5 Steps to Having the Most Fun in WoW

First I would like to introduce myself.  My name is William Tyler aka Billtripod, my main’s name is Kohrin who is a 70 human warrior.  I’m married, have a newborn baby, work full time and go to college.  I play WoW casually, but still want to compete in PvP/Arena as well as do the occasional raid. As many of you already know all of this is close to impossible.  My goal here as a new member to the Zuggaming team is to help casual players accomplish hardcore-Esq goals and achievements. So lets begin with my top 5 ways to be an effective member of WoW society and the real society too!

Specialize

Every WoW player wants to kill Illidan, be a 2400 rating arena team and have 10000000 Gold.  Specialize in PvP or PvE, unless you enjoy just doing the entry level things on both sides.

Stay positive

Don’t ever get discouraged at a 0-100 arena win/loss ratio or being bottom of the DPS meter in a raid. It may take you a little time, but you have to eventually get better, and most importantly the people beating you most likely doesn’t sleep, eat, or see sunlight(no offense Zug lol).

Read forums

When in doubt of your own ability, before rerolling every class in the game out of frustation, read the forums.  95% of the time most casual players are misusing some core ability or missing them entirely.  Reading forum posts is almost as effective as playing especially when you read something you didn’t know.

Set goals

Players who aimlessly wonder through the game never get anywhere.  The guys with the purples, nether drake, and 10000 gold didn’t get it in a day (…ie. the guys like Zuggy!).  Is a crazy mount, gear or gold more important?  Find which is most important to you and set goals on how to  their.  Some goals are synonymous with others.  If a player wants a mount then they should read forums about making gold and then in the end they have 5k gold and a new mount.

Have fun

Many people I know including my best friends and myself try to turn WoW into a chore or grind to something. Ultimately if you have all the gear in the game and you hate the game then maybe you should look at whats fun and change your direction. Whether your winning or losing, if your having a good time who cares if you have Season 4 and pwning n00bs?

I hope this initial post gives someone something useful.  In post to comes I hope to cover very speciafically each point covered above and every point in between.  Please comment/critique as much as possible. I am new to this and would love any advice or feedback

Thanks

-Bill Tripod-

Late Night Blue Posts - WotLK Class Changes and Boss Armor

Upcoming Frost Changes

We have concerns about how bursty dps has become in PvP. On the other hand, we’re pretty happy with mage dps in PvE so we want to take care not to hurt it.

For example, we discussed shifting some of Arcane’s damage between Arcane Blast and Arcane Barrage, but that actually does hurt one of Arcane’s PvE advantages over Fire — namely to be able to move around while doing some instant spells.

In the case of Frost, however, we have become concerned that it’s too easy to blow opponents up too quickly. Two of the culprits here are instant, uninterruptible Fireballs and Deep Freeze.

We are changing Brain Freeze to only proc off of Frost spells that can chill. Specifically, this limits the tactic of trying to fish for procs with Ice Lance. Ice Lance gets used a lot more in PvP, so we don’t think this will hurt Frost as much in PvE.

Secondly, Cold as Ice no longer reduces the cooldown on Deep Freeze. Deep Freeze is an (ahem) cool spell and we don’t want to nerf it too much, but you must admit that the poor frozen shmuck can endure a lot of damage while he is locked up.

Upcoming Warlock DPS Changes

We have finished a fairly comprehensive look at the dps of various classes and specs and are concerned that warlock dps isn’t quite where it should be. It’s not abysmal by any means, but we think it should be a little higher.

To give warlocks a little extra nudge in PvP, we increased Soul Link up to 20% from 15%. You may already have this change.

In PvE, overall, we just think a lot of classes benefitted from getting the warlock buffs a little more than the locks benefited from getting everyone else’s buffs. So we decided to just buff lock damage across the board (which will also help in PvP somewhat). Rather than change damage and coefficients of a lot of different ranks of spells, we just inflated talents that we were almost certain you’d already have. Shadow Mastery, Demonic Tactics and Emberstorm were all increased by 1% per rank for 5% total.

Let us know how that feels. The changes should go live before Nov 13.

