Tank like a girl

Sorry for the long silence, but I moved RL, and have only returned to WoW this weekend.

Today is one of those long dull Tuesdays over here, called Patch Days. They usually mean no playtime til Wednesday, because servers come back so late that it’s bedtime over here. It’s time for 3.2, highly anticipated by many, and strangely enough dreaded by just as many, at least based on the vibe I got from the WoW Twitterati. I am kinda torn on my own feelings about the patch, so here’s my personal look at the patch today.

Pros:

• Warrior changes: Increased radius for our shouts; 100% buffed damage of Devastate; more attack power via Armored to the Teeth; Shield Specialization now grants 5 rage per block, dodge or parry. It’s not a huge buff, but it’s a buff, and I will enjoy the DPS increase and the availability of more rage in all tanking situations. Premonition’s DPS parses showed a big jump for Devastate, which is awesome. Speaking of Premo, check out Xav’s Tank Tests as well.
• Shaman changes: totem bar, Call of Fire to put down totems within one GCD. What’s not to love about that? Also, increased range for all shocks; increased jump distance for CH plus less heal decrease per jump; 2 minute cooldown for Nature’s Swiftness
• Death Knight changes: I am no tank, I don’t like Unholy, so I am happy as blood DK and will go back to the same spec I currently have. Big plus for me: fixed RP cost and fixed duration for Dancing Rune Weapon. This means I can now reliably use it every cooldown, instead of waiting for 100 RP.
• Emblem changes: heroics will find a sudden rise in popularity again, and I get to play the gear game again. This will be a huge help for us in Ulduar and will lessen the gap between my guild’s Naxx raiders and the Ulduar team.
• Trial of the Champion, a new 5-man. Not so thrilled about the jousting boss, but variety is good. 
• Raid ID extensions. This could be hugely helpful for us as we’re trying to push deeper into Ulduar and are still running out of time. I think we’ll use this feature to get more attempts in on the Keepers.
• Nexus instances: drakes scaling with gear. About freaking time. This should make Oculus and EoE phase 3 less painful.
• Bye bye to some addons, welcome to the general UI: Doublewide, EquipCompare, SellFish
• Boosts for twinks: earlier mounts, faster mounts, heirloom cold-weather flying, new heirloom chest. Doesn’t really help me specifically as my lowest played character on Bronzebeard is 66, but I can see how many people will find this helpful.

I am sure I forgot something or another, but that’s all the good stuff I got at a glimpse at the patch notes. I am definitely most excited to see what change I’ll see while tanking, but I think other than a DPS increase, I won’t notice much.

Cons:

• Where’s my fix for Heroic Strike? Since 3.0 the devs mention it, and still, there is no fix. Not even an attempt. I. Do. Not. Want. To. Spam. One. Button
• A jousting encounter. Did I mention how quickly the novelty of jousting wore off, and that I know maybe one person (hi Rilgon!) who actually enjoys jousting?
• The tedious Argent Tournament quests got some fixes that make them even more tedious. 3 Boneguard Commanders, really? Specific mobs for the Scourge quests, so that you’ll have camped mobs? I’ll never do that quest anymore, ever. But as I want to see the new quests, I’ll have to continue grinding it out, to hit Exalted and get the Crusader title. Bleh.
• The Block changes are lame. Diminishing returns on Shield Slam is also not very exciting. 
• Despite having similar combat ratings to Dodge now, Parry is still weaker, and diminishes more quickly than dodge. What’s the point?
• I do not like the change to Tidal Waves for shamans. I will miss my super-fast Lesser Healing Waves.
• Why did Blacksmiths get zippo zilch? Every profession got a boost, blacksmiths get absolutely nothing.
• I don’t care about the new raid yet, because as long as Ulduar isn’t cleared, I don’t want to set foot in there. Strangely enough I feel a bit rushed now.

All things considered, the cons list is not that bad. It could be a lot worse. So, a very mixed bag, this patch. How about you guys, what are your thoughts on 3.2, what do you like, what do you hate? Would love to hear opinions.

It makes me feel a little dirty, this guilty pleasure of mine. I…like to raid DPS. Yes, I have said it. I’ve had a lot of playtime on my Deathknight lately, and oh boy, does she kick ass. If I could change one thing about her, I would make her an orc, but other than that, she’s mighty fine. Now, I shouldn’t exaggerate, I have only been on two raids with her, but I kicked butt, I did. My best fights were Loatheb with 3.900 DPS and Patchwerk with 3.700. Not bad at all!

 
DKs are a very peculiar class. You either see real DPS monsters annihilating the meters or you see mediocrity. Which should make it obvious that yes, you can faceroll your way through life and still do decent DPS, but if you learn and understand how to not faceroll, then you can really shine. Which is just the way it is with all classes, I suppose, but none makes it so apparent as the DK class. I originally rolled Hélle to figure out how not to be a faceroller, not just for myself, but fellow guildies.

