Nomorenoob.com - League of Legends

Vladimir The Blood Tank - League of Legends Guide

2011-11-04T22:13:00.002-07:00

This week's free champions included Vladimir the Hemomancer. I'd never really given Vladimir much of a chance until I started this blog up again and man do I feel dumb, so here's my league of legend . Early on I kept trying to build him as a ranged only to find out that while he was good most melee quickly chewed me up and spit me out. I found I was squishy and while I was doing massive damage when I had 4 stacks of Tides of blood all of Vladimir's attack cost...well blood. So I get's to thinking...I need more health. Now a typical Vladimir build had me sitting with more or less the stock items, perhaps a defensive item here or there. HP max of roughly 2500-2800 that's not bad mind you, but when you run into a yi that can spam 600+ crits in a matter of 4 seconds well...that's your ass.

So I did what any good hemomancer would do, I stacked warmongers. Now That might not sound smart at first, but take into consideration

Sanguine Pool - Vladimir sinks into a pool of blood becoming untargetable for 2 seconds (this is called built in defense). Additionally, enemies on the pool are slowed (plus a snare) and Vladimir siphons life from them (plus a heal)

Vladimir sinks into a pool of blood for 2 seconds, becoming untargetable and slowing enemies above him by 40%.
(PLUS a shyt load of damage) Vladmir deals 80/135/190/245/300 (+ [15% of bonus Health]) magic damage over the duration and heals himself for 12.5% of that amount.

Costs - 20/20/20/20/20% of Current Health
Range -1050

Now the first thing you should notice about sanguine pool is the Range, if you can't tell it's roughly 25% bigger than Fiddlesticks dreaded crowstorm and does slightly less damage in a slightly smaller frame of time. The difference, as bolded above is instead of being able to be stunned you become untargetable.

Now the dynamics of this spell work really well with:

Warmog's Armor

+920 Health +30 Health Regen per 5 seconds Passive: Minion kills permanently grant 4.5 Health and .15 Health Regen per 5 seconds. Champion kills and assists permanently grant 45 Health and 1.5 Health Regen per 5 seconds. Bonuses cap at +450 Health and +15 Health Regen per 5 seconds.

920 x.15 = 138 damage add that back into the 300 and you have a quick 400 + damage over a matter of seconds while you're invincible and 12.5% of that comes back as health... now double that, or triple it and you will put Fiddlesticks crow storm to shame AND Sanguine Pool is on a MUCH shorter CD.

How do you use this massive spell though? Let me guide you through this it's not to hard...

Well first it's great early game for farming minions, and if you can get a Warmog's Early it's even better. The bonus cap of 450 adds an addition 67.5 damage to Sanguine blood so the faster you get there the better.
Sanguine blood is NOT an opener, there are too many people who can still melt your face, the beauty of this spell is that while they THINK they are close to killing you you disapear for 2 seconds, deal 600-800 damage and can pop up to your two other spells off cooldown. The math translates into being able to use anywhere from 3-8 spells all that hit for over 300 a pop 300x8=2400 which is enough to cover 80% of all champions. Oh and keep in mind a good chunk of that is AoE damage AND all but one of your spells heals you.

While two Warmog's is great ability power is also very important to Vlad, as is spell penetration.

Here are the recommended Items. I will OBVIOUSLY drop the regen trinket as with the hourglass in exchange for the two Warmog's. You can generally disregard armor, your health is your armor. At roughly 4.2k health you can withstand most attacks for long enough to whoop some ass.

There it is my Vladimir League of Legends Guide to semi tanking.

League of Legends Week 7 Free Champions

2011-11-01T21:28:00.000-07:00

This week we there are several champions to choose from on league of legends. More to come as the week goes on. My suggestions for new folks is to give either Gankgplank, Miss Fortune Graves or Galio.

I'll be doing some work tonight with Sonia and Vladimir as they are both VERY strong but can be difficult to work with. Singed is also VERY difficult for people who are melee minded as he's more of a runner.
Keep posted for more League of Legends info

League Of Legends - The New Frontier

2011-10-30T23:38:00.003-07:00

Well after several years, hundreds of friends, thousands of noobs and a lifetime of memories I've decided to take a break again from WoW. My heart's just not in it. I never thought I'd grow tired of killing gnomes, alas I have...sorta. I still enjoy whack-a-gnome as much as the next guy but the game play has become so repetitive and dull lately that I've decided to branch out into other games. For my followers and readers thank you for these past few years, they've been a blast. I've been out on the interwebs here for the past few months trying new things out, playing some PC and console games and I think I've found my new home.

League of Legends - CLICK HERE TO PLAY FOR FREE ALWAYS AND FOREVER.

(See The Trailer Below)

Think battleground, meets arena, with a little bit of LOOT and there's even a dragon to kill.
The setup is real simple and if you've played DOTA then League of Legends is basically DOTA 2.0

In a nutshell there are 3 game types 3v3, 5v5 and then 5v5 with a slight twist. Unlike WoW you're not locked into a particular character (though you may find you like some over others). You level your "account" so to speak with the ability to use available "weekly champions" and then the option to permanently unlock champions.

Game Play:
You get to choose a "champion" as do each of your teammates; the goal of the game is to destroy the other team's base. Your base constantly spawns MINIONS who march towards your enemy base via predefined roads. These roads are guarded by towers that shoot devastating magic at the minions and champions. In addition to the NPC types the opposite team is lurking about. Long story short you focus on killing their towers and base, while gaining gold to build items (armor, weapons, boots, etc, etc) to strengthen your champion.

The game centers around trying to negotiate all these variables.

Why this vs. wow?

Well first it's free. You can play to your heart's content for zero monitary units. You can buy different skins and such but beyond that it's free.

The game play also varies drastically from game to game. One game you can find yourself facing a team that doesn't match up well against you and the next game you're getting farmed because the other team is organized. Personally I like that no matter what each game is different and the variety of characters makes it so that I have yet to get tired of devising new strategies for each opponent.

Noobs?
Of course there are noobs. There have been noobs since the dawn of time. They were here before you and they will be here long after you're gone, if you're one of them then stick around and learn something...if you're not, still stick around...you'll still learn something.

Thanks again for your visits to my site, I hope you've enjoyed things. Continue to enjoy and come and play.
You can friend request me in League of Legends my name is MORTHID (Blackthought was taken :( )
You can use this link to join League of Legends

Again it's 100% free so you've nothing to lose.
Thanks & Kill ya later,
Blackthought

Kilnara Tank Guide: How to Tank Kilnara in Zul Aman

2011-09-27T10:07:00.000-07:00

Recent tanking questions have been asked about the Panther Boss in Zul Aman. Kilnara is her name and she's actually pretty easy when done right.

When you first enter her door you'll see there are four groups of panthers in pens on the outside of the room. The trick to tanking Kilnara is to know that at 50% she will call all groups of panther to chew on your ass. Armed with this knowledge the most efficient strategy for killing her is to attacker her first, but ONLY the tank should attack. Attacker her for a total of about 10 seconds or so and then move on to the first group of panthers.

Phase 1

Kilnara cast Shadow Bolt through all of phase one. Interrupt this as much as possible.
Kilnara will periodically cast Lash of Anguish and Tears of Blood interrupt Tears.
Wave of Agony is a very noticeable spell, she starts channeling a HUGE wall in front of her. It's pretty noticeable so just step through it and get to her back side, otherwise you get hit and shoved way back and take an ass ton of damage.
Wail of Sorrow which cannot be avoided. Simply heal through it.

During phase 1 what you want to do is take on each group of panthers one at a time.
After the first pull you'll hit Kilnara till you get agro after you get agro pull one group, kill the group of panthers, then move on to the next group. It's important to make sure your dps doesn't attack the boss, it makes it easier to keep agro on Kilnara.

Phase 2 - Starts when Kilnara gets to 50% health
Once you have all the panthers down it's important to burn Kilnara fast. As soon as she turns into her panther form it's important to use demo shout and tclap to help mitigate damage. I'll usually reserve my CD's for this phase as a crappy healer can sometimes blow the deal here.

Primal Blessing, transforms Kilnara into a panther. She'll start to stack Rage of the Ancients, periodically Cave In, will happen and hit everyone. Any panthers you haven't killed by now will intervene in the fight.
Kilnara will also use Ravage, dealing damage to a single target and Vengeful Smash, dealing AoE damage.
At around 15%, she will briefly go into Camouflage to irritate your party, and then reappear.

In general the hardest part of this fight is not pulling all the panthers at once.

Video to post soon.

Zul Aman: Daakara Lynx Form Guide

2011-09-19T23:16:00.001-07:00

I get a lot of questions on the Daakara lynx form and how best to handle it. I've never really had a problem with it but thought it would be good testing ground for some "video" testing and such. Nomorenoob will debut with their first you tube video. Still working on that whole "sound" thing. I could put some music in there but figured I'd keep it simple.

