Xmas Update!

This post, if you want to call it that, is a bit early this week. Bit of last minute planning went on and I'm headed back to stay with family for a week or two over the Xmas season. That'll probably mean that the next regular post will be on January 2nd or so, provided I didn't get so drunk on New Year's Eve that I;m still hanging on the 2nd. Regardless, I'll endeavour to get the post out then at the very least because I promised myself that I'd start posting regular updates as I got more serious with the game and with my career within PvP Live.

Other updates that may not be exclusively WoW-Based:

I signed up for the Wildstar Beta, after being very skeptical of how the game was going to be in the first 2-3 weeks after launch, however after watching the class showcase videos on NCSoft's website, I think I'll give it a go for the hell of it, the classes all look fun to play, and I think there'll be a point where I'll find it more fun than WoW, probably until Warlords of Draenor comes out.

If you don't have it, I'd sincerely recommend picking up Payday 2 in the Steam Xmas Sale if it gets reduced, and even if it doesn't get reduced I think its still about 16 pounds or so. It's by far one of the most fun Co-Op games I've ever played, and for anyone that doesn't know what Payday is about, you can check it out here: http://www.crimenet.info/

PvP Live is growing, but as always, any support we get from the community is great, even if that's just tuning in to the weekly podcast or watching it on YouTube when it's been uploaded. For the people that wish to watch it live, it's at twitch.tv/pvplive at 9PM EST on Sundays, which translates as 2AM GMT for the EU readers of my blog. Alternatively you can watch them all on Youtube @ http://www.youtube.com/pvplive (Note: this is a hyperlink, this actual address doesn't work for some reason) or listen to them all @ https://soundcloud.com/pvp-live

That's pretty much all the news I have, so I'll wish you all a very Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year, and I'll see you all in 2014!

Exhil MD

5.4.2 - Warriors got a nerf. -A- Nerf. Singular.

So, as the title suggests, Warriors got a nerf to our mobility (which was out of hand). Intervene no longer breaks roots, but Safeguard keeps it's root-breaking abilities. Effectively killing two birds with one stone.

1) Warriors have to take Safeguard if they want to keep the mobility.
2) This stops them having double reflect + a root break.
3) If they go for double reflect, any class with a root can kite them forever (read: frost mages + hunters)

I'm happy with this change. Warrior damage was never the issue. Their damage got brought up to par and their burst damage, as with many other classes, is out of hand in general. The damage combined with the mobility was too much. I still can't help but feel that having Double Time as a talent is too much. I'd like it to be reworked, but I'm not quite sure what it would become. Perhaps reintroduce Intercept?

Obviously Blizzard are going to go through a lot of design changes in the upcoming alpha and beta testing for Warlords of Draenor, and I'm really hoping that a lot of stuff gets changed, including, how much CC and control are in-game.

I know this is a short post, but I'm still waiting on more info on Trial of the Gladiator to come out so that the draft post I have for that can be updated and published. As always for regular content and obviously Warrior-biased opinions from me, follow me on twitter @DrExhilMD!

Thanks for reading,
Exhil MD,

Joining PVP Live! And other things...

Again, I've neglected my blog a bit, should probably stop that.

Also I prefer this font, so I might use this a bit more.

But yes, moving on! Recently (read: for a few weeks) I've been dashed into the amazing community at PVP Live. As I've started moving away from slaying dragons and more into slaying Alliance, I threw all my eggs into one basket and it's paid off. I got introduced to a load of the community and been chatting to them all about all sorts, it's really refreshing to be part of a group of people that passionately care about the way the game is played (as well as having quite possibly one of the most enjoyable streams I've ever seen, courtesy of Thugonomicz)

I've been trying to push myself in terms of what I can do in arenas and RBGs, and while I'm still lacking a lot of expertise in arena, I'd say my RBG skill has improved over the past few weeks. I know right now I get a lot of flak from people because I play Warrior (despite the fact that I've played it since Season 11) but I'm enjoying it at the moment, though I would massively prefer it if Blizzard completely revamped Warriors a lá Warlock-style. (See my last blog post)

Moving back to Argent Dawn I think also helped, I'm back amongst friends I've known for a while, server's ridiculously active compared to Aerie Peak and it's home, for what that's worth. Even though it has it's fair share of idiots, the same can be said of any server, and it was nice arriving back to several actual whispers from people saying that they were happy that I was back. It seems Rage has his fanclub back.

I've got a few things that I'm going to be keeping a close eye on in order to write blog posts about, though for the time being I'll have to perhaps help people get inside my head when I get down to just playing. Maybe a VLog in the future? No idea yet.

So for now, keep it real and I'll talk to you guys soon!

Exhil MD.

The Doctor's Report: Warriors

So I was sat in this chair last night thinking about all the new things that the new expansion is going to bring, and I'm so happy with the way Blizzard is taking their game. Then it dawned on me. What about what's already in-game? There's so many things that they're addressing in the new expansion like the removal of reforging, dodge/parry, hit/expertise, the addition of "fun" stats like Cleave and Lifesteal, that I'd just like to take some time and analyse something that is already in-game that still needs fixing. As my main is a Warrior, I thought I'd start there. What follows is entirely my opinion and most of the examples that will be given are going to be PvP-Orientated.

Class: Warrior

Role(s): Melee DPS/Tank

Strengths:

• High Mobility
• High Utility
• God-Tier Burst Damage
• Non-dispellable Fear.
• Almost unpeelable
• Strong AoE Damage/Pressure
• Probably the best AoE Burst of any class currently (Patch 5.4)
• Two Spell Reflects
• Two Interrupts

Weaknesses:

• Very squishy when caught off-guard.
• Damage very limited when out of melee range.
• Can't generate resources when out of Melee Range (Exception being Charge)
• Two methods of CC have to be chosen as talents at the cost of less burst damage.
• (PvP) Selfhealing requires you to be nearly at Execute-Range to be of any use.
• All of our burst is negated by Parries/Dodges
• Damage in Defensive Stance is severely limited.

Now I know I might have missed some things out, but these are the first to spring to mind. I'd like to suggest a few changes to the things that I've mentioned on this list.

