Needing advice for this warrior I just bought my way to 85 with. Needing to know proper AA rotation? Is duel wield plausible? How should I be equipped when just soloing for exp? Shields? Point me to another thread already tapped into these questions? Thanks for any input.
If you're tanking (and you should be), Sword & Shield. The AAs for Shield Specialist and Improved Shield Specialist make it the best all around; best damage, best agro, best defense. If someone else is tanking (ought to be rare, but it can happen), still Sword & Shield until you buy Combat Proficiency AA, then 2h when you have the Stance to multiply it. There's no current use case for dual wielding 85+, leave that to poncy rangers, bards, rogues, monks and beastlords. Bash(skill), Knee Strike(AA), Gut Punch(AA), Shield Topple(disc), Battle Leap(AA) should be grayed out from use constantly. Champion's Aura(disc), Commanding Voice(disc), Bracing Defense(disc) and Field Armorer(disc) ought to be active ~all the time when fighting normal mobs. For agro, you lead every fight with Bazu Bellow(disc), and/or Blast of Anger (AA,2 minute timer). Maelstrom Blade(disc) is AE damage+agro, use it on any multi-pull but be careful around mezzed mobs. P.S. the "soloing for exp" thing is kinda funny
So, since you were so helpful with my previous post, do you have any good macro tips that would smooth out my combat? ...to ease the finger dancing?
Macro's, I wouldn't use too many. In my experience they cause just enough lag at times to miss pickups and stuff. Commanding voice as mentioned above either shouldn't be needed at 85 or sometime soon after 85 your myrmidon's aura clicky will surpass it's usefulness (check your shoulders for this clicky - when the clicky is at 20%, it's equal to commanding voice). Flash of anger at level 87 is a must have disc. Gives you a 1 tick weapon shield on a fast reuse timer. Use it to settle down a bad pull, or hp's dropping bad due to healer lag or a bad spike, it'll be your short term react to bad stuff button. Since you'll be using a shield most of the time, slap your highest ac shield usable aug in your shield. Shield ac ignores the soft cap.
Great info--but remember to use your Field Guardian (or level appropriate equivalent) before hitting Flash of Anger if it is even remotely feasible (sometimes it's not)--the extra AC from FG line will be nice once the Flash weaponshield wears off, but if you hit Flash first you cannot use FG until the Flash timer is done.
In the realm of DI rounds, there is no situation mathematically that I've seen where flash of anger isn't always better than the AC buff unless you're not over the softcap (you're almost over this naked). I've seen this debate several times before and still never heard or seen a solid argument, it always boils down to 'Well I prefer the extra AC' from whichever tank is part of the conversation. Do either of you have data to prove that Field Guardian being used when Flash of Anger is up and available is actually providing more safety than using Flash of Anger for pure mitigation in any real world situation?
I didn't say either, I said both. Field Guardian has no cooldown, while Flash of Anger does, and they are on the same timer. If you hit flash first, you cannot hit Field Guardian until the timer is up, but if you hit Field Guardian First you can then hit Flash immediately, and have the benefit of the extra 500 or so AC for when Flash drops in 6 seconds.
Rather than using a macro to spam multiple abilities, consider multibinding hotkeys. This is where you assign the same keyboard key to multiple hotkeys.
Just curious... At lvl 100 my (group geared) war only has myrmidon's skill viii, which it says gives 14%. Am I thinking about the wrong thing, or is there a better version out there? On paper, it seems like the extra 6% would still be worth keeping commanding voice up for me. War is not my first class, so I'm not sure if I'm missing something here.
Jeer is fine to use; the extra agro is just not generally necessary so the extra damage of Toppling is what I recommend. I also stopped bothering with explicit +agro augs on weapons six(?) years ago; I just use +dmg. If you're grouped with some really excellent dps and they challenge you for control of mobs, then for sure swap out that hot button.
As a Heroic character, you have a full set of 30ac 3dex 40hp augs sitting waiting for you in the quests for Mercenary & Partisan of Feerrott and House of Thule zones. Get them asap. Then, head on up to 100, picking up augments as convenient. Reassess if you get burned out at some point on leveling, or just want to mix it up.
Your best augs can be attained without stopping xp, since you can now turn CotF HA currency into augs. Start with the Feerrott/HoT quested heroic augs then move to CotF heroic adventures and try to get enough currency for the augs. By the time you have all of your slots filled with the best augs available this way, you will be in great shape, in terms of exp and augs. You can do a search on EQresource or ZAM for better augs when you are done, and want to keep pushing ahead to maximize your toon's tankability.
My mistake, it looks like it's only the raid drops. I thought the group clicky had caught up but I guess not.
