Armor Penetration Information

Ok, many of you have already seen this, but since it is not only interesting, but factual, I wanted to provide a couple extra thoughts on the current posts.

I begin with a direct quote from Ghostcrawler:

We didn’t want Armor Penetration Rating to be too powerful against low armor targets, like it had been in BC. We also didn’t want Armor Penetration Rating to be too powerful against high armor targets.

So, we decided on a system where there is a cap on how much armor the Armor Penetration Rating can be applied to. So, the first X armor on the target is reduced by the percentage listed in the Armor Penetration Rating tooltip, and all armor past that X is unaffected. Another way of understanding that is we multiply the percentage in the tooltip times the minimum of the two values: the cap, and the amount of armor on the target after all other modifiers.

Computing the cap is a little tricky unless you are already familiar with how World of Warcraft armor works. There is an armor constant we’ll call C. C is derived as follows (in some pseudocode):

If (level<60)
C=400+85*targetlevel
Else
C=400+85*targetlevel+4.5*85*(targetlevel-59);

For a level 80 target, C=15232.5. For a level 83, C=16635.

The cap for Armor Penetration then is: (armor + C)/3.

A level 80 warrior creature has 9729 armor. C=15232.5. So, the cap is (9729+15232.5)/3=8320.5. Let’s say a player has 30% armor penetration from armor penetration rating and no other modifiers that complicate the calculation (talents, Battle Stance, Sunder Armor, etc.). The game chooses the minimum of 8320.5 and 9729, so 8320.5. That is multiplied by 30% = 2496.15, and so that much armor is ignored. The effective armor on the target is 7232.85 (9729-2496.15). From a player point of view, the armor penetration rating didn’t ignore the full 30%, but instead ignored 25.66%. (85.5% as effective as expected).

So, I see one point of interest here that we should be (possibly) happy about. Namely that there is no "cap" per-se on Armor Penetration, except that you cannot possibly ignore more than 100% of the Armor penetration cap amount. Thus we can stack our Armor Penetration up to (but not over) the 100% mark (which is already pretty tough to get to anyway.

I'd LOVE to have enough AP gear to actually test this theory, but I'm having a significant amount of difficulty getting to that point.

If you read the early post on how to calculate this sort of thing, let me amend whatever I may have said about the Armor Penetration rating. Since the modifications to AP (they buffed it significantly), the new "base" value that needs to be used appears to be about 3.754 (it is slightly more than 3.75, but that's a rough estimate of how much more).

So, Arms warriors can expect that in heavy combat situations, on top of the 10% armor penetration we have from battle stance we're going to to want 5 sunder stacks (eliminating 20% of the target's "removable" armor) and we'll assume that for stressful situations we will also allow shattering throw to remove an additional 20%, so we want to know how much AP rating it would take to get to 50% passive armor penetration (yes, you may have trinkets that boost it occasionally, but let's first find out what the number to stay below is).

And the answer turns out to be 616.

Now, I was goofing around looking at some items I could use, and I noticed that I can get up to about 400-500 easily, which nets us about 32%-40% passive AP.

With this in mind, watch out for trinkets like the Mjolnir Runestone (which are phenomenal if used correctly). You don't need to worry about them being "not as good as advertised", only worry that (if you notice), adding 612 AP rating for 10 seconds won't do you a lot of good if you're already stacked to 400-500 AP, since you'll be pretty much hitting your cap around even without any "extra" armor penetration rating, just from the trinket.

For those adventurous few that are seeking more than 50% armor penetration, here's the guide for caps up to 100%, I'll start at 50%, though.

50% = 616 AP rating

60% = 739 AP rating (I suppose so you can dps in Berserker stance?)

70% (so you're capped with only 5 sunder stacks) = 862 AP rating (with a 612 boost from the runestone, this would be fairly simple, and then you can ignore Shattering Throw for all intents)

90% (so you're capped even without sunders) = 1108 AP rating.

100% (so you're capped even in Berserker stance without sunders?) = 1231 AP

My thoughts on this are that basically, if you want to shoot for the 862 rating cap, that could be very nice. If you assume that you're doing this with the 612 rating boost from the trinket, that means you'll have about 250 Armor Penetration rating all the time, with the trinket boost coming into play every so often. You still have a reason to keep your sunders up, and you'ld be looking at having:

Passively: 30.3% armor reduction (of the armor that is reducible, see above)

W/Sunders: 50.3% armor reduction

W/Sunders & Shattering Throw: 70.3% armor reduction

W/Runestone (Grim Toll also works) proccing: 80.02% armor reduction

W/Sunders & Runestone (Grim Toll also works) proccing: 100% armor reduction

So essentially, since these have an internal 45 second cooldown on procs, and they last 10 seconds, we can say that (provided you have your sunders up) you could expect to have 45 seconds of 50.3% armor penetration followed by 10 seconds of 100% armor penetration every 55 seconds or so.