1. Mobility - I would happily lose some mobility for more damage on our lesser-used spells, such as Overpower, which is currently almost useless.
2. Our Utility is too much in certain circumstances. Personally I would change Skull Banner to be a personal CD, as paired with certain classes (Destro Lock/Ele Shaman) the damage that gets done in the 8s that it's up is sometimes just too much.
3. Our burst damage is a bit RNG. Sometimes I'll hit for 50-60k Slams, other times it's for 100k+ against players with 75% resilience. This RNG needs to go.
4. Being unpeelable isn't fun for the other players. If we've got this much mobility and Blizzard is happy with it, then some of the damage, naturally needs to go. Would like to see some damage shifted away from Slam, and on to either Overpower or Execute. Make Execute feel like it's designed to kill someone, rather than Slam hitting for ~30k more.
5. Make Disrupting Shout and Mass Spell Reflect replace their weaker, baseline versions. It's not cool to be able to just straight up ruin someone's day because you can Pummel, Reflect, then Disrupt and Mass Reflect after that.
6. Second Wind, in my opinion, needs to be baseline, the fact that the only way Warriors can get healing is by killing a target is ridiculous when every other melee can heal itself WITHOUT talents. At least give us some healing that only requires us to... be alive.
7. Colossus Smash needs to always land. I.E. Impossible to dodge or parry. A lot of people might jump out of their chairs at this, but it's the same situation as a Deep Freeze or Frost Nova. To ensure decent burst goes off as a Mage, the target needs to be Frozen. To ensure decent burst goes off as a Warrior, the target needs to have CS on it. Deep Freeze can't be parried, or dodged, it' can be reflected and that's it.

I could probably keep going, but I'll probably get someone shouting at me for these anyway.

As always, if you want to leave a comment or some feedback, you can add me on skype (Veren1994), or sign up on pvp-live.com and drop a message to Exhil in our livechat (pvp-live.com/pvpchat). I'm always happy to discuss my opinions.

Thanks for reading!

Exhil MD

Warlords of Draenor - The Savior of PvP?

At Blizzcon this year, it was announced that Blizzard had plans to change a load of things about PvP. I'll summarize these in a brief list:

• New World PvP Zone (Ashran)
• UI Changes
• Rewards from Battlegrounds
• Trial of the Gladiator

Now straight away, I saw this list and thought "Blizzard are making... good PvP changes?" and immediately started doubting how the panel was going to go. However over the course of the next 10-20 minutes, I was in complete awe of what Blizzard wanted to do with Warlords of Draenor regarding PvP content.

Ashran:

So according to what we were told at Blizzcon 2013, Ashran is a new World PvP zone located off of the northeast coast of Tanaan Jungle (Hellfire, roughly). It's going to be a staging area for the Alliance and Horde in the new expansion, and for lore reasons that you probably don't really care about, they want all the goodies that the island has in abundance, of course. It's going to feature a base for either faction, plus a number of "hotspots" similar to Wintergrasp and Tol Barad that both factions are going to want to control.

What sets Ashran apart from these two other "World Battlegrounds" is that Ashran is going to be completely sandbox. The "Timeless Isle of PvP" in the words of Tom Chilton, where there'll be regular PvP Objectives and Goals, similar to the Alterac Valley of Vanilla, where fights could last for days on end before a victor was decided. What really puts the cherry on the cake for this new island though, is the implementation of cross-realm technology.

Blizzard understand that some servers are tilted very heavily in the favour of one faction (Outland, Sylvannas, Stormscale - Looking at you), and so are going to use the XRealm technology to alter the amount of people on the island at any given time to ensure a constant balance of Alliance and Horde forces. On top of this, we'll be building (or stealing) Siege Vehicles to completely destroy the enemy base. BUT THE FUN DOESN'T STOP THERE.

Due to the way the Island works, losing teams will be capturing objectives (such as mines, lumber mills, etc) to rebuild their broken fortress so that they can get back on the offensive, allowing what would be a very stale, one-sided BG to become a shifting island of destruction. Alliance winning one day, Horde winning the next. I'm so excited for this that words can't adequately describe it.

UI Changes:

This is a pretty short topic, but it's just a quality of life change for the most part. Blizzard have acknowledged that the icons and flags in the older BGs are a bit outdated, and we're getting a few updates. Flags in Alterac Valley and Arathi Basin will be changed, allowing the actual flag itself to act like a loading bar. For example, the Horde capture Stonehearth Graveyard (as always) and the flag turns from blue to grey. The flag will then colour itself in with the Horde colours from bottom to top, and when it hits the top, it's fully captured.

This helps when you're near the flag, but what if you're the other end of the map, you might say? No fear, Blizzard is here! The map and objective tracker are similarly being updated to show a countdown circle over the base (on the map) or a DBM-Style timer on the right hand side of your screen to let you know how long you have left to recapture, or defend, a specific base.

Rewards from Battlegrounds:

This is an interesting topic that's been brought up a few times over the years, and has been more prominent since they drastically reduced the amount of money you got from removing Insignias from corpses. What Blizzard's plan is apparently is to allow you to win goodies from Random Battlegrounds, which include pieces of PvP Gear, BoE items, consumables, "and more..." Really hoping this rewards interesting things like BG only consumables or custom PvP Banners similar to the current War Banners and the banners from the Krasarang World PvP Vendors. We'll have to wait until further confirmation or until Beta to see what kind of items Blizz is going to throw our way!

The Big One - Trial of the Gladiator:

Now a lot of PvP enthusiasts around the world saw this announcement and collectively screamed like fanboys/girls. Blizzard plans to implement a bi-weekly event where you:

1. Turn up.
2. Get a free set of top-tier PvP gear.
3. Free enchants/gems to get it all sorted out.
4. Play all the games you want.
5. Get titles and other rewards.
6. ALL ON A WEEKLY BASIS.

This could be one of the best ideas Blizzard has ever had in the PvP Department. No more rage on the forums about "X Class destroyed me because of the gear difference, Blizz pls fix". The game can start to be a tad more balanced and we can leave Chief Holinka to tweak and balance things for the better so that when you jump into the Trial of the Gladiator and come out on top for that week, you can rest assured that it's not because you've cheesed your way there *cough* Blood DKs *cough*, it's because you damned well earned it.

If anyone wants to discuss anything further about any of the changes, throw some new information at me, or even to point out that I've missed something important, feel free to message me on Skype (Veren1994), on PvP-Live (Exhil) or leave a comment below!

Back to Basics: Arms Warrior 101

I get a lot of questions about different aspects of Warriors, regarding stats, how to do X, all sorts of things, so I thought I'd grab a whole load of data + personal experience and cram it all together into a guide. So without further ado:

THE BASIC ROTATION:

Arms Warrior, in my opinion, is a very low skill-capped spec. I don't mean this in a harsh way, but the spec is very easy to get to grips with, but there are a few subtle nuances that separate a good Warrior from a bad Warrior.

