TankSpot - Blogs - Sunder from Down Under by Arrivan

I'm bored and felt like posting something

Arrivan — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 10:31:16 GMT

So here are some pictures of my warrior at various levels:

Level 40ish (sadly I lost all my older screenshots :()

Level 60 (after 2.0 but before BC)

Level 60 (not long after the last one)

Level 70 (during S2, not sure exactly when)

Level 70 (during S3, before I made Dragonstrike)

Level 70 (some time before 3.0 and Wrath)

Level 73 (still wearing all but one visible piece of level 70 gear)

Level 77-79 (not exactly sure, but it was definitely after 77)

Level 80 (no, I didn't sex change. I found out that if you use the Orb of the Sin'dorei while you have the disguise you get at Brunnhildar Village as a male character you become a female BE for the duration)

Here's one of my rogue too:

And last of all - HYPNOTOAD

First blog entry in a long time

Arrivan — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 10:53:29 GMT

Ever had one of those runs where you managed to shock yourself by pulling off something completely unexpected? Well I had one last night tanking heroic Culling of Stratholme, specifically on Mal'Ganis. The shaman in the group used Heroism right at the start of the fight. This coupled with my damage intake let me spam Heroic Strike on pretty much every attack. I'll let the screenshot speak for itself:

Yes, this is pretty much a veiled brag post. :)

Time zones suck

Arrivan — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 05:58:12 GMT

That is all.

This entry will not be popular

Arrivan — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 04:55:23 GMT

I've been feeling lately that this site is being flooded by the kind of mindless QQ that I so dearly hate on the WoW forums. The thread on the news forum about Blessing of Sanctuary finally caused me to write this entry. This will probably be interpreted as some kind of personal attack towards paladins but it is not. I'm just sick of seeing people with huge chips on their shoulders getting all up in arms about something that they've misinterpreted or chosen to take a different way to what was meant.

The thread about BoSanc is NOT about warriors vs paladins. The thread does NOT advocate flat out removing BoSanc. Making BoSanc self-only (and additionally changing it so it is no longer a Blessing) would mean you can cast Kings on yourself. This would be beneficial to you when soloing or raiding without another paladin.

If warriors had some buff that was absolutely required (or could be viewed to be required by most raid leaders) we would want it changed too. Nobody is picking on paladins as tanks. I want to see all tank team combinations be equally effective and not be lacking if one tank class is missing.

/nerdrage off

Soloing Ramparts

Arrivan — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 15:02:53 GMT

I heard about a video of a T6 warrior soloing Ramparts on the PTR, so I decided to do it myself. It was surprisingly easy. It only took me an hour and a stack and a half of food. I died once after I pulled two groups and stupidly left the dogs until last to kill (used Last Stand and the bleed they do killed me once it ran out :()

On to Blood Furnace in the near future! :)

Edit: FYI, my gear is a mix of Kara, badge and ZA stuff. On the PTR I have 15324 health, 17172 armour, ~48% avoidance, 1200 AP and 688 block value (incidentally those are about my live stats except my block value has doubled).

Issues I'd like to see addressed in Wrath

Arrivan — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 07:48:31 GMT

I'm aware that Blizzard haven't "gotten around to" looking at warriors in the Wrath beta yet, but I have some concerns that I'd like to see addressed when they do.

1. 30 minute cooldowns.

I slightly derailed another thread here about this issue, so I'm just going to directly copy what I posted there. (By the way, it's good to see that Divine Protection will again have a place on my paladins action bars)

I'd like to see Blizzard rework our 30 minute cooldowns altogether into something more useful (not that they aren't now, but the huge cooldown really holds them back). Perhaps they could shorten the cooldown and bring the effect into line accordingly. Honestly, how often do you actually use the big three cooldowns outside of a raid? Of the three I use Recklessness the most during Execute range on a raid boss. I don't often use Shield Wall because I don't usually need it, but I'll admit that's because I don't tank too much these days. Retaliation on the other hand needs to be buffed big time. It competes with Rend for the "least used ability" title for me.

