I love fury. I raided in vanilla WoW with a two-handed fury DPS spec and also tanked, because everyone who played a warrior tanked back then. I tanked with a fury spec that worked very well for threat generation, but I eventually switched to an arms/prot spec for the Mortal Strike debuff.

When Titan’s Grip was announced for Wrath of the Lich King, everyone who knew me knew what my reaction would be. TG fury became my DPS spec of choice until I became a main tank for my Wrath guild, and it has stayed my favorite spec throughout the talent’s existence. Even now that I raid as arms DPS, fury is technically my main spec and arms my secondary. I even applauded when Single-Minded Fury was announced for Cata because I knew a lot of fury warriors missed the one-handed weapon playstyle.

At present, this is all moot. Both SMF fury and TG fury lag well behind arms as a DPS spec. Neither can match either the AoE potential of a Blood and Thunder build or sustain the rage for a single-target fight, with the exception of Ultraxion. Fury suffers for a variety of reasons, which we’ll go into as we discuss the spec. I don’t currently have BiS SMF weapons, so my SMF sims/testing and runs produced artificially low results. It is my belief that fury warriors who prefer SMF to TG would be better off considering a No’Kaled despite the agility, as the proc on the weapon is superior for DPS than Souldrinker. I’m sure a lot of shaman hate me now. (Remember, the Raid Finder version of No’Kaled is unavailable to you warriors.)

Cooldowns and survival

There are some positives to a fury DPS build in Dragon Soul.

Fury can be the more survivable option. With proper glyphing and talents, a fury warrior can increase his self-healing options, useful for fights like heroic Zon’ozz where there’s a lot of raid damage going around. Since there’s not a ton of AoE to be done in this fight and there’s incoming damage to increase your rage generation, fury also has higher DPS than normal in these situations. Making healing easier while putting out respectable numbers is a good option to have.
Fury is competitive on DPS check fights. The biggest DPS check in the instance is Ultraxion, and due to the high incoming raid damage, fury can usually ensure its proper rotation and put out competitive if not chart-topping DPS. The survivability from the above point should be kept in mind.
Fury has more cooldowns for burn phase fights. Being able to use Reck, Death Wish, and a combination of two-piece T12 and T13 lined up at the proper time can give fury a surprisingly high burst potential. Doing 55k to 60k DPS on Yor’sahj is fun as arms, true, but it’s mostly Bladestorm abuse. Fury can blow a globule up in a few swings with proper use of cooldowns, and that has value in tight situations.

I’m on the fence about some of the Diablo III system changes announced yesterday, but at least half of ‘em are pretty good changes, so I’m definitely continuing to look forward to playing my wizard (best class) when the game comes out some time this year.

Erik asked:

What do you feel the odds are that Blizzard will still add the older tier content to Raid Finder? Have them on Normal modes, after the nerfs it should be possible for 25 random people to handle these days. I ask because if there really is no more content patches left, that is a long time to go until Mists.

Couldn’t say. Blizzard devs have expressed a desire to hook up the Raid Finder to older raids, but with cross-realm raiding, you don’t really need the Raid Finder at all for really old raids. For stuff like Firelands or BoT or BWD, I’d imagine there are some issues with figuring out how many people you’d need for a “full” group — 25 is probably overkill with BoT and BWD when everyone’s in 378+ gear from 4.3. And would they need to have a Raid Finder difficulty mode as well? Would you just play them on normal mode? That would defeat the Raid Finder’s purpose as raiding with training wheels on. If it did have a Raid Finder mode, what item level gear would drop? 346 would make the raids even more pointless than they already are; leaving them at 359 would mean no difference from the loot that already drops in normal mode.

Lots of considerations; no easy answers. As much as I want people to see previous tiers of raiding, I’m just not sure it’s worth development time that could be spent giving us Pandaria, which will ship with all its raids hooked up to the Raid Finder.

Do I need to remind you again that right now is the perfect time for you to tinker with your user interface? WoW feels much more relaxed now. A second cataclysm has been averted, Deathwing has been defeated, and life is feeling pretty good right now. Sit back, relax, and clean up your interface. You’ll thank me when Mists of Pandaria comes out.

