M.I.A.

Yes I know I was MIA for quite a while, but... just to share a little surprise with you, this is what my guild and I have been doing these past weeks:

Edit: Instead of a link to the video, I have uploaded the whole video here. Enjoy :)

Edit on the edit: I've posted back the link here in case you people want a larger view.

I have 80% avoidance

Just an hour or so ago, I heard someone LF main tank for VoA10, so I brought S, since she was the only warrior still not saved yet, in the quest for that elusive 4T8 Protection set. Surprisingly, offtank was a warrior with some pieces of gear that were of higher ilvl than mine, but with questionable gem choices, and in some instances, not enchanted. Should be easy enough, I thought.

A couple of attempts into Koralon, (and even on the trash before that), I realised that the only warrior debuffs on the boss were mine, save Sunder. We had 3 healers, but two of them were averaging 1.5k to 2k HPS - rather weak. On the 2nd attempt, this offtank moved too quickly out of the fire on the ground, only to kill me, because Koralon happened to be casting Meteor Fists at the exact same moment. After we all run back, he asks to main tank, and here's what he says:

And here's what I say:

Wow. Are you actually as stupid as you look? Block was not, is not, and never will be, avoidance. Where did you learn your English?

Avoidance: -noun. the act of avoiding or keeping away from.

In short, it is the ability to TOTALLY avoid an attack. As I have already mentioned, block is a MITIGATION stat. Score one in the win column for me.

But surprisingly, we manage to clear, because all the healers are putting out a combined of 10k HPS this time. On a closer look at recount, however...

Nicely done! Top skill is Devastate, Heroic Strike is 3rd, and only one Thunder Clap. Nice tanking! -endsarcasm-

Compare to my parse on Emalon himself:

I think the screenshots speak for themselves.

Now look at his parse while tanking Emalon's adds:

Top damage ability... is Melee!? Full of win.

People, if you have no idea what the fock you are talking about, and no idea how your class mechanics work, please dont freaking embarass yourself in public. The warrior community is better off without you, seriously.

More tidbits

Since I've been asked, I thought I'd put these two up.

This is a link to the site on how fast both dodge and parry diminish, you can draw your own conclusions here: http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f63/40003-diminishing-returns-avoidance.html.

This is the link to the site on which bosses currently have parry haste enabled:

http://maintankadin.failsafedesign.com/forum/index.php?rb_v=viewtopic&p=490560

A common enchant

Everytime I see a tank sporting Armsman, which is like 99% of the people on my server, I always end up shaking my head in disbelief. Let's look at the enchant more carefully, shall we?

Enchant Gloves - Armsman 5 sec cast
Permanently enchant gloves to increase threat caused by 2% and increase parry rating by 10. Requires a level 60 or higher item.

Now, 10 parry rating is roughly 0.22% parry, but when you factor in diminishing returns, its true value would be something closer to 0.1% parry. But I'm sure that's not why most tanks pick it up. They are enthralled by the 2% threat increase. Now, think about it carefully. On a 7 minute boss fight, an average tank can put out 2 million threat. 2% of that is 40,000 threat. That's barely more than 2 Shield Slams + autoattacks + 3 or 4 Heroic Strikes. Not convinced? Let's analyse what happens in a heroic. On average, mobs in heroic instances die before the tank has 50k threat. 2% of 50k, therefore, would be 1000 threat. That's even less than one Devastate!

Comparing to other alternatives - Heavy Borean Armor Kit for Effective Health and Precise Strikes and Expertise for threat; 18 Stam equates to roughly 210 HP with Vitality and Blessing of Kings, and you already know how good hit and expertise are for threat, and in expertise's case, survivability.

Need I say anymore?

More aggro, part 2

As an update on the previous post, I now present to you the fact that it is also fully possible to hold the DPS of the same T9.25 arcane mage, doing 6.4k DPS and only 20% threat reduction, while only putting out ~1.8k DPS and with no vigilance, tested and proven by yours truly on Wednesday.

As a side update, I bought a new PC about a month ago, and the 25-man experience is amazing, for want of a better word. Haven't been doing too much of them due to a busy schedule, but being able to maintain 20 FPS during the Faction Champions in T0C25 while running at a 12x9 resolution with maxed settings is incredible, and so is having 40 FPS in 25man Onyxia with 40 whelps being AoE'd at the same time.

As an addendum to the side update, I quite possibly had my finest moment last night in ToC25 (not a PuG). Situation: Anub'arak, people were buffing and the raid was in the process of swapping a member. Some hunter managed to aggro the boss with his pet, killing the pet and a priest in the process. While everyone was still sleeping, yours truly charged in, picked up the boss, and tanked it. We wiped in the end though, because the first 2 adds that spawned managed to kill 3 or 4 healers, and subsequently killed the 2 ilvl245 tanks who were still sleeping. In the end, we managed to get the boss to burrow, but because of the lack of healers, the 3rd add I picked up killed me and we wiped. One of my finest moments, I must say~

How to Teach DPS who the Tank *IS*

Garona is down, and I am amusing myself with forum posts. This caught my eye:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=21042555646&sid=1&pageNo=1

Basically, this is an argument about a tank not being able to hold a DPSer's aggro in a heroic, and the various people inside are trying to put forth their arguments about who is in the wrong and so on and so forth. Read the whole thread before reading on if you haven't already done so.

