Tank like a girl

Thanks to Aylii I stumbled over my first tanking glyph today: Glyph of Revenge Holy crap, is that awesome, or what? While Revenge might proc less reliably with the Shield Block changes, it still lights up a whole lot. With that Glyph you could use a Revenge macro that would queue up Heroic Strike, for awesome TPS. I am in love. Which means I actually have to look at Inscription and what it can do for us tanks.

You will be able to use three major glyphs and three lesser glyphs. I actually don’t know if you can replace any of your glyphs, we’ll have to wait and see. Now, let’s see which of the glyphs could prove useful for tanks:

Major Glyphs:

• Glyph of Barbaric Insults: Clearly wins for the name. What it does is that it adds a Taunt to Mocking Blow. The current mechanics of MB are that it forces the mob to attack you for six second, without any threat change. Unlike Taunt, which will actually put you on top of the threat list. With the Glyph, Mocking Blow will be able to do both.
• Glyph of Blocking: increases block value by 10% for 10 seconds, after using Shield Slam. Mmmm, block value.
• Glyph of Devastate: applies two stacks of sunder per Devastate. My immediate reaction is to call it weak. To proc S&B you will use a lot of Devastate anyway, so keeping a full stack of Sunders up is no big deal.
   
  Update: My immediate reaction lies in this case, as my commenters have made me see the light. Fast threat on multiple targets possible, plus a fast full stack, for more grinding power when soloing. Hot!
• Glyph of Heroic Strike: you gain 10 rage for crits with HS. Not so great for tanking, when you’re limited to 3 glyphs, IMHO.
   
  Update: That’s what happens when I post early in the morning, I don’t think things through. This can be a wonderful source of rage. With the Glyph of Revenge we’ll be using Heroic Strike reliably, and will get rewarded for crits.
• Glyph of Intervene: if you Intervene a lot, and I don’t really do, you might get some mileage out of this glyph. You get an extra attack on you instead of the party member you Intervened too. With Warbringer sure to be in my build, I am fine just using that instead of Intervene.
• Glyph of Last Stand: while a reduced cooldown would be nice, the health loss makes it unattractive to me. This is something I use on bosses in a pinch, and only sometimes while soloing, so I shall give that one a pass.
• Glyph of Revenge: as mentioned above, this glyph is just awesome.
• Glyph of Sunder Armor: if this affects the Sunder Armor effect of Devastate, this would be fantastic for building threat on multiple targets. Has anyone tested this?
• Glyph of Taunt: again, depends on how much you really have to taunt in 5-mans, and how often you get resists. I won’t want to use this.

That’s it for the major glyphs. There are a couple more minor glyphs, including Glyph of Thunder Clap, which given the TC changes seems pretty nice to have.

If I had to pick glyphs right now, at least major glyphs, I would go with Revenge, Blocking, and Sunder Armor if the effect applies to Devastate. If it doesn’t, then I would go with Heroic Strike instead.

How about the rest of you, what do you think? As a note, the glyphs are of course still subject to change until Inscription goes live. I will definitely pick that up with one character, using Siha’s wonderful Inscription Guide.

This week’s BA Shared Topic comes up with the question asked by Pixelated Executioner: What do you wish your profession could do?

I happen to be a 375 Blacksmith with a specialization as Armorsmith, with mining on the side. At 375 I find it to be one of the most useless, pointless professions to have. There, I said it. What do I, as maxed out blacksmith do with the profession? I make the occasional enchanting rod, adamantite sharpening stones, and the Felsteel set for leveling plate armor tanks. If you do not have access to epic blacksmithing plans, there is no market for blacksmiths. This is a problem. Now you might say that most professions have this problem, but I always find that I do a lot more with my other professions (maxed out leatherworking and alchemy) than blacksmithing.

The Armorsmithing specialization is equally problematic. In my DPS gear, I am sporting the Bulwark of Ancient Kings. Out of sheer desperation I wore it as and the lower version as tanking chest for a long time, for the use effect and the nutso amount of stamina on it. But it’s clearly a DPS chest. None of the few armorsmith BoPs does anything for tanks. How can this possibly be?

