Bryntroll, the Bone Arbiter

This AMAZING Axe drops off of the very first boss in Icecrown Citadel 25 man. It has amazing stats, a huge DPS boost over anything from the previous patch, and like many other weapons in Icecrown Citadel, has a proc effect (Which I find nice).

The Blizzard developers thought they were getting to methodical with the stats and weapons in the previous patches. They reopened Onyxia's Lair, and liked the response to the weapons they put in the loot list for Onyxia.

I was lucky enough to get this weapon in our guild's very first foray into ICC25. The first boss is quite easy.

I immediately equipped it, and was blown away by this axe! The weapon procced 24 times in one trash pull! Granted I was whirl-winding and cleaving like a mad man, but it was a significant amount of my overall DPS.

So good luck on your drops fellow DPS warriors. And enjoy this new instance. Turn off your itunes, and crank up the in-game music. They put alot of work into this instance, so take advantage of it.

Tier 10 Preview: Ymirjar Lord's Battlegear

Click the picture for more shots of different angles.

Kinda bleh name, equally bleh visuals. Nothing really stands out. I dunno, maybe it's me. Maybe we've seen so many armor sets that nothing impresses me now. Why have the designers put the misty glow effect on every gear set lately? I don't get it.

I do like the set bonuses however. They give a boost of dps to players that are using their class correctly. Instead of a flat crit boost across the board, they take an ability that procs, and gives you a double take. These are subject to change of course, being test realm content.

Poppin' Potions

Every good raiding warrior brings their flasks to the raid like they are instructed.
But not many bring potions.
These lil' wonder drinks are cheap and bring more benefit to your DPS than you might think.

The first potion is the indestructible potion. 3500 armor is nice, and since All DPS warriors should be specced 3/3 into Armored to the Teeth, this potion will give you 97 AP for a full 2 minutes.

The second potion grants you 500 haste for 15 seconds. This buff seems like a proc of a trinket, but can be used any time you want. And is best used when you have all your other cooldowns popped.

The limitation of potions is we can only use 1 during any combat phase, which pretty much means 1 per boss fight. What we can do to get around this is pop one right before the boss pull.
So pop your Indestructible potion right before the boss is pulled, and then your second potion whenever you need it. This second potion can be either of these. Depending on if your encounter needs alot of dps during a specific point (Popping the shield of the Twin Val'kyr), or not.

Holy Crap! Shadowmourne the Legendary Axe

Check out this amazing weapon that probably none of us will ever get! haha.

Shadowmourne. It is the latest legendary weapon to be obtainable from the forthcoming Icecrown patch. It follows the same style of the legendary Ulduar priest mace, where the raid must collect items from each boss and assemble them.

We can all hope right? =D

Arms vs. Fury! The Great Debate

This is the topic of nearly half the threads on the WoW forums. And everyone's response to this question is in response to their gear. This is only half of the answer.

When leveling your Warrior, there is only one answer: Arms. Your gear choices are limited when your leveling up, and Fury is too stat dependent to be effective at any level other than 80. Even after hitting 80, Fury will be sub-par compared to arms for quite some time.
But with Conquest and Triumph badges, the jump into fury level gear isn't that hard to accomplish.

The numbers you want to shoot for to make fury worthwhile are:

164 hit (minimum)
any expertise is helpful
4000+ AP unbuffed
213+ dps weapon for your main-hand.

If you don't have these numbers, Arms will probably give you more personal DPS. But both specs with max gear are evenly matched.

And now for the readers who are well beyond those limits.
This blog is directed to the raiding DPS warrior. What spec will be most effective in the raid environment? Lets break it down.
The first question you need to ask your self is what buffs are already covered by other raid members, and what does the group composition look like? Chances are you will be the only DPS warrior in the raid. So you have a choice between 2 DPS specs.


Blood Frenzy (Arms)
vs.
Savage Combat
Both these talents do the same thing, and do not stack. If you're raid already has a combat specced rogue, then your Blood Frenzy Talent will only provide you the 10% attack speed buff. So check with your rogues and see what specs they are.


Trauma (Arms)
vs.
Mangle
These do the same thing and do not stack. If your raid has a feral druid tank he will be doing mangle for threat anyway. However, if your raid has a dps kitty druid, let him know that he doesn't have to use mangle anymore since your arms talent already provides that buff. He will be very happy.


Rampage (Fury)
vs.
Leader of the Pack
Your Rampage talent is overwritten by the feral druid's talent. 5% crit is a lot, and the raid needs this. If your raid does not have a feral druid, it falls upon you to provide this buff. It trumps both Blood Frenzy and Trauma in terms of need-a-bility. (Yes that's a word =D)

In conclusion...
If your raid group does not have a feral druid, you should be fury.

If your raid group has a feral druid, you should be arms.

If your raid group has another dps warrior, then choose the opposite of him.

Blue Set: Arms Edition!

So a couple of posts back I built a gear set consisted entirely of blue gear pieces and blue level enchants. I wanted to see how much DPS I could pull in a heroic with this "noob" gear set.

Well I built the set, a very bad gear set. Ventured into a heroic Old Kingdom and put up only 1500 DPS. This was in fury spec. Now any warrior can tell you that Arms is better for the fresh 80 non-epic'ed warriors. Fury is just too gear dependent.

So tonight I switched over into Arms, and rocked that same exact gear set, minus one of those weapons of course.

Top DPS! The other guys were all fully epic'ed, so they are definitely doing something wrong.

2100 DPS! Not too bad considering the disaster area of a gear set I was rocking! Most heroics have packs of mobs, so Sweeping Strikes and Bladestorm together are a great combination. and they are almost always both up for every pull. I didn't feel rage starved at any point during the run. I even crit one boss for 7K damage!

So this run is pretty good evidence for the budding DPS warrior: If you just hit 80 or are leveling up, stay Arms spec. I'll get into when the right time is to consider Fury spec later.

Cleave to Achieve

Now must fury warrior blokes go 2/2 Improved Execute, and when you couple that with Glyph of Execution, it can hit very hard. Almost to the point of just spamming it non stop when the boss hits 20%. Its simple, its the best for single target bosses.

Single target bosses.

But with TOC 25 man, we were given 5 new encounters, all that involve multiple targets. So what do we do? Well, you adapt is what you do!
Take your 2 points out of Improved Execute, and pull another point out of somewhere else. If your raid always has a Ret Pally, drop the points in Commanding Presence, or perhaps 1 point out of Precision if you feel you already have enough hit to keep your rotation up. Take these 3 points and put them into Improved Cleave.Replace your Glyph of Execution with Glyph of Cleaving and you are done!

These 2 basic specs are the way to go. Yours might have small differences that work better with your play style.

When you have a situation where there is 3 or more targets, just spam Cleave and Whirlwind. If you happen to have enough rage to use Bloodthirst, do so. Even with 2 targets only, your cleave will hit almost as hard as a heroic strike. but since its hitting 2 targets, it's doing twice as much damage as before. With this spec, you will see your DPS soar in fights like Anub'arak. Heroics your DPS will shoot up at least 600. Heroics are the best place to show off this spec. They are designed with trash mobs in packs of 3 or 4. Perfect for a fury warrior.
So try it out, tell me what you think. Enjoy those numbers.