Now, assuming you already read it all, you will have seen that there are 2 differing opinions on the topic:

(A) It's the tank's fault for not being able to hold aggro

(B) It's the DPSer's fault for not lightening back

As you all might or might not already know, I strongly reside in camp (A).

DISCLAIMER: WHAT I AM ABOUT TO SAY HOLDS TRUE FOR WARRIORS. IT MIGHT OR MIGHT NOT HOLD TRUE FOR DKs, PALLIES, AND DRUIDS.

As I was saying, I pride myself on being an aggro monster when tanking on any warrior. I might not mark mobs any more, but this does not mean I intentionally let people die if their aggro, and hence DPS, is that high.

Sure, you might still be marking your mobs, and that idiot DPS refuses to follow the focus-fire order. Give him a couple of warnings, then boot him if you wish. BUT IS IT REALLY TOTALLY HIS FAULT?

It is YOUR job as a tank to keep the attention of hostile monsters. Just because one party member isn't following instructions doesn't mean you should stoop to his level and let the situation deteriorate. Once you see that happening, immediately stack threat on the mob that the rogue DPS is beating on. It IS part and parcel of a tank's job (see Adaptability here). If you are simply so stubborn and refuse to adapt to the situation, you might as well quit tanking.

Of course, this does not mean that you have to always share the blame. Sometimes your gear is really so bad that the rogue DPS will over-aggro you. In that case, you have my support in booting him if you already warned him and tried to take corrective actions. BUT, and I MUST stress this, it is totally and completely possible to hold the aggro of a DPSer who is more than one tier of gear above yours, if you have a decent block value (~1200-1300) and decent attack power (~3k).

I have held the 13k DPS of an arcane mage decked out in T9.25 with only 20% threat reduction + vigilance on the Twin Valkyr's in ToC10, wearing only average ilvl 226 gear. I have held the 5k DPS of a marksman hunter in heroics way before the block value buff, with only ~900 block value and with mostly ilvl 200 epics. Heck, I've held Z's mage's aggro doing 6k TPS without a single point of threat reduction in heroics without marking a single mob while holding the aggro of other DPSers. I have managed to overtake the main tank's threat in raids while offtanking and receiving only minimal environmental damage (and those were fairly good tanks too).

Gentlemen (and ladies), do not tell me it cannot be done because it can be done and I have done it. Yes, I did not say it was easy. But, if I can do it, so can you. You, as a tank, are supposed to be doing everything you can so that your raid DPS can unload. If you have not done everything in your power to make it so, you have failed as a tank, and obviously still have a lot of room for improvement.

Edit: To the level 24 mage, Wobble, and his "arguments" and the people who agree with him and the people whom he supports, you can take your arguments and stuff it.

Edit on the edit: To quote Zangetzu, one of the posters in that thread:

"I try to save dps who pull from me when tanking, no matter what kind of stupid reasons exist for it. I don't have any kind of stupid - you pull it you taunt it policy. I'm here to tank, and i'll protect the group any way I can."

That's exactly who I am. I'll still try to kill you if you're silly though :P, like B.

Edit on the edit on the edit: Open for discussion.

PuGs

Recently, something I read made me re-evaluate my mindset about PuGs.

Do you realise that when you consistently keep grouping with the same few friends over a long period, that the few of you will easily breeze through instances more quickly than before? This is because as you become accustomed to each others' playing styles, you will, conciously and unconciously, compensate for each others' flaws and weaknesses. It is this synergy that allows you to perform your jobs without thinking, because you know what the other guy is going to do, and when he is going to do it.

The reverse is also true of PuGs. When you throw a group of people who have never played with each other before, it is going to take them time to attune to each person's varying style of play. Have you realised that you can have a fairly well geared PuG raid who know how to play, but still end up bottlenecked at a particular boss, wiping endlessly? This is the crux of it. They are wiping not because they don't know how to play, but because the synergy is not there.

That notwithstanding, I will still stay away from PuGs as much as possible, because there are simply too many people out there who are just asking to be carried.

-endrant-

The four tenets

In my not so humble opinion, there are 4 visible aspects of tanking that can be resonably gauged. These are (in no order of importance, a.k.a. equally important):

1. Reaction

2. Threat

3. Survivability

4. Adaptability/Judgement

Threat is pretty self-explanatory; how much you put out directly affects how much your DPS can unload. Any good warrior can put out a ton of it.

