Tank like a girl

After my QQ post last week one shouldn’t believe it, but I love my guild. I really do. We have tons of fun girls in the guild, everyone’s helpful, and we have some very skilled, great players.

On Saturday, I forgot to take killshots and I always take great pride in taking those. But I just forgot. So Normanitee, our really excellent resto druid volunteered to draw us a killshot in MS-Paint. And today she posted it, and it’s just so much win. Click on it, you know you want to.

And that’s why I love my guild. Thanks Norm, you rock!

After my massive round of QQ from a couple days ago, we did indeed have our very first Naxx raid upon us. When we raid, it’s Saturday/Sunday, for 3 hours each. We started with the spider wing, and after one test-try where the kiting didn’t work as expected, we got Anub’rekhan down the second try. Grand Widow Faerlina proved to be fairly easy as well, with our only problem being that the last worshipper died too early, whoops. Our bear MT died, got a battle rez and picked up again. In any case, that was a oneshot, albeit a slightly messy one.

Maexxna took three tries until we got the positioning just right. Initially there were tons of range issues, that room is pretty huge. Once we had the positioning down, it seemed fairly trivial. Arachnid Quarter complete, yay. That was one of my raid goals (as I usually set the goals fairly low) and so that was very nice. Healing-wise, I am a bit competitive by nature and thus I felt I didn’t do so well, but I assigned myself to raid healing, and there weren’t a lot of death. I just get way too easily bored when healing.

From there we moved on to the Plague Wing to test the waters there and one-shot Noth the Plaguebringer. Yay for Cleanse Spirit spam and Chain Heals. This fight really felt as easy as they say, no danger of wiping. I wish I could say the same about the dance champion Heigan who was our next target and end of our raid for the day. In our best attempt we had him at 35%, before things went to hell. I was pretty upset at myself because I felt I set a very bad example as raid leader by always dying to the dance pretty quickly. Thanks to watching Ciderhelm’s video, I now know my mistake, I always ran too far into zone 4 and then never caught up when running back. Lesson learned!

The next day dawned, and our most awesome retribution paladin informs me that her boyfriend Skaze is sick and will not be able to fill our main tank spot. In TBC, Kaylexanna was one of our top healers, she went retribution for leveling and stayed retribution because she kicks ass at it. She’s our only DPS who breaks 3k DPS without any Naxx gear. Hax! Nevertheless, she offered to go holy, which meant that all my QQing about not tanking was for nothing and I actually was able to fill the tank spot. Hallelujah! We then quickly ran H VH and then H CoS for some missing badges for her healing shield and my T7 gloves and lo and behold, this was my first successful tanked attempt at the timed run! It was very close. We had like 6 minutes left right after Chrono Lord, and the Infinite Corruptor was heading back to the portal. I had kited him down the street to give us just a little bit more time, and whew, it worked out. The two guildies in my group both already had the drake, the two PUG guys both didn’t have epic flying and were kind enough not to roll, so it defaulted to me. Huzzah!

Just a bit later it was time to head to Naxxramas and try this Heigan thing again. Our first try was just as messy as our previous tries, as we also had new people in the raid, and then, well, then we killed him, in possibly the most maddening and epic raid fight I was ever in. Pretty early on we lost a couple people to the Plague Fissures. Then I must have made a huge mistake, because most but not all of our casters got hit by the disease and died from it. From that point on, we had four people left standing. The two tanks, a paladin healer and a shadowpriest. We danced it. We danced and danced and danced. I felt like I was going mad, running back and forth, back and forth, all the time. Eventually, Heigan’s health was at 0% when he teleported, with very little health left, and I told those last ones standing to proudly perform our last lap of running. That jinxed it, everyone but me died. The DoT from our dead shadowpriest does the killing blow, Heigan dies, and just a moment later I die on top of him, from his disease DoT. Now if that’s not epic, I don’t know anything.

From there we moved on to Loatheb. I died on the first attempt because the healers were still getting used to their limited capabilities of healing, but the second try we nailed it. I was pretty happy with my performance, given my gear level 1.4k DPS is not bad at all. It could be more, but I definitely increased my Heroic Strike use. My use of Concussion Blow wasn’t that hot, but all in all, I felt I did very well. Tanking, how I missed thee!