I've been hitting up the alts pretty heavily lately, but have managed to get all but one of my reckless set. As I can tell most people want some pve tanking info I put this guide up. It's getting easier, that's the good news.

Send your questions to me and I'll be sure to get more stuff out as I figure more things out.
http://www.youtube.com/user/NoMoreNoob1 - link to our channel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S98vjjuHFe4 - Link to Daakara Lynx form video

You can see the guide on our youtube channel I will also embed it here for your review.

Warrior Set Tier 13 - Badassidness In Plate

2011-09-13T11:22:00.000-07:00

So every now and again warriors get a good set Tier 13 is one of those sets.
Um yeah, we look like Diablo, which as a warrior is a good think. Now there are some (our resident Bonerot) for instance, that isn't digging this Transmogifigy thing, I'm not going back to get any gear because honestly Tier 13 whoops all the other tiers in the ass, period bottom line. Don't believe me? Check out the images below.

Ok now of all of these images which comes in first on the "OMG He's Gonna Kill Me" meter Warrior Tier 13 is tops easily. What are your thoughts on the new tier?

The New Poll To Your Left Is Where You Can Answer This Question

Warrior Tier 13

Warrior's Overview

2011-09-13T00:04:00.001-07:00

So here we go. I finally figured out how to get video up and running. Sounds on those videos is another thing entirely. Damn Windows Live Movie Maker just isn't what it's cracked up to be so I'm still fiddling with that, any thoughts would be appreciated. Needless to say the videos are pretty...shall we say "low budget" at this time so bare with me as a become blog owner/video producer/gnome punter extraordinaire.

As I said before there's a lot to go over and I'm not sure where to pick up so I'll just cover some of my musings from the last few months and the new patch, new pvp crap new tanking stuff and welcome AFURA, my warlock. Yeah I know. This is a warrior site, but it turns out there are warlock noobs out there to that need our help and honestly, WARlocks and WARriors have something in common:)......WAR (Because I know some of you didn't catch that:) )

First and foremost AB. I've noticed something and I don't know if it's just me but the new ally strategy here is to zerg farm. For some strange reason it works. It stretches all logic and defies common sense but horde simply do not like it when ally have our farm. We will stream into an ally killing field in a single file line until the BG is over. I just don't get it. GO the FUK around the farm. It's real easy. All kudos to ally for somehow making this completely illogical strategy a good one.

AV (sigh)....
There was a time durning the first half of this past decade where horde could zerg in AV and it was an instant win. Several years later and it turns out that we can't seam to adjust. ZERGING DOES NOT WORK.

I take that back it CAN work but it requires to many tanks and coordination between 40 people that doesn't typically happen, or for Ally to completely drop the ball. FFS hordies, STOP zerging. We win the war of attrition because we still have better choke points advantages. Sending 10-15 people to defend our towers for a few seconds is an instant win for Horde. Preach it to the masses.

Arena - Sigh...
Well my priest partner died I think because he's not been on in a week or so. My points have ground to a halt. Good news is I'm sitting on a whole lot of season 10 gear, bad news is I still need a few crucial pieces. Time for some trash.

I've been out of the "Ask Dr. Blackthought" mode for some time so the more questions I get the more I'll know what people want to hear. Polls going up.

Tanking stuff is coming up soon. With videos and such. Not since my trash runs into FL have I actually gone into FL so probably wont see to much quality stuff in there for now.

http://www.youtube.com/user/NoMoreNoob1
Videos will be going up soon.

We're back! - Though we were never gone.

2011-08-25T11:15:00.000-07:00

Hello my friends,
Long time no speak or write. My apologies. I’ve been here, just without drive to put pen to paper or fingers to keys. That’s changed a bit and we’re going to have a go at it here again to start bringing the thump back to the site with all the info you love and miss.

Updates to Blackthought:
1 - Yes he’s still kicking ass and taking names, Deathwing-Blackthough, go on armory him if you need more proof. So content will be fresh and more or less in line with what you need.

Site Updates & Objectives:
1 – The site is dated so I’ll be throwing up some new polls
2 – Posting frequency will again go up a bit, I am recruiting some help of some top notch warriors to assist with things and provide more content.
3 – You Tube videos, I’ll be sending over the channels as soon as I get them, probably more than one channel for each warrior who contributes. Pay them a visit and learn a thing or two.
4 – the guide is still in the works, for those who received the PDF version warm up know that it’s still coming, sorry for the delay, I believe more of it will come in the form of video’s though, not sure still playing with a few things.
5 – 4.2 has been out for a while and there’s lots to talk about, news, money making, pvp, pve, dailies, tips, tricks, and generally things to complain about and or praise. I’ll get to as much of it as possible.
6 – Leveling. I know there are a lot of 85 warriors out there, but there are just as many level 65 warriors at a loss for what to do (GO PROT AND DUNGEON YOU FOOLS). I’ll be telling them what to do to level up quickly and be prepared.

So stay tuned…
We’re back.

4.1 Prot PVP to Train Your Warrior Tanking Skill

2011-06-09T14:38:00.000-07:00

Train your PVE with a little PVP.
Well I took up the challenge of prot PVP last night and boy oh boy was it a challenge, a fun one though and very rewarding.
EPEEN STROKE ALERT!!!

EOTS – top damage, top HK’s, top killing blows, 2 deaths. Hoora!.
WSG – Top HK’s, top 3 KB’s, 3 deaths
AB – Top 3 KB’s, top 3 damage, top 3 Deaths (I got stuck at farm assaulting the unassailable...but tied up 5 other ally)

On top of that I ran about 15 arena 8 arms, 7 prot and actually won more as prot than arms (was running with a hunter).

First and foremost there’s nothing easy about prot pvp, in fact it’s VERY engaging. VERY. Timing everything SOOOO reminds me of tanking. Full area awareness, knowing what your DPS is doing, where your healer is, where their healer is, who’s attacking, what’s attacking who, is there incoming, etc, etc.

I started the night in EOTS I drop down the starting area and head over to the tower on the right, there’s 3 dps, including me, and one healer. I had arguably one of the most epic pvp battles I ever had with a 4 v 7 set up. The healer was leet that‘s for sure so I can’t take all the credit, BUT I can credit keeping his ass alive long enough for us to kill their healers (YES TWO OF THEM) and then dispatch their dps. I kid you not the fight lasted a good 5 – 6 minutes before we were able to clear the first tower. THANKFULLY the rest of the BG was able to pwn as well so we ended up winning.

After that fight things went well in attacking towers and such, I really started paying attention to just how hard I was working. There’s no nuke’m macro, there’s no SUPER BURST damage no there’s none of that (though you can start to burst as vengeance goes up). No instead what you’re faced with is having to methodically time and work out what you’re going to be doing, who you should be attacking how you should be forcing them to move...it quickly hit me...”hey this is just like tanking...only harder”

Hence the title.
I noticed that when I charged a group during early BG play they focused me, then realized I was prot and focused elsewhere (I dropped agro). This both offended me and motivated me.

After that I made damn sure they were aware of where I was at all times because if I was near by they were going to be experiencing problems. About mid way through I was becoming the main target again.

How.

Well first off as I said the opening burst just isn’t going to scare anyone, sorry , it’s just not. HOWEVER what seamed to scare people was that I could tie down casters almost completely, making things all but simple for even a mediocre dps to kill someone. People started running from me, not because I was killing them, though I had my fair share, but because I would render them completely useless. Shockwave is also a very scary tool when you learn to position people...just like with tanking instances.

There are just so many similarities between prot pvp and prot pve that It got me to thinking, MAN, this is a great way to learn how to tank.

I took a look at the poll on the right hand side of this site and guess what, most people want tanking help. I would strongly suggest you hone your reaction skills with some period tank pvp.

Learn to identify the caster in the background and heroic throw or charge him. Learn to help your fellow bg’s out by intervening and then concblowing their would be attacker.

LEARN TO USE SHIELD WALL and rally cry and enraged regend.

Like I said, if you want a pretty good feel of how to organize yourself in an instance then play some BG’s as prot, run 10 and then do an instance, you’ll feel like you’re going in slow motion.

Daijozen - Darkspear - Featured Prot PVP Warrior

2011-06-06T21:34:00.000-07:00

Well I don't usually do this but damn. When I'm inspired I'm inspired. I've touched on prot warriors in pvp a few times this patch, at first I was a bit standoffish and then warmed up to the idea as I geared up a bit. Then today we got a comment from Daijozen and I checked his youtube channel out
http://www.youtube.com/user/crimsoon27

And WOW is all I have to say. Watching his videos inspired me, moreover his armory is a testament to how to get shyt done.
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/darkspear/daijozen/advanced

So just wanted to give credit were credit was due, who knows maybe Daijozen will bless us all with some pointers because...wow!

