Warrior PvP info

Hi, I'm beginning some research into the best way for me to arena well.  I wanted to post some links in case anyone else is looking at having an Arms or Prot heavy build that they want to use for arenas or BG's.

WowWikki's Warrior PvP Guide

I thought this was a good overall guide, showing a lot of the major points you want to look out for.  However, I did notice that they were trying to throw in a few "skills" you aren't as likely to use much at first, such as Disarm, Recklessness, etc.  

Don't get me wrong, stance dancing isn't dead by any means, since they didn't implement the incredibly bad sounding stance change system, but in most situations you're having to weigh the cost of gcd's on how it get's spent.  If you're in a situation where you have low rage, (say 20 or so, unless you're talented to keep up to 30) then it might make sense to write a macro to stance to berserker, pop Recklessness, and then shift back to battle.  Even with the increase in the crit (which is nice, don't get me wrong), you definitely like the 10% extra armor ignored by your battle stance, and you don't want to be without it for long.  I just found that for now (I'm still new to PvP, remember) things are hectic enough and I don't know the best time to pop something like that.  Retaliation and Bladestorm (especially when accompanied with a glyphed Sweeping Strikes) I've about got the hang of, which are fantastic burst damage potential, and I know I still need other things in my arsenal.  I worked on a macro to allow me to spell reflect in a pinch, and I'm probably going to modify it to allow me to Shield Bash instead, since that is a lot better once I've closed to melee range.

I'll post more as I find them.

My Charge Card is now limping!

Ok, so yes, they've changed the mechanics of Juggernaut, and since I don't use the Glyph of Rapid Charge, I'd never notice any changes there.

So the previous changes only reduced the crit chance, and this is what I said then:

What I do want to mention quickly is that I notice that I'm sitting pretty at around 40% crit chance unbuffed as it is, so I'm still critting after a charge about 2/3 of the time anyway, and that's before any procs from any druids or Fury Warriors etc.  

So I think I'm fine.  It didn't add nearly as much uncertainty into my rotation, it just means that once in every 3 charges I make I see a weird number come up under my Mortal Strike damage that I have to look at twice to make sure I'm not crazy, since it's so much lower than all the other times.  Even still it strikes for about 2100+ damage, so it could be a lot worse.  

Now they've also increased the cooldown of Charge from 15secs to 20secs.  Whoah, now.  Warriors are already pretty "kiteable" by some classes, and charging is about all we can do to catch up sometimes.  Why is it that talents and glyphs for warriors are like Blizzards chance for us to elect "trade-offs"?  Other classes get full out benefits depending on their talents.  We get "Well, we're going to allow you to do this, BUT we're going to nerf something else if you take this ability."

As exciting as some of the changes to Warriors have been over the last year, the fact that so many of our good abilities are being reduced to "trades" is a little obnoxious.

What's worse, we aren't really afforded the chance, as in the case of Titan's grip.  Sure, we don't "have" to take it, but since all the talents in the Fury Tree kind of lead up to it, and lean heavily on it, not taking it is kind of like kicking yourself in the head: not only does it hurt, but it leaves you wobbly and probably lying on your back.

When should you execute? To spam or not to spam, that is the question.

Ok, so I've been looking at some numbers and here's my official information regarding when to execute as an Arms warrior.  

Execute is a funny ability.  Even though it scales up to give us a burst damage as high as 12K+, the actual damage/rage from a properly talented and glyphed Execute actually decreases the more rage you put into it.  The reason for this is that the first 10 rage (remember you have it properly talented?) which is spent to initiate the attack returns you the huge damage bonus of over 1400 + 20% of your attack power (I assume at the very least this is 3K +) so you're looking at an initial damage of 2K (before crits are taken into account) for the first 10 rage points (which you get back, by the way, so really it's even cheaper than that).  And once you add in the Glyph of Execution you took, you're really doing 2380 damage with those 10 rage points.

So it's pretty simple, 238 damage per rage > 38 damage per rage which is the additional rage that is added per rage point you have over the initial expense.  So once you get up to where you're spending 100 rage points and your damage is up in the 5800+ range, Notice that you're now getting only 58 damage per rage.  

