Confessions of an Arms Warrior

The Most Epic Questline in WoW

2013-10-21T17:26:00.001-07:00

*Update: Click here for the movie playlist*

I finally got around to wrapping up a project I've been working on ever since the end of Wrath. It is about the "Scepter of the Shifting Sands" questline that was removed from the game when Cataclysm came out.

It is viewed as one of the longest and most epic questlines ever put on WoW and it was the culmination of a server wide gathering quest to open the gates of Ahn Qiraj. This was needed to get access to the AQ raids. A one person quest, the backing of a well geared entire 40 man raid team and still you might not make it before someone else on your server did. When the gates where opened a 10 hour war would ensue, places all over Kalimdor would be invaded by Qiraji elites and raid bosses. At the end the person who rang the gong to open the gates, and anyone within these 10 hours that also did, would receive the legendary quality mount, the Black Qiraji Battle Tank, and the title of "Scarab Lord...".

I found out at the end of Wrath of the Lich King that this questline still existed in the game and as a lore nerd, and having heard the stories about it, I felt that I needed to complete it and see what all the fuzz was about. This took quite a while and at the end I almost didnt' make it in time (cursed GM's), but that is another story. While I was completing it I randomly filmed some bits here and there, things I thought where cool. And slowly I realized that noone would be able to see any of these things after they removed the questline. So I decided to try and put something together as an attempt to preserve it.

Click that "read more" for more

After hammering a bit on the first movie part I realized that I had two choices. Either I would make this in to a "bits and pieces" video showing of some things about the questline, or I could make a whole movie that showed of both the story and content of the adventure. Not knowing any better I chose the latter.
I quickly saw that I was in deep trouble. With large parts of the world being reshaped with the release of Cataclysm, some areas would never look the same and some NPCs would disappear completely. The time I had left to structure a movie and record the pieces vital to the movie, before they where forever lost, was severely limited. In the end I failed to film all I needed. I had to make due with what I had and try to blue screen in bits that I just could not do in any other way.

I chose to make the movie as a story about a character completing this questline in the era of Wrath, both because that is what was actually going on but also to create a sort of reflection and farewell. By having the story take place in the end of Wrath I could have my character doing this quest as sort of a tribute to the old ways. As though he was looking back at things that where, in anticipation of what was to come (in form of The Shattering). I really liked this concept and incorporated flashbacks to "the old days" into the movie to show this aspect off. I also tried to keep the film looking like it was shot before flying was available in the old world, in the end I think there are only three scenes where flight was used to camera shots. Keeping the scenes simple was another of my goals, no complex effects like view distance blur or such things. I wanted a more traditional look and feel.

In the end I think I managed as best I could considering the material I had (differing resolutions, UI covering most of the screen etc). There are a few inaccuracies in the movie that I am aware of. Like the fact that the mount shown in the flashbacks was not available at that time, and that the character in the flashbacks was wearing tank gear and using a dps weapon but I excuse these with "artistic freedom" ;) What I do regret is the fact that I missed an optional quest in the questline, the one with the little mermaid. I didn't even know it was in the game until I had already completed the questline past that point.

In the end I'm just happy to finally be able to share my creation with the internet. It took me too long, but at least it got done. Now the essence of a long lost questline is finally available for others to enjoy, either to relive old memories or to see for the first time.

The strange future of WoWs timeline

2013-10-09T15:08:00.004-07:00

Wow, no pun intended, I havent written here in a while. Time to fix that.

World of Warcrafts in-game timeline. I have been thinking about this little subject since Cataclysm was announced but a bit more ever since Mists of Pandaria came out. Blizzard has really made things very difficult for themselves and I can not understand how they did not see this coming.

Ok, to illustrate my point (Horde view). Previously you started off leveling up your character in vanilla WoW, everything was taking place before the opening of the dark portal. Then you hit level 58-60 and you could now enter the Burning Crusade expansion, with the story of how we tackled Dreanor and eventually defeated Illidan/Kil'Jaeden (not that you where very likely to actually see that particular content but still). Then you swiftly moved on to Wrath of the Lich King where Arthas kept hopping out from around the corners and the story unfolded much better than it had in the previous incarnations of the game, but then something happened...