~Blackthought

Zul' Aman Tanking Guide for Warriors and Other Tanks Too

2011-06-03T17:25:00.000-07:00

Zul’Aman

Akil’Zon (Eagle boss)
Easy mode. Start off with hitting the boss, he’ll summon a white bird, when he does kill it immediately as it just picked up one of your teammates. After it’s dead back to killing the boss. He’ll summon a bird again do the same thing. At some point he’ll cast a thunderstorm spell that lifts one of your teammates in the air. All you need do is run under your teammate to avoid any damage. Tank and spank boss.

Nalorakk (Bear boss)
Tank and spank for a tank. Ranged dps needs to create a rush lineup as every so often the boss will charge the FURTHEST PERSON and damn near kill them. He places a debuff on them. If he rushes them again they die. SO. First have someone take the first rush. Then they move up while someone else falls FURTHER back. The next rush will hit the NEW furthest person. After the new guy eats a rush he comes up and a third guy falls back to take the next rush. He should be dead shortly after or before 3rd rush.

Halazzi (Lynx boss)
Phase 1: YOUR JOB: keep him out of the green. He drops totems that create a green circle on the floor and heal him, as with Jin’Do you want to tank him out of the green. At like 66%.

Phase 2: He summons a Lynx, it will attack a random member, have your team burn either the lynx or the boss as when one of them get’s low enough in health things get returned to phase 1. Also he will drop a lightning totem that needs to be nuked immediately. Again keep him out of green.
At 33% he does the linx thing again and drops totems more frequently, just kill totems and focus either him or the lynx to get back to phase one. He should be dead now.

Jan’Alai (Dragonhawk)
There are two side areas with eggs in them. Every so often the boss calls 2 adds and they go unhatch the eggs, Dragons swarm your group. Have one of your dps with freezes or traps stay by the right bridge, you stay on the left. Pull the boss. Tank the boss, on the side. Watch for his Frontal fire attack. When he calls adds your dps should kill ONE of the adds and you should let the add coming by you get to and hatch the eggs. When he does make sure you have a rend on the boss. Now a craptastic load of adds are going to come storming across the bridge you just let your ad go through. As they do make sure a large enough group is there and Tclap to agro and then shockwave to aoe DPS the adds until you kill them, get back on boss. He’ll call more adds to hatch more eggs, kill the one like you just did, then kill the adds again. At some point like 25% health all the eggs that didn’t hatch are hatched, kill adds and burn boss. Jan’ Alai will do an AOE attack that puts orange circles on the ground, they blow up, don’t stand on them. Kill boss, loot corpse.

Hex Lord Malacrass
He has two adds with Lor Malacrass. If you can CC them do so, it’s easy. If you can CC one do so and then burn the add, then the boss, if you can’t CC either, burn the adds and then the boss. Pretty easy fight honestly. Malacrass takes powers from random people in your party so just FYI fear sucks.

Daakara
Changes forms every 33% damage, so two changes over the course of the fight, he can change into any of the following

Lynx form: He’ll rush ONE player and hit them OMG so fukin hard. TAUNT IMMEDIATELY be prepared to blow cooldowns on this one. He also does this aoe type thing where he charges at each player, DO NOT BLOW YOUR TAUNT on that attack. He spawns with 2 smaller lynx, I don’t even bother with them honestly, If I can grab them with a shockwave I will if not I focus on the boss the whole time, you only need to go 33% to get them to go away so better to focus on him not One shotting one of your members and have them worry about the add then to pick up the add and be late with a taunt. (this is the hardest part of the fight)

Dragonhawk form: Shoots fire in a circle everywhere for AoE damage and then does a really bad line of fire blast, don’t’ stand in front of it, it’s pretty easy to avoid. Also theirs pillars of fire, don’t get hit by the, you should only really need to move a little to avoid his frontal attack.

Bear form: Stand their and tank him. He’ll charge a random play and then come back to you. Demo shout helps as does TC. It’s just tank and spank. He does hit hard though so if you need to use last stand don’t hesitate.

Eagle form: Spawns 5 cyclones in random positions. They move around every so often, just avoid them. They shoot lightning too but not much you can do about that...oh wait yes there is. Shield block now reduces magic damage, so make sure you’re using it.

If you found something needs adjusting let me know.

Zul'Gurub Tanking Guide for Warriors and other tanks too

2011-06-03T17:21:00.001-07:00

Here's my tank guide for Zul'Gurub.

Zul’Gurub

Venoxxis (arguably the hardest fight in ZA and ZG)
Pull him down to the front of the stairs(see pic below) Tank him there till he turns into a snake. Watch for his poision spit crap and just run through him right befor he does it. Be mindful of the green smoke that creeps out from his towers it kills you, and leaves a maze pattern on the floor. After you kick his ass as a snake for a while he runs back to the top of his stair case. You should more clearly see the maze on the floor now, be prepared to walk around it NOT touching it as three giant laser type things are going to start tracing around the map, I find it best to go all the way to the left and hid there for a bit, 9/10 times the lasers don’t even go over there.

He does have an attack he uses on no tank players that links them. They need to be FAR, FAR way from eachother and anyone else in the raid. To break the link they need to run away from eachother, when it breaks it causes AOE damage from both the linked players, that’s why they need to be far away from eachother. Also they shouldn’t step on the poision maze on the floor as they run away from eachother, I believe that also causes the link to break.

Here's a map of how to do this. Tank the boss on the red circle in the pic, DO NOT STAND ON THE GREEN LINES. The black box is all poision free so you should be good there. If you tank him here then when your melee get's linked one can go north and one goes south (as per the RED lines). During the phse when he runs up the stairs and shoots green beems if you have melee stack on the tank just prior to him firing the green lazers there's a godo chance all the lazers will start ON the red dot and you can all safely run away.

Easy mode. Oh this is arguably the hardest fight

Bloodlord Mandokir
Tank Mandokir, he’ll one shot people, it’s ok they are supposed to die. Ghost will res them. Periodically he’ll summon a raptor pet, KILL IT ASAP, then back to killing him. Not rocket science. He has a frontal spike type attack, don’t stand in front of him when he casts it.

Kilnara (Panther boss)
Phase 1. Tell your group NOT to attack the boss. Instead, you attack, get agro and then pull 1 pack of panthers that are asleep in the main room you’re in. Kill that pack of panthers. Pull another pack, pull another until you’ve cleared ALL panther packs.

Phase 2: nuke boss. Phase two begins at 50%. If you decided NOT to listen to me then you get what’s coming. Any panthers alive in the room when phase two starts join. The main boss does a wall type attack that’s as obvious as the day is long. The cast time on it is HUGE and you see a large purple wall building in front of her. Go around to her back side as she shoots the wall forward. She’ll disappear and drop agro in phase two, be ready to taunt and get agro back.
Interrupt tears of blood.

Zan’zil
Three phases (Fire, Ice, Poison)
There are three cauldrons in the area. Green(poison), Red (Fire), Blue (Ice)

Basically the boss will do one of the three following things.
Zombie trolls: He calls a crap load of zombies, get to the red cauldron and it gives you a fire AOE buff that pretty much kills them.
Berserker phase: One big mob? Usually best to have a ranged get the blue cauldron Attacks gain freezing powers. Slows down Berserker and kills them quick. As a tank you shouldn’t really even be involved in this portion.
Poision Phase: Entire environment covered in gas. Grab poison cauldron, become i mmune. EVERYON NEEDS TO CLICK THE GREEN CAULDRON. Not just you.

Jin’do
Phase 1: Get agro on Jin, he’ll cast a bubble shield over himself, pull him out of it. Your team should DPS him until he cast shadow of Hakkar, once he starts casting get in the bubble. I like to pull him out just past the edge of the bubble and then turn around and place myself in the bubble while he is out of the bubble. So when he casts I can stay safely in the bubble and he’s close enough that melee can still hit him. He’ll cast another bubble do the same, pull him out and get ready to get into the bubble when he casts Shadow of Hakkar.

Phase 2 (starts about 3-4 green bubbles into the fight): Hakkar
There are chains on the ground. They each have 1 million health and a bubble on top that makes them immune to damage. Breaking the chains wins the fight. Your team needs to stay near the bubbles. YOU need to go pick up one of the large trolls you killed on the up, Heroic throw works best. Bring the troll up onto the platform and start tanking him, make sure to avoid giant black fireballs. At some point he’ll target a party member and SLAM (it’s a jumping attack). This is the attack that breaks the bubbles on the chains so it’s important that your team be near an unbroken bubble. As soon as he break the bubble KILL THE TROLL ASAP. And then nuke the unprotected chain. Go grab another troll and do the same thing to break all the chains.

Now the challenge is that there will be a constant streem of black ghosts spawning. Your team should be killing those throughout. The more and faster they kill the better, theonly time they should NOT be killing ghosts is when they are breaking the chains or nuking the troll. The ghost eat your healer so FYI. I normally pop shield wall sometime after I pull up the last troll, when I see it falling off I’ll blow last stand and enraged regen. Trust me it’ll help your healer and if done right the fights over so you wont need those CD’s anyway. DO IT.