Now, this comes with a tradeoff.  If, for example, you're using this ability in PvP, you want the high burst of damage, because it's harder to heal through.  Taking a 12K critical hit will completely wipe out most clothies, especially if it's preceded by a Mortal Strike + Rend + OP combo that wipes their effective healing to zilch.  So in PvP you want to wait until you're full of rage prior to using this, in order to increase your chance to kill the target.

In PvE, however, which you should do depends a lot on your rate of rage regeneration.  If you notice that you build rage fast enough to accumulate at least 62 rage in 1.5 -2 seconds (the global cooldown plus some possible lag waiting for Sudden Death to proc back your 10 rage) then you should definitely be waiting and doing an Execute every other global cooldown.  

If you don't generate rage that quickly, then you should be using Execute every gcd, because essentially, that's the amount of extra rage it takes for you to double your damage.  If, for example, you earn 20 rage per second, so over 2 seconds you would get 40 (ish) then you're better off spamming Execute every time it pops during those last 20% of the bosse's health.   Every time, that is, except the once every 15-18 gcd's where you need to refresh your Sunder stack, or if OP procs.  This is because OP is your best damage per rage attack doing 170% (check the talents, my friends) weapon damage and costing only 5 rage.   A crit with this attack can easily hit for 5K+ and even not crit for just under 2K, so compare the 400 damage per rage up to 1K+ damage per rage you get from Overpower to the 238 or less you get from Execute and you can easily see why that's the one attack you should use a gcd for.  In order to proc it, you may also want to spend one gcd every so often on a Rend also. 

So my basic rotation in PvE on most bosses after they hit the 20% is to choose:

OP (if it's up) > Sunder (if the stack is going to fall off) > Spam Execute > Mortal Strike or Rend if I feel like the rotation is getting boring.  Although, to be fair, Mortal Strike is fantastic earlier in the fights, but later on, it's not nearly as rage efficient as your low rage executes or Overpowers, so I'd stick with Rend if you get bored since it will proc your best attack occasionally.  Otherwise stick with the basics.

Threat building, what's the better way to go?

Since one of my jobs in any raid is tanking (I'm not fortunate enough to be a dps only warrior, if that's fortunate) I am always considering threat amounts and searching for ways to do it better.

I've been trying an unusual Protection spec lately that seems to be working very well. Allow me to explain:

Gurggy's (12/3/56) Tanking Spec

This is a little different from most of the "standard" cookie cutter specs I've seen in that it

a) doesn't take Deep Wounds (although I've considered that too) but 

b) instead takes the Improved Spell Reflection and fills up all the prot talents we know and love.

First let me say a word or two about deep wounds.  Since the patch, I think it's fair to say that deep wounds is really only viably good if your weapon damage is good.  Not that my Red Sword of Courage's 240 avg damage is pathetic, but the ticking for 40 damage per second is less impressive than when coupled with the mighty BoH and it's whopping 750 average damage that ticks at 125 per second.   In fact, notice that even with the 2.075 increase to threat from defensive stance (even coupled with the .8 threat modifier from battle/berserker (not improved) stance) we have

40*2.075 = 83 < 100 = 125*0.8

so essentially, this talent will generate less threat for you than it will for dps warriors that are using a good slow 2 hander to cause their damage, even taking proc rates etc. into account, mostly because any good dps warrior should be far more "critty" than you anyway.

I exclude from this any discussion about attack power, since dps warriors should also have you beat in terms of attack power also.

However, it's companion, Impale, does something interesting for us.  Specifically in its synergy with Incite and Improved Thunder Clap.   So, here's the way this works:

First of all, Thunder Clap generates threat with a factor modifier of 1.85 * damage.  In defensive stance, you then multiply this by another 2.075 (assuming the standard method of dividing all threat by 100) [Source], and because of Incite you have a fairly high chance to crit when you do this.  It hits everyone around you once, and thus is very good for maintaining aggro with multiple mobs.  

Notice the entire effect here:

Threat of bumped Thunder Clap = (300 + modifier based on AP damage) x1.3(Improved Thunder Clap) x2.2 (crit + Impale) x 1.85 (built in) x 2.075 (Defensive Stance) gives us

(Dmg) x 10.979

If you couple that with Armsman enchant, you're talking about an 11.198 modifier to your threat from your base Thunder Clap damage when you crit, which you do 15% more often than you normally would.

