Tank like a girl

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?

It’s been a while since I have done…story time! The mindless rambling of stuff that I have been doing day to day in WoW and which I used to post on Mondays. However, between the Sunday raiding and having to be at work at 7 am, I just have to squeeze it in this late in the week. So what have I been up to? Not much, and yet at the same time a lot!

First off, my shameful leveling project. It should be a testament to the ease of leveling in general, but in particular hunters when I can proclaim that my hunter just hit 70. I rolled her in the first week of August, and give her a playtime of 3-8 hours a week tops, which is very little for me. Yes, the one class I vowed I would never level because it’s so boooooring. But you know what? Boooooring can be very relaxing. As officer and raid leader, I go through bouts of burnout and stress, and that’s when the hunter comes in. True, I could just send the pet in and auto-shoot my way to glory, but it’s been very relaxing. Tiraxi is currently a BM hunter in absolutely craptastic gear (I have done one on-level instance, Blood Furnace), but at 80 I am looking forward to going Survival and might even raid with my German friends. Maybe. They raid a lot more than I do and are all gung-ho about hardmodes. But who knows? I might fit in. And if not? That’s also a-okay.

On Kadomi, I have drastically reduced the amount of heroics she’s doing. After tanking every single day of the week, in a frenzy to save up Emblems of Triumph, it all kinda deflated after I got the 45 emblems shoulders. I have been trying to get some achievements in while doing heroics, and that is an aspect I still enjoy. If timing wasn’t such an issue, I would be all over an achievement group. Me and mah favorite gals, we keep talking about it, and then never act on it. One achievement I had never tried for was Abuse the Ooze and though we completed it, I can see why people might skip it. Those slimes can get out of control very quickly, sheesh!

I recently finished the Champion quests for all Argent Tournament factions and woohoo, I am a Crusader. *yawn* Those quests get old, I tell ya, but I am a pro at jousting now. As Crusader I am pretty happy, because those dailies are short, fun, and in a nice route of getting nice gold and Champion Seals into my pocket. The first reward I saved up for was the Pony for my squire. After all my squire looks like mini-me (if I’d ever take off my helmet). Adorable! Disappointing that I can only use mailbox, bank or vendor, instead of all three in a timed window. Boo!

Then one night one of our guildies had an interesting bug. She sold something to a vendor and bam, she got the Gruul’s Lair achievement. Bizarre! This started some sighing from people who never got that achievement, and I decided to drum people up and off we were to Blade’s Edge, to re-visit the big guy. 10 level 80s, ready to take on the world! High King Maulgar and friends was an adventure. Our Krosh mage tank didn’t know how, our enslaving warlock couldn’t keep perma-fearing Olm off me, and those ogres laughed and mocked us. It took us four tries before we finally had enough control over the fight that we pulled it off. Not so easy still, that pull. Gruul himself was pretty much a joke. I seemed to have an endless stream of dodges and had fun stuff like -312 (3400 blocked) in my combat log when he managed to hit me. People were happy about their achievements, and I got to rar for justice, because they finally were mine. My QQ post about my SO outrolling me on the T4 shouldertoken is still a vivid memory for me, so when HKM dropped two Protector tokens, I was all over one! Right after the raid my friend Cariad and I went straight for Aldor Rise and then I got on a table to be at her level. Yay, Warbringer Shoulders!

The loot gods are so very kind to me lately. We did VoA-10 and Onyxia right afterwards, and Gleaming Quel’Serrar dropped. I only took it for looks and to maybe be my threat weapon in heroics (stats > unreliable proc), but I also won the roll for Onyxia’s head. Bye-bye Seal of the Pantheon, hello Purified Onyxia Blood Talisman! You might not be the best trinket in the world but in gear sets where I need def over stamina, you will now be my precioussssss.

 
As added bonus, Auriaya then coughed up a shield for the first time, and I won the roll, and am as happy as a tank can be. The same raid ID, we managed to clear to Yogg-Saron within our six hours of alotted raid time, with maybe 30 minutes of tries on Y-S himself. I extended the ID and we will devote a full raid to learning this fight. As our three tries were pretty disastrous in P1, any advice is welcome. Oh god, I want to kill him so bad, and I am so happy he’s such a challenge for us. Killing him will feel super-awesome, I know it.

So yeah, I guess I have been busy. What’s up with y’all? Getting excited for Icecrown?