When Cataclysm was released they fixed up the vanilla leveling experience, this was very needed since the game had improved much since 2004 but the initial leveling zones had not. However they did not simply make the existing content more interesting or more accessible, they actually remade the story of the entire vanilla leveling experience to match the story development of Cataclysm. This made leveling so much more intriguing and intuitive but it had a huge problem. The story of the first 58-60 levels now made no sense when you got to the other expansions. You where following the escapades of Warchief Garrosh Hellscream only to then get to Nagrand and find Warchief Thrall meeting Garrosh for the first time.

"Well this is not that huge of a problem" you might think, at least when you got to end game Cataclysm things made more sense. And yes this was very true, however what of the future? The leveling content of Cata-vanilla works really well as long as you intend to end up in Cataclysm. Luckily we got a new continent with Mists of Pandaria so the problems could be put on hold for the time being.
The big problems will really start when the next expansion comes out. Now you will have three Warchiefs running around telling you what to do, a timeline that starts in Cataclysm, goes in to the future locally when you are in main cities, goes back years in the Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King and then progressively moves you through a dead Deathwing threat, strange panda isles and a mad Garrosh that you probably won't see defeated in your leveling experience, only to end up with the now present Warchief and a very confused player.

Ok hopefully I conveyed the problem in a not too confusing a way, so what can be/should have been done then?
One solution that you might think of, I sure did, was that Blizzard should never have messed around with the story of the vanilla leveling experience in the first place. They should have made the experience much better and more accessible, like they did, but they should have kept the original story. This would have made the player start in classic WoW and they would have moved seamlessly through time up to the present expansion all the time traveling through the story in a, at least semi logical, fashion.

So why then did they change the story? Well I think a lot of the reasoning for this came from the introduction of the two new races. Both the Goblins and the Worgen had Deathwing and the cataclysm to thank for their existence as playable races. Their starting zones had this built in to the story and perhaps Blizzard thought it would be too strange to then come out and see the Greymane wall still standing and things like that. Another issue was that at this time the story of WoW was becoming a bit hard to keep track of as leveling character since you seldom finished an expansion off completely before going to the next one and Cataclysm introduced a big shift in main characters for the different sides, ok mainly for the Horde with Garrosh but that still affected the Alliance in a big way.
I believe they ceased the opportunity, since they where going to redo the vanilla leveling experience anyway, to bring the story back in the game. So that new players could build a relation to these characters and get a better understanding of what was going on in the world (of warcraft) thereby making players feel connected to the game to a greater extent. This was a great idea and something that was very badly needed, but it dated the content and introduced the above mentioned rather big problems.

So what should have been done then? What would be the way forward?
Blizzard has talked about "fixing up" the Burning Crusade leveling experience and bring it up to date. I feel like this solution would bring about a never ending updating of old content to suit the newest expansion, because where would that stop? Would they bring the Burning Crusade up to date so that it matched the Cata-vanilla content so the transition between them would work more smoothly? Or would they bring it up to a post-Mists date? And how would this affect future expansions? And what about Wrath of the Lich King? No I don't think that this solution would work unless you had a finished story to work towards and as long as there are expansions that story will not be finished.

So is it hopeless then? I don't think so. I think at this point the only solution that would make the story make sense and get everything to line up would be something that has never been in the game previously. An optional timeline.
Lets picture it like this. You log in to WoW for the first time. After you create a character you will see one big "start" button with a smaller "story" button next to it. The "story" button will say "classic", however if you click it you get the option to change it to "Cataclysm". If you do it warns you with some info and you can click "I've already played the game and know the main story" or something along those lines to select "Cataclysm". This would effectively split the level 1-60 experience in to two different phases. One would have the now present Cataclysm story in it while the other would have an "fixed up" and streamlined vanilla storyline.
Don't get me wrong I know this solution would take a great effort of Blizzards part. Sure some zones could stay largely intact with only some buildings having different models, but some zones (looking at you thousand needles) would be far more challenging. The upside would be that the stories are already there from original WoW along with the characters, but it would still take a ton of work and it would be work that is not directed at new content. It would however make the storyline sensible and it could also be an oportunity to reintroduce "classic" WoW to players.

In the end I don't know what would be best. If this was Starcraft 2 the fans would already be making this idea in to an optional mod but that does not really work with WoW, it is up to the developers. It is a bitter irony that the hard work Blizzard put in to integrate the player in to the story and make new players understand what the story of WoW is, might be the thing that ends up making players more confused than ever about what is actually going on.

Stand against SOPA

2012-01-18T06:34:00.000-08:00

This is going to be off topic but it is of the utmost importance in my opinion to spread word of this.