I had decided to try the Death Knight wing next and so eventually we ended up at Instructor Razuvious. While I do appreciate that you do not need to bring priests for MC to the 10-man version, it felt awfully gimmicky. Us tanks had some issues figuring it all out, had some bad luck with the mind control breaking right when I was supposed to taunt, but when we finally got it, we got him down. The OT’s understudy died early, and so I tanked Razuvious til he went down, kept alive even when Bone Armor was down by the magic of strong healers.

We paid Gothik a visit, the healer on the live side died early on, and we just wiped it from there and called it. Next raid I hope we can finish both Spider and Plague wings on the first day, leaving us a lot more time to work on Death Knight Wing the following day. 7/15 on our very first raid weekend is not bad at all, I would say, not bad at all. And I got to tank. This made me so happy, I couldn’t stop smiling for the rest of the day.

Oh boy, I actually got tagged for this by two three bloggers. I feel popular!

Daraxxus, Spicytunas and Yakra tagged me for this blog me-me. Instructions are easy. Go to the sixth folder of your screenshots folder, and post the sixth picture, then tag six other bloggers.

Now, first problem: I don’t have six folders in there. I only have raw screenshots, and an edited folder. So instead, I will present you with the sixth image in my screenshot folder:

 
Ah, the Barrens. Whose horde heart is not singing at the sight? Just drown out all your horrible memories of Barrens chat and Mankrik’s wife.

That was pretty dull. I have a screenshot gallery so I just went with the sixth screenshot in there.

 
Meet Tratsch, my former main, affliction warlock. This was our first run of that instance, and to this day, Dire Maul holds a special place in my heart. I totally love that instance, all of its wings.

Last but not least, I went and took the sixth down from the most current one, and ended up with our Sartharion killshot:

 
There ya go! And now for the tagging of the very few people in the WoW blogosphere that haven’t been tagged yet:

• Durnic from ORLY Factor
• Yasura from Heals, Smites and Prayers
• Naissa from Naissa’s Rage
• Dezdemona from Will Tank for Healz
• Drug from Shields Up!
• Jagerbombz from Hoof ‘n Healz

Yesterday, I had a pretty bad day WoW-wise. Rarely ever have I felt so defeated about this game that so many of us play. Through it all, I have come to a couple observations about me and WoW 3.0. Prepare for a lot of QQ, and rest assured that I will go back to informative or entertaining posts soon. But this is boiling inside of me, it’s my blog, it’s got to come out.

1. I love tanking. Above all. Kadomi will always be my first love. Everything else might be fun, but Kadomi is my main. Not getting to play her in raids is breaking my heart and sapping my will to push my guild to raid.

2. I think the easy approach to raiding is totally backfiring, especially for casual guilds like mine. In TBC when we first started doing 10-man raids, none of us had been in Karazhan, other than maybe one or two people. It was this big thing that we did together. Same with Zul’Aman. I still remember the overwhelming feeling of triumph when we first got down Hex-Lord Malacrass together. I loved it. But that’s not how raiding is panning out in WotLK. Right now, we have people who are struggling to get geared but are finally getting there, and then we have people who PUG raids. Stuff like Naxx and OS, but even Eye of Eternity. When we will now finally start Naxx this weekend, it will be with people in the raid who approach raids as something that you PUG for loot, as if they were just bigger versions of heroics, not something that you want to conquer with 9 friends. I am casual for a reason, with a hardcore mentality to raiding, but above all, I just want to encounter new challenges and see content, together with friends. I have spoken to friends from other casual guilds that raid (as opposed to casual raiding guilds), and they have similar feelings. It’s very disheartening.

3. Along with the PUG issue comes another issue I never ever thought I’d see happen to us: people signing up for our raids and then getting locked to another raid’s ID. Isn’t that just great? Screw tanking, Kadomi, your best-geared healer just had to got asked to do the 8-man Naxx achievement with another guild, forgetting about our very own raid, so prepare yourself to be healbot again. Now I am stuck with having to make a raid work somehow, by bowing out of the tanking spot I so badly crave. I am no longer a main tank, I am now a raid healer, not of my own choosing completely.

