Tank like a girl

Patch 3.3.2 is rolled out on the US realms today, and the EU realms tomorrow. Normally I don’t post about patches much, because there’s tons of sites out there who cover it better than I could, but as there are a couple protection warrior changes coming to us, I need to evaluate how this will impact my playstyle.

• Concussion Blow: The damage done by this ability has been reduced by 50%, but its threat generation will remain approximately the same.
• Devastate: This ability now deals 120% of weapon damage, up from 100% of weapon damage.
• Shield Slam: The damage scaling from block value for this ability now diminishes faster and diminishes starting at a lower block value. The difference should be negligible for players in high-end tanking armor. In addition, the threat caused by Shield Slam has been increased by 30%.
• Warbringer: This talent no longer allows Charge and Intercept to break roots or snares. Intervene remains unaffected.

Let’s look at them one after the other.

1: This will mean CB will likely be pushed out of my rotation and will be relegated to its previously use in TBC: to be used as stun and interrupt on trash or encounters such as Assembly of Iron. I don’t need it to supply threat, I used it for doing damage.

2. Another damage boost to Devastate means that I can pretty much ignore Revenge beyond a certain rage level. Revenge will still deliver the best rage to threat ratio, so at the start of an encounter, in heroics, or in situations where you rage-starved yourself, it’s useful. I am sure people will run threat parses soon, but Devastate spamming sounds more and more attractive.

3. I actually have no idea how this will affect me. It’s not like I have huge amounts of SBV stacked, or ArP in my tanking gear, so I have to test the numbers. At least it will be more threat. Let’s just hope the Devastate buff will compensate overall.

4. This nerf makes me sad, because it cuts into our PvE utility so much. It was incredibly useful in heroics and just felt right to me. Thank you Arena. Not.

As far as other non-warrior changes go, heroics will be simplified across the board, which still makes me long for a heroic heroic switch that must be hidden somewhere in the game. Blizzard, please, if you should ever read my words, remember that there are people out there who don’t mind tough 5-mans. Don’t make me mourn TBC heroics forever and ever.

Furthermore, Toravon will be added to Vault of Archavon and Friends, meaning another opportunity to receive T10 gear without spending hard-earned frost emblems. This means I will have to try to run that every week now, rar.

Oh, and some dude called Lich King will be available as final encounter of Icecrown Citadel. Or so I have heard.

What are your thoughts on the new mini-patch?

-This weekend, my guild had its first ever Icecrown Citadel raid. We’ve never been at the cutting edge of progression and this is like the closest we’ve ever been timeline-wise to starting progression fights. It’s pretty cool. It’s one of the things that I love about WotLK. It truly has made raiding accessible to everyone. We have been able to visit all raid content in the game so far, this would have been inconceivable in previous incarnations of WoW. Kudos!

Now, this first ICC-10 raid was a really different raid for me. It was the first raid I wasn’t going in as progression raid leader and main tank. I recently stepped down as guild officer, after 3.5 years. There were many contributing factors. First, I have no tact. I don’t know if this is a German trait or just me, so I fail at anything that in any form requires tact. When I think someone sucks, I will not sugarcoat it. I won’t be insulting, but I won’t pat on the head either. I will offer advice, but I won’t coddle. As I have posted many times, my guild is all girls. We have little to no drama, but we have a repeating pattern. Girls who have been in the guild for months will leave with absolutely no warning to officers. I don’t know if this is common in other guilds, but it really just happened time and again. Bam, leaving, and mentioning in their apps to other guilds that they did not like something or another about us. The lack of constructive criticism towards the most approachable group of people I have ever met anywhere is baffling. I drew my own conclusion from this: people fear the bad cop, people dislike talking to the blunt, most vocal officer. One of my (many) character flaws is that when I feel pressured and pushed, I will push back and block. But you know what? I was one of 7-8 active officers we had at the time. Even with personal beef against me, there were other nicer, kinder, more gentle people available to talk to, even if it was to complain about me. Never happened. So I bowed out, because I love my guild, and I don’t want to be that officer.

Not being an officer felt like a weight is off my shoulders. I still schedule raids and lead them in off-weeks, but more for my personal pleasure and not with a look at the big picture anymore. On my personal raid to-do list I want to do a Sartharion zerg, because Kadomi of the Nightfall sounds sexy, and possibly Ulduar hardmodes, which should likely be ezmode, but I still want to do them. For fun. After all, WoW is for fun! I am also raid assist for our current raid leader, trying to help her out in any form. We’re a good team, so I think we’ll do fantastically well.