Survivability is directly related to your gear and how consistent you are at keeping your debuff uptime at 100% on a mob. Assuming the debuffs are always there, your level of gear and your positioning is all there is to surviving.

Reaction is an important one. This is how fast you Taunt a mob back when someone pulls it off you. This is also how adept you are at refreshing your debuffs on a mob, whether your shouts are up, etc etc.

Adaptability is an interesting one. The way I see it, apart from 1, 2, and 3, the only remaining practical aspect of tanking involves how good you are at judging a given situation. Do I need to press a cooldown? Which cooldown do I press? What will happen if I move the boss here?

Am I about to lose aggro? What do I do if that DPS is about to pull the mob off me? What skill do I press to prevent that?

This one takes time and experience to hone, and it's something you need to learn mostly by yourself. A split-second decision is often all the difference between a kill and a wipe. If you play a warrior and you're tanking, YOU will be walking that fine line between madness and sanity all too often. And the lives of your party or raid members depend on it.

As for me... hmm. I'd rate myself a 6.5 on reaction, a 9 on threat, an 8 on survivability, and a 7 on judgement. How do you score? How do I score in YOUR opinion? I'd love to hear it.

So there we go... practice, practice, and more practice... and you'll get there someday.

A stupid mistake

You're just starting your tanking career, have made a couple of friends on the way to 80, and are really unsure of how to proceed. You're afraid of making mistakes and being labelled a noob by others, which is why you don't even admit to your mistakes. Sound familiar?

Don't worry, you're not alone. Many new tanks go through this same phase as you, yours truly included. The most important thing to remember, is that it's ok to make mistakes. Everyone makes them, myself included. We're only human after all. If you know you've truly made a mistake, do try to admit to it, but more importantly, learn from it! (I know I know I don't always admit to mine :P). Still, the main thing I want to stress is that there is no point in playing a tank if you don't want to learn from your mistakes. If you don't correct them, you don't improve, and you'll forever be stuck at that standard.

Remember: The only stupid mistakes are those you never learn from.

Siesta

I took a long siesta because its kinda hard to squeeze in gaming and blogging in between work, so yea. Don't worry, I'm not goin' anywhere.

What's your HP?

One of the most irritating questions ever devised by mainkind, is "What's your HP?"

I always seemed to get asked this question when PuGging (thankfully, I don't PuG much anymore), although less now that 3.2 and 3.2.2 has hit the live servers, and I'm sure that many of you tanks out there have been asked this countless times too.

Let me reiterate again: HP is NOT everything. It is a good estimate of the tank's level of gear, but it is not the be-all end-all solution to every instance and raid. Avoidance, armour, and HP all go hand-in-hand, and to speak of one without mentioning the rest, is to be ignorant. This goes to show how many other people out there are so ignorant so uninformed about the way tanking works, that they have to ask this everytime they want to find a tank.

To illustrate, let me cite an extreme example:

Assume you have two tanks, A and B. They both have the same amount of avoidance and armour, but tank A is 44k HP fully buffed, while tank B is 50k HP fully buffed. Let's assume they are both tanking Anub'arak in normal ToC-10. Anub'arak hits hard, roughly 17k-19k on a well-geared tank. Now, as we all know, avoidance can, and will, fail sometimes. Suppose the healers are incapacitated, and tank A takes 3 consecutive hits in a row without healing (no cooldowns involved). No question about it, the tank dies, right?

Let's put tank B in the same situation. He also takes 3 consecutive hits without healing. The result? Tank B also dies.

The point I'm trying to make here, is that you could have 1 million HP, but if you don't know how to reduce incoming damage, then you're screwed.

Tanking is not about how much damage you can take. It is about taking as little damage as possible and still keep ticking.

Air ganking

The title says it all. I came across this while searching for some gear-related stuff. A must watch!
http://www.warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=115589

Number theory

No, I'm not a math major, and this is just a little tidbit about warriors.

Based on my own calculations, the changes to Str and block in 3.2 effectively means that 1.5 Str is approximately required to gain 1 block value with a Protection spec. Should be a handy enough tidbit for those of you still scratching your heads over which pieces of gear to choose. Note that threat stats will never be as important as survival stats. More is always good, but it is not your primary concern. Remember: A dead tank can't tank.

On the DPS side, people have been asking me whether hit is better or crit is better. As always, I will refer them to the spreadsheet that has already been updated for 3.2.2, simply because stat weights change with different sets of gear. However, if you are that lazy, the short general answer is that yellow hit>crit>white hit.

Remember when I said that Execute spam wouldn't be viable again? I'm going to eat my words now, and tell you that for all intents and purposes, a 30 rage Execute (glyphed) every cooldown can provide for some very impressive numbers if there's enough rage to fuel the warrior. All you have to do, is to queue Heroic Strike along with Executing every global cooldown, and watch the numbers fly. Throw in a few Whirlwinds, and you're all set for sub-20% boss DPS.

