02-23-2006, 11:04 PM
Spangles was specced full protect during her early raiding period. Then she specced 31 arms / 20 fury for several months, soloing for wintersaber faction. She killed thousands of furbolgs with this build in the course of becoming revered and enjoyed faster killing greatly. She especially liked mortal strike. She stancedanced a lot but stayed in zerker mode most of the time just because it was the most difficult stance to work in. This training was prescient.
I came to realize that I cannot gauge the efficacy of a build before killing several hundred similar mobs, since fights are governed by probabilities, and it is easy to perceive false patterns generated by small samples of random events. Winterfall furbolgs are ideal for long-term experiments because they are sturdy enough to put up a fight and are killed reliably when they add. They drop good money and good greens, the occasional blue and, so far, one epic.
Exhalted wintersaber faction requires 960 turn-ins of 10 furbolgs each. Effects of certain details accumulate. The crunching sound of a 2H sword quickly became unbearable, so Spangles specced for heavy axes. There is always competition for kills, so there is no time to eat. No consumption of potions or storebought food is economically viable over 10,000 kills. Furbolgs drop runecloth copiously since 1.9, so bandaging is the best heal. The plan is kill, kill, kill, kill, bandage at 20% hp, repeat ad infinitum.
The main problem with this mode of combat is that a kill takes too long, and the fight is unrealistic. Spangles swats the mob. The mob stands there, then swats back. Spangles stands there, and eventually swats again. A single fight, using an Arcanite Reaper, can take 20 to 30 seconds. Horde are ganking her kills. We have 500 turn-ins to go. This is untenable.
The potential for faster killing in zerker mode was readily apparent. So, Spangles completed the transition to the wild side with a "PvP" 17 arms / 34 fury build, from this guide:
http://www.warriorguideswow.com/content/view/13/28/
2/5 parry
3/3 improved rend
5/5 tactical mastery
2/2 improved overpower
3/3 deep wounds
2/2 impale
arms total: 17
5/5 cruelty
5/5 unbridled wrath
1/1 piercing howl
5/5 improved battle shout
5/5 enrage
2/2 improved execute
2/2 improved intercept
1/1 death wish
5/5 flurry
2/2 improved berserker rage
1/1 bloodthirst
fury total: 34
This configuration was chosen over the dual wield build because her offhand weapons are insufficiently powerful to make a 12.5% damage increase worthwhile. Her plan was to compare the efficacy of 2H weapon and dual wield attacks.
Spangles has accumulated gear to accomodate this build, and the stats are an important part of the story. She has full Valor that gives her 5000+ HP, 6500 AC and 100+ FR, but won't wear it except in MC or 5 man instances where she is performing always-protect.
Her farming gear is described here:
https://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.a...mp=1#post692679
The stats for armor, weapons, enchants and jewelry are blended to increase +agility, +crit, +hit, +attack power and +parry. Balance is usually the key, but this assembly is experimental, and deliberately skewed away from +stamina and +defense to see what we can get away with.
Note that all her gear is crafted, or dropped randomly, or found in mid level instances. Battleground rewards and high-tier drops are not available to her.
armor:
Lionheart Helm (crafted by Elsington)
565 armor
+18 strength
equip: improves your chance to get a critical strike by 2%.
equip: improves your chance to hit by 2%.
enchant: +8 agility
comment: hide this ugly graphic
Razorsteel Shoulders (Sunken Temple)
410 armor
+10 strength
+10 agility
+9 stamina
equip: improves your chance to hit by 1%.
enchant: +5 nature resist
comment: absolutely awesome stats for a lvl 50 quest
Deathdealer Breastplate (BRD)
338 armor
+8 strength
+8 stamina
equip: improves your chance to get a critical strike by 2%.
enchant: +100 health
comment: tres chic shows lots of skin
Stoneskin Gargoyle Cape (Stratholme)
43 armor
+7 strength
+8 agility
+14 stamina
enchant: +70 armor
comment: very pretty graphic, but hide it to unclutter field of vision
Vambraces of the Sadist (Stratholme)
270 armor
+7 stamina
+6 spirit
equip: improves your chance to get a critical strike by 1%.
enchant: +9 stamina
Stronghold Gauntlets (crafted by Elsington)
441 armor
+12 stamina
equip: immune to disarm.
equip: increases your chance to parry an attack by 1%.
equip: improves your chance to get a critical strike by 1%.
enchant: +9 strength
comment: pretty blue & gold graphic
Omokk's Girth Restrainer (LBRS)
353 armor
+15 strength
+9 stamina
equip: Improves your chance to get a critical strike by 1%.
