Tank like a girl

I called it, didn’t I? Back in March, when Blizzard announced their 3-tiered Emblem plan for 3.1, I posted my critical view of their plan, and how it would kill heroics.

Turns out I was right. Since my DK hit 80, I was able to get her into 3 PUGs. One was OS-25, the other two were H UK and H CoS. It seems easier to PUG 25-mans than to actually find groups for heroics. Thankfully, my guild is accomodating, and so I have been on quite a few heroic runs. Yet whenever I am on and park myself in LFG, nothing happens whatsoever. I click through LFM for all heroics, and there’s a sporadic person or two but that’s about it. I would love to see numbers for this, but I am sure Blizzard has noticed an impact, or they wouldn’t have announced their rather surprising and drastic measure to fix things: bye-bye, 3-tiered system, hello 2-tiered system. I just wish they had done this for 3.1 and not for 3.2.

In an ideal world, Blizzard would have phased out EoHs in 3.1. Heroics and T7 content would have awarded Emblems of Valor, T8 content both 10 and 25-man would have awarded Emblems of Conquest. Both kinds of emblems would have had an option to downgrade to EoH for BoA gear, gems and entry-level raid gear. Does this sound familiar? Oh yes, because that’s exactly what they’re doing for 3.2. It would have solved some fundamental issues that the 3-tier system introduced. At least they’re trying to fix it now. I am really hoping they’ll stick to the 2-tiers for good, whenever they introduce the next raid’s Emblems of Uber-Awesome.

• People would still have had a reason to run heroics, to gain gear of ilevel 213. This would be a step up from EoH gear, but not overly so. At the time 3.1 was introduced, people were already done with their respective content for the most part, so hardcore raiders were diving into ilevel 226 or higher raid gear right away. Not a huge gap.
• Currently, people who are running 10-man content exclusively are looking at a very low ratio of Emblem-to-gear reward. After two Ulduar raids, I have 10 Emblems of Valor, and we are doing a lot better than other guilds who raid casually. Still, my first EoV purchase is quite some time away, and it is often gear that I can actually replace with Ulduar drops. It feels like a thing on the side, not a reward. To maximize your gear, you would still need to jump in on Naxx-25 farm runs, something that a lot of us casual 10-man raiders either do not want to do, or cannot.
• Rewards aside, a lot of WoW players that also raid seem to forget one thing: heroics are something that a lot of people enjoy, for their own sake. Encouraging people to enjoy what used to be the heart of the game is not a bad thing, IMHO.

Reactions about the badge change are very strong, e.g. over at Destructive Reach. There are people who immediately say ‘Hell yeah!’, and those are most often people on the casual end of the spectrum, or people with lots of alts. And Twitter was full of people who were shocked because they are upset that people who might never set foot into a raid instance will have access to Ulduar-25 level gear. I can understand the criticism, it’s a drastic departure from their (not very) old system. One argument that I read was that’s outrageous because people who don’t raid don’t need access to such gear. But who’s hurt by non-raiders having such gear? Egos. Yes, hardcore raiders work hard to get access to gear, but they have access to hard-mode drops, Best-In-Slot gear, the vast pool of Ulduar drops, so how does that hurt them? Assuming you have talented people who unfortunately are just some time behind the expansion time curve, they will now be able to gear up and maybe be recruited for guilds that are already in Ulduar. It’s possible.

The only really strong negative reaction that I have with this change is that it will re-introduce farm raids. Karazhan was farmed to death for Badges of Justice when the Sunwell heroic gear was introduced. I imagine Naxxramas will be similarly farmed. This is a step back for my guild and I refuse to conform to it. While I will still set up Naxxramas raids to gear new raiders, I do not want to raid Naxxramas forever. We have Ulduar to clear, and then move forward to Argent Coliseum, and then to Icecrown.

I am not 100% convinced it will actually go live. If Blizzard changes anything around, I do still hope EoH are phased out for EoV instead. We will see. But all I am really asking for is that people look at the change as a fix for something that Blizzard really broke, instead of the slap in the face that Ulduar raiders perceive it as. Also check out Aurik’s view over at /hug, it’s a view I pretty much agree with.

As I have posted before, 5-man content is probably my favorite content. Give me a good guild group, and heroics are the most awesome fun that you can have. Hell, even Suckulus was fun, if really frustrating. WotLK did a lot of great things with 5-mans. The length is ideal, they’re fast-paced, they’re diverse. Good job. On the other hand, I personally find it too easy to get into heroics, people diving on the first day at 80 is common, and for a casual player it takes away some of my personal sense of progression. The latter might just be me.