So if you're going to apply a PvE rotation to anything (PvE or PvP) it's going to look like this:

Colossus Smash > Mortal Strike > Slam > Overpower

Now this is very basic. I would honestly say that there is 4-5 different rotations for Arms, and that's purely down to the passive ability Sudden Death. Sudden Death allows your autoattacks and Mastery Procs (Strikes of Opportunity) to reset the cooldown on your Colossus Smash. This straight away changes the rotation because you don't use Colossus Smash on cooldown, you use it if the target doesn't have the debuff on the target. If you'd like to see, in my opinion, what the rotation should look like, it's this:

Colossus Smash (If not on the target) > Mortal Strike (if below 50 Rage) > Slam (if above 50 rage) > Mortal Strike (if above 50 Rage) > Overpower > Slam (If below 50 Rage) > Colossus Smash (If debuff is on the target)

This is not even factoring in if the target is within Execute range. Simply using Overpower over Slam in the wrong place can drop your damage by a ridiculous margin. 80-90k Overpower Crit vs the chance of a 250k Slam Crit. Apparently this is Mr. Street's intent, they want Slam to be the burst ability and Overpower to be the filler ability, but there's such a divide between the damage of the two that it seems... a bit absurd. But I digress:


STAT PRIORITY:

Arms is pretty straightforward:

Strength > Critical Strike > Haste > Mastery

I put Critical Strike in bold for reasons that I'll highlight later, but this is basically going to be your go-to Stat Priority.

GEMS:

Red Slot: Expertise/Crit OR Strength/Crit
Yellow Slot: Crit
Blue Slot: Hit/Crit (Crit/PvP Power for PvP)
Meta Slot: Legendary Gem or Reverberating Primal Diamond
Prismatic Slot: Crit

The reason for these choices is the explanation to the bolded Critical Strike marker in the Stat Prio section. What happened when Blizzard tinkered with the value of secondary stats is that Crit gained so much value that it brought it to over half the value of Strength. In number form Strength could be 1.0 and Crit could be 0.65. This means that due to Secondary stats giving 2x the amount of that stat compared to Primary Stats (i.e. +320 Critical Strike vs +160 Strength), Crit is worth more on gems than Strength is. Using the example above:

Strength Value = 1
Critical Strike Value = 0.65

1 Strength Gem is worth 160 points.
1 Crit gem is worth (0.65x320) = 208 points.

These values are only being used as an example, if you want to min-max on your Warrior, run it through Simcraft and get values specific for your Warrior.

Another thing to remember is that sometimes socket bonuses really aren't worth it. As a rule of thumb you can go with:

+60 Crit/+120 Str on Bonus = Match Sockets
Anything else = 320 Crit gems in every socket.

PVP ADVICE:

This section is going to be worth reading if you're inclined to only PvP on your Warrior. You can still follow the rotation and gem choices as listed above, this is just a set of simple rules/guidelines to go by while in Arena, RBGs, and premade Random BGs (less applicable in Randoms).

1) Never LoS your healer - as a Warrior, you're very easily squished if you get stunned while you're outside of Defensive Stance or don't have any cooldowns up. Second Wind isn't half as good as people make it out to be, and while it will keep you up when you're low, you need to kite and LoS whoever is trying to kill you to get yourself back up to 35%.
2) Correct use of Berserker Rage - So many times I've popped BR to get that extra 10% damage in a burst and as soon as it's over, I just get feared and I'll either have to trinket it if my healer gets focused, or sit a 3 year long Fear. Unmacro Berserker Rage. Save it to break out of Fears IF YOU NEED TO. Don't BR a Fear if you can sit it. While you'd rather not be CCed to oblivion, sometimes saving a BR can mean the difference between a kill and... not a kill.
3) Get used to Banner-Intervene - What this means in a nutshell is bind Mocking Banner to your bars. You can quite easily drop it, intervene to it, and carry on going. HOWEVER. If you're using Safeguard, probably best to use it on a party member, your Banner won't appreciate 20% less damage taken like a Healer will.
4) Don't be afraid to backpedal when necessary - By this I don't mean "Backpedal everywhere, it's a good idea", I mean when you have abilities like Die by the Sword active, backpedaling to ensure that the Rogue/Warrior/DK/Pally/Enhance stays in front of you is sometimes the only option you have.
DISCLAIMER - I DO NOT ENDORSE BACKPEDALING IN A NORMAL SCENARIO. IT'S SLOW, AND BAD.

This is my first time making a guide like this, so if there's anything you'd like me to add to this one, or maybe something to discuss in a future post, feel free to add me on skype (veren1994) or message me on PvP-Live (Exhil)

Thanks for reading, and hopefully talk soon!

Exhil MD

Blizzcon Day 2

So, tonnes of changes and announcements today, I'll summarise the ones I feel are going to be the most gamechanging.

Raid Difficulty Changes

Raid Finder = 10-25 Players
Normal (Was Flex) - 10-25 Players
Heroic (Was Normal) - 10-25 Players
Mythic (Was Heroic) - 20 Players
All have separate lockouts.

This is going to really screw with the way casual guilds work, and will especially tinker with how Heroic 10m Guilds are functioning. They'll need to find ~10 more players (Sub players dependant). Looking forward to testing it all out though.

"From level 91 to 100 you will get upgrades to your core spells. Some will be slight class changes, some will be passive bonuses, similar to old spell ranks. Some of the boosts will definitely be easy to feel."

This is good. You will feel an obvious power increase, and you don't get any more action bar bloat. Really looking forward to seeing these changes, especially for Warriors.

Hit and Expertise - Gone!
Dodge and Parry - Gone!
Reforging - Gone!
Fewer items can be enchanted!
Stats on Armour will change based on spec!
Armour will become a good tanking stat again!
Tertiary Bonus Stats! - Lifesteal, Avoidance (AoE Damage Reduc.), Cleave, Speed, No Durability Damage!
Item Squish! - Relative power unchanged, stats dropped by approx. 96%

This list is just... I have no words. Blizzard have finally woken up and smelled that delicious chocolate iced frappuccino in the corner, downed it, and decided to start fixing their broken game. Still many more changes to be made, but this expansion so far is picking me up and giving me a 1st Class Ticket on the Hype Train.

Will edit this with any more cool information that gets brought to my attention, so feel free to leave a comment or add me on Skype (veren1994)!

Exhil MD.

Blizzcon's First Day, Warrior Talents, and my boys at PvP Live.

Well, it happened. Warlords of Draenor is the new WoW Expansion. It's going to spring loads of graphical updates to the character models and the models they showcased so far (Orc Male, Gnome Male/Female, Dwarf Male/Female, Tauren Male) all look fantastic and I can't wait to see the rest.