Edit: Some of that paragraph was written in massive anger and did not reflect entirely how things went down. Valuable lesson learnt, don’t blog when you’re really angry.

4. Three years on a US server, 9 hours ahead of my own timezone are finally getting to me. I am tired of late late hours when I want to run anything. Would most of you guys stay up til 4 am to run a heroic? I think not. I am tired of twiddling my thumbs when I get home from work because the server is deserted. The siren song of my German friends trying to lure me back to picking up my characters on Forscherliga is getting more attractive. But I would miss Kadomi. So many hours, days, weeks, months of my life invested into her. I would miss my Bronzebeard friends. I tried the EU approach before and loved playing in my timezone, but I missed playing Kadomi so much, and my German guild tried to turn me into a four nights a week T5 raider, which was too much for me, so I quit.

Back in the day, Blessing of Kings had this lovely overview of hit caps for TBC. Rohan didn’t update it, and so my one-page reference for all questions regarding hit to point guildies at was gone.

Which is as good a reason as any to start my own compilation. Here we go, your ultimate list for hit ratings. My thanks go to the editors of Wowwiki and various class forums to help fill my blanks.

Spell Hit:

The unmodified spell hit cap without any modifications is 446. Various talents will modify this value. In all cases, you can take off 1% (27 rating for spell casters) if a Draenei is present in your party, due to Heroic Presence. Furthermore, you can take off 3% (79 rating for spell casters) if a Shadow Priest provides the Misery debuff or a Balance Druid provides the Improved Faerie Fire debuff.

Modified values:

• Death Knight: 368 with Virulence
• Druids: 342 with Balance of Power, 263 with Balance of Power and Improved Faerie Fire
• Mages: 368 with Precision for fire and frost mages, or Arcane Focus for arcane mages; 289 for arcane mages with both Arcane Focus and Precision
• Priests: 368 hit rating with Misery, 289 hit rating with Misery and Shadow Focus
• Shamans: 368 with Elemental Precision
• Warlocks: 368 with Suppression

Physical Hit:

The unmodified physical hit caps without any modifications are
Dual-wield auto attack: 886
Special attacks and auto-attack: 263

Various talents will modify these values. In all cases, you can take off 1% (33 rating) if a Draenei is present in your party, due to Heroic Presence.

Modified values for special attacks:

• Death Knights: 164 dual-wielding 1H weapons with Nerves of Cold Steel
• Hunters: 164 with Focused Aim
• Rogues: 99 with Precision The poison hit cap is 315 with Precision and 446 without (based on spell hit).
• Shamans: 66 with Dual-Wield Specialization For Maelstrom Weapon, enh shamans will however have to gear for the spell hit cap 446.
• Warriors: 164 with Precision

I was unable to find any modifier for paladins and feral druids, so their cap for special attacks is 263.

Because it bears mentioning, two additional values:

26 expertise (about 214 expertise rating at level 80) to negate a boss’ dodge chance,
60 expertise (about 492 expertise rating at level 80) to prevent parries

Find any errors or inconsistencies? Speak up!

I am getting closer to getting my Northrend Heroic Dungeonmaster achievement. Two left to go, but I am not looking forward to either: Ahn’kahet and Oculus. I have heard horrible stories from one of the better tanks I know about Ahn’kahet, and yet gaze in envy at his shiny bracers he got there first try. Oculus was my least favorite instance in Northrend, I didn’t enjoy any of the bosses, and I am not looking forward to the Eregos fight whatsoever. Though I possibly hated Mage-Lord Urom more, in a heavy melee DPS group.

I am happy I got Halls of Lightning done, and actually didn’t think it was so bad. I had some booboos because of my G13, but it got a lot smoother further in. Of course we had the obligatory Loken wipes, because our healer just couldn’t run out, but eventually she managed and we got the achievement for killing him in under 2 minutes. Our ret pally does insane, nutso damage, and she’s inspired me to level my own.