This would amount to an average of 59.33% Armor penetration all the time (obviously with the sunders).

Notice that this is equivalent (basically) to stacking the 616 AP rating. Also be very careful when making statements like "Grim Toll/Mjolnir's Runestone is BiS trinkets for blah blah blah" because each of these separately proc a 612 AP rating, and you have to look at your chance of having them proc separately or simultaneously.

For example, if you have them both equipped and have the 250 AP rating to go with them, and they proc separately, then you could enjoy a comfortable 20 seconds of 100% armor penetration out of every 55 seconds of combat, or approximately a 68.37% Armor penetrated (of that which is penetrable) overall. However, if they procced at the same time, even with all that massive overload, you would have exactly the same 59.33% Armor penetration that you'd have with only the runestone, since you can't penetrate more than the 100% of the penetrable armor.

Because the benefit from either of these trinkets is so massive, I might suggest going ahead and not worrying if one takes you over the count, but I don't know whether or not I'd gamble on both at once. For example, this set of (admittedly high level) gear would give you 584 Armor Penetration (before enchants and gems) and isn't the highest you could get. However, it would give you 57.44% passive Armor penetration with the 5 sunder stacks giving you a 77.44% passive Armor Penetration, and the 10 seconds when the trinket pops, you get the extra 22.56% for 10 seconds, which would give you an average AP of about 81.54% overall. Notice it's not a big increase from the passive amount, but it is an increase even over using Grim Toll/Runestone only even if they proc separately all the time. Also, it's nice to know that you can always add an extra 20% AP with Shattering throw during any of those internal cd's of the Runestone that you know you want the extra oomph during.

Another nice thing about your gear is that it should be balanced enough to privide a healthy amount of crit rating (here you get 682 or approximately an extra 14.86%), enough hit and expertise rating to get the rest of the way to hit cap and expertise cap with some gems and enchants, and plenty of strength and Armor (which will be more important for us after patch 3.2, which is the only reason I bring it up) to give us a healthy dose of Attack Power.

A secondary piece of information to take from this is that we now know (A) how to anticipate a mob's armor values a little, and (B) how to cheat the system in PvP. Suppose you're worried about a warrior stacking 100% armor penetration in an arena. . . get the highest armor value you can before you go after him.

Note that this is because of the way they average these values together. If the armor value for the mob etc. were less than half of the C value they give for that level, then the overall armor penetration possible would be 100% of the armor the mob has. So for level 80 this gives a lower armor value of 7616.25. Any target with this amount of armor or less would essentially be "disarmorable" with 100% armor penetration. On the other hand, if you are wearing 21000 armor, that same 100% armor penetration will only allow them to remove 57.51% of your armor value, which may come as a shock to them.

So assuming that level 80 mobs do actually have differing armor values, Armor Penetration will still be on a sliding scale of effectiveness, with the more armored foes being less vulnerable to it, but now we know how it works.

I think I've found the gear set I'm going to work towards here (at least until the new patch when better is available). This accomplishes (once enchanted, gemmed etc) about 422 Armor Penetration (34.28% penetration + 10% battle stance, + 20% sunders gives 64.28% Armor Penetration most of the time, with 100% for 10 seconds out of every 55 seconds, giving an average of 70.77% without considering Shattering Throw), balanced out with 1019 crit rating (about 22.2% extra bringing me to 34.24% unbuffed), about 1285 extra strength and enough hit and expertise to be just barely over the caps (albeit the soft cap in the expertise case).

Ok, not too bad, now to actually accomplish it. :D

Warrior Perspective on Antechamber of Ulduar

Ok, howdy again. You've probably noticed that I haven't really covered trash much at all. Some of the trash has it's own quirks that you will want to read up on, and the Antechamber of Ulduar is no exception. You should probably look for a more in-depth look at the trash for strats on them, especially if you're tanking.

