Tank like a girl

Back when 3.0 came out, I wrote a post about protection warrior DPS, stressing the priority of Shield Slam > Revenge > Devastate. As Veneretio points out, that has not turned out to be the real priority. If you’re sticking to that, because that’s a lot like our old rotation used to be like, you’re gimping your TPS and your DPS. You have to use your whole arsenal of tricks to compete. Just because a boss is immune to stuns does not mean you have no reason to use Concussion Blow and Shockwave as they will still cause the damage, it’s only the stun component they are immune to. Use them, whenever you can.

I personally find myself a bit limited by the overload of abilities and the global cooldown, based on my personal skills. There is so much going on that I do not find the time to use Heroic Strike often enough, aside from the free one that comes from my Revenge glyph. I could gnash my teeth at all that extra sweet DPS I am tossing out the window. That is definitely something I need to work on.

Thanks Vene, for once again offering food for thought.

I had a lot of playtime, and so I have finally managed to run 3/4 level 80 instances. Yes, still dabbling with normal ones, though I think I am definitely totally ready for heroics on Kadomi. I finished the last piece of Titansteel gear for her, and she actually looks badass again. I managed to hit Revered with Argent Crusade and Wyrmrest Accord, and Honored with the Sons of Hodir. I am basically done with rep grinding aside from SoH, which is nice. Now I can just champion for fun-stuff like the red dragon.

Deep Wounds is working out great for me. I am usually around 1.1k DPS overall in instances, but I have been breaking 1.2k DPS as well. As I am usually running stuff with not very geared guild members, I still tend to come out on top DPS-wise, unless our resident paladin (currently ret) is in the group. That’s very cool and makes me feel incredibly powerful, but it’s also a bit frustrating when I am looking at starting raiding again soon. In any case, with Deep Wounds spec, get used to the constant splattering sound of bloody procs as mobs get hit by Damage Shield crits as they wail on you. Fun stuff. Highly recommend it.

The only Northrend instance I have not done yet is The Oculus. I am a bit hesitant about it, as I am not 100% sold on vehicle combat, at least not in a group scenario. But it might be fun! Speaking of fun, I enjoyed The Culling of Stratholme, a lot. I need to go back and just stroll through Stratholme. Brings back memories of the good ol’ days of wiping in the streets of undead Stratholme, which was a lot more punishing an instance than most others ever implemented in the game since then. Unlike Violet Hold which I find very lackluster and dull, Old Strat feels a lot like Black Morass to me, just in the streets of a familiar yet different city. Once the first two bosses are dead, the instance then feels like Old Hillsbrad, but Arthas is a lot easier to handle than our beloved Thrall. All in all, solid work.

Halls of Lightning felt like a clear continuation of Halls of Stone. I was a bit surprised to find out that Yogg-Saron is the mastermind here. Think he’ll be the raid end boss in Ulduar? I think that’s quite possible. His story is tied to just about every single zone in Northrend. The only zone that doesn’t seem to have a saronite quest is Borean Tundra, all other zones have at least one quest about the evils of saronite. Imagine if all plate wearers collectively lost their minds because they’re wearing this evil material all over? As for the encounters, they were fun to tank. Loken reminds me of Murmur, like a lot, and I have to practice running a bit more. Got hit by Lightning Nova twice, not a good record. As Volkhan didn’t drop his sword, and I am extremely tired of the slow axe from Zul’Drak, I’ll go again. I want to be suitably geared before I bash my head against the H UP wall, and I miss having a fast tanking weapon.

Speaking of UP, that’s the 3rd level 80 instance that I have done, though I did not tank. I healed the instance. Let me describe the many ways that the Skadi encounter sucked. Gauntlets are always stressful, but that was like uber-stress. We wiped twice. I got one battle rez, healed myself and voila, Skadi landed and immediately proceeded to one-shot me. Good times, good times. Gauntlets are annoying in general, but gauntlets with ranged mobs that are hard to pick up for the tank and really love healers? Extremely annoying. I will say that our DPS sucked very hard aside from one person, and I ran it again just yesterday, and it was easy as pie. DPS really can make or break a group.