Now, that part of that selection of talents may seem minor, but if you reduce the extra 20% damage from crits from abilities, those numbers drop to 9.981 and 10.180 with Armsman. 

That's a 10% increase in threat generated from an equivalently talented Thunder Clap without using Impale. 

I'm not even going to start in on the equivalent discussion for Heroic Strike, which you should be using whenever you hit Revenge because of the glyph.   Even though it's insta-threat isn't quite as dramatic as the Thunder Clap's, it's still a sizeable increase.  

So, while Deep Wounds is nice (and it is, don't get me wrong) the fact that it's tied to our weapon damage is part of why my threat generated from that ability wasn't even getting up anywhere close to the 10% of overall threat that it used to.  

Now, why take Improved Spell Reflect instead of whatever extra threat Deep Wounds would generate?  

Pre-Ulduar, the only time this talent came in handy was Eye, during phase 2 of Malygos.  Most of the rest of the time, bosses are attacking with area effect damage spells that aren't targetted, and therefore can't be reflected.  

However, in Ulduar, you'll find LOTS of places where mobs (even trash mobs) fire off spells that individually target people based on proximity, and in some cases, (for example: the displacement device which is created by these guys) the ability spawned "mob" can't be individually targetted, but spell reflect can hit and destroy it immediately, even when the tank is only close to whomever it is targetting.

I never heard so many people so happy about Improved Spell Reflect until I started raiding Ulduar.  

You don't really need every tank in your party to have this, so if you have 2 warrior tanks going along, and one of them has traded out for Deep Wounds instead, they'll produce maybe 4-6% more threat than you which will be really good for dps race bosses, but I would rather have the trade-off ability during most of the raid.  

I happen to be the only warrior tank that goes along on "most" raids, at the moment, so for me this is a no-brainer choice.  If we had another consistent warrior tank, I think I'd flip them for it.  After all, an extra 4%-6% threat is better than nothing.

Raid dps Arms spec for 80.

Ok, so I've been playing a bit with my cross-purpose spec, and I can say that I don't hate it, but since my guild is going to be doing Ulduar 25 for the first time, I'm thinking about going ahead and switching to a raid specific build.  

In light of that, I present my "alternate" raid version of my Arms spec:

Gurggy's (and it seems to be popular) 54/17/0 Raid spec

Dailies, dailies. . .

So I want to start a push to convince Blizzard to add a "feat of strength" to their list of achievements.  Specifically, I'd like to add

"Overachiever" - "In a single action, complete the requirements needed to complete more than 5 achievements simultaneously."

Specifically I want this, because I'm going to be doing it in about a week and a half. 

Oh, I know you may think that I have exactly 6 I can get at one time, but nay, I have planned carefully and I'll be awarded 7 achievements at once.  And lest you think that more is impossible, I beg to differ.  In fact, if you plan it right you would possibly be able to do the same ones (give or take) as I am, and "maybe" even get 1 or 2 more at the same time.  Of course reputation gains cause some difficulty in doing this, but I think it might be possible.

I'm actually hoping to take a screenshot of the event so that I can post it for the archives. 

Be looking out for me.

Ok, Who ran up the "Charge" card?

So, I'm looking at the PTR notes, and I see two things that make me think someone has been charging more than we can afford.

Warriors

• Juggernaut: Critical strike chance bonus reduced to 25%, down from 100%.

Items

• Glyphs
• Glyph of Rapid Charge: Reduced to 7%, down from 20% cooldown reduction to Charge.

and what this leads me to ask is, who ran up the charge card?

So the first one, I think I get, even though I can't say I'm happy about it.  It adds that much extra uncertainty into my rotation I was just getting used to, but I can just amend my earlier dual purpose spec and make a raid dps spec only and switch it out to do PvP just like I was having to do back before dual specs, which will give me some extra tricks I can use to put damage down.

The second one, though has me baffled.  Bear in mind, that charge is on a 15 second cooldown.  So the 20% reduction to our cooldown made charge something that was doable every 12 seconds instead of 15 secs.  So apparently that 3 second cooldown reduction has caused so much QQ that we had to do away with it quickly to be replaced with the FAR more reasonable 1 second cooldown reduction?

