Furiously

With the alpha being leakier than a plastic bag with its bottom cut out, there is a choice to be made by every blogger:

To spoil or not to spoil

Will we include information (of any kind) from the alpha or not?

The alpha information currently accessible on sites like mmo-champ is not official. It has not (apparently) been released by Blizzard and it is not part of a game that is currently available to the public at large.

Whilst information is merely information, and open to speculation, to some, it is also part of a game that many of us are looking forward to, a game that is currently still being very much developed by Blizzard. Saying in any way, shape, or form that we, the fans and players, have a right to the information is quite honestly wrong. We are not entitled to anything, despite being longtime fans etc, so the fact that Blizzard devs actively release and discuss information on their forums is a bonus. It is not a right, despite what some people might think.

It genuinely appears to me that the average WoW player expects Blizzard to supply information on a platter well in advance, so that we know of all the changes beforehand and can mentally adjust to them. Why must all information be available beforehand? The old days were perhaps not ideal, but they did at least conserve some excitement for patch day. These days we know of all the changes ahead of time, so that nothing is a surprise when we get ingame. The “hardcore” gamers basically have a list for each patch that says “do daily X, get rep with faction Y, change gem Z into W”. Does that sound like a shopping or todo list? Does it take all the excitement out of everything and makes it feel like yet another grinding session.

I for one enjoy the sense of exploration and discovery that comes with new content. The sense of “new”, the joy at discovering what’s around the bend in the road (which is also why I wasn’t necessarily jumping for joy at the flying in Northrend at lvl70 changes, but that’s another story), and the, pardon the prose, feeling of going where no character has ever gone before.

The upshot is that I will not be discussing anything under the NDA for two reasons.

1. As said above, having all the information available to you for months makes it “ye olde hat”, thereby robbing it of some of the shiny factor
2. The alpha is under a non disclosure agreement, which means the information currently accessible has been obtained by way of illegal means somewhere down the line. As I will not condone somebody elses unlawful behaviour I will not discuss anything that hasn’t been released by Blizzard or is otherwise lawfully available.

As soon as something is released that isn’t covered by the NDA, I’ll be amongst the first to comment on it but for now I’ll hold off. Despite some people thinking that a NDA is futile, I for one will not be helping to make it alright in the eyes of the public. Besides, why not let our excitement build up for a change. Let ourselves be amazed the first time we actually step into this new land, rather than having browsed a million screenshots a million times.

To boldly go where no character has gone before. But only when the time is right.

Where the forums will once again become awash with pleas for keys, talks on scams, and just about every post will contain one or more of the following words:

• alpha
• beta
• key
• can haz plz

The friends and family alpha has begun for Cataclysm:

Just to confirm and reiterate what we have already said about this in our US forums: the Friends & Family phase of Cataclysm began yesterday and not before. Those who are participating in this phase are doing so only through acceptance of a confidentiality agreement. The closed beta phase has not yet begun and we will endeavour to provide more details on that at an appropriate time. Once the testing has been opened up further and at the time of our choosing, the NDA will be rescinded. Until that time, however, it remains in place.

Does that mean anything for those of us who aren’t friends or family? Not really. There may or may not be leaks, but then, Blizzard have been very forthcoming with both screenshots and game info this time round, no doubt to combat the constant leaking of information that more often than not is a scam. We know more about how Cataclysm is going to work than we did about The Burning Crusade or Wrath, so as players we are in a quite privileged position.

Some might say that the wait has already been too long, and to those of you who are already jumping in your seats with joy that Cataclysm seems closer I will say: go have a cup of something calming. There is still a long way to go before the midnight launch parties and the frenzied levelling.

The King is dead (for some), Cataclysm has been announced (although we don’t know when it’ll be here), and we have perhaps one more patch coming before Cataclysm, albeit it’ll be a preparation patch like 3.0 which means it wont be for a while yet.

Already we are seeing people starting to complain about lack of things to do, although most are just rumbling and muttering in dark corners yet. In other words, we’re currently in a state of pre-expansion limbo, merely biding our time until we can be delivered from this blight of content.

