Wanderer Dominating In BG’s As Arms Warrior

As of patch 3.1, arms warrior dps > fury in pve. For pvp reasons, fury isn’t even a plausible spec, you are either arms or prot unless you want to get face rolled all day.

PvE

Despite only having crap ten man gear and welfare epics, I still enter 25 raids and top charts, especially over fury warriors who out-gear me by a couple thousand via gear score.  I can’t give people a reason why this is the way it is, but what I can do is explain how to get the best dps from your arms warrior.

Arms PvE Spec for Patch 3.1+

What you do with the last 2 points doesn’t matter.   Having anger management and improved bloodrage will help keep your rage up, especially at the end of fights when you are spamming execute. Most of the best weapons in the game are axes, but obviously go with the spec you have your weapon with. I’ve been waiting for ironsoul to drop from Leviathan since Uldaur came out, because I want to test how much armor penetration I can reach. Right now I am sitting at 20% unbuffed, adding mace spec will up that to 35% with a goal of 40-45% in mind.

Rotation Priority

• Charge/Rend – The first thing in battle you will do is charge then apply rend. After, use up the juggernaut proc with mortal strike.
• Bladestorm – When your tank has established agro, use bladestorm right away. A lot of people like to save their special abilities, but this is foolish. Unless you know there is a specific part you must save your special cooldowns for, use them up right away. Bladestorm is the highest dps we have, so get that right off the bat so the cooldown can begin its process.
• Execute is the highest priority ability during the fight. Execute crits will do the most damage over the rest of your abilities and you want to use this immediately so your white hits can proc it again.
• Overpower is your next highest dps ability, mostly because it will always crit. With taste for blood, you will always have an overpower proc with a cooldown of six seconds.
• Mortal Strike – is your base attack, you should be using this whenever the cooldown is over, give execute priority though.
• Rend – must always be applied to the target. Using Glyph of Rending helps keep this up.
• Slam – With improved slam, this ability will be used whenever there is a small opening. Usually when you don’t have any execute procs and MS is on cooldown, improved slam is the fill in. It won’t be until you fully understand and get the rotation down solid, that you will see the small openings to add this ability every now and then.
• Sweeping Strikes - should be used whenever there is more than one opponent around. Combining this with bladestorm will give you a massive burst dps but by doing that you are not getting the best dps outcome. Don’t use sweeping strikes with bladestorm, use it with your regular rotation and you will get much more damage applying overpower crits and executes  – only then should you add the standard damage of bladestorm (use both together in pvp in certain situations).
• Don’t ever use heroic strike or cleave. It will rob you of your rage and there isn’t even much damage it will add.

What you need to know about overpower
- When overpower procs, you have 9 seconds to use it and 6 seconds to use it so that it will not reset your charge. Meaning, when your overpower procs, you don’t necessarily have to use it right away. If you get an overpower proc and an execute proc at the same time, you still have 6 seconds to use that overpower and it won’t mess up the 6 second cooldown timer. What this means is, use overpower right before the timer hits 4 seconds, if you do this another overpower will proc right after. Using your overpower rotation correctly will yield more dps. Even if a mortal strike cooldown ends the same time an overpower proc does, use the MS and then carry out the overpower. You are getting much more dps this way. The thirst for blood overpower proc does not tie in to the basic overpower proc (when an opponent dodges). However, reaching an expertise cap should be applied so none of your attacks are dodged. You could think, “But if an attack is dodged I could just overpower crit it back.” This will actually hurt your rotation and your damage, especially if you are giving up execute crits.

Glyphs

Major

• Glyph of Rending
• Glyph of Whirlwind
• Glyph of Mortal Strike

Minor

• Glyph of Charge
• Glyph of Bloodrage

PvP

Arms PvP 3.1 Max DPS Neckstomper Build

The PvP build is not much different, you are switching things like improved slam or improved bloodrage to reach bloodcraze in the fury tree. Bloodcraze is the best survival trait in pvp and must be active.  Piercing howl and anger management are more of a choice.

The advantage of using piercing howl over hamstring (other than the AoE effect) is that it can’t be dodged, blocked or parry. The best instance to use this is if a hunter gets a wing clip on you and your hamstring fails, you’re his toy until charge reaches its cooldown.