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

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

Here’s a sample of the article:

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

When I posted about my guild’s progress in Ulduar this weekend when I was all bubbly and excited, I soon got a downer that really aggravated me. A comment was left cheering the badge changes, making such progress as we had this weekend possible. I resented the implication then and I resent it now. I realize the comment was not meant to denigrate our success as a result of patch 3.2 alone, but it sure sounds like it. I hate pats on the back, but really adore genuine congratulations.

Gevlon, the probably most…hated is probably not the right word, but certainly the most contentious WoW blogger out there, was out to prove that skill > gear, and his guild did that by clearing Ulduar-10 wearing nothing but blue gear.

Impressive feat, isn’t it? And it certainly shows that knowing your class, skill in playing in is a lot more important than any gear upgrades.

Now, I won’t lie, I have received upgrades recently. Let’s look at them in detail.

• New helmet. Effective gain: 5 strength, 65 armor, 10 defense, 70 parry, 54 hit. Lost 27 stamina.
• New bracers. Effective gain: 25 stamina, 56 armor, 2 defense, 27 parry, 39 hit. Losing 2 strength, 19 dodge.
• New chest. Effective gain: 36 stamina, 32 strength, 107 armor, 153 block value, 4 defense, 60 parry. Losing 47 dodge, 38 block.
• New gloves. Effective gain: 40 stamina, 9 strength, 66 armor, 17 defense, 56 dodge, 49 hit. Losing 43 parry, 30 expertise, 1 socket.
• New ring. Effective gain: 26 stamina, 34 parry, 26 expertise. Losing 2 strength, 25 defense, 4 dodge.
• New cloak. Effective gain: 9 stamina, 4 armor, 38 defense, 32 hit. Losing 12 dodge, 21 expertise.
• New trinket. Effective gain: 15 stamina, plus a frequent armor proc.

Summary: Gained 10 strength, 298 armor aka a damage reduction of 1.76%, 46 defense rating aka 9.35 defense skill, 148 parry rating aka 3.27% parry, 99 stamina aka 990 health, 174 hit (essentially not important for a warrior tank). I lost 25 expertise rating aka 3 expertise (which hurts a lot more than gaining hit outweighs) and 26 dodge rating, aka .57% dodge.

The most dramatic change is the amount of parry. But this is because Blizzard is pushing parry as a stat, when it previously was the redheaded-stepchild of avoidance stats that no one was actively gearing for as you got the lowest bang for the buck.

Parry and dodge are essentially the same for me now, when previously I had a lot more dodge. I phased out more dodge gear in the last couple weeks. I phased out pretty much all of my T7. Looking at the cold numbers I see that my gear improved, but not so dramatically. My avoidance evened out to include another stat. I was able to re-gem because of extra defense, for more effective health. I did not gain dramatic amounts of armor that would suddenly make me take tiny hits.

Gevlon is right when he says all of us are too focused on purples and numbers. I know that a few of our raiders have been grinding heroics for badges every day. Some haven’t at all. Some got maybe one upgrade. Extra mana, attack power, crit, haste, spellpower, they’ll have helped us, sure! But coordinated damage on elementals, focusing on Detonating Lashers and switching to Eonar’s Gift on Freya is not accomplished by gear. The players behind the wheel do that.

The previous week we did not get Thorim down because we had gazillions of adds in the arena and were overwhelmed before the gauntlet team cleared the Ancient Runegiant. Arena was no problem this week, because we had an excellent melee team, including our extremely skilled paladins. On Saturday we did not get Thorim down because adds would kill the gauntlet healer or someone would die in Shockwave. This has everything to do with skill (in this case I failed at picking up adds) and intelligently responding to things like fire/voidzones/poison/shockwave/all sorts of other crap. On Sunday we had two battle resurrections available because we had two druids, so it’s also a question of composition.

Maybe the ultimate revelation is that my guild runs gear requirements, and there are certain limits that you should have reached for raiding, but the most important delimiter for me these days is experience. Earn experience in Naxx, learn to acquire skill, rock the house.

For more thoughts about this, check out what Gravity has to say, and RJK.

And now it’s time to lean back and to find out if Tobold really turns out to be Gevlon, which would be just as shocking as the Ferraro scandal.

I really wanted to post about our last Ulduar raid, just never got around to it. It was my first raid weekend where I didn’t tank, as we had enough tanks but not enough healers or DPS. On the first day we killed the standard program that we manage so far, FL, XT, Kologarn, Auriaya, and then wiped to Hodir. The next day we killed Razorscale, Hodir, and Iron Council after we gave up on Thorim.

