Focused Warrior

Pre-Raid Gearing Guide

2010-01-15T02:22:00.029-05:00

I put together this guide to help out new warriors looking to gear up as quick as possible to start raiding. All of these pieces can be obtained from 5-man heroics and triumph badges.
I recommend getting your 4-piece Tier 9 set bonus, regardless if your a Fury or Arms warrior. At minimum the 2 set bonus. Just make sure you have at least 8% hit and 5-6.5% Expertise.

Slot	Piece Name	Source
	Hellscream's Helmet of Conquest	50 Emblems of Triumph
	Skeleton Lord's Cranium	Scourgelord Tyrannus - Pit of Saron (Normal)
	Barbed Ymirheim Choker	Forgemaster Garfrost - Pit of Saron (Heroic)
	Hellscream's Shoulderplates of Conquest	30 Emblems of Triumph
	Pauldrons of the Devourer	Devourer of Souls - Forge of Souls (Heroic)
	Accursed Crawling Cape	Devourer of Souls - Forge of Souls (Normal)
	Hellscream's Battleplate of Conquest	50 Emblems of Triumph
	Frost Wyrm Ribcage	Scourgelord Tyrannus - Pit of Saron (Heroic)
	Malykriss Vambraces	Forgemaster Garfrost - Pit of Saron (Heroic)
	Weeping Gauntlets	Bronjahm - Forge of Souls (Heroic)
	Hellscream's Gauntlets of Conquest	30 Emblems of Triumph
	Bent Gold Belt	Ick - Pit of Saron (Normal)
	Hellscream's Legplates of Conquest	50 Emblems of Triumph
	Minister's Number One Legplates	Bronjahm - Forge of Souls (Normal)
	Grinning Skull Boots	Lich King - Halls of Reflection (Heroic)
	Band of Stained Souls	Scourgelord Tyrannus - Pit of Saron (Heroic)
	The Lady's Promise	Lich King - Halls of Reflection (Heroic)
	Dexterous Brightstone Ring	35 Emblems of Triumph
	Bloodshed Band	35 Emblems of Triumph
	Needle-Encrusted Scorpion	Devourer of Souls - Forge of Souls (Heroic)
	Mark of Supremacy	50 Emblems of Triumph
	Tyrannical Beheader	Scourgelord Tyrannus - Pit of Saron (Heroic)
	Orca-Hunter's Harpoon	Marwyn - Halls of Reflection (Heroic)
	Papa's Brand New Knife	Bronjahm - Forge of Souls (Heroic)
	Felglacier Bolter	Ick - Pit of Saron (Heroic)
	Crimson Star	25 Emblems of Triumph

The Art of Speccing

2010-01-14T22:10:00.017-05:00

"How do I spec? Should I use this talent? Which spec does more dps?"
Shut up and I'll tell ya! This post is long over due. Before you can figure out which spec is best for you, you need to ask yourself one question; What content are you doing? There are talents that work better for certain instances, and at the same time pretty lousy for raid bosses. So without further adieu, the chart-o-specs!

Click the picture for its corresponding talent tree.

Arms for Heroics
Starting out as a fresh 80, you're going to be in pretty crappy gear. You're running heroics until your eyes bleed, gathering up those badges. This spec is designed to make those heroics go by as quickly as possible. This spec is centered around Bladestorm. Heroics are designed with groups of mobs. You will be charging in hit Sweeping Strikes, then Bladestorm. Clear them out quick and build up your badge count.

Fury for Heroics
Now I don't recommend going fury when starting out as a new warrior. Your attacks will miss and be dodged constantly. You will feel rage starved, and your DPS will suck. I built this spec to help with the rage issue. Going 2/2 into Improved Berserker Rage and putting your final point into Improved Bloodrage will help during those times where your rage bar is drained. As you build up your gear set, the rage will build as well, as well as the DPS.
This spec also beefs up Cleave. Talented and glyphed, this ability will hit an additional target, and makes this ability hit even harder than normal. You could essentially just Cleave and Whirlwind your way through heroics if you have the rage.

Arms for Raiding
Ok hotshot. You've got the gear, and you're ready to tear up Icecrown Citadel. This spec changes a few arms talents around, putting a focus on maximizing dps on a single boss target. All of the Icecrown bosses released so far are single target encounters. You will be on that boss almost the entire fight. So this build maximizes your Execute's power. The 25man Festergut encounter requires you to do a constant 7.5K DPS by yourself to beat the encounter before the enrage! Flasking, potting, and being geared and specced right is crucial to victory, along with many other encounters within ICC.

