Well folks it's that time again, for another blog that is! I have lots of things to talk about this time. Over the past week I have been fortunate enough to run around in the Cataclysm Alpha. The game as a whole looks and feels potentially promising. The graphics and art stylization are lush, there also may be a possibility of coding improvements. The alpha client does seem to run a hair bit better than my Wrath client, but that may be for an unforseen reason. The new water engine doesn't seem to be a FPS hog at all, which is very nice also because a lot of the new areas are dependent on water (or lava). Most of the Old world zones have their environment changes already, and also there are many new zones to explore. Due to being able to fly as well, I have also uncovered many cool spots which were once unreachable in the previous expansions. The old zones are definitely refreshing to see from an aerial view, as they were not able to be seen that way before. Some of the shots are simply breathtaking, and it's almost like playing a new game. Outlands and Northrend simply don't compare to what you can be amazed by when flying in Azeroth. Unfortunately due to the NDA that is binding me, I cannot show show any screenshots of many of the cool places I found. There has not been a lot of mechanics changes to Warriors in the latest patch compared to a few other classes, except for a few things. Improved Heroic Strike, Improved Cleave, and Improved Execute are all ported to damage by this ability increased by X% models. Heroic Strike and Cleave go up to +15% and Execute up to +20%. We may see again Execute being a strong finisher, since at the moment it is scaling faster than Heroic Strike unbuffed. Heroic Strike and Cleave do not seem to be using weapon damage anymore still, and Slam does. Also, Cruelty has been completely changed to grant critical strike chance on primarily Fury abilities: Bloodthirst, Slam, and Victory Rush by up to 10%. I don't know why they did that, as once you are able to get the talent at level 10 you only have Victory Rush, and that's only once everytime you score a kill on something. Also, Blood Craze has been ported to a chance on being hit instead of crit, which is going to be rediculously good for leveling or farming in conjunction with high armor and Glyph of Bloodthirst. Not to mention, that ability plus Death Wish, Enrage (up all the time when levelling), and self heals will be scaled by up to an additional 80% with 0 mastery rating and standard fury talents. If that's confusing, as an example, Enrage when up will give you +18% damage instead of +10%, and Death with will be +36% instead of +20%! That's kind of crazy when you can exploit them.

A second topic I wanted to briefly touch on was that I recorded a Heroic Lich King 25 kill as requested by a few fans. People seem to like watching my POV. This kill was our time-before our last one. We ended up missing our 2nd Holy Paladin and had to replace him with 2 healers, meaning running with 6 healers instead of 5, which made our DPS kind of sluggish. At the end of the fight, Arthas was running around enraged one-shotting everyone, and finally casted his last Harvest Soul. Only 2 players made it out of that Harvest Soul alive, and you will have to watch the videos to see what finally happened in the end! You can view these videos on my youtube page: http://www.youtube.com/user/LandsoulWoW This was one of the better 25 man raid Fraps's I've done, since my computer was able to record the whole thing at 15+ FPS and no stuttering. Unfortunately due to my maximum monitor resolution, I can't upload in 1080p, otherwise I would have.

The thinktank article on Elitist Jerks which I had been working on and off since December 2008 is finally finished. It has many many morsels of in depth and detailed information about Fury Warriors. You should read it if you are any skill level. Be warned though, as it can get unnecessarily technical at times. But hey, that's what theorycrafting is. Just to give a perspective of its vastness, I put it into Word and single spaced, it spans 75 pages with over 40,000 words. That my friends is pretty intense for a gaming article. It has charts, graphs, and formulas to supplement the material. Topics cover pretty much everything from talents to rotation comparison to UI modifications, and many more. Definately check it out! You can find it at: http://elitistjerks.com/f47/t37804-fury ... ompendium/

Since I get constant whispers, emails, and PMs on various forums about helping people improve their performance in raids, it's been difficult to answer everyone in the detail I would like. It's very difficult to give someone a straight one line answer to problems people may be having. This is why I started my Warrior DPS coaching service a few months back. Because of this, I have been able to help dozens of players so far improve their game by breaking down their gameplay and identifying specific areas of improvement. I have gotten nothing but positive feedback from my clients so far, and several players have signed up for multiple hourlong sessions. If you want to sign up for some help, all you have to do is email me and we can setup an appointment. The cost is only 20$ for one hour, which definately beats banging your head against your desk or sifting through forums for hours to find your answers. You can talk with me and get your results immediately as long as you are willing to improve. My email adress is technodragon@hotmail.com if you want to get a session going.