Wait what? Hold on a moment.

The Lich King has barely been killed in heroic mode, and already we’re starting to feel as if we’ve nothing to do? Granted, we’ve been killing the same things for a couple of months now, but to say that there are no things to sink your teeth into is surely a bit of an exagerration?

Let’s look back at this stage in TBC. Sunwell had just come out, along with the nicely challenging Magister’s Terrace, which only had a single instance as opposed to three in ICC. People were wiping endlessly on Muru and Felmyst, they were wiping on the priestess in the Terrace…

…but they were also wiping in the Black Temple, in Hyjal, oh and in Tempest Keep and Serpentshrine Cavern. And of course there were the people who were still doing Zul’Aman and Karazhan.

Raiding was harder back then, no matter what anybody says, and raids needed more people to run them, which meant that for some Karazhan, and Zul’Aman for that matter, were the only viable options unless you wanted to PUG the bigger raids. If you could find a group at all.

The major difference between then and now is that people were raiding at all levels, whereas today we’re all raiding the top level. T6 was a dream set I’d never get, whereas I’ve now a full T10 (albeit 10-man). Illidan was the aloof boss you could only dream about fighting, whereas the Lich King…oh wait, I’ve not killed him yet.

Anyway, the point is that rather than having the entirety of the raiding population spread out amongst all the raids, the raiding population is pretty much crammed into ICC in it’s entirety. Instead of only a small percentage of the the population having seen all of the content, there is now only a small percentage of people who haven’t seen all the raiding content.

So if you’re suffering a bit from the blues, it’s completely understandable, but remember that at this time in TBC you had most likely seen far less actual content than you have now. I know I had. It appears that the urge to drive people through the story and the content in Wrath has put Blizzard in a situation where more people are going to be waiting impatiently for the next expansion.

It does make you wonder what Blizzard can do to combat this drought come Cataclysm. Firstly, they are already doing quite a lot in that regard in that they are renovating the entirety of Azeroths zones. Not only for levelling alts, but also for providing new sights and sounds for higher level characters. One of the things that have always made WoW stand out compared to other MMO’s is the fact that it rewards exploration, and it provides you with a multitude of “pointless” things to do. Which may well be the way to go for Blizzard in future, if they plan on making sure that the majority of people see the hardest content.

So let’s have more of the interesting and curious content, like the Hammer of Expertise or Thunderbrew’s Boot Flask. Reward the explorers, the crafters, the intrepid people who venture into the unknown areas of the map. We’ve had quest hubs and clearly marked instances for two expansions now, and it’s been a blast for the most part. But now it may be the time to decentralise a bit. Don’t remove the questing hubs, because hunting for essential quests is a pain for people who merely want to level up quickly, but provide that extra touch for people who like to walk the road less travelled.

Blizzard delivered the proverbial bombshell today, with the disclosure of the Cataclysm raiding system. It is, of course, only a preview of things to come, and Blizzard have said that it’ll probably need refining after launch, but nevertheless they delivered something that has instantly polarized the blogosphere. Some arepositive, others are inherently negative, and they all share the commonality that they make assumptions and guesstimate about things Blizzard haven’t yet figured out.

We are of course talking about the big news announcement that has 10-man and 25-man raids share a lockout and loot.

I must admit that I breathed a sigh of relief when I read it. Ever since the first mention of shared lockout was made, I have been hoping for it to actually happen even if I didn’t believe it actually would. Before launching into a discussion of the various pros and cons though, let me quote Zarhym:

Overall, our goal is that you make the decision between whether to raid with 10 players or 25 players based on what you find fun and not because of the reward structure.

Let’s be honest here. The current system of Blizzard having to tune vendor epic costs based on doing a heroic every day, doing a 10-man, a 25-man, plus a number of weekly raids (the weekly raid quest and two sizes of VoA), is forcing people into a massive grind. Saying that “people don’t need to do all that” is missing the point, since a person who doesn’t do all the things is inevitably going to fall behind. Hence people are going to feel compelled to do it, thus removing the choice that people are supposed to have. At this point in time WoW is a horrible grind for emblems, and I know quite a few people who are tired of it.