Recent developments

Breezing through 3.2 and 3.2.2, it just occured to me that all three of my warriors now have their Red Proto-Drake. And to think that I swore I would never again do those achievements after my first warrior got them all. To cap it all off, my rogue is up-and-coming and is only 9 achievements away from her own drake.

Also, my shaman is 80 already (finally!)

Remember I said some time ago that I would be gearing my rogue? Well, I don't mind revealing the reason now. At that time, B and I had this huge discussion about combat dagger rogues. Having already known that the spec was effectively dead, I tried to convince him otherwise, without much success. He believed in using Shiv as a combo point generator, with a fast dagger in the main hand and a fast dagger in the off hand, with the use of Instant Poison instead of Wound Poison, and in just stacking hit to the white cap and ignoring expertise totally. Despite my efforts telling him that getting to the white hit cap (27%) was illogical, as was ignoring expertise, he went ahead and proceeded with his plan. So, says me, I'll gear up my rogue and prove you wrong.

Needless to say, his rogue's gear now has a slow (2.6) non-dagger (fist) main hand, has reasonable amounts of expertise, and is nowhere near the white hit cap. I believe he still uses Shiv though :D

Still, I have been wanting to gear up a pure DPS class, and thought that my rogue was as good a place to start as any :)

Warriors in 3.2.2

OK, I didn't mean this to sound like reminiscing, but as you'll all agree that this update is long overdue, I shall make this a long good one :D

As you might have already realised, patch 3.2.2 brought with it very few changes to warriors, notably, Sword Specialization in the Arms tree and Critical Block in the Protection tree have both been buffed. That notwithstanding, Sword Specialization is still far inferior to Axe Specialization, as previously mentioned. The Critical Block buff is nice though, bringing it more in line with the intent of Blizzard to make block a more useful stat.

Having now had more time to do more testing on my various tanks, I am forced to conclude that I was, am, and always will be a Warrior at heart. The plethora of snap aggro abilities, along with the wide range of various situational single-target and AoE tanking abilities make this class my first and foremost favourite. Anyone can play a warrior; but it takes skill to truly master the warrior.

3.2.2 also brought along with it a new and revamped Onyxia encounter, that unfortunately, unlike the encounter in vanilla WoW, precludes melee DPS from hitting her in phase 2, the air phase with Deep Breath. Evaluation of the drops are still in progress by various higher authorities (read: Elitistjerks), so we shall wait and see what they have to say. The gear is ilvl 245, but a quick scan of the loot table tells me that some of the item budget is wasted in the fire and shadow resistance, so their true value may lie somewhere around 232 or so only. Still, it is an easy encounter for loot, providing you have enough ranged DPS.

The new fire boss in VoA, however, is a whole new ballgame. Not only do his abilities hit really hard, they hit even harder as his HP drops lower and lower. An unmitigated Meteor Fists attack is roughly 50,000 fire damage in 10-man mode, split between two targets (the tanks, naturally). After factoring in resistances, that should be roughly 10k-15k damage per tank. Armour wont do much here, so bring HP (and fire resistance, if possible). Lots of it. He is rather easy to kill with a seasoned raid, though.

3.2.2

Ok, so 3.2.2 has hit, and I've been getting lazy busy too update. One will come soon.

Heroic Nexus

So just to blow off some steam, did the heroic daily, Nexus, with B, Z, and A, new friend there. Yes Z got his title. I'll be back, mon...

Anyways, I was kinda hoping for a relaxed run when "BHS, MORE AGGRO" came out in party chat, cos Z was jokingly saying that B would tank, and I would dps... kinda makes sense doesn't it, when my threat is higher than him and he's supposed to be tanking? :P

SO... he now goes out of his way to generate MORE aggro... and he bloody used pots! It was still quite controllable, IF I had marked the mobs... otherwise some will start to go haywire (we had 3 Elemental shaman DPS >.<). Still, I was surprised I was (more or less) managing to hold his 3.6k DPS aggro at roughly 1.4k DPS, and not exactly the relaxed run I was hoping for, but it did help me to blow off some steam.

Lousy PC

For those of you who know me personally, you will find that I have emphasized the same thing over and over again. For those who don't, I will tell you that I rarely step into 25-man raids, because my system is 5 years old and going into a 25-man just gives me 1-2 FPS, so I avoid those like the plague, and even 10-mans sometimes bring me down below 10 FPS, which is why I keep saying I need cash to get a new PC. Donations, anyone?