Now, from a protection warrior standpoint, I can "almost" see this, except that I still don't.  For protection warriors at least charging has the benefit of removing movement impairing effects, so that gives us another way to get out of entangles, freezes, etc.  And I suppose that being able to do that every 12 seconds could be lightyears worse than allowing us to do that every 14 seconds, but I have a hard time seeing it.   For Arms warriors, though (which it seems this is directed at) if you're PvPing against an Arms warrior and you think he's charging too often, just entangle him.  What's the big deal?   And if you're against a Fury warrior who has taken Glyph of Charge, well, then just thank your lucky stars you're against such a noob and pwn him!

I add to that the fact that I always thought Glyph of Charge was a waste of a good glyph spot that could go to Glyph of Revenge/Glyph of blocking/Glyph of Heroic Strike /Glyph of Shockwave, I find myself really wondering what the big gripe about charging was.  Clearly someone is very upset that warriors can charge.  

So just remember, you warriors out there, to charge only when you've got the cash in the bank to pay for it.

One note about my Arms talent spec:

I fully realize that there are some talents (a la Improved Slam and Improved Cleave) I could put points in to increase my dps output, but I don't really see myself utilizing Heroic Strike etc, and for the time being I don't want to build a PvE only Arms spec just to have to constantly switch it back and forth whenever I do BG's or arenas, so this is a more "dual purpose" spec, and I know I could make a couple talent changes in order to improve it's performance in Raids.

Arms/Fury Talent spec post 3.1

So I'm not finding a lot of posts regarding talent specs, and just in case, I wanted to post mine to help out anyone who might be looking.

Gurggy's (54/17/0)  Arms spec.

The linkless version (for the link impaired):

Arms tree: (54 points)

1st tier - (5/5) Deflection, (2/2) Improved Rend

2nd tier - (2/2) Improved Charge, (1/3) Iron Will

3rd tier - (2/2) Improved Overpower, (2/2) Impale, (3/3) Deep Wounds

4th tier - (3/3) 2 Handed Weapon Spec., (3/3) Taste for Blood

5th tier - (5/5) Poleaxe Spec., (1/1) Sweeping Strikes

6th tier - (2/2) Trauma

7th tier - (2/2) Second Wind*, (1/1) Mortal Strike, (2/2) Strength of Arms

8th tier - (1/1) Juggernaut, (3/3) Improved Mortal Strike, (2/2) Unrelenting Assault

9th tier - (3/3) Sudden Death, (1/1) Endless Rage, (2/2) Blood Frenzy

10th tier - (5/5) Wrecking Crew

11th tier - (1/1) Bladestorm

Fury Tree: (17 points)

1st tier - (3/3) Armored to the Teeth, (2/2) Booming Voice, (5/5) Cruelty

2nd tier - (1/5) Unbridled Wrath

3rd tier - (1/1) Piercing Howl, (3/3) Blood Craze**

4th tier - (2/2) Improved Execute

* = placed instead of Improved Slam to allow for PvP

** = placed instead of Improved Cleave to allow for PvP

So rather than simply posting this, I'll share some of my thinking below regarding the difference between this and some others I've seen.

I have seen a lot of people who are taking all the talents they can grab in the Arms tree, and this is nice, but . . . . from playing for a while I think the best choice is to pick your winners.  For example, I had 2 different choices I had to make here, and I elected to lose a little PvE damage in favor of having a more PvP friendly build that could still do PvE.

My winners are: Mortal Strike, Rend, Execute, and Overpower (the biggies in the Arms race)

Because these are my winners I want to do right by them.  

So as you can see, in favor of Execute I've taken Sudden Death(3/3), I've taken Improved Execute (2/2) and I've glyphed for Execution.   I've chosen to keep execute as my "occasional" rage dump in favor of trying to improve heroic strike, and I've run the numbers.  See my earlier post for some discussion of this.  

In favor of Rend I've taken Improved Rend (2/2), Trauma (2/2), and for it's connection to Overpower, I've taken Taste for Blood (3/3).  You may notice I've elected NOT to use Glyph of Rending, and I'll say a bit about that later.

In favor of Mortal Strike, I've taken the Glyph as well as the talents Improved Mortal Strike (3/3) and Juggernaut (1/1), and notice that Trauma (2/2) also has a connection to this as well.