Tired. Not having fun. Feeling as if WoW is a second job.

Read that again: second job. WoW is a game, it’s supposed to be where you go to unwind from the drudgery of real life. Except that the current incarnation of WoW has turned into a monster full of grinding, all in the name of progression.

Let’s have a quick look at some of the comments made around the internet:

Why will anybody bother doing 25-mans when we all know 10-mans are easier?

These people assume that Blizzard will not be able to tune the difficulty so that 10 and 25-mans are equally difficult. Currently the 10’s are done in 25-man level gear, and as a result they seem easier. The complexity of having 3-4 levels of gear is precisely why Blizzard are making this change. Instead of this layer cake of difficulty levels and gear levels, which is an impossible thing to manage and balance to perfection, they are reverting the system to something that resembles the original premise for Wrath raiding. Two levels of difficulty, two levels of loot.

Now I can’t raid every night! I’ll have nothing to do.

Whilst it seems that many people seem to believe that the PUG raid scene will be killed off, I can’t quite understand it myself. I think the PUG scene, if anything, will flourish despite the shared lockouts. It will just be populated with alts instead. Is that a bad thing? If you live with the assumption that people suck at playing their alts, then perhaps it is. If however you don’t suffer from that particular delusion, then this is a thoroughly good thing. Currently my alts are setting pretty and neglected on the bench since I cannot find the time to raid with them (let alone gear them up).

Isn’t it sad that Blizzard has to regulate the time players can spend in the game?

If you choose to look at it that way, yes you can argue that it’s a sad state of affairs. However, the current situation where we have a supposed choice between raids is little better. There may be a choice, but the whole system is balanced around people doing everything, so its a choice between doing everything or falling behind the curve. The new system will limit you yes, but it will be easier to keep up for those who don’t have time for all that raiding.

This change will kill 25-mans since 10-mans are so much simpler to organise and recruit for.

I will not argue that it’s easier to pull together ten people than 25 people. And I think that a few 25-man guilds and communities will suffer from this particular change. Namely those for whom the only reason to raid 25-mans is the better gear.

In future, the choice between 10 or 25 will be a choice based on preferred format rather than loot. It’s just about the biggest change in raiding that we’ve ever witnessed in the history of WoW. The enjoyment factor has been put ahead of the loot race for once. It wont be about where you get the bestest epixxes the fastest, because there will be only one kind of epics. It will be all about where you want to go today. I for one applaud that.

If I can’t get better loot, then I wont do 25-mans.

Raiding is about rewards, that much is eminently clear. But is the loot really everything? Can you honestly say that the only thing that makes you enjoy a 25-man raid (more than a 10-man raid) is the fact that you can get a golden horsey rather than a silver horsey? Because that is essentially what this argument boils down to. “I have more friends, so I should get something for it.”

Saying that 25-mans are tuned harder is a moot point come Cataclysm since the difficulties will be tuned to be as near equal as can be. It will, as said, boil down to a choice between formats more than anything.

These announced changes to raiding in Cataclysm have, more than the class previews, caused a stir in the community. They are huge changes, both to the format of raiding and to the underlying philosophy. Raiding is supposed to be fun, more than anything. Blizzard seem to be attempting to arrest this increasing focus on emblems, and the grinding thereof. At the end of TBC, raiding was only for the elite few, something that they have managed to remedy with flying colours. At the end of Wrath, raiding is for everybody, but only if you can maintain a gruelling schedule of instances and raiding. In the end, the situation where the best and brightest devoted countless hours to raiding has been substituted by a situation where everybody is devoting countless hours to raiding.

Those who oppose these changes appear to be those who have thrived on this gruelling grind. Those who stand to lose the most are those in guilds or communites that are held together only by the desire for the best epics. For those who raid for the pure fun of it, because they like the process of raiding, and enjoy the company in a raid, there is everything to gain. For altoholics the future is looking bright as well. They will quite easily be able to maintain several alts without having 26 hours in the day.