Fury for Raiding
This spec drops the battleshout improving talents, and puts those points into maximizing single target DPS. This spec beefs up your Execute, and reduces your cooldowns through the Intensify Rage talent. Most boss fights last between 5-7 minutes. Speccing into this talent will allow you to use Death Wish 3 times during the course of the encounter rather than 2. The first 3 tiers of the fury tree and be specced many different ways, and it depends entirely on your raid composition, and your rage generation. If you never run out of rage and heroic strike non stop, go ahead and take points out of Unbridled Wrath and put them into Booming Voice and Commanding Presence. That will provide your raid with a 5 minute buff with around 560 more HP than the regular version. And for you more adventurous few who run with a feral druid and trust he will never go down, you could drop your point in Rampage and shift it over to Heroic Fury for tons more maneuverability during the fight, or put it into Anger Management over in the Arms tree for even more rage generation.

Conclusion
Speccing these ways is a great start to your path as a warrior. But they are no means best for everyone. It depends on your gear, raid composition, and play style. There is no one spec for everyone. Any questions, feel free to drop a comment below.

Soon I will make a post about speccing your warrior while leveling, making this task as painless as possible.

Rend Timing

2010-01-06T04:01:00.007-05:00

Keeping your rend up at all times as an arms warrior is vital. And in the heat of battle, looking up and finding that little icon in a shifting list of 25 others, then squinting to see how much is left... frankly is just annoying.

Well say no more, I found a great lightweight addon called ClassTimer that fixes this problem. It has great applications for fury warriors too! It moves those debuffs (and your buffs if specified) down to a scalable, movable bar. You can stay on top of them and never let those vital ones fall off.

My Arms setup. I only have it displaying Rend. And as big as possible!

I recommend arms warriors turning everything off except rend, to keep from cluttering up your window. Or keep sunder armor on as well if you don't have a warrior tank in your group.

As for fury warriors, you can add in your trinket procs, and when they pop up, hit your Death Wish! Combining your cooldowns together is what separates good fury warriors from great ones. To add in your trinket procs, find name of the buff it gives you when it procs, then add that name (CaSe SeNsItIvE!) to the extras tab under timers in the addon's options menu.

Example showing your buffs and target debuffs in one window. Icy rage was a trinket proc I added in.

So grab this addon over at Curse.com And if you have any questions how to use it, feel free to post them here.

Theorycrafting 102!

2010-01-04T15:40:00.002-05:00

Landsoul's new edition of his spreadsheet is out, and now covers everything from the new Icecrown patch up to the first 4 bosses, and even a little beyond that, using some test realm data. The look-up feature has changed a little, but follow the guide on the first page and you should be fine.

If you don't know what a spreadsheet is, refer to my previous post about Theorycrafting here.

Anyway here is the link to the official forum post with some important info.
http://elitistjerks.com/f81/t37462-warrior_dps_calculation_spreadsheet/

Taking a step back

2009-12-31T05:13:00.003-05:00

I will be the first to admit... I get too involved into this game. The numbers, the gear. The desire to be the best out of anyone. That PvP aspect of the game. Even in a PvE raiding environment, we are still competing against each other on DPS charts, and that can be fun, but it can also be destructive. When that becomes your only purpose of playing WoW, then we have lost sight of the game. There is so much more to this game than DPS charts.

So I encourage you dps warriors to branch out. Take a break. Start an alt. A healer in-fact. experience the other side of the game. Find out how it feels to keep up a tank. I started a druid a few months ago with the intention of making him an end-game resto druid, and I have had so much fun. My playtime hours shifted drastically, and I didn't even care!

I don't want to rabble on...my point is this; Play the game for everything it's worth. It's not called World of Warcraft for nothing.
Go monster hunting.
Level an alt.
Help out guildies.
Collect pets or mounts.

Have fun. =)

Bryntroll, the Bone Arbiter

2009-12-09T13:21:00.005-05:00

This AMAZING Axe drops off of the very first boss in Icecrown Citadel 25 man. It has great 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

2009-11-26T09:26:00.000-05:00

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

2009-11-24T02:48:00.000-05:00

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

2009-11-20T19:14:00.000-05:00

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

2009-11-10T14:30:00.000-05:00

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!

