Hearthstone: Warrior vs Heroic Noth

Noth is a pain on heroic as Warrior especially since his passive hero ability summons a 5/5 minion when one of your minions die, and the fact that Warriors don't have any spells that can damage heroes aside from weapons and Noth has a pretty good counter to weapons with his Skeletal Smith card. Once I added Deathwing to this deck Noth was dead the first time I played it, and deathwing was the reason I won the game. What you need watch out for in the late game is Plague and Ice Block, because if you load up the board with your Grommash and Molten Giant and trigger Ice Block the next turn you may be S.O.L he has minions on board and you are low on health. Brawl and Deathwing are key, they are the board clear you need to avoid taking damage. Same thing as with my Maexxna deck the goal is to get a free Molten Giant with Charge. When I downed Noth I played Deathing on turn 10 to get rid of 2 5/5s after Noth casting Plague the second time on my Grommash and Molten Giant, my hand was empty and and what I drew was my charge which luckily ended up not hurting me. From there it was dancing with clearing minions with weapons if I could afford the health or Deathwing, also played Ragnaros and from there Noth was dead.

This deck takes a lot of luck of the draw but if you time your Brawl and Deathwings right you may be able to pull it off, good luck Warriors.

Unfortunately I don't have a video of my kill, however if you check out my Twitch stream you can see me get really excited because I have lethal only to be thwarted by Ice Block and die the next turn, which happened once today before I killed him.

Hearthstone: Warrior vs Heroic Maexxna

Above is the Warrior deck that I put together to defeat Heroic Maexxna, after a couple attempts of dying with my Control Warrior deck I went to the net and tried out a couple decks that still didn't have enough finishing power for me to kill her. So I made some adjustments and came up with the deck above. It builds on the same premise as other Warrior decks for heroic Maexxna by filling the enemies side of the board with 1 attack minions and using Earthen Ring Farseer, Voodoo Doctor, and Armor Up! and canceling out the damage from the minions.

Where it differs from most is by using Leeroy and Molten Giant/Charge combo, just in case you don't get your charge cards, which is actually how I was able to finish her off with a free Molten Giant and 2 Charges on it for 16 damage. Using this deck only took me 2 attempts and you need to have the dexterity to sometimes forgo the heal armor move for a turn to make sure you can do damage to her through weapons. You will be low using this deck I hovered around 8 health the attempt I killed her.

Good luck Warriors.

Potential Changes, Arms

The following was posted by Celestalon today on WoW forum thread about Fury Feedback, but in it he dropped a ton of information on "potential" Arms changes.

"So, we don't often share our thoughts on upcoming changes this early, as plans can change very rapidly. Please keep in mind that none of the following is set in stone – it hasn't even been developed yet – and there’s any number of issues that could cause us to decide to take a different approach. That said, we definitely agree that Arms feels a bit empty at the moment, and want to fill it out a bit more, and we want to add some talent choices to both Arms and Fury that provide options for more involved gameplay. Here’s what we're thinking:

Rage generation increased by 20% for Arms.

Rend returns for Arms. Costs 10 Rage, deals damage over 18sec, with a burst of bleed damage at the end. Total damage is similar to a Mortal Strike.

Thunder Clap is usable in any stance. AoE damage and snares, 6sec cooldown. 30 Rage cost for Arms, free for Protection.

We’re replace the level 45 talent row (Staggering Shout / Piercing Howl / Disrupting Shout) with:

Varies by spec:

Arms – Taste for Blood: Passive. Rend ticks grant 3 Rage.

Fury – Furious Strikes: Passive. Reduces the cost of Wild Strike by 10 Rage.

Protection – Heavy Repercussions: Passive. Shield Slam deals 50% additional damage while Shield Block or Shield Charge is active.

Sudden Death: Passive. Auto attacks have a chance to trigger Sudden Death, making your next Execute free and usable on targets above 20% health.

Varies by spec:

Arms – Slam: Active ability. Costs 10 Rage. Deals 100% weapon damage. Each consecutive use increases Slam’s damage by 50% and Rage cost by 100%, stacking up to 2 times. Benefits from Mastery.

Fury – Unquenchable Thirst: Passive. Bloodthirst has no cooldown.

Protection – Unyielding Strikes: Passive. Devastate reduces the Rage cost of Heroic Strike by 6, stacking up to 5 times. Lasts 10 sec. No longer refreshes while at 5 stacks.