The reward ratio for running heroics is great. You get Emblems of Heroism, and the gear drops are clearly superior to normal instances, and sometimes on-par with 10-man raid drops. The emblem gear offers a relatively small selection of great items to gear up with, including T7 tokens for the perpetually unlucky or those who’d rather not count on RNG to get their bonuses. I personally was never concerned about the low number of things you could buy for your emblems, I reckoned the emblem vendors would receive fresh gear sometime. It’s here where I was completely wrong apparently.

In 3.1, Blizzard is introducing the Emblem of Conquest. Said emblems will drop in the new 25-mans, that is Ulduar and whoever that new Wintergrasp boss is going to be eventually. People who run Ulduar-10 will get Emblems of Valor off every boss, the currency that’s currently used in all existing 25-mans. Ulduar-10 raiders are supposed to gear up with the Valor reward gear that current 25-man raiders are already wearing. There will be no gear on either the Valor and the Heroism vendors.

What does this mean for the crowd that likes to run heroics? It means that you will sit on a large pile of emblems that you can only use to buy heirloom items for twinks, blue gems (which will likely go worthless when epic gems are released), or frozen orbs. I’m already at a point where I have spent emblems on everything that I wanted and am now only pondering offspec gear. I understand the reason, I do. It’s to fight the battle of complaints from the raiding hardcore, how casuals were able to get gear on par with T5 without ever setting foot into SSC or Tempest Keep. Badge-farming in Kara was hip back then, easy content rushed through for badges. I mean, when WotLK hit I was wearing all the Sunwell badge gear, some pretty great pieces of gear. I am not crying because I want uber-awesome epics for my heroics fun-time. I just want something more, something new for people who primarily run heroics. Fun-toys, non-combat pets, something.

The emblem change has already taken the wind out of my sails in regards to running heroics. I just got the Northrend Dungeon Hero achievement. I could try the heroic achievements for the proto-drake, but that’s about it. I won’t be the only one feeling like that. The raiders certainly won’t want to run heroics at all, why bother? For me it makes heroics pointless, until they add more 5-mans, if that’s in the books at all.

Will you continue to run heroics when 3.1 hits the live realms?

That’s my name for it, and I am sticking to it. Not too long ago, Blizzard asked for feedback on heroics and ran a poll on which one’s the toughest. The Oculus came out on top by a large margin. Now, I needed one more instance run for the Northrend Dungeon Hero achievement, and we finally decided to try this with a guild group. It was with some of my favorite people, great DPS, awesome heals, and yet, it turned out to be the most sucktastic instance I have run for a very long time. Really, it makes all other heroics look fantabulous.

Let me count the ways. First, you have those extremely annoying whelp pulls that are nightmarish to tank. They’re all ranged, and spell reflect does only so much. Just annoying. Then you have the element of flying around on drakes that don’t have the abilities of the final encounter, so if you’re reckless, you can’t even get healed. Get separated? Too bad. Then you have Mage-Lord Urom, one of the most melee-punishing bosses I have seen for a long time. We’re usually melee-heavy, so it’s suckage. But ultimately, you end up with Ley-Guard Eregos, in the only encounter of the game that you can never outgear. We wiped on him for three hours. Three hours of my life I’ll never get back. And of all the wipes, just about most of them were 2% wipes. A couple 50ish% wipes, and then 2% wipes for the rest of the instance. Inbetween we had to reclear whelps to get new drakes. Then wipe some more. It was almost 4 am my time when we finally got him down, and, well, let’s say I got a unique perspective to his death, as I fell to my own when he had 11k health left. Yes, nekkid Kadomi action, how ’bout dat?

 
We all vowed to never go back. I know there’s people who read this blog who have all the Oculus drake achievements, and I have to say, kudos to you. I have no idea how you did it. We tried 2 ruby, two emerald, one amber. 1 ruby, 3 emerald, 1 amber. Back to 2/2/1, and that was how we killed him.

Dungeon Hero is done, but I doubt I could ever get the proto-drake, simply because of Oculus. Ugh.

