WoW Machinima: The Avenger

The Avenger

Guide to Arathi Basin

The Arathi Basin is one of the main staging points of war between the humans and the Forsaken in Azeroth. The League of Arathor seek to reclaim lost lands for their benefactors in Stormwind, while the Defilers elite troopers under the watchful eye of Varimathras seek to sever the vital connection between the humans and their dwarven allies to the south.

15 Player Battleground
How to Win
The goal of Arathi Basin is to gain 2000 (1600 in patch 3.2) Resources to win the battleground, the only way to gain resources in the battleground is to captuer points inside the game. There are 5 Main Points.

- Stables
- Farm
- Blacksmith
- Lumber Mill
- Mine

The More resources you have caputred the faster your resoure count will go up. Therfore if your team has 3 resources and the opposing team has 2, you will eventually win the game if you hold those resources.

Level Bracket
20-29
30-39
40-49
50-59
60-69
70

Achievements

Name		Location	Side	Points	Category
	Arathi Basin All-Star Assault and Defend 2 bases in a single Arathi Basin match.	Arathi Basin	Both	20	Arathi Basin
	Arathi Basin Assassin Get five honorable kills at each of the bases in a single Arathi Basin battle.	Arathi Basin	Both	20	Arathi Basin
	Arathi Basin Perfection Win Arathi Basin with a score of 2000 to 0.	Arathi Basin	Both	20	Arathi Basin
	Arathi Basin Veteran Complete 100 victories in Arathi Basin.	Arathi Basin	Both	10	Arathi Basin
	Arathi Basin Victory Win Arathi Basin.	Arathi Basin	Both	10	Arathi Basin
	Disgracin' The Basin Assault 3 bases in a single Arathi Basin battle.	Arathi Basin	Both	10	Arathi Basin
	Let's Get This Done Win Arathi Basin in 6 minutes.	Arathi Basin	Both	10	Arathi Basin
	Master of Arathi Basin Complete the Arathi Basin achievements listed below.	Arathi Basin	Alliance	25	Arathi Basin
	Master of Arathi Basin Complete the Arathi Basin achievements listed below.	Arathi Basin	Horde	25	Arathi Basin
	Me and the Cappin' Makin' it Happen Take 50 flags in Arathi Basin.	Arathi Basin	Both	10	Arathi Basin
	Overly Defensive Defend 3 bases in a single Arathi Basin battle.	Arathi Basin	Both	10	Arathi Basin
	Resilient Victory Overcome a 500 resource disadvantage in a match of Arathi Basin and claim victory.	Arathi Basin	Both	10	Arathi Basin
	Territorial Dominance Win 10 Arathi Basin matches while controlling all 5 flags.	Arathi Basin	Both	10	Arathi Basin
	The Conqueror Raise your reputation values in Warsong Gulch, Arathi Basin and Alterac Valley to Exalted.		Horde	20	Player vs. Player
	The Justicar Raise your reputation values in Warsong Gulch, Arathi Basin and Alterac Valley to Exalted.		Alliance	20	Player vs. Player
	To The Rescue! Come to the defense of a base in Arathi Basin 50 times by recapping the flag.	Arathi Basin	Both	10	Arathi Basin
	We Had It All Along *cough* Win Arathi Basin by 10 points (2000 to 1990).	Arathi Basin	Both	10	Arathi Basin

Warrior Wednesday: The Basics: DPS Edition.(Now with screwed up websites!)

Written by Claymore
I promised, and here it is. Slightly delayed because of trouble on our main website, but here it is: The Warrior DPS stat focus guide. Some similarities are here between gearing as a DPS warrior and a Prot Warrior, but there are obvious differences in what you should be concentrating on.

Firstly, there is the choice of which talent tree you want to specialize in; Either Fury or Arms. Arms is generally regarded as the PvP tree with Fury being PvE, but either one can be viable in both situations. Fury is thought of as easier to play currently in patch 3.1 because of Arms needing to manage a debuff timer, watch for procs, and keeping one ability on cooldown. All that needs to be done for Fury is to keep certain abilities on cooldown while spamming one ability and watching for just one proc. Oh, they get a cooldown too, but Arms, instead of having a cooldown, brings a debuff that really helps other melee classes with bleed effects (which includes themselves). Overall, one's DPS isn't higher than the other, so just choose which one you want to play.

