Phase 3: Profit !

This may shock you, dear reader, but I have a confession to make: I have thoughts about WoW that go beyond the scope of gold. As a rule, I keep my posts here at P3P limited to gold. However, I’m making an exception to that rule today to talk a little bit about Warriors in WoW. Consider yourself warned- this post is not about gold, and I won’t be offended if you stop reading right now.

I am, at heart, a warrior tank, and I love everything about the warrior protection tree as it currently stands. It is tremendously fun to tank, and right now the prot tree is also great in battlegrounds. But all the Cataclysm changes have me thinking of another warrior tree that, in my opinion, needs some work: Arms.

Each of the three warrior trees have a different flavor. Protection is the bulwark, the immoveable object. It is the, “I’ll hold them, you hit them” tree. Fury is about, well… just that: fury. It’s about rage, bloodlust, and smashing your opponent with the two biggest sticks you can find. Arms, the final tree, is about precision, training, and skill with a weapon. The Fury warrior is the Norse berserker, and the Arms warrior is the veteran military professional.

With the success of Titan’s Grip at the top of the fury tree, there has been a call to make a similar talent for one-handed weapons. This is a good idea, but here’s my suggestion:

Put it in the Arms tree.

This is something that I actually have some experience with. I have, for some time now, dabbled in martial arts, specifically Filipino Martial Arts (FMA). Basically, FMA is about using two short sticks/knives/swords simultaneously to really hurt whoever you are fighting. And FMA are, collectively, a brutal set of martial arts systems. There aren’t any snap kicks or board brakes. There are no belts. It is a group of systems that evolved over centuries of fighting tribal wars in the jungle. If a technique was ineffective, it usually died with the practitioner, which makes for a very compact and effective set of systems.

You may be thinking to yourself, “What is Filipino Martial Arts? I’ve never heard of it or seen it in use.” Well, chances are that you actually have seen some form of FMA but didn’t realize it. Did you see the movie The Hunted? The knife fighting in that movie is all FMA. What about that little trilogy from a few years back, the Jason Bourne movies? All the close combat in those movies is FMA as well. So, when you watch Jason Bourne defend himself with a pen or a towel, you’re watching FMA in action. (Warning: that pen clip is very violent, and probably not safe for work, kids, etc.)

Why does all this matter? Well, as a practitioner of FMA (specifically Pekiti Tirsia Kali), I can tell you that the amount of training necessary to wield a weapon in each hand is tremendous. You need years of  training to truly become proficient. You need to perfect your footwork, timing, distance, strike technique, and coordination, and this takes serious training. It takes a lifetime of training.

Which is why this belongs in the Arms tree. Druids have the feral tree that holds both tanking and cat DPS. Arms should be similar, and be a tree that contains two styles: wielding a two-handed weapon or two one-handed weapons. It would add new flavor to the tree, would increase warrior options, and would make the arms tree represent the intended flavor- the tree of a dedicated, practiced, skilled fighter.

Maybe I’m wrong about all this, and maybe it wouldn’t work in the Arms tree. But it seems like a natural way to spice up the most boring warrior tree, and make it more competitive at the same time. Let me know what you think, dear reader. As always, I look forward to your feedback.

GL! /bow