The new zones, the story, I love it all. Blizzard have made an expansion that I've really fallen in love with. The high-fantasy style that they've embraced here, while it might anger a few of the completely lore-correct people amongst Roleplaying communities, I feel will be able to drive WoW out of the rutt that it got itself into with Mists of Pandaria.

On to the Warrior-Based stuff! New Talents:

Blade Barrier - When you Whirlwind or Thunder Clap, whirling blades continue to spin around you for 30 seconds. These blades to 1000 damage every 1.00 seconds to all enemies within 8 yards. (Passive)

Ravager - 40 yd range, 1m cooldown, 0.879 sec cast -Throw a whirling axe at the target location that inflicts 3000 damage to enemies within 8 yards every 1 sec. Lasts 15 sec.

Extreme Measures -
[Arms and Fury] - Masochism - Deal damage to yourself equal to 20% of your maximum health and gain 30 rage.
[Protection] - Gladiator Stance - Increases all damage dealt by 20%. Also causes Shield Slam to consume Shield Barrier as additional damage, and have an increased chance to critically strike equal to your critical block chance. (Replaces Defensive Stance)

So. Blade Barrier is of course, completely situational, as a tank this will be pretty good for AoE damage. As a DPS it will be good for AoE burst and AoE sustain. No downsides to this one in an AoE situation.

Ravager is along the same lines, completely situational. I guess as a tank, I'd use this to pull a group of adds I know will be spawning somewhere so that they're immediately aggroed on me before I HC Leap onto them or something along those lines. As a DPS this is going to be a bit iffy as it has a cast time and it requires the adds stay in the axe. Blade Barrier superior in this scenario.

Extreme Measures is just... Wow. For a Tank, if this doesn't reduce damage taken while in the Defensive Stance then this is the most useless ability besides maybe... no, nevermind. It needs to replace Berserker Stance for Protection or it's just complete trash. As a DPS, trading 20% of my health for 30 rage seems like a massive trade for what is basically the old Bloodrage, just with no cooldown. Except that the old Bloodrage cost 4% less health. I really think that this could do with some tinkering, and it can't be something to do with single-target damage, else it makes it the clear winner vs Ravager and Blade Barrier.

Lastly, I've been very active on Twitter during Blizzcon supporting the guys at http://pvp-live.com/ - If you PvP at all, or want to start and don't know how to get going, I recommend signing up and getting invovled with this project and the amazing people there. Brief shoutout to Mwi (@notoriousMWI) for getting me involved with it all!

May write a brief write-up tomorrow after further information regarding Warlords of Draenor, but until then, seeya!

Exhil (@DrExhilMD)

PvP-Based Class Revamp

"I think this is only my third post on PvP-Live, but it’s a collection of ideas from myself, friends, a few warriors in the PvE community, and a few in the PvP community. Most of these changes are only with PvP in mind.
First: Talents.
Assuming Blizzard -want- to keep the current Talent system, then there’s definitely changes that need to be made.
Tier 1: Charge
Juggernaut – I honestly think this is fine in it’s current iteration.
Double Time – Needs changing. Suggested change would be something like “Passive: After using Charge, for the next 10 seconds your Charge can be used again to generate an extra 10 Rage but will not stun the target.
Warbringer – Needs to return to being a knockdown (opinion up for discussion).
Tier 2: Self-Healing
Unsure about this tier to be honest, though if they want every talent choice to be an option, then they need to buff Impending Victory somehow (Up for discussion).
Tier 3: Shouts
Piercing Howl needs to be baseline and it’s replacement needs to be some kind of CC. In the current metagame where it feels like it’s just “Pile CC on a healer to force trinket, pile more CC on to force defensives, last lot of CC and burst a DPS” then Warriors need a more viable CC option than just -Talented- stuns, and 1 Fear.
Tier 4: Cooldowns
Here’s where any arguments are going to pop up. I think this Tier of talents is fine. Apart from Dragon Roar. I would much rather Dragon Roar be something along the lines of:
“Roar ferociously, causing X (+ Y% of Attack power) damage to the target and disorientating enemies within 8 yards for Z sec. Dragon Roar is always a critical strike and ignores all armor on the target.”
Tier 5: Utility
Vigilance had some utility, but with the change to it basically being a Pain Suppression and not a HoS, it lost the power to break the Warrior out of Sheep/Hex/Fear. Still good, just not as good in my opinion.
Mass-Reflect I think is fine, if it’s deemed “Too OP” at some point, consider making it replace SR.
Safeguard is now only an option, as the Root-Break is built in to Intervene as standard, so you’d pick it for the burst-negation, i.e. if your healer was going to get swapped hard, you could Safeguard to maybe block a Deep Freeze, and they still have 20% damage reduction for the following Ice Lance spam.
Tier 6: MOAR COOLDOWNS
There’s not a lot to be changed here to be honest (again, opinion). Avatar breaks roots (utility, though who seriously uses this as a root breaker?) and can be stacked with Reck/Skull Banner. Bloodbath has an amazingly short cooldown and has a slow, but is a pressure CD, not burst, and Storm bolt is…well… Only good if you don’t have a ranged stun. It’s trash damage, and if you already have a stun on your team you may as well roll with that, though Shockwave/Stormbolt is useful in 2v2, where you can Stormbolt one, Shockwave the other, and your partner can CC the first out of the SB or off a trinket.
Secondly: Rage.
Ah Rage. A Warrior’s best friend… and his worst nightmare. Since launch, the hardest resource to balance because it’s either too good or too bad. You never have enough when you need it, and you always have too much when you can’t do anything with it. Total revamp needed with the Warrior resource system. Even if Rage would steadily build while in-combat, and every time it hit a milestone (15-20 Rage), you gained the use of Raging Blow/Slam, which would be your nukes. Similar to how Destruction works, build Embers, pop CDs, unleash Chaos Bolts on the universe. Warriors could build rage to fill… Enrage Charges?… And then when damage needs to come, you pop CDs and unleash your vengeance on the target. This brings me nicely on to the third (and for now, last) topic I’d like to put forward:
Colossus Smash.
For f*cks sake Blizzard. Make this either:
A) Lower CD
B) Can’t be parried/dodged.
Because having a ridiculous amount of damage negated simply because the person, by chance, parries a (technically) DPS cooldown when they have no defensives (Evasion, Deterrence, DbtS) active, is quite frankly ridiculous. make it cost 10 Rage, but dear lords stop it being parried or dodged.
Feel free to discuss anything I’ve suggested here in the comments, hopefully a few of you are a bit more outspoken than me on the forums/twitter and can possibly suggest a few of these to Mr Street et al.
Thanks for reading!
Exhil"

Continue the discussion here or on:

http://pvp-live.com/forums/topic/class-revamp-warriors/

Life on Alliance Side... And Other Things.