Recent Fury Changes

As I posted recently in the hunter forums, we increased the armor on level 83 raid bosses by 10%. This will be a nerf to warrior dps.

In the case of Arms and Protection, we don’t think any adjustment is necessary at this time. Arms is doing very competitive dps, while Fury has fallen behind. We experimented with lowering the proc chance of Sudden Death, from where Arms gets a lot of its damage, but weren’t happy with the result and ultimately decided to buff Fury instead.

First, we increased the percentage of AP that contributes to Bloodthirst from 45% to 50%.

Second, we reduced the hit penalty on special attacks on Titan’s Grip from -12% to -5%.

As I have said before, we have been somewhat reluctant to give Titan’s Grip such a huge buff. It is now likely more powerful than several other talents in the tree and risks being the 51-point talent to which all other classes compare their 51-point talent. Nevertheless, we feel it was the right change to make.

When a Fury warrior missed a Slam or Bloodthirst on a boss, they ended up building up a lot of extra rage that couldn’t be spent fast enough. I understand some players suggested an additional attack for Fury, and that is something we may still consider when we see players hit 80 and start experimenting more with the build. But it would be a very big change that involved touching talent trees and glyphs, as well as a lot of time necessary to iterate on the right values. The Titan’s Grip change by contrast was a simple one, and judging by the number of players who have asked for it throughout beta, one that will be welcomed by the community.

Upcoming Hunter Changes

As I have suggested a few times, we are concerned that hunters of all 3 specs are doing damage that is clearly superior to other classes. While we’re trying to achieve closer parity among specs of all classes with regard to dps, and we want to particularly make sure that hunters, rogues, mages and locks are not left behind, we do think the hunters are too far ahead, particularly at 80, in good gear, when raid-buffed.

However, we have also tried to give hunters a substantial survivability boost in PvP and we don’t want to do anything that hurts them too much in PvP.

So here are changes you will most likely see soon:

1) Ranged attacks no longer benefit from the haste effects of Windfury Totem and Improved Icy Talons. This is a nerf to hunter white damage.

2) We are also improving the armor on level 83 raid bosses by 10%. This will be a nerf to the dps of any class that does physical damage. For classes that would slide behind with such a change, we’ll take steps to adjust them — though it probably isn’t as many as you think. The raid buff stacking overhaul was very beneficial to melee (and hunters). Sunder / Expose Armor alone can be a 20%+ dps increase, which is why we decided to attack the problem from this angle.

3) Now the armor change won’t affect PvP at all and the haste buff change will only have a marginal affect in BGs and only in Arena teams that include certain comps. However, in order to make sure we didn’t nerf hunters too much, we made two changes to Disengage. First, its cooldown dropped to 25 sec (from 30) which can be talented to 16. Second, it no longer requires a target, but does require you to be in combat. Now if someone closes to melee, you can leap back without having to select them first. We require you to be in combat though so we don’t see a lot of hunters bouncing around IF / Org or using it like Blink to goofily speed up travel.

Boss Armor Change

As I have posted a couple of times recently, we decided to raise the armor of level 83 raid bosses by 10% to correct for some dps difference between casters and melee + hunters. I wanted to address the issue head on with the rogues.

We have done a lot of testing recently, and concluded that even with this change, Assassination rogues are likely the top dps spec in the game against single bosses that don’t move around a lot (like Patchwerk). This isn’t a bad place for them to be. They pay a small price both for being melee (where more damage tends to occur) and for lacking the ability to respec into a non-damage build. We don’t think they will be as far above hybrids as they have been before — as I’ve posted before, it’s very important that hybrid classes do higher dps now that their buffs do not stack.

Combat builds, especially swords, is competitive but probably behind Assassination. This is something we’d like to address, especially if it turns out to be a major difference between the specs. Additional armor does hurt Combat, but also remember it’s just raid bosses and not other players (or trash or heroic bosses).

Subtelty, sadly, is just much harder to test since so much of their damage relies on other players. Our preliminary evidence is that they generate plenty of combo points from Honor Among Thieves, but this might mean their personal dps when not in a group suffers. This is something we’re still testing.