Still, it isn't so bad, I still can do some short ones now and then. But, there was a PuG in trade channel LFM for people for Sarth +3D, and Z wanted to go, so I thought, might as well give it a try, right? The raid was led by someone who had led a similar raid in which a friend of mine got his Twilight Vanquisher title, so I thought it wasn't going to be a big problem. This particular guy, a new recruit in Z's guild, seemed pretty friendly and all. So, we go in, (I was supposed to tank the drakes), first attempt was horrible, people dying to void zones and firewalls, same for the second attempt. I did warn them that I was having 2 FPS, and so would eat a firewall once in 2 attempts or something like that. However, there was one particular attempt in which I ate 3 firewalls, leading someone to comment that I "failed so hard", this coming from the shaman who died twice to firewall on the next attempt. Subsequently, said raid leader was saying to me something along the lines of "last try for you, ok?" So, not realizing what it meant, I said "OK", and not surprisingly, we wipe again the next attempt, probably because a firewall killed some healers and the main tank died. So, after zoning in again, I get removed from the raid group.

Nope, no warning, no "would you like to switch to DPS instead", no "I'm sorry but I'll have to replace you", just a boot. Oh, so now you boot me after 1 fail attempt, but not the shaman that died twice to firewall, or the prot pally that accidentally mistaunted Sarth, wiping the raid in an earlier attempt, or the healer that is doing 1k HPS, or the person that keeps dying to void zones, or the 10+ other DPSers who are not putting out 4k+ DPS on the drakes that I actually manage to hold onto me all those times? Yep, full of win.

I will never admit I'm good (I'm not), but I'm not half bad either. Who cares about you, eh?

-end rant

On a side note, I will defy you, the reader, to find someone with a PC as bad as mine and still be able to perform reasonably well in 10-man raids.

The Undying

H, my main warrior, FINALLY got this last night (along with K)!! And about time too... It's 3-4 months late. Thanks to all the people who came with me on that run last night.

Guess what? We got Shocking too! Cheers!

Spreadsheets

A few people have recently asked me on where to find spreadsheets to evaluate tanking and DPS gear, so I will link it here for convenience.

Both types can be found here, under the appropriate sections, but be warned, they are not updated for 3.2. Still, the best way to evaluate your gear, and plan any future updates, is simply to plug it into a spreadsheet. Get them. Learn to love them. Never leave home without them.

Long 3.2 update

Sorry for the long siesta :P, but I have been, like everyone else, farming Emblems of Conquest for H, which has by now, complete her prot set, and is close to finishing her DPS set. It's pointless to talk more about the mechanics behind the changes until we actually discuss the changes themselves, so here they are:

There have been plenty of changes in 3.2, mostly affecting prot warriors more than DPS warriors. About the only noticeable change for DPS warriors is the buff to AttT: Armored to the Teeth - now Increases your attack power by 3 for every 108 armor value you have. (Old - 3 AP every 180 Armor).

Ahhh.. Where to start with the tanking changes... There are just too many of them... I'll start with the easier to understand ones first.

For starters, overall tank avoidance was lowered by a little, with DK's probably being the hardest hit, having their HP and armour lowered as well. The change is as described below, in the patch notes:

Agility: The amount of agility required per percentage of dodge has been increased by 15%. This change required recalibrating the amount of dodge a player has with 0 agility by a slight amount as well, so all players will see their dodge percentage vary a small amount.

Dodge Rating: The amount of dodge rating required per percentage of dodge has been increased by 15%. This is before diminishing returns. Combined with other changes, this makes dodge rating and parry rating equally potent before diminishing returns apply.

Parry Rating: The amount of parry rating required per percentage of parry has been reduced by 8%. This is before diminishing returns. Combined with other changes, this makes dodge rating and parry rating equally potent before diminishing returns apply. Parry still diminishes more quickly than dodge.

That's where your avoidance went. Since parry diminishes more quickly, after a certain amount of parry, it is still better to get dodge instead of more parry, even though you already have more dodge.

And then, we have these:

- Battle Shout: Radius increased to 30 yards.

- Bloodrage: This ability now generates 20 rage initially, and 10 rage over the next 10 seconds. The health cost is unchanged.

- Commanding Shout: Radius increased to 30 yards.

And a hidden change to Glyph of Battle that made it 2 mins instead of 1 min. So now, we have longer Battle Shouts, a larger shout radius, and the ability to instantly use Shield Slam upon pressing Bloodrage. Overall, I think the best improvement here was the change to Bloodrage. No more waiting a few seconds for it to tick in order for Shield Slam to light up.

And here we have:

Execute: This ability now never costs more than a total of 30 rage. The tooltip for Sudden Death has been revised to remove reference to that maximum, since the ability now behaves that way even when untalented.

Another minor change here, nothing too much to worry about. I don't believe that Fury warriors will now resort to Execute spam again instead of their normal rotation.

Finally, we come to the more exciting changes, and those that will undoubtedly be a source of woe for many generations of warriors to come.

Shield Specialization: Now provides 5 rage on a block, dodge or parry instead of 2 rage on a block. No more rage starves in 5-mans, although the current 3/3 Focused Rage and 2/5 Shield Specialization could still work better for you.

Devastate: Weapon damage and bonus per Sunder Armor on the target increased by 100%. This ability now requires a shield to be equipped. (No more Devastate/Flurry/1H dual-wield builds!)