You can say that Blizzard are once again dumbing down the content and making it even easier for everybody to get the coveted epics. I don’t agree with this sentiment, especially since we know nothing of how difficult the Cataclysm raids will turn out to be. Just because there is only one type of loot doesn’t mean it’ll be like raiding Hogger in T10.

Despite the catcalls that Blizzard have now finally ruined raiding entirely, I welcome the changes. It will turn 10-manning into the equal of the 25-man raids, something that it has not previously been. And despite the doomsayers predictions, I think there will be plenty of 25-man raids when Cataclysm comes rolling around.

I usually PUG the weekly raid quest, not so much because I like it, but because my guild usually runs them on wednesday evenings when I am usually unable to raid due to real life (or if you like: foreseeable weekly DC’s).

They generally fall into 3 categories:

1. The hopeless ones where people genuinely dont know the tactics, dont follow them, or are blatantly undergeared, most often all three in unison
2. The competent raids that go into the instance, do their thing, go out. Job done.
3. And the latest breed of PUG weekly raids, where people seem to develop this ambitious urge to try the achievements of yore. Like Sartharion 3D, or the XT hardmode (more on that particular hardmode later).

I’ll not lose many words on category 1. They are the rarest breed of the three, but they do happen now and again. Sometimes they succeed, but more often than not they are a foregone conclusion. It’s going to cost alot of pain and repair money, but at least you’re not likely to be saved needlessly because most of the weeklies hit the first boss.

Category 2 is where I like to be. Everybody knows why they are there, they know what to do, when to do it, and how to do it. No frills. It makes the whole thing about as interesting as the random heroic really, except for the slightly longer fights, so it’ll be over in about 20 minutes time. It beats the random heroic for emblems/minute usually.

The third category is becoming more and more prevalent, at least on my server. Nearly every week there is somebody who asks “can we do achievement X or Y plz?” Oftentimes its answered with “no”, but sometimes it isn’t. Like my latest forage into the Obsidian Sanctum, where the raid leader himself suggested doing Sartharion with 3 drakes up. It was put to a vote, and the vote was a thundering aye in favour of doing the zerg 3D thing.

The short of the long is that we failed, as I expected us to. I made roughly no money out of the weekly raid quest but of course I did get my emblems. In retrospect it could’ve gone a lot worse, so when all is said and done it was no big deal. Nevertheless it is a remarkable statistic that is slowly forming from my PUGging experience: No PUG I’ve been in has ever succeeded in doing hardmodes.

There is an inherent dichotomy in the weekly raid groups, between those who want the weekly quest and those who see it as a way to get achievements. I have to admit to being entrenched in the conservative camp here. I don’t do weekly raid quest PUG’s to get achievements out of it, it is strictly a method to get the emblems (those durned emblems). I realise that some people want the achievements, whether for their mains or alts, but if you want to do achievements why not advertise for them specifically instead of potentially alienating the people who would like nothing more than a relatively simple ride to the emblems?

Is it because achievement groups are otherwise impossible to find?

If so, then it’s tough luck really, because most people will be tired of the earlier instances, having done them a million times (or what feels like it) already, and will be lacking in either time or willingness to put in extra hours on top of the dailies, weeklies, and regular raiding. It may well be a product of Blizzard piling grind upon grind lately, but its still the truth. So an achiever is nearly forced into using the scraps that are handed over by the weekly raids.

All good and well you may think. Yes. Until you then get somebody asking “can we do hardmode plx”, who then continues to demonstrate that they don’t even know how or what to do to start the hardmode. That’s when people headdesk, facepalm, or even do the infamous “ffs”. These days, peoples patience with PUG’s can handle one or two wipes at best, then its game over for that particular group. The individual members may well be experienced, and it may have been a poor unfortunate mishap that caused the wipe, but a PUG raid is like a house of cards; it will fall over at the slightest provocation.

So are the weekly raids for hardmodes or not?