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

Arms Warrior DPS 4.2 - Test

2011-11-07T06:54:00.000-08:00

I just released a new DPS Test vid on my youtube channel :)

In the vid I go over my opening rotation and some thoughts in general.

I plan on doing a more proper look in to Arms DPS as 4.3 hits, provided that the raiding and gearing does not take up all my waking hours (it should not though). It might even turn in to a proper guide but that we shall have to see.

Blizzcon and Mists of Pandaria

2011-10-25T06:43:00.000-07:00

Blizzcon this year was huge. As a follower of all Blizzards games I must say that this years event had the most information ever. Tons and tons of info on Diablo 3, Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm and of course WoW: Mists of Pandaria (aka MoP).

Mists of Pandaria was both expected and unexpected. Crafty people had already found out that Blizzard had trademarked the name a few months before Blizzcon so it was no surprise really. What was unexpected was how drastically Blizzard had changed from their ususal semi-dark themed expansions into something that could basically air on the disney channel.

The theme is controversial and personaly I'm not very happy about it either, however a lot of people have jumped on the "omg I'm gonna quit this game after cataclysm"-train solely based on pictures of pandas. For those of us that followed the panels there was a lot of other points that really stood out.

The big change to talents and spec seems like a really great change. Blizzards attempt at fixing "cookie cutter builds" in Cata was only marginally successful, usually there was only a point or two that you could really change as you wanted. With this all new system it will be a lot easier for Blizzard to balance out your options and thus having you actually making hard choices. That said I don't really see any dps raid Warrior not taking Avatar as a top tier choice, that 1 min cd is great.

There where also a lot of other implementations that will serve to highten the genral quality of the max level gameplay, like challenge mode dungeons with uniqe transmog rewards, hinted changes to Archeology and of course pet battles aka pokéwow.

All in all Mists of Pandaria leaves me with mixed feelings. I really like the mechanics and max level changes but I really can't come to grips with the theme of the expansion. It does not seem to be related in any way to regular warcraft lore. For example: did the titans create the pandaren, pandaria and the surrounding veil that has sheltered the island for all these years? And a new sentient insectiod race that has no relation to the other sentient insectiod race that was spread all over Azeroth (the Qiraji)?

There are a lot of questions that are unanswered and I will reserve my final judjement until there has been more light shead on these mysteries.

Kill-vid celebration!

2011-07-08T08:19:00.000-07:00

Ok, I must admit that I have a weakness for neatly edited kill-vids. This is especially true is it manages to capture some of the lore or premise of the fight in question. There is also, in my opinion, no better way to honour your guild. Some guilds are famed as much for their fast progression as for their inspiring videos. Examples would be Paragon or Vodka or even the WotLK Ensidia kills.
Paragons video of their amazing world first Heroic Lich King 25man will forever be remembered as a milestone in both the art of making kill-vids and in guild promotion. The second bit is important as nowadays people can actually follow their favorite guild, see them progress and also distinguish individual raiders performance thereby learning and improving their own techniques. The mystique previously attached to the top end guilds have dissapated somewhat and instead revealed their true dedication and skill, plain for all to see.

Now with the release of the Firelands 4.2 patch a new flood of kill-vids are about to decend upon us. In a sort of celebration of this impending delight I've put together a little list of the top five videos from the patch 4.0 era. All after the jump.

The top 5 kill vids of 4.0 (link to the entire playlist here).

Nr 5: For the Horde's vs Sinestra (Warrior PoV).

I choose this vid because of the extra work put in to the beginning of the vid, the appropriate music but most of all because if is from a Warrior PoV ;)

Nr 4: Vodka vs Nefarian.

Vodka vids are very popular due much to the fact that they are polished and clean and that the music they feature is very appropriate, this vid is no exception. I was torn between this vid and Paragons Nefarian world first kill but that vid just had too many cats.

Nr 3: Paragon vs Ascendant Council.

This vid features one of the most dramatic kills in World of Warcraft so far. It also has very well put together audio. A true must see. "Buuuuurn!"

Nr 2: Vodka vs Cho'gall (Beta).

I really wanted to chose this vid as my number one because of all the vids this is the one I've watched the most. It is audio excellence at it's finest. A flawless merger of voice, music and story.

Nr 1: Paragon vs Al'akir.

This kill was made pre-nerf (the only 25man kill made before nerfs) and only through Paragons ingenuity was it secured. The boss was deemed unkillable in the heroic 25man mode due the insane amounts of AoE damage he put out during the first phase of the fight. I wont spoil any surprises but this is the vid to remember from the Tier 11 era. Enjoy.