2. Talents (41 and 51 point talents in particular and others too).

This issue was first raised in the Burning Crusade beta when our 41 point talents were unveiled. To put it simply, a few of our talents are underwhelming or overly inconvenient to use (Rampage, I'm looking at you). I'll address each talent I feel needs looking at separately in another blog post. Suffice to say, we have a lot of poor talents in all our trees that need work.

3. Class direction.

I have no intention of QQing about the nasty mean paladins, druids and deathknights takin' mah jerb, but I would like to know what direction Blizzard intend to take our class in Wrath. They seem to want to muddy the currently crystal clear waters of what each talent tree does; Arms for PVP, Fury for PVE DPS and Prot for tanking by adding things like Heroic Leap to Fury and Shockwave to Prot, as well as rumours I've heard abount Taunt working in PVP. They've also stated that they want warriors to feel more like Warcraft 3 warrior heroes like the Mountain King and Tauren Chieftain but that doesn't address our "place" in groups. How many warriors would you expect players to take to a raid in Wrath and for what role? What is our "niche" going to be? So far it seems like Paladins = AOE tank, Druid = excellent EH tank, DK = magic damage tank. Where do warriors fit in? These are the kind of things I'd like some kind of idea about. This point isn't a big one though, so I'll move on to the next one.

4. Umm.... I may have to save this one for a later post. I was in the zone when I started typing this but have since lost my train of thought. Stay tuned for my opinionated take on warrior talents as they are in the current Wrath beta build.

Titan's Grip and Heroic Leap in action

Arrivan — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 02:37:11 GMT

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-ZG86g60us

The same guy also has videos for Shockwave and Bladestorm. They all look really cool :D

I've also started a discussion thread for Fury warriors in WotLK here: http://www.tankspot.com/forums/damag...-new-post.html

Start saving those points...

Arrivan — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 04:00:11 GMT

Because Arena season 4 is coming soon. Eyonix posted this on the WoW General forum:

Quote:

We’re currently planning to end the third Arena season and begin Arena Season 4 on June 24, 2008. This exciting Arena season will introduce the Brutal Gladiator set, and will also allow players to purchase Arena Season 2 items using the honor system. Please note that we will be resetting all Arena team and personal ratings. Players will still retain their Arena points and teams with this reset. The team and personal rating will simply be reset to the default 1500, allowing all teams to once again compete for top honors with a fresh start.

Also, with the end of the third season, players on the top teams from each battlegroup will receive their end-of-season rewards. These include Arena-specific titles that they can display proudly until the end of the new season, and, for the best of the best, an Armored Nether Drake. Please also be aware that with the end of the current season, all previous end-of-season titles will be removed.

Newb alts that get gear

Arrivan — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 14:06:33 GMT

My warrior is stagnating, to be frank. Sure, I'm going to be getting the badge fist OH this week but apart from that, I really have nowhere else to go with my current guild. The only reason I haven't left now is I don't know where else I'd go. I know a couple of guilds that would probably take me, but I simply can't commit to any kind of moderately involved raiding schedule being an Australian player on a US realm. The thing that's holding me back is a nagging doubt that I'd be able to get a setup anything like what I have now in any other guild on my server. Transferring is out of the question for now too because I don't have the money =/. So what have I been doing? Playing alts.

First, I'll quickly touch on my paladin. I've occasionally brought him into Kara when needed or when I felt like it, so he has some leftovers from there but most of it is unenchanted. Late one night I decided to join a Kara pug for Shade onwards and ended up picking up the plate healing shoulders and healing shield from Chess as well as possibly earning myself a spot on several friends lists (I was complimented on my healing several times). I've even started to farm for enchants since I've decided to get semi-serious about gearing him up.

