Skinny Tank

Crowd Control: The List.

2011-01-07T12:32:00.013Z

So, hey, Cataclysm brought tactics, crowd control and caution back from the dead! Hurrah for proper tank work, with marks and interrupts and dancing around angry flayer claws. But, uh, all these new crowd control moves can be a little confusing. In fact, even the older ones are a bit dusty after spending the whole of Wrath loitering, unused, on people’s action bars. So here’s the list:

DRUID

Cyclone. This is only a six-second effect with diminishing returns, so you’re not going to be using it as a fight-long CC effect. The target is immune to damage for the duration, however, so at least it won’t break when your boomkin goes Hurricane-happy.

Entangling Roots. This spell doesn’t incapacitate a mob: if they have ranged moves, they will use them, and if any of your party runs too close, even melee mobs will take a swipe, irrespective of that person’s threat. Make sure you mark a melee mob for roots, and pull the rest of the pack away from it.

Hibernate. The mob is incapacitated with this spell, so you just need to make sure no damage is going to hit it and wake it up. The limited types of mob this can be cast against is important to keep in mind: while Hibernate shines in Grim Batol, it’s useless in those instances that operate a strict no-beast-no-dragon employment policy (Throne of the Tides, for example).

HUNTER

Wyvern Sting. A straightforward incapacitate effect. What you need to keep in mind is that this skill is a talent in the survival tree, so your hunter won’t necessarily be specced into it.

Freezing Trap. The hunter’s trademark CC (usually indicated with the blue square when you’re marking, by the by). Trapping has been made much easier for hunters with their Trap Launcher, which propels their trap wherever they want. A trap doesn’t work directly like Wyvern Sting, though: there’s an instant between the trap hitting the ground and the mob freezing in place. This is important to know as a tank because the trap won’t necessarily go off in time if you pull as the hunter fires the trap – the mob may leg it out of the way.

MAGE

Polymorph. Probably the best known CC skill, usually marked with moon and often referred to as sheep – even though mages turn mobs into anything from cats to tortoises. A Polymorphed target wanders, as the tooltip states. This doesn’t mean it’s going to meander all over the battlefield, but a Poly’d target can occasionally edge into the range of Thunderclap, so watch out. Additionally, Polymorph heals its target to full. This is important in Grim Batol, where you’ll want to avoid asking your mage to sheep a target you’ve already burned to low health on a dragon.

Frost Nova. Another short-duration skill like Cyclone. I’m mentioning it because it has the potential to be the bane of your existence as a tank. Nova applies the same root effect as a druid’s Entangling Roots, which means the mob will go for whoever it can reach if a mage freezes it a couple feet away from you. This can be hard to see in the middle of a crowd – it looks like they’re all on you, but ho, that rogue is taking damage. A mage’s instinctual reaction to pulling aggro can be to Frost Nova as well, and if a mob’s rooted, it won’t run back to you when you taunt. Beware.

PALADIN

Repentance. Another straightforward skill. It can be cast on pretty much everything other than elementals, so it’s very versatile. Only retribution paladins will be specced into it, however.

PRIEST

Mind Control. There are some very neat tricks a priest can play with Mind Control. If they pull with it, for example, the other mobs have a habit of beating the CCed target to death so you don’t have to. They’re nice like that. Mind Control also affords the priest use of the target’s different spells. Using it on a high-damage target won’t just take that damage off you, it’ll turn that damage around and aim it at the mobs. The downside of Mind Control is that it incapacitates the priest. If your party needs to dodge fire, goo or whirlwinds, asking your priest to MC can be problematic.

Shackle. Incapacitates the target neatly, but only works on the undead.

Psychic Scream. Glyphed, this is essentially a short-term AoE stun that breaks with damage. Unglyphed, it has everything running every which way. It’s important to know the difference. The long CD also makes this ineffective as a proper CC skill.

ROGUE

Sap. This cannot be used on a target that is in combat, so make sure you give your rogue time to stealth over there and apply the effect before you pull. It can’t be reapplied after the pull, either, so if you see Sap break make sure you pick it up. Sap’s range isn’t as horrendously short as it once was, but the rogue still needs to get moderately close to use it. If you have the choice, try to mark targets close to the front for Sap, rather than those hiding behind layers of friends.

Blind. This is only a ten-second effect, but you may see your rogue using it when another form of CC wears off. The target wanders like a sheeped mob. Glyphed, Blind will actually remove DoTs from the mob, so it can be very helpful in re-CCing mobs that have been freed with an accidental DoT (hello, Thunderclap and Rend).

SHAMAN

Hex. Works just like sheep on mobs (unable to attack, but wandering about – in this case, probably ribbiting), with the added bonus that Hex can take a few hits before breaking. Can is an important part of that statement, mind you. Hex might be a bit more durable, but it’s not going to hold up for too long.

Bind Elemental. The shaman’s newer ability, Bind Elemental looks like it’s a root effect when cast, but it actually incapacitates. It’s in the name, but I’ll say it anyway – only works on elementals!

WARLOCK

Banish. A very strong CC that works on elementals and demons. Banish incapacitates the mob and makes it immune to damage, so it can’t be broken. Your warlock can remove it by recasting.

Seduction. This is a tricky move to use as it involves the warlock’s succubus. She needs to be summoned, then needs to run into range to seduce. While seduce is active, the succubus is stuck in place and can be killed by splash damage if you tank the mobs right up near her. She is channelling, so damage will also reduce the duration of the CC.

Fear. Thanks to this glyph, Fear is now a strong CC choice for a warlock. It incapacitates the mob for the duration, and will break through damage.

P.S. Too much 'incapacitate' hurts the typist's brain, oh yes.

Celestial Speed

2010-04-17T22:02:00.006+01:00

Blizzard are an intelligent lot. For all that Trade might try, the point really can't be argued: the other night they were pulling in millions of pounds via a queue numbering in the hundred-thousands, and they did it through well-considered use of ponies. To be more precise, the Celestial Steed. Other blogs have already delved into estimating the enormous profit, so I'm going to leave them to it, as there's another area of discussion much more suited to my maths-retardant brain.

Specifically: what the flying horse are thousands of people doing throwing their cash into pixels?

The mount is, essentially, purely aesthetic. Alright, it spares you the in-game cost and toil of trundling over to your friendly local mount vendor and snagging a new steed every time your riding skill escalates, but the cost is so low these days it's negligible. Defending your purchase from a standpoint of convenience alone is going to be difficult. In fact, I suspect most people who're doing this are actually just a little bit afraid of admitting something closer to the truth: they're buying it because it's really, really pretty. And there's a word people tag to you when you buy stuff because it's really, really pretty: superficial.

Superficial - RELATING TO THE SURFACE.
Relating to, affecting, or located on or near the surface of something.
A superficial wound.

As this is entirely to do with a mount skin, it's exactly the right word. The problem lies in the reams of social stigma surrounding this notion: buy something just because it's pretty and you risk being materialistic and focused only on aesthetics. Perhaps you're even a wee bit stupid because you're paying for pixels in a game.

Those that are entirely caught up on that idea need to stop and think for a moment. If you're playing World of Warcraft, I'm afraid you already are paying for pixels in a game. Even if you do it to make new friends or spend time with old ones, you witness everything going on in WoW, from chat to damage output to that nice new loot, through pixels on your screen. So be careful, least you find your argument turns in a lot of “only in some cases” or perhaps “just not in my case” because of your own monthly subscription fee.