Sadly, the Starcraft 2 Beta will be going on a hiatus starting on the 31st for a few weeks. So, if you want to test out your superfast Mothership or mass Queen strats on yoru buddies or lowly Bnet goers, then get your gametime in soon before you won't be able to! I myself have not been playing too much Starcraft 2 lately as I have been doing finals, moving, putting hours into Lich King and Arena, playing the Cataclysm Alpha, and looking for a job. I do hope to get back into it. I was able to maintain rank 1 in my platinum 2v2 random division for a little while, which means I haven't been doing terrible. I kind of enjoy 2v2 random a little bit more than solo league because there's not as much pressure involved. If you make a aimple mistake you aren't as punished because your partner can back you up. Versus in top solo leagues, simple mistakes can easily cost you the game. If I am going to be playing Sc2 casually for any amount of time, I do enjoy not being pressured all the time, I just want to have fun.

Well, that's it for this time, and until next!

The Cataclysm patch will bring us new skills, talent changes, and new ideologies on rage management, gear scaling, and rotational decisions. Wow news guru Boubouille from MMO-Champion.com kindly and graciously sums up everything from the developer's posts on the official WoW forums. So far, we will get 3 new baseline abilities up to level 85. These are Inner Rage, Gushing Wound, Heroic Leap, and a new Heroic Strike. I say the new Heroic Strike is a new ability simply because it's a redone version of the old one.

Firstly, Inner Rage is the answer to potential damage loss through capping out on rage. Anytime you hit 100 rage, you will get a 15% damage increasing modifier (DIM for short) for a short time at the cost of all abilities costing 50% more rage. A lot of people have mixed feelings about this ability, but I don't. Here's why: If you are at 100 rage, the extra rage cost on abilities won't really matter. The buff will only last a few seconds, so the chance of becoming rage starved (rage dropping down from 100 to sub 30) will only be a function of how much you are spending over those few seconds. Let's think about this.Since heroic strike does not prevent you from gaining rage off your main hand anymore, the only real chance you can starve yourself is if your main hand will become dodged or miss. In raids, even as arms, our swing speeds are sub 3 seconds, or sub 2 globals. If we do two back to back abilities that cost 30 rage, say Mortal Strike and Execute as Arms for example, those costs will be 45+45 rage totalling 90 rage cost. In those three seconds, we are likely to get an autoattack, putting us back up from 10 rage to 20-50 rage, depending on if we crit or glance and what the new rage normalization formulas will be. The skill involved in this new change will most likely amount to keeping high buff uptime by using new rage gaining abilities, meticulous rage management, and rage income increasers like haste, hit for fury, and critical strike rating. The goal will probably be to get a solid amount of rage income to manage keeping the buff up, without waiting too long to recover the rage after the bottom-out. The reason I am leaning towards this is, a 15% DIM is a very large damage increase, and it may be worth sacrificing a perfect ability rotation by using lower cost abilities (think slamming at odd times) to keep the buff going. A good portion of our damage is automatic through our melee swings, traditionally 40-55%. So maybe the gains from a high buff uptime will overcome the DPS loss from some rotation delays. Rage income and management will become much much more important than it is now. I'm afraid though that this ability will be tweaked several times before the final version of the buff gets launched.

Next is Gushing Wound. I do have mixed feelings about this. A bleed that deals more damage if the target has moved will be very situational, but if the rage cost is low I think this will be an amazing ability. The ramped up damage will also have to be high enough to warrant using this ability in greater priority than abilities in a perfect instant rotation. Let's imagine you are at high rage like 80 or 90 and you want to use a low rage ability so that it may be possible to get the 100 rage buff and the target so happens to be moving or will move. Hit gushing wound, get melee swings, get 100 rage, get the buff, the target moves and takes a bunch of dot damage, and your next few abilities will hit very hard. I'm afraid tho if it is battle and defensive stance only (like rend) that this will be an arms or prot only notion.

Heroic Leap is back! If you played WotLK BETA, for a little bit we had this awesome leaping ability which used a selection circle, stunned, and did damage. The reason it was removed is because it had phasing issues (targets would disappear and take too long to reappear) and people were using it to pass impassable terrain. It's back though for Cataclysm, but instead of a selection circle it is target only. It does about the same thing though with it's AoE stun and damage. In addition, it will apply your thunderclap debuff to those targets. However there are a few crippling restrictions to Heroic Leap. It will be battle stance and out of combat only unless you have Warbringer to remove those restrictions, or battle stance only if you have Juggernaut to remove the combat restriction. It also has a longer cooldown, and a shared cooldown with charge. Sorry fury warriors, you won't get to use this ability effectively at all, due to being in combat and being in a different stance.

