Tank like a girl

After all my recent worrying over losing one of two progress-raiding tanks, I have to say that this weekend totally made up for all the worrying I did. Even more exciting, this weekend proved that having two protection warriors in Ulduar means a lot of asskicking too.

On day 1, we progressed very smoothly through Ulduar, downing FL, XT, Ignis, Assembly of Iron, Kologarn, Auriaya, Hodir and Thorim in 3 hours. That’s 8 bosses, 6 of them one-shots, and the two keepers being two-shot. We had an annoying bug on Thorim. We breezed through the gauntlet, I jumped down into the Arena, ready to pick up Thorim, he jumped down as well and despawned. What gives? Very annoying. I finally managed to score a little bit more Ulduar loot, getting Legacy of Thunder off Thorim. Woot!

On day 2, we started with Razorscale, which was extremely confusing. I have never seen so many Sentinels show up in my life. From there we moved to Freya, who really gave us more difficulties than I thought possible. We are still struggling with the Elementals, consistently downing them at the same time is hard. I must read up on strategies for that, because the rest of the fight is really a breeze, it’s only the two waves of elementals that cause us problems.

And then it was time for Mimiron, who I had never main-tanked. The first two tries were wipes that I caused. I did not realize the first Plasma Blast is so early and was too slow with Shield Walling. The second time, Shock Blast ate me. From that point on, it was P4 just about every try. After six wipes, one of our raiders had to leave. We replaced her, and I set a time limit when we would call it. Those last two tries P1-P3 were a dream. P1 over after 2 Plasma Blasts. P2 done with only one Barrage. No issues whatsoever in P3. We almost had it, that perfect execution.

In the last try of the day, people stayed alive. I called out DPS switches, for our ranged to switch over to the middle, then the bottom. It was looking good. The Leviathan tank died, I picked it up, and tanked it, while continuously spell reflecting the Plasma Balls from the head. Two DPS went down, we had a battle rez, then another DPS death. Numbers were ticking down. I was too rattled to call out more switches, DPS intelligently did it on their own. First part went down, then the dreaded self-repair bar showed up and then, boom!

 
It was pretty deafening on Vent, and I squealed loudly too. I think this moment beats our Hex-Lord kill as favorite raiding moment for now. It was pretty amazing. I am so freaking proud. We don’t even raid every week (though we kinda have since the extended raid lock, more often than not), and it took us 19 pulls spread out over two different raids, to kill one of the two big challenges in Ulduar. Next week I expect us to down General Vezax, and then we’ll pay a visit to Yogg-Saron. I am so freaking excited.

 
We had a fabulous guest raider again, Naissa, who tanked in Ulduar for the first time ever, and did a fantastic job at it. She kindly posted more screenshots, and I totally want her computer. If that’s not some badass screenshots, I don’t know anything.

I receive a lot of questions from newer tanks via e-mail or I read about struggling tanks who are getting discouraged, in a world where a WoW Heroes score seems more important to PUGs than actual skill. But it’s never been easier than today to get awesome tanking gear in little time. Don’t let the snobs discourage you and stick to your game plan. Consider all my previous gear lists irrelevant after the big gear reset of 3.2. Here’s your ticket to fabulous tanking gear that will find you ready to tackle Ulduar-10.

I will list several pieces of gear per slot. The top piece is your entryway into heroics, the second or third piece your gear progression.

Head:

• Tempered Titansteel Helm – buy in AH or bring the mats to a friendly blacksmith.
• Helm of the Crestfallen Challenger – Once you’re comfortable with tanking H ToC, this is what you should pick up next.
• Conqueror’s Siegebreaker Greathelm – buy this one last with 58 Emblems of Conquest, as the above is superior until the 4pc T8 bonus.

Neck:

• Titanium Earthguard Chain – buy in AH or bring mats to a friendly Jewelcrafter
• Shard of the Crystal Forest – excellent 19 badge purchase

Shoulders:

• Crusader’s Square Pauldrons – common as dirt BoE drop in CoS (reg or heroic), which seems to be the daily on my server just about every day. Should be able to pick this up cheap anywhere.
• Regal Aurous Shoulderplates – lovely shoulders from H ToC

Cloak:

• Cloak of Peaceful Resolutions – Honored with Wyrmrest Accord, your companion for a long time
• Platinum Mesh Cloak – still a valuable buy at 25 Emblems of Valor

Chest:

• Breastplate of the Solemn Council – Revered with Wyrmrest Accord, which should take you right to…
• Conqueror’s Siegebreaker Breastplate – earn 58 Emblems of Conquest, buy it, hug it, gem it, love it

Wrist:

• Tempered Saronite Bracers – This is our problem slot, there is very very little selection. Starting out with the crafted bracers should be sufficient to get you to…
• Bindings of Dark Will – in H CoS, a fairly common drop off the 2nd boss
• Bracers of the Herald – H OK, the best you can get outside of a raid instance.