This turned out a little differently from what I speculated, as it now does 100% weapon damage + 202 for each application of sunder on the target, meaning that it does 100% weapon damage + 202, and then 100% + 404, 100% + 606, and so on. Not quite what I imagined, but it is still a huge threat boost, and this means that Devastate is now no longer a GCD-filler, so to speak. It is now a powerful ability in its own right. If you want to read more, try this; I will refer to it again later.

And the most exciting change of all:

Block Value: The amount of bonus block value on all items has been doubled. This does not affect the base block value on shields or block value derived from strength.

On-Use Block Value Items: All items and set bonuses that trigger temporary increases to block value have been modified. Instead of increasing their block value amount by 100% like other items, they have all had their effect durations doubled.

Honestly, I didn't doubt for one moment that this wouldn't make it live, simply because protection warrior DPS was THE lowest among all the four tanking classes, and this is exactly what we needed. However... we then run into this:

Shield Slam: The benefit from additional block value this ability gains is now subject to diminishing returns. Diminishing returns occur once block value exceeds 30 times the player’s level and caps the maximum damage benefit from shield block value at 34.5 times the player’s level.

For the uninitiated, DR to Shield Slam damage sets in at 2400 block value, and the cap on Shield Slam damage is 2760 block value. That is not to say that block value is useless beyond those numbers. It is not. Block value does serve to mitigate damage, so if it comes with your gear, like the T8 chest and T8 leggings, by all means put it to good use.

The upshot of all those changes effectively meant that, H, with the Conquest badge gear and 4T8, has a 20% magic damage reduction on Shield Block use, in addition to:

A 2000 HP gain, sitting at 32, 571 unbuffed in my regular tank set now

An increase of 700 or so AP, sitting at 3401 unbuffed AP

An increase of 500+ block value, with 1494 unbuffed block value

A DPS increase (while tanking) of 600-800 (on trash), hovering between 1.8k to 2k, and an increase up to 2.3k - 2.5k on raid bosses, assuming unlimited rage

This is a HUGE buff, and I am seeing my TPS go up to as high as 7.5k, and even peaking at 8k for certain periods, whereas pre 3.2, I would be struggling to maintain 5.5k-6k. Shield Slams are hitting much harder, and I am seeing noticeable increase in Devastate damage numbers from 0 to 5 sunders. I have yet to test this extensively on my lesser-geared warriors, but they are experiencing at least a 300 DPS increase, sitting in pre-25man/pre-Conquest gear.

Of course, the downside to every "welfare epic" patch is that there is the usual headache of planning gear, with DPS gear being especially nasty to plan because of the delicate balance of stats, namely hit and expertise. I picked up some nice stuff in the new 5-man instance, like the 1H tanking weapon (which incidentally, is now part of my boss tanking set, will explain below) and tanking ring (what the hell happened to defense rating on gear??), and had to re-gem some stuff and slot in some epic gems to maintain 540+ defense.

What I did notice while trying out the fast 1H weapon mentioned before, is that my threat dropped dramatically on trash, while it skyrocketed on bosses. And then I found this post that nicely explains (with some serious math), that because Heroic Strike is on such a high usage during boss fights, a fast weapon is preferable for TPS during bosses, and a slow weapon otherwise. It seems counter-intuitive, because the Devastate change would naturally prefer slow weapons, but when you consider that each Heroic Strike is +495 damage and +259 threat, and multiplied by the 2.0735 Defensive Stance threat multiplier, it stacks up pretty quickly with your 1.6 or 1.5 second Heroic Strike, outperforming the slow weapon even with the increase in Devastate and Deep Wounds damage.

Also, I found this along the way, which shows that Devastate has a strange mechanic which adds a portion of your AP to its threat, and the glyph conveniently doubles that amount. With the new Devastate change, this would be a top pick for single-target threat generation, i.e. boss fights, and no longer be some backwater glyph.

Since I had picked up a couple of new tanking weapons, I thought it would be nice to rethink tanking weapon enchants. Comparing Mongoose to 26 Agi, Mongoose is slightly-lower-than 30 Agi static enchant, when accounting for diminishing returns on dodge (120 Agi has more DR than 26 Agi), while providing a very slight attack speed boost. Overall, Mongoose is still the best avoidance enchant. Close seconds are 26 Agi and Blade Ward. However, Blade Ward seems to be exceptionally nerfed now, providing only one stack of buff, so I'd just stick with Agi for now. If you want a lengthy discussion on Blade Ward vs Mongoose, see here. For effective health, Blood Draining is still second to none though, and same with Accuracy for threat (cheaper alternative would be 50/65 AP or a Titanium Weapon Chain).

Wall O' Text crits you for 100k. You die. d(^_^)b

Anyway, to summarise that wall of text above:

Prot warrior DPS has dramatically increased. More block value, higher Str on higher ilvl gear, and slow tanking weapons contribute the most to that. Devastate damage has been increased, and should now be used more often.

