Slowing down

The calm before the storm so to speak.

Still raiding some ICC 25, but with some of our core members on a break until Cata we are basically doing 11/12 HM and regular RS, as we have for weeks, without any real progression. We are working on our 3rd Shadowmourne, for the guild leader no less, which is why we are still raiding weekly by my estimation. I am gathering a few remaining pieces, and some tank gear which is nice, but clearly a lot of the guild's drive has been lost. While expected given our proximity to the expansion, it's still a shame. With some concerted effort we could have clearly gotten LK 25 Hard Mode, but looks like it's not to be.

New PTR is up with huge changes, and while I want to discuss them I kind of want to let it all shake out a bit more before putting in my two cents. If you get a chance though, definitely play on the PTR. The changes are drastic and will take some real getting used to. Be on the lookout for a preview post next week after some more testing.

Oh and still no luck on ZG mounts (either one). Frustrating, but what can you do.

Hopefully things pick up in the near future, or I'm gonna have to do something drastic like play Call of Duty for a while.

Soloing ZG bosses as fury

Quick, relativly short post today, but wanted to share with you my method of soloing ZG mount bosses (no luck yet, but just started farming).

It's honestly pretty simple, but figured what the hell, an actual warrior tip was worth posting.

Basically the safest and easiest method I have found is more a gear change than a strategy per se. What you do is wear your tanking gear, shield and all, but as fury spec and with your best 2 hander in your main hand (I use heroic Bryntroll, the extra healing helps but is not required).

I was able to stay in zerker stance through the whole fight, making sure to use BT on cooldown for the healing. This method took a lot longer than going in full fury gear, but my mitigation was such that I basically bounced between 85% and 100% health through the fights. If your gear is a bit worse you could use Glyph of Bloodthirst, but I didn't find it needed.

Oh and one more note, you don't have to kill the trash in the tiger boss' room, which is a good thing because when you get 3 of those spinning dudes chain stunning you death can occur, trust me.

And on the raptor boss I held off killing the raptor until after the boss went down but I am not sure this is needed, I just did it to be safe since it was basically doing no damage to me.

Mains and Alts

When I look at my friends in WoW and separate those who i consider to be very successful from those who aren't(please note my definition of success is gear, achieves, progression and prestige. This is fairly subjective and other people have different definitions of gaming success, so don't get all uppity on this point, I know my definition isn't for everyone) one factor seems to have more of an impact than the rest: they stick to their main.

There are outliers of course, some incredible DKs immediately spring to mind, but by in large I have found the most successful people in WoW found something they enjoy and have stuck with it through thick and thin, year after year.

Is this because they have a heightened appreciation of that classes particular mechanics due to years of experience, or did they just find something well suited to their particular play style? I don't know, but I do know that sticking it out with one toon seems to predict long term success more than current gear or guild.

If i had to guess, and I clearly will because this is my blog after all, I would say it is due to running out of shit to do. Yeah, that's it, that's my big theory. I will explain a bit more, but I think the concept is pretty simple. People who lots of toons can always find an easy, relatively stress free way to make one of their multitude of toons better (how hard is leveling or heroic farming after all? not very

Warrior LFB (looking for blog)

I didn't want to write a warrior blog, not really. What I really wanted to do was read a warrior blog. I found a decent one, www.tankingtips.com, but I'm not a tank (not main spec anyway), so this was of limited help. What I was really looking for was a dps warrior's perspective on the state of the class, where blizzard was taking us and what other warriors thought about raiding and the class in general.

Of these types I could find next to none. While complaining to an office mate of mine about this distinct lack of warrior blogs (talking about WoW as a computer programmer isn't really rare) he said 'you like to write, start one or shut up.' Well that got me thinking, why the hell not, and i started what you are reading right now.

I had to come up with a name first, Raging Warrior, clever don't you think? Yeah, my coworker didn't think so either, but i like it. Then came an About Me section (click the link above) which i still think basically sucks so I will be rewriting it soon. Then finally the hard part, posting. Well I figured why not start, as most things do, with an introduction, so here you are.

First off, what you can expect out of this blog? Let me just say I am not a hard core theory-crafter. I dabble a bit, use spread sheets to optimize gemming and plan upgrades, read EJ and watch boss strats before raids, troll other blogs of various classes looking for more in depth discussion and strategy. I don't consider these things that make me a theory-crafter though, i consider them the bare minimum to be a raider. If you think this goes above and beyond then let me just say you need to try harder and you are the reason your raid cant kill Heroic Prof P. even with the 30% buff. Get to work.

That out of the way, what I hope to write about is more thoughts and opinions regarding warriors in general, rage as mechanic, and what it feels like to be a dps warrior in WoW. OMG EMO - i mean, no, not feelings like that. I mean feelings as in, you could have picked any class and done basically similar dps, bring the player not the class and all that, why did we pick warrior? Why do we keep picking warrior (besides the obvious - our gear looks bad ass and charge is mad fun)? And what frustrations go along with that decision? When does being a warrior suck and how can we make it suck less?

I will also post about the game in general of course, about raiding, instancing, pvp and the sucktastic (and very rarely awesome) people you meet in pugs.

I hope this becomes a two way street and we get some good discussion about warriors and WoW, and why we just can't seem to quit either of them, happening here. If not and I write a bunch of posts no one reads but me, at least the next blogger to come around wont be able to complain that they went looking for a blog with banter regarding the life and times of a warrior and came up empty handed.