I also did not go in as MT, as I mentioned. In fact, our first night in, I was healing. Now, don’t get me wrong, I know most of you come here to read about tanking. But in all honesty I currently do not feel good about the state of the protection warrior in WotLK. I have tried to avoid making whine posts, but I think most protection warrior bloggers like Tarsus, Linedan and even Veneretio will probably agree with me that currently, we get the shaft. Icecrown Citadel, or maybe progression content in its current form is not made for warrior tanking. Our utility and toolkit is supposed to be the buffer for our traditionally low DPS output compared to all other tanks, but that’s not enough for me anymore. Speaking of the toolkit, how awesome will Warbringer be for us when it no longer breaks snares? Thanks, PvP, I love that nerf. Same with Shield Slam damage. Now, there is a sustained damage buff in the air, and it’s likely going to be Devastate getting another buff. This means we go back to Devastate spamming. Big toolkit. Yay.

Yesterday, I was offtank on our second day in Icecrown Citadel. Never have I felt more useless as a tank than in the Plagueworks. Our current MT is a Death Knight. She’s excellent, I adore her, and she does a great job. She could have solo-tanked most of the trash, I suppose. All those AoE pulls where I hopeless spammed Thunderclap and Cleave til I was out of rage and basically only my current target was on me, everything else on the DK. Or on Precious, with all her zombies, where the same situation occurred that she was doing all the AoE tanking and all I could do was taunt Precious off at the right time. And let’s not speak of Festergut. Dead, dead, dead. Here I was, feeling helpless in battle stance, keeping sunders up, keeping Rend up, keeping debuffs up, pretending I was able to make any DPS contribution. I am not able to say that warriors do not have issues. We do. Please fix us, Blizzard. I’ll be on my ‘main alt’ in the meantime, my shaman.

Enough with the whining. Let’s hear some good stuff!

First off, our raid group is awesome. I can’t say that often enough. They bring it. On Saturday, our first ever visit, we went in and one-shot Lord Marrowgar, Lady Deathwhisper and Gunship Battle. I had a blast healing, and got rewarded for my efforts, with the very sweet Midnight Sun.

Deathbringer Saurfang turned out to be our stumbling block for the night, after an 8% wipe. As we 2-healed this, I felt this was our first real healing challenge, holy crap. Healing a clothie with a Mark is really intense. Our two Blood Beast kiters got some good practice in, and we went back yesterday afternoon. That time I was tanking, not healing, and it was a very amazing one-shot. It was a beauty to behold. Our kiters did a fabulous job, Blood Beasts went down smoothly, our tank transitions were very well timed, and we got our first Mark at about 30%, much later than the day before. I love learning encounters and then kicking their ass.

We moved on to Plagueworks and banged our heads against Festergut for the rest of the day. All in all, I think our raid DPS just isn’t there yet. We need every DPSer to break 4k or it just won’t happen, not in such a tightly tuned encounter. But we did not have everyone break 4k, and those who did weren’t so far above that they compensated for the rest. We cannot carry. I hope that will be in every raider’s head for next time. We cannot carry any DPS. It’s A-game or we will only bring home a huge repair bill. I keep hearing the argument that tank DPS doesn’t decide an encounter, but 100, 200, 500 DPS, it still might mean you beat that enrage timer. I think next time we might have more success with a more execution based encounter as Rotface while we try to solve our DPS problems.

I really did enjoy what I have seen so far, despite my personal disappointment with my own tanking capabilities there. Trash mobs! Traps on the ground to watch for! Rep for killing mobs! You have no idea how excited people were when they got to buy their rings, just like in the good ol’ days of Karazhan raids. Unfortunately I am sitting at 50% rep towards friendly on both my characters now. Next time! The encounters in Lower Spire were all good fun, and especially Gunship Battle made people happy. The Plagueworks immediately set the bar with a lot higher difficulty, starting with the Vrykul trash pulls. It will feel amazing to clear it.

As an aside, I should note that my 24″ monitor I got for Christmas still makes me so freaking happy, and I am in love with my raid UI. Witness my screenshot of the Saurfang kill. Now only try to ignore the stupid quest tracker on the right. Really need to find a way to disable it in raids. I need to write another addon spotlight, to sing the praises for DXE. Deus Vox Encounters is fantastic, I love it, I fully endorse it. Must post about it soon.

There aren’t really a multitude of addons out there that are specifically written to assist tanks. Today’s reviewed addons however are most helpful if you are a tank. I have been using them extensively for a month or two, and I fully endorse them. Originally I had wanted to make a companion video, but that’ll have to wait for another time.

Step 1: to use this, you need to run with name plates turned on. Press ‘V’ and enjoy seeing nameplates over the head of all neutral and hostile mobs.

Step 2: Install Tidy Plates, which is basically an addon to skin the default nameplates Blizzard gives us. TP’s default skin is extreme fug though, if you ask me.

Step 3: Install Tidy Plates: Threat as theme for Tidy Plates. You need to have both TP and the threat module enabled. Runs out of the box, but can be adjusted. You can turn off display of nameplates for neutral mobs, e.g., or adjust size, opacity for the various threat levels.

