Focus

This tuesday was actually a step up. Everyone decided to shake things up and really focus, and we almost cleared Naxx but had to stop at KT after some unluck with the Frost Blasts. We were melee heavy and one of the two healers haven't healed this fight before, so no surprise that the FBs caused havoc.

I'm happy to have had a real decent night of raiding though, too bad tonight was cancelled. I was planning on finally getting the druid back in the rotation, but it'll have to wait.

Slow night

Things are winding down in the raid force, and we're nowhere near as good a couple of weeks ago, or even a month ago.

That's just life when you're that many people with different things going on around you, sometimes you get periods of chaos and unfocus. 

I'm frustrated and unhappy that Schnee is the one that seems to suffer from unlucky raid nights, when my druid often get into the successful ones.

On a positive note, my latest dummy test got 2.5k dps, and according to the logs from last night I almost got to 2.7 under "real" conditions ( and thanks to excellent and awake healers I got away with it too :P ). So she's definately ready for at least starting Ulduar for real. But that doesn't help much at all if I don't have fun...

I will have to score some cake. Or a bun of some sort. It'll cheer me up.

Level 80 Fury Warrior for dummies Glyph Appendix

As promised, as a finishing touch to my little quickstart guide, here comes my recommendations on Glyphs.

Let's start with the Major Glyphs

They are the powerful last touches to our fury warrior, and should be carefully combined with talents to really shine.

There is one major glyph that is the bread and butter for us, namely the Glyph of Whirlwind. Must have in my book.

Next, we can  either choose between Glyph of Cleaving and Glyph of Heroic Strike (depending on which of the two you use as your rage dump, and hopefully have specced your talents for) or  take both if you want to split hairs and for example use Cleave on trash and HS on bosses *shrug*.

Since I do some PvP as well, i prefer to have Cleave for PvE purposes, and throw in Glyph of Execution to help me nuke healer classes (including Death Knights) before they can get back on their feet in PvP. 

Now, the Minor Glyphs...

These are helpers, making your life a touch easier so that you can focus less on certain little irritating aspects and more on what you're actually doing. 

Glyph of Bloodrage is a no-brainer really (less focus on what your health is doing all the time), and who can say no to Glyph of Battle? (less checking your buffs and wasting rage on renewing it). I like to add in Glyph of Enduring Victory after that, since it helps you tweak your damage output, even when there is some travel time and/or wait between battles.

Not much else to say, there aren't that many minor glyphs to choose from for a us after all.

Taking Schnee out for a spin

Things could be moved around last night, and Schnee got to do some raiding at last!

We weren't really at our best like this and one of the dps shamans had to switch to resto, which can be a bit unsettling I guess. And we were one dpser down as it was so we only cleared Arachnid.
I'm hoping that our follow-up on tuesday will have some people attending so that I can continue testing what dps I have now.

For now, I think Cleave was a success. But I have gotten some new heroic and pvp gear since last time, so I can't tell for sure yet.

To be continued...


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Fury Top Ten ---> 1 <---

2-handers! Two of them!

Yep. The one defining characteristic of the modern fury warrior (since 3.0) is Titan's Grip. Attack power and crit chance is nice enough to have, but they won't deliver much unless backed up by a couple of big honking 2-handers.

This is the way I went about it when I hit 80:

Being a blacksmith, I had no problems at all making myself a Titansteel Destroyer. It's even there in the name!

Then I got into some serious daily questing for the Ebon Blade. They have some nice stuff, including Runeblade of Demonstrable Power. This is just a temporary solution though, since once you have these and some good armour, you can try and farm Loken in Halls of Lightning for the best 2-hander pre-naxx: Colossal Skull-Clad Cleaver, which is what you really want.

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Fury Top Ten ---> 2 <---

Attack Power! The bread and water of all non-caster dps classes.

This is the foundation for all your other attributes to build on, so you want a lot of Attack Power (AP).