I wish I could say it’s been a hugely successful week in Kadomi-land, but I guess I’ll get there eventually. I didn’t PUG as much as I thought I would, it was mostly almost full guild-groups, as I mentioned. I managed to complete the easy heroics at least, with some blood, sweat and tears. I had a very good Nexus run with only two accidental wipes, and then a disastrous, called Violet Hold run. It makes me dread going back. The next day I grabbed a couple guildies and friends, and we ran Utgarde Keep and Nexus and it was ugly. Extremely wipetastic, so many tank-deaths, I felt like a noob again. Our healer had terrible lag in Nexus in particular and thus I went down so many times. It was a really low point in my tanking career, felt a lot like when I was an undergeared fury-spec scrub wiping the floor in Shadow Labs.

Nevertheless, I don’t give up easily, so the next day Drak’tharon Keep was the daily, I grabbed two guildies, managed to snag the PUG healer of the successful Nexus run, and had a smooth and easy run with no wipes. The Prophet kill was a bit messy, but all in all, excellent run. Some trash was so kind to drop Waistguard of the Risen Knight, which was a huge upgrade, and the final boss dropped Keystone Great-Ring. Wearing the ring and no def trinket my defense is down to 535, but that’s fine for heroics, and I am only waiting for 3.0.8 now to get fully enchanted for raiding. Today I promised to help the most-geared guildie who’s been pugging heroics and Naxx like crazy with Halls of Stone, so wish me luck.

Speaking of raiding, I just scheduled our first Sartharion/Archavon (if up) raid for the last weekend of January. Should give people some time to gear some more and get their stuff together. If we can make it happen, it looks like I’d be tanking, but that also means we might be short a healer. I’ll know more soon.

During the weekend, I mostly played my shaman, for several heroics, including one I hadn’t done on heroic, Halls of Stone. I think the tuning of the instance is like completely off. All bosses are a walk in the park, no challenge whatsoever, but the freaking Brann Bronzebeard event? Eight wipes, always at around 30 seconds til end of the event. The amount of mobs just got too insane at that point. Even in our successful try, most of the group was down, we got lucky. As a healer I felt the whole event was unbalanced. Searing Gaze starts at about 3:25 into the event, anything before that was easy to heal. There was not that much damage. Then you get Searing Gaze, people standing in it a tick too long, mobs everywhere, golems stunning you, etc. I know it’s supposedly easy-peasy tanking on the stairs, but that’s where mobs were tanked, and it still didn’t work out easily.

Speaking of the difficulty of heroics, it’s like back in TBC. The raiders are all saying ‘Yawn, heroics are caek, lol Blizzard we want more content’. The non-raiders who are just starting heroics, especially the ones with low DPS, they struggle. Blizzard recently started a poll asking which heroic is considered the most challenging, and the comments are full of ‘lol, where’s the option none’. Bothers me. But then, it’s the official forums, what to expect?

I managed to get the Northrend Dungeonmaster achievement plus my first heroic under my belt since I posted I would start doing PUGs. Kudos to WoW Armory, a wonderful plugin for WordPress. *points to her sidebar*

Normal Utgarde Pinnacle was alright, but I felt that I wasn’t on top of my game in the gauntlet. I was incredibly rage-starved and the fight lasted forever. Normal Oculus was just as painful to tank as it was to heal, and I don’t think I’ll want to go back on heroic anytime soon. Both of these runs were full guild-runs.

Heroic Nexus was done with 3 other guildies, plus a tree druid we pugged. Instance went fine, though I still want to strangle the hunter who had less than optimal pet control and pulled Commander Stoutbeard early. Full of confidence, I went into Heroic Violet Hold right afterwards, this time we pugged a paladin healer. I came out again with shattered confidence and one emblem of heroism.

As first boss we had Ichoron, whose mechanics overwhelmed most group members completely. It just didn’t work. There were gazillions of adds, I took so much damage, and it was frustrating as heck. It took us four tries to get Ichoron down. On one of the tries, the instance bugged out on us and we had multiple portals open at the same time. Even before the first boss we already had 7 portals open. Eventually we got Ichoron down, fought down waves and what second boss do we get? Zuramat the Obliterator. Again, no one (including me) knew how to deal with him and we wiped spectacularly. When we went back in and it started at portal 1 again, I just folded, as it was past 2 am my time, and I had been in the instance for well over an hour.

Very frustrating, as my last visit there as healer saw us out of the instance in 25 minutes, with Ichoron and Lavanthor as bosses. I will say I believe DPS was a huge issue. 1k DPS just doesn’t cut it in a heroic, no way. Is it that common to come out on top as prot warrior or am I still running with DPS that’s not quite there? Okay, likely a rhetorical question.

Summary: Fail guild groups are more soul-crushing than fail pugs.