Nevertheless, there is some weight to what these people are saying. Buying anything simply because it's pretty, be it a new shirt or a new winged horse, cannot logically be justified. The thing that several members of both sides seem to be missing is that no one is buying it simply because it's pretty. They're buying it because it's pretty and pretty is going to make them happy.

Let me go all anecdotal on you.

The night before the Celestial Steed was released, I split from my boyfriend of three years. While I had prepared myself for that – hell, I instigated it – it knocked me back a bit nevertheless. By the following evening I had a headache and that lingering nausea of recent loss. Not the stuff of violent heartbreak, but suffice to say I was on a downer. Then I found out about this horse, and my immediate reaction was I deserve cheering up. Not “it'll save me a few minutes' travel time and a handful of gold for my alts”, not “it'll boost my mount count for that achievement”, not “I'll be able to hang around Dalaran with the cool kids!” I wanted to nab me some happy and damn, what is a sparkly winged horse if not that?

My purchase has provided exactly what I wanted. I bought it, rode around on it with a mate, and just generally had fun. Not just that, but the depth of my love for shiny horses has left me gleeful every time I log on to find my character sitting on one.

To summarise, I bought something aesthetically pleasing. It made me happy. It doesn't need rationalising any further: as soon as you stop looking at superficial assets and considering them as something shiny with no additional benefits, as soon as buying pretty translates correctly to buying happy, it ceases to be something to get defensive about. It ceases to be worthy of derision.

Identity Crisis: Resolved

2010-04-07T11:26:00.003+01:00

So, I've had quite a lot to say lately. Lots of interesting new changes to the game, lots of Cataclysm speculation, lots of class-related discourse, a bit of GearScore-related bitching, even some roleplaying posts. Yet the blog remained silent.

This is because I've felt unable to reconcile the name of this blog – which refers to my bone-thin warrior tank – with the characters I've been playing lately. I'd write a page about my fire mage or my multi-tasking druid, then scrap the whole thing because I wasn't sure it belonged here. And as Aelys is still sitting unplayed on rotten old Moonglade it rather looked like Skinny Tank was over.

Then, the other day, as I was tanking Utgarde Keep for the first time in ages as my death knight, Daelythir, I realised what I was doing internally as I looked at certain pulls.

This particular pull was the one just before the first boss, Prince Keleseth: two mobs on either side of a wide table, two of them prone to pausing to self-buff when aggroed. As a death knight, I generally pull the closest on one side with Icy Touch, throw down Death and Decay, yoink the furthest loitering Runecaster with Death Grip, Plague Strike the first one, spread diseases with Pestilence, reactivate a blood rune with Blood Tap and immediately Blood Boil. The thing is, I hadn't played my Death Knight in a while so I found myself having to puzzle this chain of actions in the split second before I reached the mobs. And in the absence of a class-specific game plan, I defaulted to warrior.

Pull with ranged weapon, use Heroic Throw on a Runecaster, toggle on Cleave and Charge a mob that's roughly central, Thunder Clap, Shockwave. Engrained in my brain. As a WoW-player, I am a warrior at heart, and the experience of playing warrior for so long happens to be very useful when playing other classes. Mob positioning; controlled pulling; marking; keeping up the pace: all of these skills are wholly transferable to any other tanking class. Meanwhile, knowledge of mob abilities and which are worth actively countering; knowing when to start nuking; knowing when to or why not to root, CC or snare; understanding the tank's likely threat levels on each mob before AoEing: these are all very useful from a DPS role.

With this in mind, I've finally established this blog's defining thread: it is a blog from the point of view of a warrior tank. It is no-longer solely about warrior tanking, it's just written by a girl who happens to think like one. “Musings of the paper-thin meatshield” - now with boundless subject matter. Hoo-hah.

The PuG Queue Redefined (or: I am Amused by Blizzard's Sledgehammer)

2010-01-06T16:19:00.005Z

Once upon a time, a night elf rogue by the name of Sevielle squatted in Ironforge. Although she would have much rather been out questing for great justice and farmable loot, this was not an option, for Sevielle wished to do an instance, and to do an instance, she needed Ironforge general chat.

“LF3M to UBRS,” cried one persistent tank, and she recognised the name as the same fellow who had been seeking members over an hour ago. “Just need healers!” he continued, quickly explaining everything. “PST!”

Sevielle rather doubted anyone would send him that tell for at least another forty minutes. Buttering a crumpet out in the real world, she mused vaguely that if she was especially lucky she might actually gain her first member for a group to Stratholme before mister Upper Blackrock zoned into his instance.

Some eighteen months later, Sevielle had inexplicably morphed into Miriah the Forsaken shadowpriest and was idly flying from the Undercity to Arathi to poke the PvP vendor there. Text gushed across her chatbox in the bottom left of her screen.

“Tank LFG SM Cath!”
“WTS [Righteous Orb]!”
“TRADE in TRADE, idiot.”
“Stop spam.”
“When you say stop spam, you're spamming, duh.”

World-wide LFG had been born and already Miriah's brain had learned to compensate by only reacting to certain combinations of letters, namely MC, Strath, Scholo and LBRS. Nevertheless, some subconscious part of her brain couldn't help but twitch at the escalating idiocy the world-wide channel apparently provided, and deduce that the added convenience of being able to travel while seeking an instance group just wasn't worth it. She would later roll her eyes and tut “I told you so” when Blizzard apparently came to the same conclusion and world-wide LFG was no more.

More time passed, and Miriah became Aelystriel the Forsaken warrior, scratching her head as she worked out defence scores, checked AtlasLoot and chose instances from drop-down boxes. Irritatingly, she could only queue specifically for three instances at a time, but it didn't take long for her to realise that, once queued for anything at all, she could click the LFM tab and search through every single heroic instance for a group or group-like gathering of un-grouped people.

First, she chanced across a group of two paladins, a druid and a priest for heroic Steam Vaults. Brilliant, she thought, and sent the leader a quick tell.

“May I join as tank or DPS?”

A long pause. She wondered vaguely if the group leader was trying to find her and inspect her, as they were both in Shattrath. Another player asked her to come tank for him in heroic Mechanar, but as she'd already asked the other group she felt bad about potentially having to let the first fellow down and said no.

“Need healer or DPS,” came the reply at length, and she noticed that he was indeed standing right next to her.

“Brilliant,” she replied immediately, “I'd love to DPS.”

“You are prot,” he stated simply.

“Well, yes, I'll respec.”

“No.”

“No?”

“No time.”

“It really won't take that long.”

“Respec takes time.”

“But surely you already have one member who's volunteered to respec if you need 'healer or DPS'.”

“Full now.”

Aelystriel sat in Shattrath and practised facedesking. As if whispering strangers wasn't irritating enough without exchanges like that. Time passed and she metamorphosed from warrior to rogue to warlock to disc priest to blood death knight to frost death knight to druid to warrior to paladin to mage, and over the course of it all she slowly ceased whispering group leaders and potential group members altogether. Her little comment in the LFG tool said all she needed to say, so frankly those other people could whisper her and save her quite a bit of effort. Occasionally, when she had come home late and tipsy, she would log on and wax lyrical to close friends about the slow degradation of human contact within the game. She remembered a time, oh yes, when she had to sit and talk in a chat channel to get a group! Oh, she thought, easily skimming over the hours wasted in Ironforge, those were the days. To have to speak to people again...!