Now many of these are basic and givens.  In fact, I think it's fair to say that you should pick your specialization based on what kind of weapon you use.  I, for example, typically use my trusty BoH, so I'm taking axe specialization.  If I were to find one of the awesome maces or swords in Ulduar, I'd consider switching over.  Of course, if I got a shot at some of the axes or polearms, I'd stay right where I am.  (the polearms would be funny since I have 1/400 skill with them at the moment)

So where were my real choices?  Well, not taking Anger Management was one.  I talked to some Arms warriors and they said that rage was seriously not an issue any more.  I'm glad I listened, because they were right.

The other choices were basically down to PvE vs PvP.  Not knowing for sure whether I wanted to try to do PvP in the same spec or not, I elected to do a PvP spec that I felt would still be useful in PvE, so I opted to put my 2 "free" points in the arms tree into Second Wind (2/2) rather than Improved Slam.

Obviously if I were aiming this for pure PvE, I'd go with slam every time, but since I have a lot of damage dealers already, I wanted to add a purely PvP element to it since it looks to me like something I definitely want in PvP, and who knows, it may come in handy in PvE occasionally too.

So why did I pass up Improved Hamstring?  Well, yes, I know that it's vital, but those 3 points when to Sudden Death that improves my Execute.  Remember I said we needed to pick our winners?  I chose Execute over either Heroic Strike or Hamstring, both of which could have taken those same 3 points of talents and the glyph slot.

The other choice I made was in the fury tree.  I needed to get to Improved Execute (again, because Execute is one of my winners) and I needed 5 more points to get there.  The whole first tier of Fury is kind of a no brainer, but where to put the rest?

I elected to take Piercing Howl (1/1) for two reasons.  First it's kind of an homage to the 3 points and glyph I couldn't put into hamstring.  It is afterall kind of an AoE hamstring ability.  Secondly, because there have been MANY times in Naxx when whomever was tanking the zombie chow was extremely grateful for having put one point in Piercing howl, and I've seen situations in Ulduar so far where I'd be glad to have it too.   Razorscale being one, and XT being another.

Even still I had 4 more points to put somewhere, so I had to choose between Improved Cleave and Blood Craze (3/3).  This was another really tough call.  One is sort of both directions, the other is pretty much all PvP.  In the end, I decided that I didn't want to have to try to hit Cleave every chance I got.  Instead I chose to use the Glyph of Sweeping Strikes together with my original winners to "simulate" cleave often enough to get me by.  After all, a free Sweeping Strikes followed by a bladestorm does a lot more AoE damage than any number of Cleaves in a row during the same time frame, even glyphed and improved.

And my final point I stuck blindly into Unbridled Rage which I see as the biggest waste of time in the Fury talent tree mainly because when I put this spec together I was somewhat uncertain whether or not rage might turn out tougher to manage than I thought, so I figured I'd stick a little more into rage generation just to be on the safe side.

Ok, so I haven't gotten to PvP at all with this spec yet, but I'm looking forward to it.  I can say that in PvE it seems to be doing just fine.  I'm outperforming some Fury warriors that refused to switch (but are really good at their talent spec), and I can definitely hold my own in that regard.

My primary attack sequence right now depends a little on what the pull is.  For single target pulls, I use "Charge, Rend, Mortal Strike, .. Put sunders up.. (wait for whichever happens next, OP, MS, or Execute) use the next one.  etc.  Rend only needs to be refreshed once every 15 seconds, so I throw one of those in every 5th or 6th button, and I may add TC to part of my rotation just to keep the extra debuffs up.  If it's a boss pull, I'll blow one Shattering throw right after sunders are up if the encounter will last more than 5 minutes, or I'll wait until later if not.  And if all is going according to plan, the basic rotation becomes

OP > Execute > MS > Rend 

The reason for this selection is that (a) OP has the shortest cooldown.  If I throw OP I only have to wait 1 sec instead of the 1.5 sec gcd.  (b) If Execute is up, no kidding, I'm sometimes throwing executes off that hit for 12K+ and even when I use minimal rage, I'm hitting for 7K+ damage each.  Remember my discussion about spamming execute once the target gets to 20%?  It goes REALLY well.

