing as Arms dps. Granted, my DPS gear is lousy, mainly quest blues and a couple of lv200 purples to shine it with, but still there is some nice DPS to give in the encounters. Seldom I sit at the bottom of the DPS meter after a heroic, just above the healer (that happens, too, but then the rest of the group is in tier10+ and even the tank delivers outrageous 5k+ damage). On the average the DPS goes in the range of 3.3-3.5k depending on the heroic: the more there are multi-mob pulls, the lower it goes as there are not too many area DPS options open for us. On the other hand, in single target boss fights I can easily go above 4k as the Execute still brings in nice crits when the mob is below 25% of it's health.
And as Arms I very seldom see the sluggish feel take away the fun from the play.
Arms as a tree is a peculiar one. You have distinct separation of PvE and PvP talents in the tree, some of which are not at all useful in the other role. I can see several of the talents I passed work extremely effectively in PvP, but have no use in PvE encounters. Then again, either way, the build is very, very easy to come up with, even without any EJ originating number crunching.
Strenght is still the main stat to go for, as long as you take care of the cap values in Hit, Crit and Haste, in that order. For hit the cap is 263, still, and anything above that is a waste (Correction: The current hit cap for melee is 8% which equals 246 hit rating. That 263 was the base before 4.0.1., adjusted by talents.). I think the cap for Crit is around 70%, so as much as you can muster is best and the same with haste. As long as you keep strength a the primary focus on gemming, you should be doing great, really.
At least that's been my philosophy, and so far it has served me well.
All in all, even though I've seen Fury warrior in 5 man heroic delivering above 11k DPS, I can say that Arms is a valid, but not as shining DPS spec. Like before, Arms will not rule the DPS meters, but will deliver without a fail.
The overall impression of these warrior specs for me is that the slower pace requires a lot of practise and slowing down properly requires that your computer can handle the game at reasonable frame rate during the combat. The queuing will ruin your day if you lag, but as a plate wearer, the result shouldn't be catastrophic unless the boss hits unexpectedly hard.
Warriors are definitely the crop of the earth: not necessarily the best of all classes for their selected roles, but best in what they do, and most definitely the steadiest and sturdiest of them all. We are the cannonfodder and the ones who stand last: not something any other class can say.
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Showing posts with label Arms. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Arms. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Monday, November 1, 2010
Startling discoveries (YAWP)
This weekend was a bit of a disappointment, not only because my objective with the Loremaster of Eastern Kingdom proves to be more time consuming than I thought, but also due to real life coming into the way of reaching it. Still lacking some 27 quests from the achievement, and then it's about 300 quest in Kalimdor. Kalimdor should be easier due to the fact that there are big quest areas which I haven't even tapped yet (like Sillithus and Tanaris) and the questing should be more condensed. Then again, kill ten rats kind of quests take their time anyhow, like in Eastern Kingdoms.
What has been an eye opener on the Old World questing (startling discovery #1) is that the most interesting quests and quest chains begin either from a random drop or from a quest giver who either appears randomly or requires certain attributes or circumstances to give the quest to you. One such questline is in Stranglethorn Valley on Alliance side. There is this soldier who will go on patrol and if you save him from being killed by the warriors from the Kurtz army, he'll give you the quest starting a chain of 5 quests (six quests for the achievement, actually). But only if you happen to be around when he gets attacked!
I waited for the bugger to start walking for 42 minutes, and the quest chain was done in 10. Wasted time when you compare to the normal quest in which you have to kill, say 30 Ogres in the Searing Gorge: that killing quest takes about 15 minutes and you get to do another quest on the side.
Of course, the low level questing is pretty boring if you really aren't for it, and for me all the waiting and flying took it's toll also. So I ran the Headless Horseman and a heroic with all my 80's toons. With my spriest I met the most incredible fury warrior I've seen so far (startling discovery #2). This warrior banged constant damage of five figures in Drak'Tharon Keep and boasted for having done over 16k crits on Lady Deathwhisper couple of nights earlier. My recount had 9880 for his dps over the whole instance, with crits over 12k.