I will add that some players have wondered if Honor Among Thieves is bugged since the cp can occur more often than 1 sec. In this case, the tooltip is just unclear. When Jimmy the Shaman crits, he cannnot “send you” a combo point more often than 1 per sec. But if you have lots of players critting all the time, you can build them up quickly. So Honor is (here it comes) working as intended.

WotLK Warrior Changes - Build 9038

All in all very minor changes, not unlike the other class changes for beta build 9038. I like the change to sudden death, which should certainly help to further solidify the talent as a key choice for arms warriors. The rage kick back will really improve its utility in arena, as dropping to zero rage without an assured killed is rarely a worthwhile.

More than anything I’m very excited to see the final result of all these protection buffs, specifically from a PvP view. The increase in taunt rage from 5 to 20 yards should really make for some interesting arena and world PvP situations. I haven’t heard any major feedback regarding protecting PvP specs, but theoretically it looks like it may be a viable solution for more defensively oriented warriors.

Warrior

Arms

• Strength of Arms - Increases your total Strength and Stamina by 2/4% and your Expertise by 2/4.
• Sudden Death - In addition, you keep 3/7/10 rage after using Execute, was added to the description.

Fury

• Unending Fury - Increases the damage done by your Slam, Whirlwind and Bloodthirst abilities by 2/4/6/8/10%. Changed from reducing rage cost.
• Execute - All ranks had a slight damage increase. Max rank: Attempt to finish off a wounded foe, causing [1456.0 + AP * 0.2] damage. Up from [1266.0 + AP * 0.2].

Protection

• Taunt - Now has a 20 yard range. Up from 5.

WotLK Warrior Developer Q & A

It’s posts like this that really prove to me time and time again that World of Warcraft is the greatest MMO currently on the market. Ghostcrawler recently made a massive post answering warrior concerns across the spectrum. A+ job from Ghostcrawler, I hope we see more player / developer interaction like this in the future for other class concerns. (note: these questions were posed by warriors currently playing the wotlk beta)

Why does bladestorm have a self-CC element? Why doesn’t it remove CC, stuns, snares or roots on use? Will this be reconsidered?
It does great dps. It would be too good if you could do other stuff too and too good if you could Intercept someone down. We might reconsider the CC issue, but really that’s the kind of thing to pop out of PvP testing.

Are there any plans to make the improved charge and improved heroic strike talents not bad? Less bad?
We buffed Imp Charge recently. Imp Heroic Strike might seem a little bland, but that may be because we’ve changed a lot of the old talents in various trees that used to do simple things like this. Heroic really does hit like a truck now, so I assume your issue is what the talent does to rage cost?

Why was enrage’s bonus damage reduced so severely? Would you consider allowing deathwish to stack again now that the bonus is so low?
Because we changed it from “be crit” to “be hurt.” We might consider letting it stack.

Have you looked at the math supplied by Torgal and company that demonstrates titans grip isn’t such a massive increase as you think it is? If their numbers are correct, then what is your stance?
Our numbers say differently. I haven’t looked to see where they differ. I’ll try to get to that.

You say you don’t want any single talent point giving a 10% damage increase (as for example.) On 25-man Kel’thuzad and Sapphiron last night, mortal strike amounted to approximately 17% of my total damage done. On Sapphiron, slam was approximately 40% of total damage. Will mortal strike, bloodthirst or improved slam be nerfed based on your talent budgeting?
No. That’s not a hard and fast rule. In your example though, if you had not used Mortal Strike or Slam you probably would have used the rage for something else. In the case of TG though we do have serious concerns about it being too good (sans a stiff penalty). While we might change our minds after more data, you’re not going to change our mind by pointing out logical inconsistencies in talent trees. There are plenty of them.

Do you see the glyph of resonating power (Increases the maximum targets affected by your Thunder Clap ability by 4) as being mandatory for tanking? If yes, do you feel that’s acceptable? If no, why not?
It’s not mandatory, and actually it only increases your radius. Thunder Clap will do what you want it to do, but that’s another topic.

Can you offer an approximation of the proc rate/PPM on furious attacks?
It’s a frequency-based proc. It’s a little complicated to explain but you might compare it to Omen of Clarity. I’ll try to get back to this later.