For multiple target pulls (trash etc) I use a slightly different sequence.  "Charge, Rend, MS (looks the same so far, huh?) TC (unless the tank is a warrior), Sweeping Strikes, Bladestorm"

then I just watch everyone lay down and die.  Once the Bladestorm is over, if there is anyone still up, I usually have OP and/or Execute activated and I start mowing down the survivors.

Make sure you give the tank some "lead-in" time before you do this.  Remember you aren't in Improved Berserker Stance anymore, so your threat generation is at 100% instead of 90%.

So in a pinch, I'll say this:  If you're planning on doing PvE only with your arms build, then I'd say go with Improved Cleave and Improved Slam.  Why not equip yourself with two more damage dealers?  But otherwise, I'd leave the rest the same.

Arms for PvE

So I find myself contemplating how I can make my  Arms spec more appropriate for PvE.  

First of all, let me say that Arms damage right now is, to quote a tree friend of mine, "just SICK".  I ran some 5 mans last night, so I wasn't really buffed.  No flasks, no food, just me and my little ol' spec, and I was still averaging over 3K dps, and considering that's about the second time I've done group dps with this spec, I think that's looking very promising.

So the one thing that battle stance has always lacked is convenient access to an interrupt.  

Not that battle stance lacks an interrupt, mind you, because "Shield Bash" is available from battle stance, but to use "Shield Bash" you have to have a shield, and shields are notoroiously hard to come by when all your dps abilities want a 2-Hander to do the most damage.

So this leaves me two possibilies (foregetting entirely the possibility that Blizz will make Pummel available in Battle stance, since that may be too much to hope for):

Either a macro to 

*equip a one-hand axe, and shield

*cast shield bash

*re-equip my trusty BoH

or

*stance change to Berserker Stance

*use Pummel

*stance change back to Battle Stance

Of the two, I think I prefer the first option, and as that same tree friend of mine pointed out, this would allow me to add an option to that macro to use spell reflect sometimes instead of shield bash.

Executing with Arms

Ok, so I've briefly put together some numbers on the cost/benefit to going for Execute vs. using Heroic Strike.

We'll assume in both cases that we've essentially talented and/or glyphed for each depending.

Ok, so in the Execute camp, here are the mechanics:

1st - Talents in Sudden Death, Improved Execute and Glyph of Execution

Mechanics:

-- Sudden death will proc infrequently, but at 9%, it will still happen many times during a long boss fight.  If we assume about 3200 AP, then the "maximum" damage you can do with an early execute will be about 3200 damage (give or take) at a cost of 20-30 total rage, making the damage per rage cost = 160 dpr.  If fired at 10 rage (the minimum you can use) the damage will be 2500 (give or take) at a cost of 0-10 rage.  That's correct, 0-10 rage.  The mechanics on Sudden death are configured so that each time you use execute, it "rewards" you 10 rage when it's done, so if you spend exactly 10 rage, you get that refunded to you, making the cost free.  

-- At endgame this comes into play as well.  The only cooldown you have to worry over here is the gcd, since Execute has no inherent cooldown.  Since you can use Execute at 10 rage, and since at 10 rage Execute is free, once the target hits 20% health, you can essentially SPAM execute for free, dealing approximately 2500 damage every 1.5 second global cooldown on top of your white strikes.  Of course, you'll probably do a lot more than this, because all those white strikes will be generating rage, but make no mistake, there's no point in pausing with this build, because the maximum damage you can do with Execute at full rage is about 5800 (give or take) and if it takes more than 3 seconds to completely fill your rage bar, you're better off going with 2-3 lower rage Executes than trying to get the single burst from full. 

Now in the Heroic Strike Camp:

1st -- Talents in Improved Heroic Strike and Glyph of Heroic Strike.

Mechanics:

-- During combat, you can use Heroic strike any time you wish, spamming it any time you have the rage to burn, there is no need to wait for a proc chance.  However, using Heroic strike has a 12 rage cost, and only does (again assuming about 3200 AP and a fairly good weapon) about 2030 damage on average.  Now, if we further assume a 40% crit rate, then we can assume that 40% of the time you'll be recovering 10 rage points from using it which "technically" lowers the cost to 8 rage, which makes this an impressive 253.75 damage per rage ability, but we have to include the 'hidden' costs as well.  Note that HS is not an instant attack, and note that you do not gain rage from an HS like you would from the white strike that would ordinarily be happening.  This also has to be factored in.  While rage generation is not typically a problem, rage generation while spamming HS is very difficult, as your white strikes are not bringing up your rage totals.