Eldritch Legplates (DM tribute)
566 armor
+15 strength
+9 agility
+20 stamina
equip: Improves your chance to get a critical strike by 1%.
enchant: +125 armor
comment: nice S&M/dominatrix graphic
Valor Boots (Scholomance)
424 armor
+8 strength
+4 agility
+20 stamina
+3 spirit
enchant: +7 stamina
comment: the better part of valor
neck:
Evil Eye Pendant (DM west)
+15 agility
equip: increased defense +7.
rings:
Painweaver Band (UBRS)
+7 stamina
equip: improves your chance to get a critical strike by 1%.
equip: +16 attack power.
Magni's Will (BRD)
+6 strength
+7 stamina
equip: improves your chance to get a critical strike by 1%.
Nagelring (BRD)
+10 Arcane Resistance
equip: when struck in combat inflicts 3 arcane damage to the attacker.
equip: improves your chance to hit by 1%.
Tarnished Elven Ring (DM)
+15 agility
equip: improves your chance to hit by 1%.
ring shopping list:
Blackstone Ring
+6 Stamina
equip: +20 attack power.
equip: improves your chance to hit by 1%.
trinkets:
Counterattack Lodestone (DM tribute)
equip: increases your chance to parry an attack by 1%.
equip: +22 attack power.
Defender of the Timbermaw (faction reward, analysis by Miniraa)
Summons a Timbermaw ancestor, a ghostly sprite of a furbolg that has roughly 900 to 1000 HP. It lasts for 20 seconds or until your death, whichever happens first. It will heal you only if you drop below 50% hp, and only if it hasn't been attacked. The healing wave is a 2.5 second cast that heals for approximately 500-560. If your timbermaw ancestor is attacked, he will go into meleeghtning bolt spam mode. His lightning bolt does about 225 to 300 damage and has a 2.5 second cast. His melee attacks do between 40 to 50 damage. The cooldown on the trinket is 10 minutes, and has the typical 30 second cooldown on equip.
trinket shopping list:
Hand of Justice (BRD)
equip: 2% chance on hit to gain 1 extra attack.
equip: +20 attack power.
Force of Will (BRD)
Equip: When struck in combat has a 1% chance of reducing all melee damage done by 25 for 10 sec.
equip: increased defense +7.
ranged weapon:
Blackcrow (LBRS)
crossbow
77 - 117 damage speed 3.20 31.1 dps
+ 1 - 4 shadow damage
equip: improves your chance to hit by 1%.
scope: +7 damage
1H weapons:
Krol Blade (world drop)
main hand/sword
80 - 149 damage speed 2.80 40.9 dps
+7 strength
+5 stamina
equip: improves your chance to get a critical strike by 1%.
enchant: +15 agility
Tooth of Eranikus (Sunken Temple)
main hand/axe
62 - 116 damage speed 2.40 37.1 dps
+6 strength
equip: improves your chance to hit by 1%.
enchant: +15 agility
Hanzo Sword (world drop)
offhand/sword
38 - 71 damage speed 1.50 36.3 dps
chance on hit: wounds the target for 75 damage.
enchant: +15 agility
Boneslicing Hatchet (Stratholme)
offhand/axe
48 - 90 damage speed 1.70 40.6 dps
+13 Agility
+5 Stamina
enchant: +15 agility
Argent Avenger (Stratholme)
offhand/sword
71 - 108 damage speed 2.20 40.7 dps
chance on hit: increases attack power against undead by 200 for 10 sec.
enchant: fiery weapon, fun!
2H weapons:
Dreadforge Retaliator (BRD)
2H axe
149 - 225 damage speed 3.70 50.5 dps
equip: increases your chance to parry an attack by 1%.
equip: improves your chance to get a critical strike by 1%.
equip: +30 attack power.
enchant: +9 damage
Arcanite Reaper (crafted by Fafner)
2H axe
153 - 256 damage speed 3.80 53.8 dps
+13 Stamina
equip: +62 attack power.
enchant: +9 damage
Bonecrusher (DM west)
2H mace
129 - 194 damage speed 3.00 53.8 dps
+30 strength
equip: improves your chance to get a critical strike by 1%.
enchant: Crusader
Peacemaker (Stratholme)
polearm
137 - 206 damage speed 3.40 50.4 dps
equip: improves your chance to get a critical strike by 1%.
equip: +56 attack power.
enchant: +9 damage
Monstrous Glaive (DM tribute)
polearm
123 - 185 damage speed 2.90 53.1 dps
+23 stamina
equip: increases your chance to parry an attack by 1%.
equip: increased defense +7.