There we have them, my top five list. The vids to remember from this insane "reset gear" and 12 new bosses at once period of WoW's history.

Arms Warrior DPS in 4.1

2011-05-09T08:27:00.000-07:00

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

2011-05-03T09:34:00.000-07:00

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!).

Since I was not around for Isle of Quel-Danas in tBC I havent really experienced a raid quest hub other than maybe Trial of the Crusader I guess, that was however not nearly as enveloping as this seem to be. This raid hub style will in my oppinion be a really welcome addition to the game. It brings more meaning to the raid instance and gets the player more involved, I almost want this quest hub to be an atunement to the raid ...almost.
New revards will also be tied to the hub the final one being a Hippogryph that someone set on fire, poor thing looks cool though.

Dragonwrath, Tarecgosa's Rest.
First of I have to say that it's great that Blizzard continues with applying huge questchains to the legendary weapons, and this chain seem to integrate quite nicely into the new lore being brought in as well.
While Shadowmourne had a nice story and all the story did not really seem like it mattered that much in the grand scheme of things.
This storyline will involve how a new aspect is chosen, which is a huge deal if you didnt know. This is the first time a new aspect is chosen in the history of Azeroth!

What I do have to complain about is how it looks.
I know legendarys are supposed to be very distinct, you are supposed to be able to see from a distance if a character has one, but look at Atiesh: Greatstaff of the Guardian for example. That staff is very plain, very inconspicuous but still instantly recognizable. Part of the appeal of Atiesh was that it didn't look like half of Las Vegas rolled up. To me the new legendary is a bit too flashy, but on the other hand it would be hard to have it be upgraded three times and still have it look sleak I guess. Honestly I like the looks of the first stage the best.

To sum up 4.2 is looking great and I hope I, as a warrior, can get at this staff a little even if it's only the first stage or so. Obvious warrior loot!

Editing vids and why Sony Vegas hates me

2011-04-22T05:51:00.000-07:00

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

2011-04-11T09:59:00.000-07:00

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.

(quoting Bashiok from the above link)
"some gold, a chance at a rare gem, a chance at a flask/potions, a good chance of receiving a non-combat pet (including cross faction pets), and a very rare chance at receiving a mount. The pets offered come from a wide variety of sources, and include ones like the Razzashi Hatchling, Cockatiel, and Tiny Sporebat, but the mounts are those specifically only available through dungeons (not raids), like the Reins of the Raven Lord from Sethekk Halls, Swift White Hawkstrider from Magister’s Terrace, and Deathcharger’s Reins from Stratholme."

And it is mainly the mount drop that has people so angry. The reason this mount drop infuriates so many people is that to get these mounts in the past you as a player would either have to be really really lucky (about 1% divided by 5 chance) or you would have to be really dedicated (this means farming the instances until the mount drops). Therefore these mounts have been quite rare, and the ones lucky enough to own one would be recognized as players with great dedication. The people owning these mounts often treasure them not necessarily because of their looks but becase of the hardships they would have gone through to get them. Effort equals worth.
Now what Blizzard does by allowing these mounts to be dropped in these tank/healer CtA lootbags is that they are creating a one-stop-shop for these few specific classes only. These tanks/healers can just run Cataclysm heroics to get: heroic gear, gold, justice points, valour points, chance at mounts, and now they also get added gold plus a chance at: flasks, gems, pets and these rare mounts. Any dps that wants these mounts will however still have to go back to the old instances and farm them the traditional way. This is what is upsetting a lot of people including me. I sum up my thoughts in this, slightly angry, forum post.

"The problem you want to solve Blizzard is the bad'ness (...it's word) of PuG's since this is the reason noone wants to tank or heal them.
This could be combated by having people learn how to play their class during the leveling experience. This is not happening at the moment since dungeons during leveling are easier that heroics in Wrath was. This results in noone having to learn how to play their class and then they end up in Cata heroics not knowing what cc is.

I was a wrath-child and did not encounter cc or any sort of "advanced" usage of abilities in all my dungeoning, except for a brief period in tBC heroics. There was no need so why learn.
I had no problem in Cata though since I had raided in end Wrath and had learned these things there, because there I had to.

Ok so now people that don't know these things end up in Cata heroics and of course it is a shocking experience for them and some of them struggle a lot. All of a sudden things are hard.
The response here is not to then make heroics easier, this defeats the whole thing and creates bad PuG's.