Again, this is all very much in the formative stages. Any or all of the above could end up changing in any number of ways. But we are listening, and are doing our best to make Warrior gameplay awesome in Warlords.

EDIT: As mentioned, lots of iteration on these early plans. Changed the +25% Rage gen to +20%, so that 3.6speed weapon swings generate an even 30 rage. Changed Slam's max stack count to 2, since Slamming at any point higher than that is a trap.

EDIT 2: Clarified that Heavy Repercussions does count Shield Charge as well.

EDIT 3: Oh, forgot to mention, Slam benefits from Mastery."

So in the bold we have the Arms specific changes, which as I wrote about earlier show that we are in fact getting slam back. The  change to the level 45 talent row, which to me makes no sense what so ever, they should have replaced the level 75 talents with these new ones. I am not anti stance dancing we have been doing it for as long as I can remember, even to this day we can do it in Siege of Orgrimmar for added survive-ability against Garrosh, my issue with the current iteration of stance dancing is that it is going to completely neuter DPS out put. Now to the pros of this change we get an interesting choice between Taste for Blood, Sudden Death and Slam, early on Taste for Blood could be the best option, especially since white hits are so slow currently on beta which means rage generation is equally slow. However if Rage generation normalizes with the 20% increase mentioned, the real choice will be between Slam and what essentially is our T16 4 piece bonus, I have personally enjoyed the T16 bonus game play wise but Slam could also be good depending on the base rage cost which was not given.

Rend comes back which I have actually missed for awhile now and Thunder Clap is now usable in any stance which gives 2 more abilities to use in our rotation.

These potential changes were put before I code type up my initial impressions of the Beta Arms so here are some notes so far.

In T16 normal raid gear, mobs in the first 2 zones are butter, however rage gen is an issue. I am getting 2-3 white attacks in before I have rage for an ability and by that point the mob is almost dead anyway, which hey makes me feel super powerful, but is not very fun. My second issue was the lack of abilities, which Blizzard seems to be addressing. Other than that the beta is amazing I said I wouldn't quest, but that didn't last long and to tell you the truth I am enjoying every bit of the story, even if we are lacking the pre-event to explain a little bit of the stuff. And the item squish on level 90+ content isn't noticeable, but I have not tried out my favorite solo farm run Black Temple, when I find a moment I will run it and report on how it felt.

Nothing Beta...

So first wave of Beta invites went out last night and I happy to say I got in, I look forward to testing out Arms in Beta and hope I get to play around with the new Tauren model soon. I am not going to focusing too much on quests or story during my beta time, mainly just getting a feel for Arms and Gladiator.

Stay tuned for more info.

WoD Changes, Make Brian Hurt

Courtesy of MMO-Champion

Courtesy of data miners we have the following Warrior T17 set piece bonuses

 Warrior (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)

• Item - Warrior T17 Arms 2P Bonus Increases the damage of Mortal Strike by 10%. Slam critical strikes reduce the cooldown of Recklessness by 5 sec.
• Item - Warrior T17 Arms 4P Bonus Execute deals 10% more damage to targets affected by Colossus Smash. Colossus Smash has a 50% chance to grant you the Deadly Calm effect. Deadly Calm reduces the Rage cost and cooldown of your Mortal Strike by 50% for 10 sec.
• Item - Warrior T17 Fury 2P Bonus Increases the critical strike chance of Bloodthirst by 10%. Wild Strike critical strikes have a 50% chance to activate Enrage.
• Item - Warrior T17 Fury 4P Bonus Raging Blow now generates 10 Rage. When you activate Recklessness, you also gain the Rampage effect. Rampage increases your attack speed and critical strike chance by 0% every second Recklessness is active.

The old bonuses in red seemed pretty standard, the latest build in green makes them a little bit more unique. However there is one very confusing change to the Arms 2 piece bonus especially after the most recent patch notes, "Slam critical strikes reduce the cooldown of Recklessness by 5 sec," Slam in the latest patch notes was removed. Does this mean we are getting it back to make or Alpha rotation 3 buttons or are these "new" set bonuses that were data mined older ones on the live alpha client and Blizzard has newer ones that reflect the most recent patch notes better?

I cant wait to get my hand on the Alpha or Beta and give Arms a real run through, hell in even a 6.0 PTR would be nice.