On Sunday, we had our second Sartharion raid, which was a bit rocky, with one wipe on the big guy, but the second attempt was pretty awesome, people moved, and as I was on OT healing duty on my shaman, I was bored to tears. So far I actually prefer healing heroics, in raids I don’t get this feeling of urgency. My favorite moment was actually when we tried to kill one of the roaming pats awfully close to Shadron, someone facepulled him and when the portal went up, one of the other healers and a DPS hopped into the portal, though the tanks were awfully busy tanking the pat + Shadron as well. They died inside the portal and from that point on I was OT and raid healer, huzzah! I actually had something to do, yay. See, this never happens with tanking, but healing can get boring when there’s little to do.

After Sartharion, we hit H CoS as one of our warriors would like to have the shield from there. We decided to try for the drake run, which I have never successfully done before, and bam, we did it, with 2 minutes to spare. I was so stoked! I didn’t win the drake, but that’s fine, I’d rather have it on Kadomi anyway.

Saturday we’ll start Naxx. I am excited. I have done a lot of prep work, much reading, lots of videos, and I think we have a good shot at making good progress quickly. It looks like I’ll have to heal on the first day, but the second scheduled day I will get to tank, which makes me just giddy. It’s going to rock. I definitely want to have spider wing cleared on Saturday, maybe we can clear Plague as well. Wish me luck!

I keep mentioning achievements here and there. Who else thinks they’re like crack? I mean, there is no point to the score, it’s not as if I can buy anything with my 3.5k points, and still, I want more. I am currently working on the coins fishing achievement in Dalaran. Nutso!

I managed to complete the Lunar Festival achievements and got my Elder title, and got tons of rep out of the whole deal, bringing my kodo closer to reality. As I leveled to 60 in vanilla WoW, my horde rep is pitifully low. Thank you, Lunar Festival!

Then I started Valentine’s achievements, and before I knew what was going on, I tried to get my title. Like a ton of people out there, I didn’t actually make it because I only got the candy bag once. If I should really be so nuts and try for the drake, it should be easy next year. And thus Blizzard binds us, like slaves. One game to rule them all.

Oh, I am working on the Chef title as well, but can’t get Stormchops as reward, it’s driving me mad. That’s just about the only thing keeping me from completing it. Madness, I say, madness.

I recently had reason to compare tanking of the past to current tanking, trying to help someone with their TPS. Just like my anti-parry gem crusade, it hasn’t quite worked out, which has me quite a bit upset, but that’s another story. It leads me to look at the evolution of prot warrior tanking in WoW. As caveat, I did not raid in vanilla, nor did I tank a lot, so I only remember the basics.

Tanking has changed a lot from when I rolled my very first warrior in summer of 2005. I was full of naivete, wanted to tank, and leveled protection, fool that I was. Back then, you really only had one tanking class, the warrior, and many of them weren’t even protection. Druids used to be resto, back before there were trees, and paladins leveled retribution and went healbot at 60 as well. Back then, the classic expression in 5-mans was ‘hold DPS til 3 Sunders’. The basic tools we still have today existed then as well, they were just a bit more limited. Simpler days. Sunder spam was very common. I am curious what raid tanking was like back then, if any of you oldtimers want to share, please do!

TBC was in the air, and with 2.0 warriors saw big changes. We got Devastate as ultimate talent. Originally best used once you had a full stack of sunders on, later then changed to replace Sunder completely. We got Thunderclap to be used in defensive stance, to help with multi-mob tanking. We suddenly had two very strong contenders for tanking spots, and it was good. Tanking was not easier than in vanilla WoW, and still mostly done with threat coefficients on abilities, not damage. By the end of TBC, the best rotation for tanking was well established: Shield Slam, Revenge, Devastate, Devastate, rinse and repeat.

Since October, we’ve been in the 3.0 tanking world. This was a rather drastic change that requires a complete change of mind, away from rotations, welcome, embrace prioritizing our abilities. Devastate spam is no longer king, instead we try to get in as many Shield Slams as we can, use Revenge, use Concussion Blow and Shockwave, and maximize our DPS for more TPS. You won’t have the DPS output of a well-played and geared DPSer, but you should give them a run for their money. That’s playing your class to the full potential. It’s an awesome time to be a tank, but it can also be stressful, as DPS expectations are very high. In a way, this easy AoE tanking for all four tank classes is a trap. It means DPS expects to be able to start the smackdown without waiting at all, and people looking at Omen get more rare.

