Food, Drinks, and Magic

For self served food you have 2 options Charbroiled Tiger Steak and Eternal Blossom Fish giving 250 and 275 strength respectively. There is also Black Pepper Ribs and Shrimp that give 300 strength and comes from Nicely Packed Lunch, but i have yet to figure out how you get this item.

As for group food we are given 2 options for each of the Pandarean cooking styles a Banquet and a Great Banquet, feeding 10 and 25 people respectively and each give 250 of a stat and may benefit some more than others (what ever that means). We are also able to use Pandaren Banquet and Great Pandaren Banquet which provide 275 stat to 10 or 25 people.

For flasks we have Flask of Winter's Bite which provides 1000 strength. As for potions we have Potion of Mogu Power for a nice 4000 strength boost over 25 seconds.

Item enhancements (non-enchants):

• Angerhide Leg Armor - 285 strength, 165 critical strike
• Tiger Fang Inscription - 120 strength, 80 critical strike
• Greater Tiger Fang Inscription  - 200 strength, 100 critical strike
• Brutal Leg Armor - 170 strength, 100critical strike
• Living Steel Belt Buckle - socket

Item Enchants

• Enchant Weapon - Dancing Steel - sometimes grants 1650 strength
• Enchant Bracer - Exceptional Strength - 170 strength
• Enchant Chest - Glorious Stats  - 180 strength
• Enchant Cloak - Superior Critical Strike - 180 critical strike
• Enchant Boots - Pandaren's Step - run speed, 140 mastery
• Enchant Gloves - Super Strength - 120 strength, 80critical strike

Today I will be going over the reputation rewards relevant to Arms, so that you all know what reps to focus on to gear up.

Rares - purchased with justice points, require honored (as of 10/1 they no longer require honored)
Epics - purchased with valor points, require revered

The August Celestials:

• Tankiss Warstompers
• Braided Black and White Bracer
• Leggings of Ponderous Advance

The Golden Lotus

• Stonetoe Spaulders
• Dawnblade's Chestguard
• Ring of the Golden Stair
• Serrated Forearm Guards
• Triumphant Conqueror's Chain

The Klaxxi

• Klaxxi Lash of the Rescinder
•  Chestplate of the Stone Lion

The Shado-Pan

• Voice Amplyifying Greathelm
• Cloak of the Dark Disciple
• Iron Belly Wok

As you can see the Golden Lotus is one of the better factions to try and shoot for once you hit 90, but remember that unlike previous expansions we no longer have a cap on dailies so you can focus on one faction or go for them all at the same time. But we lost the ability to run dungeons to gain reputation, so it will be dailies or nothing to gain your reputation. And you must gain reputation to spend your hard earned valor tokens.

Also don't forget to start your quests for the Black Prince so you can begin your rep grind for your Legendary. Most of the mobs you need to kill to earn rep are involved with the other factions dailies.

Parenting and WoW

Let me preface this by saying that there a many different opinions on what good parenting is and this is just my way of incorporating WoW and gaming in general in to my new life.

The above image is how I thought my gaming life would be after the birth of my Daughter last December. I couldn't have been more wrong. We are going on 8.5 months of gaming with baby, although I do admit sometimes it can be hard. After the break I will go in to the various stages of gaming with my daughter and offer up some things that make it easier.

More After The Jump!

Being a Good DPS in a Raid Setting is More than Just Big Numbers

Continuing the theme of my last post I will be discussing ways to increase your value to your raid group so that you will be more likely to keep a raid spot.

1) Don't Gloat, no one likes the guy that constantly brags about how he out DPS' everyone and tears into everyone for not being more like him. Also if you are gloating about high DPS numbers on fight where you should be doing more than just stabbing the boss, people will start to put you in your place very quickly and you may lose your raid spot for not understanding the basics of a fight.

More After The Jump!

Sun's Guide to Being a Better DPS Through not so Common, Common Sense

After taking month long breaks in between a week of play time for the 4 months I have come to find that a) people are just really bad at their classes or b) they just don't care about how they play.

I have joined some raid groups with people that out gear me which I admit currently would be some one if full heroic DS loot, but even in the past when I was not geared the way I am now I always found away to be competitive and push myself to the limit. After the break I will go into a few steps that can help improve your DPS with getting new gear or needing to have better gear then everyone else.

1) Dont stand in the fire, or the cookies tornadoes, walls of death or anything else that cause a insurmountable amount of damage really quickly. Also in this category and it applies to probably 90% of Dragons in the game don't stand in front of or behind the Dragon

More After The Jump!

The one about my break

I have been on an unintentional month long break and hadn't played till very recently. My house flooded and all the stuff that wasn't damaged got piled in my office and my computer was unreachable, which also meant no time spent in the beta as well. When i started to play again this week I found the urge to farm pets and mounts (non-warrior) stuff. So currently I have been farming Argent Crusade pets (I will farm for the mounts once done).

I also have been farming Heroic Magister's Terrance in hopes of getting my hatchling, white mount and orb. Funny story Tuesday night I was talking to a friend, who is currently farming KT (TK version) and Auttumen, about how much I hated KT because he never drops and of them. Well as soon as I killed him he was kind enough to drop the hatching for me.

I did raid the 2nd half of regular DS on Monday and won the trinket from spine finally. Now I just need Deathwing to drop my damn sword. Maybe this week? I do plan on completing my thoughts on the Warrior class in beta but I do not plan on actually doing any raiding or dungeon running so bear in mind that these opinions are based on questing and general thoughts on how they "would feel" in raiding.