Now you say that you will reward tanks and healers (there won't be lack of dps ok) for solo-queing in the LFG. Making people solo que instead of going with their friends. So you're going to try and treat the symptoms of the disease by bribing select classes? Ok fine it might be worth a shot. But not those mounts. Are you going to insult the people that got those mounts the hard way, by running these specific dungeons, by giving them out to select classes as just a bonus? I know it is supposed to be a rare drop but it already was that and now it's going to be a rare drop that you can get on top of the rest of the special loot you will already get, and in any cata heroic? And any dps that want those mounts will still have to go back to those instances and get them the traditional way.

This mount rare drop does not seem like it was very thought through. If you really have to reward a select few classes with mounts please make it the Argent Crusade faction ones or something, not ones that with only people with great luck or great dedication can aquire."

Personally I hope they just remove the mount drops.

Blizzards april fools (updated)

2011-04-01T03:57:00.000-07:00

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

2011-03-25T05:52:00.000-07:00

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.

Gear and Spec.

Can’t say much here except get info on what your class and spec need to focus on in terms of stats and make sure you have a viable skill tree. You should know this already.

Consult elitistjerks, tankspot, random youtube clips etc.

Rotation.

First find out what your rotation/”priority list” is. Some classes don’t have a set rotation but use abilities based on priorities. The most important step towards really understanding your class is to find out why your rotation/prio-list is the way it is. This more than anything will give you the edge when a new patch or hotfix rolls out.

After that you will want to get comfortable with your rotation. Use those dummies in your city. Once you have your rotation down, try to do it while moving around your target. If you can’t use some of your abilities while moving find out which ones you can use and put them to work. Flexibility is key.

Cooldowns and trinkets.

The timing and usage of cd’s and trinkets can make a huge difference for your dps in a fight, and the most important concept here is to stack.

Say you have one ability that increases your haste by 20% for 20 sec and one ability that increases your chance to crit to 100% for 15sec, now using one after the other will increase your dps but if used together you can squeeze in more guarantied crits in those 15 secs because of that extra haste and therefore get more dps than you would have if you had used them separately.

Now let’s say you also have a trinket that has a chance to increase your damage by 20% for 30 secs. If you use your other 2 cd’s right when your trinket procs you can see that the effect would be increased even more. They all build on each other.

Flipside. The problem is that you can’t always wait for everything to line up perfectly. When it comes to cd’s and usable trinkets you will want to use them as fast as possible so that they can be used again and again later in the fight. This leads me to my next topic.

Learning boss fights.

In order to maximize your effectiveness this step is essential. You need to know if you can pop all your cd’s and go all out at the start of the fight or if you need to wait for the tank to get enough threat (Al’Akir). Maybe very high dps right at the start is not very necessary or even detrimental due to the need for timing (Onyxia dpsers in Nefarian fight). Is there a phase where you need to change target? Is there a phase where you do extra damage (Magmaw exposing his head)?

These things are important to know so that you can time your cd’s, AoE bursts etc well. You do not want to get to the last phase on Ascendant Council and find out that you have no cd’s available. But don’t worry too much. You are going to figure this out simply by trying the fights a few times, don’t expect to be able to study up and know this on the first pull. Find a way that works for you in your raid.

Tips:

* Min/maxing spec - Is there another */insert your class and spec here* in your raid? If so how is that person speced and can you change in relation to that? Have you both speced into the same ability that is optional and affects the raid? Is it necessary to have two of those abilities or should you respec out of that and into another ability that might help the raid?

* Pre-pot - It is only possible to use one potion per combat if it is used when in combat. However if you use one potion just before you enter combat you can use another one after a 1 min cd. Pre-pots should be used when your tanks countdown is at “1”. If your tank does not count down before a boss pull you should ask him to please do so, any decent tank should already be doing this though. The second potion can be used at for example the “execute phase” (boss under 20% health) or at another suitable moment, like when bloodlusting.

* Don’t die! - Dead people have 0 dps and you don’t want that now do you? On a more serious note when you take damage as a dps you cause your healers to have to spend mana and focus more on you instead of others like the tanks, and dead tanks usually means dead raid.

In short: Less damage taken = easier on healers = living tanks = living you = more dps!

* Theory crafting - This is something that can be a lot of fun to mess with but unless you already do decent dps, for your class/spec, you should not get too bogged down in it. This is mainly a way to squeeze that little tiny bit of extra dps out.