Lastly is the new Heroic Strike. This new version will be almost exactly like execute in terms of rage cost, will be an instant attack, and will scale with your weapon damage. It is still unclear though if it share the 1.5 second global cooldown, or will have it's own global cooldown (think the 1.0s stance GCD) on a different track. Depending on the scaling, this sounds like it may always do more damage than execute. Weapon damage scales with AP comparatively at a factor of about 0.26 whereas execute only 0.20. Overall though it is a good change from it's present incarnation and will allow rage gains on main hand attacks, making the rage management aspect of a warrior much more interesting.

A few other notes on new versions of old abilities are as follows: Whirlwind will now have no target cap, but will only do 50% damage. This will make it where whirlwind will do single target damage just behind a bloodsurge slam. Depending on how much heroic strike does, whirlwind may still be viable in a single target rotation as a filler for fury. This is a much needed change for fury warriors because of our poor 6+ target aoe damage and our poor ability to do good single target damage while avoiding hitting other mobs. An example of this would be on heroic Lich King, where you don't want to get aggro on the ghouls so that you will die from Infest because the ghouls would have eaten your Power Word: Shield. Removing weapon specs will also be a great convenience for us when obtaining new weapons with different types. Our shouts will be much improved and give us rage instead of taking it away. Shouts will have a short cooldown to prevent us from spamming them to get rage. Also, sunder armor is capped at 3 stacks instead of 5 to make our lives easier. Prot warrior tanks (at least Grafarion lol) don't like to put up sunders right away even if they get tricks to pad their starting threat. SO not only does the maximum stack go up faster, you will have to spend less globals getting there. Also if you wish you can pick up the new sunder talent which will attach some damage to each sunder done, so that it's not a completely wasted GCD in terms of DPS.

Along with our talent and ability changes comes our talent tree masteries. Both Arms and Fury will get increased Melee damage. Arms will get Armor Penetration and increased chance for bonus swing. Remember Armor Penetration Rating is going to be removed, so the low level exponential scaling of armor pen may or may not pan out too well. Fury will get melee haste and Enrage Intensity. Melee haste might not seem that great now compared to armor pen, but think of the new rage changes and how the Inner Rage buff will work. Melee haste may be a very powerful stat depending on how it helps you increase the viability of maximizing Inner Rage uptime. Enrage Intensity may also work the same way, giving you much more potent rage management abilities to help you keep that buff up, as well as a stronger death wish. How it scales though will make or break these masteries for fury.

Another change for Fury is the possibility of dual wielding one handers again. Instead of Titan's Grip, we will have the option of going Single-Minded Fury which is a talent that increases our melee damage with one handers. DW-ing one handers provides a much more fast-paced style and may have different implications for rage management and ability usage. Again, this will have to be meticulously balanced so that it is within viability distance to Titan's Grip. I prefer the notion of one handers, but if TG is any more than 5% better than SMF, I would probably stick with TG due to my desire to maximize my damage. This option will also give fury warrior many many more dilemmas in gear choice as well. Players may be inclined to follow the spec that matches the weapons dropped in the instance they are working on, whetther they drop first, if one set of weapons has better itemization, etc.

For PvP, Arms will get a CC in the form of a physical fear attached to their disarm, and also a talent that will add damage to charge based on distance traveled. Fury will get a talent that will give rage on a successful pummel. Also, MS will be scaled back to only a 20% buff. This opens up the chance that Fury will be as viable as Arms (Furious Attacks never stayed up) for PvP. Fury will probably be more oriented around burst and sustained damage than pressure and control that you get with Arms. I'm afraid though that Fury will still be more limited than Arms due to lack of mobility and much less survivability which are extremely important for warriors in Battlegrounds and Arena. I'm really looking forward to how rated battlegrounds will work, because arena gets stale very quick.

Overall, our changes are kind of underwhelming and stale compared to other classes, but they do solve a lot of previous problems as well as introduce new ones, so we'll have to see how they pan out in the beta. Look for me there if you get in and we can brainstorm about stuff.

Greetings readers and thanks for reading my first ever internet blog.