It was around this point when she changed again into Daelythir the dual-wielding frost death knight. Although she might have been perplexed by her new gender, this was all easily overruled by such a huge change she wasn't quite sure what to make of it: cross-server LFG.

Cross-server LFG came complete with ticky boxes, which the she-male inspected while hovering over the Stadium in Hellfire Peninsula, waiting for unsuspecting Alliance to kill for Marks of Thrallmar. Tick one to queue as DPS, tick the next to state she was quite willing to tank, select “Queue for random dungeon” from the dropdown box and then hit the button marked queue. Within minutes she had a group, the result of a painless process that required no effort on her part. No cries of “LFG!” in a chat-channel, no humble whispers to an irritable party leader, no rejection and no endless clicking through instances to find a group for a heroic, any heroic, only for every party to lack a helpful comment announcing what they needed.

Oh yes, thought Daelythir as his/her Howling Blast stuck a magnificent triple pull of nine mobs to him like Taffy to the roof of one's mouth, Blizzard had done it this time, hadn't they. Mindlessly easy group formation. And all it took was to remove human interaction from the process. Funny, that.

3.3

2009-12-09T08:21:00.005Z

So, it's big patch day and I'm scanning the notes when I see the real point of this update.

The existing /welcome emote now greets/welcomes targets (character says "hello"), while the new /yw is for saying "you're welcome."

Confusion begone. The /welcome emote had perplexed and irritated me for years; I have to admit seeing it, of all things, being fixed made me grin 'til my cheeks hurt. Huzzah Blizzard, huzzah!

Alright, alright. They've changed Taunt's diminishing returns too. Specifically, mobs no longer become immune to Taunt until five Taunts have landed, and the duration of the Taunt effect will be reduced by 35% instead of 50% for each Taunt landed. Somewhat vaguely, we're also told that "most creatures in the world will not be affected by Taunt diminishing returns at all." I presume this means mobs outside of instances and perhaps instance trash; this last part is a tad useless if that's the case, as the only mobs to regularly be Taunted back and forth between tanks are bosses.

That said, I've been musing over why they would make Taunt easier and safer to use, and it makes me wonder if perhaps it hints at more fights like Gormok the Impaler being added in future. The process of letting one tank hold the boss until a certain debuff is applied/stacks to a certain number is one I quite enjoy, as it keeps both tanks entertained and keeps the healers attentive as well. A boss fight that starts with multiple mobs and then narrows down to just one can be particularly boring in the final phase for an off tank if his or her only role is to apply any debuffs and wait for the main tank to make a mistake, after all.

As per usual, though, the patch includes something annoying. It wouldn't be right otherwise, no?

Will of the Forsaken now shares a 45-second cooldown with similar effects, including the Medallion of the Horde, Titan-Forged runes, Insignia of the Horde, etc.

Okay, so this isn't exactly crippling. A fight would have to be riddled with fear, stun and polymorph to make me even consider equipping my PvP trinket while tanking, but damn it, haven't they nerfed WotF enough? With these changes to it, Arcane Torrent is becoming the clear winner when comparing the two for PvP. Pfft. And once upon a time we Forsaken were the unchallenged rulers of the PvP racial...

Ahem. Anyway. Warriors, you must be loving our corner of the patch notes.

Warriors
Victory Rush: This ability is now trainable at level six.
Talents: Protection: Damage Shield: This ability will no longer trigger any chance-on-hit effects from the warrior or the opponent it damages.

Stop and take a few deep breaths. I know it's a lot to take in, especially for those of us at level eighty. Sheesh.

In all seriousness, though, the Damage Shield change makes sense and adding Victory Rush to our low level move pool is definitely coherent with all the other changes to make levelling less painful. To a low level warrior, rage starved and struggling to kill things with rubbish weaponry, Victory Rush will be a godsend. Yes, it won't effect those of us who've already levelled in the slightest, but let there be love for our newly-rolled warrior amigos. Besides, the lack of changes can mean one of two things: they think we're fine, or they're working on something bigger and more ground-breaking. I can't really see a reason to complain about either!

Happy patch day, at any rate. Best of luck to those set to raid Icecrown, and grats on all those incoming upgrades to those ready to grind some more heroics for new emblems!

Socialising, Paladins and the Skinny Alt

2009-11-30T23:55:00.005Z

Recovering from nearly a month offline has proved a bit difficult for me. While I still love Aelys and the warrior class, the radio silence on Moonglade whenever I log in has been depressing. And yes, yes, when I first got back to her I was new to the Horde side of the server and happy to hurl myself into things, but now I have epics and they feel hollow without the people who helped me gain them beside me.

Yes, I openly admit it. I'm a sentimental nutcase. I would be happier with my current situation on Moonglade if I had shitty blues and was fighting for respect once more. Thus is the mind of the raving madwoman.

Actually, I'm probably being a little hard on myself. See, while I enjoy the gameplay in WoW and I appreciate the pretty little details in Northrend and the interesting questlines and the overarching lore of the whole shibang, I mostly play to have fun with other people. People geographically distant, with a spread of ethnicities and hobbies I'm hard pressed to match IRL, even now that I'm back at uni and rocking with a whole load of nifty students. I like making friends I know I wouldn't meet if not for the game, and logging onto a whole list of alts made by people who transferred to other servers in my absence, knowing I may as well just remove the whole lot, makes me melancholy.

Again, yes, sentimental nutcase.

Well.

It just so happens the WoW Ladies were in the midst of starting up a new version of Daughters of the Horde on the European servers when I was getting back, and naturally this caught my attention. “Why not?” thought I. “I can roll a new character and hang out with them, and if it seems to be going well, I can transfer Aelys over and hey presto, new home.”

I rolled an orc shaman to start out with, because orcs are hot and I've never levelled a shaman past forty. She, uh, didn't stick. A stick, however, did. Oh yes, my new alt is a blood elf. A blood elf paladin.

The immediate response to this from a fellow warrior tank was "I now class you as scum", which wasn't very nice. I reassured him it was all in the name of research, to which he said "I now class you as lab-coat-wearing scum." He is lovely like that.

Nevertheless, I do count little Allévansis as something of an experiment even now that she's sitting at 60, a high level for an alt of mine. I find that, in gameplay terms, I enjoy playing her for the opposite reason I enjoy playing Aelys: it is incredibly easy to be a very solid player as a paladin without really knowing a great deal about the class.

I have not researched my role as retridin like I did with warrior, but I cleanly top the charts in every instance - and that's not including trash, where Consecration and Seal of Command cleave things into oblivion. I've had to tank a lot in instances while levelling up, as well, which has proved very easy. As a retridin I hold aggro even when I forget to use Righteous Fury, so god alone knows what threat generation must be like for someone actually specced to tank, complete with shield of pwnage. There is little challenge in survival and threat generation, so I can focus most of my efforts on the little things. Speedy marking, snagging patrols, seamless pulling, my healer's mana and, of course, idle banter. For someone used to mashing Heroic Strike every second and generally being rendered mute during combat, it's all relaxing and refreshing.

Obviously this is all low-level stuff. I have not played paladin at eighty, let alone tanked a raid as one, so I really can't comment on end game at all, yet the difference between off-spec tanking as a paladin and off-spec tanking as a warrior while levelling up is extremely clear. Paladin is just effortlessly better; a warrior would have to be very skilled indeed to compete.