Are there any plans to make unending fury not bad? Less bad? Seriously, it’s really really bad.
Yeah, this one doesn’t feel done.

Damage shield is, according to some very basic testing, not generating threat from damage dealt. Can you confirm this? If so, is this intended?
It appears to generate threat based on the damage done. But there might be a bug.

Are there any plans to buff revenge baseline so that it’s worth injecting into rotations for protection?
Putting it into Sword and Board is something we are discussing.

Do you feel that shockwave is, or should be, our be-all answer to AoE threat generation? Is there any chance of lowering the cooldown?
No, we don’t want it to be your go-to AE ability, because then Arms and Fury can never tank a 5-player dungeon very well. We want it to be useful obviously.

Is it possible to give Disarm the same functionality as rogue’s Dismantle, or at least, the removed Shield Break skill?
I’ll have to investigate this.

Do you feel heroic throw is strong or interesting enough for a level 80 skill?
Yes.

The devs seem to have originally planned several means for warriors to interact with the new enrage mechanics. Will enraged regeneration and the rend bonus be all that we see for the expansion, or is more being considered? Specifically, enraged assault.
The problem we had with Enraged Assault was our warrior testers and designers didn’t feel like they had enough GCDs to work another attack into their rotations. It was just too much. I love the idea though (it wasn’t mine) so I wouldn’t say never.

While you’re doing numbers passes, any chance of restoring flurry to its original 30% bonus? Compare it to shamans flurry and it’s clearly underbudgeted.
It all depends at this point on whether shamans or warriors are doing too much damage.

Why was the healing component of bloodthirst nerfed?
We thought it was too good, though to be honest, there are clandestine whispers echoing through our offices in the dead of night to change it back.

Also is it intended for protection warriors to be in the 1.3 1.4k dps ballpark when prot DKs, pallies or bears do a lot more damage?
No, that is too low. We nerfed Devastate (for good reason) and haven’t given warriors anything back yet. We don’t want to just buff Revenge, because that doesn’t help dps when you aren’t the tank. Shield Slam is a good candidate.

And it *is* the intention for Arms and Fury to do damage that is very close to other dps specs. I can’t say 100%, because I feel the need to always caveat this. You may be tops on one fight, but the very next fight may work so differently that you aren’t on top. Overall it should be really hard to tell whether it’s the player or the class that is driving those numbers.

To what extent is the warrior community’s perception that the developers deliberately design warriors to be weaker than other classes at low or “casual” gear levels in exchange for being powerful at higher gear levels correct?
We worry a lot more about class balance at max level. We do try and make sure people have the tools they need to level up, but we don’t spend a lot of our time making sure rogues and warriors do similar dps at level 76. I don’t think warriors are unique here. We *have* been burned before by warriors ending up a lot more powerful with good gear than we anticipated. Warriors have a tendency to be rage-starved and do low dps and then suddenly hit some magic threshold of gear and have plenty of rage, which means more dps, which means more rage…. It may have been our referencing that phenomenon that has driven that perception. But we don’t go out of our way to compensate for that by nerfing warriors in greens or heroic blues.

Mage / Rogue Vs. Paladin / Warrior 2v2 Arena Strategy

Much like most warrior / healer teams, your opponents will probably have to try harder than you.

Rogue

Get a sap on the warrior and open on the paladin going full out dps to force his bubble. Once he bubbles reset the fight via vanish. If you and your partner are having trouble CC’ing the warrior while forcing the paladin to bubble pop Evasion and Ghostly Strike as needed to avoid unwanted bleed effect when resetting the fight. Kill the paladin, and get away from the warrior if you have to.

Mage

Crowd control the warrior as best as possible with sheeps, frost novas, Rank 1 Frost Bolts(to Frost Bite snare him). These are all able to be cleansed by the pally, so tell your rogue to dodge it up if you’re having trouble controlling the warrior. Assist dps, and once the pally bubbles hit iceblock to reset the fight and wait it out. You decide when you want your rogue to blind, but I recommend while going for a kill on the pally or after killing the pally one of you has to get away.

Looking for more strategies? Check out the complete rogue / mage 2v2 arena strategy guide!