Glyphs

Major

• Glyph of Rapid Charge
• Glyph of Mortal Strike
• Glyph of Bladestorm
• Glyph of Hamstring – replace MS if you wanna spec in this

Minor

• Glyph of Charge
• Glyph of Bloodrage
• Glyph of Battle

Another way down the road is hamstring spec. By dropping anger management piercing howl you can apply two points to improved hamstring and then glyph in it.  Either way, you should be able (with a little practice) make life miserable for your opponents and Dominate in Battlegrounds or any other PvP situation using this spec.

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The Domination Podcast episode 12

Episode 12 is the first time we’ve ever had pre-reqs.  It’s nothing serious, but you really need to see the following video or you’ll miss something.  Besides all that, it’s funny as heck.

As always you can get the full transcript of the show by clicking the linkbelow.  Be sure to leave your questions in the thread so we can pass those on to the crew.  The more of your questions we get, the less of their own antics you have to deal with.  So do your bit to keep the fellas focused and giving you the Dominating information you want.

Episode 12 Full Transcript

 

 Domination Podcast Episode 12 [16:09m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Recognizing Opportunities During Market Shifts

Once you’ve been working the AH for a while you should begin to notice things you never saw before.  Today we’re going to give you an example of that so you can see how we look at the marketplace as a whole – and how to profit from it no matter what’s going on.

Petitepowerhouse made a little comment the other day which led to this teaching session.  She said “it’s sad you can’t make money off of silk any more, now it’s worth more to just vendor it.”  Instantly I knew why, and so we discussed exactly what to do about it to not only make up for the lost profits on silk, but make even more off of other things.

Silk prices have dropped because supply has far outstripped demand.  This can only mean one thing.  It means that on the horde side of Fenris there are a lot of people leveling new toons.  Not just lots of new toons, lots of new toons between levels 20-40ish.

As those guys grind through mobs, they are picking up tons of silk.  Since they already have mains (more than likely) they don’t need the cloth once they get enough silk to level first aid and do the cloth turn ins (if they remember to do so).  All in all that would take about 15 stacks of silk.  Needless to say most people end up with more than this through 20 levels.  If you only got one stack per level it would be too much.

So since there is too much silk already, even though folks probably aren’t using all they could, the price drops like a rock and soon you find yourself in the situation Petitepowerhouse is in – vendoring the stuff.  What I see is a huge market for other things.  That’s how you make gold all the time at the AH – recognizing trends.

So, if there are all these alts leveling up, what can I sell them instead of silk?  Since I’m also leveling some alts while working on a project, I know exactly what I needed a little while ago.  Or, more importantly, wanted.  Want always makes you more money than need.  People will spend far more money on want than need.  If you catch them wanting what they also need, that’s when you make a fortune.  That’s not just in WoW, that’s real life too.

So the average alt leveling toon needs mats and greens.  So instead of silk, we should be selling ore, herbs and world drops.  But not just any drops, we can also specialize in suffixes on equipment that are always popular such as of the monkey/bandit/bear/eagle. You can see by the screenshot above from the AH we’re not the only ones to see the recent trend and push prices for ‘of the monkey’ gear higher recently in the level 30 range.

Every few levels, those guys are going to run over to the AH and see if they can get some gear upgrades.  For the alt, this means they won’t fret over spending 2-5g each on items that make the leveling process go a lot faster.  And since probably very few other people are aware of the minor temporary market shift there is money to be made on lower end herbs and ore as well.

The seasoned pro might be trying to get a head start on blacksmithing, Jewelcrafting, alchemy or any number of professions.  So you can probably buy out all of the copper, tin, bronze and iron for not a ton of change and bump the prices a bit.  It will still sell like hotcakes and you’ll turn a tidy profit and never farm a lick.

That’s always the way you want to do it.  If you recognize a market and then go farm to fill it you’re not seeing a real good opportunity.  Real fortunes are only made where you can multiply your effectiveness using the effort of others.  Let other people go farm the raw materials, you just buy low and sell high.

That way you can sell in about 15 minutes worth of work what it took 20 other people 60 hours to farm.  Yes, your margin is lower, but you will make far more gold that way than you ever will farming.