Prefer a fast weapon for boss tanking, a slower weapon for everything else.

Glyph of Devastate is now very good. Get one.

Mongoose/26 Agi are your best friends for avoidance enchants. Stick to whatever you prefer, however, as long as it's not Int, Spi, or Spellpower.

3.2

3.2 is here! More updates when I find the time.

New: Devastate!

Devastate: Weapon damage and bonus per Sunder Armor on the target increased by 100%. This ability now requires a shield to be equipped.

So... if I got that right, that is a base 100% weapon damage for the Devastate ability, and another 500% with a 5-stack Sunder on the target, which adds up to... 600% of weapon damage for one Devastate! Not to mention the threat it would provide. I guess in lieu of prot warriors' low damage, I can settle for this. Time to start thinking about a slow tanking weapon if you haven't already got one! Broken Promise from Gluth or 4HM in Naxx25 rates to be pretty good, if this is really implemented. Here's to looking forward to patch 3.2!

The pace is reckless and getting us killed

The bunch of us just finished a Naxx10 to celebrate Z's priest hitting 80, and also to gear up my rogue for reasons that won't be discussed here. Along the way, we've had someone in our group who, despite having been to Naxx countless times, was still clueless about the various aspects (tank, DPS, heal) of some boss fights apart from what he was used to playing. This brings me to the point that the people in those progression guilds striving for world first, are so good, that they even bother to familiarise themselves with the other aspects of a boss fight, other than just knowing their job scope alone. It is these people that are really really good. Hats off to them!

Anyway, we cleared the Plague Quarter first, and was stuck for quite awhile at the gauntlet before Loatheb, due to some... reasons. Other than that, it was fine. Then we headed to the Arachnid Quarter, and, other than a few mishaps, managed to kill everything. Just before our Maexxna kill, however, we lost our offtank to real life issues, and B replaced him with a prot pally who seemed competent enough. Proceeding into the Military Quarter, and the trash immediately after Instructor, we lost our main tank to a dinner appointment, and had to replace him too. The pally now pulls two packs of weapons (a total of 4), which we handle okay. Sticking to the left wall, our new tank, the druid, pulls two more that I marked before hand (I had a total of 6 marked at this point), and to the horror of horrors, the pally uses his Avenger's Shield to pull 2 more, and naturally his shield jumps into another pack, so we had a total of 6 weapons on us. Needless to say, we wiped. This is what the pally said in raid chat afterward:

I mean, we're moving along at a very slow pace by my standards, and you pull an extra 4 mobs, AND you spring this on us? -100 points for the mispull, -3900 points for that remark. Gothik was ok, but the trash on the way to 4HM was marked by many many Misdirections from K, and many many Tricks of the Trade from me and B, because it seemed that both tanks' threat were very very low. Surprisingly, 4HM went fairly well too. However...

We now come to the last wing, the Construct Quarter. At this point, I start noticing that the paladin is pulling with his taunt, Hand of Reckoning (WHAT!?). Does this mean he knows he was at fault earlier, and is afraid to use his Avenger's Shield to pull, lest he overpull?? Patchwerk and Gluth seemed ok, but again, there was an overpull in the corridor leading to Thaddius' room with all the pats. We had 2 of the big pats that do a ground slam thing, and a shade. The best part? After these 3 mobs, said pally planted a Fish Feast on the ground, smack in the middle of the corridor. Naturally, being curious creatures, the second shade and the pack of small jumping mobs came to visit, and B died almost instantly. Well done, pally, well done.

Everything seemed fine up until... Kel'Thuzad. In phase one, said pally went to melee a Soul Weaver. FYI, thats the banshee type mob that does large Shadow AoE damage to people on a melee hit. So, as you can guess, we wiped again. The pally, claimed it was "the wife waking up" that distracted him, and so he "forgot" and went to "hit skull on instinct". Bullshit. He died twice to the void zone on the subsequent attempt (and kill). Pure bullshit.

Conclusion: DO NOT emulate -4000 points in any way, manner, or fashion. We are still laughing at him to this day.

I think I am better than you

So my shaman is now level 62 :P. Was LFG for Ramparts yesterday when a warrior invited me. His gear was above average for a 61, some items with 24 stam socketed, a waste of cash, but hey, if you have cash to burn, why not, right? There was also a priest in similarly outfitted gear, with 24 int in most sockets, and as they both had BoA gear, I assumed they had to have some standard. Our last party member was a hunter in pretty average gear.

This rated to be pretty easy, so we went in, and we started clearing. I found that I was pulling aggro pretty easily, and the warrior (prot), didn't even Taunt the mobs off me the first few times it happened. Even the healer pulled aggro with healing spells. It seems that this warrior rated to be pretty bad at AoE tanking. Naturally, not wanting to be an insufferable know-it-all, I didn't say anything, but I did check his recount. 4 Shield Slams over 7 or so pulls, a few Revenges, and Thunder Clap as his highest damage done skill. Still, I thought it was pretty ok, with the exception of the hunter (BM) who wasn't putting out much damage.