What I am trying to say is that we have seen 3 incarnations of protection warrior throughout the different game versions. It’s a new game now, and you’re doing yourself and your groups and your raid a disservice if you are not trying to be as informed and open to the different changes that have come upon us. Know your class. Don’t tell people to wait for three sunders. That’s so 2005. Don’t spam Devastate and ignore abilities that are much higher on the priority list. That’s so 2007. Prioritize your use of Shield Slam > Revenge > Concussion Blow > Shockwave > Devastate, on bosses and trash. That’s so 2009. Just do it. I know you can break old habits.

Last week I had my birthday, and my friends were kick-ass enough to fulfill my greatest wish: a G13 Logitech gaming keyboard. I have long been unhappy with my keybindings. As warrior I have more abilities and bars than any other of my characters. I use the number keys for my main action bar, and then Shift and Alt modifiers for the other bars. Not efficient. It means some awkward finger positions while tanking, and always two hands on the keyboard, which makes me a keyboard turner.

First impressions:
the thing is heavy. Quite heavy. I had to clear some stuff off my desk to make it fit. Hand position was pretty comfortable. Also, 22 keys still don’t seem enough, and I will have to prune stuff off. The display is nice, and will be great for seeing who talks on Vent, but the character information is kinda pointless. I can see all that via my UI. Moving with the thumb stick will take some time getting used to, but it really makes you turn using the mouse.

Setup is extremely easy. Click on key you want to configure in the Profiler, assign a key from your regular keyboard, done. There are a lot of pre-configured macro actions, like Auto-Run, Follow, Jump, Attack, etc. which also provide nice examples on how to use the macro abilities of the keyboard.

I redid my action bars, using 3 bars with 7 buttons. The middle G-row is numbers 1-7, the top row is Shift 1-7. The row with five buttons has various stuff like mounting up, /startattack, etc. The lower row I have assigned to Shift, Ctrl and Alt, so I will be able to use Clique for healing easily.

Sounds nice in theory, but how does it play? After doing my Brunhildar daily, I set off to Stratholme, to get some Runecloth and Argent Dawn rep while learning the keyboard. And it is a learning process. I remapped most of my keybindings so that the abilities I use non-stop are more easily reachable. This is mostly Charge, Thunderclap, Devastate, Revenge, Concussion Blow, Shield Slam. Buttons 3-5 are the core tanking abilities Revenge/HS, Concussion Blow, Shield Slam. Charge, TC, Shockwave and Cleave are in the row above, and they’re a bit trickier to hit. It’s all about my finger memory at the moment.

I completed Stratholme using the G13 exclusively and was pretty happy for the most part. Some keys aren’t mapped perfectly yet, and I have to shuffle things around still. It was very comfortable and I felt very mobile. Targetting was a bit iffy, but I can work around that.

As I still need two dungeon Elders for my title and Azjol-Nerub was the heroic daily, a guildie came along and we pugged the rest. My first real test of the G13!

As you can imagine, it went awfully. Targetting was a problem. Hitting my auto-run thumb button was a problem. Suddenly not remembering the new bindings in the heat of the moment was a disaster. We wiped on the three-pull before the first boss. Back to the regular keyboard I went, but as I mentioned, everything was rebound, so that did jackall. Yet another wipe. I have to give it to the guys from the PUG, they didn’t seem to care about my keyboard moments. Then my Pitbull 4 alpha failed me and Target of Target didn’t work anymore, so I quickly had to ditch Pitbull for my ouf setup. After re-binding all keys back to what they were before, I finally got a handle on things.

It was one of the messiest heroics I have done, DPS stole aggro left and right, and even though we one-shot all bosses when we did them, at least one DPSer usually died. But then, standing in Anub’arak’s Pounce is not so smart. As major bonus of the day, Hadronox dropped Essence of Gossamer, and of course I am now only one Elder away from my title. 28.2k health unbuffed, rawr!