What does the skin do overall? It makes the nameplates respond based on the amount of threat you have on the mob. If you set the addon in tank mode, nameplates of mobs you currently do not have aggro on, are large and red. Mobs that are aggro’d on you but another player is just about to snag them off you will be framed in yellow. Mobs you hold safely have green frames. The less threat you have, the bigger the nameplate. Especially in AoE situations, this makes actually locating stray mobs very easy, and you can just click on the large nameplate for targetting. You can freely define the threat threshholds that will have the color and behavior of the nameplates change.

In my example screenshot, I have full control over the pull, all mobs are on me. I managed to frontload a lot of threat, the closest party member is only sitting at 4% threat. All green, all safe. But the less threat you have, the bigger the nameplate would be.

 
If you’re strugging in larger pulls, this is a fabulous visual aid, and I wouldn’t want to miss it anymore. On top of that, it has a low memory footprint and won’t tax your resources. Give it a spin or discuss it on Tankspot, as the author is specifically looking for feedback from us.

P.S.: if you are not of the tanking kind, the nameplates have a DPS mode, which means they would be all green for you, if your threat level was safe, and go yellow as soon as you gain threat on the tank to your personal warn level. Big and red when you have pulled aggro. Could be useful, right?

I got a 24″ widescreen monitor for Christmas, and it’s been since TBC since I discussed my whole UI, so expect a dissecting the UI post very soon.

P.S.S.: Another player who tanks like a girl made a demo video. Enjoy, and thanks for the link, Gabbu. Another review can be found over at Pwnwear.

I know that not all of my readers are predominantly tanks. Maybe some of you DPS will read this, or even healers (because it applies to some of you too).

• Read ‘Do not spank the tank‘ over in the WoW European forums. Credit for discovering this gem goes to Heartbourne over at Project Lore.
• When you start running an instance, set your tank as /focus.
• If you are melee DPS, create a macro to assist the tank. It will start auto-attacking the current target of your focus, which should be the tank:
  
#showtooltip Attack
/target [target=focustarget, harm, nodead]
/startattack
• If you are caster DPS, change the macro to:
  
/target [target=focustarget, harm, nodead]


Why the macro, you might ask? Just to provide some kind of assistance to the tank. I play DPS as well, and I always try to assist the tank and not pull aggro inevitably. Based on my personal experience, many people don’t care about marked targets, kill order or /assisting, and this macro would be such an easy fix for a lot of people. Try it, you damage dealers. It won’t hurt anyone, and will not kill your DPS.

As personal appeal: Please do not pull for the tank.

I have seen healers, mages, death knights, everyone and their brother pull. If the pace is too slow, say so, without using the gogogo variation.

Alternatively, I think tanks need to be more resolute, stop taunting off people who pull or kick them. I know I will, because it gets tiresome.

So now you’re a fresh 80, ready to jump into heroic content to get all the things from my shopping list.

First, the good thing: as tank you’ll get groups just about the moment you queue up. We’re still the least played role, even less so than healers, so groups will be all over you.

The bad thing: no one is under as much scrutiny as the tank. There will be times that you join a group and people will start bitching about your health pool, your blue gear, the speed of your pulls.

Here’s Kadomi’s survival tips for fresh tanks using LFD:

• take a deep breath if people complain about your health/gear/skill. Remember that you will be able to find another group the moment you queue up, unlike the possibly bitching healer or DPS. DPS are looking at queue times of 10-30 minutes after all.
• know your stuff. Being a fresh 80 is no excuse for ignorance. Know your rotation. Especially when it comes to building AoE threat. Your DPS will want to lay the smack down and focus fire is often a completely unknown method in PUGs, so AoE threat will be your game.
• learn the pulls. There are no differences in trash pulls between regular and heroics. When in doubt, run them on regular first. Know which mobs are casters, which one are melee, what trash is problematic. Typical examples of trash mobs that you should know on sight and how to handle them: Anub’ar Skirmishers, Stormforged Runeshapers, Dark Rune Theurgist, Twilight Worshippers, etc. Understanding all pulls can make or break a run, especially in an instance like H OK where trash pulls can be somewhat unforgiving.
• be polite. Egomaniac tank divas have a crappy reputation, well within reason. Just because you can get groups more easily than others, you’re not automatically a better player. You are not a special snowflake. You just chose to fill a role others didn’t want to play. Bonus points if you thank your healer for saving your butt on a bad pull. Allison Robert from the wow.com team wrote some choice words for tank divas as well, so I am only re-stating her point.
• don’t rush it. There will be groups that will carry you to success. Overgeared DPS and healers with an endless mana pool make chainpulling easy. But wait a couple pulls into the instance to get a feel for your group. You gain absolutely nothing if you leave behind the fresh healer who’s drinking in the back. Learn to eye mana pools. Being considerate never hurts. As example, I had a newer paladin tank who decided he’d run to the end of the gauntlet in H CoS. Well, he forgot to pick up a couple elites who decided to eat my face off as his healer. He didn’t even notice that I was dead when he called for heals. Pay attention, tanks.
• if you’re a warrior tank, watch the threat meter carefully at the start of an instance, to choose your Vigilance target. Especially if tanking heroics is still new to you, the 10% extra threat from a strong DPSer will be a great boon. Don’t forget to use Vigilance. 
• above all, try to have fun. Gearing up and running instances has never been as accessible as it is today. Make the best of it!