This doesn't make me resentful, however. Yes, a paladin can have one tanking spec that covers both high threat talents and high survivability talents; yes, they're more durable than us at the moment; yes, they can be decent tanks even in the hands of the foolish and noobish; and yes, they're fun. But the differences between their static, glowing variation of tanking and our active, gritty one don't undermine or cheapen either side. I believe we complement one another nicely, and am simply glad to have the choice of going either way when I log in nowadays.

Anyway, I'm aware I've gone through tangents like Simon Cowel through tooth-whitening treatments. My main points are:

1. I'm still alive.
2. Other people are cool.
3. Aelys should soon have a new home and I will be posting about her again.
~~4. Interclass orgies are go.~~

Much love, thine recently absent skinny tank,

Circle of Tanks

2009-11-09T16:56:00.003Z

I'm still getting back on track with my next post (originally it was just going to be a strategy post for ToC5 but it's so late on now I doubt there's a great deal of point, even for new tanks) so here's a handy filler post!

Tagged by Askevar of You Yank it, You Tank it.

What is the name, class, and spec of your primary tank?
Aelystriel, warrior, survival prot.

What is your primary tanking environment? (i.e. raids, pvp, 5 mans)
As my guild disbanded in my absence, I'm sticking to 5 mans and VoA PuGs at the moment. Used to be 10man.

What is your favourite tanking spell for your class and why?
CHARGE. Alright, alright, it's not specifically a tanking move, but there's still nothing like yelling "Rawr!" and zooming into a group of mobs. As for tanking skills, it's a tie between Shockwave and Shield Slam. Shockwave is a brilliant move: masses of threat and a good long pause in which to position yourself without the mobs hopping on your back. Shield Slam, on the other hand, gets my love because it means part of my rotation is also a dispel. Tanking Jeraxxus' adds is especially fun when I dart over and smack Nether Protection back to whence it came before turning back to my target.

What tanking spell do you use least for your class and why?
Challenging Shout. I feel I could make much better use of it than I do; at the moment it's just an "oh shit!" button for me, whereas I feel it would be quite useful used more frequently. The only fight where I'm sure to use it is Onyxia (but frankly, the whelps count as an "oh shit!" moment for me as my dodgy connection is big on buggering up as soon as they spawn).

As for why I don't use Challenging Shout that much, I think it's partly because of the keybinding. I have it bound to dash above my num pad, and I jab it with my mouse hand when I need to use it. Were it elsewhere it wouldn't be such a stretch to use. Other than that, I still have the backward mentality that taunting is bad. This, of course, is foolish. Using taunt isn't a sign of a bad tank; taunt is a perfectly acceptable tool and its AoE counterpart is no different.

What do you feel is the biggest strength of your tanking class and why?
Mobility and flexibility. Your prot warrior can deal with fear better than any other class thanks to Berserker Rage (and Will of the Forsaken for me, too); we have a reliable interrupt; we can dispel; we channel another player's threat away from them; we have three effective taunts (Taunt, Challenging Shout and Mocking Blow); we can apply three debuffs that reduce mobs' damage (Thunderclap, Demo Shout and Disarm); we bring buffs to improve our team's damage (Devastate and Battle Shout); we can take a hit that should have struck another tank without risking making a mob taunt-immune (Intervene); we can cross a field faster than any other class with Charge, Intercept and Intervene; we have a ranged silence; we can stunlock mobs that aren't immune for almost as long as a rogue... the list goes on. I do not feel we are the strongest main tank figure any more, even though our cooldowns are solid and our mitigation is not to be scoffed at. We are, however, brilliant at dealing with those little oddities of boss fights and, in my opinion, a pleasure to watch when we're Doing It Right.

What do you feel is the biggest weakness of your tanking class and why?
Sometimes we get resource starved. Not half as frequently as the "down with rage!" ranting crew you can find on the forums try to make out, but when it happens you just look bad. Bloodrage, Challenging Shout, Heroic Throw and Charge are on cooldown. You have no rage. Someone body-pulls. You Taunt one of the mobs and run out to meet it, but you block the first strike it makes against you and gain no rage worth speaking of so you can't snag the others with anything other than your melee swing. Your silly body-pulling ally? Quite possibly on the floor. I've only had this happen twice in my entire tanking life, but it still burns the portion of my memory in which those two occasions reside.

In a 25 man raiding environment, what do you feel, in general, is the best tanking assignment for you?
The only 25man raids I run are OS and VoA. In OS, I find I'm very good on the drakes and lava spawns, though I can still tank Satharion himself with ease. In VoA, I prefer to main tank Koralon: Vigilance on the off tank reduces the damage dealt to him and gives me such an abundance of threat that the DPS can just pewpew to their heart's content. On Archavon it really doesn't matter. I like tanking the adds for Emalon, as Heroic Throw is great for picking them up, but I'm probably best suited to main tank there as I can zoom in and out of Lightning Nova range with Intervene and Charge.

What tanking class do you enjoy tanking with most and why?
I have a druid, a paladin, a death knight and a warrior, and the warrior is my favourite. Of course, the warrior is the only one at 80 - the others range from 40 to 73. I enjoy bear most of the other three; Swipe is fun, Mangle the closest to gory this game gets and, let's be honest here, who doesn't like tanking with their face? I always feel slow as a bear though, perhaps because of my big bear butt. Feral Charge is fun, but just doesn't compare to the real deal.

Paladin just feels too passive. Things hit me, I get threat. And yes, I know that's an oversimplification, but that's just how it feels. I stick down Consecration and mobs just run into a carpet of threat; people heal me and my resource pool replenishes; I have an instant full-heal for those ohshit moments. I do quite enjoy the guise of invincibility provided and watching really good paladins, like the leader of my old guild, is quite something. I just don't love it like I do warrior.

Death Knight frustrates me, in part because I prefer DK DPS but never get to do it. I'm good at keeping up diseases and boiling them and using Howling Blast whenever it comes off cooldown, and I'm starting to react well to the odd unintentional pull that previously had me groping stupidly for Heroic Throw. I just feel kinda... passive, though. I stand and my skills zoom out to mobs.

Which leads to why I like warrior. Mobs move, and I zoom to them. Yes, that's right. I love warrior because I can zoom. It really is as simple as that.

What tanking class do you enjoy tanking with least and why?
Death Knight. I think this may change if I try a different spec - perhaps blood - because frost just bores me, but I dunno fo'sho. It's mostly down to the feeling of being stationary I mentioned above.

What is your worst habit as a tank?
I brood. If I make a mistake, I make more mistakes for a little while afterwards because I'm still focusing on the first one and being bitter about it. As I'm always a leader figure when tanking, this makes for snark in chat if I really manage to stress myself out, or just plain forgetting to mention something if I need to review tactics. This doesn't seem to happen to me when playing healer or DPS: when healing, if I screw up and my charge dies I apologise and then make sure I don't make the same error again; when DPSing I just pull out all the stops to make up for lost ground.

I also occasionally forget to watch a healer's mana. Not frequently, but every once in a while. This is bad because I get really frustrated when a healer insists on calling out every mana break even though I've obviously stopped already. *facepalm*

What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while tanking?
DPS pulling or deliberately overnuking. I don't care if you're a mate and you think it's fun to push me; I set a good, quick pace through heroics but that doesn't mean I ever pull mindlessly like some of these dweebs do. If you notice that I pull a group, spend a little time attacking it, then pull another, think about why that might be, mister "ololol, Aelys, run here! :D" paladin. Maybe it's because I'm waiting for a patrol to pass. Maybe it's 'cause I want an AoE ability off cooldown first. Maybe because I as the tank want to keep everything under control...!