Mage / Rogue vs. Warrior / Druid 2v2 Arena Strategy

Oh man for every one of you guys out there, you’ll see about thirty of these. Some are competent, others face roll.

Rogue

See if you can find the druid in stealth. Before opening try to sap the warrior if possible. Do a KS lockdown to force the druid to trinket. Once you and your mage have a good CC train rolling on the warrior, Kidney shot again to shatter burst the druid.

Mage

Control the warrior in any way possible. Freeze effects, sheeps, whatever just take him out of the game and kill his carrier.

If the druid can’t be found:

Rogue open on the warrior(save premeditation) to force the druid to come out. Vanish and pull a switch to the druid, run cc trains on the warrior and win. It’s a good idea to not wait for the stealth detect eyes, as a smart druid will go into bear form at this point.

Looking for more strategies? Check out the complete rogue / mage 2v2 arena strategy guide!

Warrior Guide

This warrior guide is intended to be a compilation of all warrior arena strategies, warrior pvp guides, warrior tips, warrior talent builds, warrior raiding guides and any other resources that may be useful to improving your game as a warrior in World of Warcraft.

This central guide will be updated as often as possible to reflect new changes to the class as well as updated information. If you would like to suggest a guide to appear on this warrior guide please post a comment below or post a note on the Zug Gaming forums.

Warrior PvP Guides

This section on warrior arena guides will incorporate as many arena team specific strategies in addition to other PvP guides related to the warrior class.

• Warrior / Druid 2v2 Strategy
• Warrior / Rogue / Druid 3v3 Strategy

Warrior Talent Builds

• Warrior Arena Talent Builds

Warrior Macros

• Warrior Arena Macros Guide
• Focus Macros Guide - How To Use / Build

Other Guides

• Hotkeys Guides - Building For Speed

Rogue / Rogue Vs. Shaman / Warrior 2v2 Arena Strategy

This match is pretty much a Druid/Warrior, except you don’t have to go through the trouble of finding the druid.

Rogue #1

Hop on the shaman preferably before he sets up shop(by shop I mean totems), hit the warrior with a blind and interrupt every heal possible. Pop Evasion + GS if the warrior is focusing on you. Downing the shaman asap, and praying the warrior doesn’t RNG your face off is all you can really do.

Rogue #2

Hop on the shaman as well and keep up with interrupts. Hit the warrior with your second blind, and do your best with your partner to down the shaman in that 5-second window. Use Evasion + GS if you’re being focused.

This match-up is usually very quick, I’m sorry the strategy can’t be more elaborate, but as with every warrior team RNG decides who wins.

Looking for more rogue / rogue action? Check out Scyth’s the full strategy guide, rogue / rogue 2v2 arena strategy!

Arena Team Strategies (Compiled)

Below you’ll find a complete listing of all of the arena team strategies that Zug Gaming currently has to offer. Keep in mind this list is always growing as a new need presents itself. If you would like to suggest a strategy please post a comment here, or over on the Zug Gaming forums.

2v2 Arena Team Strategies
Rogue / Priest
Rogue / Warlock
Rogue / Rogue
Rogue / Druid
Rogue / Shadow Priest

Warrior / Druid

3v3 Arena Team Strategies
Rogue / Mage / Priest
Rogue / Warrior / Druid

Shadow Priest / Rogue vs. Shaman / Warrior 2v2 Arena Strategy

This team has an advantage over Priest/Rogue, but not over you!
Rogue Arena Strategy
Alright you just want to start off the combat quick in this match. Sap the warrior(Shadowstep sap if he’s like right next to his shaman partner). Open up on the shaman and unload. The warrior will probably try to lock you down so Ghostly Strike + Evasion and continue to unload on the shaman. You’ll also want to conserve energy for kicks, as they shaman will be spam healing themselves every time they don’t move

Priest Arena Strategy
Using your mount get to the shaman ASAP. Unload damage upon him, and help your rogue with interrupts via silence. Fear bomb every now and again to give your rogue or yourself some breathing room from the warrior.

Very simple match-up, have fun!

Need more strategies? Check out the full shadow priest / rogue 2v2 arena guide!

Strategy courtesy of S-Scythe

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