I have to continue to fine-tune my G13. I predict a lot of time spent in Stratholme while I try to figure it all out. I think my shaman and all other characters will be fine, because I just use a lot less abilities on the rest of them. My next scheduled guild heroic is Halls of Lightning on Wednesday, we’ll see if I can make that happen with the G13. I hope so! We’re doing OS-10 again on the weekend, but I will be healing again, which should be a breeze.

So, who of you are using a gaming pad to tank? n52te, G13, the Saitek Command Unit, what have you. Share your experiences.

I am a dedicated fan of jewelcrafting. I wouldn’t want to do the profession, but gem sockets make me happy. Gear with sockets makes me squee. Blacksmith sockets for bracers and gloves are scrumptious. Eternal Belt Buckles are a must.

Back in TBC, gem sockets were boring. Socket bonuses sucked for the most part, so you gemmed stamina gems into every socket you had, at least at my level of raiding.

Nowadays, in WotLK, I usually gem for the socket bonus. There are lovely gems out there, for all three socket colors. You definitely want to use red and blue gems for the meta gem of your hat. Surely you will want to wear one with a meta slot. A while back Durnic posted a great article on tank gems. I totally stand behind it, that’s the gems I am going for, it’s very solid stuff. Haha, solid, gems, get it?

As I ramble on, I come to my point. What is up with parry gems and why does anyone use them? I have no explanation for it. A gem I keep seeing on tank gear is Glimmering Monarch Topaz. Parry and Defense. Let me tell you the reasons I don’t understand such a gem choice.

• The number one reason is that parry is the weakest of all avoidance stats to gem for. 49.1 parry rating provide 1% parry at level 80. This gem provides you with 8 parry rating. You would need 5 more of those gems for 1% parry. A drop in the bucket, water on a hot stone, it will not make a difference.
• If you think this is a good gem for the defense, it provides exactly the same defense rating that you would get if you used an Enduring Forest Emerald instead. You get the same defense benefit, but your effective health goes up as well.<
• But Kadomi, I want to gem for avoidance, you might say. Then do so. Thick Autumn’s Glow gives you 16 defense rating, almost 4 points of defense skill. Defense rating is by far a superior avoidance stat to parry. 4.9 rating grants 1 defense skill, and 25 defense skill give you 1% dodge/parry/block/miss. I don’t do math (much) but Veneretio excels at it, so if you want avoidance, check out how good defense is.
• Of course the other reason for using this gem might be that you need a red gem, for the socket bonus or for a meta gem. If that’s the case, the parry/def gem is still a poor choice, as Guardian’s Twilight Opal is a much better choice for red sockets. It provides delicious threat and stamina. For those of you who want to see numbers, 32.8 rating grants 1% less dodge/parry for mobs whacking on you. You want to hit the dodge cap at least, as tank (213 expertise rating).
• The last possible argumentation could be that you are gemming because parry offers avoidance plus threat. You don’t get hit and the remaining time on your current swing is reduced by 40% of your weapon speed. Sure, parry has a threat component, but please re-read the part about expertise. Both hit rating and expertise are stronger threat stats than parry by far. This means parry is the weakest avoidance stat to gear for, and also the weakest threat stat.

I think that’s some very good reasons to not use a parry gem. Like ever. You might wonder why Blizzard actually has them in the game, but parry is a lot stronger for other classes. I think. I still don’t understand Death Knight tanking at all, that’s something I’ll have to try sometime, but I think they’re parry-based. Educate me, death knights of the world.

Yesterday I ran H UP, as usual, and it was probably the worst run of it I had for a while. Countless wipes in the Skadi gauntlet because the timing for him landing always sucked with multiple adds up. Frustration was eating me alive, and I actually asked a DK friend to swap in for me because I was sick and tired of wiping, sick and tired of that damn instance.

He told me to stay, and we did one more concerted effort in the gauntlet, finally downing Skadi. Maybe it was just a test of patience for me, because King Ymiron finally coughed up my precioussssss.

So this is for all the plate tanks in the world (aside from those creepy DKs): he really drops that sword. After your 8th Girdle of Bane it might not seem like it, and Skadi does not seem worth the pain to get it, but keep at it, it will drop.