I'm trying to not spend as much time with WoW and my extensions to the game that I have been working on, including my YouTube page, spreadsheet development, Arms DPS simulation, mass arena games... I have shifted my ideology to quality over quantity. Unfortunately this will make me somewhat of a raidlogger and a 30 arena games per week kind of player. I had developed a mage and been working on him to become gladiator viable through RMP this season, just to have the ability to play other classes other than a warrior. It's not really as much to quell others' misconceptions that I am only a 'Warrior Class PvE Hero' but a very well-rounded gamer in general.

On that topic, I also have been developing my skills in SC2 to have the opportunity to play in professional leagues, and make a name for myself there. The theory is to be able to play up to a top skill level that can be maintained by not playing 10 hours a day like the Koreans do, but rather a few hours a day. This could probably be achieved through quality control of playing, and not game-spamming. This way I could still play WoW on the side at the top level as well. WoW will always be fun for me, and I have always maintained a kind of affection and attachment to Landsoul. I knew when I first made him and was confirmed after a year of playing him that I would be playing WoW for the long haul, until it's attractiveness has fizzled out. I'm pretty sure I can shift into a less hardcore mentality (hardcore meaning playing 8-10 hours a day) while still playing in a top progression guild, and only logging in to meet the requirements for play-style reinforcement and maintenance, progression/farm raids, and some arena. This will make enough room to re-focus on Sc2 and re-develop my RTS skill set, speed, and confidence. All this is also balanced with my studies at the University I attend. Yes, it's a time management nightmare but I somehow find time to manage it all without killing myself. So if you are a starcraft fan, be sure to look out for my name sometime in the Sc2 scene, if I am able to make it. Don't worry though, you won't see my name dissapear from the WoW scene anytime soon, as I will do my best to continue to contribute to the warrior community.

Back to WoW talk, 25 man HM Arthas is a real bitch. What is really odd to me is the huge gradient of difficulty between him and the rest of the instance. HM Putricide (the next most difficult fight) was a fairly hectic, difficult, and well-tuned fight during it's first appearance. HM Arthas feels as if it belongs as the end boss of a tier 11 instance. You fight him and do well, and all of a sudden one little thing is out of place or mistimed, and the whole attempt falls apart. I'm not even talking about a player mistake such as one person getting launched by a Shadow Trap, either. I'm talking about mistiming a tank cooldown by a few seconds, or not having enough ghouls alive to pass the plague perfectly to the shambler, or having a bad player combination of valkyr pickups. Being perfect over a 15 minute fight is not easy, and takes dozens of repetitions to even have a forgiving attempt. What perplexes me more is to design the boss so that you absolutely need a generous percentile buff to even have a stable string of attempts. Why not design the boss to be killable without a percentile buff? So the situation is in general, you play the instance perfectly and have 35 attempts remaining, and spend 34 attempts (leaving one up to kill on easy mode) practicing phase 1 and 2 knowing that he's not killable in normal circumstances. Yes he may be possible with a 10% buff, if 25 people perform perfectly across 15 straight minutes. But I don't even see this occur in professional sports, where players in teams are paid millions of dollars per annum to play a game that is arguably less complex than hard mode Arthas. WTF Blizz? You didn't even make him doable with a full raid in 277 gear did you? Nope gotta give you a gated buff to kill him lolol... Yogg 0 was much more interesting because he was complicated as well as known doable.

I'm really hoping Cataclysm will be more fun and more practical when it comes to progression raiding. ICC fun lasted about 3 repeat kills per boss, and afterwords became just annoying, especially wiping 34 times to an unkillable Arthas and then the raid week is done. I'm hoping talents will be more dynamic and make Landsoul very unique and more flexible. I'm hoping rolling through a DPS rotation is much less reliant on RNG procs to be able to use abilities. I'm hoping Arms DPS will be less clunky, inflexible, and unexiting. I'd offer some advice to class development, but it seems to me, not that it is actually true, that their (designers) interest in my insight can probably be summed up in naming a very poorly desired item with a bucket of an undesired stat that shares the same slot as a set item after myself: Landsoul's Horned Greathelm. I'm honored but... it's a piece of crap and it's like naming a shitty brand of socks after me when everyone is gonna wear Hanes or Puma anyway. Yeah! Maybe I should write them (Blizzard) to take my name off that piece of shit. At least the other community contributors got excellent items that are actually used in BiS sets. I want a well itemized offset item with my name on it. Just put my name on the plate belt and rename the shitty helm. The only only reason that helm would ever be good or better than the tier helm would be if the 4.0 patch gave reason to gem and gear for hit rating (think a well geared combat rogue who is dealing with crit cap in 3.3.3) with fury spec.

Well that's it for me this time. Until Next!