Which reminds me, I didn’t mention the other big moment of the weekend: my shaman hit 80. She’s still fun, and healing is so out of my comfort zone that every instance is a challenge. Healing on Loken was pretty intense, let me say that. I have her pretty nicely geared already, but unlike Kadomi I am not sure she’s quite ready for heroic primetime yet. I might try H Nexus to see how that goes.

I have started preliminary planning to get the guild back into raiding in about a month. We’ll see how that goes! It’s exciting, but it’s also going to be work, mostly because we are unbelievably low on DPS still. That is utterly bizarre, isn’t it?

Once a year, Kadomi takes off all that plate and replaces it with fluffy winter clothing.

Then five minutes later she realizes it’s really cold out there with so little clothing and goes back to covering herself with good ol’ plate.

Have a good one, all of you.

I’m in a real pickle these days with Kadomi. Because the other half is a tanking druid, I play my resto shaman with her. My guild runs are mostly in that combo. With Kadomi I have zippo luck finding any guild healers (we only have two at 80). One of them is usually running heroics non-stop or PvPing, the other is super-busy RL and on a completely different schedule from me. So a-pugging I went, normal Halls of Stone, because I really want to do all instances on normal first before jumping into heroics. I am odd like that, but I think my heroics will be more pleasant if I know the mechanics of the fights first.

I hung around forever in LFG, until a level 80 paladin showed up. Healers are a scarce commodity. As DPS we had two enh shamans and a death knight. Welcome to the melee heavy world of WotLK.  One of the shamans had connection issues, so we basically four-manned most of the instance. The PUG wasn’t good or bad, it was pretty unremarkable. On Krystallus no one understood how the Shatter worked, so the healer bit the dust right at the first Shatter. Thanks to Enraged Regeneration I stayed up anyhow. Did I enjoy the PUG? Not in particular. It’s very different from our goofy guild runs. I don’t really know what to do, I think I might just have to keep her on the backburner for a while, and just jump onto guild runs when one of our other healers has time. I might just finish her Northrend Loremaster achievement. About 100 quests left in Icecrown, and then I have to go back to Borean Tundra.

I am however happy with her gear level. After a mining marathon in Icecrown, I managed to hit the magic mark of blacksmithing 440, so now I am the proud owner of Titansteel Shieldwall and Tempered Titansteel Treads. The helmet will have to wait until I have gotten the Wyrmrest chest and a defense enchant on the shield.  545 defense, 21.5k health, 22k armor. Not too shabby! Wyrmrest rep is going slowly, but I am about 70% through Honored, only from doing the three dailies every day. I love the look of the Titansteel Shield. Holy gosh, I hope I can make the helmet soon, because both the default helmet model of Wrath and the Tempered Saronite one are fugglier than fugly.

As I mentioned, I will be going Deep Wounds spec, the latest flavor in the tanking world. Talldar over at warriortanking.com is wondering why people in that spec go ATT 3/3 and Cruelty 2/5, instead of 5/5 Cruelty. Too bad he didn’t get a response yet, so why don’t y’all enlighten me (and him)? I have used Talented to set up my desired spec as template, so today I will head to Orgrimmar and apply that template. Btw, if you really enjoy messing around with talent builds, that addon is fabulous.

For Christmas, I’ll be off work from Wed-Sun, so I am really hoping I can run some of the 80s instances. My shaman should hit 80 in that time as well.

Time for another reference guide, mostly for myself, hopefully of interest for others too. A new expansion means new consumables, from buff foods to elixirs to flasks. Let’s see what’s out there.

Potion:

• The Health pot du jour is called Runic Healing Potion this time around. Due to potion sickness, chain-chugging is a thing of the past, so time your potion use carefully.
• As alternative to using a health potion, you could try an Indestructible Potion instead. That’s a lot of armor that might help in encounters with Enrages or very heavy melee damage.