I sprang some gold on her to grab dual-specs to test all DPS specs on her. Here’s my personal rundown:

Blood DPS:
I leveled as blood for the survivability. I was disappointed that while leveling I was not able to solo most elite quests, unlike on Kadomi, but I am likely just spoiled. When I hit 80, I tweaked her spec to dump some of the survivability aspects (like Bloodworms) and grabbed some DPS boosts from the unholy tree. Blood DPS plays like old-school prot warrior. A very very set rotation that is all about proper execution. If you are blindly poking buttons, you are losing a lot of DPS here.

My rotation:
Icy Touch-Plague Strike-Heart Strikex2-Death Strike-Death Coilx2 or Raise Dead/Dancing Rune Weapon
Death Strike-Heart Strikex4-Death Coilx2, rinse and repeat.

I am looking forward to the DRW change in the next patch. Not having to wait for a full Runic Power bar will be a great help, it means you can always use it within the first cycle already. At the moment I have to wait at times if the RP bar is not full. Common issues that I see from fellow blood DKs is that they do not Heart Strike enough or sit on their RP. Make sure to dump RP in every break while you wait for runes to refresh! Don’t forget to get a ghoul for a temporary DPS boost and use DRW with full RP bar every single cooldown. It’s a fun spec and does great DPS.

Frost DPS:
Aaaaah. The spec I would love to use as main spec. So much fun. I really enjoy the heck out of it whenever I switch to it, but unfortunately I found it does not do competitive DPS compared to blood on bosses. I have talked to my friend at work who has cleared Ulduar-25 as frost DK and he said at my gear level it’s just not feasible to expect it to do more DPS than blood. Like all DK specs, you have a very set rotation, but much like prot warriors and arms warriors you have to watch your procs. It is important to watch them, and I set up several Power Auras triggers to help me not miss any procs. First proc to watch out for is Killing Machine, and Rime procs. KM procs a lot! This can make for some bursty moments as Frost Strike hits hard (at least now, before it gets its 10% nerf). Rime doesn’t proc as much, but free Howling Blasts are cool. Frost feels a lot more dynamic than the other two specs.

My Rotation:
I went for the Howling Blast glyph instead of Icy Touch, and thus went with this 1-disease rotation:
Howling Blast-Obliterate-Blood Strikex2-Frost Strike RP dump
Obliteratex3-Frost Strike RP dump

I had a harder time tracking when Frost Fever falls off, when it does, you need to replace Obliterate with Howling Blast to refresh the disease. Like all specs you do not want your diseases to fall off ever. As this is very dependent on watching procs, you need to add extra Frost Strikes for every KM proc, plus Rime usage. I will admit to not having fully figured out the best use of Rime yet. Always HB when it comes off cooldown? Hold on to them and Obliterate instead? I’ll let you know when I have had more experience with it. I’ll definitely try to improve on it.

Unholy DPS:
This is the spec that I liked the least of all. I know that everyone and their brother runs around with a perma-ghoul, but I just couldn’t hack it. I tried to like it, I tested it in many heroics, and yet always switched back to blood in frustration. My major issue is that it requires too much micro-management. As melee class I had a harder time controlling the ghoul. I think it’s easier as warlock or hunter to see what the pet is doing but in melee range it was just frustrating. The only way I could stand to play was with the ghoul on defensive, and that is problematic at times. Then you constantly have to refresh Bone Shield to keep the damage buff up, also no fun. Nevertheless, it did have its DPS moments and is solid, but it’s just not for me. Like all DK specs, you have a very set rotation, no procs to watch for, but a pet to control.

My Rotation:
Icy Touch-Plague Strike-Blood Strikex2-Scourge Strike-Unholy Blight-Death Coil
Scourge Strikex3-Runic Power Dump

AoE rotation: Icy Touch-Plague Strike-Pestilence-Death&Decay-Unholy Blight

This is bound to change with the next patch as they’re nerfing Unholy AoE capabilities, including changing Unholy Blight completely.

I definitely recommend playing around with all three trees. Every tree feels very different, subtle tweaks for a different experience.

Some great references if you also want to stop button-mashing:

• Skeleton Jack (yo, Bronzebeard represent!)
• Elitist Jerks as ultimate, theorycraft-heavy reference
• DK Wowhead forums

I have been relatively quiet about what’s currently going on with me in-game, but it’s time to break the silence. Don’t want you guys to think I quit playing or something. The name of my blog is a curse in a way, because I do not spend all of my game-time tanking. It’s what I like best (most days), but it’s just not my only focus in-game.