Auriaya: If you're the MT here, you'll want to LOS pull her to a safe area where there is enough movement to allow you to rotate her at least once (explained later) but to keep everyone clustered together. Our raid likes to use the niche next to the stairs on the right for this. The basic trick to this fight is that everyone will be grouped up together. She does a blast every so often that causes a fixed amount of damage spread out over everyone in the cone in front of her, so the more people that are there, the less damage everyone takes. She starts with two adds, that (if you choose) can either be OT'd or can be killed first, just depending on what your MT and raid want to do. There are really two things you want to pay attention to during most of this fight. First, she does a mass fear (that friendly shamans can help with if you have some) and immediately follows it with a big spell that has to be interrupted. Make double sure that you have your Berserker Rage somewhere convenient, ESPECIALLY if you're either Fury or one of the tanks, since you have an interrupt that won't involve stance dancing. If you are Arms and you have no one else that can interrupt (but most tanks can, this is just an extra safety thing) you might go ahead and put together a macro to equip a shield and use Shield Bash, since that's something that is available from Battle Stance and that won't kill your rage like trying to dance to hit Pummel will. The second thing to watch out for the whole fight is that she periodically does a summon that summons a large number of small adds that need to be burned down quickly. Save your big cooldowns (unless you're Fury) for this time. If you're one of the tanks, blow Shockwave once that happens to try to stun as many of them as possible. If you're tha MT (and hence already tanking Auriaya) try to use Challenging Shout, otherwise use everything else you would normally do for group pulls to try to keep as many as possible off the rest of the raid. If you're Arms, you will save your Bladestorms for this point (and Sweeping Strikes if you've glyphed for it). If you're Fury, you're going to do what you always do: Whirlwind, Bloodthirst, but now might also be the time to use Cleave for your rage dump instead of Heroic Strike.

Eventually, Auriaya will call for a defender, and this is when the OT steps in. The defender will jump around and will cause bleed damage and stuns randomly, but if everyone is grouped together still, that shouldn't be an issue for you to continue to keep aggro on it. Now, here is where the fun begins for everyone. You essentially have two options: try to keep the defender alive, or try to kill it. The feral defender has 9 lives (ha ha) and each time it goes down it will spawn a large void zone that will remain for the rest of the encounter. If you want to kill it you will need to have a place scouted out where you can safely place 9 different void zones. You will also need to do it quickly. Basically, each time the defender is up, dps them down quickly, move to a new location, burn down Auriaya. From everything I've read about trying this, even if you do it right, it will be close to the enrage timer when you finally kill the 9th defender (I plan on trying to talk my raid into trying this at least once, but sometimes they're less interested in the achievements than the hard modes, I like both. ^.^). If you decide to ignore the defender and focus on Auriaya, do exactly that. It may happen that the defender dies accidentally once, so that's why you need to have at least one other place you can stand her to avoid the void zone. This way is pretty cake, since Auriaya doesn't have that many HP.

Iron Council(optional): So many good things to say about these guys. To begin let me break down into tank and dps categories. If you're dps here, there is basically one thing to worry about. Whenever you need to move, MOVE! Otherwise, dps. You will have different times that you will have to move (depending on who is up when), Stormcaller does an Overload right from the start, Molgeim does a Rune of Death if at least one of them has gone down, and Steelbreaker does a static disruption (with at least one of the others down) that does a small amount of damage but also adds a debuff that increases susceptibility to damage. Avoid these. Otherwise, just remember that this is a "one at a time" fight. You cannot get them all down at once, you just need to pick the order and focus fire through it.

Ok, now to the tanking. Being the MT in this is all about survivability. Being the OT in this is all about your ability to position and move your targets (even though one is a caster and WILL NOT follow you). Everything else depends solely on which order you choose to follow. For example, the easiest way is to work from large to small. In this situation, the OT will rush in and grab aggro on them and pull them to one side of the room (the MT will pull whichever one you're starting with to the other side), remember to use Heroic Throw (which is talented with Gag Order) to silence Stormcaller so he'll run where you tell him to. Runemaster is easier from that respect because he's a melee type. I hate to admit it, but because Stormcaller is so difficult to maneuver (since you have to use either Shield Bash or Heroic Throw to move him, and you're going to be interrupting a lot too.) sometimes we just us a DK tank to handle this. If, on the other hand you're starting with this guy, then it's very possible you could MT him without worry (he does barely any damage and EVERY one of his abilities is interruptible early on), since there won't be any death runes to try to pull him out of. You'll still need to pull him out of the Rune of Powers, but it's not as serious since he doesn't really do that much damage at first anyway. You will need to have someone available who can dispell Steelbreaker's Fusion punch if you're tanking him, since that will kill you faster than anything, and you'll need someone who can dispell Runemaster's Shield of Runes since that also will kill you faster than anything.

