Farming/Soloing/Grinding as MS...

[Horacio]

So last night [item]Despair[/item] drops from Opera and I figure what the hell, I haven't had a good 2 hander since [item]Obsidian Edged Blade[/item] from MC. I haven't specced MS since I dinged 60 2 years ago, having messed around with fury a couple of times.

I outrolled Flint on it, ROFL. I owe him donuts.

So...I went to the trainer in IF and respecced to a gimped 40/15/5 spec and queued up for some arena. Meh, it went ok. I was able to do some damage. A few friends wanted to run some alts through Ramparts so I warned them and accepted the invite. It was me, a 70 mage, a 70 priest, my wife's 59 priest (on follow, lol) and a 62 feral druid. It was AWESOME! There wasn't much tanking going on, I just WW through everything. Oh.....the carnage. I think it took 20 min? Sweeping Strikes + (stance change) Whirlwind + Sword Spec proc + weapon proc = whoa. Of course, this is level 60-62 elite mobs and I have an epiced out lvl 70 healer on me. It was so much fun we did Blood Furnace next. And got shards, some gear for the noobs, a pile of cloth and greens to send to my DE bot.

So then, I hopped on my bird and headed to SMV to knock out my Netherwing dailies. One target is easysauce but I'm taking damage too. I have decent DPS gear but I lack crit (24%) ..if I get crits and procs, it looks like a truck ran over the mob. If not, I'm sitting there waiting on my swing timer or rage to build up while I get pounded. I actually got killed and it was a situation I would have had zero problems as a tank with.

Granted, this was all new to me and my gear isn't the best but 10K HP, 1500 AP, 24% crit w/ a Karahzan epic weapon ain't too bad. With a partner healing me it would have been incredible farming...anything would, but alone it was kinda meh.

Which makes me wonder...I know alot of people respec for grinding, for arena, for leveling (like from 60-70 w/ TBC) but I frankly don't see it as being that huge an upgrade. Granted, I went 60-70 w/ Thunderfury and its got great damage independant of conventional damage stats. Now...not so much but I still tear stuff up with it. There's no downtime and its security, I don't get caught in situations like last night where I can't do anything but die and run back. With a pocket healer, its awesome. But as a tank with pocket DPS (like my wife's mage) its equally efficient or close.

I admit, it might just be a comfort thing. I have been a prot tank forever and having a crap ton of DR and HP is what I am used to. 2K MS crits are fun and all, but a 1K SS is pretty hot too especially considering my health bar isn't moving along with the mob's....

[Fubar]

this has been actually haunting me for the last couple of weeks when I got the same sword.

I got the epic legs from heroic mech, put cobrascale armor kit, +str/crit gems, got my arms gear, abacus and hourglass trinks and thought grinding for motes would be easier... I ended up unimpressed. I still had to eat every 2-3 mobs farming for fire motes in northern BEM...

I have a counterweight on mine to get it to proc more, I am not sure, but would like to know if the proc from the abacus (haste proc) stacks.

Like you, I was unimpressed as well.

whew.. I thought I forgot how to be an arms warrior!

thanks,
fubar

[TheZ]

Don't worry I feel the same exact way. A few weeks ago I speced MS with deep thunder and well i found it less than appetizing when generaly farming and doing a few side cleanup quests for a bit of gold..

Like I leveled to 60 as fury and then to 70 as fury since I didn't have the greatest of gear at all when TBC hit so I mostly did what I could really. Overall gring as anything but tank spec just sucks. some things that i don't like as dps spec.. there is just to much downtime, can't solo some of hte group quests, need groups for some quests, easy to find yourself in a situation that end in your death, tend to have higher repair bills, cant aoe pull 10 mobs at once and kill them all.

All that i know is when the next x-pac comes out I'll be doing the grind from 70 to 80 as prot and truthfully i can't wait for it. Prot farming and grinding ftw, Slow and steady wins the race!

[Kazeyonoma]

Doing dailies, prot spec is actually much easier I've found since a lot of them require you to stay alive more than killing mobs fast so I never had trouble doing it that way. I only really respec to Arms for PVP/Arenas.

And 40/15/5 is not fun.

Gotta go 33/28 or 33/25/3 Much more fun when you can pop Deathwish and just destroy things.