Alts, a discourse:

• I’ve always had alts. No matter what time, I always have to spend time leveling a character to max-level. It’s not that I love questing so much. Especially in Northrend, repeating quests has very little charm. What I do love about leveling is learning to master a new class. The slow progress through levels, training new skills, becoming better and better. Trying different builds. That’s what I love. And so I will keep leveling and leveling, until a WoW killer comes along.
• My current leveling project is a Death Knight. Oh no, not another death-tard! Armory Mining has shown us that Azeroth is filled with DKs and Paladins these days. Rogues and warlocks are a dying breed. Usually I am a defender of the underdog, playing the least played race and least played classes in my guild (orc, warrior and shaman respectively). Just this once, I wanted the easy life. Kinda like the hunter I deleted at 43, because the easy life was a bit too easy for me. Also, I like playing classes that I have seen played not so great, to see if it’s the class or the player (usually it’s the player). So here’s my DK, rocking the craptastic Northrend quest greens, slowly but steadily leveling: Hélle. I originally rolled her as a pair to do the DK starter quests with my partner, and her DK is called Hiwater. Get it? We are teh funnay! Anyway. My partner detests leveling and questing and will likely never have more than one max-level character, ever. I am on my own now!

  Leveling through Outlands was deceptively easy, but in Northrend the cold reality set in. Unless I am doing something really wrong, you cannot kill elites anywhere as easily as a protection warrior can. Squishy in plate, that’s me. Other than that, it’s super-fast leveling, and with the help of TourGuide + Jame’s addon for TG, I just blast through. 80 is not far away. Already I am making Titansteel bars every day, to be fully prepared. Another reason I really enjoy leveling is the gear game at the end. I already have a gear plan for her. I intend to stay blood for DPS, but want to give unholy a whirl as well. I think she’ll be able to do great.

• There’s also such a thing as primary alt, and that spot is firmly held by my shaman. In fact I just wrote a Naxxramas healing guide for my guild. I have done more Naxx clears as healer than as tank. I am proud that I can strongly contribute to 2-man healing in Naxx-10. I love it that I outheal other healers on Patchwerk. I <3 my shaman. Her gear is pretty much perfect for Naxx-10, with maybe 2 upgrades left, and I can't wait to progress with her. She's also very strong in heroics. She's kinda everything I ever wanted in a healer, more than my paladin ever was. Playing a tank makes me a better healer, because I know when to expect spikes, what pulls are hairy, and when I can afford to DPS instead of hanging in the back. I have her ready to spec elemental, with a gear set that finds me hit-capped, and yet I haven't done it, because I want to heal and not DPS with her, much like I want to tank and not DPS with Kadomi. For me, the 'holy trinity' of MMOs still comes in 3 characters.
• I am already contemplating what character to level next. It should be ranged DPS. As I am full on my main server, I have a couple options. Should I level my 73 warlock, or my 72 boomkin? Should I go back and level the 55 mage I haven’t touched in 1.5 years? Or my 43 shadow priest? Ah, decisions. It’s hard. I have no clue. My other leveling project is on my German realm, but very much on the backburner. I re-rolled a warrior to level efficiently. She’s 20 and then my DK started distracting me. I want to finish that guide though, and I really want to try Arms. I wish she was on Bronzebeard, and I really wish Blizzard would raise the character limit to…15 or so. I have a hard time playing on other servers. I keep toying with the idea of joining a bunch of old friends on Doomhammer, but they’re mostly on Arizona time, so that likely wouldn’t work out either. Aaaah.

So, how about my gentle readers? Do you enjoy leveling? Do you have alts? No time for alts? Hybrid specs to be tank/healer/DPS all in one? Share!

Setbacks are frustrating, aren’t they? As I mentioned before, my guild has a very light raiding schedule, every other weekend. We are currently alternating between Karazhan and Zul’Aman. My own interest lies in exploring ZA some more. It’s still exciting and fresh content for me. However, our raid balance is very wonky. We have four ZA-geared healers, maybe six geared DPS and exactly two tanks. You see the problem, right?

So while our other prot warrior shall go camping next weekend, we’ll head to Karazhan again. *yawn*

Our dire tank situation is actually quite bizarre, as for our last Karazhan we had, what, 5 or 6 tanks sign up. However, a bunch of them are alts. Alts of our main healers. Who are needed as healers in ZA, of course. My new mission as one of the raid leaders will be to schedule people who actually want to move on to ZA tanking.

Heh, maybe it’ll give me another chance for gearing up my own alt in Karazhan, my rogue.

I am getting excited about my next project: Go go Champion-title! It basically is a concerted effort to get a Gruul and Magtheridon kill, two bosses that my guild couldn’t possibly raid on its own. But apparently they must like me that much after all that we are going full-force, filling the rest of the raid slots with friends from our guild alliance. I should note that even though we have a 25-man raid alliance, few of the girls regularly go. Excited! Now gimme all your advice for Gruul, okay? I have off-tanked in the Highking Maulgar fight once, which was not so exciting. Tanking Blindeye the Seer was not the highlight of my tanking career.

I played my boomkin druid instead of tanking, and we headed to Heroic Sethekk Halls to kill Anzu the Raven God. Skirting, played by my other half, tanked her first heroic, and it went pretty fabulously. I think only one wipe? Smooth run, good times. The swift flight form is so perty!

Watch me perch, doncha wish your flight form was hot like me?