AP is a stat in itself, found on items and various buffs and talents. But you also get it from your Strength (Str) stat. You get 2 AP for every Str, so an item with +20 Str is better than an item with +30 AP. Since there are buffs in the game that increases all your stats by a percentage, every point of Str will give you even more AP. So if you are chosing between +20 Str and +40 AP, go for Str!

Once you feel happy about your AP, you can stop enchanting and gemming for it and Str and start working for real with your hit, crit, Expertise and Armor Penetration, in that order but more on those later.

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Fury Top Ten ---> 3 <---

Whirlwind!

The number one ability that should be used everytime it's available. Don't let the fact that it hits up to 4 target around you fool you - it is STILL a great attack on just one target too. Give it the best spot on the action bar, you'll be mashing that button from now on.

Combine it with the glyph and talent, do it now!

NOTE: be careful with your threat. Tanks usually needs a few seconds at the beginning of groups of mobs to really grab hold of them all before you do your first WW.

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Fury Top Ten ---> 4 <---

There was a time, back in ye olde WoW, when you heard people talk about Flurry warriors.

It's a 5-point talent, pretty far up in the Fury tree. The reason I like it is that you do crit a lot if you're well geared, and the extra fast attacks builds up rage at a rate that always comes in handy, as well as the extra damage output. See it as the Fury Warrior's own nitro boost!

And it has a noble history as one of the most faithful fury warrior talents of of all time :)

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Fury Top Ten ---> 5 <---

When you're not doing whirlwind, you should be doing Bloodthirst. Also an instant cast, it scales with your Attack power instead of your actual weapon damage so it'll always "stay in shape".

It's got a small health boost (can be increased with glyph but I don't think it's a good idea at 80) which is nice while leveling or maybe even during PvP.

NOTE: If both WW and BT are available to me, I go WW (see Top Ten #3).

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Fury Top Ten ---> 6 <---

Middle tier Arms talents!

Impale, Deep Wounds, Two-Handed Weapon Specialization.

Just look at them! 'Nuff said....

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Fury Top Ten ---> 7 <---

Hit rating.

Everyone except healers needs hit rating, but dual-wielders such as us needs it more. No hits, no rage, no damage. Add the fact the we usually lumber around with two heavy-ass megaweapons that makes holes in reality when swung, we do NOT want to wast all that time on a miss.

The goal is to reach the so-called soft cap at least - which is +8% chance to hit. But since you'll get Precision (ofc), +5% will do. That sums up to about 164 hit rating.

Why the soft cap? Because that's the point where all your Special Attacks (non-auto attacks like WW and BT) hits a lvl 83 mob (aka dungeon bosses, skull bosses). You don't want to waste all that rage and CD timers on a miss now do you?

NOTE: you will still get a benefit from hit rating past the soft cap, just not so much. Which means that you should gem/enchant etc for other want-to-have stats such as AP/Str and crit rating.

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Fury Top Ten ---> 8 <---

Crit rating.

This is where all your hard work pays off. You've gotten high-yield weaponry, a nice firm base of AP to stand on, your strikes are hitting nicely, and you have talents such as Flurry and Impale standing by to rock your world. Time to land some critical hits!

Not only is it an excellent way of letting your other stats out of the barn and stretch their legs, critical hits with your auto-attacks generate more rage, yay!

You get higher chance to crit with crit rating, Agility (1 Agi = 0.74 crit rating, but Agi is not so bad considering it also gives you some +dodge and armor if you like that kind of stuff) and with the Cruelty talent.

In my opinion you should have, at a minimum, 25% at lvl 80 (at which point you'll need 45.9 crit rating for every percent you want to add). Personally, I don't like to rest until 33% (rest = going for Armor Penetration and Expertise as well as crit when choosing equipment and gems) since I like the symmetry of "every third hit".

And here we touch at the difficult subject of how to balance more-oh!-more of AP and crit vs ArP and Exp.... But I won't go there now.