Thorim was an interesting albeit frustrating experience. I am not sure how I would ever be able to tank the arena (which is why I am glad that I was blood DK DPS). Our protection paladin had issues picking up all the mobs, and we were just torn apart in the arena. The gauntlet team got the second boss down, so I think with a little practice, we’ll get through Phase 2 soon. However, I am thinking moving to Freya might maybe be a better option, but I am not 100% sure. She sounds a lot more complex, but maybe not as rocky as Thorim. We’ll work more on him next week.

Due to my work schedule, I have not really been able to run heroics much, and I still have the issue that I usually show up when the guild groups have already started running. I think that showed when I daringly scheduled a Trial of the Crusader raid. Our protection paladin has been running heroics consistently, so she has 2pc T8 and goodies.

First off, our Trial of the Crusader raid was very successful as we managed to down both encounters that are currently available. I found the difficulty on Northrend Beasts a lot higher than on Lord Jaraxxus. We had several issues on Northrend Beasts. I had an incredibly high fatality rate on Gormok the Impaler, and for the first time I felt like an undergeared tank scrub. We first started switching aggro at 3 stacks, but later moved to 2 stacks, because I would inevitably die, despite blowing all the cooldowns I had, using Disarm every cooldown, really trying my best. To add insult to injury, our paladin’s threat output is definitely superior to mine. This meant that after the Taunt wore off, Gormok would just go right back to her. Very humbling and disappointing.

Eventually we got that under control, and reliably made it to the blasted Jormungars. I was Dreadscale tank. We picked them up right by the door, and that’s where the problems started. How to kite Dreadscale so that the toxin people didn’t have to run far, but that I wouldn’t carry Burning Bile and poison rings into the raid? We tried the path around the wall, which didn’t work, then I led him around the Acidmaw tank behind her. That seemed to work a lot better, though it still felt like I was carrying death and destruction through the raid. In the end, I died just as Acidmaw went down and was able to watch Icehowl from the ground. I felt Icehowl was the fun reward the raid gets for having survived the Jormungars. Looked incredibly fun. The first time we got past the Jormungars, we had it.

 
For Lord Jaraxxus, I had the easy job. Pretty much a tank and spank with interrupts. I only had to move him when a volcano came too close. Originally, I had wanted to tank adds, but then we changed plans, so I could dispel his Nether Power with Shield Slam. The first try, we had people with Legion Fire go down, and then got overwhelmed by adds, and the second try we had it. As was the story of my life yesterday, I went down when he was at 4%, but our pally picked him up, and we got him. Really easy fight, considering it took us 10 minutes to get him down, after wiping on Northrend Beasts for more than 2.5 hours.

 
I got me a shiny, the very nice Dreadscale Bracers that I will gem nicely with a +30 stamina gem and slap the +40 stamina enchant on them. Nommy! On my to-do-list for this week is running more heroics for badges and giving the triumph list a long, hard look to figure out a gear priority. Expect a look at the Emblem of Triumph gear soon.

The first week after a content patch is always one that’s a) busy as people are trying out the new content and b) ripe with frustration at the numerous bugs that need to be hotfixed. With 3.2, both is the case, as my guild has seen record numbers of people being online, while being plagued with bugs in several instances.

Two of the more common bugs appear to be buggy encounters in the new 5-man, but also bugged raid bosses, e.g. Gothik, Thorim and XT. I’ve run into the Trial of the Champion bugs several times. The champions of the first encounters won’t stay down, e.g., or the trash groups before Paletress/Eadric are clumped together.

Speaking of the new 5-man, it follows the tried and trued Magister’s Terrace model: definite step-up in difficulty compared to the other instances, with the same increase in loot quality. I have had beautiful groups of friends in there where we just tear through the instance, or I have had groups where DPS was so abysmal that we had to call it on Paletress. My advice to anyone who wants to do this on heroic is to really find a group that brings it in all three departments: tank, heals and DPS. Don’t drag your groups down when you just can’t break 1.5k DPS, be sensible. Yes, this also includes my guildies.

The new 5-man does of course offer very tasty tank loot and I was able to grab most pieces the many times I have run this place now. I’d first like to proudly declare myself a member of the Black Heart club, along with such ‘famous’ members as Veneretio and Spinks! It took me about 5-6 consecutive runs on normal mode before I finally got it, which was pretty happy-making.