Grab bag Addon Spotlights are some of my favorite editions of the column because the regular format means a lot of words about just one addon. That’s great and all, but what about those addons that just don’t have many words worth saying about them? These little guys fall through the cracks and land in my grab bag collection sack, thrown into the back of a shady-looking truck and taken off for “processing.” It’s totally painless — no one complains too much.

LightMyMacro

LightMyMacro is an ingenious little addon from Adirelle that allows Blizzard’s action button glow effect to activate on action buttons that contain a macro. My Revenge macro on my warrior, for instance, will not light up with it’s traditional I’m available! glowing alert because it is buried in a macro. Now, with LightMyMacro, macros with abilities that will notify the player of activation with a lit border. Good times.

I used to think that the whole macros not lighting up thing was a bug and was going to be fixed. Has it been fixed? This problem could very well have been fixed a long time ago, and I’ve just been using an addon for over a year to fix a problem that didn’t need fixing. Interesting. Very interesting. If this is still an issue and macros are still not properly displaying the glowing action bar effects, then this is the addon for you.

Yes, yes, it’s an old addon, but it works. Like an old Zippo.

Download LightMyMacro at [Curse].

Who Taunted?

Our next addon is finding out who That Guy is. You know who I’m talking about — the tank with Taunt in his or her rotation. Yes, there are tanks who do this. Yes, they need to stop it. Don’t be rude about it; kindly let this taunter know that Taunt should be saved for actual tank swaps and not as a threat gain. Just because you can’t miss with it doesn’t mean it should be on cooldown permanently.

Who Taunted? simply lets you know in the chat window who taunted what mob with what ability. It is super-simple, works out of the box, and quickly identifies losers in raid groups who steal your aggro with taunts or announce to you that your off tank just screwed up. Wait and see if he says anything about it. Just go on and wait, then move on to the checklist below.

I like to think of the number wizards of the Elitist Jerks community as nerdy cowboys. They’re mathslingers of the wild west, their calculators slung low across their waists, never more than an instant away from being drawn and fired at any rogue damage algorithms that might want to start a ruckus.

EJ certainly isn’t the only useful WoW website out there, but it’s a good place to start. Its bank of collective knowledge is simply staggering, and because they are nerds, they perform their own swift and merciless oversight on each other, ensuring that the numbers presented are as correct as the internet is capable of providing.

Now, I am by no means suggesting to any of you that you should just copy/paste the first cookie-cutter spec out there. I’m just suggesting that perhaps you should use the constantly evolving wisdom of the mage community as a jumping-off point for your own experimentation. Research the specs that are considered accepted by the community at places like EJ, trust their judgment to get you started, then adjust and tweak to suit your needs.

The most currently accepted level 85 PVE cookie-cutter specs for each tree:

Fire 3/35/3

Arcane 33/5/3

Frost 2/8/31

And again, these are not the final say on how you should spec. But our topic today is improving your DPS, and these specs are examples of tried and tested builds that you can start with. Take a look at your own build, see where it differs from the norm, and perform a bit of self-analysis. Try both builds. Tweak either as you see fit. Which one provides you the most consistent damage and why? It’ll take some time and effort, but optimizing your spec to fit your own particular needs and playstyle but still provide you with the highest possible DPS is the first and most important step in making you the best mage you can possibly be.

All of which brings us to the next item on our agenda:

2. Hit the training dummies. And hit them as hard as you possibly can. They’re an important resource as you climb the damage output ladder, and it’d be silly to let them go to waste.

Before you begin any sort of training dummy regimen, you need to make sure you have a good damage meter up and running so that you have an accurate readout of the actual numbers you’re putting out. I recommend Recount. Download it and install it.

Now put your spec tweaks to the test. Focus on cleaning up your rotation, both your standing-still rotation and your movement one. Pay attention to the numbers you’re putting out, experiment with different rotations and talent builds, and try to figure out which of each puts out the best numbers for you most often.

Now, I understand that nobody wants to spend all of their leisure time practicing. You want to get in and blow stuff up that actually drops loot. Still, if you take at least some time in a static environment, maybe while you’re waiting for your raid to form up, you will notice an improvement and get a better handle on your ideal spec and spell rotation. It’s absolutely worth doing.