It’s impossible to answer definitively either way since it depends on so many things. However, if you are an achievement hunter, please do ask yourself these questions before you bring up the topic in your next weekly raid PUG:

1. Is it essential for me to get the achievement today?
2. Could I potentially go with friends/guildies/fellow raiders instead of a bunch of random people?
3. Do I know my current class well enough to be able to perform well in a progression ICC raid?

If any of these can be answered with a “no”, then you should give it another think before you ask the random raid whether it wants to do an achievement. You can of course throw caution to the wind and ask anyway (or make your own raid even), but since PUG raids are still confined to your server you run a very real risk of running up a reputation if you continuously run poor raids.

My Obsidian Sanctum run was handled in the completely right manner in my mind. There was a vote as to whether to attempt Sartharion 3D, a simple majority vote. Furthermore, the raid leader announced before the vote that there would be exactly two attempts at 3D, then we’d do the normal version. Which we, after two wipes, thundered through in less time than it takes to write “the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog”. It was a commendable display of raid leading; everybody might not agree to the course of action, but the plan of action is crystal clear and, most importantly, very very reasonable.

So the moral of the story is, if you are determined, despite the above, to hunt achievements whilst doing the weekly raid quest, be reasonable in your request and, most importantly, show people that you know what you are talking about. Limit yourself, limit the potential damage, limit the time spent. I’ll say it again: Be reasonable.

If you can do that, you just might find that people will go “oh alright then, let’s do it” when you ask for achievement X or Y.

The UI. Our window into the game. It is a highly personal thing, and it reflects our needs and choices in the game as much as our gear and gem choices, perhaps even more. Naturally enough, with this obsession comes an army of addons tailored to nearly every form of need and/or desire one could have. This is quite overwhelming for anybody who is new to either the game or just addons in general.

When building a new UI, it helps to have a structured approach, if nothing else than to avoid endlessly having to switch between a forest of parameters and tweak each one. It ends up being like threading a needle whilst riding a unicycle on a yacht in a storm. The foundations of every UI are made from the most basic of building blocks: the action bars and the various target and player frames (target, focus, group, raid, player, pet).

Bartender

My action bar addon of choice is Bartender (currently in its fourth incarnation). It does more or less what it says on the tin. It gives you up to 120 buttons in 10 bars, giving you the ability to customise spacing, size, number of rows in the bar, and a host of visibility options.

Alternatives:

• Dominos
• Macaroon

Grid

Healers love it, and so should everybody else. Truth be told, Grid is no longer the only “show everything in a box” raid frame addon on the market, but if it works don’t fix it.

Alternatives

Setup

The first question I ask myself is: which buttons do I absolutely need to be able to see and click? I used to think that it was vital that all abilities be visible at all times, so that I was covered for every eventuality. These days I prefer a much more trimmed down approach, where I might not have absolutely every ability visible, but the ones I do have are the ones I am very likely to need in combat.

Fury warriors don’t have a lot of abilities to start with, compared to some other classes, so the essential number of buttons is accordingly not too big. I divide them into three categories: combat abilities, utility abilities, and “the other stuff”. The latter is everything that isn’t one of the other two, i.e. not needed in the middle of a fight, such as mounts, flasks and pots, crafting, etc. I have placed these along the bottom edge of the screen where they stay invisible unless moused over.

The main bars, of which I have two, are set up like this:

A no nonsense setup really, although I have reduced the button size ever so slightly. This is mostly a remnant from the days when I had a smaller resolution on my screen. In those days, screen real estate was very valuable so it made sense to reduce the button size. If I were to reset them to the original size they could arguably be easier to hit when in a hurry, but whilst combat can get pressed for time it is normally not that panicky.

The utility abilities are those which don’t directly hurt mobs, such as macros, shouts, health stones, self healing, etc. I used to have them with the main action bars but in my urge to declutter I decided to banish these abilities to a bar of their own. Preferably I would have them placed as close to the screen as possible, but without being in the middle of my screen. The compromise I reached was to only have it show up in combat, and furthermore it is semi transparent. It doesnt impede my view, but its still easily findable and reachable when needed. The setup for it looks like this:

The setup for the two bottom bars (bottom left and right) which contain the non-combat abilities and nice-to-haves, has a fade out alpha of 0% instead of 10%, and no tick in the “Hide out of Combat” box.