Got your own tips for fresh tanks? Please share.

If you’re in battlegroup Cyclone and ever end up in a group with a female orc tank wearing a Red Winter Hat, don’t forget to say hi to me. Happy holidays, all of you!

The addition of the new 5-mans plus the easy availability of Emblems of Triumph call for an update for the gear list for protection warriors who are just hitting 80. If you follow the list, you should be able to hop into the raiding scene in little time. It’s never been easier.

I will list several pieces of gear per slot. The top piece listed is your entry gear into heroics, and the further down on list, the better the piece.

Head:

• Tempered Titansteel Helm – buy in AH or bring the mats to a friendly blacksmith.
• Helm of the Crestfallen Challenger – 2nd encounter, H Trial of the Champions. Once you’re comfortable with tanking H ToC, this is what you should pick up next.
• Second Helm of the Executioner – Forgemaster Garfrost, H Pit of Saron
• Headplate of the Honorbound/Faceplate of the Honorbound – 75 Emblems of Triumph. Definitely more attractive than the T9 warrior helmet, with tasty amounts of expertise

Neck:

• Titanium Earthguard Chain – buy in AH or bring mats to a friendly Jewelcrafter
• Shard of the Crystal Forest – available for 19 Emblems of Conquest, so you will have to downgrade some emblems. Nevertheless, still a very solid piece, if you don’t dare set foot into the Icecrown instances yet.
• Fossilized Ammonite Choker – Arthas encounter, H HoR. A tough instance and encounter, with a great necklace as reward.

Shoulders:

• Crusader’s Square Pauldrons – common as dirt BoE drop in CoS (reg or heroic). Should be able to pick this up cheap anywhere.
• Regal Aurous Shoulderplates – Confessor Paletress, H ToC. Lovely shoulders from H ToC with a socket. Grab ‘em!
• Shoulderplates of Frozen Blood – Forgemaster Garfrost, H Pit of Saron. Excellent upgrade, with nice expertise. Too bad it has no socket.
• Shoulderguards of Enduring Order/Shoulderplates of Enduring Order – 45 Emblems of Triumph. Spiky shoulders with a nice red socket for expertise or dodge gems. Again, better than the T9 counterpart.

Back:

• 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
• Eerie Runeblade Polisher – Falric and Marwyn, reg. Halls of Reflection. I have revised my opinion, it’s better than the Platinum Mesh Cloak, due to stats being a touch higher. If you are having bad drop luck though, and spare badges, the PMC is still great.

Chest:

• Breastplate of the Solemn Council – Revered with Wyrmrest Accord
• Scourgelord’s Frigid Chestplate – Scourgelord Tyrannus, reg. Pit of Saron
• Hellscream’s Breastplate of Conquest/Wrynn’s Breastplate of Conquest – 50 Emblems of Triumph. Absolutely solid chest for warriors, no complaints here.
• Breastplate of the White Knight – crafted by blacksmiths. With the price of Crusader Orbs dropping every day, this is now a most excellent chest alternative superior to the ilevel 232 T9 chest.

Wrist:

• Tempered Saronite Bracers – 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 unless you invest gold into…
• Saronite Swordbreakers – crafted by blacksmiths. Mats are pretty reasonable, now that Crusader Orbs are available relatively easily. Strong bracers.

Gloves:

• Mercy’s Hold – fabulous gloves from reg ToC, well worth running this until they drop
• Hellscream’s Handguards of Conquest/Wrynn’s Handguards of Conquest – 30 Emblems of Triumph. Cheap to get and one of the better pieces of 232 T9 for warriors, so the route to success is pretty easy here.

Waist: nothing has changed for this slot at all

• 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 should be not too expensive now

Legs:

• Legguards of Abandoned Fealty – first encounter in reg. ToC
• Legplates of Frozen Granite – Devourer of Souls, reg. Forge of Souls. Lots of hit instead of avoidance, but pretty solidly itemized otherwise
• Hellscream’s Legguards of Conquest/Wrynn’s Legguards of Conquest – 50 Emblems of Triumph. Definitely a threat piece, with all the SBV and all the hit, but the best you can get for that slot.

Feet:

• Tempered Titansteel Treads – grab a cheap pair of those crafted boots to start tanking heroics.
  