Once one of them are down, the remaining ones acquire new abilities and are healed back to full. Runemaster gains the rune of death everyone will have to avoid, Stormcaller gains the lightning whirl that must be interrupted immediately, and Steelbreaker gains the static disruption I mentioned earlier.

At this point, the MT will take one of the two that the OT is holding away and move him over to the other side of the room where you all just took down the first one, and continue on. Once this guy goes down everyone can focus on the last target, which is good, because there are a number of difficulties that arise with the last batch of abilities. If Stormcaller is last, he gains Lightning Tendrils where he floats into the air, and follows a random person doing damage for a while to everyone in range. For this reason, everyone should spread out for this and stay away from each other as well as be out towards the walls. Runemaster gains a rune of summoning which summons an elemental that will target a random player and head for them to cast a lightning blast that hits for a lot. That rune will periodically summon these elementals until it subsides.

Steelbreaker gains the worst ability, and I'll tell you what it says, but I haven't done it yet. The power is called Overwhelming power. It targets someone and increases size and damage of them by 200%. After 60 (30? I see different reports) seconds it causes a meltdown which causes them to die instantly and also meltdown causing them to deal about 30K damage to everyone within 15 yards. If you get this, I'd guess you dps like crazy for the time you have and then get away from whomever melted down. From reading the strats, you're going to need at least a druid or lock or two to get at least one soulstone and/or one brez in order to do this properly. The tank will take the debuff and get the time to do damage, and then at about 5-10 secs left, the OT will taunt off them and the tank will run off to die in a big explosion. Hopefully the raid can get the big guy down to about 30%-40% in that time, because he also heals up some. One of the guides I read would make Arms a good dps to have along since they can limit healing taken by 50%+. I'm eager to try this. Incidentally, if your plan is to eventually take on Algalon (which requires doing not only one of the hard modes here, but also the four hard modes on the four keepers) this is where you will start. First you need to either "choose" Runemaster or Steelbreaker, and whichever you choose, you will get the quest item needed to begin the quest to unlock Algalon. To complete the quest you will still have to do the other hard modes, but at least if you do this first, you can work on the other hard modes later.

Kologarn: There's not much for us to worry about on this guy. You should already know how to tab target, and that's really all you need to worry about. As dps, you'll notice that you can stand right in the middle (in front of the guy) and still target/hit either arm without difficulty. Don't let his size concern you. In fact, to observers, they'll think you're dpsing Kologarn instead of his arms, but don't let that bother you either. The advantage to dpsing from there is that you are guaranteed to be in melee range, and hence not a choice for his eye beams, and also whenever you whirlwind or bladestorm, you'lre going to hit him and both his arms simultaneously (also whenever you Cleave/Sweeping Strikes you'll get the same thing. As a tank, you're either on Kologarn or you're on the adds. In 10 man, you probably only have 2 tanks, so the tanks will rotate. [edit: No need to rotate in 10 man since the debuff only exists in 25 man] Kologarn does a debuff that you can't let stack beyond 1 for very long, so once it gets to 2, the other tank needs to taunt him off. Whomever isn't tanking Kologarn at the moment that the right arm goes down needs to grab the adds. The ranged dps should AoE the adds down quickly to free up the tank on the adds, so he can go back to taunting Kologarn off the other tank. In 25 man, you'll have 3 tanks, so it's not such an issue there. One tank will do the adds, the other two will stay close to Kologarn and dps/taunt and tank as needed. Your ranged dps and healers will have eyebeams and stuff to worry about, but the only time you'll need to worry about these is if you're tanking the adds when he starts. Just move to the side and keep moving around in a wide pattern to keep him trailing after you, and don't go too near the rest of the raid if you're in that position. The adds should stay on you with just some simple Demo Shouts and Thunderclaps, use challenging shout if things get out of hand. The only thing the melee dps will ever have happen to them, they can't avoid or do much about anyway. If you get picked up and your healers are having a rough time, having a macro to equip a shield and use shield block will save them some effort ( just like you did on Ignis) but generally you won't be taking too much damage from being picked up by the right arm.

And grats, you're past the antechamber!