On heroic, I have scored the Mark of the Relentless and Warlord’s Depravity. The latter is a very strong SBV neck, despite the not updated Wowhead tooltip, and the former is a wonderfully itemized ring that is a stamina dream. It has no defense, but I have gotten a lot of defense heavy upgrades that I can actually wear it now. I also broke a personal milestone, I hit 30k health unbuffed. Finally! I wouldn’t mind getting the other two tank drops in there, preferably the helmet, and I am sure I will eventually.

A common argument of the people who don’t like the badge changes is that it provides gear to casuals who don’t need upgrades, but they are forgetting the big part where upgrading your gear just fills great. It’s a sense of personal accomplishment at any level of play. Gear upgrades make people feel happy, and that’s why everyone’s running Trial of the Champion over and over again, and why people run chain heroics. I managed to snag two emblem purchases, Platinum Mesh Cloak and Gauntlets of the Royal Watch, and along with the drops from ToC, it’s a great feeling. Every emblem naysayer should think about that. Let other people have fun too!

I will admit that this first week after the patch was more filled with frustration than I have experienced in a long while, and those of you who follow me on Twitter will likely have seen screams of outrage that are a bit unlike me, at least to this public extent. Stuff just boiled over for me. A big contributor is that most days my guild is only able to field one group into heroics during my playtimes, and yet, no one ever asked me along on the fun. People are running chain heroics, and yet here I am, the guild officer who has to PUG. That was incredibly frustrating. By now, I know I am not the only one who feels left out, and we’ve been able to do runs on our own. I guess it’s an issue in guilds of our size that can’t be helped. It’s still been a hurtful experience.

I have had more personal issues as well, and the only thing I want to say about that is that it’s not polite or nice to whisper other people in your character’s main spec every single drop you’ve been getting. It doesn’t accomplish anything but breed resentment, especially if that’s the only kind of conversation you ever have. This might seem hypocritical seeing as I at times use this blog to tout all the new gear I have acquired. But I think there’s a difference.

In a later post, I will post about my experiences tanking Trial of the Champion, it certainly has a lot to offer on the challenge plate, and I will of course have to talk about our first visit to Thorim in Ulduar, and pick your collective brains for advice.

How’s the first week of 3.2 been treating you?

Just about a year ago, in one of my first posts, I talked about my weaknesses, the biggest one being a keyboard turner. I have since graduated from the school of keyboard turning noobs to G13 pros. It was a long, hard road in which I switched back and forth between my old-school playing method and my G13. Especially on Kadomi it was really difficult. But now it’s become second nature, and I can’t imagine moving any differently now. It helps as tank, as healer, as melee DPS, as ranged DPS. I really recommend breaking the habit.

But now I have another habit to break that I have inherited from my old days of TBC multi-target tanking: tab-targetting. Never was it more apparent that I need to figure this shit out than when I did my first excursion to Emalon in VoA-10. It was a motley group of 7 guildies, a friend plus two pugged people. As the better geared tank, I tanked adds. I’ll be frank, it didn’t work out. We only had 40 minutes left on the Wintergrasp timer when we started, so we had 25 minutes of attempts before heading out dejectedly. We had a couple issues, but we are fast learners, so I am convinced next time it’ll be a kill. If only Horde had Wintergrasp more often on Bronzebeard. It’s usually in Alliance hand as we’re heavily outnumbered.

My particular issue was targeting new adds and targeting the one that would blow up. BigWigs was so kind to mark the growing add with a skull so I just cycled through until I had the right one. Unfortunately I was hitting tab so frantically that I often missed the skull and had to tab some more. But that really wasn’t the biggest issue. The biggest issue was grabbing the new add. As it would pop up next to Emalon where we had the paladin tank and a couple melee DPS, I tried to click-target, but sometimes would miss or click on a raid member instead. In that time the add would often make for the next healer, and I was fail enough not to Intervene often enough. Add to that that my vigorous tanking killed two adds at the same time and you see a problem. I now know that I have to switch adds a lot more frequently to keep their health at just about the same level.

Veneretio did one of his Back to Basics posts recently about targeting, and he preaches clicking as the best way. I know he’s right. I zoom my camera out a lot on all fights, I know how to turn the camera angle, and yet…

As always, I am determined to master the target issue, so bring on the feedback, guys. Don’t be shy.