3. Optimize your gear. This is the part of our program where spreadsheets come into play. Programs like Rawr can be indispensable when it comes down to fine-tuning your gear loadout and the ways in which you can customize your stats via glyphs, gems, enchants and reforging. I’ll fully admit that I’m hopeless when it comes to determining which stat is most effective at which gear level when stat A is higher than stat B and stat C is at the semi-soft cap and the wind is blowing out of the southeast and I’m filing as head of household but have two dependents. That’s why I use a simulation program to do the heavy lifting for me.

Is the information a program like Rawr gives you always going to be 100% infallible? No. But as with every other useful resource at our disposal, it’s a damn fine place to start.

Plug in your current setup, and see where you might benefit from a gem swap or from a reforge. Regardless of playstyle, your enchant, gem and glyph choices can dramatically affect your damage potential, and you may need a bit of help in figuring out ways to raise your own DPS ceiling. And as before, make a return trip to training dummies and see what the actual implications for your DPS bottom line might be for any changes you make.

Simulations aside, a good rule of thumb with mage stats is to always focus on intellect, even at the expense of socket bonuses in most cases. Stack intellect, and use Rawr to help you with the trickier stats.

With Mists of Pandaria coming up on the horizon, many holy paladins are looking ahead to the changes that the expansion will bring. Most of the talent and ability info is still very malleable at this point, and as such, I haven’t begun to worry or get excited just yet. One thing that we do know is that in Mists, intellect will finish the transformation that it started in Cataclysm. Intellect is going to become a throughput-only stat, as it will stop increasing our maximum mana.

Today, intellect and longevity are nearly synonymous. Replenishment and Divine Plea are two of our largest mana sources, and they both scale off of our intellect. Most paladins are sporting intellect gems and trinkets, and intellect flasks and food fill up our bags. Holy paladins have been leaning on intellect for a long time due to its versatility, and it seemed like the decision to roll spell power into intellect would permanently ensure intellect’s role as our best stat. By decoupling intellect and mana, the developers are changing everything we know about gearing a healer.

Forced to choose

Today, holy paladins are able to have their Conjured Mana Cake and eat it too. Intellect gives us everything we could want out of a single stat. Blizzard’s developers are forcing us to choose between the two most important aspects of healing: throughput and regeneration.

While I loved being able to socket my gear mindlessly with Brilliant Inferno Rubies, I understand that creating tension between stats ultimately results in a more interesting gearing environment. Our secondary stats are almost to the point now where all three are balanced, and moving intellect and spirit to that same system makes sense. We need to learn how to handle the balance between intellect and spirit now.

Fixed mana pools for everyone

The key change in Mists is that intellect will no longer provide us with 15 mana per point, effectively fixing the size of our mana pools. While we’ll still have mana pools up in the six-digit range, they won’t see any increase from tier to tier. Every raiding holy paladin will end up with the same amount of maximum mana. We don’t know how Divine Plea, Replenishment, or Arcane Torrent will scale under this model, but my money is on spirit becoming a factor here. As a thought, I wouldn’t mind seeing Arcane Torrent grant us holy power points instead of mana in Mists.

Because every holy paladin starts with the same mana pool, the only differentiator in our longevity will be spirit. If one holy paladin has more spirit than another, then they have more longevity. It’s as simple as that. Rather than trying to figure out whether one paladin’s extra intellect makes up for the other’s spirit trinkets, spirit will simply be the first and last word. Need more longevity? Get spirit. It will be as simple as that.

I was tired. I’d traveled to the End of Time, participated in one of the biggest moments in the history of Azeroth, and helped the spiritual leader of the Horde kill the spiritual leader of the Alliance (who, admittedly, had tried to kill us first). I’d never felt much of a calling to the Dream, but a few hundred years of meditation sounded great right about now.

Peering over the scales of my drake (I’d have flown myself, but they insisted), I gestured to the large dragon in flight beside me.

“You know, you dragons are always causing trouble,” I shouted as the frigid wind of Northrend whipped by. “Can’t you just drop me off at the nearest forest and call it a day?”

Nethestrasz chuckled. Through some queer trick of the dragons’ magic, they were fully understandable, even in dragon form.