Battle Elixir:

• Guru’s Elixir raises all stats by 20, so is quite the excellent choice.
• Elixir of Expertise does exactly what the name suggests, raising expertise. Strong stat for tanks, so it’s a very good consumable to use, if you’re not using a flask.
• In a similar vein, you could also use Elixir of Accuracy for hit rating for threat.
• If you can’t get either of those battle elixirs, I would use either Elixir of Lightning Speed, Elixir of Deadly Strikes or Elixir of Armor Piercing, but I personally don’t think they’re as strong as the other two.
• You want to use something that scales with Blessing of Kings? How about Elixir of Mighty Strength for bigger Shield Slams?
• If you’re of the druidic persuasion, Elixir of Mighty Agility is probably the best option.

Guardian Elixir:

• Elixir of Mighty Fortitude is very nifty, and offers tons of extra health plus regen.
• Defense is a very strong avoidance stat nowadays and still worth stacking beyond the crit cap, so I highly endorse Elixir of Mighty Defense.
• Elixir of Protection offers extra armor, I will have to test if I get more mileage out of extra armor than any of the others.

Flasks:

• Flask of Stoneblood is the tanking flask, I suppose. It’s a shame that it’s just health now, no longer any extra defense.
• If health is no concern and you want to increase your personal DPS and threat, there’s Flask of Endless Rage.

Food:

All the new buff food brings back all the stats that show up on gear these days. You get to choose between strength, agility, expertise, hit, haste, armor penetration, crit rating plus 40 stamina. Which one you want to use is really up to you. Used an expertise battle elixir? Combine it with buff food that gives you extra strength, e.g.

• Strength:  Dragonfin Filet
• Agility: Blackened Dragonfin
• Expertise: Rhinolicious Wyrmsteak
• Hit: Snapper Extreme
• Haste: Imperial Manta Steak or Very Burnt Worg
• Armor Penetration: Hearty Rhino
• Crit: Spiced Wyrm Burger or Spicy Blue Nettlefish

Lots of options. Think I missed anything? Leave a comment.

Maybe you’ve come here to look at pre-heroic tanking gear, so why not get some links to pimp up the gear you’ll be going into raids and heroics with? I was going to look at enhancements next, but others already did the work, so here’s some gems I’ve been able to find.

• Anglachel over at The Meatshield Diaries has written a two part guide to enchantments for tanks
• Durnic at Orlyfactor has looked at gems for tanks in WotLK
• Bizzam at Tank Hard is also looking at tanking gems and enchants
  
• Rochelle at Tank Hard is looking at the glyph changes coming with 3.0.8

Thanks to those bloggers for some excellent guides.

As I was busy with RL things, my usual Monday update went missing. Which isn’t so bad, as I don’t have that much stuff to post about.

My personal progress is very slim. I can say that without having set foot in any level 80 instance, I am pretty close to hitting the magic 540, so it’s really not as hard to reach as some said. I am only sitting at 537 defense, 21.3k health unbuffed, 20.5k armor, but I haven’t got a single enchantment, and most of my sockets so far have stamina gems in them. I’m still working on the Loremaster of Northrend achievement, and am really getting there. I completed Sholazar Basin on Saturday and Storm Peaks on Monday, so all that’s left are 140 quests in Icecrown and 130 quests in Borean Tundra. One thing this loremaster attempt surely causes is that it’s making me rich. I spent 7k gold last week to buy Artisan Riding, epic flyer and cold-weather flying for my shaman, and since then I have already gone up 5k gold again because gold is just so easy to come by while questing.

Warrior-tanking still feels a bit too powerful for me. I ran normal Gundrak in a group of mostly 80s, was #2 on DPS again, setting a new personal record of 1.1k DPS, and there were times that I had mindboggling values like 3.5k TPS displayed in Omen, on some trash pulls. I would be pissed if I was a druid. The other half is a feral druid and doesn’t do TPS on trash like that. If tanking classes are to be homogenized, we should all be equally strong on multi-mob tanking. Here’s to hoping for a druid Swipe buff.