So far the action bars. For player, target, and focus frames I used the Blizzard standards, pretty much in their original locations too. In 5-man groups I also use the standard Blizzard frames. Only for raids do I use Grid. Is it important for me to know who is debuffed? No. Who needs healing? No. What everybodies mana state is? Not really.

Why on earth am I using Grid?! Firstly, my alts use Grid, so it saves me from installing another addon in the first place. Secondly, as a raid leader it is actually useful to know who gets hit with what sometimes. However, since I don’t really need to look at it all the time I have placed it out of the way below the player frame like so:

It is only ever visible in a raid since I use the standard group frame in 5-mans. It is in a quite out of the way place, so it does not distract me from the combat itself, but if I need to I have the information available. Probably the most useful thing that Grid does is to show the Ready or Not Ready status of my guildies during readychecks in raids. I use Grid pretty much directly out of the box, so there is little reason to show all the settings (of which there are many). Simply install it and use it, simple as that.

Grid and Bartender 4 accomplish the following things:

• Display the action bars with the needed abilities visible
• Display group and raid information
• Lay down the foundation upon which I build the rest of the UI

Layout

Lets have a look at the overall layout of the bars:

The most important bars are located nearest to the centre of the screen, where the combat occurs, so the eyes have to travel less distance. The pet bar might as well be removed since I can’t remember having ever used it. Maybe I have, but then I’ve forgotten a long time ago. Better safe than sorry though so it’s still there. Note also that the vehicle bar (the “jump down”, “up”, and “down” buttons) is directly on top of bar 2. Since the normal bars disappear when inside a vehicle there will be no overlap at all, unless Blizzard suddenly make vehicles with enough abilities that they don’t fit on one bar, in which case there will be far more pressing problems I’d wager.

Bars 3 and 4 are the non-combat bars I spoke about earlier. Their size is 0.65 so that they fit in beneath the chat windows. For good measure, it should be said that Chatter (I’ll be getting to that one in a later part) is enabled in this picture.

That’s all for Bartender 4 and Grid. Next time I will cover the next building blocks in my UI: Chatter and Omen.

UPDATED: Fixed the alternative addon lists, remedying my rogue brainwave.

You hear quite a bit about strict raids these days, more specifically 10-man strict raids. Defined by GuildOx, it quite simply means to raid 10-mans with gear that you can obtain in 10-mans. The strict bit is that no 25-man gear whatsoever is allowed.

Essentially it’s what Blizzard probably intended 10-man raiding to be like all along. The pure undiluted McCoy, the single malt of raids, the real deal, etc etc.

There are quite a few guilds who proclaim themselves 10-man Strict guilds, but it will never become a mainstream act. It will remain a feinschmecker type of raiding, mostly since most people tend to want to pug 25-mans even if their guild doesn’t. And why not? Every bit of kit and every emblem will help in the progression, and since Blizz have balanced gear costs around doing all the farming every week, it is inevitable that most people will feel compelled to do all they can, and as a result they will probably end up with 25-man gear.

Odd as it seems, 10-man strict is for people who don’t have endless amounts of time to raid or prepare for raids. In fact, it would probably be quite good for chronic altoholics.

Now, I would wager that Blizzard are thinking heavily on the raiding issues for Cataclysm. They have mentioned several times that their initial idea was to have people do one or the other, not both, and the crab monster has mentioned that their choices aren’t ones they’d necessarily make again, so it is completely thinkable that there will be changes come Cataclysm.

The big question on my mind though is: Why isn’t there a 25-man Strict series of raiding? Why is it that 25-manners generally do 10-mans as well. I know there are exceptions, and that there are people who don’t touch 10-mans at all, but on the whole it seems that every 25-man raider has been in the 10-mans too.

The answer to that question is very nearly a carbon copy of the one I posed above; it makes life easier. I have raided with a 25-man raiding guild who uses the 10-mans to learn the fights.