Spangles fields 212 strength, 182 agility, 241 stamina, 4019 HP, 3899 AC, 27% crit, 9% parry and 622/863 attack power (battle shout is always up) when she farms with the Krol blade and the Bone Slicing Hatchet. Chance to hit is +5% from gear, don't know where to find the total. She uses WeaponSwap and Stancesets to change weapon configurations on the fly.
The dual wield encounter in zerker stance is entirely different from that using the big 2H slugger: a kung fu movie that is over very quickly, one way or the other. Hit berserker rage, bloodrage, intercept, battle shout. Hamstring, multiple sunder, discouraging shout, spam bloodthirst and piercing howl, execute. Heroic strike, cleave, whirlwind when dealing with adds. There is time for only one pummel on shamans, so that attack is reserved to prevent rejuvenation.
Hamstring has no purpose on a stationary mob except for rage generation. It is the attack requiring least rage, so it lights up after an intercept. This attack seems to prevent deadband during the stun period, providing rage to start sundering. Sunders light up bloodthirst, which triggers a cascade of blows leading to execute.
This works on the furbolg, who are unarmed, stationary, and attack singly or in pairs. With other mobs there is not always time to get rage before intercepting, so, charge from battle stance, hit mocking blow since it always is available and may help to hold aggro, switch into protect to disarm if necessary, switch into zerker, issue battle shout, discouraging shout, deathwish, spam piercing howl.
Heroic strike, cleave and whirlwind all produce deadband in the fight, so they are used only on adds.
Differences among offhand weapons are profound. My criterion for success is smooth and and accelerating rage generation. The hatchet is much better for this than any other weapon on the list.
The difference between dual wield and big 2H encounters is readily apparent. A good dual wield attack is continuous, with no downtime, resembling the sunder/revenge sequence in protection mode. Rage generation is continuous in dual wield, presumably because alternating mainhand/offhand hits provoke continuous attacks from the mob.
The CTMod DPS readout typically shows 150 to 250 dps during the dual wield attack. 2H attacks often show more DPS, but the action is not smooth, with timeouts due to rage loss between damage bursts. The most important advantage of the dual wield attack is that bloodthirst and other high rage attacks are available almost continuously. Besides that, I enjoy it more.
The improved execute talent allows executing at single second intervals. Terminal crits and reflexive (passively induced) multiple attacks are common at this stage. I assume that the magnitude of the crit is determined by a probability curve that is invariant with the frequency of critting. The percieved effect of rapid critting is more high-damage crits, however, which is fun.
Crits of 100 to 600 are routine, 700 to 1200 are common. Single-stroke executes are common. Crits above 2000 are rare. High crits seem to max out at 2885, the highest I have seen.
Fights with single 58+ non-elites usually end with 15% - 30% of total HP lost. Fights begun with a minimum of 25% total HP are reliably survivable, however.
The effect of even one add can be devastating. There is insufficient stamina in this configuration to sustain continuous damage from an untargeted mob. If the fight goes well and the targeted mob goes down quickly, there is HP remaining to take out the add relibably. If not, the add must be feared to allow time for bandaging between killing and attacking the add. The most common cause of dying is forgetting to bandage.
Kill time is halved, to 8 to 18 seconds. This is the effect I was looking for. This build is the most fun since full protection. I may drop the dual wield attack if Spangles ever gets an epic 2H. Meanwhile, the novelty of dual wield fury is making it (more) fun to farm. She probably won't get around to testing her 2H weapons extensively.
The loss of protection talents is not detrimental in 5 player instances. Spangles will suit up in Valor and a shield, and knows how to use the protect hotbar. Taunt and mocking blow get the attention of most mobs, although the 10 second cooldown on taunt is annoying.
A good priest can accomodate her switching into zerker for extended fights, which is great fun. After 15 months of WoW, players in blues are much tougher than their equivalents a year ago, and the mobs are pretty much the same, so the balance is not so precarious as it was.
It is apparent that in raids she should be MA, or assisting the MA, rather than MT. There is no point trying to out-protect the warrior built for that purpose. Skillful arms/fury warriors can compete on the damage meters with rogues and casters, so life has compensations.
I see no reason at present to spec more conservatively. Instances beyond MC are designed to promote more varied tactics than the operatic MT/primadonna scheme. There is need for high dps from a platewearer.