Enjoy and if you find a better way share it so I can update it.

Zygor 50% Off Sale

2011-06-02T10:30:00.000-07:00

Some cool news if you want to take a look at Zygor Guides now is the time. They are running a special right now for the leveling and dailies guides, 50% off. That’s FIVE, ZERO.

I can personally vouch for this thing as I’m not only a promoter, I’m an avid user.

Some people are still of the opinion that a leveling guides doesn’t really benefit you, but OH my how wrong you would be. Leveling, while quick and not as challenging as it once was, is only made quicker with a world of Warcraft leveling guide, and when it comes to guides Zygor is top notch.

Not only does the guide auto select the next quest you should be doing, it does it regardless of when you start.
Do you have a level 15 alt you want to start playing, zygor guide will auto inject your butt into the right spot in the guide.
Level 54, same thing. Basically you download it, let the installer walk you through the easy steps and BAM you’re off to the races.

Like I said if you’ve ever wondered what all the hoopla was about now is as good a time as any to check it out. FYI you have a full 100% refund option if you decide it blows.
Click on the Zygor image above for your 50% pricing

WOW Tattoos - World of Warcraft In Your Life

2011-06-01T15:21:00.000-07:00

So I’m walking to “lunch” today near my work. There’s a convenience story about 40 feet from my job and nothing says fiscal responsibility and healthy eating like a “hotdog”, grilled taquito and 44oz soda all for $3. I pick up my lunch of champions and start walking back to work. I happen to notice a car stopped at the intersection with a Horde logo decal on the back and I think to myself, “Now there’s a guy who has his shyt together”.

I sorta chuckled as I ran the same scene through my head but instead of a horde decal there was an ally decal. Needless to say no matter how I played it out in my head there were 2 endings that always came to mind. One had me dragging the guy from his car and tossing him into on coming traffic and the other had him speeding away and getting hit by a semi.

Now, that’s sick right? I know. That’s why I chuckled. Now I never would really do or wish either of those things on anyone, but I found myself playfully wishing harm upon people because of their faction affiliation.

Maybe I have issues and maybe I don’t, that’s not the point here, the point is that the more I thought about World of Warcraft and the affect it has on roughly 12 million people world wide and approximately double that via association (i.e. Your momma and daddy) people “know” about wow. Bottom line is that WOW is in effect the Star Trek of the next generation (does that qualify as double entendre?) It affects and consumes the lives of many people around the world. Doubt me? You right now have taken the time to come visit my blog and there are only two possible reason.
1. You’re a stalker. In which case quit it.
2. You’ve made a conscious choice to go OUTSIDE OF THE GAME and read up on THE GAME.

I’m willing to bet that if you take the time to do some self searching, and not that crap you do when you’re in the shower, but some serious soul searching you’ll find that on some level you’ve taken parts of WOW and injected them into your own life and your own mentality. Be it you silently tell yourself FTH when you accomplish something of importance or perhaps you find yourself thinking, man if only we ally had a cool “For The Horde” type chant that would suit my mediocre accomplishment as an ally-centric wow player, perhaps you’ve envisioned how best you’d be able to pull your office if your boss where a raid boss and your co workers were adds, or maybe you’ve sat in class and though, man if only I had my axe right now this teacher would learn to STFU so I could finish my nap. Regardless of how you’ve placed wow in your life I bet you could name a couple of wow type things you do, or even have a “wow” story or two that have spilled over into your real life.

My son for instance and the “Mortal Strike” Elementary School incident of 2011 that placed a permanent ban on saying Lok'tar ogar in any context while on school property. While details of that fateful afternoon remain lost to the annals (it’s not the word your thinking...google it.) of time one thing is clear, Blackthought’s Guide to Fatherly Advice concerning school yard bullying has been placed in a permanent hold pattern by my wife. I kid of course but for a second you believe me.

Now I know some people are going to read this and say, “not me, I can clearly separate myself from this game when not playing” they will then spend the next 4-8 hours of their life guiding pixels to hit other pixels in an attempt to get pixels from the dead pixels...don’t throw stones when you live in a pixilated house made of glass is all I’m saying.

This brings me to my next thought. Wow Tattoos. Now, before you start sending me pictures of your cleverly placed WoW tattoo (...think about it for a second and you’ll get the joke...no? Still not getting it huh?... Come on think a little harder...No? Here’s a hint then. It involves the thing you’re sitting on now...Ahhhh, welcome to the party...) or before you start spouting off “that’s dumb I’d never get a tattoo of a “game”” let me ask you this:
What do you think of sports tattoos?
Tribal bands?
FUKIN DOLPHINS ON YOUR ANKLES
Tramp Stamps
Or really damn near any other tattoo you’ve ever seen, what’s the significance and how do any of the afore mentioned tattoos differ from a WOW Tattoo in their lack of significance?
.
.
.
Exactly, they don’t differ. So don’t judge. Would you ever get one?

Wow is just to big now for you to have played it seriously on any level and not have it spill over into your RL, even if only a little.

Just some thoughts for the mind I guess. Tomorrow I’ll pick back up on some tanking tips as well as some arena tales. DID YOU KNOW for instance that an arms warrior and a well played Elemental Shaman can really cause problems for a lot of 2v2 teams? Also did you know that when tanking even marking a target with skull doesn’t always stop the noob inside of people from shinning through?

So what are your thoughts, if any, on how wow has seeped into your regular life?

4.1 Arms Warrior Revisited - Fury has a friend

2011-05-31T12:12:00.000-07:00

Welcome kids I hope everyone had a great 3 day weekend. For my European readers who were not celebrating Memorial day....well happy Tuesday as it were.

Now on to my exploits this weekend, lots to cover and all the time in the world to do it.
First and foremost, I mentioned last week that I would be taking a serious look at Arms warriors. So this weekend that’s exactly what I did.

First and foremost let me say I love fury. Always have, always will. Now let me just say that I was thoroughly impressed with Arms and what I was able to do.

Now I’ve been running fury in arena for some time now and while I love what it brings after comparing it to ARMS I think I’m going to have to reconsider my initial assessment of fury being better than arms in 4.1. The burst for arms, while not quite as bursty as fury, is no slouch and having the peel abilities as well as bladestorm makes for an interesting comparison.

In terms of Arena viability I still think fury and arms can be used, the issue you run into with fury is the lack of control. You can keep pressure up pretty high but nothing like with ARMS. Fury is built around timed cooldown destruction. Arms is a little more reliable in it’s ability to dish out bombs consistently while fury in my opinion relies to much on Raging Blow procing and while it’s nice when it does the fact that enrage is on a 9% proc chance it does sorta leave you with bloodthirst ever other GCD and then CS once ever six seconds, so basically you can run into large stretches of time when you’re not doing the OMG WTF STOP HITTING ME damage you are capable of doing. In PVP this is painful especially when facing people who have a healer in their pocket or even when trying to burn down a healer. The other major thing that hurt fury was the reduction in the stun intercept provides you used to be able to get 2 gcd off before your target moved. Now you’re lucky if you can get one.

4.1 arms on the other hand provides you with more attacks more constantly. MS hits harder than Bloodthirst so the burst is bigger and now that you don’t have to refresh rend anymore because MS refreshes it when you hit. Couple that with the way hamstring is basically spammable and snares and you’re looking at getting some pretty nasty hits in a very short time. On more than one occasion was I able to kick off the following attacks back to back to back ... to back.

CS, MS, OP, CS, Slam...keep in mind I peppered HS in there like twice as well. In a nutshell the priest I was fighting got knocked the fuk out as did his warrior buddy.
Don’t even get me started on my BG fun. Not to sound too cheesy but I feel like a force of nature out there. There wasn’t a person in any BG I ran this weekend (and I ran about 50) that I can honestly say I ever felt threatened by, ironically enough there was this enhance shammy that was kicking ass and taking names...but still I melted his face and shoved a totem up his rear too.

BTW ally they have this things called resilience GET SOME!

The only problem I did run into was when I was fighting someone in better gear who also had a healer, beyond that there were very few times I ever felt in danger.
Fun pro BG tip: Bladestorm hits lots of people, use it when you see lots of people near death and rack up 5 killing blows and piss the rest of your team off:)

In terms of PVE I did a number of ZA/ZG runs this weekend and while many of those were in tanking spec I did manage to get a few dps runs as well. Arms was competitive, I dare say that did better in arms which I attribute mostly to getting some better gear in between runs. Also with recklessness popped I could ring off over 150k in about 3-5 hits and THEN use execute. BTW inner rage is awesome for spamming using slam while everything else is on CD.

So after everything was said and done and arenas were completed and instances were run, foots put to asses and axes put to faces I think it’s ok to bring ARMS out of the basement, take off his protective helmet and shinny reflective vest, put some points in your tree and give ARMS another go at it.