I haven’t really done any meaty tank talk post for quite some time. Talldar summed it up nicely a while ago, though I don’t agree with all the points he’s making. It’s not so easy to write about tanking anymore. Tanking feels a lot easier than it did in TBC, at least in my playing field, heroics and 10-mans. Tanking mechanics are very simple. Once you understand the protection warrior priorities, there isn’t much room for fine-tuning. Use the correct priority, be smart about the cooldowns, maybe use smart macros like the Warbringer macro for one button Charge/Intercept/Intervene, and try to spam Heroic Strike as much as you can. There is not much room for technical advice, because warrior tanking is all very straightforward. And it currently feels underpowered and is definitely not flavor of the month. But no worries, this is not about crying about the state of the warrior.

I never talked much about tanking while in Naxxramas because, let’s be honest, once you have understood how a fight works, a trained monkey could do the job. I mean, there are a couple challenges, but basically, it’s tanking bootcamp for basics. Here’s the run-down of things you learn in tanking bootcamp there: tanking and spanking. Kiting to get away from a boss while keeping the raid safe. Not standing in fire, acid, frogger, poison, void zones. Building threat on the move. Strafe-kiting if you’re good. Knowledge of when you need to use your cooldowns (if you ever really have a reason to use them outside of Faerlina, Maexxna and maybe Patchwerk). I guess you could add AoE threat to the list, because trash tanking is really a joke, coming from the background of 10-man raiding in TBC. Bring back the Karazhan trash and it’s different abilities you needed to be aware of. Or the brutal trash gauntlets from Zul’Aman.

But that was Naxxramas, and now is Ulduar. Wipes on trash, hooray! Nowhere was the difference between Naxx and Ulduar so evident for me as in the area leading to Hodir. So much trash. Surprise worms from snowdrifts! Hard-hitting giants! Wheeeee, a pat! All with different abilities. Wiping for an hour, learning every pull the hard way. Or entering the Antechamber, where our warlock got to use Banish. I wish we needed more CC. Seriously, bring back CC. Not like Magister’s Terrace, where you needed the right kind of CC or you were doomed to failure. But really, in raids CC is fine, we should be forced to use it. Intelligent use which gives us more control over a pull than AoE spammage.

I have tanked seven bosses in there so far, and all the stuff that was learned in WotLK tanking bootcamp comes in very handily. Razorscale is a weird amalgation of several Naxx fights into one boss. You have Noth-style adds that the tanks need to control. In phase 2, you need to kite her the way you learned to on Grobbulus. And you need to watch your debuffs and swap aggro like you did on Gluth. To me this fight is a perfect example that tanking in Ulduar is a lot more complex, and I love it. I get very stressed out on Razorscale, because she also hits a lot harder than anything I’ve dealt with in Naxxramas. XT is a great fight to see how aware your raid is to debuffs, and the right response to it. Not that challenging as MT, but definitely fun as adds tank. I felt very proud at myself when I take out a pair of bots all on my own until the next heart-phase starts. Kologarn and Ignis I find strange. I would expect Kologarn to be as difficult as Ignis is, based on his placement, and I find Ignis still a lot more difficult than a boss in the first part of a raid should be. Again, you get to be mobile. On Kologarn I had the personal challenge of running away from the eyebeam while still tanking elementals. Interesting times.

Assembly of Iron is made for a warrior tank. Stressful at times. Reminded me of Aran in a way, but that’s probably just because of interrupts. Here our arsenal is fabulous as Stormcaller tank. He casts? Shield Bash. Casts again? Move away then charge! Next cast? Heroic Throw! Next cast? Intercept! Or maybe Concussion Blow. Or Shockwave. And then you do it all over again! It’s a fight to make you feel extremely versatile, because we have more options on this boss than any other tank class. At least this once. The only tricky part I found was to move him out of the runes when both Shield Bash and Heroic Throw are on cooldown, but just stunning until they’re available again works.

Ulduar fights are fun and challenging enough that I really recommend to anyone who hasn’t gone to jump on a chance and go there. Bring your a-game, be ready to use your abilities to their fullest. Don’t be afraid of using your cooldowns. Just bring it. Especially if you’re bored of T7 content, be ready to move on. If you do well in Naxx as prot warrior, you have the skillset to do well in Ulduar. Me, I am still stoked. We’re going to work on Malygos this weekend, but I really am so excited about fresh tanking content.

I’d love to hear more warrior stories from Ulduar because we really deserve to hear good stuff about warriors at the moment.

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.

Three weeks ago, my guild had its first trip into Ulduar, as a farewell present to our raid officer who’s now in the frozen north until August. As I am in her footsteps now, I decided to return to Ulduar, after our failed attempt at killing Malygos two weeks ago. I didn’t really post about it, because phase 3 is full of fail. He’ll die soon enough.