MoP Warrior - Talents

A month ago I was playing on the beta servers (I know much has probably already changed), and I was playing my faithful Warrior. I found the quests to be fun even the ones where you were fighting over spawns. Something I forgot to mention in my first MoP Beta post is the fact that blizzard made possibly the best quality of life change (even better then moving pets and mounts from our bags) by allowing us to Mass Loot, no more digging through 20 corpses to get your loot just click one and done. I have my suspicions about Mass Loot however like might mass looting short you on items, as in does the system give you less items if you mass loot versus single looting?

My first step Specing and Glyphing below the break I will break down what I picked and why.

More After The Jump!

Hiatus

So I have been away from WoW now for about a month, with real life catching up to me and tha fact that all my friends are on a break as well. This by no means is the end for me, I plan on coming back for MoP and even my come back before too. I admittedly have been playing Diablo 3 and currently have my Barbarian to level 41 and on Nightmare Act 2. I know this isn't that far compared to most people, but I like to explore every nook and cranny on my way through a dungeon.

In the coming days I will post about my thoughts on the Barbarian and how it relates to or favorite WoW Warriros.

MoP Beta Pandaria and Monks (non-warrior)

So I have been in the beta now for a little over week and finally had time to sit down today and play it. As the title says this is non-warrior, I decided the one thing I needed to do in the beta was to play through the starting Pandarean zone so I could see it and at least try the monk class. Where do I start, upon creating my Pandarean I noticed te character creation screen had been changed no more aimlessly scrolling through skin tones and hair styles you get to see them all and select them from a grid view of them all. Once on the island the first thing I noticed was that the terrain and objects looked a lot smoother even the starting armor looked amazing. the quests were fun and not too boring or grind feeling. The first thing about the monk class that I noticed was that when I went to attack the target dummies for the second quest I was auto attacking, somewhere I missed the memo that they were adding auto attack to monks. I was very disappointed to see auto attacks because I was hoping to see Blizzard remove auto attacks from all classes to make the game even more immersive and to make afkers stand out even more on fights. For the first 10 levels I have felt at home playing the monk it felt familiar like a warrior yet different, with energy and combo points like a rogue one would expect a monk to play like a rogue. I dont Know if it was the quests, the environment or the new class but it was the most fun I've had leveling a character 1-10 since I leveled my first Tauren Warrior. Next week I will have an update on the Monk class and the final few level on Pandaria. I decided to go Brewmaster and will be going Horde once I get the chance to. Also next week I will post my impressions of MoP Beta Warrior as I sit down and toy with specs and debate whether I want to play the new content now or wait till release.

Warrior Pride

A well written article provided by WoW Insider on the Warrior, and what it means to play one here.

Mist of Pandaria Pre-beta Thoughts

I have been playing WoW now for 4 years now so I missed the hay day of Vanilla, I started at the release of The Burning Crusade and spent way to many days not studying playing. I do have to admit that since the release of Wrath of the Lich King I did start playing a whole lot less down to playing only 2-3 nights a week most weeks. Through Cataclysm I have wanted to play more but have not had the time due to real life changes for the best.

But I am really excited for Mists of Pandaria because it is new and unknown, where Cataclysm kinda let us down with only 2 truly new zones, Tol Barad, and 2 starter areas that were new, I was really looking forward to going to Undermine. Uldum was a let with 6 years of build up of wondering what was behind those doors. Hyjal a fun zone but it felt very familiar and Twilight Highlands was the same. With Wrath it was new in a WoW sense but in Warcraft it was not. So with Mists we should get that sense of excitement of going somewhere new like we did in Vanilla and TBC.

And this whole notion of Kung-Fu Panda will ruin the game, is bogus the Pandaren have been around since WarCraft3 and have been a race that me along with many long time Warcraft fans (not necessarily wow fans) have been eager to play. Pre-TBC they were even thought to be the Alliance playable race for the expansion.

I did signup for the WoW annual pass so I will be in the MoP beta however I don't play on PTRs much because I like being surprised with content that I will be playing through for 4-8 months, so I am still torn about actually participating in the beta.

My Arms Warrior UI

Raiding Addons:
- Deadly Boss Mods
- Deadly Boss Mods Spell Timers (great for monitoring your groups CDs)
- Parrot (floating combat text)
- Tidy Plates
- X-Perl Unit Frames

UI addons:
- ArkInventory
- Fortress (a broker display)
- Broker uClock
- MrCurrency
- Broker_DurabilityInfo
- Broker_Location
- Postal
- Razer Naga
- Prat 3.0
- SexyMap
- Sunn Viewport Art

Screen Shot comming soon

4.3 and the Glory of Arms

With the coming of 4.3 it has laid to rest the notion that it would kill Arms PvE DPS being competive with Fury, and in fact made Arms the viable PvE spec by a lot. People called me crazy for playing Arms in 4.1 and 4.2 but look at them now all running around with their single 2 handed weapons. The funny thing is that even with full 4.2 gear I am currently putting out more DPS than better geared warriors on my Server and in LFR (yes I know they are normally lazy in LFR). What it comes down to is how I DPS and the way my spec is set up. 1) I know the arms priority system very well for playing it over a year now, and most Fury warriors are still trying to faceroll as Arms, yes it will put out okay numbers, but no where near where it should be. 2) In DS the same as it was in FL the AoE Arms spec seems to be the better overall spec for the dungeon there are a few fights where the single target spec is better but for the over all raid go with the AoE spec especially if you need your 2nd spec for something else (like having to tank because your guild fell apart 2 weeks before 4.3 came out and still hasn't recovered).

Just remember the best DPS priority rotation will look something like this for single target Open w/ Rend - then begin - CS>MS>OP>Slam(Rage<60&MS still on CD)/HS(Rage>60)

and for Multiple Target: Open with Rend - then begin - CS>MS>TC>OP>MS>BS>MS>CS>SS> then settle into the above single target rotation until BS and SS are off cooldown.