Protection Warrior Cool Down Management

2011-05-26T14:55:00.000-07:00

By special request I’m going to touch on the topic of Prot Warrior Tank Cool down Rotation which in and of itself is somewhat of a misnomer. There’s no real rotation in my opinion as they are more situational. The only three skills I will ALWAYS use in conjunction are Rally Cry or Last Stand + Enraged Regeneration. You’ll want to do this to maximize your enraged regen as it takes into account the extra health you get and increases the health per tick.

Now let’s look at the three main protection warrior cool downs.

Longer Cool Downs
Shield Wall – 40% Damage Reduction for 12 Seconds on 5 minute CD (Glyph reduces damage to 20% and CD to 2 minutes)
Enraged Regeneration – Heals you for 30% of your Max health over 10 seconds or 3% each second (150k x 3% = 4500hp/sec, or 45k total), 3 min CD.
Last Stand – Grants 30% of your max health for 20 seconds after which the health disappears. 3 min CD
Rally Cry - It temporarily grants the warrior and all party or raid members within 30 yards 20% of maximum health for 10 seconds. 3 min CD but shares CD with Last Stand.

Abilities with shorter CD’s
Shield Block – Increases block chance by 25% AND when specced creates aura that reduces magic damage by 20%
Spell Reflect – Reflects a spell 25 second CD, 20 with glyph.
Inner Rage – Reduces cool down of Cleave and HS by 50% for 15 seconds. 30 Second CD.
Intimidating Shout – Fear bomb when glyphed to not have shyt running every which way.

That should just about cover all warrior CD’s

So first I’ll take a look at the longer standard cool downs for protection warriors. First and foremost they are situational. That is to say it’s best to keep these big 4 for when you need them and when you know you’re going to be taking a massive wave of damage. Personally I run a priority system for when to use them.

Shield wall gets used when I’m up shyt creek and my paddle is broken and or missing. This is the MAIN CD warriors have to make some magic happen. If I blow shield wall I’m also blowing ever available CD I have because it’s now crunch time. This includes commanding shout as well as blowing pots and eating lock rocks. If my healer goes down and I think there’s a shot of killing the monster I blow it. If my healer is CC’d or something I blow it. If I see my health near the 10-25% mark (which is about 30-45k) I blow it. The thing with shield wall is that because it’s on a 5 min CD chances are you’re only going to be able to use it once so save it for when you need it most.

Last Stand and Enraged regen are a little more situational and can be used in a staggered like setting to give your healer some breathing room or as an “oh shyt” button. I find that I use it most about mid fight when there’s a lot of raid damage going around and the healer is falling behind. I really like rally cry right now as a means to help my healers catch up on healing when they fall behind. In a nutshell rally cry let’s you insta heal your entire party for 20% health. That’s HUGE in terms of group and solo survivability. Don’t forget to use enraged regen at the same time to give your healer that much more time. In tight fights where damages is flying all over the place sometimes a healer being able to get 1 or 2 more heals on a NON tank person can be the difference between wipe and no wipe. If average dps is 12k and someone dies then every 10 seconds you lose 120k damage to a target, that’s huge over the course of a fight. The more people alive the better. I also like to use my CD’s towards the end of a fight, say at about the last two minutes of the fight or between 0-10% of the target’s health.

So those are the larger CD, again they are very situational and really beyond using enraged regen AFTER last stand or rally cry there is no real priority.

Well the ONE MAYBE is if you glyph for shield wall to be able to use it more often. IF you do this then things change a bit and you’ll want to use it pretty much once every other pull, most likely early in a pull when you have the most targets attacking you. I’m going to glyph this tonight and try it out. On boss fights I would still try to save it for oh shyt moments, but more so when you KNOW you’re going to get hit with something big. With a 2 minute CD that’s short enough to use it several times in a fight.

So what about the Shorter Ability CD’s?
These are just as important as your OH SHYT type cool downs because NOT using these appropriately make using your OH SHYT CD’s all but inevitable.
First and foremost shield block. If you’re not keeping this on CD then you’re doing it entirely and completely wrong, especially now that it creates a 20% reduce magic damage aura. As I’ve mentioned before the following macro works wonders
/Cast Shield Block
/Cast Shield Slam

Even when shield block is on CD shield slam will work. So you have damn near 100% up time on that. The importance here is that you mitigate as much incoming damage as possible be it magical or physical. Imagine 4 casters who would have hit you for 50k. With shield block up you’ve essentially saved 10k of your health. Which adds up over the course of a fight.

Spell reflect works the same way. Far to often tanks only focus on Pummel, which in and of itself can be good if you’re specced into getting increased damage, if nothing else reflecting a spell back does 2 things. 1 reduces damage you take, increase damage done to a mob. There’s also something very satisfying about stamping a shadow bolt “return to sender” and having some dumb ass mob kill itself.

Now intimidating shout when glyphed is actually a very powerful mitigation tool, assuming the mobs aren’t fear immune. Imagine you find yourself surrounded by 4 mobs and some dumb ass hunter pet goes and agros a pat or another pack of mobs. A quick thinking tank is going to fear bomb and pray to holy hell said dumb ass hunter pet doesn’t have some AoE. In a nutshell, think of this as a mass interrupt spell, similar to shockwave but non damaging and not in a frontal cone. I don’t think warriors utilize this nearly enough IMHO and honestly it might not be your fault entirely as most people are going AoE happy so the fear would be broken. Never the less when you’re with a group you know you can tell them that after the first couple of seconds once you have agro on the pack you’re going to fear bomb to focus on skull. If you’re still running grim batol this is a great place to use it as you can fear a whole pull and sometimes kill them all before the fear drops if you FF one after the other.

Inner Rage – now this is purely a little wow warrior AOE agro grabbing trick I’ve used when things get sticky and I am getting hit by a shyt load of things and agro is going every which a way. Inner rage makes cleave very useful for grabbing agro back and when popped your priority should go something like, Shockwave, revenge, devastate, cleave spam. The idea is that you’re getting hit by so many things that rage isn’t to much of an issue so you can afford to spam cleave all while doing good dps to burn mobs down. This is also good to use during burn phases of bosses when you know you’re going to have tons of rage. Pop inner rage and if you have incite you’ll crit like crazy AND still maintain agro. Overall it’s just good clean fun too.

So there’s warrior cooldown management for you.

I didn’t even touch on warrior trinkets did I....?
Ok real quick. Depending on the trinket and what it does you’ll need to use them differently. If you have a “increase health for xyz” trinket then make sure to use that in conjunction with your regen. If you have a dodge or parry increase then honestly I’d use those like you would shield slam and keep them on CD relying on your main CD’s for those Oh shyt moments. In the macro above try placing a /use TRINKET after the cast shield slam and you should be able to keep that bad boy on CD.

So how do you manage your protection warrior CD’s?

4.1 Prot PVP - Warrior Protection PVP

2011-05-25T09:57:00.001-07:00

So, um 4.1 prot pvp isn’t as bad as I might have previously thought. Don’t get me wrong you’re not going to solo burst down a healer or anything but um yeah it’s viable. You know my story earlier this week about a fail hunter who most likely bought his account? Well during my 20 some losses I dabbled in the art of prot pvp in arena and I found it interesting. Mobility is still monsterous.

My previous assessments of prot in various different patch was that you were like batman, all utility. That still holds true today. Now understand I’m talking aboug BG’s here. I wasn’t ramping up killing blows, though I input a respectable number still. What I was able to do though was help my team and even bring the pain (30k heroic throw crits anyone?)

Essential for 4.1 prot pvp is resilience. You want to still pvp in your resilience gear (though recent changes in resilience have me and a few forum pals discussing the finer points of a potential soft resilience cap...more on this when I get some math to back things up.) As prot I’m damn near indestructible. Last night i self defended several flags in AB against upwards of 5 ally. It’s amazing how much damage you can mitigate, truly it is amazing. Couple that with enraged regen and shield wall and prot pvp is a force. Granted the pure blow’em away power of fury isn’t there but it does provide a new challenge for those nights after arena play.Not only that but really it helps to be a better tank.

No really it does. Think of it like this. In PVE you know damn near every move your enemy is going to make right, hell DBM tells you EXACTLY what each boss is going to do it and WHEN they are going to do it. Convert over to PVP and you don’t have a predictable enemy or a nifty little add on telling you exactly what’s going to happen and you’re forced to pay attention and utilize your skills.

In PVE when tanking your objective is to keep all the squishy people alive by getting mobs to be angry with you. Well the same holds true for 4.1 prot pvp. If you can disarm, aoe stun, aoe fear, silence, range silence, reduce armor, reduce incoming damage, reflect spells, semi stun lock, aoe via devastate, revenge and cleave, intervene, charge, intercept and provide a 20% hp boost via rally cry how do you suppose a fight is going to work out? That’s a lot of things to dish out to any opposing team.