I have been very inspired by a lot of postings I have seen at Tankspot, regarding Impale/Deep Wounds builds, and I think I might give that a shot as well. Raid results where Deep Wounds did the same damage as Revenge did sound pretty fabulous. It’s the new cookie cutter spec, so I might as well try it. Who wouldn’t want to do more damage?

I’m currently a bit frustrated and unhappy. Being a member of a casual guild isn’t as easy as it might seem.  I recently did a poll to find out how interested everyone is in raiding, and the overwhelming response was that people want to raid, but are in no hurry. That’s cool, I am in no hurry either. Our most ‘hardcore’ member just gquit to join our partner guild, and I felt her app over there was full of disses hinted at our guild, and so was her farewell posting, in a very unpleasant passive-aggressive manner. I don’t mind people leaving, we’re not for everyone, but at least try to be nice about it.

We have eight level 80s atm. Of those eight, two of them run heroics every day and have gone to Naxxramas with other guilds. The rest of them are mostly questing solo-style, skilling up in professions and seem to have no desire to set up instance runs. Me, I am halfway inbetween. I am setting up runs, have done all instances up to Halls of Stone now. But I am still running instances with the druid/shaman combo first, so I have yet to set a warrior foot into heroics or any level 80 instance. I really can’t form a new raiding team if people don’t have their own initiative and drive to gear up, but if we don’t start raiding soon, we will lose those who are getting bored with us. Don’t know how to fix really. I am probably overthinking it, and things might change a lot after Christmas. I think the ease of soloing in WotLK is biting us in the ass. If you can complete whole zones without requiring any groups, the leveling/questing phase has turned into a big single-player game. I did Storm Peaks all by myself, all 100 quests of the achievement, without any outside help.

Maybe it’s just that I am not used to being on top of my game, because in TBC, the other half and I were the ones who were running instances and heroics every day while the rest of the guild wasn’t. Then again, in TBC we were also the ones who actively helped getting other people there, so we could start raiding.

I was thinking of setting a start date of when we would like to start raiding, maybe that would change things a bit, but I don’t know if that would work for sure. I tell you, being casual raid leader has quite the emo-potential.

WTB patience of a saint to just relax and have fun and not feel like I am millions of lightyears behind everyone else. Taking longer to get there just means less boredom inbetween waiting for future patches.

As I keep mentioning, I also play a resto shaman. She hit 77 today, huzzah. I don’t want to spam my blog with a lot of shaman info, after all this is a tanking blog. However, a lot of people sounded interested in my resto shaman gear list similar to my pre-heroics prot warrior list. Here it is.

The only gear listed are mail drops or rewards, but don’t be shy when it comes to wearing cloth or leather if no one else is rolling. For those of you who care, enjoy. It’s my first attempt at a Google Spreadsheet, and I find it quite handy.

Back in the day, Blizzard’s default combat log sucked. Like a lot. A massive wall of text and it was hard to discern what exactly happened specifically to yourself. Enter combat log addons. I used SimpleCombatLog for the longest time. It only showed my own events, color coded, I could see stuff specifically for me. Kinda like what the default combat log does these days.

And still, I wanted it even simpler, more compact, easier to read. Meet EavesDrop.

EavesDrop is written by Grayhoof, author of Scrolling Combat Text, so it looks very similar in how it works. You could call it Scrolling Combat Log. You get a configurable window with Player events on one side and Target events in the other column. The player column will list events happening to you. Basically all damage, all incoming heals on you, they will be there, with an ability icon in front of it, and colored for damage/heal type. In the target column, you will see all damage you do, with the corresponding ability icon.

Whenever I die in an instance or raid environment, I can just scroll up, and see the fatal blows or lack of heals. At the end of combat, there’s always a quick summary of damage done, heals received and damage taken. Very handy!

As added bonus, there’s a history function tracking your hit/crit records.  In my example, I clearly need to reset it, because it has the astronomical values from Battle of Undercity in it that I’ll never repeat. It tracks damage done, damage taken, heals, just about everything you would want to track.

Very configurable, I wouldn’t want to miss this little gem of an addon.