At the other end of the scale, as I was running Culling of Stratholme with my baby DK in his Unholy, I could come up with 3.2k. The startling discovery #3 was as follows. I got in there just before the gauntlet after the inn. The tank ran on as I came in, and we cleared the gauntlet. At the same time as I came in, came a mage and we took care of the dps part of the run. So we cleared the gauntlet, came to the end of it and started to wait for Arthas to join us. We waited. And waited. And... this mage asked if anyone had talked to Arthas before we started. "Oh, I didn't know, I'm here for the first time", responded the tank.
Sure as can be, his gear were quest blues and greens and he was tanking in heroic Culling of Stratholme. No wonder the dps had left after the inn, fearing they would fail in the gauntlet.
The funny part of this? We had to clear the gauntlet three times. First to get through it, second to get back and third to get through it with Arthas. And for the majority of the run, I was tanking more than this 'tank to be' who really knew the basics but sure as hell couldn't handle the aggro. The healer paladin was a professional, though, and he switched to healing mainly my DK instead of the tank.
Malganis was our puppy and I scored some 6k crits in there. (Startling discovery #4)
To cap this all, I got finally switched my banker druid's profession from skinning to herbalism. As I started to pick it up with the herb collecting, I made the final startling discovery: I got experience from using the skill?!
Come Cataclysm, I think I could make a Worgen priest or a druid and make the pacifist levelling thing, only healing in random dungeons LFD style and picking flowers!!
As the final note: I think I have to take a bit more serious approach into the blog, as Kadomi from Tank Like A Girl (one of my big influences) has put this blog into her list of warrior blogs. I'll take the protection and arms route, but more of that later. I have ideas already, but do not expect any real number crunching. Most probably more on the routes on how I find things and how they work for me.
Cheers!
C out
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Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Arms DPS
One's performance is pretty interestingly dependant on her/his subjective view. The commonly accepted or required values tend to be easily measured and are usually posed more out of the convenience rather than actual facts.
Take the GS for example: you can have completely wrong gearset which exceeds the actual requirement, but still doesn't improve your actual performance in the role you sign in. This is sadly pretty common, so now we can see more and more requirements for gear checks, dps checks and achievements.
My achilles heel has always been my lack of interest in the dps role of the warrior. However, this has to change if I'm to continue on the raiding path I'm trying to follow, and thus I have started to dig up information on Arms dps.
Before anyone starts telling me that Fury is by far better in delivering the overall dps I can say that I don't like Fury and I'm not going to change my view to please others. That would make me miserable, and you have seen what that looks like.
In the search it has become very clear that there is a lack of actual Warrior dps blogs out there: in fact, there is a certain lack of Warrior blogs in general, except the few excellent tanking blogs everyone is following. The only one remotely touching the subject of Arms dps is the blog of Pixelated Executioner, or Pix for short.
Now the main point of an Arms Warrior is that he's an utility to the group. Not only a valid dps cannon which really starts to shine at the final 20% of the boss fight, but as a valid buff source. Trauma, Mortal Strike and Rend are all very much appreciated in any party or raid an Arms warrior is part of.
The critical stats are almost the same for an Arms Warrior as they are to other melee classes:
Now the rotation of an Arms Warrior is pretty simple, and goes along the same ways as with warriors in general. Rather than being a rotation per se, its more a priority like Protection Warriors, being as:
The main point is the same as with all the classes with DoTs: keep the DoTs up all times and don't clip them. So in general terms Arms Warrior pops up Berserker Rage and charges in on the footsteps of the tank, striking with the Rend as soon as he arrives to the combat. Followed by mandatory shout (Commanding as priority) as the Rage builds up (utility to the group first and foremost, dps as an added value is my view) its time to start using the rest of the skills which have a pretty limited window of execution because Overpower, Mortal Strike and Execute are available only on procs. This is the main reason for the priority list rather than rotation. Thankfully our Taste of Blood talent, Overpower also procs pretty decently over the fight and is almost interchangeable with Mortal Strike, with Slam as filler if neither is up. If you're lucky, you may land a Heroic Strike in there, too, but that shouldn't be prioritized.