Those are the things I can think of right now.

Please leave a comment (constructive) if you have any input.

Edit: Put the theory crafting bit in

The reintroduction of long, difficult and time consuming questlines

2011-03-17T07:20:00.000-07:00

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!

Do you miss your first months in WoW?

2011-03-16T16:54:00.000-07:00

Just before Cataclysm hit I recreated one of the first screenshots I ever took in WoW. Back when the world was unknown and fresh.

I took ages leveling and stopped regularly just to check out side quests that where below my level. Like The Mithril Order quests, so much mithril and thorium. I miss that time.

What really has changed for me with WoW I think is time. Back when I was leveling my first character I had no end goal or other reason to hurry up. I was, and still am, a non social player. I like doing as much as I can on my own. This helped to shield me from information about endgame content, and for that matter any information on what was around the corner. Everything was so new.

I think a lot of people that perhaps raid or pvp at max level, or even just players that have been playing for a long while, easily get very cynical and upset about either Blizzard or WoW itself. I have recently been feeling unhappy with the game, a lot because of what Cataclysm did to it but more on that in another post.

I belive that players really have to just stop and take a breath now and then. Perhaps start a non guild alt without heirlooms that one only levels through quests or whatever is prefered but always focusing on the moment instead of fighting to get to some end goal.

If people did that I would bet that the WoW community, being utterly childish and aweful atm, would be a nicer thing to partake in and be a part of.

A new vid series maybe?

2011-03-14T06:16:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about starting a series of vids that focus on a little side hobby I have in WoW. Filling up my bankspace, well filling it up with interesting and shiny stuff really.

This whole collecting thing I think started when I did the warrior quest for the whirlwind weapon. I picked the sword of course and noticed that this was a weapon that looked very different from the other sword-looking swords I'd had before that (this was my first ever character in WoW so everything was new). When the time came for me to separate from it in favor of a better weapon I just could not vendor it. Ever since it has dwelled in my bank, a memory of simpler times.

That was how it all started.
After that sword many other things came and went in my bank, hard choices where made and less shiny stuff was taken out back and dealt with. In later days a lot more have been entering my vaults. A lot of stuff I have can no longer me attained, many things went the way of the Dodo when Cata came.

Anyway my idea with these new vids would be to show people the cool stuff that is out there and some of the history surrounding the items, Ashkandi anyone? And to show people that they can get items that are a big part of the history of WoW.
Also just to share with other collectors out there and speculate what Blizzard might remove next so that swift action can be taken. And perhaps to entice more people to get bigger bankbags.

Al'Akir joins his son in death!

2011-03-09T04:24:00.000-08:00

Finally, after a lot of hard work, Vanguard managed to take down Al'Akir 25 man last night.
As I understand it that was the first 25 man kill of Al'Akir on the server, and I can understand why.

Al'Akir on 25 man is very rng, at least at first. But even after knowing the fight it is easy to have 1/25th of your raid screw the other 24 up. Especially in P3 where a cloud at the wrong level leads to what I call the "electric sandwich". The recipe is one cook and 24 pieces of ham. If it wasn't for that this fight might be concidered fun.

What I found most annoying about the fight is of course P1. The reason I hate it is because I can only speed it up by so much. Since the tank can't really generate a constant high threat, due to wind bursts and tornados, I as a dps have to be really careful not to overaggro. This is trickier than it might sound due to the randomness of the tank threat "pauses".

My trick to combat threat at the start is to use pre-pot but start by just stacking up sunders and saving my cd's for the 3rd rend. This is not enough in itself but it certainly helps. I wish I could just throw everything I have at the guy, Rawrr.

Anyway, I'm very happy to have defended this shattered world and to have gotten the raids done exclusively on 25 man.

Looking forward to crying about hardmodes now ;)

What is wrong with raiding, 10 vs 25 man, in Cataclysm

2011-03-08T10:00:00.000-08:00

Ok let me talk before you start throwing things.

Raiding in Wrath of the Lich King (henceforth: Wrath) built upon the lessons learned by Blizzard in tBC.
They noticed that people loved the option of going with 10 man raids.
They also noticed that there was a huge problem with raiding in tBC. That was that you basically had to do every raid after the other, starting with the oldest easiest ones, in order for you to get to the gear you needed for the later raids.
If you wanted to do Sunwell you had to have done everything before Sunwell for you to have any sort of decent gear basically.