I had a fabulous WoW weekend. Really tons of fun. As usual I did not have luck with the Hyldnir spoils, and my Mysterious Egg got me nothing but Aged Yolk, but there’s always the next spoil bag or the next egg. Kadomi is oodles of fun to play, and I enjoy pushing the DPS in my group to bring it. At least in guild groups I usually end up 2nd if not 1st, with my Deep Wounds build. Eternally Folded Blade is a myth. If my luck’s like that when I start doing the H UP runs, then woe is me.

But back to my weekend. I ran my very first couple of heroics. As healer, that is. In fact I managed to get 29 Emblems of Heroism this weekend, and my shaman bought her first piece of new badge gear. I had a blast! Healing is fun. Being the tank-healer team with someone right across from you is great. But it does not solve the dilemma that I have an epic-geared alt and a neglected main. This must change.

This place will continue to be ‘Tank like a girl’ because you can read everywhere else how to heal. My passion is for tanking, for being a meat shield, and for being pretty darn good at it. I will follow the current trend and will learn to love the PUG, just like Drug from Shields Up! and Namthe from The View from Down Here recommend to people. A ret paladin friend has declared she’ll help me and will come along, and soon the pages of this blog will be filled with entertaining tales of PUG adventures. At least that’s the theory.

In truth, I can absolutely see the merits of PUGs. Back in TBC when I first started tanking, I ran PUGs extensively. Almost all experiences were positive, and you sure learn a lot. I know a lot more since then. It’s not as if I don’t get a lot of whispers to tank this and that heroic. Instead of categorically saying no, I will embrace them, if I cannot get a guild group. I am done with all the basic rep grinds for gear and stuff like enchants, as I’ll be Exalted with Sons of Hodir later today. It’s time to try all the easy heroics. Hell, if I can heal all the easy heroics, I sure will be able to tank them.

There, it’s posted, now I will have to do it. Hopefully I can entertain you with great stories soon.

What’s your take on it, do you PUG, do you never PUG?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 
Trash:

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

Krik’thir the Gatewatcher:

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

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

Hadronox:

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

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

Again, absolutely no loot any prot warrior could use.

Anub’arak:

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

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

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

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

Happy Turkey-Day, American readers, and happy Thursday to everyone else.

The Nexus is the second Northrend instance, located in the Coldarra in Borean Tundra. To get there, get the dragon flight point at Amber Ledge. This instance is supposed to be for the range 71-73, and offers four very fun boss fights, good rewards, and is definitely a step up from Utgarde Keep. I highly recommend doing all quest chains in the Coldarra to receive all quests, because the whole story behind the final encounter is superb, if tragic.

Quest rewards for tanks:

• Tundra Pauldrons are the reward for Have they no shame? and that’s what I want to say about those shoulders too. Have they no shame to make me replace my awesome Pauldrons of Stone Resolve so early in the expansion?
• Postponing the Inevitable has one pre-req quest and rewards you with Gauntlets of the Disturbed Giant, which are also very nice.
• If you’re looking for nice boots and never got anything better than the Boots of Elusion, make sure to pick up the quest Quickening after you did the pre-req quest, as the reward is Boots of the Unbowed Protector.

Trash:

Each boss has some trash associated with them, so you will fight various mobs. You can go see the bosses in any order. I have usually started with the right hallway, but you can also go left first. In the hallways you will find one lone dragonkin pat, either a female caster or a male melee dragonkin. Nothing to worry about whatsoever.

Ormorok-trash: The halls leading to Ormorok are filled with lots of annoying little flowers. Round them up, burn them down, and then make sure that your healer in particular doesn’t hang around where the flowers died. They leave a pod behind that will pop after one minute and then the flower will be back, to harass your healer and ranged DPS. The rest of the trash are either pathing groups of Crystalline Tenders and their tree buddies, or static Crystalline Protectors. When fighting the pat, make sure to interrupt the Tranquility the tenders cast and take them out first. CC shouldn’t be necessary, but if it makes you feel safer, you can use a warlock’s Banish or a hunter’s trap here. Try to keep moving, to avoid the flower repops.

Ormorok the Tree-Shaper: Standing on a pedestal surrounded by pods is Ormorok. The moment he’s dead, the flowers finally stop respawning, which should be enough to make anyone happy at this point. However, the pods on the pedestal are false alarm, there are no flower adds up there. Ormorok is the most tank-and-spank fight in the Nexus that you’ll find, but be on your toes. Much like Lord Ahune from mid-summer, he will cast spikes that will throw you in the air and cause extra fall damage if you don’t avoid them. Strafe away if they start popping in your area, watch the ground. It’s pretty easy to avoid them. He enrages, so save your survival abilities like Shield Wall for it.