I should terminate that rant before it goes too far.

Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other tanks?
The fact that I adore my class makes this hard to tell. I do feel that paladins are pulling ahead of everyone at the moment but I don't mind that much. I'm not being excluded because of my class, after all, although I have had a PuG group rise up against one member who demanded I was kicked so they could bring in their friend "who's a proper tank class." Instead of taking that as a bad experience, I was mostly just touched that the people I'd grouped with before were impressed enough by my previous performance to tell that guy where to stuff it.

What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a tank?
I keep loose track of how many spells I reflect, how much of the time I keep Thunderclap and Demo Shout active, how frequently I make use of cooldowns and how often I just don't notice a mob to evaluate myself, as well as checking up on Recount to track my interrupts, skill usage and dispels. I also ask healers how easy I am to heal and watch Omen to see how my TPS is doing. Occasionally I'll even play without Vigilance if I feel I've been slacking a bit but generally I feel that, while it may force me to work hard, not making use of such a strong ability is a bad thing to do.

What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your class?
That we were left behind with TBC. Yeah, we were the only tanks worth speaking of in Vanilla WoW. Yeah, everyone else finally (and deservedly) came into their own in TBC. Yeah, some people are foolishly calling death knights "warrior mk. II". Our AoE threat is a lot stronger than you realise, our cooldowns a lot more effective, our versatility a lot more worth considering. Just because our rivals are now on equal footing does not mean Blizzard hates the warrior class, nor that it should be left in the dust by the player base.

What do you feel is the most difficult thing for new tanks of your class to learn?
Spatial awareness. This includes intelligent positioning of mob group and of yourself within the mob group, as well as how you aim your camera and whether you look to make sure everything is in LoS of your party. I notice a lot of new warriors will charge into a group and let one or two of the mobs hide around a corner, so that the warrior is hitting them but the ranged have to move before they can do the same.

Having sat behind someone who was learning the warrior class and watched him run Maraudon, I also noticed how static his camera usage was - while fighting he would stop moving the camera altogether and just stare at his own butt. You need to be constantly vigilant for patrols and for party screwups, remembering that a good tank will see the mage accidentally hit blink instead of pyro and body pull a dragon in time to save his squishy arse, while a bad or mediocre tank will only notice the mistake when suddenly a party member is dead.

Effective Health or Avoidance and why?
I believe that a good health pool is much more important when you're first gearing up. This is because a tank that starts stacking avoidance immediately will get Spiky Health Syndrome (SHS, fo'sho). They'll dodge and dodge and take a hit of a third of their health and block a bit of the next hit and parry and take another hit; because their avoidance is at the "getting there" stage and their health will barely be in the 20k range they will be taking regular hits and those hits will be disproportionately large to the healer, because a 5k smack is actually a fourth of the tank's healthpool. You do not get the near-invincible level of mitigation until much high gear levels so you need the big health pool to soak the inevitable hits.

Additionally, people will judge you on your health. A new tank needs to build up their confidence as much as their gear, so the fewer people sneering at them for having low HP the better. Later on, I feel you need to achieve a balance. Personally, I do still favour health a bit: blue sockets get stamina gems, red sockets get expertise/stamina gems, yellow sockets get defence/stamina or dodge/stamina gems. This is because, while healing, I have had to deal with tanks that favoured mitigation... and I know I would much rather they'd beefed up their stamina a bit first.

What tanking class do you feel you understand least?
Druid. I've never read about their end-game tanking 'cause I don't know any druid tanks at the moment. I think they look wicked cool though! (See earlier paragraph re: FACE TANKING.)

What add-ons or macros do you use, if any, to aid you in tanking?
I have a macro that takes me into Battle Stance, uses Retaliation and then hops back into Defensive Stance when I hit it three times. I usually hit it twice and then smack my Defensive Stance keybind instead, though: too many moments where I haven't spammed as much as I thought I did or have spammed too much and ended up tanking in Battle Stance for a few seconds. o.o;

Other than that, I have no macros. I tried one to use Heroic Strike with Devastate, but that rather removed Heroic Strike's functionality as a threat/rage "throttle" and irritated me so it didn't even last one instance run. My mods are Omen, Pitbull, ForteXorcist, Recount, Quartz, Satrina's Buff Frames, CaelNamePlates, DeadlyBossMods and TicTac.

Do you strive primarily for balance between your tanking stats, or do you stack some much higher than others, and why?
I love me some stamina, so once I'm defence capped stamina becomes my best mate. Other than that, I prioritise expertise over hit (although you wouldn't know it by looking at me - somehow I have enough hit from my gear, without enchants or gems, to put me well over the hit cap) and dodge over block over parry. I mostly aim to keep myself balanced, although I intend on creating a threat set, a mitigation set and a health set when I get the gear to customise it thusly.

So yeah, that's it. I tag any tank that sees this and still hasn't done it themselves. Go! Spread the word. The circle cannot be broken.

And... I have internet again!

2009-11-02T11:47:00.002Z

So, that whole post about how my driver update saved the day? It really didn't. My wireless adapter refused to connect at all until I finally did a total move around of everything in my room so as to get my computer as close as possible to the router.

I don't retract the main thrust of that old post - seriously, do update your drivers - but I was utterly wrong in thinking my wireless adapter was anything other than useless. :( I'll be back to posting soon enough, anyway. I hope.

An Aside Concerning Parries

2009-10-12T14:23:00.009+01:00

So, after some encouraging comments by Askevar at You Yank It, You Tank It, I healed my first dual-wielding death knight tank the other day. He was no more difficult to heal than he had been while using a two-hander.

What does this have to do with warriors? Well.

As a healer, I was most concerned that my death knight fellow would be more prone to the dreaded parry gib (in which a boss parries an attack, speeding up the next swing, and smacks the tank in the face) or at least take more damage from parry-hasted strikes. This did not prove to be the case, which got me thinking: is a death knight tank the one who needs to worry about parried strikes the most?

Although I have yet to acquire any numbers to back this up, I think the answer is no. Why?

Well, it's because I think we warriors actually hit faster, meaning more frequent strikes and more potential parries. I come to this conclusion for two reasons. The first is that the bouncy thing to the right is, in fact, what my character looks like while tanking, with the odd pause for Shield Slam's animation (although the yellow numbers never slow in their scrolling). When tanking a boss we don't massively outgear we have the rage to attack on every global cooldown, with further attacks occurring every melee swing (be that white damage, Heroic Strike or cleave, they can all be parried). That's a lot of potential parries.

Of course, the death knight is swinging fairly frantically themselves as one-handed tanking weapons are naturally quick and these guys are using two. Like the warrior, they have a melee-swing replacing attack - Rune Strike - but we differ in that skills such as Death and Decay, Icy Touch and the frost tank's Howling Blast are spells. Spells cannot be parried. While I definitely do not mean to suggest that all of a death knight's skills are spells - they're not - I do believe there may be enough of a difference between the number of a death knight's GCDs spent on physical attacks and the number a warrior uses to mean parrying is definitely not a DWing death knight-specific concern.