PvP is the next frontier. We will put this off as long as possible. Spangles doesn't have the moves or the insight to fight player classes effectively. With the new patch and the expansion there should be plenty of content for her to explore, however.
I came to realize that I cannot gauge the efficacy of a build before killing several hundred similar mobs, since fights are governed by probabilities, and it is easy to perceive false patterns generated by small samples of random events. Winterfall furbolgs are ideal for long-term experiments because they are sturdy enough to put up a fight and are killed reliably when they add. They drop good money and good greens, the occasional blue and, so far, one epic.
Exhalted wintersaber faction requires 960 turn-ins of 10 furbolgs each. Effects of certain details accumulate. The crunching sound of a 2H sword quickly became unbearable, so Spangles specced for heavy axes. There is always competition for kills, so there is no time to eat. No consumption of potions or storebought food is economically viable over 10,000 kills. Furbolgs drop runecloth copiously since 1.9, so bandaging is the best heal. The plan is kill, kill, kill, kill, bandage at 20% hp, repeat ad infinitum.
The main problem with this mode of combat is that a kill takes too long, and the fight is unrealistic. Spangles swats the mob. The mob stands there, then swats back. Spangles stands there, and eventually swats again. A single fight, using an Arcanite Reaper, can take 20 to 30 seconds. Horde are ganking her kills. We have 500 turn-ins to go. This is untenable.
The potential for faster killing in zerker mode was readily apparent. So, Spangles completed the transition to the wild side with a "PvP" 17 arms / 34 fury build, from this guide:
http://www.warriorguideswow.com/content/view/13/28/
2/5 parry
3/3 improved rend
5/5 tactical mastery
2/2 improved overpower
3/3 deep wounds
2/2 impale
arms total: 17
5/5 cruelty
5/5 unbridled wrath
1/1 piercing howl
5/5 improved battle shout
5/5 enrage
2/2 improved execute
2/2 improved intercept
1/1 death wish
5/5 flurry
2/2 improved berserker rage
1/1 bloodthirst
fury total: 34
This configuration was chosen over the dual wield build because her offhand weapons are insufficiently powerful to make a 12.5% damage increase worthwhile. Her plan was to compare the efficacy of 2H weapon and dual wield attacks.
Spangles has accumulated gear to accomodate this build, and the stats are an important part of the story. She has full Valor that gives her 5000+ HP, 6500 AC and 100+ FR, but won't wear it except in MC or 5 man instances where she is performing always-protect.
Her farming gear is described here:
https://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.a...mp=1#post692679
The stats for armor, weapons, enchants and jewelry are blended to increase +agility, +crit, +hit, +attack power and +parry. Balance is usually the key, but this assembly is experimental, and deliberately skewed away from +stamina and +defense to see what we can get away with.
Note that all her gear is crafted, or dropped randomly, or found in mid level instances. Battleground rewards and high-tier drops are not available to her.
armor:
Lionheart Helm (crafted by Elsington)
565 armor
+18 strength
equip: improves your chance to get a critical strike by 2%.
equip: improves your chance to hit by 2%.
enchant: +8 agility
comment: hide this ugly graphic
Razorsteel Shoulders (Sunken Temple)
410 armor
+10 strength
+10 agility
+9 stamina
equip: improves your chance to hit by 1%.
enchant: +5 nature resist
comment: absolutely awesome stats for a lvl 50 quest
Deathdealer Breastplate (BRD)
338 armor
+8 strength
+8 stamina
equip: improves your chance to get a critical strike by 2%.
enchant: +100 health
comment: tres chic shows lots of skin
Stoneskin Gargoyle Cape (Stratholme)
43 armor
+7 strength
+8 agility
+14 stamina
enchant: +70 armor
comment: very pretty graphic, but hide it to unclutter field of vision
Vambraces of the Sadist (Stratholme)
270 armor
+7 stamina
+6 spirit
equip: improves your chance to get a critical strike by 1%.
enchant: +9 stamina
Stronghold Gauntlets (crafted by Elsington)
441 armor
+12 stamina
equip: immune to disarm.
equip: increases your chance to parry an attack by 1%.
equip: improves your chance to get a critical strike by 1%.
enchant: +9 strength
comment: pretty blue & gold graphic
Omokk's Girth Restrainer (LBRS)
353 armor
+15 strength
+9 stamina
equip: Improves your chance to get a critical strike by 1%.