“If a forest existed that would be spared from Deathwing’s flames, I might join you,” he replied. Unfortunately, any further reply was drowned out by a sudden, loud cracking noise as the earth split asunder before us, revealing a gigantic earth elemental.

“Well, looks like it’s time to be troublesome,” I thought. Wordlessly, I nodded to Nethestrasz, and our army turned as one and dove for the surface.

This week and next, I’ll be covering everything you need to know to DPS your way through the new Dragon Soul raid encounter. I’ll provide a quick capsule strategy for those attempting the fight in the Raid Finder, then describe the changes to the fight for normal and heroic modes.

This is a picture of my roommates’ cat playing on my new bedding. Enjoy.

Exogenesis asked:

I’ve started a new project, which involves sort of writing a story about my character’s levelling process, from her eyes. I chose a draenei, due to a unique prospect, but I’m a little confused – in Ammen Vale, when you hand the blood elf plans to Vindicator Aldar, he says that the blood elves followed them there.

Followed them from where? Draenor? I thought blood elves didn’t go there until after the draenei left?

Kael’thas and his blood elf followers were in Outland after the Third War; they went there with Illidan and Vashj. They took over Tempest Keep, which was the main draenei “ship,” and began takeovers of Keep’s four satellite ships (the Arcatraz, the Botanica, the Mechanar, and the Exodar). The draenei escaped Outland by flying the Exodar through the Twisting Nether, but blood elf saboteurs caused the ship to crash on Azeroth.

razion asked:

In Stratholme, the cultists and acolytes will yell, when a set are killed within a ziggurat, that an “Ash’ari Crystal has fallen!” And to try to re-summon it later on. I am curious if these crystals are unique to Stratholme, or if they are used in all ziggurats? Are they perhaps only unique to Spirit Towers?

I have yet to hear mention of these crystals outside Stratholme. What are the origins behind the Ash’ari Crystals? They are summoned, but does this mean the crystals are somewhat sentient, like minions? Are there souls inside the crystals?

So, in a nutshell, what do we know about Ash’ari Crystals?

Nothing. They were intended as a locking mechanism of sorts for the Baron’s portion of Stratholme, and there’s no lore for them besides that.

As the great dragon crashed down, I turned and began padding toward the entrance to the shrine. The padding quickly became walking as I assumed my elven form, feeling the familiar weight of armor settle around my body. Brushing the sand out of my cloak, I turned to the figure who had silently watched us battle.

“Now that we’ve killed you,” I began, “You can help us?”

“Yes. The path to the Dragon Soul is open. It must be retrieved if we are to have any chance of stopping Deathwing and saving our world. I will now take you there.” He gestured, and a portal coalesced into existence.

I couldn’t help myself. “Um, I know you’re the Aspect of Time and everything, but wouldn’t it make a bit more sense to just go warn the other Aspects about Neltharion before he betrays them? This seems rather roundabout.”

He stared back at me, expressionlessly.

“Right. I’ll just … take the portal, and Shred something. Sounds good.”

The Well of Eternity

Well of Eternity is the second of the new 5-man instances released with Patch 4.3, and it is full of Burning Crusade lore. (In my subjective opinion, it’s the best of the three, which further proves that Blizzard needs to go ahead and release The Burning Crusade 2: They’re Really On Fire Now.) After a quick intro fight with a demon, you’ll meet Illidan, who will promptly enlist you, cloak you, and then lead you around as you kill demons and break things. After a short while, you’ll meet Peroth’arn.

The first phase is quite simple. You will enter with 30 stacks of Shadow Walk, which will turn into 30 seconds of Shadow Ambusher, which will grant you some crazy damage. Just dodge the obvious void zones and do your thing. Assuming the other DPSers in your group are reasonable, you’ll likely push him below 60% before the buff wears off, which triggers the “run away” part of the fight.

At this point, everyone gets re-stealthed and has to dodge some floating eyes for a while. With your feral movement abilities, this is pretty simple, but many groups just let themselves be found immediately to get it over with. Either way, he doesn’t do anything new, so just finish him off and proceed to Queen Azshara.

Of course, you don’t actually get to fight Azshara yourself (yay, lore), so this is a battle against her magi, who will spawn in twos. They fling quite a few spells around, but their damage output is mostly trivial for a good healer to handle. If your healer needs help, though, all the magi are stunnable with Maim, and most of the spells can be interrupted (but don’t; you want to save your interrupt).