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Fury Top Ten ---> 9 <---

Boosters! Helpers! Winbuttons!

All those little things that sometimes are overlooked, but you need to familiarize yourself with them all.

All warriors know about Bloodrage of course. Hammer that button! (doesn't activate global cooldown (gcd) you see...)

Depending on you talent spec, Berserker rage is either very handy, or totally awesome. If you suspect that you'll get feared, save it, otherwise use it if you've got a gcd to spare.

I love Death Wish, but these days I'm so geared that I basically only use it in raids (which is the only time my enemies live long enough for this to be effective ;) ).

Bloodsurge when it procs, Recklessness if you're not worried about HP, Enraged Regeneration if you are worried, Victory Rush is free candy , and trinkets with a "Use: " effect should of course be rubbed vigorously!

If you want to save space on your action bar, do what I do and use macros. The simplest one looks like this:

/use [Trinket1 name]

/use [Trinket2 name]

Nothing complicated, it tries to activate whatever trinket on you that's isn't on cooldown. If you really want to save space, you could also add

/cast Death Wish

but I prefer to be in control when it comes to Death Wish.

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Fury Top Ten ---> 10 <---

Ok, time for the final piece of the puzzle to Fury Warrior Greatness.

Now this might sound cheesy, but the final bit that you will need to work on is you.

I save this for no. 10, not because it's not important, but because this part will take the longest and should not be rushed. It's all about learning how to play (aka l2p). I myself am currently on this stage, it's why I created this blog. So I can't say anything cool and kung fu-like such as "you must master your rage or rage will become your master", I'm not even a theorycrafter or even amongst the best of the fury warriors on my server. I just love to play it, and I'm inviting you all to join me and share our experiences here on Pretty in Plate!

But I will try and set you on the path, cause I sense much rage in you. Rage leads to fury, fury leads to dps - and dps leads to awesomeness! "Rawr rawr moo moo", as Schneekuh likes to shout when she's happy with the outcome of her battles.

First, get a feel for your rage generation in different situations. You should always know how the next seconds will go so that you can adapt your rotation of attacks and abilities to be the most optimal.

Second, get comfortable with your gcd. You want a nice, steady rythm to what you're doing. We swing our weapons in big slow arcs, we do not pepper our enemies with lots of tiny holes like rogues or enhancement shamans. Know what boosters you have that don't trigger the gcd, and get a feel for what downtime the different attacks have.

Thirdly, adapt on the battlefield, placing yourself wisely. If you have tank, stand behind the enemy. You don't get hit by cleaves, you miss less often and crit more often and you don't trigger something called "Parry Haste" (which is bad for the tank, I'll just leave it at that).

Furthermore, it is vital to learn the range and effect from Whirlwind. Yes, we wan't to use it as much as possible, but it can be a source of trouble sometimes. Be wary of CC:ed mobs, currently un-tanked mobs etc.

I'll just leave it at that for now - as I meantioned at the start of this post, this is something that you'll have to work out over time. For now, just adapt an analytic attitude and try to think about what you're doing. At least try to start l2p a week or so after you've re-specced :)

That was the Top Ten List, thank your for reading!

RAWR RAWR MOO MOO!

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Top Ten list on the way.

Instead of making more in-depth guides, I'm planning to first present a Top Ten of the fury warrior's assets.

This way I can expand a bit on the most important parts, fast.

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HS vs Cleave part II

I still haven't gotten a chance at testing my slightly different spec. When testing it on a Boss doll and normal doll at the same time (for an average between trash fights and boss fights) it gave +200 dps. But it is rage I'm worried about. Improved HS is in the Arms tree and therefore helped building toward the good stuff on tier 3 and 4, but now I had to allocate the funds for improved Cleave within the Fury tree and thus losing rage on the way.

Maybe it won't be a problem, but I realised that I should definately try and pull some numbers next raid and see what my rage generation was.

Anyhoo, going for Cleave instead of HS will mean more damage on trash and less damage on bosses. And since we are currently farming Naxx, I figured that efficient trash kills was the way to go to get faster runs. 