Hold that thought. Learn. The. Fights. So much for separate progression paths Blizzard.

I’ve ranted about it before (I promise I wont rant this time, honest), and about how it essentially converts 10-mans into training grounds for 25-mans and not as a progression path in itself. Instead of that however, let’s try to imagine that there was a 25-man Strict series of raiding. Would it work at all? Would people actually take up the challenge? I find it somewhat remarkable that there are people taking pride in keeping their fingers entirely away from the “bigger” series, but the reverse is not true to any noteworthy extent.

It appears to me that there are somewhat conflicting interests going on. Blizzard want to have 2 equal series of raids going on, but they also want to give the players as much freedom as possible. Players want to be free to do whatever they please, when they please, and they want it to feel rewarding whatever it is. Which exactly is what drives people to do 10-Man Strict. They want the challenge, the unaltered challenge of a 10-man raid, something that actually takes a fair amount of dedication. It’s like trying not to find christmas presents hidden around the house when every corner sparkles and rustles.

It seems unfair that the people who do 10-man Strict are not rewarded for it, when 25-man raiders, who by the way can do 10-mans first for practice, can get legendaries and mounts. If Blizzard are determined to have 2 equal sizes of raids there needs to be something for the people who are determined not to have their 10-man experience soiled by filthy 25-man loot (so much for the not ranting).

So the warrior class preview for Cataclysm finally arrived. I was surprised how early in the day it was (my optimistic self had expected it around midnight CET).

The preview comes in three parts: new abilities, changed abilities/mechanics, new talents, and the mastery stuff. Four parts.

Part the first, new abilities

Let’s get it over with: We’re getting Heroic Leap (again). Thank you Blizz. Seems that warriors are the second-time-rounders for new abilities.

Inner Rage is an ability that kicks in at 100 Rage, and which causes abilities to cost 50% more Rage but also increases their damage 15%. Essentially it softens the blow when we can’t dump our Rage quite fast enough. Since Blizzard make a big deal of mentioning that this isn’t designed to make us wait for 100 Rage, it is very likely that it’ll be played with if it becomes too powerful. It is not a bad little ability, but it remains to be seen whether it’ll be of any use at all.

Gushing Wound is a stacking bleed debuff that increases in number of stacks when the target moves. It reeks of PVP, since very few PVE tanks are likely to kite their mobs just for the benefit of a warrior. But in a PVP environment I could see it having some use.

Part the second, changed abilities

Heroic Strike is changed from its current “on-next wrist destructomator” to a “push lots if you have too much Rage” ability. Since it increases in damage with more Rage (up to 30), this could become a very very interesting ability at 100 Rage. The cost would go up to 45, but it’d do 15% more damage. This could make Heroic Strike into the 100 Rage ability, and I think Blizzard will be monitoring that extremely closely. Does the notion of “Heroic Strike spam” ring any bells?

The various Shouts will start generating Rage, which is a good thing in my book, even if it does ring with undertones of us being ever so slightly Rage starved come Cataclysm. If nothing else it’ll provide a way of ensuring that the various shouts are always up. I mean, who wants to miss out on Rage? On the downside, this probably means that our shouts are not going to be increased in length. If you were dreaming of longer duration shouts, best go to sleep now and dream some more.

Whirlwind is changed thoroughly. Its damage component is reduced, but its number of targets becomes unlimited. Read that sentence again and mime the words: warrior AOE. What it does mean is that Whirlwind becomes a more situational attack, rather than a part of our basic rotation.

Part the third, talents

Furious Sundering is a utilitarian talent that provides Sunder Armor with a damage component. To those of us who find ourselves as the only warrior in a raid this is a small godsend since we’ll be able to use it whilst still keeping up doing DPS. Add to that the lowering of stack size from 5 to 3 on Sunder Armor and it suddenly becomes a lot easier to apply. However, Sunder Armor will lose some of its potency; it will at most remove 12% of the armour of the mob its applied to. The upshot is that it will be easier to deal with, but if it falls off it has less of an impact overall.