So in conclusion we can see that, ultimately, going with Execute over Heroic Strike as an Arms warrior makes good PvE sense.  During combat, you still have plenty of abilities to fire to keep yourself busy, and you can always blow a few HS's when you have the chance, but the ability to add an instant Execute during the lead in phase without disrupting rage generation from white strikes will keep your rage at good levels to pop for emergencies, while at the same time allowing unreal damage potential in the last 20% health on bosses.  

Growing into my Arms

So after some debate, and largely due to the clear advantages Arms has at the moment, I've elected to switch my dps spec to Arms.  Since I've never done arms before, this will take some getting used to, I fear, but I'm working on it with some guild mates and other friends to find a rotation that is both useful and doable.

So far, my current rotation seems to be something like:

(for one mob)

Charge, Rend, Mortal Strike 

If Overpower or Execute pop, fire those, otherwise, go back to Mortal Strike and Slam.

(for multi-mobs)

Charge, Rend, Mortal Strike (start with the primary and give the tank a few seconds to build some threat across the others, if you're the tank or you're soloing, just do it), sweeping strikes, bladestorm,

If Overpower or Execute pop, fire those, otherwise use Cleave, Mortal Strike and Slam

Rage dump = Heroic Strike?  I still haven't been able to determine fully whether this is still true or not.  At least one of the people I've spoken with said they never bother with Heroic Strike anymore now that they have Sudden Death, Improved Execute, and Glyph of Execution they can blow Execute many times during a battle, and it seems to be working.  

So far the biggest "options" I seem to be encountering are how to effectively manage my talents to accomplish what I want to do.  The more I play with it, the more I'm not entirely sure.  While Arms is still pretty wonderful, I've been facing several arms warriors in bg's etc again, and once again it seems that arms still can't really get through the protection barricade.  However, arms dps in raids is clearly superior now to anything Fury has to offer.  For that reason, I'm thinking of designing a purely PvE arms spec to use in raids, which will limit some of the things I had taken to facilitate some PvP and soloing.  

The Off tanking job for Iron Council (Warriors)

Hey, so even though I haven't been able to complete the iron council with my 10 man group yet, we fully expect this Sunday to be the slam dunk.  Of course, I can't be there, but that's another story, and has nothing to do with this.

If you're the only protection warrior in the group, you can expect to have the weirdest job ever against the Iron Council.  Your job is to keep Stormcaller occupied, until he dies.  It really doesn't make any difference if you're MT/OT, whatever.  The ONE thing we have over the other classes is our abundance of interrupts and stuns.  We may not do nearly as much damage (I can sometimes see my dps at about 1/2 that of DK or especially bear tanks) and we may not have area effect "ticking" threat builders like paladins and DK's, but give us a target who is both stunnable and interruptible, and you've got a fight on your hands.   

Just in case you didn't read my earlier post, I will reiterate the following.  Remember that as protection warriors you may have a lot of interrupts and stuns, but you have ONLY 2 silencing abilities, and they're both dependent on you having taken "gag order" in your talent tree.  Both shield bash and heroic throw will silence your target for 3 seconds (as well as preventing casting in the same school for longer than that).  

The reason I mention this, is that you'll need to use these two abilities to maneuver Stormcaller.  He is as caster as caster gets.  If he can cast, he will, and his spells hurt, and they hurt everyone, not just you.  So you have to carefully meter out your interrupts, use your silences to move him when needed, and make sure that he never gets a spell off (or if he does, at least don't let it go on for long).  

The only issue from Stormcaller's abilities has to do with when he shouts "Run away, little girl!" just EXACTLY in the same voice as Sartherion, that ability isn't interruptible or stunnable etc., but it also only has a 30 foot range, so run away and once it's over, charge back in to prevent the followup cast he's started doing.

Other than that there is only one other issue to do with Stormcaller.  If you're killing the big guy first, when he goes down the medium guy will use Death Rune which drops a huge bad void zone right underneath you.   If this happens, make sure you get out of there, but make sure you have at least one of your silences available when you do, otherwise, he'll just sit there in the middle of the death rune and wipe your party.