I took to the field with the dream of 20-30k crit shield slams, after some experimentation I found that life was just so much more fun screwing with people. Call me an ass or whatever but there’s a special joy I get when I run at a healer who’s been keeping a team alive and I like him down for what seams like forever, all while my team chews up his team.

Same thing for hunters. A disarmed hunter is easily the most useless thing in wow. You can get mages to blow all types of nifty things like blink and frost and then still silence them so they can’t hit you and then when they are able to hit you you can spell reflect.

All classes fall that much faster with a full stack of sunders
A disarmed warrior is all but useless.
Rogues who can’t move are easy pray.

The list goes on and on.

Call me crazy but there’s something intrinsically warrior about being able to charge 4 people, put a serious hurting on 4 of them and still not die that just sings to my warrior heart.

Now it’s not all sunshine and gnome blood. I stood toe to toe with a priest healer and the fuker just sat there as I widdled her down to like 15% health and then she just poped her health back to 100%.

There was the 6 minute rogue fight that I eventually won that were I fury would have lasted like 4 seconds.

Never the less prot pvp is still very viable in this day and age. I can’t seam to find anyone crazy enough to want to test some arena out with me though :(

Anyone out there giving prot a try?

4.1 Fury VS Arms Warrior PVP

2011-05-23T09:47:00.001-07:00

Update: A follow up to this post was written here: http://www.nomorenoob.com/2011/05/41-arms-warrior-revisited-fury-has.html

And while I believe fury has a place in arena, ARMS continues to remain the best option for serious arena play...in most cases.
4.1 Fury PVP VS 4.1 Arms PVP.

First a little story, then fury vs arms debate.
An unfortunate set of circumstances found me without a good arena partner this week. My normal healer is out of town so I was consigned to pug it as I’ve not found a decent team yet. So with that I went to trade chat and started looking for a “point” partner. Admittedly I’m a bit “arena rusty” so I figured I’d wet my whistle with some good old fashion warrior pvp.

I happen upon a prot pally. It’s not ideal but ok we’ll see what happens. 0-13 later and I’m getting a little annoyed. Normally I would have tossed the dude to the curb but as I wasn’t feeling 100% yet either I looked at it like a “learning experience.” As I’m running around an arena with a DK and a mage on my ass with this pally (oh did I mention he’s a fresh 85 with very little resilience and even less pally skillz?) Well this pally tells me, “hey I have a hunter in full viscous want me to get him?” (/FACEPALM) Of course I want you to get him, have you seen the last 20 games or so? You last all of 30 seconds and then I’m left trying to fight a losing battle.

In comes the full vicious hunter. All things being equal I’m thinking GREAT this guy knows what he’s doing. (ASSUMPTION #1)

From this point forward I will never judge a character by gear alone, not that I did before but this just reinforces my previous stance that skill>gear.

We go another 4-5 games with him dying in the first few seconds.

I’m far be it for me to judge someone, but this guy was just not very good at all. He couldn’t kite a turtle with glue on its claws. HOW in the world he had a full pvp set is straight beyond me. I simply cannot see how this guy made it on ANY arena team.
Never the less we EVENTUALLY won the 8 or so games I needed to cap out for the week, keep in mind that of the 8 we won I two manned 3 of them (awesome stories in and of themselves.)

The reason I bring up this little story, aside from pointing out yet another example of why you should never buy your account online, is to demonstrate that I had a A LOT of play time in various specs and then followed suit with about 10 BG’s alternating fury and arms.

So on to the 4.1 fury vs 4.1 arms pvp...
Each is situational, ARMS is definitely more kiteable, with n the time it takes for charge to come off cooldown you can often find yourself DEAD.
Fury is definitely more mobile and really I can’t see a draw back on fury PVP at this point in time. Some people get miffed at the lack of certain skills like (bladestorm and throwdown) I just can’t see where those two skills make or break a deal.

Fury 4.1 hits hard, has decent self heals and a VERY nice extra stat stick in your second weapon making resilience all that more beneficial.

Both specs hit like trucks. Theirs something to be said of rend+CS+overpower+MS. I took many a clothy from full health to “running like a biotch” in that single rotation. The 20% chance to double white is nice. In a nut shell that’s a crit. (2x your normal white damage). Bladestorm + recklessness still rains death in a circle and does wonders in flag fights. It’s very nice in arena for scaring people away from your team mate. All things the same ARMS is definitely not dead, not by any stretch of the imagination.

I’m had tons of success with an initial charge + rend +cs+OP+MS and now that MS apply rend the arms rotation as I saw it is EXTREMELY easy to manage in both pve and pvp.

My recommendation for warriors at this stage in this season is to give both specs a try.

One thing I will say is that while dueling outside of ORG I fought a crap ton of warriors and while I would lose about 1/2 of the fights and things really depended on who was able to make the most of their throwdown.

When I fought the same 4-5 warriors (who were all very well geared ) as a fury warrior I melted face and rarely was under 50% health.

4.1 is the last time in a long time that I can remember both of our DPS specs being completely viable for PVP. I’m still going to give fury the slight increase simply based on these three things.
1. Harder to kite
2. More self heals.
3. Better stats.

Other than that the damage is near enough in both specs. The only thing arms has over fury that I could tell would be the utility of bladestorm along with throwdown

Would anyone like to share their experiences with the ARMS vs Fury 4.1 warrior debate?

4.1 Protection Warrior Rotation

2011-05-20T11:44:00.001-07:00

4.1 Protection Warrior Rotation is as follows:

I’m going to preface this portion of 4.1 rotation guide with the following: The rotation being put forth should be more a guideline. If you find you are trying to stick to close to a “rotation” and not “keeping shyt off people” then you need to readjust. The rotation below is more a guide on how to build and keep agro vs a YOU NEED TO DO IT LIKE THIS. There are far too many factors (huntards and their pets, AOE happy warriors, dumbasses that break CC, misguided misdirection or tricks of the trade) for you as a tank to be able to just stick to some rotation religiously.
Each of these rotations assumes you opened up with heroic throw + charge.
That being said.

4.1 Prot Warrior Single Target BOSS Rotation:

Shield Slam > Revenge > Rend (tclap) > Shockwave> Devastate to 3 stacks > Heroic Strike.

Prioritize Shield Slam over Revenge. Once the first application of Rend is applied refresh with thunderclap making sure not to let rend fall off. Keep shockwave on CD as with Conc blow.

The other thing you want to ALWAYS HAVE UP is Shield Block probably more than your offensive rotation your defensive rotation is key as well. Shield Block IS A MUST BE USED ALWAYS(see footnote below) skill. Use Devastate as filler to keep sunder applied AND in order to proc Sword and Board. Beyond that spam HS like it’s going out of style as long as you have the rage for it. As always be ready to pick up adds and have the following skills EASILY ACCESSIBLE: Taunt, Challenging Shout, heroic throw & Pummel. If these aren’t key bound you should consider it.

4.1 Prot Warrior Trash Pack Rotation: (when you heroic throw try to hit someone with a mana bar so you silence them and they run to you rather than stay away nuking you)

Initial Rotation: Rend > Tclap > (after turning the mob group) Shockwave, Shield Slam (skull or main target), Revenge, TAB Target, Devastate, Tab Target, Devastate, Target Main Devastate., cleave replaces HS.

Skill priority after that is to keep shield slam on CD, keep rend applied via tclap and keep revenge and shockwave on CD while filling with devistate.

The goal is to throw around as much AoE agro as possible up front. You may have to adjust according to your group and their threat. MARK SKULL if you find someone is pulling and TELL THEM (don’t ask them you better freakin TELL THEM) to give you a 3 Mississippi count before they open up so you aren’t chasing shyt around. After the initial threat build phase it’s pretty simple actually just keep things on CD and you should be fine. It’s trash after all. YOU MUST STILL KEEP SHIELD BLOCK ON COOLDOWN. I can’t stress this enough.

In a good group you’ll likely have some interrupts but you can’t always depend on that in a pug. Be mindful of who’s causing you the most damage and either disarm, pummel or Heroic Throw to silence, conc blow to stun and interrupt and shockwave to mass stun and stop attacks.

One of the biggest strengths prot warriors have is their mobility. More than ANY OTHER CLASS we have the ability to move around. Charge, Intercept, Intervene, and Heroic leap. If you can’t get where you need to be with those just send me your gold now and delete your account.

There’s your 4.1 protection warrior rotation at a glance.

Oh and one last FOOT note on shield block. YOU HAVE TO KEEP THIS ON COOLDOWN. BUT... Pay attention cause I don’t want you to fudge this up and then come back upset when your TPS sucks ass and you’re dead.