If, and ONLY IF, the boss doesn't have adds you can use Bladestorm. On a boss like Saurfang it's an absolute no-no (as well as Thunderclap) only because of the Bloodbeasts. If you get hit by a boss or an add you are not supposed to attack, you have failed.
Like I mentioned earlier, Arms Warrior begins to shine at the last 20% of the bosses health, as then the Execute starts to proc constantly. The fight, especially with stationary bosses, turns into a one button smashing show, but the result is quite impressive.
In short, Arms Warrior will not currently top the damage meters, but s/e sure as hell fills her/his spot in the group by giving a good damage buff and an increase in overall dps.
Did I mention I've always liked the underdogs?
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Take the GS for example: you can have completely wrong gearset which exceeds the actual requirement, but still doesn't improve your actual performance in the role you sign in. This is sadly pretty common, so now we can see more and more requirements for gear checks, dps checks and achievements.
My achilles heel has always been my lack of interest in the dps role of the warrior. However, this has to change if I'm to continue on the raiding path I'm trying to follow, and thus I have started to dig up information on Arms dps.
Before anyone starts telling me that Fury is by far better in delivering the overall dps I can say that I don't like Fury and I'm not going to change my view to please others. That would make me miserable, and you have seen what that looks like.
In the search it has become very clear that there is a lack of actual Warrior dps blogs out there: in fact, there is a certain lack of Warrior blogs in general, except the few excellent tanking blogs everyone is following. The only one remotely touching the subject of Arms dps is the blog of Pixelated Executioner, or Pix for short.
Now the main point of an Arms Warrior is that he's an utility to the group. Not only a valid dps cannon which really starts to shine at the final 20% of the boss fight, but as a valid buff source. Trauma, Mortal Strike and Rend are all very much appreciated in any party or raid an Arms warrior is part of.
The critical stats are almost the same for an Arms Warrior as they are to other melee classes:
- 8% or 263 hit rating to soft cap the hit
- soft cap on Expertise, meaning 16 Expertise with proper talents
- Strength to give the hit some real punch
- +Crit and +ArPen to cover the cake
Now the rotation of an Arms Warrior is pretty simple, and goes along the same ways as with warriors in general. Rather than being a rotation per se, its more a priority like Protection Warriors, being as:
- Rend has to be up all the time
- Overpower
- Mortal Strike
- Execute
- Slam
- Bladestorm
The main point is the same as with all the classes with DoTs: keep the DoTs up all times and don't clip them. So in general terms Arms Warrior pops up Berserker Rage and charges in on the footsteps of the tank, striking with the Rend as soon as he arrives to the combat. Followed by mandatory shout (Commanding as priority) as the Rage builds up (utility to the group first and foremost, dps as an added value is my view) its time to start using the rest of the skills which have a pretty limited window of execution because Overpower, Mortal Strike and Execute are available only on procs. This is the main reason for the priority list rather than rotation. Thankfully our Taste of Blood talent, Overpower also procs pretty decently over the fight and is almost interchangeable with Mortal Strike, with Slam as filler if neither is up. If you're lucky, you may land a Heroic Strike in there, too, but that shouldn't be prioritized.
If, and ONLY IF, the boss doesn't have adds you can use Bladestorm. On a boss like Saurfang it's an absolute no-no (as well as Thunderclap) only because of the Bloodbeasts. If you get hit by a boss or an add you are not supposed to attack, you have failed.
Like I mentioned earlier, Arms Warrior begins to shine at the last 20% of the bosses health, as then the Execute starts to proc constantly. The fight, especially with stationary bosses, turns into a one button smashing show, but the result is quite impressive.
In short, Arms Warrior will not currently top the damage meters, but s/e sure as hell fills her/his spot in the group by giving a good damage buff and an increase in overall dps.
Did I mention I've always liked the underdogs?
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