And Ramparts on regular as MS is immensely fun. Lol the other day, I helped a guidy with his alt, by running him through Ramparts, Slave Pens, and Underbog all in under 1.5 hours. I just said, heal me, and I ran through the place, not stopping at all unless they cried for mana. lol. I even fought the bosses on the RUN because I wanted to finish it faster (I was sleepy!) Its definitely fun =]

[psychostomp]

totally agree with kazey 33/28 if u are gonna spec arms and yes the low 60 instances as arms with any real gear just stay in zerk and pwn it all only stepping out to SS = a fun run may try it later this week in sethekk lol

[Keza]

My gm approached me a few weeks ago and said, 'hey, we've got enough tank types you wanna go dps?' We did not have any dps warriors in the guild, and the rogues had been asking for one. I was hesitant at first, I've been tanking since level 70 post BC, epic'ed out in tank gear from kara and gruul, and prior to that I was an avid arms war. I was like...hmmm, sure I'll give it a shot. His only request was that I still needed to be able to tank.

So I tried fury/prot, since I'm not a theorycrafter, but rely on others to do the dirty work for me, I had a hard time coming up with spell rotations and specs from reliable sources (ty for starting tankspot), I was told to aim for 300 hit and go dual wield. Currently my best weapon is Despair. I had a very hard time managing threat and rage, I died a lot, took a lot of dmg, and sucked up healer mana. My dps in kara was running about 420 (our raiding minimum is 500) in this spec with 1/2 tank gear since I'm still in the process of collecting decent dps gear.

A few nights ago I found out that one of our warriors in guild is into theorycrafting. We got together one night after a raid to talk about optimizing my dps. The outcome being a respec to 33/28 and coming up with spell rotations for dps and tanking. Last night in kara my dps was 550, I'm currently wearing blues and a few purples, one piece of tank gear left to change over to dps.

Ok, back to the topic of solo'ing, yes I miss being able to take 3-4 mobs in a row and not drop health, yes I depend on crits to get that mob down b/f my health takes a big dump, but I'm loving this spec, I've never geared my war to dps, it's like playing a new toon. I installed quartz last night and that made a big difference with keeping up flurry and managing threat a little bit. The majority of advice on these forums is sound and has helped me make my warrior a viable dps raider.

What I've learned:
-still rage starved at times (thinking about using rage pots)
-sucking up healing mana
-solo'ing-just have to be careful or take a pocket healer
-depending on the tank-I still pull aggro (this is mostly in heroics, or me just being a smarty pants trying to aoe)
-I have less problems pulling aggro with druid and pally tanks.
-Salvation is my favorite pally buff.
-Rogues love me.
-I can still tank...I think.

[Horacio]

I'm back to prot now but I ended up on my healing druid in Kara last night(/sigh) because our OT is very good (and will prolly reply to this post) and our off healer's alarm clock fails.

We run w/ a full time fury warrior (yep, 3 warriors in our Kara raid team...I should have my head examined) and he does incredible DPS. I know he stacks hit rating out the wazoo. His current weapons are Decapitator and the Merciless Gladiators OH sword and he is a solid 2nd or 3rd every night on the meters but our rogues is the best rogue I have seen and his GF is geared and specced exactly the same as he is so they do a ton of damage.

DPS spec is just not for me. If and when they make those rumored changes to the leveling curve, I might level another warrior but I already have 3 70's so.....

[Flintridge]

i do love compliments, but i tell you waht after prince i think my finger is broken from slamming my SB macro.

[Horacio]

Get used to it. It really seemed to work out well with the extra healing. Only one of us can MT and the other is garbage DPS. I may start bringing Woody from more often. All I really "need" is the tier 4 helm yet and with any luck, it won't continue to be a friggen party gift for our guests every week. I can fill in and pick up Maiden gloves neck with other groups as needed and the shield/chest off Nightbane are not items I must have either. 1 more week of arena and 4 more nethers and that's a non issue.

Eh, I dunno, we'll see.

[Flintridge]

nightbane chest, and helm is all i really need, KD would be nice but im going to make Blazefury or w/e its called.

[Theremin]

I've found that my "cut-over" point from staying prot while farming and just dual-wielding, and respec'ing 33/28 was when I got a [item]Gorehowl[/item]. Any weapon w/ DPS lower than 118 just didn't cut the mustard. I have a [item]Soul Cleaver[/item] now, so respec'ing is a no-brainer, but YMMV.

[Voltaik]

What skills do you use while soloing as prot? I feel like I've completely forgotten how to do this, and I seem to be having a hard time with just dailies.

Does devastate help for soloing? Do you stack sunders first (and how many) before starting to devastate? Dual wield or shield slam?

[TheZ]

For grinding as prot just stick with Revenge and Shield Slam, not that hard just equip some block/avoidance gear and your good to go. If you find rage then heroic strike, devistate is ok but the game is lackluster w/o 5 sunders up.

[Kazeyonoma]

i go 3 sunders and devastate spam with dual wield fury gear.

if i'm staying in tanking gear i just put on all my sbv gear and go full on shield slam/revenge.

[Xhathor]

-still rage starved at times (thinking about using rage pots)

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