Shield Block IS a defensive Cooldown, BUT it also serves as a TPS booster. So there’s a balance somewhere in there you need to take into consideration. If YOU KNOW you’re going to be getting a crap load of damage coming in then hold off on using it a few seconds. On trash normally it’s ok to just spam it. I’m going to give you the following macro

/Cast Shield Block
/Cast Slam

This will work even when shield blow is on CD, the thing is IT WILL ALWAYS CAST IT when it’s available, so be mindful of what yu’re doing and if you’d rather NOT have it auto cast before you shield slam them don’t use the macro... You’ve been warned. :)

Now get out there and stop a sword with your face.

PVE GUIDE - PVE Formula New Wold of Warcraft Guide

2011-05-20T10:26:00.002-07:00

You might have noticed some new ads have popped up. On the sides of the site for PVE Formula. Previously I’ve only really endorsed two or three “guides”; Dugis, Zygor and 20k Gold Guide from Marko at Just My Two Copper. Trust me when I say there are HUNDEREDS of guides out there that are pretty freakin useless. Zygor, Dugis and 20k are not in this category. After having a talk and a quick review of PVE Formula I think, as per the new ads, that it’s time to add a new one to the GUIDES YOU NEED category.

Here’s the skinny on PVE Formula. They’ve only been out for a little over a month but they are NOT noobs by any stretch of the imagination. After reviewing their fury warrior section and the strategy guide for killing Sinestra from what I’m seeing this is a guide EVERYONE could and will benefit from. In a nut shell they break down everything you need to know to NOT SUCK while playing PVE. The information is sound and current to the latest patch. It’s almost more than just a world of Warcraft warrior guide or raiding guide it’s a PLAYERS GUIDE, made for and by players. Far to often some of these other guides I see around are made by some internet marketer who essentially visits sites like NoMoreNoob and basically steals our shyt. PVE Formula is NOT one of these guides.
Any how you can click HERE

Or the image below to check the guide out for yourself. It’s not free definitely worth the investment if you plan on playing for more than 3 months (and since I know some of you guys have hit the 5+ years mark there’s stuff in there for you too.)

If you check it out come back and let me know what you think in our comments section.

4.1 Protection Warrior - Gemming - Stat Priority - Reforge

2011-05-18T23:37:00.003-07:00

So until the free warrior guide is completed I'm going to fill some of these pages with what you need to get the most out of tanking and playing a protection warrior in 4.1 once the guide is released you'll find all this info in one convenient place and you will get automatic updates when new patches arrive. To Pre-register for your copy of the guide simply sign up in the box to your left.

4.1 Protection Warrior Stat Priorities

Master> Parry > Dodge> Stam > Hit 3-5% > Expertise 18-23 > Haste

Now before people start debating the effective health vs avoidance let me follow up my priorities with the following statement. Avoidance for the majority of instances is > than health. My focus here isn't for the end game raider, if you're in end game and want to discuss the finer points then bring it, otherwise recognize that the priority above is for the large majority of warrior tanks in 4.1. Now to explain a bit, Mastery simply benefits us more. Parry works really well with hold the line and the stamina you get from gear and gems means you don't really have to focus on it as it is a byproduct of doing things correctly. So let me say again, 4.1 prot warrior stat priorities are:

Master> Parry > Dodge> Stam > Hit 3-5% > Expertise 18-23 > Haste

4.1 Protection Warrior Gemming

Red = Parry/Mastery
Yellow = Mastery or mastery/stamina
Blue = Mastery/Stamina
Meta (helm) is Sta/Armor

It is important that you take advantage of stamina while gemming but with 4.1 prot warriors need to strive to push unmitigated attacks off of the table. Keep in mind while gemming to obviously make sure your meta is activated and also make sure that you are picking item gemming bonuses. You'll notice that in each gem slot you want to have mastery being buffed up. This is because 4.1 prot warriors benefit so much from mastery.

4.1 Protection Warrior Reforge Priority

Haste => Mastery

Expertise=> Mastery

Hit=> Mastery

Dodge=> Mastery

Parry=> Leave Alone

Mastery=> Leave alone.

Because most items come with 2 of these stats you will always be able to reforge ONE of them. Follow the priority list above. IN other words if you have an item with Haste & Hit Reforge the haste, if you have Dodge & Parry Reforge the dodge and if you have Parry & Mastery just leave it. Work from the top down and reforge the first stat the shows up in the list. Again the common theme here is to max out your mastery to reach a 77.4% when you add block+parry+dodge. As you should be using shield block every 30 seconds you'll get an additional 25% block.

What this translates into is EVERY attack that comes your way will either be Blocked, Dodged, Parried or Crit blocked. Worst case scenario is you ONLY block an attack for 30% damage.

Tier 12 Druid Pieces L...M...A...O

2011-05-18T00:07:00.001-07:00

We need to do an exercise here real quick. Close your eyes...ok wait no don't do that because then you can't read what i'm going to write; instead clear your mind and focus only on the words you're reading. Ok good, now I want you to imagine yourself in a forest, it's dark and cold and you hear a rustling in the bushes. A faint glow surrounds you and out from the bushes pops one of these things:

Are you done laughing yet? The trick is to stop looking at the picture. Now far be it for me to judge the tier 12 druid look. I mean who am I to say a broken twig doubling as a uni-brow = fail. Who am I to point out the hobo gloves or the open toe look. (I'm pretty sure there's a no shirt no shoes no raiding OSHA rule out there but I haven't looked.) Oh and don't forget the dress made out of cheap hotel curtains or how about the waffle cone thing coming up around the head.

I guess the druid tactic this tear is to either
A: Make the enemy laugh so hard that they will be rendered helpless and fall before the overly manicured feet of
B: Have the enemy feel so sorry for them that they simply lay down and die rather than be known as the person who beat up the retarded looking druid. Seriously though WTF? This is probably the worst looking contraption I've seen. Your thoughts?

I know my first thought was, "So THAT'S what the deer who got stuck in the headlights looks like after he gets hit."

Wait till you see the warrior set, it looks pretty bad ass.

4.1 Warrior Updates, rotation, and getting back up to speed.

2011-05-17T13:40:00.003-07:00

Well after a few nights of game time and getting the feel for things again. Knocking the dust off the axes and buffing up ye old shield to tank some heroics I have a few thoughts I’d like to share on warriors in patch 4.1

First fury is straight killer, but then it was straight killer in patch 4.06 so not much has changed. If you kicked as then you probably kick ass now, so no big stretchs. Patch 4.1 didn’t bring to many HUGE changes to either fury or prot. CS took a hit in PVP but so did resilience so it was almost a wash (we still ended up losing on that exchange but bottom line is you should have been nuking things before and now you should still be able to do that.) Heroic leap is off the global cooldown which is nice. All the other changes were lukewarm and didn’t really change much of the play style.

Fury warrior rotation from what I see is still:
CS>BT>RB> Slam when it procs keeping BT on cooldown and CS on cooldown.
Whirlwind you now use on mobs of 4 or more only and the execute phase consists of CS+Execute after using deathwish and racials and such.
You still want 8% hit (5 + the 3 from precision)
Stat priority is as follows:
hit to 8%>exp to 26> Strength> Crit>Mastery> hit to 27%> haste>Spirit>int>mp5 :p

Protection had a few major changes, namely to spell reflect which is now on a 20 second CD with a glyph. Shield block now provides an aura to reduce magic damage by 20% for 6 seconds when activated and speced into shield mastery. This means casting shield block on magic fights needs to be taken into consideration to reduce damage. It’s also nice in PVP because you can use this as a “shield wall” of sorts for magic damage and unlike spell reflect it doesn’t dissipate after it reflects ONE spell, its active the whole 6 seconds.

Arms experienced some big changes but since I haven’t had a chance to test those out I’m going to hold my tongue for a few more days. I’ve seen some good pvp arms warriors though so I know it can’t be all that bad. We’ll see though.

Well I think that more or less catches us up on 4.1 Warriors in today World of Warcraft. I’m working on a guide for warriors that will encompass a lot of what is already on this site, which means you’ll see parts of this site fall off here soon and then watch as they are replaced with hopefully more useful information, the guide will be free and will consist of all the information you normally look for, the various caps and stats and rotations that you’ve come to expect but instead of having to click around you’ll be able to see it all in one easy and convenient spot. Sign up to receive your copies of the guide have already started. In addition to getting the guide for free you’ll get email updates when the site is updated and whenever a new guide is put out you’ll be the first to have it as I’ll send it directly to you.

All in all it should be very useful.

I’m going to be putting some more polls up to too in order to get a better feel for what type of info the warrior community needs right now. If you have any request feel free to drop the min the comment section.
Wow that was extra dry wasn’t it, not very “entertaining” from a writing perspective, tomorrow will be better, this post was an effort to get things back on track here with the site. You can expect more asz whomping shyt kicking threads very soon.

Blackthought - Deathwing (US)

Hello Friends, I'm back.

2011-05-14T17:01:00.000-07:00

News in 7 words - Been away, coming back. Last patch sucked.

