Arms Warrior DPS in 4.1

I recently put together a new dps-test vid to see how patch 4.1 had treated Arms, and I was pleasantly surprised. 19k dps on a raid dummy is not hard at all.

(view on youtube for proper annotations and info)



The major change that came in 4.1 was that Mortal Strike now refreshes Rend. This is a bigger help to the complexity of the rotation than one might think, however with the removal of re-rend'ing Arms suddenly feels very different.
Rend is at the core of the mechanic that makes the class tick (no pun intended) and with the removal of it from the rotation it almost feel as if Arms has lost some of it's soul.

I have not yet had the pleasure of testing the new system in the execute phase of a fight. I really hope that this change improves the buff tending bore that preceded it in patch 4.0.6.

Even though Arms is far from the 'very challenging to play' class it used to be, it is still a ton of fun. And to new warriors out there it is at present a very appealing dps-class choice.

Patch 4.2 and the new legendary staff

Lately I've been afk a lot. Either not having access to my computer and when I have, I havent had access to the internet. So I have not seen much of 4.1, except that my raid dummy DPS has increased quite a lot. Thank you Blizzard, Arms pve is quite sweet atm.

During my gaming absence I have however been keeping up, as much I can, with the new info comming out on 4.2. And from what I can tell it will be really good. The new phasing technology that only affects what you as a player can see, while you still can see people who are in different "phases", seems like a huge leap forward in enhancing the personal progression experience. They have said that it is a bit experimental but I hope that this works out well since this would mean that you truly get a feeling of having your actions affect your enviorment while at the same time not losing out on social interaction (no more invisible node-stealers, yes!).

Editing vids and why Sony Vegas hates me

I thought I'd write and explain a little bit about why my vids are so few and far between at the moment. I know a lot of people are waiting for Part 2 of my "Scepter of the Shifting Sands" movie (link to Part 1 here, also avalible on warcraftmovies.com).

The big issue I have with the videomaking process at the moment is limitations with my computer hardware. Sony Vegas is operating quite slow on the system I have available today and that makes working on a project the scale of my "Scepter of the Shifting Sands" movie most taxing. I will however not let that stop me of course and I will keep working on it.

I have a lot of other projects lined up that I want to get to working on but I feel it is important to finish this movie before I start with something else, exceptions might be smaller simpler vids I can throw together just for the fun of it like boss kills or exploration vids.

Why the 4.1 "Call to Arms" is really bad

Blizzard recently announced that they will implement a new feature in the upcomming 4.1 patch, this feature will be called "Call to Arms" (Link). This is an improvement of the LFG aka dungeonfinder feature, that is already implemented, and is aimed to resolve the very long queue times that the dps classes are having to deal with in cataclysm heroic dungeons.
This feature will reward the class (tank, healer or dps) that is in shortest supply in the dungeonfinder, at the time of entering the queue, with an extra lootbag after finishing the dungeon. This to motivate basically tanks and healers (since dps are not really in short supply) to queue for heroics more. To be eligible to recive this lootbag the player must have entered the queue on his/her own and not as a part of a group.

Now this in itself has upset some people that are saying things like: 'So the classes that only have 5 sec queue-times are to on top of that going to get extra loot?' or 'This will cause everyone to roll tanks and then we will have tons of tanks that can't tank making PuG's worse'.
However what has gotten a lot of people upset is what is going to be in the actual lootbags.

Blizzards april fools (updated)

This is always something I look forward to, this and their x-mas spoof. Just goes to show how groovy and how in touch with the community Blizzard really are. By far the best game company around.

Links.
Dungeon helper: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/game/dungeon-helper/
New dungeon!: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/game/dungeon/tomb-of-immortal-darkness
Horadric app: http://eu.blizzard.com/diablo3/media/horadrapp/#horadrapp-disclaimer

Starcraft 2 on consoles:

Wonder if there is a page where one can see all past april fools and other such things? I know they had one for their x-mas stuff back in the day...

Moar fools:
Paragon vs Ragnaros Heroic Strategy: http://www.paragon.fi/articles/sneak-peek-ragnaros-firelord

How to build up your DPS in raids

 This is going to be some of my thoughts on the subject of damage per second. This is not aimed at bleeding edge raiders, they should know this. Note that I do not claim that this is the only way to do things.

Raid DPS.

First and foremost it is important to note that in a raid environment it is your raid dps that matters most. To some of you this is perhaps obvious but it is very common that people just focus on their own personal results.

Why is this important to state? Because there are ways to increase your own dps by sacrificing potential gains to the raid. Example: not applying sunders or shattering throw as a dps warrior. Not doing that extra work will, most likely, improve your personal dps but lower the raid dps and in the end it might cost you that important boss kill.

How to tackle this? Find out what raid buffs and boss debuffs you have and see if they’re already covered. To continue with our dps warrior, if you have a warrior tank in the raid you will not have to stack sunders for example since he will do that automatically through devastate. Once you have gone through your abilities and you see what your need to worry about, and what not to, you can move on to what you can do to improve yourself.

The reintroduction of long, difficult and time consuming questlines

We all remember certain questlines.

Linkens “It’s a secret to everybody” or “You are Rakh’likh, Demon”, "The Scepter of the Shifting Sands" or some of the old attunement quests.

We remember them not because of the loot we got in the end or the experience points they gave, we remember them because of their epic scale and how much we had to work and travel to complete them. They where not something everyone did, in some cases very few got around to completing them (for example Dungeon Set 2).

A lot of old old-world quests had you traveling all over Azeroth. Some of these where just normal quests that where just annoying to complete and completely broke you off from the area you where questing in to deliver some package or something to someone on the other side of the world. For just normal quests this was not very good.

However for end level questlines that the developers had put extra time in to developing and that had a great story this was very cool.

The reason this was so cool was because it brought depth to the world around you, it made it feel more alive. A lot of them made sure to be annoying and difficult, this was a great thing since that made you feel as if though you had actually completed something special. Another huge factor in this was how they often started off as unassuming average quests that didn’t seem like anything special and also how “un required” the quest rewards where.

When Cataclysm came and remade the old world and its quests most, if not all, of these kind of questlines where lost. They might have been breaking with what the forward jump in time that occurred and changes to the zones had brought, they might have been dropped due to the fact that they did not bring any end game rewards or they might have been dropped because of the fact that they where too messy for newer players to complete.

Cataclysm quests where at first very appealing and interesting to me due to how streamlined they where, but after a while I realized that it was all a railroad. Jump on and ride along but no choices are allowed.

Where is the forsaken in Kalimdor that in the middle of a questing zone convinces me to take up the banner of the banshee queen as an undercover agent and travel to Eastern Kingdoms to start a whole new line of quests instead?

Why can’t I choose a faction to support and, maybe not exclusively, quest for all over Azeroth from for example level 15 to 60 (tabards don’t give faction specific quests) and upon reaching exalted get access to a specific questline (levels 58, 68, 78 and 85) with a unique reward?

In summary.

Generally questing should not be a pain, but sometimes it should!