So enter wrath.
In wrath every raid had the option to go either 10 or 25 man. Great, everyone can choose what to go for. Current gear could be gotten through heroic dungeons and tokens.
The problem here was that 25 man raids where harder than their 10 man counterparts, another issue was that every raid had separate achivements for 10 and 25 man.
To clarify: Every raid achivement had 2 versions (some exceptions).

So people started thinking that 25 man was the more hardcore way of raiding, and Blizzard reinforced this by tieing certain quests (like Shadowmourne) to "only 25 man" and most of all through loot which was much better on 25 man.

So; Cataclysm.
In Cataclysm Blizzard wanted to remove any sort of "This way is the real way to raid" by having 10 and 25 man raids share everything. Loot, achivements, lockouts and difficulty.

My issue is this.
10 man is very different from 25 man! Now I'm not saying that 25 man is always harder or vice versa, but they are very different. Some bosses are easier on a certain raidsize, this is a fact. The problem is not that I want to go back to the wrath system of doing things, the problem is that I don't get recognition for what I have done.

Blizzard turned away from using separate achivements for the different raidsizes because they are supposed to be equaly hard now. They are not.
You tell me that Nefarian on 10 man is as hard as it is on 25 man with a strait face.

I want Blizzard to reintroduce separate achivements for killing Cataclysm bosses.
I don't want the metas to go that way though mind you, I don't care about them. I just want to have a separate achivement for Bastion of Twilight 10 man and Bastion of Twilight 25 man for example. That's all.

WTF does one play Arms?

2011-03-07T07:56:00.000-08:00

Good question. Hmm, lets start with a short recap of dps warriors.

Once upon a time in vanilla.
Back in classic WoW Arms warriors, otherwise known as MS (mortal strike)-warriors, where the dps warriors. Fury was not working very well, this might have been due to suboptimal gear (this would later become a trend with fury and also arms to a lesser extent), and so arms reigned supreme.

Fast forward to WotLK aka the rise of fury.
Titan's grip. Now fury could suddenly wield twohanded weapons in one hand. This together with increasing crit and ArP from endgame gear made rage generation for fury insanely high. This alone made fury in endgame WotLK the ultimate melee dps class. Endless rage made it possible to use Heroic Strike on every attack and with Whirlwind working the way it did nothing could hold fury down. Single target or multi targets made no difference.

But the most significant thing about fury was; It was easy to play.
Yes I said it. It was damn easy to play. Add to that fact that if you could find your way to any sort of decent gear you would be putting out huge dps numbers and you have one hell of a onesided looking balance of dps warriors. Everyone (face)rolled a fury warrior. (Now I'm not saying that people that excelled at fury where just facerolling, but excelling at anything requires effort so)

Ok so what about Arms?
Arms is not easy to play. ...Yeah that's about it.
If you where a good arms warrior in Icecrown Citadel you would be putting very big numbers out and if you where playing with anyone but people that knew exactly how to play their class you would outpreform them, unless they where better geared. I personally was constantly finding myself at the top spot(s) when it came to boss dps. This was very surprising to since all I heard from people was: "Arms can't dps".

Now the problem with arms in WotLK was that the class was capped, at some point arms could just not conjure any more dps. Arms didnt have the endless rage that fury had and that made using Heroic Strike a tricky business because of the fact that the used the "...on the next normal attack swing" mechanic. That always created, at least for me, the fear of: "What if my rage is not there when it goes off?".
I am at 85 rage, I hit HS, I continue my rotation, my rage goes down to 35 and then HS goes off leaving me ragestarved -_-
I always hated that mechanic and I love what Blizzard did with it in Cataclysm. If we would have had that in WotLK things might have been different.

So what is so great with Arms then?
People that play arms know and it is hard to describe but playing arms feels more ..real.
Think of arms as an arcade fighting game take on WoW. It is a frantic hammering of buttons, constantly knowing that if something procs you must react fast and make sure you dont lose that mortal strike/execute/rend/sunder-debuff/battleshout you've got rolling. There is no steady flow of rage comming in, it crashes in on you slapping you in the face screaming: "Omfg HS!".
Executing a perfect bossbattle in terms of your rotation is next to impossible and every single bossbattle is different from the previous one. You're constantly adapting, fighting to stay on top.
It feels excactly like a battle should feel.

In the end I can't really put into words what makes playing arms so rewarding.
But people that play arms know.