Anyway, as I mentioned in my Protection Guide, you want to concentrate on certain stats first, as they are the most important. For a DPS warrior, the stats you should concentrate on are as follows:

1. Hit Rating!: Trying to hit a big bad boss with your gigantic weapon(s) isn't very effective if you can't even hit him in the first place! For your yellow damage, the hit cap is always 263 hit rating, which translates into 8.00%. Semi-deep into the fury tree, there is a talent that, for 3 points, chops off 3% from that percentage, leaving you with 165 rating needed. Unfortunately, most Arms warriors will not take this as it is still relatively easy to reach 263. As for white damage, it is near impossible to reach the cap, so it is recommended that you just stay above this soft hit cap without going far over it.

2. Expertise!: Slightly less important than hit, but still recommended to have is your expertise capped at 6.50%, or approximately 26 expertise skill, which translates to 214 rating. Like the Protection tree, our two DPS talent trees have their own certain talents that allow us to lower this cap. The Arms tree has Strength of Arms while Fury has Weapon Mastery. Strength of Arms lowers the rating cap to 181, while Weapon Mastery lowers it to 148. Also, if you refer back to my Protection guide, certain races gain even more expertise through weapon racials. Any way it's looked at, being expertise capped means that all level 80 raid bosses won't dodge your attacks when you are standing behind them. Very helpful when you're trying to kill them, right?

3. (Arms Warriors Only) Armor Penetration!: All while you are gearing up as an arms warrior and trying to become hit and expertise capped, you want to have your armor penetration as high as possible until you have reached 100%. This is currently very difficult to accomplish, even with fully gemmed and enchanted gear, but being around the 40% range is fine through gear stats and gems (trinket procs work very well too, pushing you up into the 90%'s). Luckily, you get 10% from being in Battle Stance already.

4. Strength/Crit!: Once an Arms Warrior reaches a high enough Armor Penetration percentage, or once a Fury Warrior becomes hit and expertise capped, while maintaining these values as much as possible, they will start to focus their gear more towards strength and crit rating. Not only do you get 2 attack power per point of strength, but more crit means more chances for your procs to happen if you're Arms and even more damage for Fury. Please note that you should ONLY start focusing on strength and crit if your Armor Pen is high enough if you're an Arms warrior and if you are hit and expertise capped either way.

DPS Warriors can be very powerful forces to have in a raid, especially for Arms with their debuff. Fury is just as good as it is easy for them to interrupt spellcasting as well as bring immediate high dps with a cooldown and relatively easy priority rotations. Either way, a raid will always benefit from having a DPS Warrior because of their unique abilities and their impressive plate-armored survivability.

Next week, I guess I'll talk about some recent Patch 3.2 changes that have popped up since my last Patch post, and maybe more. Maybe. :) Until then, Cláymore out!
written by claymore

Trial of the Crusader PTR TESTING!

Daelo

Here's the current schedule for Trial of the Crusader PTR testing:

On the North American test realms:

Lord Jaraxxus - Thursday Night, July 9, starting at 7pm EDT/4pm PDT.

On the European test realms:

Eydis Darkbane and Fjola Lightbane - Thursday Night, July 9, starting at 19:00 CEST.

Note that only the 10 Player and 25 Player difficulties will be available on PTR. The Heroic versions will not be available. If you are usually part of raids that easily crushes Ulduar Hard Modes, you should find the non-Heroic difficulties to be not difficult.

Koralon the Flame Watcher is also available to be tested in the Vault of Archavon depending on PTR Wintergrasp status.

Test Patchwerks (Tank and DPS versions) will also be available in the Argent Coliseum during similar times to other bosses. Instead of the previous tank test patchwerk that increased melee damage over time, the 3.2 tank test patchwerk will just hit VERY hard (as hard as Algalon) all the time to allow for more lengthy sustained tank parses. We're always interested in seeing combat logs and parses for all raid testing on the PTR, but especially test patchwerk logs. These are extremely helpful to our class team.

This schedule could change at a moment's notice due to server, bug, or patch status. I'll try to keep everyone informed as much as possible. The Trial of the Crusader and the bosses to be tested will remain also open a variable length of time. How long they stay open depends upon a host of factors including designer availability, bug status, etc. These bosses are very much a work in progress, and this is a test server.


Quick Trial of the Crusader FAQ:

Q) Where's all the trash?
A) There isn't any in this raid zone. Really.

Q) Where's the loot?
A) Loot is present on the bosses, but note that many of the items do not have final art.

Q) What about achievements?
A) Most of them are not fully implemented yet.

Q) What about the Trial of the Champion (ie the 5 player dungeon)?
A) This will see more extended testing later in the PTR cycle.