Thursday, December 4, 2008

Speed, Action Bars, and Outlook

I'll tie it all together, I swear.

First, Outlook is down at work, which basically means our office stops until it's back up. I'm honestly not certain how modern business functions in our technology-reliant society anymore. One system going down shouldn't completely stop work from being done at a major financial institution, especially an ancillary one like email. But, since we're all not working, I figured I post a concern and a question here.

First, the concern: Speed. Needz moar speed. I was noticing while mobbing around with our rogue the other day that I have the initiative of a pregnant Yak. The speediest weapon I've found so far I've got equipped (click on Tsuri's pic to the left to check out his Armory page for details) and it's a lightning-quick 2.70. Ugh. Even dual wielding it and the meat cleaver, I'm ridiculously slow. Now, granted, one round of Hammer, Revenge glyph, Free HS and HS will generally take a comparably-leveled opponent down almost halfway, but after that I've got to wait for cooldown and Rage rebuild while still being slower. My stupid good Stamina, shield bock, dodge, and defense ratings usually save me, but it's still frustrating to go something like this in battle: Spinspinspin! "Hah! You're at 60% HP now!" *waits 5 seconds* whap! *another 5 seconds, Ragebuider still hasn't cooled down* whap! *another 5 seconds* "thank God I can HS again" *wait 5 seconds* spin! "Ugh...die, already!"

And the question: I just ventured to the Island of wannabe warriors last night and got my berserker stance, giving me access to Interrupt and a few others. Since I'm going to be in Defensive stance 90% of the time, what should my action bar look like? Right now, I've got it setup something like this:

1. Attack (natch)
2. Heroic Strike
3. Don't remember..must not be all that useful
4. Shout of Rage (the convert health to rage action)
5. Sunder Armor
6. Thunderclap
7. Interrupt (can I even use this in defensive mode?)
8. Shield Bash
9. Hammer Blow
0. Revenge
-. Shield Block (sooo goooood)
=. Shield *muble mumble* (can't remember the name...the "12 sec ignore damage" cooldown)

Last Stand, Execute, and Demo Shout are on my bottom right action bar separate from the others. And don't ask me why having Revenge, Heroic, and Hammer in those slots makes any logical sense, it just does. Any suggestions for retooling? And other than the ragebuilder, does anyone else even use the shouts much? Is Disarm worth it?

2 comments:

Blackthought said...

Start out with charge as much as possible your weapon really isn’t bad at all and rage is something you just have to learn to cope with. Over time you’ll get how to keep things going and continually hit, AND as you get higher in levels you’ll find more tools at your disposal and better rage creation and retention. Kill critters as often as possible as they do give rage. Charge starts you out with rage so try to start as many fights using charge.

Lets see at your level I think my rotation was something like(mind you before nice glyphs that gave you free Shield slams and HS):

Charge: FREE RAGE
Rend: (I figure if I’m going to be standing and waiting for your swing timer then you might as well be taking some damage from them)
TClap: (if I have to be slow then so do they)
Shield Slam
HS
THEN HAMMER. NO sense in starting a fight off with hammer at this level because you’re front loading. Use it to stun when you’re waiting for your rage to build towards the middle/end of the fight
I’d pepper revenge in there pretty often as well.

Oddly enough once I got Berserker I switched to fury and stayed as such until level 60, where I dabbled in the tank arts for the first time, and then swapped around between fury and Arms for PVP.

For leveling I would say stick with fury or arms till you get your 51 point talent then try respecing to prot.

Kusamoto said...

Excellent. Thanks for the advice. I've retooled all my action bars with this in mind, and have demo shout and the "oh shiznit" buttons on my bottom right action bar to conserve bar space. Rend is cool. I had originally pitched it because it was doing so little damage, but it's hella useful now that I'm higher level and have dumped a couple of talent points into it.

I am still sticking with protection as my main talent tree, however, simply because I group a lot while leveling and want to make sure the squishy squishy mage isn't going to be gang-tackled when I'm not looking.