I actually have no idea what plans Blizzard has for the blacksmithing specializations in WotLK, but I would hope that it’s a better implementation than in TBC. In comparison, look at tailors with their specializations. You can pick your specialization on what kind of caster you are (frost/shadow, fire/arcane, healing). I would not have picked armorsmithing and would have gone swordsmithing if I had known about the lack of tanking gear this would provide me with.

Now that I have done my share of griping, the good stuff. Blacksmithing did provide me with decent gear while leveling. The Fel Armor set was amazingly good, same for the Adamantite set, and as I got all Felsteel plans fairly quickly, that set was also great. Sharpening stones are awesome. I want to continue to see great pieces of gear you can make for making leveling easier. I am totally excited about the addition of shields. But I think the biggest step is that we get to add sockets to gear. That is great. This will be something of use even at max-level in the profession. Everyone will eventually upgrade gear and will want extra sockets. Especially one that’s colorless. It provides so much needed utility.

From the other Shared Topic bloggers I have seen the same request, and I am endorsing it as well: let us repair our own gear. That would be a killer feature for tanking blacksmiths. Blacksmiths should be able to repair mail or plate armor, leatherworkers should be able to repair mail and leather, tailors should be able to repair cloth armor. That’s the ideal for me. Come on, I can make fancy armor, but I can’t hammer the bumps out of my plate pieces? You could even do it as a bonus, like half-price repairs. Everyone knows that us folks have huge repair bills, and every little perk would count.

As last request, something with a fun factor would be great. Tailors will get a flying carpet in WotLK, engineers get tons of stuff that just screams fun, it’d be nice to have something like that too. I am fresh out of ideas what could be fun smithing gadget, but surely there could be something.

So as summary: do something to keep blacksmiths busy once they’re at 450, something with utility; make blacksmithing the killer profession for tanks by adding the ability to repair armor; and some fun stuff wouldn’t hurt.

I am honestly still trying to avoid joining the train of people blogging about warrior changes for WotLK, too many changes abound. Also, it’s hard not to feel discouraged when you read bloggers like Tobold posting about DKs being so totally solo-viable and powerful, speaking of doom and gloom for the warrior class.

But one of the many beta postings at WoW Insider got my attention: the first look at blacksmithing plans for WotLK. Now, my warrior is a blacksmith. As it is, I feel it’s one of the weakest professions. Unless you’re lucky with drops of epic plans, it’s weak. Hitting 375 requires very heavy farming, and lucky drops of the Felsteel plate set. I was lucky, I got all three plans very quickly. But there’s a reason I am my guild’s only maxed blacksmithing. Instance drops will almost always be superior to what you can make. The Ragesteel Shoulders are about the only BS piece I can make that is somewhat in demand, aside from enchanting rods. As for the specialisation, I went for armorsmithing, because I thought powerful armor would rock my world. Now don’t get me wrong, I have the maxed out BoP chestpiece, Bulwark of Ancient Kings, it’s a fantastic piece of gear, and the two versions I had before were great too, but they don’t particularly cater to the prot warrior crowd. I did use them to tank, simply because of the superior armor, stamina and for the Last Stand-like use effect. But it would have been nice to see something for the non-DPS crowd as well.

Ah, where was I? Right, blacksmithing. In the beta. This gallery introduces our kind and gentle readers to a level 75 blacksmithing set, including 8 pieces. You will be able to make a shield. How freaking awesome is that? About damn time! I can’t say anything about farming costs yet, but there’s nothing crazy like frost motes (or whatever the WotLK version of Primals is going to be), just bars of new metals. Itemization immediately strikes me as odd, but I guess it’s a taste of WotLK warrior gear: tons of strength for AP, lots of stamina, and good ol’ defense. No sockets. No hint of agility or any avoidance stat anywhere. No block value. Is it possible that warrior itemization will be really boring? Looks like. Not a fan yet.

It also looks like it that current prot warriors with their gear stacked with stamina and avoidance will have trouble tanking in the new age, where threat scales with attack power. Pimp your offensive gear, it’s going to be an interesting ride.

I am excited about seeing blue crafted gear that I’ll be able to make eventually, I love the ability of making a shield, and it certainly was an interesting sneak peek at the new itemization.