Up In Arms

After patch 4.0.1 hit, like most everyone else that has a DPS warrior, I put my talents in Fury and then went W.T.F.?!?! when it sucked. It was so bad at that point that a couple of my friends stopped playing their warriors altogether. So I just said the hell with it, respecced arms, and mostly just played with my other toons.

Then buffs were put in. I don’t recall exactly what all the changes were … I’ll be honest, I didn’t really pay attention. I just went about my business, considering the warrior to be my enchanter and not much else, until Matt Rossi rocked my world with this article about how arms is surprisingly viable.

Since reading that, I adjusted my arms spec to match the second build he suggested, and went about running heroics til my eyes bled to get the T10 2 piece bonus. This bonus is absolutely worthless for fury, but super for arms, and I had already decided I was staying arms for good.

The true test came last night, when I stepped into ICC 10. I was wearing the 2 pieces of T10, the friendly Ashen Verdict rep ring, the badge cloak, and the crafted 264 boots. Everything else was iLevel 232 (including two pieces of T9 for the 5% damage boost)  excluding my pants and the other ring that were 245 and my neck that was 226. My trinkets were the Victor’s Call out of ToC10 and that Scorpion thingy out of FoS, and I was wielding a Tyrannical Beheader out of PoS. So basically, decently geared but nowhere near full ICC level gear.

Trash was … amazing. Charge in, rend, thunder clap, sweeping strikes, BLADESTORM!! I did something like 27k on that pack of vengeful fleshreapers at the bottom of the stairs leading up to the plague wing. I pretty much spent the evening gleefully charging from one trash pack to the next. That is one thing as fury that I missed very much. I <3 charge.

Bosses, it just depended on how much movement I had to do. Saurfang is usually a good litmus test for stand-still dps though. I did 8k on him. Mortal Strike and Overpower both hit like a truck. I haven’t stacked crit, yet overpower crit 88.5% in that fight, doing 11-16k a pop. MS hit just as hard, but ‘only’ crit 66% of the time … yeah.

Yes, one of the tanks was a warrior so sunders were always up. That does help. But still … this is arms! It was the not-good-for-raids spec for … well, it’s kinda always been that way, minus a couple of tiers here and there. Will it get nerfed in Cata again? Probably. But for now I’m going to enjoy it.

Ok Now This is Just Insane

Karius

Kerick

Sanbec is the only one of my five Alliance 80′s that doesn’t have one yet. Just the opposite of Brewfest, where my three Horde 80′s got mounts and none of my Alliance toons did.

It Exists!

Horsies!!

There is one thing in all of WoW that I have always wanted, more than anything else. Even more than my Kingslayer title. And I was always jealous of the one Elgar has and called it mine, pretending he was just borrowing it. The history of this goes back more than a year, to a time when Kalyon was Katia and Karius was getting run-throughs of Deadmines. Yeah …

SO naturally, the toon I want it most on is Ragle, since he’s Elgar’s twin and all. But I wasn’t really expecting anything, even after hearing that other guildies has gotten one on the first day. So when I  queued up on Monday for the first day of Hallow’s End, I was wishing for one but mostly just hoping to get a pet. I cannot even express how I felt when I opened that bag.

Of course the first thing I did was go flying around aimlessly. Ok, maybe that was second after taking a screenshot.

Then I went and did all of the Outland trick or treating, because I could fly everywhere. Later on, Cruel got one too, so he and I and Elgar went around doing Kalimdor and part of Eastern Kingdoms. That was pretty awesome having three of them riding together. Cruel wore his helm and did the Headless Horseman laugh every time it was off cooldown. lol. Good times!

Oh yes, and before I forget … shadowform looks as awesome on Rags as it did on Elgar way back when.

A part of me almost feels like the value of these beauties is lessened because of the high drop rate this year … but then the side of me that is ecstatic to actually be able to GET them overrides that sentiment and is thrilled to be able to have not one, but TWO so far. I just hope and pray that the drop rate is intentional and won’t be hotfixed. Here’s Kaly on his.

Oh, and it was mentioned in the comments from my last post that the 60% ground mounts now scale up to your riding skill, i.e. they go 100% now once you have trained it. So Elgar and Kerick got out their pintos for a ride down to Goldshire to partake in the festivites.

Ok, back to work. Maybe I’ll get another one tonight.