by Matthew Rossi

Right off the bat, of course, we know Mortal Strike, Bloodthirst, Dual Wield Specialization, Two-Handed Weapon Specialization, Precision and Vitality are all no longer talents at all. Furthermore, several talents are obviously not finalized yet, as they don’t have icons. Still, we have quite a lot to discuss here.

Arms

Arms talents have seen a good amount of shifting around. The top tier of arms, despite the loss of Deflection, still contains talents that will be of interest to protection after spending its 31 points: Field Dressing, a new two-point talent will increase self healing (Enraged Regeneration, Blood Craze, Second Wind, Bloodthirst) by 10/20% and all healing taken by 3/6%. Meanwhile, Improved Rend (additional 15/30% damage to Rend) will be attractive to prot warriors with the talent Blood and Thunder (which we’ll discuss later), and War Academy in the first tier will be attractive because it increases damage of Heroic Strike, Victory Rush and Slam by 5/10/15%.

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by Zach Yonzon

A new, exciting build of the Cataclysm beta has been released, implementing the promised overhaul to the talent trees. It’s still raw at this point, but we get a glimpse of the direction the developers want to take. The basic or starter abilities have been defined and although some of these may change, such as Divine Storm for retribution paladins (Ghostcrawler, lead systems designer, mentioned that it would probably go back into the talent tree), the changes feel solid and refreshing. One of the ideas the developers have is that “both the 31-point and the 10(-point) ability need to have more single-target use,” which means we should get very good one-on-one abilities early on as well as at higher levels. The trees are a long way off from being done, but that shouldn’t stop us from taking a look at them and picturing the possibilities.

One of the cooler, less noticeable things to come out of this build are the one-liner descriptions about each of the talent specs, allowing players to quickly grasp the concept of each spec. Blizzard seems committed to keeping this model, complete with talent tree lock-outs to prevent players from straying into other trees early on. As you might have suspected, the real culprit (or at least the most notable one) behind this change is PvP

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by Matthew Rossi

The first thing to talk about in Ruby Sanctum are the trash pulls. As a DPSer, you really just need to know what the kill order is and to stick to it, but I also suggest to be aware. Remember Ulduar on the way to General Vezax? Yeah, it’s like that. There most likely will be CC, and it’s a bad idea to Whirlwind/Bladestorm in the middle of it. So pay attention and use your abilities responsibly. As a tank, you should likewise watch your AoE threat moves and make sure only to break CC when you need to. Make sure to use Charge to get right back on the Charscale Invoker when it punts you, and in general, use your stuns and silences to keep the casters locked down as much as possible when tanking them. If you’re tanking the Charscale Commanders, pull them out; don’t let them use Rallying Shout. There’s no reason to let a five-or-so-mob trash pull get a 25% DPS increase.

Once you get done with the trash, it’s on to the mini-bosses.

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by Matthew Rossi

One of the great things about playing a warrior is, we don’t have to write a lot about how awesome we are or how we do things better than other classes because we’re cool with who we are. And when we’re not cool with who we are, we slam shields or axes into things until we are.

Things have changed since those days in BC when that post was written. For starters, the big three warrior cooldowns (Recklessness, Retaliation and Shield Wall) are no longer linked and now only take 3 minutes to becomes usable, making them much more active and promoting their use over making the cautious warrior hold onto them for emergencies. While you won’t have Recklessness in the 21 – 40 range, you will gain both Shield Wall and Retaliation in these levels, and you won’t be forced to pick between them.

Also, you’ll get a mount at level 20. Cherish it. When I first leveled a warrior I had to run everywhere until level 40, and at 40 you got the 60% speed mount. Now at level 40 you get an epic! You kids today are spoiled.

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by Matthew Rossi

This post will be aimed at helping a new protection warrior gear up as fast as possible when reaching 80, focusing on Emblem of Triumph gear and drops from heroic and normal 5-mans.

So, you want gear? Emblems, my son. Emblems.