Warrior perspective on Siege of Ulduar

So in a note of excitement, my 10 man group finished up through Mimiron, the last keeper of Ulduar, this weekend. We stumbled a bit on General Vezax, which is strange, because he doesn't even have two "X"s at the end of his name! (ha ha) No seriously he's not that tough, but there's a lot going on, and it's mostly on the casters. Boy, I've never been happier to NOT be a caster.

It's a fascinating set-up. You have to have casters, because if you don't, then the shadow smashes will target the melee and that's no good, not to mention the mark of the faceless (that heals him based on how many people are standing around the person affected) that shouldn't be aimed towards the melee.

But overall, things went very well. I've now got some properly decent Ulduar level 219 tanking gear (mostly) and even a few pieces of dps gear too. My dual spec may really come into play before too long, because our awesome druid OT is also an awesome feral cat, and there may be some hard modes where we will need the extra dps she puts out.

So, from a warrior perspective, here are some things you might need to know about the bosses in Ulduar, I'm starting with the Siege of Ulduar bosses.

Flame Leviathon: Ok, not much to this, it totally depends on which vehicle you're in, and very little on your class. The only catch is if you're dps specced, you may be put in the gunner's chair in a Demolisher to be launched onto FL to overload him (and stop him from moving for a while and remove the buff that stacks to increase his speed).

Chopper:> You have 2 jobs. 1 - every cooldown, speed in front of FL and drop tar. 2 - whenever someone is launched, you need to go pick them up after they've killed the turrets. That's really it. If you're bored in between times, use your attack. A little extra dps never hurt anyone.

Siege Engine:> You have 2 jobs, which change based on which seat you're in. If you're in the driver's seat, your job is to 1 - interrupt Flame Vents every time FL does it. In order to do that (and that's really the important one) you need to be right up on the back of FL unless he's chasing you. If he's chasing you, then your job is 2 - don't die. You have a speed boost you can use to help kite him. If you're in the gunner's seat, your jobs are to 1 - shoot down the pyrite barrels, and 2 - cannon the tar on the ground when possible. The only other thing you should ever do, is notice when your driver is having a hard time getting away from FL and use your shield to help out.

Demolisher:> You have 3-4 jobs, which change based on which seat you're in. If you're in the driver's seat, your job is to 1 - put up to 10 stacks of pyrite onto FL and keep them on. The debuff lasts 10 seconds, so you can use the cannon 2-3 times between shots to help it last longer, 2 - stay away from FL. You are ranged, so act like it. You don't want to be anywhere near the guy if you can help it, 3 - if you start to get low on Pyrite (say 30/50 or so) you have to drive closer to Pyrite barrels, and finally 4 - you need to launch your passenger onto FL when it's time (basically 6-8 stacks of the buff, and when you're not the one being chased) and then stay the heck away from the guy and try to make your pyrite last until the cannons come down. Once they do, FL will be stuck into place and this is a good time to make sure you top off your 10 stacks of Pyrite. If you're in the gunner's chair, then your jobs are 1 - shoot down Pyrite all the time, your cannons don't do a lot of damage, don't worry about them, the Pyrite is a lot more important, 2 - whenever your driver gets you close to a Pyrite barrel, pick it up, 3 - if FL starts pursuing you and it's close, hit the speed boost and then go back to job 2 to fill up the Pyrite again, and finally 4 - when your driver tells you to, use the last button to hop in the catapult and go up and smash the cannon you're on.

If everyone in the vehicles (and there should be pretty much a mixture of them. In 10 man 2 each, in 25 man, 5 each) does their jobs, this fight is pretty simple, even though it seems at times like it's just not going your way. Get good at the basics, and you can start leaving towers up.

Razorscale(optional): Ok, back to typical fighting stuff. You may have 3 rolls, MT, OT, or DPS. The only difference in MT and OT is whether you're tanking Razorscale or any Sentinals or other adds still up during the ground phases. In 25 man, you will probably have 2 OT to deal with adds, one specially for pulling out the sentinals, and the other just for the adds since there will be more adds left up when Razorscale drops.

