3.2: The Aftermath

Frequently referred to as “the wellfare patch”, 3.2 caused Emblems of Conquest to drop here, there and everywhere rather than confining them to Ulduar25. On my priest, I heard plenty of complaints about how it was cheapening gear and undermining raiders but you know what? Me and my army of alts were happy to hear of it.

Gearing to a high level is now possible to do without raiding and without relying on luck with drops. All you do is gather little piles of Emblems of Conquest, hand them over to a vendor and receive item level 226 loot. As new tanks we should be cheering about this, right?

Well, yes. But as tanks we also happen to suffer from the new system too.

It's all down to player mindsets. When my brother's prot warrior first hit eighty, roughly three weeks after Wrath's release, he had 18k health and was considered a god amongst PuGers. After all, they had no one else to go to. Gear was secondary to simply filling a party slot. Now that we're months into Wrath, this obviously isn't the case; tanks have been gathering gear for a while so there are alternatives to the new eighty in his silly saronite cap.

3.2 takes this a step further: now the tank that reached eighty a week before you is also sporting 30k health as opposed to your 19k. And it doesn't stop there: your damage dealers are sitting around in epics too, which means 21k health for your plate wearers. Anyone who has ever witnessed the choosing of the main tank in VoA will probably already know exactly what this means.

Oh yes. Respect? You're going to have to dig for it.

There are a few ways to deal with those people who can't resist the chance to complain. First is simply to make your health look as impressive as possible. Keep Commanding Shout active even when you're sitting in a city waiting for the final member. Consider buying buff food too - shelling out for the good stuff is great if you have the cash, but otherwise there's a particular sort of buff food I've grown to love: the Pickled Fangtooth. A stack of twenty fangtooth usually goes for five gold on my server for one reason: no one actually uses mp5 food so there's no demand for it. However useless to casters it may be, however, that 40 stamina is a great boost for a new tank wanting to stave off nasty remarks and help out their healer.

The other tactic, of course, is to simply ignore them. If someone wants to be an ass about your perfectly heroic-viable 20k health, fine. Mentally brand them with the idiot stick and set out to prove them wrong. What you should never do is lie: if someone asks if you're in your DPS gear when you're actually in your tank gear, tell them the truth and be confident about it. Any other reply only makes it sound as if you don't feel you're ready, whilst simultaneously leading the healer on to expect an easier run than he's going to get.

Quite simply, be aware that people are used to better gear than yours and be excited at the chance to try and overcome the difference through pure skill. If your trinkets have an on-use effect, use them on cooldown. Throw Vigilance on whichever party member has the highest threat. Use Shield Block and Shield Wall, Spell Reflect and Enraged Regeneration. Try to limit incoming damage with Concussion Blow and Disarm. Treat each pull like a boss fight in its own right, not through constant ready checking but through intelligent application of your skills. It might make you feel a tad silly for taking trash seriously but I assure you, using all your skills will help you to learn their keybinds properly... while convincing your group that you can still hold your own without all that purple.