I seem to have neglected my blog a bit. That said, been playing a myriad of other games recently (as I've not been raiding) and so haven't had much to talk about on the WoW front. So I'll summarise a few things that, in my opinion, the game needs to change pretty damn quick.

First off: Racials.

I knew that the Human Racial was overpowered in PvP, due to the fact it allows you to run with 2 DPS trinkets but OH MY GOD is it stupid. My first battleground as a Human and it was Strand of the Ancients. Without touching the Demos I matched my damage done that I normally did on Hordeside. The next BG was also Strand of the Ancients, where I actually hit the Demos. I did nearly 10 MILLION more damage done than what I'd do on Hordeside, simply due to my ridiculous burst with double trinket procs up.

As an idea, instead of removing the Human Racial, just make it available to -all- races, and remove the PvP "Get-out-of-shit" trinket. That way:
A) You're not forced into playing Human for competitive Alliance-Side PvP.
B) Every non-human race stops complaining about it being overpowered.

Secondly: The State of Class Balance.

Now I know that there's never going to be a balance, Class A will always beat Class B. Class C isn't even viable any more and Class D is going to be FoTM after the buffs. This is the same for PvE as it is for PvP. This expansion, there has never been a point where a Warlock in your Raid was a bad thing. There's never been a point where a Priests were bad in Arena. Blizzard tries to balance Utility, Mobility, and Damage. For some classes, you can not trade damage for Mobility. For example, I would quite happily trade the Double Time talent for Warriors for a built-in Bull Rush glyph (+35 Rage to charge).

Obviously a lot of my expertise on a Warrior is through PvE. I'm not claiming to be the next Mystic or anything in PvP. But I know when something is broken, and when something is fine. And it really pains me when my class gets nerfed, simply because people can't handle the damage it can put out when -every- possible buff I could have happens to be up. That "stars align" moment gets my class gutted, and it's completely unfair. Or when something like the whole "Second Wind is OP" argument came up originally.

Lastly: Gearing Your Character

Zellviren has wrote numerous blog posts about the downfall of the 5-Man dungeon, and how it's completely lost it's place this expansion. My pet peeve is a different aspect of the game. As fun as it is, Flex really shot itself in the foot. To quote a friend of mine:

"Write about how much of a pisstake it is that Blizzard adds a scaling boss difficulty for SoO, yet the gear doesn't reflect that at all. I can get my BiS gear from the first 5 bosses and only a trinket from Garrosh, yet the first bosses are complete and utter piss compared to the second half of the raid."

 That sums it up quite perfectly, I'd say. He, as a warlock, can get -all- the gear he needs from the first 5 bosses. On Normal mode. Why does he even need to do any of the Flex Quarters that aren't Downfall (P4)? Loot tables, and where loot is for every class, could have definitely been distributed a tonne better. Admittedly better than Throne of Thunder (BiS Caster Dagger is a -random- drop from bosses), but still feels like they completely ignored where loot should be.

I'll try to gather some more thoughts, perhaps PvP a bit more to get a grasp on where things are on that front, but I should be posting a bit more often now.

Thanks for reading!

Teren/Exhil

I Made An Alliance Character!... Wait...

So, after some (read: not a lot) of convincing from an ex-Raid Leader (and since girlfriend), I made a few characters on  Aerie Peak and swapped my Mage over to carry some heirlooms over with me. Needless to say we ended up making a guild there for friends/family/bads so if you're tempted to reroll a new character, feel free to come join us!

Current Levelling Progress on AP:

Mage - 90
Rogue - 25
Warlock - 28
Warrior - 1
Priest - 1
Hunter -1
Monk -1
Death Knight -1
Paladin - 1
Druid -1
Shaman -1

Hopefully I can grind out a few 90s, and if people are interested we can maybe get some thing going in the raiding scene!

Sad Endings and New Beginnings

It brings me great pain to announce that I left The Undecided today.

During my time there (just over a year), I had some of the most fun I've ever had in WoW, met some of my best friends, met my partner,  and gained a family I never knew I wanted. I've raided 10m and 25m with them, Normal Modes, Heroic Modes and even full-derp LFRs. It was, and always shall be, a home for me, should I need it. However due to various real-life constraints, University, a more active social life, high blood pressure and a genetically irritable nature, my brief tenure in 25m seems to be at an end.

I've chosen to leave all my alts in TU apart from my Warrior, who is now residing in a Trial Member spot in Orb of Souls, a guild I was in on my Deathknight at the start of Cataclysm for a brief period of time. They're a great bunch of guys and I hope they'll enjoy having me back around again, even if only a few remember me.

Raiding 10m again will be a strange experience, but I can only hope that my stress levels drop enough to maybe look at jumping into a larger raid in the future.

Seeyas!

Terentula

More Trinket Analysis

So now that I have a small period of downtime I can write a bit more detail on the possible trinkets for use by Str Users in Patch 5.4. These are the options, and they're pretty... odd. Lets look at them one at a time.

Trinket 1: Skeer's Bloodsoaked Talisman

This trinket seems the pretty much go-to trinket for Warriors, Passive +1959 STR and a boost to crit on proc. The proc being the new RPPM. Oh lovely. Unless you've been living under a rock while playing Warrior, you'll have noticed that RPPM isn't our best friend. We got a mediocre boost from it while every other class got a very sizable boost from it. However, now that RPPM has been changed to not scale with Haste, Warriors can at least get some use out of them. This Trinket is going to be a staple for Warriors. Leaving one slot left open for one of the remaining 3. Let's start with:

Trinket 2: Fusion-Fire Core

This trinket is going to be -very- situational, not to mention that the actual Cleave effect has a radius that's smaller than a dinner plate. This is definitely the dummy trinket for the tier, although may get some use on adds, or perhaps on fights like Spoils of Pandaria.

Trinket 3: Thok's Tail Tip

Thiiiiiis looks tasty. ICD Proc of nearly 12k Str for 20s, 115s CD. Amplification passive, increasing our Crit Damage, Haste, and Mastery by 7%. On the surface this trinket looks very good, though due to Fury not needing Haste at all, I have a feeling it would be of more use on an Arms warrior, who needs all three secondary stats. I'll probably use this trinket when/if I'm playing Arms, though for Fury, my second trinket choice will be:

Trinket 4: Evil Eye of Galakras

The Proc on this trinket is exactly the same, however lasts 10s less, and has less than half the CD, thus giving it more uptime over the course of a fight. The CD Reduction scales with the iLevel of the trinket itself, up to a 49% Reduction from the Heroic Warforged 2/2 version. The abilities the Trinket reduces in CD are as follows:

Die By the Sword
Recklessness
Shield Wall
T60 Talent (Bladestorm, Shockwave, Dragon Roar)
T90 Talent (Avatar, Bloodbath, Stormbolt)
No Observable 6th Ability Yet.