However, the main thing I've been focusing on is my rogue. Now level 70, I've decided to PVP to get some swords to use in PVE. How different undergeared rogue PVP is to undergeared warrior PVP. Wearing 4/5 pieces of the rep blue set and a 71 DPS blue main hand sword I have often gone one on one with people wearing arena gear and won. Shaman in particular, I regularly kill S2/3 geared shammys 1v1; however that is probably more due to problems with their class and the admitted OP-ness of 20/0/41 nowadays than much skill on my part. While my warrior is stagnating, my rogue seems to be flourishing. I can't wait to get my hands on some S2 swords. I'm also an officer in a small 10 man raiding guild and will hopefully start to get geared up in the near future. Being on an oceanic server makes it easier to raid, but because of university things (and being a massively undergeared rogue) I'm not ready to commit to a higher raiding guild yet.

So I guess the question I'm posing here is: how geared are your alts?

Grand Theft Auto IV

Arrivan — Mon, 05 May 2008 08:18:01 GMT

OH. MY. GOD.

If you own an Xbox 360 or PS3, get this game. It blows all the previous GTA games out of the water.

What a difference a week makes

Arrivan — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 08:03:24 GMT

I haven't played or written a blog entry in over a week, so I thought I'd get the ball rolling again. My guild has been stagnating since losing several key members. We lost our GM (and healadin extraordinaire), the only level 70 shaman in the guild, one of our best geared tanks and /gkicked our MT. As a result, we've been languishing in Karazhan for the past two months, and only in the last two weeks have we started to foray back into ZA. So yeah, it hasn't been the most interesting two months.

Surprisingly, our progression problem hasn't been with our tanks. For the two geared tanks we lost, we have another two (including myself) able to take their places. Instead, it's been a lack of motivation and loss of confidence after losing these geared players. However, this lack of progress hasn't bothered me too much. I was starting to get bored with the game and in the past week I was very busy with university work and only was free to play yesterday.

I logged on yesterday to do some Shattered Sun dailies, and was pleasantly surprised to see that we'd opened the portal and taken the armoury and were a third of the way towards the anvil and new badge gear. Entering phase 3 opens up some of the more fun quests I'd done already on the 2.4 PTR, which was nice. However, after just over a week my DPS rotation seemed unfamiliar and I had to readjust myself to it again.

After refamiliarising myself with my controls, I found a group looking for more DPS for normal BM. I needed two runs to get KoT exalted, so I decided to tag along. Sadly the [item]Hourglass of the Unraveller[/item] still refused to drop (QQ), but it was one of the most fun runs I've been on. Fortunately for the tank I was on adds, otherwise I'd have ended up tanking the whole run. The elites and bosses died in a blink of an eye; we could have gotten by not using the beacons at all on waves 13-17. I walked away with two more shards towards an Executioner enchant for my Dragonstrike too.

What a difference a week makes indeed.

Six hours almost non-stop

Arrivan — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 11:09:21 GMT

Is how long I've had DI.fm's Trance stream playing. Looking back now, I should have checked it out when I first read about it in the "What music do you tank to" thread. Oh well :)

No, this isn't an April Fool's joke. Why would I lie about that?

Best change in 2.4 in my opinion

Arrivan — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 06:26:44 GMT

[item]Commander's Badge[/item] can now be used indoors.

<3

Dragonstrike vs 2.4 badge fist: Number crunching!

Arrivan — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 01:11:44 GMT

I've been debating whether to use my badges to buy [item]Vanir's Right Fist of Brutality[/item] or 7 Nether Vortices to make [item]Dragonstrike[/item] and [item]Red Belt of Battle[/item]. I originally thought the fist weapon would produce higher DPS, but once I plugged some numbers into the latest fury warrior spreadsheet from Elitist Jerks I found something entirely different. Bear in mind this is for a human warrior (important).

http://www.theoryspot.com/photoplog/...fist_buffs.jpg

http://www.theoryspot.com/photoplog/...ge_fist_MH.jpg

That's all very well and good, but when I tried Dragonstrike, I found this:

http://www.theoryspot.com/photoplog/...rike_buffs.jpg

http://www.theoryspot.com/photoplog/...nstrike_MH.jpg

Using Dragonstrike against an unarmoured level 73 boss with only self buffs will in theory produce 1.31 DPS more than using the Vanir's Right Fist. I will repeat right now that this is for a human warrior who is not expertise capped with or without the racial.