That said, I haven't found it too problematic for my warrior. Seems boss parries just aren't that consequential anymore, mayhap.

Drivers

2009-10-08T13:45:00.007+01:00

This really isn't warrior-specific advice but I think it important enough a reminder to muscle its way in here. Everyone: remember to regularly update your drivers. If you don't, you risk reducing the effectiveness of (or even rendering useless) parts of your computer. Why do I mention this now? Well...

I made brief mention of my terrible connection in my last post. I have two ways of connecting to the internet wirelessly: through my ZyXEL wireless network card and through a Belkin USB stick. Although the card recognised my network it just wouldn't connect so it seemed I was stuck using the stick, which gives a deceptively normal ms of roughly 100-200 but also adds in the odd 2-3 second burst of lag (as extra flavour). Frankly, it sucked. I was still a passable tank thanks to gear and begging Tricks and Misdirection off friendly DPS, but I just felt incredibly bog-standard. I couldn't do any fun tricks charging between mobs and whatnot and my TPS was mediocre at best.

Being single-minded and remembering issues with thick walls blocking signal in the past, I tried moving my computer to the corner of my room closest to the router downstairs. My card did notice the improvement in signal, but it only changed the little "your signal is x strong" and nothing useful. So my mind turned to buying a new network card or router. Frankly, I'm glad I'm a penniless student, or else I would have one or the other by now.

Vista saved me. My computer crashed for the first time ever while being shut down last night, and this morning Vista gave me a handy little dialogue box. "This computer has suffered from an unexpected shutdown. This is a serious error." It gave me a list of things to check. And there at the very top? "Check your wireless network adapter drivers." I did. And the little properties box... told me that my network card was working on drivers from 2007.

Admittedly, my card was made by an obscure company and I remember searching for and failing to find drivers for it in the past, but I persevered this time and located them. And yes, they appear to have fixed my problem!

In summary: treat your hardware and relative drivers like your own children. They require love, attention and, importantly, not being left to look after themselves since 2007.

Oh, and as I rarely get to say this I really must add: I love you, Vista.

An Extremely Important Note

2009-10-06T12:44:00.010+01:00

Aspect of the Hare just made me aware of something awesome in this post here. Wowhead's tooltip code allows you to show tooltips for characters too! LOOK: I am Aelystriel, I used to play Talista but healing is not as cool as being smacked in the face by dragons. I tried tanking as a death knight with Jadwiga but it just wasn't as much fun.

I am in love with this.

On another, less important note, I finally got to tank Maly yesterday! I've been trying to PuG a group there for some time (by some time, I mean a week and a half) when out of the blue I get an invite from my guild leader... and it's a full Eye of Eternity group. I had far too much fun strafe-tanking him around and feeling slick, and at the end of it all he dropped the Barricade of Eternity. An excellent night all around, even if my new internet connection is doing its best to drive me mad.

Basic Positioning: Trash

2009-10-04T10:16:00.016+01:00

So, now that I have power cables for my computer and my monitor...

Trash can be overlooked when you're first getting ready to take the plunge into heroics. How many people could honestly say that when a group to heroic Gun'drak dropped them an invite their minds immediately leapt to the horrors of tanking groups of trolls rather than dodging Poison Nova and being beaten on by Moorabi's mammoth form? There's (rightfully) a lot of focus on having enough defence to tank bosses and enough avoidance and health to survive the beatings they dish out when we're first preparing to tank heroics, but it's wise to remember that while trash may not drop emblems or require so much defence, it still makes up the bulk of the instance.

So, what should be considered when approaching a trash pack? For this post, I'm going to focus on positioning. There are several elements to keep in mind when moving mobs around:

1. How easy will it be to move them? Some mobs are casters or ranged and hence unwilling to run up to you like their more compliant melee counterparts. With Gag Order in our toolbox, prot warriors have two silences to hand to help them move casters around. While Heroic Throw makes things easiest as you don't even need to get too close to the caster to silence it, Shield Bash is perfectly viable, especially when teamed with one of your charge skills. Ranged mobs (spear throwers and hunters, usually) are somewhat more annoying: your best bet is to run right up to them and move them back slowly. Both forms of ranged mobs fall victim to the line of sight pull: attract the pack's attention and leg it behind a corner so they have to turn it to hit you.

2. Are there patrolling mobs in the area I need to avoid? Tanking in the path of a patrol is generally inadvisable. Figure out a safer place to hold your pack and shift them over there pronto.

3. Is this pack particularly close to another? If yes, you may want to pull your pack back a bit to avoid accidentally body-pulling the next. Even if you think you'll be fine tanking on the next group's doorstep do consider the fact that your meleers are going to want to attack the mobs from behind and may well blunder too close to the next group if you don't make sure they have space. A good method of pulling back is to use a ranged technique to grab their attention, run back a few paces and then charge when you have them roughly where you want them.

4. Do these mobs have frontal cone/cleave effects? You should be turning most mobs away from your group anyway, but if a mob has an attack liable to flatten non-tanks in front of them that's just an extra incentive to do it and do it fast. If you don't have room to turn them all away around, at least turn them to the side.

5. Can these mobs fear? While you may be able to break out of fear sharpish or even pre-emptively with Berserker Rage, most of your party members are unlikely to be capable of the same. Try to move fearing mobs away from other groups, and also consider the possibility that your healer might be feared around a corner and out of line of sight from you.

With all this considered, you should have a pretty good idea of where to tank your packs and how to move them as you like. Threat can be generated on the run with Thunderclap and Demoralising Shout, and if you're used to strafing you can even Cleave, Devastate, Revenge and Shield Slam over your shoulder. The king of multi-target tanking, however, is undoubtedly Shockwave.

Shockwave comes into positioning for two reasons: you need to position mobs for it to hit as many as possible and it makes positioning yourself relative to the mobs infinitely easier. As any tank is liable to know, mobs can be stupid sometimes: if you twitch to the side some of them may take this as an opportunity to sneak in behind you. Therefore I find it best to use Shockwave as soon as possible, preferably when the mobs are still running at me. For this to work, I need them all running at me from the same direction, so Shockwave tends to dictate which mob I want to charge into. As my screenshot key tends to lock up my game for a second, here are some out-of-instance-where-I-could-kill-people mobs as an example group:

If I charged a middle mob I'd have the rest collapse in from the sides. While I could handle this by taking a few steps backwards after charging, then Shockwaving, the simpler solution is to charge one of the mobs on the end. If I did this from my current angle I would have to then swing around to face the rest of them. The stun from Charge should keep my target in place but there's always a chance that I lag for a second or the mob resists Charge's stun, so it's somewhat safer to change the angle of my attack so that I don't need to move at all for every mob to be in Shockwave's cone area of effect. Something like this:

Once Shockwave is off you have a few seconds of group-wide stun in which to get to whichever side of the pack you want. It's the perfect instant to turn them away from your party.

Of course, most mob packs don't come in handy straight lines. Nevertheless, there's usually a "corner" mob that gives you a good position from which to hit the others, and if you need some initial threat while you move around a bit before Shockwaving there's always Thunderclap. Good places to practice this include the shoveltusk packs in Howling Fjord or the mammoths running around in the Storm Peaks. It's definitely worth experimenting with there, as the AoE-happy nature of WotLK DPS demands solid AoE tanking, which in turn demands a good grasp of Shockwave.