• Boots of Heartfelt Repentance – Eadric the Pure, reg. ToC. These boots will take you a long way.
• Black Spire Sabatons – Devourer of Souls, H Forge of Souls. Awesome boots, definitely nice to grab.
• Spiked Deathdealers – crafted by blacksmiths, cost a pretty penny, but are most excellent. Two sockets give you an EH edge, so I place them above the Black Spire Sabatons.

If you already have the Spiked Deathdealers, you’re set, if you don’t, save the gold and get the Black Spire Sabatons.

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 the above with…
• Mark of the Relentless – beautifully itemized ring from H ToC, just no defense on it.
• Clutch of Fortification – 35 Emblems of Triumph. Simply perfect ring. Armor, stamina, avoidance.

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
• Glyph of Indomitability – 50 Emblems of Triumph. Clearly a mix of EH (due to the high armor) and avoidance trinket, it’s on use should allow powerful avoidance. For someone who only does heroics pretty useless, but in raids it should rock.

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 – 2nd encounter, H ToC. The turkey knife is nicely itemized and has a socket. As there’s no def on the sword, you might have to gem it for defense.
• Lucky Old Son – Bronjahm, reg. Forge of Souls. If a baby rattle is more your style and you like inherent def on weapons, this drop might be for you. Not a huge upgrade, but slightly higher DPS.
• Falric’s Wrist-Chopper – Falric and Marwyn, H Halls of Reflection. This is it for orc tanks. Go figure that Blizzard had to hide it in one of the most difficult dungeon encounters ever. This is best pre-raid for orcs, however if you’re not one of us, you’d rather go for…
• Rimefang’s Claw – Scourgelord Tyrannus, H Pit of Saron. No wasted item budget on block rating, all around solid stuff. Looks pretty nice too.

Shields:

• 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
• Splintered Door of the Citadel – Falric and Marwyn, reg. Halls of Reflection. Whew, they changed the model, no one wants to carry around a face, trust me.

Ranged:

• Blades of the Sable Cross – makes no sense to buy the engineer gun anymore. Go straight for the thrown weapon for 25 Emblems of Triumph.

To get all Emblem gear listed here, you’d have to spend 25 Emblems of Valor, 47 Emblems of Conquest and 310 Emblems of Triumph. Remember, tanks get instant gratification when queueing up for random heroics, so you can get those emblems faster than any other role. Happy hunting.

So just about a week ago the long anticipated content patch dropped for WoW, supposedly the last one before Cataclysm. Which I can’t quite believe because that would mean either a) Cataclysm is really further along than anyone’s led to believe or b) there is much boredom ahead of us in the WoW.

For someone as burnt out as me, 3.3 is a breath of fresh air, but I do have my concerns. As just about everyone, I have dived into the LFD tool. Since Wednesday, I have been able to buy the 75 emblem Headplate of the Honorbound and the 50 emblem Glyph of Indomitability. Average waiting time in queue for me as tank: about 10 seconds. Regardless of time of day. The time of day thing is of huge importance to me as European on a US server. In the past I was always limited by my timezone and was never able to find groups before 9 pm my time. This is pretty amazing. But I am not fully sold on tanking for full PUGs. Not 100%. Mostly because apparently some people are not happy about my pace. Now, I am a chain puller. I move from group to group as quickly as possible. I will only briefly stop if mana seems low on a healer. But apparently that’s not fast enough for some. One priest actually dropped group at the second boss in Gundrak. The expectations are a bit stressful. But it depends on the group. One run we actually 4-manned, HoL. A rogue was practically afk the whole run, providing a total of 7% to the group’s damage. Just a couple pulls before Loken we finally had enough and voted to kick him.

Really, it’s not been bad at all, but being the PUG tank is more stressful than healing or DPS. Then, I am a funny girl. I got majorly upset by a run that was actually full guild, with some of our newer 80s (though one of them isn’t new). I came out on top damage-wise and that just pisses me off. We missed the CoS timer by a minute. It’s been many months since I last missed the timer, so I was really cranky about that. It wouldn’t have bothered me at all if it was a PUG, but that it was a guild run, that really annoyed me so much.

In the same time that I managed to get all those sweet pieces of tanking gear with emblems, I also managed to run enough instances with my shaman and my DK to buy T9 gloves and shoulders for the shaman and T9 pants for the DK. I really do not ever get to play my DK much at all, and who previously took DKs into a PUG on my server? No one. Now I get groups within 10 minutes and it’s awesome fun. I can go farm stuff and have instances pop up for a break. I love it.

I mentioned concerns up there, and I do have those. First, I am wondering what this will do to a guild like mine. We’re a social bunch, but since 3.3 hit, you look into who’s on and see 8-15 names on in my normal hours, and just about everyone is in a different instance. Very few questions in gchat if people want to group up for instances. Not anymore. Not when it’s so easy to just dive into any heroic. Spinks posted about the changing role of guilds in WoW, and I see her point, but I do worry. As officers we are now setting up one day during the week when it’s all guild runs all the time. We’ll see how that goes.