The future will tell. To be continued.

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Level 80 Fury Warrior for dummies (patch 3.1.1)

It's time for the first guide I'd like to publish. It is for those who don't understand one iota of the fury warrior, but would like a quick introduction and maybe try it themselves.

So here we go, the shortshort version:

Right. You've just wiped your talents. The first you need to know is that a fury warrior's home is in the Berserker stance*. Unless you want to do something fancy, got to that stance and stay there.

If you've never tried Fury before, the first thing you'll notice is that the action bar for Berserker stance is empty. We will get to that soon.

Talents
Before we start filling the slots with useful buttons, let's flesh out an easy-to-use talent tree. It's not the most powerful but it is the most user friendly at a start, for soloing or grouping.

NOTE: if you're a stance-dancer this enables you to travel between fights through both Charge* when it's available and Intercept* when Charge is on cooldown or when you're in combat. If this sounds like alien language to you, or too messy, move the points from Tactical Mastery* on the second level of the Arms tree to its neighbour Iron Will* for a less complicated (and less powerful) setup.

The action bar

Now, I'll ot interfere on where on the action bar you want your attacks and abilities, but here are the ones you want on there, sorted by type:

Attacks:
Whirlwind* (WW)
Bloodthirst* (BT)
Slam*
Heroic Strike* (HS)

Utility:
Bloodrage* (Blr)
Berserker Rage* (BeR)
Death Wish* and Recklessness*
Enraged Regeneration*
Intercept*
(Pummel* and Hamstring*)

Getting Rage
The talent spec gets you a lot of rage. With this you can get a full rage bar out of combat (ooc) by just spamming Blr and BeR. Blr does not trigger the global cooldown (gcd) so use it as soon as it's available. BeR is trickier, but a good rule of thumb is to use it whenever you WW and BT is on cd and/or your rage is below 50.

How to attack
The basic rotation is to WW and BT whenever they are up, and do the insta-Slam whenever you get the Bloodsurge* effect. If your rage is above 50 and WW, BT and insta-Slam is not available, it's time for Heroic Strike - but only then!

Special abilities and boosts
Deathwish and Recklessness boosts your damage and should be used when you're not low on healthpoints (HP) and with Deathwish, when more than 20 seconds of combat is before you. Remember that the way of the fury warrior is to take out the enemy hard and fast and worry about HP later.
You can also use Enraged Regeneration to heal up. If it's greyed out you can use Blr or BeR to enable it.

Intercept is mostly used as a way of transport between mobs, Pummel is the spellcast interrupt and Hamstring is for those that can't get enemies down fast enough when they flee.


Summing up

Use Blr when you can, always spam WW and BT, hit Slam when Bloodsurge activates, use BeR to boost your rage, and do a HS when you have lots or rage.

I shouldn't have to tell you this, but always keep Battle Shout* up of course.


Wait, what about gear?

You'll need two 2-handers (sword, axe, mace). Go for the damage stat first, and take Strength, Attackpower and Hit/Crit ratings. Agility is not great, but it is useful. Take Stamina if it's free. Armor Penetration and Expertise are powerful stats, but only once you're done stacking the other ones. More on these two stats in future guides.
The above goes for armour too, except the damage stat of course!


Time to go!

Now, equip your 2-handers and your dps gear, enter Berserker stance and start that rampage of destruction!


Next time we'll talk about Glyphs.

ps WW will hit crowd-controlled mobs, like sheeps and saps, so make sure you place yourself well on the battlefield if you're in a group that uses CC!

ps2 Cleave* has not been included in the rotation since it complicates things further. Stick with HS for now.


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Bye HS, hello Cleave!