Gloves:

• Mercy’s Hold – fabulous gloves from reg ToC, well worth running this until you receive it.
• Gauntlets of the Royal Watch – a sweet deal at 28 Emblems of Conquest

Waist:

• Waistguard of the Risen Knight – common BoE drop in H DTK, should be cheap.
• Ancient Aligned Girdle – a direct upgrade in H A-N
• Shieldwarder Girdle – available for 28 Emblems of Conquest, unless you want to get yourself the crafted…
• Indestructible Plate Girdle – made by a friendly blacksmith, mats might be a bit steep

Legs:

• Legguards of Abandoned Fealty – from reg ToC, absolutely fabulous starter pants, and should be more than sufficient for raiding. I raided Ulduar-10 in worse!
• Wyrmguard Legplates – a lot of item budget is wasted on block rating and SBV, but these are the highest ilevel legs outside of raid instances. I personally would not purchase them if you have the above, and wait for a raid drop.

Feet:

• Boots of Heartfelt Repentance – yet another strong drop from Trial of the Champions. These boots will take you a long way.
• Spiked Deathdealers – crafted by blacksmiths, cost a pretty penny, but are most excellent

Rings:

• Titanium Earthguard Ring – fabulous ring, crafted, save up some gold and profit
• Signet of the Accord – BoE drop in Obsidian Sanctum-10, should be up in the AH or…
• Keystone Great-Ring – if you’re still def-capped anyhow, drops in H Drak’tharon Keep
• Alternatively any of the blue tanking rings from heroics. Eventually replace one of the above with…
• Mark of the Relentless – beautifully itemized ring from H ToC, just no defense on it.

Trinkets:

• Seal of the Pantheon – regular Halls of Lightning. Should it just not drop, have Dabiri’s Enigma or Adamantine Figurine as standby.
• The Black Heart – the sacred grail of stamina, available in regular ToC

Main Hand:

• Wanted: Ragemane’s Flipper – start out with any of the quest rewards as per race and personal taste.
• Axe of the Sen’jin Protector or Teldrassil Protector – if you enjoy the Argent Tournament Dailies, these are available for 25 Champion’s Seals.
• Peacekeeper Blade – replacing the H UP sword as best available tanking weapon from heroics, this vibrating turkey knife is where it’s at. Stuff a def gem in it if necessary. Available in H ToC.

Shield:

• Titansteel Shield Wall - crafted by blacksmiths
• Royal Crest of Lordaeron – with a lead on avoidance, this drops from H CoS and is still your best bet outside of raids

Ranged:

• Armor Plated Combat Shotgun – crafted by engineers, and still the best in the slot for us.

Before anyone mentions that I did not list any of the Emblem of Triumph upgrades, they’re not the purpose of this post and I greatly recommend the ever fabulous Tankingtips.com to help you spend your hard-earned EoTs.

I was really looking forward to posting about raid progress for my raid, but I am afraid we took a good few steps back since I last posted about raiding. It’s been rough to deal with, but I guess as raid leader you have to learn how to deal and keep on moving.

We pushed to get to Mimiron again last raid, but as we didn’t down Thorim on the first day due to lack of time, we didn’t have enough time to tackle Mimiron on the 2nd day. On top of that, I was there on my death knight, as DPS, and all the tank drops that never happened before were raining down on the guild. We did four bosses on day 2, Razorscale, Ignis, Thorim and Freya. Four bosses, four tank drops. Two pieces went to an offspec-tank, the MH went to a tank from another guild who had filled in to help us out, and the trinket went to our main tank who after the raid informed me that she was going to gquit. I kinda deflated, because losing a tank is a huge deal in DotH. Another tank had just faction-transferred out, and that leaves a big gaping hole for our Ulduar progression.