More important, however, are Azshara’s spells. First will be Hand of the Queen — a ghostly hand that will mind-control one of the players in your group. It has very little health, so just kill it quickly (or rage at your group when you get MCed and everyone ignores it … seen that, too). Second will be Total Obedience, an AoE MC that thankfully has an 8-second cast time. You’ll get a very obvious warning message, so just run over, Skull Bash her, and get back to what you’re doing. Some groups will attempt to assign someone, but that usually ends in disaster, I find.

Noble knights in shining armor are a dime (a silver?) a dozen Alliance-side in World of Warcraft. Where you find one or more Alliance roleplayers, you’ll find a veritable solar flare of the Light. In most cases, however, the buck (or the Light, as it may) stops right here at the boundary between Azeroth and Earth. But in one longstanding Moon Guard (US) guild, the Light spills forth into all corners of members’ lives. The Bearers of Light’s noble guild foundation rests on charity, both in game and out. Moving beyond regular newbie zone assistance events, the guild recently embarked upon a real-world community challenge that’s racking up life-changing results.

Since its inception in the classic WoW era, this guild force for good seems to be filling an apparently unique niche among Azerothian guilds. Back in 2009, WoW Insider’s David Bowers (then author of our roleplaying column) wrote about discovering the guild with his own character: “The guild I eventually chose is called The Bearers of Light on the Moon Guard server, and I chose it because its members pledge to be kind to others. It was the first and only guild I’ve ever seen in World of Warcraft that is explicitly founded around the spirit of benevolence and charity. I felt that it was a perfect match for me personally — if you’ve seen movies like Pay It Forward or read about ideas such as random kindness and senseless acts of beauty, then you will have seen the kind of impact this theme can have on a group of people. Once kindness itself is a goal, it makes life so much more livable.”

Looking for inspiration to start your new year off on the right foot? Look no further than The Bearers of Light.

Not all classes have crowd control abilities of the type we’re talking about here. Warriors and death knights have a few stuns, fears and Hungering Cold, all of which can be put to excellent use but aren’t really crowd control in this sense as they can’t be cast prior to the pull.

So which classes have these pre-pull crowd control abilities, and what are they?

Well, here’s a helpful list! I’m too good to you. Remember that this is pre-pull, castable from a distance CC. It also needs to last long enough for the group to finish off a few of the other mobs before it breaks, and should have a cooldown-to-duration ratio that allows it to be kept up.

Mage Polymorph
Hunter Freezing Trap, Wyvern Sting (survival only)
Warlock Fear (must be glyphed), Banish (I’m not including Enslave Demon)
Priest Mind Control, Shackle Undead
Druid Entangling Roots, Hibernate
Paladin Repentance (retribution only)
Shaman Hex, Bind Elemental
Rogue Sap
These are what I’d call “proper” CC, but there are myriad other, shorter abilities, like the paladin Hammer of Justice, or the warrior Intimidating Shout (which should also be glyphed). Rogues also have a huge arsenal of these: Blind, Kidney Shot, Gouge and so on, but they can’t be cast before you pull due to the requirement for melee or near-melee range, or they are shorter stuns. These abilities are, of course, helpful. There are also snares, like Improved Hamstring, and huge amounts of slows like Chains of Ice.

Is there anything you should know about the listed CC abilities? There certainly is. The warlock ability Fear must, must, must be glyphed with Glyph of Fear for dungeon use. Why? Well, because if it isn’t, the feared target will run off into the distance, alerting every mob it passes of your presence. When it returns, you’ll have half the dungeon to contend with. If you know the pack you’re dealing with is all by itself and definitely won’t pull anything, then go mad, but don’t come crying to me when it pulls the boss!

The druid ability Entangling Roots holds its target in place but doesn’t prevent it from casting spells. The priest ability Mind Control means you have no priest for the duration of the ability; the priest gets some of its target’s abilities, so if your priest is a healer, have him use this on healer targets. If your shaman is a healer, they’re unlikely to be hit-capped, so there is a chance their Hex will break prematurely.

All these abilities will break if you hit their target with any damage, including AoE damage.