Recklessness being reduced in CD means obviously it's not going to Sync with Skull Banner properly, however the CD reduction for the Talents I believe (Not Yet Tested) will more than make up for it. Also having DBtS and SW on lower cooldowns provides much greater defensive power, especially when, if you need to soak some massive ability, a glyphed shield wall (60% Dmg Reduc, 5m CD) will get dropped to a 2.5m CD, but stay at 60%, that's amazingly powerful in the right places.

So my main priority on trinket acquisition is going to be:

Skeer's > Evil Eye/Tail Tip > Fusion-Fire Core

If anyone has any differing opinions or wishes to discuss any details of these trinkets with me, feel free to leave a comment below or if you play on the EU Servers, my BattleTag is Teren#2551

Teren

Back in the UK - Arms Warriors

So now that I'm back in the UK I can get back to writing more blog posts, and what better way to start them off than with some fun news.

As you can see by the picture above, that's a Sim I ran of my warrior with 10k iterations not 5 minutes ago, doing nearly 190k dps as an Arms Warrior. On Tuesday I ranked 7th  as Arms Warrior on Megaera with 213k DPS. Arms' situation seems a lot less grim than I thought it was.

Of course some things still need to be changed, Overpower still needs a buff/change, Mortal Strike needs to feel more like a -key- ability, as of late I feel that I can ignore MS to get more Slams into my CS window, rage permitting.

If you're sat here wondering about the stats for that sim. They are as follows:

8.13% Hit
7.51% Expertise
24046 Strength
36.23% Critical Strike
19.72% Melee Haste (31.69% Swing Speed)
43.54% Mastery

So nowhere near optimal, would rather shift that hit away, and after some trinket simulation using Spark of Zandalar + Primordius' Talisman of Rage, I think I'm going to swap to those when they drop.

That's all for now, but I'll be updating this more now that I'm back at a computer almost 24/7.

Terentula - Hunting Chocolate Dinosaurs since May 19, 2013.

Holidays and Chop Chop Carnage with Arms

Well, I'm currently writing this from the desk of a guildy as they had a PC built for me so that I could still raid from a lovely little town in Sweden while i'm here for all 36 days of my holiday. Just a quick update on things while I have some downtime before LFR.

In regards to Arms Warriors at this current point in time:

I respecced to Arms to see if it was any fun, regardless of the damage, and I have to admit that even if the Arms buff doesn't match Fury's dps, I'll probably still go arms anyway. The spec feels so fluid, the cleave is awesome, there's big numbers all over my screen, it's fantastic.

In regards to current raiding with the fantastic community in The Undecided:

We blasted down Jin'Rohk on 25m HC and managed to get Horridon onto the third door after a few tries so we were all pretty hyped about that, but it's a bit difficult doing it without everyone at least fully normal geared.

Just as I'm writing this I finally got my last Titan Runestone so now I can get my legendary cape, finally! Though whether to get the DPS one or the Tanking one is a hard choice.

Anyway, will be back to updating this more regularly when I get back to the UK. As for now, keep it real and seeya!

So... This Trinket...

So this trinket got changed slightly and all of the abilities now reduced are:

Recklessness
Skull Banner
Die By The Sword
Shield Wall
Rallying Cry
Shattering Throw

The change to have Skull banner on there is somewhat better, bringing Reck and Skull Banner down to a 2.5m CD currently on PTR, so the tooltip is a bit buggy perhaps. But it at least means that this trinket is a bigger DPS gain for your raid than it is for you.

I already feel like a walking Skull Banner as it is due to Warrior damage being complete pants in this tier of content. To fully understand this, I'll show you the most recent parses just for Melee DPS in 25m HC Throne of Thunder:

If you play warrior as DPS in a 25m, you're either -really- good, or you're there for a Skull Banner. Arms Warrior is getting a decent buff and with higher iLevel might get up to "average" dps. However with that, all of the DPS specs that use agility will scale more and more out of control as they get more out of Agility than Strength-users get out of Strength.

Intellect gives Spell Power and Spell Critical Strike

Agility gives Attack Power, Critical Strike and Dodge

Strength gives Attack Power and Parry.

Obvious problem is obvious.

If this could be changed in 6.0 so that Strength gave Critical Strike as well, that would close the gap a bit, though you may as well revamp Warriors, DKs and Ret Paladins which would allow Strength to not give crit and still be just as good for Strength classes as Agility is for Agility users.

New Trinkets and Warrior Buffs....

Looking at the buffs that they're making to Arms Warrior, I may contemplate playing it again in PvE. I like the spec, I just don't like the damage it does, and considering that Warriors are below average in terms of damage output, I think arms needs to at least be kicked up to be on-par with Fury, if not better. More Slam damage is awesome, the passive cleave that's being added in will be a good boost to it's 2-3 target damage, and the AoE increase from the Blood and Thunder change will be awesome.

Protection Warriors needed some love too, and the addition of Riposte in combination with the new style of Enrage for Prot may swap around stat priorities a bit. In case you don't know how Prot currently works, they become Enraged by critically blocking, which makes Mastery their best DPS stat. With the new changes, you'll become enraged by critically blocking OR by critting with Shield Slam or Devastate, Riposte will serve to increase this as whenever you parry or dodge and attack, 50% of your combined Dodge and Parry PERCENTAGE will be given to you as Critical Strike PERCENTAGE, ratings are ignored. This will probably be giving you around 15-20% bonus Crit Chance (assuming you're in full ToT normal [iLevel 522] gear).

Now, these new trinkets that got datamined look pretty decent, however there's a major flaw in the one that made my jaw drop:

http://ptr.wowhead.com/item=102298

This is the trinket in question, and the abilities it reduces the CD on are: Shield Wall, Rallying Cry, Shattering Throw and Recklessness.

Shield Wall and Rallying Cry are purely utility based, and for damage purposes are of no use at all. Shattering Throw on a 5 minute cooldown is pretty long, but it is a raidwide 20% armour removal, and so lowering the CD to 3m to line up with everything else would be the only decent change.