Eldritch Legplates (DM tribute)
566 armor
+15 strength
+9 agility
+20 stamina
equip: Improves your chance to get a critical strike by 1%.
enchant: +125 armor
comment: nice S&M/dominatrix graphic
Valor Boots (Scholomance)
424 armor
+8 strength
+4 agility
+20 stamina
+3 spirit
enchant: +7 stamina
comment: the better part of valor
neck:
Evil Eye Pendant (DM west)
+15 agility
equip: increased defense +7.
rings:
Painweaver Band (UBRS)
+7 stamina
equip: improves your chance to get a critical strike by 1%.
equip: +16 attack power.
Magni's Will (BRD)
+6 strength
+7 stamina
equip: improves your chance to get a critical strike by 1%.
Nagelring (BRD)
+10 Arcane Resistance
equip: when struck in combat inflicts 3 arcane damage to the attacker.
equip: improves your chance to hit by 1%.
Tarnished Elven Ring (DM)
+15 agility
equip: improves your chance to hit by 1%.
ring shopping list:
Blackstone Ring
+6 Stamina
equip: +20 attack power.
equip: improves your chance to hit by 1%.
trinkets:
Counterattack Lodestone (DM tribute)
equip: increases your chance to parry an attack by 1%.
equip: +22 attack power.
Defender of the Timbermaw (faction reward, analysis by Miniraa)
Summons a Timbermaw ancestor, a ghostly sprite of a furbolg that has roughly 900 to 1000 HP. It lasts for 20 seconds or until your death, whichever happens first. It will heal you only if you drop below 50% hp, and only if it hasn't been attacked. The healing wave is a 2.5 second cast that heals for approximately 500-560. If your timbermaw ancestor is attacked, he will go into meleeghtning bolt spam mode. His lightning bolt does about 225 to 300 damage and has a 2.5 second cast. His melee attacks do between 40 to 50 damage. The cooldown on the trinket is 10 minutes, and has the typical 30 second cooldown on equip.
trinket shopping list:
Hand of Justice (BRD)
equip: 2% chance on hit to gain 1 extra attack.
equip: +20 attack power.
Force of Will (BRD)
Equip: When struck in combat has a 1% chance of reducing all melee damage done by 25 for 10 sec.
equip: increased defense +7.
ranged weapon:
Blackcrow (LBRS)
crossbow
77 - 117 damage speed 3.20 31.1 dps
+ 1 - 4 shadow damage
equip: improves your chance to hit by 1%.
scope: +7 damage
1H weapons:
Krol Blade (world drop)
main hand/sword
80 - 149 damage speed 2.80 40.9 dps
+7 strength
+5 stamina
equip: improves your chance to get a critical strike by 1%.
enchant: +15 agility
Tooth of Eranikus (Sunken Temple)
main hand/axe
62 - 116 damage speed 2.40 37.1 dps
+6 strength
equip: improves your chance to hit by 1%.
enchant: +15 agility
Hanzo Sword (world drop)
offhand/sword
38 - 71 damage speed 1.50 36.3 dps
chance on hit: wounds the target for 75 damage.
enchant: +15 agility
Boneslicing Hatchet (Stratholme)
offhand/axe
48 - 90 damage speed 1.70 40.6 dps
+13 Agility
+5 Stamina
enchant: +15 agility
Argent Avenger (Stratholme)
offhand/sword
71 - 108 damage speed 2.20 40.7 dps
chance on hit: increases attack power against undead by 200 for 10 sec.
enchant: fiery weapon, fun!
2H weapons:
Dreadforge Retaliator (BRD)
2H axe
149 - 225 damage speed 3.70 50.5 dps
equip: increases your chance to parry an attack by 1%.
equip: improves your chance to get a critical strike by 1%.
equip: +30 attack power.
enchant: +9 damage
Arcanite Reaper (crafted by Fafner)
2H axe
153 - 256 damage speed 3.80 53.8 dps
+13 Stamina
equip: +62 attack power.
enchant: +9 damage
Bonecrusher (DM west)
2H mace
129 - 194 damage speed 3.00 53.8 dps
+30 strength
equip: improves your chance to get a critical strike by 1%.
enchant: Crusader
Peacemaker (Stratholme)
polearm
137 - 206 damage speed 3.40 50.4 dps
equip: improves your chance to get a critical strike by 1%.
equip: +56 attack power.
enchant: +9 damage
Monstrous Glaive (DM tribute)
polearm
123 - 185 damage speed 2.90 53.1 dps
+23 stamina
equip: increases your chance to parry an attack by 1%.
equip: increased defense +7.