My second concern is that we’ll all blow through heroics for hours and hours now, but what when you are swimming in Emblems of Triumph? At the end of 3.2 I had 142 Emblems of Conquest on Kadomi, and just about zero desire to tank heroics. Instead, I ran them with my shaman, in order to gear her up. But at the accelerated rate of emblems from the random dungeons, I predict I will be done with Triumph gear in just a couple weeks. And then? It’s not like you can run WotLK heroics for the entertainment factor. Once you’re in any badge gear, all of them are frighteningly trivial. I am leaving out the 3 new ones, I hear Halls of Reflection puts the same terror into people’s heart as Magister’s Terrace did at the time. The rest? I was shocked to see how badly Oculus has been nerfed. You just look at trash sideways and they fall over dead. Everything was ridiculously easy. I have no answer to this, but I expect a sharp drop in heroics popularity soon. Unless everyone and their brother levels yet more alts.

As far as raiding goes, we’re holding out. Despite the allure of ICC, we’re continuing to get more gear on people. Because we focused on clearing Ulduar first (which I am glad we did), our average raider gear-level is more 219, not so much 232. This weekend we had our 3rd TotC clear, and the first one where I felt how easy it is. ToC and Onyxia done in 1.5 hours. We one-shot the Twins easily despite missing the interrupt twice. Nuff said. Icecrown Citadel, we’ll come for you in January 2010. The girls will be rolling in, ready to kick ass and take names. Soon.

So share, what’s up with you guys? How’s your tanking in PUGs been?

3.3 will go live today, which means I have to work on my shopping list for plate tanks very soon. To tide you over in the mean time, let’s look at what tanking goodness expects us in the 3 wings of the new 5-man in Icecrown. Running the wings on normal gets you ilevel 219 loot, on par with Ulduar-10, and running it on heroic gets you ilevel 232 loot, on par with Trial of the Crusader-10.

The Forge of Souls

The first wing offers 2 bosses, Bronjahm, who will clearly be a sex machine, and Devourer of Souls.

• Lucky Old Sun (Bronjahm, normal) – almost identical to Legacy of Thunder from Ulduar-10, with subtle differences (more strength, no expertise, less def and dodge, but parry), same baby rattle model. Not a true upgrade if you already have the Ulduar mace or Peacekeeper Blade, but not bad.
• Sollerets of Suffering (Devourer of Souls, normal) – interesting name, for sure. These boots are for threat, with shield block value on them, so I personally prefer the itemization of Boots of Heartfelt Repentance. Nevertheless, that’s a good amount of stamina and strength on them. Spiked Deathdealers are still the best deal compared to those other two available outside of a raid.
• Legplates of Frozen Granite (Devourer of Souls, normal) – these are pretty strong pants. Socket, oodles of stamina. Very high def and hit which has become a little bit more important for tanks in recent times. Do you know how much a missed taunt sucks? A lot.
• Black Spire Sabatons (Devourer of Souls, heroic) – Now that’s what I am talking about. Those boots are a lot stronger. Still not as good as the Spiked Deathdealers as they have no sockets, but definitely very solid all around aside from that.

Pit of Saron

The second wing has three boss encounters, Forgemaster Garfrost, Krick and Ick and finally Scourgelord Tyrannus.

• Shoulderplates of Frozen Blood (Forgemaster, heroic) – very nicely itemized shoulders, because I love expertise. I keep hovering around the dodge cap, so seeing more expertise on gear makes me happy.
• Ick’s Rotting Thumb (Krick and Ick, heroic) – that’s a disgusting name and with Chill of the Throne in Icecrown, I don’t know that anyone would use this instead of one of the high stamina trinkets. Still, that’s a lot of dodge, and a Last Stand effect for Oh Shit! moments.
• Scourgelord’s Frigid Chestplate (Scourgelord Tyrannus, normal) – another solidly itemized piece of gear. Not as strong as the T9 chest, but a great filler piece until you have enough Emblems of Triumph.
• Rimefang’s Claw (Scourgelord Tyrannus, heroic) – very nice tank sword. Yay for catering to the Alliance masses. QQ for us poor axe-starved orcs, again.
• Icebound Bronze Cuirass (Scourgelord Tyrannus, heroic) – another chestpiece, and probably nice for a hit set. I’ll still go with T9 chest instead, because of the sockets.

Halls of Reflection

The last wing is supposed to be amazing lore-wise. Let’s see how amazing the drops are along with that!