That about sums it up right? Life is a busy thing and sometimes blogging about wow 24/7 get's knocked to a low point on things to do. Never the less I'm back and with the joys of coming back we are faced with the "problems" when you come back after being away for a few months.
I've already mentioned the patch. Which in and of itself wasn't horrible...jk it sucked. CS at 50% for pvp (which begs the question if they can adjust skills by PVP vs PVE then why weren't mages hit with this a long time ago). Charge + Intercept on the same CD = BS.
Intercept stun reduction = BS

Problem number 2 stems around my account and it getting hacked. I get everything set up and go to download the patch, keep in mind I hadn't paid yet. I, for kicks, attempt to log in before paying. Lo and behold I get a message saying my account had been hacked.
The next step is call blizzard to get my world of warcraft account unfrozen. THis is done quick as hell, again good job Blizzard. The next step is to pay, silly me I attempt loging in first and BAM. I have time available. Turns out the "hacker" paid to use my account to farm. Which brings me to my next point

Farming on my account. I now have an large amount of elementium ore and pyrite. The jury is still out on how much I'll be able to make from this but i"m willing to venture it's more than the 6k I had on the account when last I checked.

So how's the world treating everyone else out there? How's tanking going? I did a regular last night just to get the juices going and man am I rusty.

PVP was nice though. Luckily all my pvp gear was restored so in terms of warcraft PVP I'm still hitting like a truc with fury. I can't say i'm going to respec arms though, the mobility things seams like it would suck...but who knows.

Site will begin to update slowly. There's a lot of old info that should be clearing out soon.

See you in the BG's
Blackthought - Deathwing.

4.0.6 Fury Warrior Rotation

2011-02-16T10:16:00.001-07:00

UPDATE: http://www.nomorenoob.com/2011/05/41-warrior-updates-rotation-and-getting.html
Read this page you're on first as it explains some of what's in the link, then click this link for the 4.1 patch rotation
--------------------------------------------------------
So how about a little 4.0.6 fury rotation talk ya?
First I’ll highlight our attacks in a very, “non-technical” manner.

Colossal Smash – I call this the “ass-neked” attack, as it renders your target completely “ass-nekked”. Colossal Smash gives you a 6 second buff that lets you ignore your targets armor, very useful for all classes, especially plate.

Raging Blow – Imagine if you will, an attack centered around the most powerful type of weapon in the game. NOW multiply that shyt by 2 and you get raging blow. Not to be confused with your first “braces-infused” sexual encounter, raging blow is pretty much THE attack that defines World of Warcraft fury warriors. You need to be enraged to use it btw. Hey, did you know our Fury Mastery increases the effectiveness of attacks and abilities that are “enraged” abilities? (KEEP THIS IN MIND) Here’s a little tidbit of info for you as well, raging blow double and triple dips into our mastery, I’ll explain in a second, but just know it’s some good shyt. (FYI there was a lot of intended and unintended innuendo in this last paragraph...my apologies)

Bloodthirst – It hits, it heals and every 3 seconds it does that, over, and over and over again till whatever you’re hitting stops moving. Pretty much a staple world of Warcraft fury Warriors everywhere Bloodthirst is that “MUST HAVE” attack. The self heal when glyphed and specced is straight nasty and in both pvp and pve it pretty much is bad ass. Did I mention it hits like a ton of bricks being shot out an elephant’s ass (I don’t know why but that sounds like it would hit hard). 4.0.6 fury warriors need use this as their every other attack based on it’s short 3 second cooldown and the 4.0.6 fury rotation dynamic.

Heroic Strike – In spite of it recently having one of its testicles removed heroic strike is still the attacking equivalent of a crazed one balled maniac--aggravating, irritating and, while slightly less manly than it once was, it’s still a force to be reckoned with. Heroic strike’s “off the GCD” basically makes this both instant and very rotation friendly. It is very rage heavy so be advised.

Slam – Well then there’s slam. Slam is like the kid in the neighborhood that no one wanted to play with, he kinda stunk, there might have been some sort of “potty” accident in public, was always taking to long to do what everyone else was doing, he road the short bus to school and for some strange reason your mom loved the guy to death. Constantly inviting him over for “play dates” and always trying to force you to play with him, if your mom had her way “slam” would be your bestest friend in the whole wide world. Slam is that kid and blizzard is your mom. Blizzard has steadily been trying to get us to use slam since damn near the dawn of time. WE DON’T WANT IT. Slam in and of itself isn’t a bad of attack. Weapon Damage + some. The problem is that it has a cast time which makes no sense for a melee character; sorta like we have to “think” about it before we do it, the words FURY and BERSERKER don’t necessarily lend themselves to “thinking”. Slam also puts your rage generation on hold. When you’re casting, your swing timer is basically paused and you do no white damage, in other words you get no rage, ergo your next attacks aren’t able to be used. THAT is the major problem with slam. Also our rotation is such that there’s really no place for it.

So with all that in mind here’s the 4.0.6 fury rotation.
CS, BT, RB, BT (using HS where rage permitting), don’t leave yourself with not enough rage to use your last BT.

This is going to be your opening move and is such because of the 6 second buff CS will give you. If you find that you need to use a talent to get enraged before hand go for it. My suggestion is berserker rage as it last 30 seconds and helps tremendously with your rotation.

Once the CS buff drops you basically want to keep everything on CD with a prioritization

RB take priority ONLY WHEN, this is IMPORTANT so pay attention, you are going to drop your enrage effect in the next 4 seconds. (THIS is where all the “skill” is going to come into play. RB has a 6 second CD while enrage has a 9 second CD, so there’s usually a 3 second window of wiggle room to get 2 RB’s off before you can’t use the attack again.

Any other time and CS is going to NEED TO BE kept on CD because of the buff.
From there RB>BT (unless your CS buff is up).
ONLY use slam when it procs or when everything else is on CD.

Bloodthirst is going to be the staple move for the most part, because it’s on a 3 second cooldown that basically means your attacks are going to go something like BT, XX, BT, XX, BT, or to put it another way, every other attack needs to be BT.

So if I were to write this in some half baked Orc programming language it would read like so:

IF CS Buff is up, THEN Lok'tar and
BT, RB, BT, w/ a light peppering of HS Else If Grombolar
Remaining rage time < 4seconds THEN Kagh!"
RB Else
Priority (RB, BT, Proc Slam)
End If
End Sub
End Target’s Life Lok'tar ogar

Let see if that didn’t make sense then how’s this

After each use of CS you need to do the following: BT,RB, BT. When CS is ready to use do so.
All other times BT every other attack except for when RB will not be able to be cast twice during an typical non “berserker’s-rage” rage buff.

If you want the simple no brainer approach to it then:
BT,xx,BT,XX,BT,XX
Where XX is either CS or RB depending on what’s available.

In all cases NEVER cast slam UNLESS everything else is on CD (which can occur about ever 20.5 seconds or so.)
Oh and use heroic strike when rage > 50 so long as it doesn’t sap your rage. IF it does then A, increase your hit and B use it at rage>60.

So that is the “normal” rotation.

Then there’s the 4.0.6 World of Warcraft fury warrior execute phase.

During Execute: For the 4.0.6 fury warrior rotation currently there are currently a few schools of thought.
All of them call for CS to be kept on cooldown
1. Execute at roughly 50 rage
2. Just spam the ever loving shyt out of execute
3. bt, execute, bt, execute.

In all 3 cases you should be fine, I’m finding a combination between 1 and 3 works best with 2 providing me “ok” numbers but a lot of wasted time.

For Bloodlust and Heroism phases Inner Rage is looking nice because it makes HS spammable and rage regen should be fine, my concern is that it doesn’t hit hard enough. I’m still waiting for more solid numbers on a good rotation for this. IF Inner rage plus the sustainable use of HS is possible that OMG that’s some nice attack, especially if you can get a full 5 stacks of the execute buff up. I’ll hold judgement on this but will update the rotation as we move further into 4.0.6.

For now all this information should be more than enough to keep you respectable in heroics and even raids. (i pull a pretty consistent 10-14k in heroics now with mostly pvp gear.

So where do whirlwind and cleave fit into the 4.0.6 fury warrior rotation?
Well, for trash they CAN BE nice, the problem is that in this day and age with CC and focusing on burning target’s you’re better off just nuking a single target at a time. Honestly the only time I use WW is when there are more than 5 mobs or when a huntard pops his snake trap. Cleave still finds use when I know I don’t have to worry about CC or agro.

So that’s it.
What did we learn?
1. 4.0.6 fury warrio rotation has SOME complexity to it, but honestly it’s pretty intuitive, when you’re fighting as long as you are using whatever is available in most cases you should be fine, will it be optimized? No, will you put up decent numbers? yeah probably.
2. WW and cleave should not be a part of any fury rotation, especially boss rotations.
3. Blackthought should never be a programmer.

Any thoughts or suggestions?