So keep your eye out on your server for opportunities like this.  It turns out Petitepowerhouse was already doing everything she needed to be doing to take maximum advantage of the situation and she didn’t even know it.  Our Auction House Mastery Guide had her already in position because it works all aspects of the market all the time.

It’s a system so sophisticated that you never have to think about making gold again.  Always be where the market is hot, with as little time, effort and guesswork possible.  All we did was tweak our AADV settings a touch and then we can just forget about it for a month or two.

But if you’re still doing this the old fashioned way we did want to point out how to take what seems like a loss and turn it into bigger gains.  Finding the opportunity in a problem is what separates the also-rans from the Dominating.

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Abusing Eviscerate – Let The Raid Do The Work For You

Here’s the spec, study it and be enlightened;
Eviscerate Rogue Spec Build

Why go with this spec?

• Honor Among Thieves – Through honor among thieves, a new era of sub rogues has come into play. Combo points are accumulated faster than any other type of spec, even in 5 man instances. As long as people are critting, you will be laying out welfare damage all over the place.
• Obtaining the highest stats – Through the sub tree we get our 15% agility and 10% attack power. No other combination is deadlier for maxing out stats to obtain highest damage.
• Hit and offhand still a factor – Now that we have our stats maxed, using 5/5 dual wield spec and precision will give our white damage the most it can pump out. Heading down the combat line more doesn’t help out your white damage. Just these two specs in the tree need to be fulfilled; it’s just ironic bliss that it leads right to aggression.
• Eviscerate – It’s obvious to get improved eviscerate, what we should be grateful is that aggression is only third tier in the combat tree, allowing us for this complex, yet unique build. Eviscerate is what you will be spamming other than keeping slice and dice active.
• Hemorrhage – This is not to be a main attack or even a concentrated damage source. All it does is allow a combo point whenever need be. Hemorrhage is cheaper in energy compared to sinister strike, and it also provides the only raid buff that rogues give. The raid however, will be only seeing a little of this. Keeping hemorrhage up is not important; it is just a tool for when the opportunity of adding more combo points arrives.

Rotation Complication?

Not at all. Rotation is simple. Eviscerate, eviscerate, eviscerate, rinse lather and repeat. Through relentless strikes and not having to rely on a combo maker, energy will rarely be a problem. Still keep in mind that slice ‘n dice is to be up at all times.

Glyphs

• Glyph of Eviscerate (duh)
• Glyph of Fan of Knives
• Glyph of Cloak of Shadows (OR)
• Slice ‘n Dice

I prefer shadows, sometimes survivability is the best offense, you can’t dps if you’re dead. 3 seconds of extra time on Slice n Dice doesn’t amaze me, but it does up add a lot of downtime that could have been used for an eviscerate.

Fists vs Daggers

It really doesn’t matter, just as long as one of the two are equipped for close quarters combat.  Using a fist main hand weapon will give you an extra hundred damage or so every time hemo is used, but hemo is rarely going to be used. So use the highest dps and stat weapon available. Faster weapons are always first choice for poison application, so using daggers like Webbed Death in both hands is very appropriate.

Not many people still use eviscerate, even though it’s the most basic finishing move since using a rogue from level 1, I’m just glad to finally get a use of it at end game, finally. This strat also works for pvp’ers, but compared to bleeding, using a finishing source that is direct damage is inferior. I do suggest it for rogues smart enough to exploit the kiting that we have. When kiting, bleeds are a waste of time. So getting a 5-point combo maker from cheap shot to 7k eviscerate then a blind to start it all over isn’t such a bad strat.

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Back in the day (pre-Wrath, pre-BC) it was always either the tank or the healer who was responsible for everything that went wrong during a raid. Just about the only way a party could wipe pre-BC was because the tank couldn’t hold aggro, or the healers couldn’t heal/dispel/cleanse quickly enough. I’d get pretty upset when some little Shadowbolt spammer would blame everything on my heals. Well now the tables have turned, and I for one am glad DPS are the noobs now.

Blizzard has changed boss fights with Wrath. Encounters now require everyone in the raid to be on the ball. Now DPS has to put out a little more effort than simply going through their rotation while they watch TV, or talk on the phone, or whatever it is DPS do while not paying attention to the fight. How many times has your DPS died to a void zone? Yeah, now you know why.