Now the reduction in CD of Recklessness is actually BAD. It drops Reck to a 1m 50s CD, which means It lines up with NO COOLDOWNS WE HAVE. Bloodbath will be on CD for another 10 seconds, you used CS 10 seconds ago (assuming use on CD), Skull Banner (and Avatar, if you run with that) will be up in another minute and 10 seconds. It is of absolutely no use at all as there are other trinkets with the +Str Proc. the trinkets I'll be using until maths dictates otherwise are these two:

http://ptr.wowhead.com/item=102308

http://ptr.wowhead.com/item=102305

Which will passively grant me:

+1959 Strength
+13% Critical Strike Damage, Mastery and Haste (Scales your current values up, not a flat addition)

And the combined equip effects will give:

Your melee attacks have a chance to trigger Cruelty for 20 seconds. While Cruelty is active, you gain 1175 Critical Strike from every melee attack, stacking up to 20 times
Your melee attacks have a chance to grant you 11759 Strength for 10 seconds.

So if we add up everything and assume perfect conditions with all procs active, as a warrior you will have:

+14759 Strength (Trinket + 2xDancing Steel)
+23500 Critical Strike (Nearly 45% Critical Strike)

Not sure about you guys, but I can see Fury damage being pretty damn good.

BETTER NERF WARRIORS.

Single-Minded Fury vs Titan's Grip vs Arms - Personal Experience

A few guildies had a conversation about this earlier and I thought I'd make a blog post about it. How thoughtful of me. So, down to business. What's the basic differences?

Single Minded Fury:
Requires Two One-Handed Weapons
Increases all damage you deal by 35%, and increases off-hand damage by an additional 35%.

Titan's Grip:
Requires Two Two-Handed Weapons
Allows you to equip Two Handed weapons in your off-hand. Does not work with Polearms and Staves.

Basically, SMF gets the damage buff due to lack of weapon damage and stats, they're not 2H weapons after all. What this basically does from my experience is drain your BT damage, and make everything else hit like a truck. I've seen some 600k Executes as SMF which I don't think I'd ever hit as TG unless I was very lucky, though for the most part Blizzard has done a good job of balancing the two.

However, TG makes up for this with some pretty insane AoE Damage through Whirlwind and Meat Cleaver making massive-stat Raging Blows hit 5 targets every few seconds. Despite the fact that SMF gets the damage boost, TG still gets higher AoE damage, assuming equal levels of gear.

Honestly I prefer SMF for playstyle, it feels like it has a lot smoother Rage generation and it makes it easier for me to pool for burst, the Execute crits are hilarious when they crop up, and it's always nice to be able to hit big with everything else, even if BT hits like a wet noodle...

...On the other hand, who can resist cleaving a boss in half with two Two-Handed weapons?

Trinket Questions, As They've Cropped Up...

As I'm writing this I'm actually in the middle of a discussion with one of the friendly warriors on MMO-Champion's Warrior Sub-Forum and I'm getting a bit of new information that I didn't quite think of originally.

As far as Trinkets are going right now, the BiS List is currently:

New BIS Trinkets:
1: H Fabled Feathers of Ji-kun (0.9k above #2)
2: H Gaze of the Twins
3: N Fabled Feathers of Ji-kun
4: H Primordius's rage
5: N Gaze of the Twins
6: N Primordius's Rage
7: H Spark of Zandalar
8: H Lei Shen's Final Orders 2/2
9: Brutal Talisman of the Shado-pan - Only if you can handle the expertise.
10: LFR Fabled Feathers of Ji-kun
11: N Spark of Zandalar
12: H Lei Shen's Final Orders 0/2 (And 1/2)

This has helped clear a lot of things up with me and my maths, and I know I'll be sending this list to the Warriors in my guild.

'Til next time!

/teren

The Swap to 25M Raiding - We Decided... Finally.

So, as I write this, it's pretty damn dark outside, but I'm in a pretty good mood. The Undecided recently merged with another 10M guild on Argent Dawn in a joint effort to form a good, stable 25M team for raiding. Everything was in place for our first day of raiding... And we oneshot four out of the five first bosses.

That was unexpected to say the least, but it does highlight a few key issues with Throne of Thunder:

1) Difficulty - Obviously

The fact that 25M for this tier is so easy is quite... underwhelming. I was expecting fights that bite back compared to 10M, where bosses would just decide that they'd had enough of the tank, kill them, and move on. The only fight we struggled on initially was Tortos, which... Yea you get the idea.

2) Thunderforged Items

I'd heard rumours that the drop rates for Thunderforged items were ridiculous, a friend that raids 25m cleared 12/12 in one week and said they had 5 items TOTAL that weren't Thunderforged. So far I believe we've had 3 TF items, from 6 bosses. So much for "Wanting to reward 25-Man raiders for the logisitcal difficulties they have to overcome".

There are more issues I could come up with, preferably when I'm not as tired, but for now I'll try to stick to the more positive side of things, which... well....

WE'RE RAIDING ToT 25!

It's a blast raiding with 24 other people and smashing bosses in numbers that feel more appropriate, and I wouldn't want to do it with any other group of fantastic people.

When it's time to party, The Undecided party hard.

Teren

Doctor's Report: Horridon

Looking at Horridon now, he seems a poor shadow of what the boss once was. The first time we came up against Horridon was pre-nerf, and we grinded ourselves on perfecting and getting down each door. Due to our healing composition, the poison door was particularly annoying if we let -any- of the volleys get through, and so we had to pay attention a lot just to get past the second door without too many stacks. Then the disease from the third door would start stacking and... yeah you get the idea.

So we finally got down Horridon after I think ten or so tries, and this felt fantastic. We were glad that this damn boss went down and now we can focus on Council. Then the first wave of nerfs rolled over Horridon's arena...

We went into the fight the next reset, wondering how much the fight had changed. We then proceeded to oneshot a boss that we had spent ~5 hours progressing on originally. No setup changes, no immense gear difference. One shot, one kill.

This, I believe, is due to a quite common disease called Wrathofthelichkingitis. This is a disease that affects the brain, where people are used to bosses falling over and they get their free epics, so when they don't get free loot from early bosses they cry a bit on the forums and big old Uncle Blizz sorts them out. They move on then, probably to the next boss to whine about that instead.