As loot, he drops Chiseled Stalagmite Pauldrons, which are pretty nice DPS shoulders.

Anomalus-trash: Take a turn in the middle of the hallway leading to Ormorok, which will lead you to dragonkin trying to fight Mana Wraiths coming from Chaotic rifts. The dragonkin groups are usually two melee, one caster. Make sure to interrupt the heals of the casters. When you attack a rift, make sure that the DPS is all on the rift and not wasting time on wraiths. Those will spawn endlessly as long as the rift is open. Tank the wraiths, and interrupt their casts as you can. Once you’re getting closer to Anomalus, there will be voidwalker-type mobs. Again, try to interrupt them when they try to mana-burn a mana-class in your party.

Anomalus: Anorexic voidwalkers make their comeback in this very pale version. This fight is a DPS race. Frequently, Anomalus will open a chaos rift, and until the rift is done for, he’s immune to all damage. As tank this means that as soon as he goes immune, you start picking up mana wraiths instead, until your DPS has closed the rift, then you go back to Anomalus. Rinse and repeat. If your DPS is quick with switching targets, this shouldn’t take too long. Again, it’s important that no one wastes time on wraiths when they should be attacking the rifts. I have seen the case that several rifts were open at the same time, not sure what’s up with that.

He drops nothing of interest to any prot warrior. Or any other tanking class, at that.

Grand Magus Telestra trash: Once you’ve cleared up the ramp and dealt with some more dragonkin/rift trash, you end up in Grand Magus Telestra’s area of the instance. There are several mage hunter pats here, so you might end up getting adds. One pat comes right to the end of Anomalus’ area, the other pat patrols up to where you go to Telestra’s room. The mage hunters come with doggies that silence. All other trash is humanoid, so if you want to use CC, you know your options. Mage Hunter Ascendants have a huge array of annoying mage skills. Spell reflect and interrupts are your friend here. The Initiates use Renew, but Shield Slam should take care of that. As long as you can keep the pull bunched up to use AoE tanking on them, you shouldn’t have a problem. I recommend killing Ascendants first.

Grand Magus Telestra: In this fun fight you get to deal with one annoying mage, and three copies. Good times! When you go in, make sure that all ranged DPS and the healer stay away, as she will use a spell called Firebomb that will damage all in her vicinity. She will also cast a spell called Gravity Lapse that picks everyone up with like tentacles and flings them about. Once everyone is dumped on the ground, charge back to her and hopefully all ranged people are back at range as soon as they can. At 50% Telestra disappears, as she splits into three copies: arcane, frost and fire mage. Neat trick. All three copies can be tanked and have normal aggro tables. The kill order largely depends on your group make-up. If you have a mage, sheep the frost mage, kill arcane and fire, then frost. No mage, but someone who can dispel magic? Kill the frost mage, then arcane, then fire. No dispeller? Arcane, frost, fire. Once the copies are down, Telestra comes back, and you finish her off.

Again, no tank loot here.

The Alliance/Horde Hallway: As you head back to the instance entrance for Keristrasza’s chamber, you will find a hallway with 2-3 frozen mobs in groups. If you’re horde, they will be alliance, if you’re alliance, they will be horde mobs. The abilities and unit names are all the same. Rangers are hunters and they will always try to get away from you to shoot at you. The berserkers probably pose the highest risk, as they have a knockback attack that can throw you into the next frozen group. Make sure you’re never standing with your back towards the next group. The commanders are your average whirlwinding warrior. Kill the clerics first, then the berserkers, and either commanders or rangers next. If you didn’t kill one of the the mage hunter pats as mentioned earlier, it might add here as it paths through this hallway.

Keristrasza: As you approach her chamber, make sure that all dragonkin pats in the area are dead. She is surrounded by three orbs, one for each boss you downed. Position yourself facing her, while everyone else lines up by her side, but never behind her. Have someone else use the three orbs and voila, welcome to the fight where mobility is everything. Keristrasza applies a debuff called Intense Cold. It stacks, is a DoT effect and slows down. If people don’t respond to it by moving, they’re dead faster than they can say ‘Huh, what?’ The debuff is removed by moving. Either strafing or jumping in place. This is of course tricky for all casters. Whatever your DPS and healer are doing, make sure they don’t move in front of her or behind her, to avoid both her breath attack and the tail-swipe. The tricky part here really is the moving. As tank, you got it easy, so do it like I did, giggle while you jump like a maniac.