• Splintered Door of the Citadel (Falric and Marwyn, normal) – funny how the doors of the Citadel look exactly like shields from Ulduar. I call mine Harry, btw. But aside from another example of laziness with models, let’s look at the numbers, compared to the Shieldwall of the Breaker. Good news: the first shield available outside of a raid since Culling of Stratholme. Bad news: definitely not as solidly itemized as the Ulduar shield, but good armor, high stamina and defense. For anyone who’s still lugging around the Royal Crest, this shield is fab.
• Eerie Runeblade Polisher (Falric and Marwyn, normal) – Cloaks for tanks are rare as well, so this is a very nice drop. It’s about on par with the Platinum Mesh Cloak, which I still think has a slight edge thanks to the expertise on it, but only a slight edge.
• Falric’s Wrist-Chopper (Falric and Marwyn, heroic) – Well, hello thar. What a mighty fine tanking axe you are. Screw the block rating, I want you. I am an orc, shiny big axes belong in my strong hands. You’re no Ardent Guard, but I love you anyway, because of the expertise. Rar!
• Crystalline Citadel Gauntlets (The Lich King, normal) – That’s a lot of SBV on those gloves, so nice for a threat set. Other than that, not convincing, Mercy’s Hold from ToC or the Conquest badge gloves are stronger.
• Second Helm of the Executioner (The Lich King, heroic) – This is a very fugly model, ew. Blue socket, meta socket, oodles of stamina and high expertise are fabulous. The shield block rating we get dumped on our helmets not so much. But not bad. 
• Fossilized Ammonite Choker (The Lich King, heroic) – very strong necklace. No complaints from me.

And that’s it. As summary, there are a lot of great pieces to gear up people and bring them up to speed with current content. Nothing I found is quite as good as any of the Emblem of Triumph gear nor better than any drops in Trial of the Crusader-10. I willl definitely try to get the axe, and maybe pick up some of the SBV stuff for a threat set (that I mostly use in heroics anyway), but I already have pretty decent gear. For everyone else playing catchup, or who never had much luck in Ulduar-10 or ToC-10, there’s some fantastic gear upgrades to get in there.

Good luck with patching, and have fun with the new 5-man! The upgraded shopping list for 3.3 will be published next week, so stay tuned.

I recently had reason to look over my achievements, and it’s really interesting, to kinda read my guild’s raiding story via achievement dates. My guild started raiding in Ulduar in June. Every second weekend we would venture into Ulduar, plodding through. In mid-June we had our first bigger success, clearing both Siege and Antechamber for the first time. We moved on to the Keepers and managed to get Hodir for the first time a month after first clearing Antechamber. Another month later, we got both Thorim and Freya. Yet another month later we got Mimiron, killing all Keepers. Vezax we killed the first day we worked on him, and since then we’ve been working on Yogg-Saron. We extended twice, re-cleared to him, extended again.

On November 29, we killed Yogg-Saron for the first time, earning us the Secrets of Ulduar achievement. Five months after starting. It sounds like a long time, but it doesn’t feel like it took us that long, because that’s 20 weeks, meaning 10 raid IDs or less. We used the extension feature (am very grateful to Blizzard for implementing this) for Mimiron and Yogg-Saron to squeeze in an extra raid day to work on them.

From a tank perspective, I feel Ulduar offers a lot of very interesting fights, and it’s still a fresher raid to me than Naxxramas will ever be. Despite the relative urge of ToC I can only urge all up and coming tanks to try and go see this beautiful raid instance.

My personal favorites:

• Hodir – It’s a very dynamic fight that requires a lot of movement, maneuvering him around to benefit from moonlight, while still busting ass to keep a threat lead and use of cooldowns for Frozen Blows.
• Thorim – The gauntlet is fast-paced good fun and I enjoy tanking in there. I have yet to tank the arena, and that’s alright, I think DKs and paladins are universally more suited to excel there.
• Mimiron – Another exciting fight where as a tank I feel I can shine. Use cooldowns properly for Plasma Blast, run out safely for Shock Blast, tank the head in P3, and then bring it all together in P4. Getting that first kill was exhilarating, and our first one-shot of him felt awesome.

I generally prefer fast paced fights that are not tank and spank, require movement and smart use of cooldowns. Where I have to struggle to stay alive and ahead in threat, without having to switch targets like crazy.

Fights I do not like that much:

• Ignis – This is mostly due to personal failure on Ignis. I suck at tanking adds in this fight. By the time I have gotten one add Brittle, another is already eating healers for breakfast. As we have an OT who easily handles all adds himself, it must be me. I still find Ignis tuned stupidly for his placement in the raid. Thumbs down from me.
• Freya – The whole area kinda blows. A little bit too much trash, and the encounter itself is kinda aggravating. I think I finally figured out assignments to make the elemental wave no issue, but the Elementals usually made or broke that encounter for us.
• Auriaya – The difficulty of an encounter should not be based on ‘Can you pull her safely or not?’ Also, too much standing around waiting if you miss the perfect time for pulling.