I was just taking a shower and realised that I decided a long time ago that Heroic Strike was the way to go instead of Cleave, and that my reasons for this are no longer valid. My choice on this matters stemmed out of the fact that in Karazhan we used tons of CC and I didn't want a rage dump attack I couldn't use without some fancy manouvering.
Furthermore, when farming elemental crystals in Northrend I took down one mob at a time, with a snugly fitting Intercept timer backed up by Heroic Fury making it possible to comfortably moving on after each fight.

After clearing Naxxramas and moving on to Ulduar, I have yet to see a single CC situation, and once my Hunter reached 80 she is basically the one doing all the farming.

So, time to update my spec and get my paws on a new glyph, wohoooo!

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Shut down on raidnight

Curses! Some cable belonging to my ISP got struck by lightning 20 mins into last night's raid. We had just cleared the towers and Flame Leviathan was next when it happened.
Three other members were affected and since we're a 10-man raid they called it.

Now I don't know if I'll get to bring Schneekuh on thursday, my resto druid has been in constant demand the last month and this was my only chance to get som warrior time really.



I miss Schnee.

Moo....



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Some background

Hi and welcome to my first post about my life as a fury warrior! Today I'm going to start off with some background, just to get things started.


I'm actually a roleplayer so I'll begin by explaining why I won't go into RP on this blog.


I started playing World of Warcraft early 2005, a month or so after it was launched in Europe. In my extreme innocence back then, I thought that RP realms would be SO hardcore, and combined with me being nervous about my first MMORPG experience, I foolishly chose to go to a Normal realm.

After a long time I finally dared to try Earthen Ring, and realised that it was the other way around. Blizzard stopped supporting RP in WoW once they had invented the realm type. Putting the letters "RP" in front of the server name was the first and last effort they made.
This has led to most RP:ers fleeing into isolated groups, leaving newcomers on the server to fight all alone to try and find one of these secretive groups and then fight even more to get included.


Still, PvE makes time go by and the game is now only a distraction, like TV. So I stay.


Now, I'm one of those annoying people who want's to do everything in WoW. At random I RP (albeit bitterly), I raid regularly and do some heroics.

I PvP. And I have altitis (addiction to making new chars). This has led to me having two mains (which is very unpractical but I wouldn't want it any other way): a druid and a warrior. Having a druid before patch 1.8 was masochistical as some people might remember, so when warriors started to get slowly shunted to the side lines (and now we have "Warrior 2.0", aka Death Knights) it was nothing new to me.
I also have a level 80 hunter, for fun.


Oh, and I play Horde only. I want Warcraft, not Lord of the Rings - no offence meant but there it is.


Right, with all that boring stuff out of the way I'm just going to finish off by introducing Schneekuh to you. She's a tauren warrior of the Ragetotem tribe, and her real name is Arabella. Schneekuh is her nickname from the army days, and most people call her "Schnee", short and sweet.
I leveled her to 60 as a tank on the Shadowsong realm, and moved her and my druid to Earthen Ring just before The Burning Crusade expansion. My hunter was already there as my first RP character, but she wouldn't see max level until half a year into WotLK.

It was in TBC that I finally tried the fury tree for the first time, and I didn't look back after that. I was spellbound by the feeling of sitting at the controls of a steaming locomotive of rage and fury, pumping out corporeal punishment and leaving a wake of destruction behind me. Warriors are one of the few classes that can keep up a sustained dps indefinately, and the only class that starts kinda slow but then builds up to a frenzy of activity. Sometimes i forgot what I was doing and just stared, mesmerised, at Schneekuh as her skin started to glow red, her face locked in fury and her weapons becoming a blur around her as her enemies fell before the massive onslaught.

I love taurens. And Schneekuh is not only the fiercest tauren warrior out there - she looks awesome in plate too! Hence the blog name :)

At some point my druid stopped being feral and went resto. I now had the perfect duo of my two favourite activities in WoW - healing and dps. Even so, now that dual-spec is here feral came back (for grinding) and I specced Schneekuh as prot in case my raid force will encounter fights that requires more than the usual amounts of tanks.


So, this is where to stop for now, having put some ground work in.

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