Spangles fields 212 strength, 182 agility, 241 stamina, 4019 HP, 3899 AC, 27% crit, 9% parry and 622/863 attack power (battle shout is always up) when she farms with the Krol blade and the Bone Slicing Hatchet. Chance to hit is +5% from gear, don't know where to find the total. She uses WeaponSwap and Stancesets to change weapon configurations on the fly.
The dual wield encounter in zerker stance is entirely different from that using the big 2H slugger: a kung fu movie that is over very quickly, one way or the other. Hit berserker rage, bloodrage, intercept, battle shout. Hamstring, multiple sunder, discouraging shout, spam bloodthirst and piercing howl, execute. Heroic strike, cleave, whirlwind when dealing with adds. There is time for only one pummel on shamans, so that attack is reserved to prevent rejuvenation.
Hamstring has no purpose on a stationary mob except for rage generation. It is the attack requiring least rage, so it lights up after an intercept. This attack seems to prevent deadband during the stun period, providing rage to start sundering. Sunders light up bloodthirst, which triggers a cascade of blows leading to execute.
This works on the furbolg, who are unarmed, stationary, and attack singly or in pairs. With other mobs there is not always time to get rage before intercepting, so, charge from battle stance, hit mocking blow since it always is available and may help to hold aggro, switch into protect to disarm if necessary, switch into zerker, issue battle shout, discouraging shout, deathwish, spam piercing howl.
Heroic strike, cleave and whirlwind all produce deadband in the fight, so they are used only on adds.
Differences among offhand weapons are profound. My criterion for success is smooth and and accelerating rage generation. The hatchet is much better for this than any other weapon on the list.
The difference between dual wield and big 2H encounters is readily apparent. A good dual wield attack is continuous, with no downtime, resembling the sunder/revenge sequence in protection mode. Rage generation is continuous in dual wield, presumably because alternating mainhand/offhand hits provoke continuous attacks from the mob.
The CTMod DPS readout typically shows 150 to 250 dps during the dual wield attack. 2H attacks often show more DPS, but the action is not smooth, with timeouts due to rage loss between damage bursts. The most important advantage of the dual wield attack is that bloodthirst and other high rage attacks are available almost continuously. Besides that, I enjoy it more.
The improved execute talent allows executing at single second intervals. Terminal crits and reflexive (passively induced) multiple attacks are common at this stage. I assume that the magnitude of the crit is determined by a probability curve that is invariant with the frequency of critting. The percieved effect of rapid critting is more high-damage crits, however, which is fun.
Crits of 100 to 600 are routine, 700 to 1200 are common. Single-stroke executes are common. Crits above 2000 are rare. High crits seem to max out at 2885, the highest I have seen.
Fights with single 58+ non-elites usually end with 15% - 30% of total HP lost. Fights begun with a minimum of 25% total HP are reliably survivable, however.
The effect of even one add can be devastating. There is insufficient stamina in this configuration to sustain continuous damage from an untargeted mob. If the fight goes well and the targeted mob goes down quickly, there is HP remaining to take out the add relibably. If not, the add must be feared to allow time for bandaging between killing and attacking the add. The most common cause of dying is forgetting to bandage.
Kill time is halved, to 8 to 18 seconds. This is the effect I was looking for. This build is the most fun since full protection. I may drop the dual wield attack if Spangles ever gets an epic 2H. Meanwhile, the novelty of dual wield fury is making it (more) fun to farm. She probably won't get around to testing her 2H weapons extensively.
The loss of protection talents is not detrimental in 5 player instances. Spangles will suit up in Valor and a shield, and knows how to use the protect hotbar. Taunt and mocking blow get the attention of most mobs, although the 10 second cooldown on taunt is annoying.
A good priest can accomodate her switching into zerker for extended fights, which is great fun. After 15 months of WoW, players in blues are much tougher than their equivalents a year ago, and the mobs are pretty much the same, so the balance is not so precarious as it was.
It is apparent that in raids she should be MA, or assisting the MA, rather than MT. There is no point trying to out-protect the warrior built for that purpose. Skillful arms/fury warriors can compete on the damage meters with rogues and casters, so life has compensations.
I see no reason at present to spec more conservatively. Instances beyond MC are designed to promote more varied tactics than the operatic MT/primadonna scheme. There is need for high dps from a platewearer.
PvP is the next frontier. We will put this off as long as possible. Spangles doesn't have the moves or the insight to fight player classes effectively. With the new patch and the expansion there should be plenty of content for her to explore, however.
![[Image: spangles_sig_3.jpg]](https://home.comcast.net/~swesson5/spangles_sig_3.jpg)