Last time, we managed to kill 3 bosses in Ulduar, Flame Leviathan, Razorscale and XT-002. Ignis was more than we could handle. But that was then, and this is now!

Flame Loothiathan actually took us two tries, because the first try we waited too long with the turrets and the vehicles got demolished. The second try was a smooth operation though, so all was good. We then moved on to Razorscale who was 2-shot. The first try we had waaaaay too many adds for us tanks to handle, but the second try was a lot better. I actually like phase 1 better than phase 2, it’s more dynamic. Stressful, but good. Phase 2 is ugh. I hate Grobbulus, I hate Gluth, and phase 2 Razorscale is like that, only on crack. It was messy in the end, with a tank death, but we got her down.

We moved on to XT-002, and that fight was fun, and a flawless kill. I seem to struggle a bit with actually locating the Pummelers, as I was on adds duty. I would find one and miss the other, but Misdirect saved the day. Not only did we kill XT flawlessly, we all got us a fancy achievement as well. Good times.

I decided to skip Ignis and move on to Kologarn instead. Gosh, he was easy. I didn’t really expect him to be that easy. I had read up on him and believed that we had to swap aggro as tanks, but the debuff never stacks in Ulduar-10, so all I did was tanking adds, while running from crazy eyebeam pew-pew. That was exciting. I have to say, Kologarn showing up when you enter his room, that’s pretty fabulous. Another very nice one-shot.

We moved on to Auriaya, which took a godly time, because her trash? Sucks. Just two trash groups, but they kicked our asses and laughed at us. And I loved it. Because lame trash like the trash in Naxx is boring. I would have preferred not wiping so much, but getting those two groups down felt like it would deserve its own epic loot. On Auriaya herself, we managed to mess up that pull. Her kitties pounced, tanks were pretty much dead from the start. Ouch. We were running out of time as one of our healers had to go, so we decided to give it one more try. The second time the pull worked like charm, the kitties went down, and from there on, I tried to gain the Feral Defender’s attention (didn’t work) and popped Berserker Rage when she feared. Not too hard when the pull works.

Amount of tank loot on day 1: zero

The next raid day, I thought it was time to re-visit our nemesis from our initial raid, Ignis. Last time, none of our strategies worked out, but even in our first try, we were already better. It was doable, I knew it. The second try was full of bad luck (adds tank in slagpot), but on the third try, we nailed it. It was very intense, less for me as Ignis tank, but for the add handlers. Our pally tanked the adds, my partner was a boomkin instead of bear that day and rooted them in the Scorch, and our warlock brought them to the pool and shattered them. Felt absolutely awesome to get him down. In my screenshot, you can see that I had to pull out all the stops at the end, and having a 49k health pool there, makes me giggle a bit. Also, whatever that golden glowy stuff is, it’s pretty.

From there, we moved on to Assembly of Iron. Originally, I had slotted myself as healer, but changed that because I wanted to do that fight, and we had no interrupts but me. It took us quite some time to figure out the fight. The first tries were wipes learning to deal with Fusion Punch and Overload on the tanks. Then we had some tries where Fusion Punch would not be dispelled even though it was spammed. The first time we got Steelbreaker down, we quickly learned how to deal with Phase 2, giant green runes of death and positioning. We wiped again, but it was educational, and the next try we got all three of them down. Looking at my WoL report, I have really subpar threat, way too much white damage, but I was so focused on interrupts. I had to set up a giant glowy icon for my cooldowns on interrupts, it was intense. Stormcaller Brundir is definitely made for warrior tanks, with three stuns and two interrupts (if you have Gag Order). The only part I had problems with was dragging him out of the Runes of Power. Those often happened right after I silenced him, aargh.

We then proceeded towards Hodir. I am not sure I can call it proceed. Raid Leader who doesn’t know the trash, plus snow mounds plus pathers with big aggro range = carnage. I think it took us at least an hour to clear to Hodir and we were running out of raid time. That’s some interesting trash there alright. We then tested the waters on Hodir, and we have our work cut out on him. But just like on Ignis the previous raid, I now have the time to analyze our mistakes, and work out a more cohesive strategy. I am full of ideas already.

Damn, it’s fantastic to be a tank. Be it as main tank, as caster tank, as adds tank. My one true love in-game. I will soon speak about my thoughts of Ulduar in the eyes of a tank, later this week. I have more to say that doesn’t fit in this story-time post.

Oh, btw. Tank loot on day 2: zero. Cry with me, tanks of the world.