A few notes: I did use [item]Shard of Contempt[/item] as one of my trinkets in that sheet though, but I don't expect it to make a difference at the level of gear I'm at, because I will only reach the dodge reduction cap using Dragonstrike. I also used the Red Belt of Battle for both weapons, because even though I wouldn't have the fist weapon and the belt at the same time, I would eventually. Right after the patch goes live, the DPS difference between using Dragonstrike/Red Belt and Vanir's/Deathforge Girdle would be slightly more notable, that is all.

Conclusion: For a human warrior that is not expertise capped (- >=5.6% dodge including Weapon Mastery) wearing my gear, Dragonstrike is still a theoretical upgrade over Vanir's Right Fist of Brutality. However, removing the human racial from the equation (non-human warriors, or humans over the expertise cap without needing the racial) Vanir's fist gains approximately 6-7 DPS over Dragonstrike. I don't expect to reach that level of gear in the near future, so it looks like I'm making Dragonstrike :)

Disclaimer: These calculations are highly subjective. Your mileage will vary depending on your current gear and character race. If you want to find out how you'd perform wearing your own gear, download the spreadsheet from Elitist Jerks and try it yourself. In general though, Vanir's > Dragonstrike unless you're human and are not at or above the expertise cap for DPSing without the racial (ie, 23 expertise from gear IIRC)

Not jumping aboard the bandwagon

Arrivan — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 10:42:49 GMT

Since Ciderhelm wrote his blog post "Why I hate raiding", half a dozen similar entries have popped up since then. I haven't blogged in a little while, so I thought I'd mix it up a little bit. Before I start, I briefly give my opinion on raiding, just because it's the thing to do at the moment.

I like raiding. I like killing bosses I haven't killed before, I like seeing new things, I like the experience of working towards a common goal with 9 or 24 other like-minded people and of course I like getting loot from those bosses. However, I hate farm status. No matter how much I enjoy the company of my guildies, I'm sick to death of running the same stuff over and over and over again.

A few weeks ago our GM and a couple of other people left the guild after our second week of Gruul's Lair attempts because they were sick of people not showing up and wanted to get out of 10 mans. I never blamed them, even though others in the guild did. Since then, we haven't even been back to ZA. We do still need to gear some people from Kara but mostly the remaining raiding core we have are just missing some stuff that stubbornly refuses to drop (Nightbane, how I hate thee). We've been discussing our options, but my impression is that the guild is generally lacking a direction. I'm not sure how much longer we can last. I haven't made a bigger fuss about this because I've started university now and generally can't play until late at night, if at all, or on weekends. I've been playing my rogue in my spare time. Which is a convenient segue to the next part of this entry...

My rogue is now level 62, and I'm starting to get a feel for why combat rogues are so OP for PVE DPS. I have 92 hit rating, 10 expertise, 978 AP and 18.53% crit, and haven't failed to top the damage meter in every group I've been in barring someone a lot higher level being in the group. Even then, I've held my own. I love it. Surprisingly, I do well in PVP too. At this level, playing a rogue in PVP is much more forgiving than a warrior, both gear and skillwise. By skillwise I mean you don't have to spec 31+ into Arms to get your main PVP attack. Granted Sinister Strike spam isn't anywhere near as good as Hemo, but it doesn't matter so far (<3 targets having no resilience and low health).

I'm not sure what I'm going to do when I get her to 70. By the time I do, I'll probably be more busy with uni work, so I still won't be able to raid during the week. Fortunately Barthilas is one of those servers where Kara, ZA and Gruul's get pugged frequently, so I may look into some of that and a bit of PVP for weapons (rogue PVP armour is not good for PVE). One thing is certain, I'm going to be much more casual with my rogue than my warrior. To be honest, I'm getting bored of my alliance characters because my warrior is beyond any solo content currently in game and holy paladins are boring to play solo. I have 300g to farm up on my rogue for my epic mount though, so that's my immediate goal. [item]Black Hawkstrider[/item] FTL.

Peace!