2009-10-28T03:09:00.000-04:00

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

2009-10-22T01:32:00.000-04:00

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.

Less is More

2009-10-19T19:35:00.000-04:00

Is your raid group having trouble getting a boss down before an enrage timer, or does the tank keep dying? Having trouble getting enough dps to engage XT's hard mode? Well DPS warriors have the tools to help in these situations! I know that deviating from your DPS rotation will make your numbers suffer, but would you rather have a wipe and be top DPS, or a dead boss and be 2nd or 3rd on the meters?

Demoralizing Shout
The most important of the 4 abilities in this list. This can be used in any stance, costs only 8 rage and lasts 30 seconds (45 if you are specced into Booming Voice). This ability should be up on any boss fight that is giving your raid trouble. It's true that keeping this ability up is your tank's responsibility, but if you notice the debuff falls off, it's your responsibility to keep it going.

Sunder Armor
This ability has been around since the beginning, and was the protection warrior's best way to generate threat. That ability is now devastate. So why is this talent even in the game?
It is here for you, the DPS warrior. Is your main tank not a warrior? Guess what. you're job is to keep sunders up on the boss. With 5 stacks, it removes 20% of the boss' armor. This is a ton of armor. Anyone doing physical damage to the target will get a huge DPS boost, even you! Slowly build stacks when your main attacks are on cooldown.
When not to use this ability: If the boss goes through phases where he is untargetable. Specifically Anub'arak or Beasts of Northrend. Your hard earned stack of 5 sunders will roll off while you are running from Anub's spikes of death!

Thunder Clap
This ability is more directed towards the Arms warriors, since it is not usable in berserker stance. It slows the attack speed of anything in range by 10%. That's 10% less damage the main tank is taking because you clicked one button. Now many times you may use Thunder Clap and realize nothing happened. The Main tank is doing it or an equivalent ability already. If your tank is getting rocked, keep this up, or yell at him to keep it up.
Where this abiltiy rocks: In the new Onyxia encounter, when the dragon takes off into the air to begin phase 2, about 50 whelps come storming out from the caves on either side, and at the same time about 7-10 of your raiders will get disconnected. Jump into that pile of whelps and drop one of these thundery blasts (and a demo shout for good measure). Your screen will be absolutely filled with numbers. Its probably the best way to DPS these adds down as a warrior.

Shattering Throw
Another ability that is more arms warrior oriented. While a bit costly on rage, the buff it provides to your raid is huge. Instantly 20% of a boss' armor is gone for 10 seconds. Now 10 seconds does not seem like a lot, but when timing is an issue (Think XT's heart phase, or when Razorscale is pulled down) this ability shines. If your group is having trouble doing enough DPS during certain phases where any damage done to a boss is multiplied (Icehowl when he is stunned on the wall), this is the perfect time to use shattering throw.

In closing, these abilities will hamper your DPS slightly, and improve your raid's DPS significantly. Bite the bullet, be a team player and use them. It's your job as a DPS warrior.

Blue Set!

2009-10-06T18:35:00.000-04:00

So I collected my blue gear set. Most were crafted, and some were rep rewards. I sort of cheated in the fact that I didn't have blue trinkets. I ran about 6-7 heroics to collect them to no avail. So I used Grim Toll and Mirror of Truth. I kept the same fury spec as normal. We assembled the group to venture back into Heroic Old Kingdom. A paladin to provide blessing of kings, and I was keeping battle shout active.

Click here to view the gear set I used.

Our group skipped Jedoga Shadowseeker boss, so overall damage isn't comparable to previous run.

I put up a paltry 1500 DPS. Now keeping in mind my gear set was stupid. I had mail pants, half was resilience PvP gear. But even with those hindrances, I expected more from myself. I felt rage starved the entire run.

I am not convinced that the differences in gear means and extra 2300 DPS. That gear alone made my character more than twice as effective.
So this topic will be concluded later, when I retry this instance with the same gear set, but in Arms spec. Arms is a great spec for leveling and fresh 80 warriors. It is not as gear dependent as Fury, and performs almost as well. Stay tuned.

What Can Gear do for my DPS?