An Idiot's Update

2009-09-30T10:12:00.009+01:00

So, being an idiot I left one of my power cables at home when I moved to my university accommodation this weekend just gone. Being a complete and utter idiot, I didn't leave a less important cable like my DSi charger, I left the one for my monitor. As such, I can't do the post I intended on writing because my backup option (my laptop with my PC's power cable plugged into the monitor) is an ancient piece of crud. Hoorah. In its place I guess I'll give a brief update on me, because what is a blog if not a place to be egocentric?

For me, 3.2 made early group finding into a mixed basket of hate, pity, vague hope and almost painful concentration. That is to say, some group members hated me for my comparatively tiny health pool; others recognised that gearing up a new tank has to start somewhere and were sickeningly sweet; more still saw me tanking well in sub-par equipment and added me to their friends list on the off chance that I might become useful; and I made use of every single tanking trick I know of in a desperate attempt not to die or let die. It was almost painful because I kept catching myself forgetting to blink.

Nevertheless, after an initially poor start (my first heroic was the Culling of Stratholme, in which the kitty druid took one look at my 21k health, scoffed and said "I'll tank", leaving me to put out a piddling 900DPS and acquire a painful headache) I have to say that every heroic has been an enjoyable experience. Once every group was in the instance and moving through trash at a reasonable rate they became much less critical of my tempered saronite and distinct lack of anything purple; in fact, I made a lot of friends with whom I'm still asked to instance fairly frequently. I've learned a lot and I'm eager to post in-depth about it here.

The other day, however, I found myself in my first ever VoA group. Thankfully, Moonglade's Horde population is small enough that no one insisted I have all the achievements that could possibly be linked to VoA success (unlike on Alliance side, where my priest was asked to provide Koralon 10 and 25 achievements, Epic and Got My Mind On My Money - apparently to prove that I at least had the money for enchantments at one point in time). Instead the group leader just wandered up to me in Dalaran, inspected my gear and gave me the thumbs up.

The other tank was a warrior. A much better geared warrior, in fact, sporting some awesome looking Ulduar25 loot. He was immediately awarded the post of main tank, which was something of a relief to me. The relief, sadly, did not last. The run went badly. Though we downed Koralon eventually it took a good five wipes to do so, after which the instance locked us out as no one had really been paying attention to the Wintergrasp timer. It shook my faith in my ability somewhat, to the point at which I made a post to WoW_Ladies hoping for some advice. And you know what? According to them (and hindsight) it was almost entirely the other tank's fault, not mine as I had initially expected. His threat was low, his kiting was poor, he was incredibly slow to taunt (to the point at which I found myself main tanking on a few occasions because otherwise DPS would have died horribly). Not just that, but he had an atrocious attitude. Although he barely spoke in raid chat, every time he did it was to insult someone.

I don't really understand why people act that way. My being terrified and his being terrifyingly unapproachable meant that we didn't swap notes much - I asked him once who his Vigilance target was and received no reply - and I believe that added to the number of wipes. It makes me wonder how many failures his attitude had caused in the past and whether he had even stopped to consider it. Probably not.

Later, of course, I checked Recount's breakdown of our healer's performances and noticed that the disc priest had been spamming Greater Heal on raid members, without touching Penance once. I wonder if he ever stopped to consider what he was doing wrong.

...Definitely not.

RP: Aelystriel and Jekavo

2009-09-27T00:00:00.004+01:00

We will take the keep. Certainty is best, so we will take the keep. Speedy, crouched bodies slung low to the ground, we slither and hurry down the slope, down the muddy, slick, treacherous path of old, rotting planks dug deep into the earth: poor purchase, like cracks in ice. We do not fall; we are stealthy as cats, as hunters. We are silent. In my mind's eye we are silent, like rolling shadows surging soundless through the sleet, though rotting ears make out the steely clink of chain against the velvet hiss of winter wetness, of clicking bone and crackling tendon.

My rot. My bones and joints laid bare. My senses weak, watery like the air; crack of lightning barely noticed, so short and sharp and easily missed when truth seeps in past the eyeballs like the last stale remnants of a soon-forgotten dream. My mind's eye so sharp it cuts reality as I wish. Whether I wish. Regardless.

We reach the village and surge through the alleyway; his cloak snaps and twists like a threadbare flag, black wings from his shoulders, leather sails slapping the long curved planks of the enemy's wall. His mouth opens and words slip through the slat in the chiselled dome of his helm. Stop. Wait. Watch. Little point in explaining to him the futility of sight; little point in doing anything but what he says.

The sleet pounds down and the liquid in my head swirls like water in a bowl. My back against his side, my neck craning, my dumb eyes peering through the night, I look out at homes and workshops, stood in rows like gravestones, their peaked roofs stretched tall and sharp like the spires of towering cathedrals. Mausoleums. Unarmed men and women and children curled up asleep within, perfect to ambush, perfect to kill.

Redemption so far off now. Soul held far from the light, caged behind black protruding ribs like prison bars. Blood runs in my mind's eye, seeps through bedsheets from tears in flesh and wells and rolls on dusty wooden floors, through gaps 'tween boards and down to crushed earth. Colour and taste elude me, but my toes tingle in my boots. Blood rippling up against my feet: it gives a hollow, dying howl and grasps weakly at my ankles; it gasps and chokes; it begs. I smile with lifeless lips.

He jerks my elbow, scowls, blue eyes flashing with lightning or anger, hard to be sure, but he doubtless saw my glee and knows just what thought I relish. The drawing down of dark, rain-slicked brows, the tightness in his neck beneath his mail, the disgust in his voice. For god's sake, come. He knows and he hates and we run together like ink once again through puddles across the square, around a dead and blackened pyre, over a wooden bridge that shifts the pounding of our feet into the pounding of fists on doors: let us in, our advance must not falter, your gates shall soon fall.

Hiding, now, in a shallow alcove in stone walls, the leering mask of Utgarde rearing high overhead, towers invisible in the darkness past the guttering torchlight from a bracket not far from us, we hunker down. A guard patrols nearby, his hefty vyrkul face turned mask by the black shadows carving out his eyes and sunken cheeks. We do not fear him, though I imagine his harsh breath steaming through cold air right past our very throats. He is so close and yet so blind, too focused to see the foe crouched right under his nose in bright firelight.

The torches move in the distance and the guard cares only for them, and the guard's peers care only for them as they charge past us to the thundering bellow of the keep's great horn. Still, silent, splattered with the mud from their massive clunking greaves, not needing even to breathe, only to watch and wait and win, we see Ymiron's army pass us by in angry, somnolent single-mindedness. They go to kill our allies. They go to cost the Horde fifty excellent men.

We wait for them, then slip around the corner and through the arched gateway, into the vast, empty hallways beyond. We move, undetected, into the enemy's precious bastion with steel and apathy and hate and gunpowder. We advance upon the king himself and I think of blood and destruction and anything beyond my own rotting self with the bubbling glee of enforced ignorance. I think of what I can do, of what I will do.

We will take the keep.

____________
Written and posted at one in the morning, this entry isn't quite what I wanted. I shall probably edit it in future so that it isn't quite so... pretentious. Eheh.

3.2: The Aftermath

2009-09-26T10:39:00.008+01:00

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.

New Eighty: Gear

2009-09-26T07:39:00.001+01:00

Well known fact: the defence cap for raiding is 540.

Lesser known fact: the defence cap for heroics is 535.