Again, nothing for tanks as drop, but that’s alright.

I highly recommend running the Nexus at least once, I thought the instance was beautiful and full of fun encounters.

For more instance guides (though I will continue writing my own as well), check out not coding’s blog.

As I am leveling, I will write short guides about all the leveling instances in Northrend, with particular focus on tanking tips for trash and bosses alike. At the moment this is all about normal instances, but once I hit 80, I will update to include changes for heroic mode. These guides are not intended for experienced people, but for those who maybe just started tanking and are looking for some advice.

Utgarde Keep

Utgarde Keep is a level 70-72 instance located in Howling Fjord. It’s low in difficulty, very linear, and easy to clear. Inside you will find three boss encounters, with three quests for the Horde and two quests for Alliance players.

Quest rewards for tanks:

Alliance: Woven Steel Necklace from the quest Disarmament, you obtain this quest in Wyrmskull Village
Horde: Tiled-Stone Pendant from the quest Disarmament, you obtain this quest inside the instance

None of the other two quests offer tank rewards, though the plate bracers from the Horde quest ‘A Score to Settle‘ are good for DPS sets.

Trash pulls:

Most pulls are groups of 3 Vrykuls, mostly 2 melee, one caster. Near the exit to the outer area you will have a couple four-pulls. If you want to use CC, try having the Runecasters, Spiritualists or Heartsplitters CC’d. Note that the Runecasters can be pulled without using LoS. Some Vrykul have worg companions which die very easily.

The second pull in the instance can get messy due to a pathing mob between the groups on the sides, and runners. I had no real trouble tanking two groups here at all, but if you’re not pimped out in TBC epics, be careful with pulling here.

You will encounter a few proto-drakes, those need to be tanked not facing the group because of their flamebreath, and don’t have your back to the next group as they do a knockback. Unless you like knockback pulling, which could be fun. The proto-drakes are the highest exp mob in the instance, so I would advise killing all of them.

Inbetween the first and second boss encounters you have a section where undead are digging a tunnel. Usually an elite Overseer will be with them. Have people stand close by to avoid their Charge and remind people to hold the AoE until you’ve gotten a solid Shockwave/Consecrate/Swipe in first.

Bosses:

Prince Keleseth:
Once you have engaged him, build solid threat on him. His spells cannot be interrupted nor reflected (that I noticed), which is sadmaking. Keep an eye on the doorway, not long after the fight starts, four skeletons will come running in, going straight for your healer. Pick them up, have DPS burn them in place and go back to tanking Keleseth. If people are on the ball and kill skeletons and Ice Tombs quickly, it’s an easy tank and spank fight.

Dalronn & Skarvald:
Skarvald is a melee mob, whereas Dalronn is a caster. Dalronn will randomly drop aggro and cast shadow bolts at party members, which makes this a very heal-intense fight. Skarvald has a charge, so people should stand as close to the tank as they can to avoid that. You have three options here.

1. Bring one of the bosses to 10%, then kill the other and burn the other one quickly.
2. Kill Dalron first, switch to Skarvald, have the healer heal through the damage the ghost of Dalronn causes until Skarvald is dead.
3. Kill Skarvald first, switch to Dalronn, pick the ghost of Skarvald up via taunt and keep him on you.

My recommendation would be either 1 or 3.

Ingvar the Plunderer:
Ingvar is the end-boss and stands on a platform chatting with a couple drake-riders. Don’t worry, they’re just there for flavor (which is a great touch), you only fight Ingvar by himself.

This is a two phase fight, in which he has roughly the same abilities, but they’re just a bit nastier in phase 2. All ranged DPS needs to be at max range to avoid the silence effect of his Roar. When he starts casting Smash, strafe to the left or right as tank to avoid the damage spike, then afterwards run back to him. Once you have killed him, he will be resurrected as undead servant of the Lich King. Same rules apply, but it will be incredibly useful to have a mage or druid for decursing the Woe Strike, so your healer won’t take shadow damage. As tank, it’s your job to run out of the Dark Smash, which is even worse burst damage than the Smash from phase 1. As always, minimize damage as much as you can, reapply Demoralizing Shout and Thunderclap whenever they have run out, and this fight is probably the only good time for using Shield Wall in UK.

Loot:

No specific tank drops in there. If you want to mess around as Arms or Fury warrior, Ingvar’s Monolithic Cleaver certainly deserves the name, and has lots of strength and hit.

Next up: The Nexus!