Love-Hate relationship: Yogg-Saron

This has been the most complex encounter of my raiding ‘career’ and I can now understand why guilds broke up over Vashj and Kael. It took us 66 pulls to get him down. 65 wipes. A little over 12 hours of tries. Out of those 66 tries, we got to P3 around half a dozen times, around that number, so that should tell you everything you need to know about this fight. P1 can go horribly wrong, but it can also be executed perfectly. But oh boy, did I contribute to some horrible moments. With three guardians up, I couldn’t see the clouds around me and spawned lots more. There were a couple Leroy moments where my boss mod just went wild alerting me of guardian spawns. P2 was by far the hardest to learn. When we killed Yogg-Saron, we had perfect brain and tentacle DPS. It was the first time ever that we actually had downtime without a single tentacle up. There were no tentacles going into P3.

P3 itself had me shaking with sweaty hands and I was unable to spare a second of attention to pushing my Push-To-Talk button. Others had to do the talking, I was too busy tanking, trying to pick up Immortal Guardians before they oneshot someone. Unfortunately I failed and so our ret pally and our tree druid bit the dust, and we still pulled it off, in a 12 minute kill.

I really enjoy the complexity of the encounter. I love that it’s so challenging as solo tank, which is what we did, going in with six DPS. On the other hand, I felt more pressure than usual on me, because if you fail in P1 and someone dies, it’s basically a wipe. If you spawn too many guardians, it’s a wipe. If you don’t watch your sanity in P2 or suck at watching Brain Link, it’s a wipe. In P3 you need to be ready to pick up Immortal Guardians in that tiny window of 10 seconds, establish quick aggro and hold it against the DPS who are trying to get the guardians down quickly.

Yogg-Saron rewarded me for our diligence, I suppose, because I got the Royal Seal of King Llane that kill, which is amazing luck. Not sure if it will replace the Black Heart or the Brewmaiden trinket. Probably the Black Heart.

This is the first time that we have ever been at a point that we have beaten all raid encounters currently in the game. We haven’t done any hardmodes, but we have beaten all the normal fights. That’s a great feeling. I am looking forward to  new challenges in Icecrown. Right now I need to figure out where we’re going raid-wise in the meantime. Probably that one-room instance that I don’t enjoy so much. Hate Northrend Beasts so much. Or maybe Ulduar hardmodes.

Here’s to hoping Icecrown will be as satisfying as Ulduar was to me.

Thanks for all the support of you friendly readers, I got some great feedback for Yogg-Saron, and all your encouragement to keep at it and not succumb to burnout. Rock on!

It’s been a couple weeks since I last posted, time flies, I know. I am at a very difficult point of time in my WoW lifespan: the time of no goals. This is a first in my WoW time. I have played since March 2005, as Kadomi since April 2006 and yet, there’s always been something to keep me going, always something to do. Right now? Not so much.

My main has all professions at 450. No option of acquiring epic plans through any means. All Northrend reps are at Exalted, the only exception being Frenzyheart, only at Revered. I should maybe finish that up for the Mercenary achievement. I am a Crusader. I am sitting on 126 Emblems of Conquest. I’ve been pondering blowing them on DPS gear and testing an Arms build, but realistically, I am a tank, I never DPS, so there goes that plan. I have seriously considered going ‘goblin’ and I might actually try starting that, earning gold. Without the glyph market though, I am not economically smart enough to sell any glyphs whatsoever. The only shining golden goal I have on Kadomi is to kill Yogg-Saron. On Sunday it’s our third raid dedicated to him, and I am seriously hoping he will finally go down. Yet a goal like killing Yogg-Saron does not actually inspire daily playing time.

My only gear upgrades come from Trial of the Crusader, and even though we’ve tried that several times, something or another always went wrong, which really kinda crushed my raiding spirit. It’s tough time in Kadomi land. :/

My alts have no goals either. My shaman is as pimp as I can get her outside of raids, same for my DK. We have such an incredible tank shortage in my guild right now that there is just about zero chance of me ever raiding on something else. Just writing this sentence makes me feel like a whining crybaby, because in the past we had more tanks and I had to bring my alts to Ulduar and /wristed about it. Other things that make me /wrist is that my tanking confidence comes and goes these days. At times I feel awesome, and then on Hodir I lose aggro to three different people. Or on Ignis I struggle picking up adds in a timely manner. It makes me dread Yogg-Saron P3 so much, as I am going to be the only tank. No pressure! :O

I know I am not alone out there. The ever brilliant Spinks posted about this in her blog. Blogs like Healing Way and Runeforge Gossip closed down because their authors no longer have the fire to be excited about WoW. But I am not giving up yet. When 3.3 arrives, I will dutifully re-write my shopping list for fresh tanks on gearing. I will talk about our first adventures in the new 5-mans and Icecrown. I will have 3 characters to get into Triumph and Frost gear. Who knows, maybe warriors will not be in their usually frozen in time status and see some changes. Heroic Strike fix, anyone? Okay, who am I kidding?

I am not gone, I am just a little bit more quiet now. How are you guys filling your WoW time and keep things interesting? Someone suggested fishing a turtle mount, but fishing negates excitement, okay?