I make mention of this because the Quest for 540 Defence seems to be a pretty common affliction for new tanks simply because 540 is thrust down our throats by every resource as "the magic number". And it is, when you get to raiding but for now? Screw it.

Alright, so. Even if you've picked up all the dungeon tanking rewards as you've been leveling up you are not going to be defence capped or, indeed, particularly close to it. When you look at the gear that made you a successful tank pre-80 and realise that you're missing a massive amount of defence it can be somewhat daunting, but never fear: Blizzard has provided for us in the form of the crafted armour Aelystriel is modelling to the left there.

These pieces are the Tempered Saronite Helm, Shoulders, Breastplate, Belt, Bracers and Boots with the Daunting Legplates and Handguards. They provide absolutely gigantic lumps of defence rating and stamina at the expense of, well, everything else. There is enough strength on them to ensure your warrior doesn't become a limp noodle, but mostly you're just going to have to accept the single-mindedness of them so that bosses don't splatter you on sight. Alternatives include The Crusader's Resolution from the Crusader's Pinnacle quest chain in Icecrown and any pieces from normal instances you might be sporting, such as the Void Sentry Legplates. I only advocate buying a replacement for a good blue piece you picked up from questing or an instance if you're still below the defence cap - although the crafted pieces listed above are great as boosters they aren't worth picking up just for the higher item level.

Other easily-obtainable upgrades include the Dream Signet, created by jewelcrafters. The correct sort (of the champion) will provide 28 defence. If your gear is anything like mine was, this will be an increase of 28 defence and very useful. Jewelcrafters themselves can create the Monarch Crab figurine which will last you a long time indeed. Tattered Castle Drape is usually on the auction house for a fair price, while the rich amongst us can always pay out for a Durable Nerubhide Cape. Good weaponry can be obtained through the Wanted: Ragemane's Flipper quest in Zul'Drak.

But I don't want to get too tied up in specifics. When I finally finished making myself heroic-ready, my gear was as shown here and if you really want an exhaustive list there's always the one set up by Kaliban. What's more important than the individual pieces, however, is how they add up: health values, defence rating. I would say that, to tank your lower level heroics like Nexus and Culling of Stratholme, you should be aiming for at least 18.5k health, meaning near to 20k with Commanding Shout active. Much less and your health pool is not going to be sufficient to survive more than a few boss swings, even when defence capped. In the harder heroics like Utgarde Pinnacle and Azjol-Nerub you want something closer to 21k. Trial of the Champion demands that much for normal mode, never mind heroic.

So, how can you quickly boost your health? Heavy Borean Armour Kits. You can stick them just about anywhere and the eighteen stamina each one provides will stack up quickly. Alternatively, there are plenty of enchanting options for you to choose from: stamina on your shield, health on your chest et cetera. It really depends on how much you're willing to spend on gear you'll be replacing as soon as possible, but consider the importance of wealth compared to the importance of making a good impression on people you group with before you go with the cheapest option. After all, if you do well and befriend a leatherworker... you have patches for life.

New Eighty: Spec

2009-09-25T10:23:00.001+01:00

As any warrior tank who's done even the slightest bit of research will notice, our class is unique in that we have two distinct paths to go down when speccing to tank: threat or survival. The highest threat builds will go deep enough into the arms tree to pick up Deep Wounds while survival builds keep the majority of their points in protection. The benefits of both have been discussed at length across the interwebs where raiding is concerned but what about for the new, poorly geared tank?

My belief is that you should spec for survival. A tank sporting crafted blues is going to have to work hard to maintain threat, yes, but look at it this way: a tank sporting crafted blues is also going to be particularly flimsy. Your threat can be boosted by the party with Misdirection or Tricks of the Trade. Threat-related issues can also be reduced through careful aggro management on the part of your damage dealers. Your survival, however, is entirely down to you and the healer, and while a well played, well geared healing character may be able to keep you up through some frantic spamming, even the best healer cannot outdo their global cooldown. By this I mean that as long as you aren't utterly incompetent, low threat can be dealt with. Dead tank cannot.

With this in mind, my first spec shaped up like this: 5/10/56.

While some of the choices - such as Deflection, Anticipation and Toughness - need no explanation as to why they help to bolster a tank's survivability, some of the others only occurred to me as I was peering through my potential talents.

The first is Improved Thunder Clap. This should really be taken in any build as the rage cost reduction and increased damage are brilliant for AoE tanking and boss fights alike. From a pure survivability point of view, however, it reduces the damage you take by improving the debuff your Thunder Clap applies to enemies around you instead of buffing your mitigation directly. The slower attack speed obviously reduces how many times a mob will hit you before your damage dealers take them out and also provides a sliver of extra time for a heal to reach you between swings.

Similarly, Booming Voice and Improved Demoralizing Shout reduce damage done to you by lessening just how hard mobs are hitting when Demoralizing Shout is up. While Booming Voice is more about reducing how frequently you have to refresh Demo Shout, I found it usually meant I only had to use the skill once per trash pull, allowing me to focus entirely on my threat and positioning.

Gag Order, meanwhile, reduces caster mobs to melee swings thanks to the silencing effect. It also makes it easier to cluster mobs correctly when a caster might have made it more difficult, hence reducing any time in which your back would have been turned.

For the most part, when speccing a new eighty prot warrior you need to consider which skills will come in handy most often in a heroic instance. While Improved Revenge, for instance, might provide some manner of threat boost when fighting a raid boss, in a heroic a lot of your work is in moving groups of mobs around. An uncontrolled stun proc can actually make this more difficult for you. Improved Spell Reflection, on the other hand, lets you protect party members from randomly targeted spells like Novos' Frostbolt in Drak'Tharon Keep or Paletress's Smite in Trial of the Champion, while also providing protection if a caster stands in Grauf's breath while you're doing Skadi's gauntlet event. A lot of what you can find on raid-centric sites does still apply to speccing for heroics, I just feel it's worth keeping content in mind when making decisions between extraneous talents.

An Introduction

2009-09-24T12:25:00.000+01:00

Recently, a discipline priest tired of green-bar whackamole looked across servers to her old warrior alt, a dusty Forsaken sitting just below the level cap in Karazhan epics and a shoddy Riot Shield. Thinking of faction transfers and tanking fun, the discipline priest did transfer that warrior alt over to Moonglade-EU, where she began her Ravasaur dailies and the grinding of Horde tournament pets in preparation for the big faction swap. The warrior alt reached 80 through dailies and the discipline priest did rub her hands together in anticipation of faction transfer's release onto the EU realms.

The release has come. The warrior remains Forsaken.

Horde-side has endeared itself to me. Moonglade is a low population server at the best of times, but with a 2:1 faction ratio in favour of the Alliance, the Horde really have it small. What you do in PuGs has lasting repercussions. This means people are far less inclined to be asshats, making it a remarkably cushy place to make all the mistakes one does when first learning. That said, I've still run into a few classist, gearist idiots: the sort that left me well alone when I was first doing heroics as my priest but are suddenly far more vicious when my health isn't a comfortable 30k.

The result of all this, anyway, is a desire to write about my experiences getting into tanking post-3.2. The warrior blogosphere is already blessed with Tankingtips.com and Tank Like a Girl, but both of those are written from the perspective of a veteran warrior. I hope to provide a different viewpoint on it all, complete with adequate confusion where necessary. ;)