Razorscale starts out in the air, and tunnelers (like the ones the dark iron Dwarves come out of) pop up and bring adds. If you're a tank, you're grabbing these adds and moving them into a central location (since there will be more than 1 tunneler) if you're DPS you'll be waiting until they're collected and then going in and mowing them down. First DPS priority will be the sentinals (big guys) the OT will typically pull them away from the rest of the adds so they can be single targeted by the Ranged dps or any spare melee. Several waves of these will spawn until deadly boss mods will announce that the turrets are ready. (You won't care about this. Someone else is in charge of these.) During this time the main thing to watch out for is the fire shots. There are two colors of fireballs that Razorscale launches at you. The blue and orange ones hit for barely any damage at all, and can be ignored, since you can't avoid them anyway. The pure blue ones, however, hit and then spawn a blue flame "void zone" on the ground where they hit. Avoid these at all costs, no matter who you are. Keep this up until the turrets are ready. Once the turrets are ready, they'll be shot and Razorscale will be brought down in reach of your viciously cool axe (or sword, I'm not prejudiced). If you're MT, you'll be grabbing Razorscale, if you're OT you'll catch the adds left up. If you're DPS at this point, you switch to Razorscale. The object here is to do AT LEAST 25% damage to her. While she's on the ground during these ground phases, she will not shoot the fire out, so everyone can burn dps like there's no stopping. At some point she'll lift back off, and the next air phase will begin. She'll keep doing this until she's at 50% health. If you want the fight to go quickly (and who doesn't) you will want to get the first 25% on the first ground phase, and get the second 25% on the second ground phase, afterwhich she won't go back up again, and we'll enter the second chapter of Razorscale. If you don't make it, then you'll end up with at least one more air/ground switchoff. To facilitate this speed dps, make sure that you have SUNDER at 5 stacks always (improves EVERYONE's dps) and make sure that you use big cooldowns early on in the first ground phase so that if you're lucky you'll have them to use again somewhere in the middle of the second one. I'm talking about Deathwish/Recklessness, and then Whirlwinds, I'm talking Rend, Shattering Throw and then Bladestorm, all that stuff. If you're tanking, you don't need to do anything but try to help keep your targets in place. Keep sunders up so the dps don't have to, keep Demoralizing shout up to help you live longer, etc. these phases aren't tests for you, they're for the dps.

Once you have her below 50% the MT and OT will basically dual tank Razor. First the dps should mow down any remaining adds to free up the OT for this. Razorscale will begin dropping more of the lovely blue flames, and will also put a debuff on the tank. The MT and OT will need to be aware of this debuff and taunt Razorscale off whenever 2 stacks are present. Basically 1 is acceptable, but as soon as it hits 2, the other tank needs to taunt. Each stack reduces armor by 20% and movement speed by 20%. As if that wasn't enough, the tanks will be trying to move her so that the dps don't have to stand in the blue fire puddles she's dropping everywhere. This is the part of the fight that tests you as a tank. The good news is, no more surprises. That's about all there is to worry about. She should go down pretty easy once you get the hang of that.

Ignis(optional): Ok so either you're a dps here and you can sleep through most of this, or you're a tank and you're going to pull your hair out. This fight will need either 2 or 3 tanks, depending on 10 or 25 man raiding party.

The fight from a MT perspective. You have one job: positioning Ignis. Ignis will need to be moved in a square/triangle/etc to give specific burn points for the OT's to use and you'll need to move anyway to keep from getting burned. Ideally, you will make this cool geometric figure in such a way that the dps can all stand directly in the middle of the room and never have to move.

The fight from an OT perspective. You are in charge of the iron construct that will be activated. If it's 10 man, you'll need to watch both sides, in 25 you can watch only one side. There are three tips I can give you. 1) each time Ignis activates a construct he'll say "Arise Soldiers!" and throw a spark up into the air that will arc towards whatever construct is being activated. Get him, but don't stray too far from the middle, because that's where you need him to come anyway. 2) Shockwave, Concussion blow, or having a druid that roots them in place will save your healers a ton of mana. You want them in the fire (preferably the most recent fire that was laid down) and you don't want to be in it. 3) when the constructs become molten, you'll see four things: first, they'll turn orange, second, they'll speed up, third they'll drop aggro and go for whomever, and fourth they'll hurt a lot more in an AoE. As soon as they go molten, you have to reacquire aggro and kite them to the nearest pool of water. Once you run into the water (and stay in the shallow part) announce to he dedicated ranged dps that you have a brittle construct and then get the heck away. It sounds simple until you try to do it.

the fight from a DPS perspective. Yawn. dps the heck out of the guy. The worst thing that can happen to you is that you might be put in the slag pot. If that happens, make sure you have some kind of something you can do to mitigate the damage he's going to do, even though it's not as bad as it was. I.e. equip a shield, switch to defensive stance and use shield wall, drink a potion, use enraged regeneration, etc. You can also be healed while you're in there, but bandages won't do you much good (as you're suffering from a dot). This used to be worse, and is now not as bad as it was.