The fact is, the Raid Leader, and the raid as a whole, survives because of the Scapegoat. At the bottom of the blame chain, and probably the DPS charts, there is a Scapegoat for every raid. So, like my friend says, “let ye who has never been a noob cast the first noob…into a pit of fire.” It was something like that…

Becoming the Scapegoat:

If it’s your first time in a 25 man raid, then you will be the Scapegoat. It’s inevitable. When the first boss goes down, everyone will see your Emblem of Heroism achievement. The only way to deal with this is hope that you’re not the only one. If you are, prepare for a long, lonely raiding experience as the Scapegoat.

If you don’t have vent, or a mic, or you live in a tiny apartment with paper walls and your wife/girlfriend is sleeping right behind you, the likelihood you will be dubbed the Scapegoat goes up 100%. Some people refuse to get in vent even though they have it, have a mic, and live in a sound-proof room. These people are lazy and deserve to be Scapegoats. Get in vent, noobs!

The Scapegoat Experience:

Someone drops the Mutating Injection in the wrong spot and it wipes out all the healers and half of the ranged DPS. Guess what, my friend? It was you. It doesn’t matter that you’re melee DPS stabbing Grobbulus in the back. It doesn’t matter if you were off-tanking slimes halfway across the room.

Some positive idiot hung out on the negative side during Thaddius and the whole raid wipes. It doesn’t matter if you were stealthed and afk at the door. It’s your fault.

Because of your abysmal DPS, the Raid Leader gives you “web wrap duty” on Maexxna. The main healer gets webwrapped and dies…the Main Tank dies….the Off-Tank dies….melee and ranged DPS die…the other healers die…no soulstone is up…people release and run back. Everyone sits, drinks, buffs up, hearths for repairs and get summoned back, all while you slowly wriggle your way to death, wrapped in a corner. You failed on webwrap duty, and since you don’t have vent, noob, it’s your fault. Geez, you’re so freakin’ terrible even Maexxna forgot you were there.

Sure, you could wonder why the hunter with an idle dragonhawk pet standing 2 ft to the left of the webwrapped main healer was spamming raid chat for someone to post the DPS charts in the middle of the fight instead of getting you out of the web wrap, but you can’t. Even if you had vent, no one would listen to you. You’re the Scapegoat.

But, in case you’re wondering why you’re getting the bad end of a :Right Click–>uninvite:, realize you may be the Scapegoat.

The Others:

The Raid Leader will designate the Scapegoat right after the first wipe. He will say “Gosh darnit, , why didn’t you X?” If you are one of the lucky ones who is not the scapegoat, then thank the WoW gods and immediately jump in the blame game. Offer reasons why you think did or did not X, and what he did do instead of X. This is so much easier when the gotas  is unable to defend his or her alleged X-ing over vent. Then you are free to postulate.

This is where general class knowledge comes in handy. Name one of goats class spells that would have been utterly useless in the fight. If is a druid, for example, tell everyone over vent that you saw him spamming Teleport: Moonglade over and over. If he is a Warlock, explain that you saw him creating firestones during the fight. Not only will you get a few chuckles, you’ll appear like an expert and be immune to the Scapegoat label for the remainder of the raid.

From there, you can report the DPS numbers. If the scapegoat is higher than you on the list, just say you lagged out during the fight. Say, “OMG! only did 900 DPS LAWL!” Be sure to give the Scapegoat advice on how to play his class. Do this so everyone can hear it. You don’t want to give him advice that’s necessarily good or that will help him be better, you just want to be giving advice so you look like you know more about the game.

Be careful, though, you don’t want to give so much advice that you become the Commentator. The Commentator we’ll save for next time.

Compy

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Matthew asks:

I don’t see any other real way to ask a question, and this blog post seemed to be the best spot.
My question is what is the best looking gear you can get for your little level 1 banker alt. I got tired of looking like every other level 1 warrior in stormwind, with the default shiled and shirt.
Any good banker alt should be just sitting there with 2-3k gold(like mine), and while i bought tux pants, and a Stylish Blue Shirt, im wondering if theres anything else i could look out for to make my banker look more unique.
I have a Tailor, so im wondering if theres any recipes i could look for that would look good.