Provided you're doing the little guy last routine, once the middle guy goes down you're still going to be on "keep the little guy from casting" duty, even if you're not tanking him.  When he goes into his "air" phase, you'll probably be running away, so make sure you can still get to him with charge or intercept once he comes down.  

Off-Tanking Ignis in Ulduar

So, as I'm doing this from different perspectives, I'm learning a little about what needs to be done.

My guild 10 man just downed the first 4 in Ulduar last night in under 2 hours.

I was playing the role of off-tank for the whole time, and as off tank, I can say that for sure, the most annoying of the four is Ignis, but last night I noticed some tricks that make it VERY easy to do.

Off Tanking Ignis:

The basic setup:  in 10 man, we determined that the key ingredient to this fight is the healers.  You will most likely need 3.  One for the main tank, one for the off tank and raid and one for the pot (and raid when no one is in the pot).  

The dps and healers will pretty much stand in the middle of the room (right between the two pools) and the MT will kite Ignis around in a circle, close enough to the dps for the melee to hit him, but always facing to the side of the group (imagine running a ruler around a penny, where Ignis is the point of contact between the two, and he's facing along the ruler).

You (the OT) are in charge of grabbing any of the 20 constructs that can be brought to life and making sure that they are killed in a timely fashion so that Ignis doesn't buff enough to wipe the tank and then the raid.  The constructs are arranged around him in 4 rows on both sides of the area, and you have to police all of them in 10 man (in 25 man, I think it would be worthwhile having 2 off tanks).

So to begin with, you're not going to be anywhere near Ignis for "most" of the encounter.  Ignis is big, and hard to see around.  Your main tank is most likely going to be circling Ignis around the middle of the floor (right between the two pools).  So you want to stay close to the sides, and keep moving.  you need to be constantly watching both sides of the room.  

Once you hear him say "Arise, soldiers!" start looking OVER his head.  He will throw a spark to whichever construct he is activating.  Having your camera distance set at maximum will help a lot with this.  Once you know which construct he's activating, start running that direction.  You want to hit him with something quickly.  If your raid group is doing this right, most of the group is huddled basically in the middle, and you don't want to get "too" far out of range for the healers, but you need to be the first thing the construct sees.  If you miss it, it's ok, they don't do a lot of damage immediately, but you will need to taunt it ASAP, and quickly lock your target's aggro on you.

Next step is to make your way as quickly as possible (which may be a slow crawl, since you may have to walk backwards to kite them without letting them aggro onto the raid group) to the most recently placed "upside down flame tornado" (that's my name for them).  Then stop.  If you have the ability to have some druids or mages on hand to root them in the middle while you step out, that's good, otherwise, you'll need to stay healed while you sit there and babysit your little guy(s).  Once you see them become orange (or have 20 stacks of the debuff, whichever is easier for you) you need to call out in vent to alert the ranged dps that you've got an incoming brittle guy.  As long as you parked them in the most recent flame-nado, you shouldn't have to move them again, but if you were forced to use an old one, you might need to take them to a new one before they finally go molten.  Run, don't walk, directly to the nearest pool.  Do NOT go anywhere near the raid, and don't be afraid to taunt them one extra time for good measure on the way.  I've noticed that the moment they become molten they drop aggro and reset, so you'll definitely need to do something to get their attention off the raid long enough to get to the pool.  Do a quick in and out at the pool, and call out in vent again that you now have a brittle construct so the ranged dps can destroy it.  Run quickly, as if you are still in range the explosion will hurt badly.  If your ranged dps has a hard time keeping oriented, you might tell them "North" or "South" pool to make it easier for them to know where to orient.

Unlike the dps, you won't really have to worry about being in the pot, and you won't really care about "most" of the things that Ignis does, but if you are a paladin or DK, do watch out for the spell lock periods.  Each time he casts flame jets, remember that this will interrupt casting and prevent casting from that school for 8 seconds.  If you're using spells to tank, this might be an issue.  Obviously it's not a big deal for me. 

By the way, ever notice that all the "shouty" bosses in Northrend have the same voice?   Hmmmm.