For starters, you should have already been tanking stuff. Even if you didn’t really want to level as prot (some folks really like the prot leveling experience; others do not), if you intend to tank at level 80, you have no excuse; you should be tanking from at least 70 on. Not only will using the LFD tool once a day net you a shiny pair of Emblems of Triumph that you can spend as soon as you hit 80, but it’s the fastest, easiest way to learn what you’re intending to do once you’re at max level. Tanking, like any skill, benefits from actively practicing, and 5-mans are solid places to get that practice. Plus, gear drops in them, and for a leveling prot, making sure you’re uncrittable at 80 (535 defense for heroic five mans, 540 defense for raids) is crucial. Trust me, once you start queuing at 80, you are going to find your gear under a microscope by people who think they know everything there is to know about tanking because they rolled a DK and got him to 72.

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by Matt Maynard

Whether you are a first-time tank or a grizzled hardcore raid veteran, a death knight, druid, paladin or warrior, you will find some useful nuggets in these top 10 tank tips.

10. Pay attention to what abilities trigger the global cooldown (and pay more attention to those that do not). For example, warriors can generate threat on a large group by charging a mob in the back and using Thunder Clap on the mobs in the front as you pass through them. This is possible because Charge does not trigger the global cooldown. Likewise, abilities like Concussion Blow and Rune Strike can be macroed into other abilities.

9. Use a unit frames addon. An addon like Grid, which is generally regarded as specific to healing can be invaluable to a tank because of the sheer amount of information that can be concisely displayed. Grab a few additional Grid modules like GridStatusThreat and GridStatusRaidDebuffs and, at a glance, you can see your threat situation, major debuffs, etc. as well as having a handy mouseover frame for the next tip.

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by Matthew Rossi

While the intro is mock grumpy, the basic message is accurate enough. It’s a good time to hit 80 with your aspiring fury warrior. The hit and expertise soft caps have never been easier to hit and with the dungeon finder; you can rapidly acquire solid gear that will allow you to begin raiding almost immediately, if that’s what you want to do. You can also PvP … Fury lacks in arenas but can solidly perform in battlegrounds. And PvP is both another source for solid gear and a reasonably fun pastime for a fury, with the playstyle meshing well with battlegrounds and Wintergrasp’s chaotic melee tumult.

This post will be more definitely aimed at what to do when you reach 80 — in other words, where to get the best gear you can as quickly as you can.

Heroics, heroics, heroics: the emblems are OK

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by Tyler Caraway

Haste follows a pretty different system between spells and melee attacks. When it comes to casters, haste influences how fast a spell is cast as well as the GCD for all abilities, allowing for the standard 1.5-second GCD to be reduced to 1 second. Haste for melee attacks, however, only increases the swing timer of auto-attacks and does not reduce the GCD on physical abilities.

This has created a pretty big disparity between how melee value haste over casters, with casters generally favoring haste far more than melee classes. Blizzard has attempted to equalize this in some ways throughout Wrath of the Lich King by increasing the amount of haste that melee get per point of rating, yet that really hasn’t made much of a difference. Cataclysm will attempt to address this disparity once again by increasing the resource gain of melee classes through haste. Obviously the finer points of this mechanic are not known to the community at large yet, and it is unlikely that Blizzard has the system fine tuned at this point anyway, so this article will not address that fact. It is something to remember for the future, though.

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by Zach Yonzon

Warriors. The most “basic” class that, at least in Cataclysm, will be available to all races (the selection was unavailable to blood elves for some unknown reason). Fighters are a fantasy staple. Big, burly guy with a sword or an axe. Maybe a shield. Everyone else is optional, really. Some generic magic user, sure. Throw in a dude with a bow and arrow for good measure. But a fantasy setting without a warrior? That’s just wrong.

In PvP, warriors seem like a staple, too. They’re central (or at least a warrior-like ability called Mortal Strike is) to a good number of arena team compositions. You could say Mortal Strike defined the PvP environment such that Blizzard had to dispense Mortal Strike-like abilities to other classes just so they’d be considered viable alternatives to a warrior. The good news is that Mortal Strike is actually a talent, so not every warrior will be walking around smiting every foe with it. The bad news is that even the fury tree has something like it. Not only that, when you’re facing a warrior, you have quite a number of things to worry about aside from Mortal Strike or similar effects. After the break, let’s take a look at warriors and the most common abilities you should expect on the battlefield.

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