Matt,

I’m sure our readers can give you some good suggestions as there are a ton of low level items in the game put there for aesthetic purposes.  Frankly, my banker is running around with Diamond Tipped Cane and a tabard.  I don’t really care how he looks, as long as the mailbox is full.

That being said, I do have guildies with outfits just for fishing – which I find odd, but if it’s fun for you do it!  So in that vein I have a couple of tools that can help you find all the odd and interesting things in the game without having to know them all by heart.

The first, of course is Wowhead.  I spend so much time there I should have admin capabilities.  When I first started playing it was thottbot, but their interface blows and is much harder to read and search.  If you can find the name of something, it super easy to figure out how to get it just by looking it up.

The next is a bit more obscure, but it’s so much fun to mess with I had to get it off my computer because it was a time sink all to itself.  The WoW Model Viewer has every graphic in the game.  You can build a toon, dress them up, give them items just to see what they look like.

Using the model viewer I was able to put together a couple of things for your viewing pleasure.  This first one is stuff you can’t have anyway, but it’s a good example of just messing around with the model viewer:

The next one I went to Wowhead and set a filter to show me only level 1 items of all sorts and just browsed through what was available in the game to any level 1 toon.  It turns out that the Unadorned Chain set is pretty slick looking, although your banker would have to be a Warrior or Paladin to wear them.

In both cases our models are wearing ruby shades, which stand out and are at least a little cool, but you get the idea.  Throw in a few perks like a fish off-hand or the Diamond Tipped Cane from the bag of fishing treasures and I’m sure you can come up with an outfit that suits you sensibilities.

The chain outfit above is sold on Horde side, so you might be able to make a little change by fencing a few over to your ally toon, or just keep the outfit all to yourself and have everyone wondering where you got your suit.  I would say the best way to stand out is to do exactly this.  Find something from the other faction that you like and then get it to the other side and really have something different.

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We have gotten a lot of questions lately on the Mage class, and it’s about time we covered them.  Before we get into anything too highfalutin’ though, we better start with getting you guys to 80.  Well, there are two ways you can play a mage.  You can do it like a lot of people and do it like this:

Funny, yes.  Good information – not so much.  But that is the way a lot of folks ham through the game.  What you end up with is a level 10 mage collecting dust or an 8 month run to 80.  None of that here, please.

So, may we offer you a much better solution to this squishy glass cannon?  Enter the AoE Frost mage.  It’s not like this is anything new, but it’s great because it’s olds.  Olds that stick around this long are news because they work like a charm.

Here’s how to put the power of the frost mage to perfect use to powerlevel yourself all the way to 80 in ridiculous time.  First, the spec: Frost talents that you need- other than these, feel free to put extra points wherever you see fit.

Even before the spell Blizzard was able to crit, skilled players still used this strategy starting at level 24. Frost has come a long way since old times, and now, AoE killing mobs with blizzard is a lot easier and even more commendable for taking on even the largest of mob clusters.  The only stats to focus on are intellect and stamina such as “of the eagle” gear.

I could spend 10 pages trying to describe exactly how to do this, but it works much better to just show you.   So here is a video demonstrating how to successfully clear large mob groups using only a mage.

Even despite going against a group of 14, I still only used a regular rotation. Having abilities like ice block, cold snap, and the water elemental summon are my back ups in case something goes wrong (like a mob resisting my frost nova).

I see a lot of videos where people have to use almost all their cool downs just to get 8 or 10 mobs down.  As long as you know your limits and stay in control, you will not have to rely on these cool downs every battle – giving you much faster leveling times.

Combine this with questing and there is no reason why a mage cannot level faster than any other class in the game at this time.  It’s also great for farming certain kinds of mats and what not.  Sure, it takes a little practice, but it’s very, very Dominating.

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Leveling Cooking From 375 to 450 In 20 Minutes Or Less

Those last 75 points in cooking may seem daunting at first glance.  But there is an easy way to get there.  We outlined our methods on the podcast last week, but here it is in print as a reference with all the links you need for the future.