Booming Voice will increase the amount of Rage generated by the various shouts. Furthermore, Improved Pummel will now cause Pummel to generate 10/20 Rage. Further indication that Rage management will be a real issue come Cataclysm. It is worth asking how much use we will actually get of it, since shouts take at least 2 minutes and Improved Pummel is very dependent on the mob being a caster. In the case of Improved Pummel, this could turn out to be mainly a PVP talent where it could be very useful to keep up Rage when faced with casters.

Part the fourth, mastery

The first mastery bonus is a bonus to melee damage. It may not be very sexy or fantastically interesting, but it is a very decent first bonus. After all, melee damage is what we do. The second one is a boost to Haste. It’ll make us auto attack quicker, and it will increase our Rage generation. There isn’t much to say about it, other than more Rage=good.

The third mastery bonus is the most interesting one (as it should be). It’s also a hard one to predict. It boosts the effectiveness of all our enrage effects, be it damage, healing, and presumably Rage generation(?) Unlike the Protection and Arms mastery bonus we can control it rather than have to rely on the dread RNG for it to proc. It might slightly situational in the sense that every one of the abilities affected by it have cooldowns, but honestly, who does not clap their hands with glee at the prospect of Death Wish getting a boost?

I have, admittedly, saved the best for last. I have said it before, but it deserves to be said again:

One-handed Fury returns!

Titan’s Grip is all good and well, but ever since I hung up my two one-handers on the wall I have missed them, missed the fast and, pardon the pun, furious playstyle. I have enjoyed Titan’s Grip, make no mistake, but it’s still not quite the same.

That’s all folks

The general feeling I get from this preview is a positive one. The spectre of Rage starvation looms in the future, but even so it appears that Blizzard are determined to give us the tools to actually manage what Rage we do have. Things like Pummel and Sunder Armor are given secondary effects that either make them interesting to use in a combat rotation or make them less painful to use than they were in the old days.

In the subsequent Q&A, Blizzard hint at wanting to give us a new attack. With WW becoming an AOE type affair only we’d need something to fill out our rotation, but unfortunately it sounds as if the BT-HS-Slam combo is still going to be part of our mainstay abilities in combat come Cataclysm. I would’ve hoped for a bit more “interactivity” a la the current Arms. It might still come, and for certain there should be some old school feel to the new rotation, but 2 new attacks would be far more welcome than just the one. Of course, I might just be daydreaming now.

As a general note, at the end, it should be reiterated (like so many times before), that this is all subject to change. Nothing is certain, and nothing is fixed before the beta has gone on for a good long while. For now, like so many times before, patience is a virtue…whether we have it or not.

I rarely get very excited about announcements about game changes (oh alright then, I rarely get extremely excited), but this time I nearly jumped with excitement. My arms took a while to come down.

While we like how Titan’s Grip plays, we recognize some warriors liked the Fury tree because of the really fast swings that dual-wielding one-handed weapons could provide. Therefore, we’re planning to try out a talent called Single-Minded Fury that is parallel to Titan’s Grip and will provide a large boost to the damage of a pair of one-handed weapons.

A more comprehensive analysis of the warrior preview will come later. For now though, I just wanted to share one of the highlights with you all.

Bring on Cataclysm!

Today is the day, if Blizzards webpages are to be believed, that we’ll get the warrior class preview for Cataclysm. I don’t know about you, but I am pretty excited. As is clear from the announcements about Rage and the change to Heroic Strike, we are in for something that looks like a major redesign.

Or are we? The danger at this stage is to become all excited, only to be let down when it turns out that we’re not as far along in the design process as the shammies are. So I’ll get that out of the way now:

We might not get any hard information in the preview at all!

I know, I know, I’m looking at the most pessimistic situation, but if you don’t expect anything you’ll only get positively surprised, right? Right?

Anyway, I would expect that we (Furies, although the story is likely to be the same for Protection and Arms warriors) get told which Mastery bonuses we get, that Heroic Strike has been changed (in a shortened form), that we are going to have to manage Rage more in Cataclysm, and finally I think we may (possibly) get a new ability at lvl85. That’s about the best we can hope for.