I extended the raid ID, had a full roster for Mimiron attempts, with an excellent lineup. But our second tank from outside the guild was sick, one of the healers dropped out, one of the DPS didn’t show. We tried to fill the raid, to no avail, and so yesterday I had to call a raid completely, for the first time ever since Zul’Aman. It’s likely going to be like this for a while. All I can do is to just keep on organizing raids, hope we can eventually get another tank to fill the second slot, and tank my heart out.

On a more positive note, Naissa transferred her priest to Bronzebeard and she’s been filling a healer spot in our last raid, for her first real visit to Ulduar. It was pretty exciting to show her how cool Ulduar is, I am not tired of that raid yet.

I am pretty much done gearing Kadomi up with Emblems of Conquest, that didn’t take very long. At the moment I run the heroic daily every day that I can squeeze it in, for my 2 Emblems of Triumph. My new shoulders are 14 days away, I can do it! I already spent 35 of them on my new spiffy ring.

As I usually fill in as DPS instead of healer these days when I am not tanking, my DK is now next in the gearing up process. Combined with that, I am still working on making frost dual-wielding DPS work for me. I like the spec, I enjoy the playstyle, and I feel it requires a lot more skill to make it work, compared to the ‘set in stone’ rotation of a Blood DK. On trash my results are very mixed, without Rime procs I feel pretty gimp compared to blood. Thanks to the Heart Strike nerf in 3.2.2, this will soon no longer be the case, as blood will no longer be so OP on trash pulls. I did a full Naxx clear with my guild and kept switching back and forth between blood and frost. Patchwerk saw me at 4595 DPS, which I think you could call successful. My eyes are shining at the thought of what I’ll be able to do with some T8 gear on instead of my T7, and with a better off-hand than my blue Ebon Blade sword. Exciting.

My my, time flies and I keep forgetting to post on Kadomi’s Blogroll Fridays. But today, I am back in business, and I bring you the blog of a fellow horde protection warrior: Achtung Panzercow!

Not only is this name made of win (yup, sucker for German references, German language represent!) but Linedan is posting one of the most solid guide series out there, how to level from 1-80 as protection warrior. He’s basically doing what I wanted to do and kinda fell flat on, he’s leveling another warrior, to show you how it’s done protection-style. Leveling builds and guides are still really popular, and you’ll be hard-pressed to find a better one out there.

So get the good stuff from Linedan and add him to your prot warrior blogrolls, well worth the read.

In June I received an e-mail asking me if I would consider an interview for the WoW magazine of the Swedish magazine Level about my experience as officer in an all-girl guild. I thought, sure, why not, and had a ball with answering the questions about my guild. Then I moved in July, completely forgot about it, and only on Monday did I remember to follow up on this when I saw Ensidia’s Kungen ask around for a copy of the magazine with an Ensidia article in it. Hmmm, they cover Ensidia and MY guild?

One of the cover stories of the current issue is ‘Tjej Guild’ which apparently means Girl Guild! Yesterday I received the layout screenshots, and a copy of the magazine will be shipped to me here in Germany. I just about fell over and died when I saw that my little interview and the couple screenshots I sent are a six-page spread.

Here’s a sample of the article:

The magazine is still on the shelves until mid-October in Sweden. For all us non-Swedes out there I’ll re-post the original English interview once the magazine is no longer on the shelves. If you are in Sweden, you should totally buy the magazine and read about me and Daughters of the Horde. I am totally stoked, this is probably one of the coolest things ever to happen to me.

That’s one of my favorite lines whenever I pug on my DK. Whenever I see some tank doing something silly, I keep thinking ‘Dude, go back to tanking school!’. But there is no tanking school. We all have to learn the basics from experience, with no experience you cannot obtain the skills.

As tank in a group, you have the ability to control a pull and set the pace for your whole group. While in the beginning, you will probably pull carefully, once you understand the basics, you can proceed through instances and raids at a steady pace. That is the skill that the non-tanks in the group will appreciate the most. It will also enable you to move your raid through farm content quickly once you start raiding. You should never be shy and insecure about pulling. Someone’s gotta get the ball rolling.

Trash is inevitable when doing group content, and usually comes in groups of 3-4 mobs. When faced with new content you’re not completely familiar with there are some easy guidelines you can follow.