There are a few pre-requirements for this one.  We have always advocated that you level cooking with fishing since cooking fish is a much better way to level your culinary skill than using other mats and recipes.  Yes, the fish recipes are all spread out, but we’ve found a new mod that will help you with that as well – but we’ll have to get to that one another time.

First, you’ll need to be doing your cooking dailies and have a stack of Northern Spices.  Next, you’ll need to have completed the Kungaloosh quest line in Sholazar basin.  For those of you using Gavin’s Horde leveling Guide, this is a done deal.  For the rest of you (yes an Ally guide is coming) the quest line starts with Some Make Lemonade, Some Make Liquor, and ends with The Taste Test.

Once you’ve completed The Taste Test, you can run down to Washed up Mage in the Dalaran sewers and buy the recipe for Kungaloosh.  Kungaloosh has to be the biggest skill level freebie in the game.  Without a cooking fire, you can brew these things up using Tundra Berries and Savory Snowplum, both available from the fruit vendor in Dalaran, Applebough.

About four stacks of each will cost you just a couple of gold and get you to skill level 400.  It has to be the easiest and cheapest 25 points you can get in any profession at any level.  You can try to sell the Kungaloosh on the AH, but we prefer to vendor them since they don’t do anything but make your screen go wonky.

Next, you’ll need to have 6 extra Dalaran Cooking Awards to purchase the recipes for Spicy Fried Herring and Gigantic Feast.  Spicy Fried Herring uses 1 Fangtooth Herring and 1 Northern Spices.  Gigantic Feast Requires the spices along with 2 Deep Sea Monsterbelly, 2 Chunk o’ Mammoth, and 2 Rockfin Grouper.

The great thing about these two recipes is that the mats are pretty cheap, or if you don’t mind fishing they aren’t ahrd to catch either.  We prefer the AH for speed, so grab 3 stacks of Herring and two stacks each of Monsterbelly, Chunk o Mammoth and Rockfin and you’re all set.

The Herring is only used in foods that give MP5, and those are normally passed over by most folks in favor of foods with SP or other stats, so Herring are in low demand which means low cost.  Deep Sea Monsterbelly are in the same boat, as they are only used in the Gigantic Feast recipe.  The Rockfin grouper have another use, but it’s just as worthless as Gigantic Feast, so again, cheap.

Spicy Fried Herring will get you to 425, where you can pound out the Gigantic Feasts right up to the cap at 450.  Then you’re just 5 cooking awards short of the best buff food in the game – Fish Feast.  It’s a really fast, cheap and Dominating way to max out your cooking and feed your crew in style.

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Goofy, fun and fast – just the way we like our achievements.  This is a really easy one to do as well and it’s certainly a break from raiding.  It’s a break from anything else for that matter since it has virtually  nothing to do with anything we can think of.

There is a tiny bit of preparation involved.  You’ll need a half a stack of Critter Bites.  If you’re making the recipe yourself that means you’ll need a stack of chilled meat (20) and 10 northern spices.  If you don’t feel like blowing the spices on these, just get the critter bites from the AH, they are usually super cheap.

Next, get on a flight to Howling Fjord and then travel out to 69,64 right where the roads form a “Y” on the map south of Nifflevar and west of the Explorer’s League Outpost.  You’ll see the turkeys running around all over the place.

Now, there is a slightly better spot to do this, but we’ve got a good reason for sending you here.  You can double up on two achievements at one time in this spot.After you’ve befriended all the turkeys with the critter bites, you can give them all a good smack down for the second achievement.

To complete Critter Gitter

• Hotkey the Critter Bites
• Target a Turkey
• Hit your Critter Bite Hotkey

It’s pretty funny to see the small flock following you around for a minute or so.  Sadly, they are all about to end up as supper.  Once your bird army de-spawn (takes about a minute) set up for the next part.

To complete Friend or Fowl just use the following macro:

/target Fjord Turkey
/cast Ice Lance (insert your favorite instant cast spell or ability here)
/cleartarget

Roasted turkey bodies all over the ground, and be prepared for the mass turkey attack that follows.  About 10 seconds after you do this one you’ll be swarmed by about 20 Angry Turkeys wanting a little payback for the Fowl Fricassee you just made.  It’s good for a chuckle and 20 points in your log in about 5 minutes.  Go Dominate those turkeys.

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