2009-10-02T07:00:00.000-04:00

I was in a very annoying Ony25 run today. There were people in the 5k-6k DPS range, and people in the 2k DPS range, both with equivalent gear sets. I thought to myself, 'how someone could be possibly playing their class so badly with gear like that?'

So, I decided to build an entire blue gear set. No epics at all, no enchants requiring abyss crystals, or epic gems. Heroic gear, rep gear. that's it. I wanted to see how much of your dps is attributed to knowing your proper dps rotation. At least for a fury warrior anyway.

I ran a heroic Old Kingdom run today. here is the link to the gear set I used, and the overall DPS report.

Click here to view Zarrick Fury Gear Set

Soon I willl publish another post with my "noob" gear set, and the numbers I put up. Stay tuned.

Crib Sheet

2009-09-23T11:07:00.000-04:00

Feel free to download this image, print it out, pin it to your chest. It is pretty much what goes through my head while destroying anything in my path. Keeping in mind I am a fury warrior. I will provide an Arms warrior sheet soon.
'Till then, enjoi.

Simple Math?

2009-09-23T10:29:00.000-04:00

Darkmoon Card: Greatness

Fury of the Five Flights

Taking a look at these 2 trinkets, you must do some math to figure out whats going on here. Fury of the Five Flights offers 16 x 20 = 320 AP.

While The Greatness Darkmoon Card offers 90 Str = 180 AP.
Clear winner right? Even with that proc chance, 320 extra constant AP in a raid boss encounter is amazing. Well that is a true statement. But Strength to a warrior means so much more, Thanks to the Fury tree talent Improved Berserker Stance; an extra 20% more Strength! So The Darkmoon Card is actually giving us 90 x 120% x 2 = 216 AP. And the proc gives Fury warriors 360 bonus strength!

Also the time needed to get the full 20 stacks is more than you might think, not to mention if that stack happened to fall off, your back to zero. So use Fury of the Five Flights until you can scrap together your Nobles Card Set.

Remember how Fury warriors get 20% extra strength when choosing all pieces of gear. It can add up. As for the Arms warriors, you only get a mere 4%.

Theorycrafting 101

2009-09-09T18:48:00.000-04:00

Theorycrafting is maximizing the right stats by taking advantage of the built-in formulas of WoW. As you might have heard, warriors are the most gear dependent class in the game. This is definitely true. Everyone knows the bread and butter stats of a DPS warrior are strength and crit. But what about expertise and hit, armor penetration and haste? How should you use these, and when does one become less valuable then the next?
Wonder no more. this spreadsheet will help you figure that out. Last night I ran my characters gear set through the Excel spreadsheet and it blew me away. It told me to equip 5 pieces of gear out of my bank that I thought were downgrades. This couldn't be right...

Man, I was wrong. I pulled 4300 dps overall in a heroic Nexus. almost 500-600 over my normal amount. This thing works.

Now by taking a look at the screenshot you can tell it is a bit complex. You don't need to know what all the numbers mean. The important ones are the overall DPS at the top, and the Rating caps window at the bottom left. Input your characters armory at the top, and it will fill in all your gear for you. Once that's done, click over to the lookup tab at the bottom. This puts every piece of gear you currently have into a list of other items for that slot. Better and worse. You will find some of your gear that you already own may give you more DPS!

Anyway enough of me talking about it. Here is the link to download the spreadsheet. The author updates it with every patch, so check back often to get the latest version. You will need Excel 2007 to run it. Excel 2003 will not work, nor will Open Office or Google Docs. You can download a 60 Day free trial at the Microsoft website.

Make sure you read the intro slide on the Excel document. It will help you set it up and teach you the basics of how to use it. And a big thank you to Landsoul for taking the time to code it up.

Welcome to Focused Warrior

2009-07-24T13:29:00.000-04:00

First I want to say thank you for visiting my blog. The first post here I believe should also be the most pertinent.
I decided to name the blog "Focused Warrior" because we are the masters of rage. Unrelenting forces of destruction and fury. We are the class that represents pure power. But without direction or focus of that power, much of it goes to waste. Hopefully with this blog I can help you focus your rage in the right way.
A warrior can only have 100 rage at any time. No more. What you do with those points is the difference between a good warrior and a bad one, and this goes beyond just threat per second or your DPS on the damage chart.

With that said, welcome to Focused Warrior.