Monday, August 30, 2010

We press on.

I'm playing on Moon Guard, an RP server. Probably the most RP server ever. As evidenced by the fact that people walk around wearing stuff like this:

Those are a mix of greens and blues ranging from levels 30 to 66. And he struts around the courtyard near the Stormwind Cathedral because it looks awesome. That's why I'm here. People take the game less seriously. Any time you get bored of the grind, you can hang out in any number of RP hubs and just check out cool armor combinations and read people's FlagRSP profiles. It's refreshing to play in an environment where GearScore isn't mentioned more than once a day, if that.



But returning to our terrible berserker.. He isn't even a berserker anymore! That was short-lived. I was incredibly unsatisfied with my damage output as a Fury Warrior, and I understand now why most people level Arms. Dual Wielding imparts automatic increased miss chance. So without some decent Hit gear and an investment in the Precision talent, which isn't particularly appetizing compared to your other options, you end up whiffing quite a few hits. Combined with the lack of on-demand damage, it was just frustrating auto-attacking things to death. So I picked up a cheap Burning War Axe off the AH, thanks to my enhanced gold income from my Herbalism. I popped +3 Weapon Damage on it, which imbued a fancy blue glow, and went to work questing, trusting that my new Overpower emphasis would let me wreck things despite my low weapon skill.


And it did!


I tore up Raven Hill Catacombs, then made a trip to Stormwind to advance the Legend of Stalvan quest line.
But while there, I read a 35 Shadow Priest bragging about doing damage comparable to a Warrior or Rogue pre-40. This happens to be a pet peeve of mine, because Warriors don't get any of their primary skills before level 40. Both Mortal Strike and Bloodthirst are talented at level 40. You get Whirlwind at 36, which I suppose you could consider one of Fury's main abilities. Both Slam and Execute don't get much rotational use before speccing much deeper into the talent tree. So that leaves you with Heroic Strike/Cleave, and if you're Arms, Overpower through Taste for Blood procs. I proceeded to explain this to the Priest in a rude tone. And all of thise PvP talk reminded me that I still had The Battle for Arathi Basin! So I queue up and go back to questing in Duskwood until the queue pops... and effortlessly get Wrecking Ball when it does. I don't know if that suits the definition of Irony, but I really felt like apologizing to that Priest when I got out. :P


It was a pretty good battle in general. There were a few Warriors on the Horde side, and it was a lot of fun steamrolling them in my quest gear. Disarm in particular was an ability they didn't seem to know about. So I'd remove their shiny Heirloom Axe and proceed to go to town on them while they ran around in circles spamming Shouts and Thunder Clap. I never even had to pull my shield out.

Interestingly, the only enemy Warrior that gave me any problems was, like myself, completely without Heirlooms. I /bowed to him and continued to murder him and his team. Improved Overpower makes for some pretty beefy hits every 6 seconds.


So I didn't do as well as our Hunters, but who does, in the 20s? I'm pretty proud of myself for being a Warrior without Intercept, Pummel, Mortal Strike, or Bladestorm, and still doing well.

And I spawned back into Duskwood and immediately pulled a Skeletal Raider, which pushed me to level 30!



I was pretty pleased with how all of this turned out. I finished up my questing in that area and headed back to Stormwind to train and get a Glyph of Sweeping Strikes, which I spec'd for at 30. Finally, I have some real AoE! 
When you're using a beefy 2-Hander, your attacks auto-cleaving is beastly. Especially when used in conjunction with Retaliation and Cleave! You pull a group of mobs, pop Sweeping Strike and Retaliation, maybe Demoralizing Shout to mitigate some of the incoming damage, but don't Thunder Clap, as it will reduce their attack rate and waste Retaliation charges.
 You start queuing up Cleaves, and your Retaliations are all cleaving to additional targets, your autoattacks are cleaving, everything is cleaving! You're hitting all 5 targets with your big, slow 2-Hander like twice every second. They tend to go down pretty quick. It's just a shame that Retaliation has such a long CD. Luckily, Sweeping Strikes has a very short cooldown, so you can at least pop it and spam Cleave to get off 3 or 4 attacks every autoattack just about every pull.


Anyhow, while in Stormwind, I continued The Unsent Letter chain, which starts with the death of Edwin VanCleef in The Deadmines. And I got up to The Attack, which bugged on me. It took me about 5 minutes of waiting and screwing around to get the quest to progress properly, and in that time a Night Elf Rogue joined me, and we knocked it out really fast. 


I got myself a shiny new ring, then decided to call it a day. Not quite as productive as yesterday, but I was in the mood for some League of Legends, which I am horrible at, but still enjoy immensely. It's free, so I recommend trying it out.

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