XT-002: This guy is fun. The majority of the difficulty here rests on the healers. If you're MT, your job is to hold XT in place, and it feels like a basic tank and spank. We have found the best placement for XT is on one of the sides (we use the left) right between the two scrap piles. This way only the far two scrap piles spawn adds instead of all of them. If you're dps just whack the heck out of the guy. Save your cooldowns for the times when his heart comes out. The only time you have to be careful there is if you don't want to kill the heart (hard mode) in which case, you want to curb your 4K dps enough to keep the heart barely alive. If you're OT, then you're going to get a bunch of pummelers that you have to keep aggroed. And you can kite them, and you can play with them. Just have a good time. The only thing to continuously watch out for as dps is that there are types of "bombs" that XT casts on you, in either case, you need to run away from everyone else. each of them does damage to you, but does damage to everyone around you also. If you're the one with the bomb, you just get at least 20 yards away from everyone else, and the healers can keep you up no problem, if you don't, they have to try to keep everyone up, which is tough. There will also be tantrums that will cause raid wide damage that must be healed through. During these tantrums, if you have potions or something you can use to heal yourself (like enraged regeneration, Lifebloom, potions, etc) doing so will make it that much easier to keep you alive.

And a few phases of heart in/heart out and he goes down.

I'll post up some info on the Keepers of Ulduar later.

Basic Lvl 80 Fury Warrior Talent Build and discussion

Recently I was asked about this by a guildmate, so I thought I'd post it just in case.

Fury spec (18/51) not much room to move

Ok, so this spec is pretty much the least "forgiving" as you notice, you have 2, count them, 2 points to put somewhere else, however, depending on the builds of other warriors in your guild/raid, you may be able to shift some other points around.

Options:

 1/1 Anger Management -- IMO a good idea.  Gets you 20 rage/min all the time, slowing rage loss out of combat as well as helping you build rage in combat.  Works better than an extra point in Unbridled Wrath.

 You can choose to spend your points differently amongst

  Commanding Presence

  BloodSurge

  Heroic Fury

  Intensify Rage

  Improved Berserker Rage

  Improved Cleave

  Piercing Howl

But basically that's about all the wiggle room you have if you're going PvE.  Since you'll be wanting to stay in Berserker stance for as much time as possible (to reduce aggro, increase crit chance etc.) you'll want to shy away from strange things in the arms tree that require you to be in Battle Stance, and don't worry about any of the PvP talents that reduce healing on the people attacked or anything.

If you want to do something other than this, you might consider putting the two throw-away points that are currently in Tactical Mastery and place them somewhere else like in Improved Heroic Strike.  The reason I've gone with this way is for those off chances that I'll want to change stances (like in emergencies) especially if I need to tank for a few seconds to allow a battle rez on the MT.  I feel like that's worth more than reducing the cost of something I only throw to dump rage anyway.  Plus, I've glyphed for returning rage when my HS crits, so ultimately I think they're about equivalent.  You definitely don't need to worry about improving Charge or Rend, since you can't use those most of the time anyway, and the few times you do, you'll be making up less in dps/usefulness for that cost than you're losing for the talents you could have taken.

Fury Rotation:

  Pretty much you are going to use Intercept to charge, WW and Bloodthirst.  

  Pop Recklessness and/or Deathwish as long as you're sure the tank has aggro and as long as you're not going to be having problems that require them elsewhere.  The only other things you are going to be paying attention to are: (1) if Slam becomes instant because of Bloodsurge, go ahead and use it, (2) if Victory Rush is up, use it, (3) if you need to use Pummel because you're fighting KelThuzad or someone else that can be interupted, use that, (4) if your rage gets over 40 spam Heroic Strike or Cleave until you start to have rage problems again, (5) if you have a chance, put up those sunders, and (6) if you like your tanks, maybe throw a demoralizing shout once in a while (oh, and also (7) if you have nothing else to do throw in a Heroic Throw just for fun).  Then just wait for Execute to proc.  Once you're down to 20%, you don't want to spam Execute, but don't use any other rage dumps, just proceed with your rotation, and once rage hits 30-50+, use Execute and start over.

The main reason for that rotation is that it won't leave you raged starved constantly, but still put out a decent amount of damage.