Unfortunately, the nerfs didn't quite stop there. I'll list them all (quoted directly from WoWPedia's page on Horridon)

• Hotfix (2013-04-10): "
  • Reduced the health of Farraki Wastewalkers, Gurubashi Venom priests, Drakkari Frozen Warlords, and Amani Warbears in the Horridon encounter by 15% in 10-player Normal difficulty.
  • Drakkari Frozen Warlord now deals less damage with Mortal Strike in 10-player Normal difficulty.
  • Risen Drakkari Champions and Warriors now deals less damage with Deadly Plague in 10-player Normal difficulty."
• Hotfix (2013-03-12): "Reduced the health of adds in the Horridon encounter by 15% for 10-player normal mode and 10% for 25-player normal mode."
•  Patch 5.2.0 (2013-03-05): Added.

These changes were completely unnecessary. In the space of  7 days the adds of this fight were rendered a minor inconvenience by most of our raid team. We could destroy all of the adds with little trouble, and they weren't doing enough damage to make our healers panic even once. I don't think I ever used any defensives on the adds themselves after that.

Sadly, this change makes Horridon one of the easiest fights in the instance now, compared to the immensely difficult (compared to Jin'rohk) fight that he was. I hope Blizzard sorts out this problem of designing bosses in  the future, because it really does cut deep when a fight goes from a challenge that you savour for the rest of the reset, to free loot.

/terentw

You have received loot: [Confidence Booster] - A Quick Look At Jin'rohk The Breaker

So, while tabbed out of WoW while waiting for Oondasta to spawn, I thought I'd take a look and see what good points and bad points I can pull out of Jin'rohk, the first boss in Throne of Thunder, to anyone that might be intimidated by stepping foot into the world of current raiding content.

Jin'rohk is a very interesting fight, requiring some quick thinking on occasion, but for the most part is a very good boss for raising confidence. Why, you might ask? Part of his tactics require you to stand in a gigantic puddle of win and deliver massive amounts of damage into the boss' face at quite regular intervals.Nothing wrong with this of course, it's always fun to see 300k burst from your class, but at the same time I feel that this is the main flaw with the fight.

See, Horridon (which I'll cover in the future) is a much harder fight than Jin'rohk. Or at least was, pre-nerf. And so gaining this sense of "I just crapped damage all over that boss, lets go nuke the next one!" is a bad thing. People will assume their damage is more than adequate and proceed to have a hard time getting through certain parts of the Horridon fight, never mind the bridge trash mobs.

So if you're a new raider, or perhaps your guild is a tad behind the times and is only just setting foot in here, keep in mind that the numbers on your Recount/Skada/Tinydps are going to be 1.5x-2x larger than what you're used to seeing, and that's perfectly normal. Unfortunately, those aren't -your- numbers, and as such you should take this fight with a pinch of salt if you're a DPS.

As a tank it's very simple, much like the other fights in this raid. Tankswap when you get the debuff... What's new?

As for healing, I think the only major part to worry about is the Lightning Storms, at which point healers should always have a major cooldown (Tranq, Spirit Shell, PW:B, etc) to cover this. It's perfectly doable with 3 cooldowns.

That'll do for Jin'rohk. I'll probably get around to writing one for Horridon while in an LFR queue at some point...


Or even maybe one for the bridge trash. ;)

/terentw

Boss Difficulty in the Throne of Thunder.

This is just a brief analysis of how I view the fights 1-11 in Throne of Thunder 10M Normal, from a Protection Warrior's perspective (iLevel 519, for gear reference):

Jin'Rohk the Breaker - Interesting mechanic for tank swaps, making it so that bad tanks punish the entire raid, bit of a "free loot" boss in my honest opinion. From a loot perspective however, good weapon considering current optimal stats for active mitigation, with a socket for straight +Stam to boot. Yum.

Horridon - One of my favourite fights in the instance, though I only really panicked when I got 15+ stacks of the Triple puncture debuff and lucky blocks saved me from taking ~1m damage straight to the face. Quite easily stomped when add tanking due to Disrupting Shout for any AoE interrupts and Mocking Banner to make sure any stragglers don't decide to wander off and attack dps.

Council of Elders - I like the fight, but felt a bit... reheated to me. Never been a massive fan of Council fights, but I think the Dark Power energy bar that they get adds an interesting mechanic. Biggest failing is the "zergable" nature of the fight, stack the Frost King, Sul, and Mar'li on top of each other and nuke Sul while cleaving the other two is a tactic that unfortunately works.

Tortos - In my honest opinion, hardest boss out of the first 11. The RNG factor of turtles knocking dps up into the air or not being able to kick because of this is very annoying. Not to mention as soon as the bats start meleeing a target that isn't a tank, they turn to mush pretty damn quickly. Not to mention that actually tanking the adds through the raid-wide stun almost guarantees a tank death unless cooldowns were in place or the adds were CC'd somehow.

Megaera - Second favourite fight in the instance, just in front of Horridon. Always been a fan of Hydra-style creatures so to see Cloud Serpents mutilated to create this monstrosity of a boss is awesome to see. Again, the LFR tactic of GRGRGRG for a kill order is unfortunately the most viable, but at least the tanks then have to be on their toes for the insane damage the blue head throws at you with 120% damage done and 120% increased attack speed.

Ji-Kun - I hate this boss. You stand still and hit a bird-shaped target dummy for 6 minutes. It's boring as hell to tank, I'll move on.

Durumu - Fun fight for healers I can imagine, with the stacking healing debuff on tanks, as well as the raid damage from the eye beams. AND OH MY GODS THE MAZE. I actually find it easier to Alt-Z my UI away and run the maze with no UI visible, but I'm very comfy with where my damage abilities are, and when my defensive/offensive CDs will be up. Very fun fight, very original.

Primordius - Or as we in The Undecided call it, LootMoredius. Not sure what the plan was for this fight, but it is easily my favourite in the instance. The first time we attempted this, I had about 50% knowledge of what to do from memory from beta testing the instance. We managed to kill the boss on the first try with only one death. As easy as it is, it's my favourite fight for the childish reason of: I MUTATE INTO A MASSIVE F*CKING LIZARD MAN! WHAT'S NOT TO LIKE?

Iron Qon - Fun fight, though some of it seems a bit pointless. Like the tornadoes doing more damage, on top of the AoE and 50% healing reduction in the air phase. After asking my co-tank (Stealthduck@Argent Dawn) what he thought of it, as I couldn't form a decent opinion, he said that it was an "okay" fight, where tanks are overlooked a lot, which in his opinion happens a lot.

Twin Consorts - Loot Consorts, killed on first try using no buffs. Thanks Blizz. Though I very much like the Beasts of Nightmare mechanic and how only tanks can deal with it. Needs to be harder I think.


Thanks for taking the time to read this, I'll be sure to post my opinions on the Lei Shen fight after he's down and before we progress on to Heroic Jin'Rohk!

Teren