• Are there any mobs that look like casters? Blizzard makes it relatively easy to spot those. Guys in dresses, most female Vrykul, dragonkin wearing hoods, they’re all identifiable as casters at a glance and should probably be killed first. Often the name also hints at their abilities. Casters should generally die before any melee mob, because they often have abilities that damage all group members, silence, heal, all the nasty stuff that clothies do. Healer-types should die before normal mage-type casters. This is e.g. why you usually kill the shaman in ToC before you kill the mage.
• If there are no obvious casters, pick the mob that looks the biggest. Yes, sometimes it is that easy. Size usually signifies how hard mobs hit so you want to kill the big guys first.
• If there is no obvious size or name that hints at a mob hitting like a truck, you have free pick. Should you spot a mob that looks like it does ranged DPS, like a hunter (e.g. in Utgarde Keep) you want to pick them first, just because their mobility and uncanny habit to go back at range are irritating.

Clustering

This is an important concept that every tank should live and breathe. Every class has different tools for clustering a pull (though I think feral druids got the shaft here?). Until level 80, we only have Charge available to cluster a pull but at 80 you receive a very powerful tool, Heroic Throw. But first, what is this Clustering? It means that you pull and keep all mobs in the group tightly together, so that your AoE tanking abilities like Thunderclap, Shockwave and Cleave all have their full effect on the group. It means that somehow you manage to bring ranged mobs into your range and keep them tanked together with the melee. You cannot build threat on a mob that’s outside of your range, risking healer or DPS death due to being unable to maintain proper threat.

Our tools for clustering:

1. Charge. Tried and true, it’s a bit more effective for pulling now than it used to be in the past. 2 melee and a caster? Charge the caster, keep the group in place. Is there another group close by and you’re not 80 yet? Warn your group, pull the caster, run out of range of the caster’s range, let him come towards you, Charge. If you’re just pulling with a gun and you do not use the opportunity to Charge, you should get used to it.
2. Heroic Throw. At level 80 you receive Heroic Throw, which will make Clustering even easier. If you picked Gag Order (and why wouldn’t you), HT will silence a mob. The above mentioned pull would be even easier now. Heroic Throw the caster, have them all run towards you, then boost your rage by charging at the group as they come running at you. Thunderclap, then position yourself for Shockwave, and they should be all yours. But not only does Heroic Throw silence a caster, it also causes quite a bit of front threat. If you’re pulling and HT is up, use it.

Now assume we have a group of two casters and two melee (like e.g. dragonkin in Nexus or Vrykul groups in Utgarde Pinnacle). The above-mentioned method usually means you have three mobs charging at you, and one caster staying behind. Sub-optimal! If you now try to just move your group to the other caster, you will end up with the same situation, as the other caster will stay behind. Soon, all hell might break loose. To cluster a group like this takes practice, but I love ‘em, because we get to use our tools. Set your /focus to one caster, Heroic Throw your focus target, and then charge the other caster. The silenced caster and the melee will come to your Charge target, eh voilà, your pull is clustered. Thunderclap, Shockwave once you’re in position, tank, loot, repeat.

Another way of clustering that I see tanks struggle with is when it’s ranged mobs, like the hunters in the Nexus hallway with the Commander. Pro-tip for clustering ranged hunter-mobs: go into their melee-range, then slowly strafe away to where another hunter might be. The secret is to not move too quickly. As long as you stay in their melee range, they will follow you around. They are that dumb. So imagine a group of iceblocks with two hunters and a berserker in H Nexus. Charge one hunter, then walk her over to the other. TC while you’re strafing, Shockwave once in position.

I keep mentioning ‘Shockwave once you’re in position’. Our 51 point talent is an amazing talent, very fun to use but it does require proper execution to work. If you are struggling with this, I highly recommend practicing in my favorite farm spot for rhino meat in the Storm Peaks. Find one of those large groups of roaming rhinos, Charge into the aggressive rhino, use Demoralizing Shout to aggro all the yellow ones and then position yourself. Shockwave is a frontal cone effect within 10 yards, so mobs to the sides of the cone or behind you will not get hit. You want all mobs to get hit by it. The easiest way to accomplish this is to Charge in, Thunderclap and then walk backwards, one or two steps, before using it. The frontal cone will hit more mobs this way.

If you want to test clustering with mixed caster-melee groups, the fortress of the Scarlet Onslaught not too far from Naxxramas in Dragonblight is good. Densely packed with mobs, you can test your moves there. Any area that has a lot of caster mobs mixed in works to practice this.

I might follow this up with a companion-video if there’s any interest. If you have any advice, suggestions or questions, please do let me know.