Well, looking at your Armory I see that your current spec is Arms, which means you can get away with standing there and hacking and slashing for the most part. I wouldn’t advise you trying to tank instances, because (a) tanking is stressful for new tanks under most circumstances since you’re the “leader” of the group as the tank (you set the pace, determine which mobs to go after first, etc.), and (b) your gear is not set up for tanking. If you did decide to try the Dungeon Finder, queue up as DPS and you’ll have a pretty good chance of being able to just follow the group, hack and slash the mobs, and collect loot. If you have a friend who’s a tank, you can queue up with him/her and get instances almost instantly.
Thank you, winterhawk11, for taking a look at us in the armory, that’s very nice of you.
So, if I understand you correctly, if I sign up as ONLY DPS, I basically just jump into the mob and use my arms specs, yes? Would that include the yells and just pretty much everything that’s a weapon on my action bar?
I want to be careful, because I’ve gotten a lot of WTF’s before, people wonder how I got to 70 if I don’t understand tanking, and I’d like to avoid more of that if I can, but at the same time, I’d enjoy being part of this if I could be.
Thanks
Q
If you’re doing DPS, you don’t want to use any talents that are supposed to divert the monster’s attention to you. No Taunt, no Sunder Armor, no Thunder Clap. Read the ability description and if it says “increases threat” or something similar, don’t use it. You job as DPS is to do damage to the mob, WITHOUT stealing the tank’s aggro. There are a couple of add-ons that let you see how the threat you’re generating with damage compares to the tank’s threat, called threat-meters. One called Omen is good. You just need to keep an eye on it and when your threat level starts to get over about 75% of the tank’s level, back off a little.
You also have to make sure you’re ONLY attacking the same mob that the tank is. Even if the tank has multiple mobs’ aggro on him, only the one he’s actually targeting is going to have high enough aggro on him that attacking it won’t draw it to you. And your second most important job is not to draw a mob off the tank. There’s a philosophy that a lot of healers hold that basically says that the healer’s job is to heal the tank, and the only duty they have to the DPS is to dispel debuffs. It’s a pretty solid philosophy, since at-level, if the tank dies, the group is probably going to wipe.
Well, realistically Quasi’s attack power isn’t that high yet, so the tank should be able to generate sufficient threat that there shouldn’t be a concern about aggro even if he’s hitting the wrong thing.
I asked a warrior friend of mine, and he said that for Arms, the abilities you should be using in dungeons are Mortal Strike, Rend, Cleave for groups, and Heroic Strike when you have lots of rage. Also, for bosses you can use Bladestorm. As **jayjay **said, just take anything that’s a taunt or other tank ability off your bar, because you won’t need them (and it could be dangerous to use them). You don’t want to be pulling aggro off the tank.
Hope this helps! I can’t give you any firsthand advice because my warrior is currently level 21, but the guy I asked is a fellow raider in our guild so he knows his stuff.
Ahem
Basic Arms warrior PvE dps priorities:
- Keep Rend up at all times(but don’t clip it).
- Overpower when available.
- If the target is below 20% hp use Execute, otherwise use Mortal Strike.
- Execute
- If you have enough(50+) rage use Slam.
Against groups you can use Cleave if you have lots of rage, but keep in mind that Slam will cancel the Cleave.
When you’re feeling suicidal you can use Bladestorm, damage output is insane, but so is the threat…
I actually left out things like Overpower on purpose, because it’s one of those things where you have to notice when it procs. My aim was to give **Quasi **a basic rotation that he could use without having to worry about watching for procs, so he can do dungeons and hold his own in groups. That was what I asked my friend about. Things like clipping Rend and watching for procs, IMO, should probably be saved for Dungeon 102 once he’s comfortable with the basic idea.
Quasi, please feel free to correct me if I’m making wrong assumptions.
Jesus! Isn’t there an action which just allows one to stand aside with a finger up one’s nose and masturbating with the other hand?:):)
Just kidding, but from what y’all are telling me, I’d better put all my taunts, yells, sunder, etc. away so I don’t accidentally use them, right, and pay attention to the Tank so I don’t compromise him/her?
Also, I don’t know what “procs” or “clips” means.
From what y’all are telling me, the one time I was a part of a dungeon thing, they must have been reeeeeaaal patient with me, because I was doing all of it, including eating, I think!
I’m gonna study all the above and make sure I have it down pat before queing up.
Thanks, y’all are the best!
Q
Exactly.
“Proc” is the WoW shorthand for when an ability that requires a condition becomes available. F’rinstance, there are a few abilities that only become available for use after the toon takes a critical hit from a mob. When you get critically hit, the button for that ability will light up to indicate it’s available. For some of these the floating combat text will show you when the ability’s ready (that is, “Overpower!” or whatever it is will show up in the middle of the monitor).
I believe “clip” involves using an ability before the last use is over, like Rend, which does Damage Over Time. Theoretically (because I have no idea offhand how long Rend is active), Rend will last 5 seconds. If you hit Rend again before that 5 seconds is up, you’re “clipping” off the end of the first Rend (because starting a new one ends the first) and therefore not getting the damage per rage point that you should be. It’s inefficient.
If Quasi has Floating Combat Text enabled <Overpower> and <Execute> will flash in the middle of the screen when they become available so watching for procs shouldn’t be that much of a problem, and by completely ignoring those abilities you cut the damage potential by 1/4.
I will agree that not clipping Rend is probably above Quasi’s level at this point and I probably shouldn’t have included it, but it’s no worse than getting Heroics Strike involved at this level.
You rolled the wrong class for that, only hunters can do that. (I’m joking, I’m joking, put the guns/bows/crossbows down.)
I see jayjay already answered that.
You can forget I said anything about clipping Rend, it’s not critical, I just didn’t want to leave it out for the sake of completeness.