The third leveling instance is in Dragonblight, with a level range of 72-74. Both Alliance and Horde have flight points right in the area (Star’s Rest/Agmar’s Hammer respectively). There are two quests, Death to the Traitor King and Don’t Forget the Eggs, both can be picked up right outside the instance, no pre-reqs necessary. The latter quest has a very solid plate tank reward, Expelling Gauntlets.

Azjol-Nerub is unique in that it has a surprising lack of trash mobs. Three bosses, little trash, and you’re in and out of the instance in 30 minutes. Azjol-Nerub, the fast food amongst instances! The normal version is not too challenging, but I hear it’s one of the rougher heroics, largely because of the first boss.

 
Trash:

As far as classic trash goes, there are exactly three trash pulls in the whole instance. A patrol of two nerubians at the instance entrance, a group of three before the first boss encounter, and a group of two before the final boss. Of the trash mobs, the Skirmishers are by far the most annoying ones and I would kill them first. They have an Enrage that makes them focus on a random target in the party for 10 seconds, which can be lethal if it’s a cloth-wearer. While they’re enraged, they’re immune to taunt and any form of CC. Only thing that’ll help are stuns and Tranq Shot. As prot warrior, keep your Concussion Blow ready for the enrage. All other trash isn’t very exciting and shouldn’t be a problem. If you want to use CC, all mobs are undead, so Shackle is the best form of CC here.

Krik’thir the Gatewatcher:

The first boss has three groups of mobs waiting before him. Every group has a Watcher plus two friends. As soon as you pull the first group, you start the event. Once you have a group down, the next group will engage shortly afterwards. Be careful, you can pull an extra group if you’re too close to it, been there, done that. All three groups have Skirmishers, so kill them first, or CC them before they are an issue. Once all three watchers are down, the big guy himself will come running. Tank him in the center of the room. His Mind Flay can be interrupted with Shield Bash, I actually haven’t tested if you can reflect it. Periodically, annoying little swarmers will pop from the walls which need to be DPSd down, you can add a couple Thunderclaps to the mix.

As far as drops go, nothing to see here for prot warriors.

Hadronox:

Once you move down into the spider-webbed area, you can already see Hadronox at the bottom of the spider-web, chewing his way through masses of Nerubians. You on the other hand will see three Nerubians not far below you, at the bottom of a set of doorways. Pull them up to you while still keeping the endless stream of non-elites that come fleeing out of the doorways under control, and do the same for the other elite groups that will come out of the doors. Eventually, Hadronox will have moved up to the doors where he will kill the rest of the Nerubians, web the doors closed, and then it’s time to deal with that huge, disgusting spider (I am arachnophobiac, so I hated this part) once all the Nerubians are dead.

Hadronox himself isn’t that challenging. Ideally, you have someone in the group who can dispel poison. If not, the poison damage will have to be healed through. Don’t stand in the acid clouds. Other than that, tank and spank.

Again, absolutely no loot any prot warrior could use.

Anub’arak:

Once you’ve run down the web, done the huge jump down (best part of the instance!) and killed the lone trash group before Anub’arak, it’s time to face this bug that some might remember as really cool hero unit from Frozen Throne. It’s important that everyone moves onto his platform as you engage him, as it will be webbed closed behind you. You don’t want anyone locked out.

Make sure to position Anub’arak so that his back is to the rest of the group, because of his Pound ability. This will only affect people standing in front of him. Pound has a cast time and it is possible to run through him while he casts, but not entirely necessary. It’s just important that no one else is in front of him. At 66%, 33% and 15%, Anub’arak burrows. At this point, you should be ready to pick up the elite adds that come in from the spot you entered as well. The rest of the group can DPS down the non-elites, but you should tank the elite adds. At the same time, make sure to move when you notice the ground shake beneath you when Anub’arak tries to Impale you, to avoid extra damage. Rinse and repeat, until the Crypt Lord is dead.

He drops Signet of Arachnathid Command, which is a pretty nice tanking ring and due to proper itemization for WotLK tanks might even beat the Exalted rep ring from The Violet Eye.

And that’s it for the shorter Nerubian instance, Ahn’kahet: The Old Kingdom will be next.