It’s not that hard really, unless you’re striving for perfection, but right now we’re just trying to keep you from being totally clueless 
To make it even simpler:
- Keep Rend up.
- Use Overpower, Mortal Strike and Execute whenever they are available.
- If none of the three above are available use Slam.
That all sounds do-able!
Let me try it tonight, pay attention and report back in afterward!
Thanks again
Quasi
ding && ding 55 now. not long till DP time.
Yeah what’s that about? I’m levelling a toon in the Eastern Kingdoms for a change and thought people were hanging in Goldshire because of the Noble Garden holiday. But there are still packs of lvl 80s there when I go by. No, I don’t want to duel you. I’m lvl 17, duh! I even see like-minded hordies showing up to join in the “fun”. I don’t get it.
… I just wanna say “thank you” to all of you for helping me out in WoW.
I know. I’ve said it before, many times, and y’all say it’s not necessary and some of you consider me profusely effusive, but I can’t help it.
See, I don’t get out much and that gives me a lot of time to think and when I think of how kind y’all are, it makes me just wanna sit here and be thankful.
Guess I’m just a wooly ol’ Think-Thank.
All kidding aside, I’ve been all over the net to see what other WoW discussion groups there might be, but there just isn’t one that compares to the one contained in this thread in both friendliness and knowledge.
If I were a girl, I’d say y’all are “too sweet”, but since I’m a guy I’ll just say “Y’all’ Rawk, Dudes!” (The word “dudes” being an all-encompassing term meant for both sexes, of course and ahem).
Thanks
Q
So I sent Kalathan, my level 80 paladin thru my first ever instance as a tank. Figured I should start low-key, so I specifically queued up for non-heroic Utgarde Keep - the lowest specific non-heroic instance you can do :-). Got a nice group of 68-70 toons.
“I’ve never seen a level 80 in here” one said.
“I’m practicing my tanking” I responded.
“Cool”, said another “We should burn thru this one pretty quick”.
No one seemed to have a problem with that, so we ran thru the instance with little or no trouble. The priest even switched to shadow spec (except when we were fighting bosses) because I wasn’t really taking enough damage to need serious healing.
I didn’t have any trouble holding aggro - except (oddly enough) with the non-elite ‘hoppy ghoul’ mobs in a couple of the tunnels (where that mining is taking place). They didn’t seem to want to stand still long enough for me to gather aggro, and I had to taunt a few of them back into the main fight. Of course, according to the Recount add-on I was doing 50+ percent of the group’s damage (big surprise), so that undoubtably helped me hold the aggro
The only bad thing that happened was that one of the DPSers - a Taureen Death Knight - died at the end of the battle against Ingvar. He didn’t move away from the spinning blade, which kept spinning even after “Undead” Ingvar went down, and I couldn’t warn him away soon enough.
Still, it was a good learning experience for me – I don’t know that I’m ready (or geared) to try tanking any heroic instances – so I’ll keep working on regular instances.
Nicely done Runestar - that’s a good strategy until you get comfortable with tanking. Also, if you ever want to try a heroic with guildies (it’s less stressful) I’m sure we’d let you practice on us.
I got my first piece of ICC25 gear this weekend, the dagger that drops off Marrowgar. And with 95 Frost emblems I upgraded to the T10 pants. So that was fun! But I’ve run ICC about 10 times now, and still have not been in a group that’s had both the time and skill to get past Rotface or Festergut, unfortunately. It’s hard with a PUG, I guess.
My spriest is now officially “geared up” - he got the ilevel 232 boots to drop in Pit of Saron the other day, and bought the Valor cloak, earning the Epic achievement; at this point his only sorta upgrade left is replacing his Pit of Saron 232 chest with the T9 chest, which would replace a bunch of useless hit rating with haste and other stats. Other than that, the only avenues for upgrade left are frost badges, raid drops, and high-level crafted items. Or he can start to put together a healing off-set.
On a side note, Pit of Saron heroic has a ridiculous amount of clothie drops; Rumpole is now wearing a trinket, boots, belt, chest, and wielding a staff from that instance, plus a dagger for his eventual off-set, and I’ve seen a set of bracers drop there as well.
Looking forward to OS/EoE tonight.
How do you know what the best gear available for a given toon is? Is there a databse somewhere?
Wowhead probably has the best item database, which you can search by maximum level and a whole lot of other categories - for a Warrior you could search for plate items in a particular slot with your level as maximum level and, say, your level - 5 as minimum level.
Thanks. That will be handy when my focus is gear instead of levelling. Wonder if i will get to 80 b4 Cataclysm…
I burned out on [del]My Pretty Pony[/del] Celestial Mount fever when I checked my bank balance last week and came back to reality. Well, I give them enough real money anyway.
I got my characters down to their last 50 g, but I finally did it - with my engineer, I made a sweet Mechano-hog, complete with “PWN” license plate.
The required 12.5k gold that I had to raise to buy the non-farmable/creatable parts was the most gold I’d ever had at once, but I decided that one of my characters had to own a “hog.” (To those who aren’t aware, the parts for one of these are not cheap, and the minimum gold cost is 12.5k due to the items you have to buy off a NPC vendor.)
Then the question became - who do I give the bike to? I have 5 level 80 characters, but my real “mains” are my bear/boomkin druid, and my disc/shadow priest. I asked my husband, and he went with the druid. Taurens always have problems fitting through doors on their mounts, especially in goblin areas, Undercity, that kind of thing. The Mechano-hog is a low-riding vehicle, even with a tauren in it. So my druid will be firing up a sweet motorcycle + side car tonight!
It’s OK, my troll priestess got herself a new ride this weekend. She has the Crusader title, so this weekend I bought her the Argent Warhorse.