After we killed the first boss though, and wiped on the next trash overpull (by the warrior), the warrior suddenly remarked in party chat (this is non-verbatim, can't remember the exact words he said): [InsertHuntername], spec BM properly, and not have some scrubby spec. At this point, I inspected the hunter's spec, and sure enough, his talent points were a mess. However, it was extremely untactful and blunt and rude to say that directly to someone's face in the presence of other people. And, if you really want to criticise someone, please examine yourself first. You are hardly any more pro than that hunter from what I can see.

"Superior ability breeds superior ambition. When a group of people start thinking they're better than anybody else, the outcome is always the same."

You, my friend, are hardly superior, in more ways than one.

Class Q&A Series: Warrior

Warrior Q&A with Ghostcrawler (GC), which can be found here or here. A definite must-read! Go check it out. Now!

Making the adjustment from DPS to tank

If you, like many other people since 3.1 and dual-spec, are newly DPS-turned-tank, and are at a loss as to what to do, look no further! There is a wealth of tanking resources out there, as I have already mentioned; Reading widely + lots of practice will help see you through your initial tank phase. It could take a while before you grasp the basics, so practice, practice, and practice more. Be self-aware, and don't be afraid to approach others for help/assistance/advice, and above all, remember that there is no substitute for practice, nor is there a shortcut to tanking.

We (by we I'm referring to K, B, Z, and I) did a Naxx10 today to help B gear up his rogue (like it needs it anyway, judging from the number of BoE Ulduar items it already has) who has recently hit 80. Not surprisingly, we had to PuG, as it was roughly an hour just past noon. Since I highly distrust PuG tanks, and it would be irresponsible for me not to tank, I did, saying that I would be better served in a tank role than a DPS role anyway. Out comes S, warrior number 3, who is in very very average gear, with 952 block value, 28k HP, and roughly 48.8% total avoidance unbuffed. B found a PuG tank, who also happened to be a warrior. We form up, and we head in. Upon inspection, this warrior's gear happened to be slightly better than mine, but with some enchants missing here and there, but he had the coveted The Undying title (which H still does not have!), so I expected an easy run, given that half of the raid comprised people who knew their class well, and given that this warrior rated to be a pro.

Starting off with the Plague Quarter, everything seemed ok up until the first pull of the 2 gargoyles with another gargoyle patrol. Warrior grabbed all 3, I had 0 rage, and Bloodrage was on cooldown. As an aside, I have a quirk of never taunting a mob that someone else is tanking. It shows contempt for the other tank, and reflects badly on me (see -2000 points). So, I just meleed a gargoyle that wasn't marked with skull, and threw out threat moves when I had the rage to afford them. To my (small) surprise, I was able to pull the other two gargoyles off the warrior, and keep them on me. Alarm bells start to go off in my head. B (who was leading the raid), asked the warrior to solo tank Noth and me to DPS (in my scrubby DPS set). Having done it myself on my warriors and druid, I knew it was totally possible to be able to generate enough threat on Noth and his adds to hold them to me. The result? I ended up pulling aggro from at least 2 adds, and was subsequently "tanking" the 2 other skeletons that spawned immediately after Noth teleported.

The situation was exacerbated at Heigan, where the warrior (who was tanking) ate quite a number of the green lava thingy due to improper positioning, causing some of the melee DPSers to eat extra damage too. Finally, B called for me to tank Loatheb and it went without a hitch.

At Loatheb, I inspected the warrior's DPS gear, and was quite surprised to find that he was Arms, with 4/5 T7.5 (his tank gear was 2 T7), which led me to conclude that he was relatively new to tanking. Naturally, not wanting to appear to be an insufferable know-it-all, I refrained from any "friendly advice".

Quite a few times throughout the raid, however, this warrior also seemed to have slow reflexes. Imagine me going AFK awhile after we downed Gluth to restart my WoW client. Now, when I come back, I move towards the raid, who is just past the entrance of Thaddius' room. Somebody is calling out in raid chat that there is a Shade, so naturally I assume the warrior would pick it up. As I am almost reaching, out of habit, I charge the Shade, only to find that the highest on its aggro table is Z, who was healing. I press Taunt, we kill the Shade without any problems, and the warrior claims to be "lagging." That was probably the 5th or 6th time that the warrior has failed to pick up a Shade, and had I not done so all those times, someone would have inevitably died.

It was quite amusing throughout the whole raid, however, to see the other warrior struggle to grab some mobs of his own to tank during trash pulls. He tried taunting mobs away from me a few times, only to have the mobs turn back to me at the end of the Taunt duration. His low threat output only became really apparent as I inspected his damage breakdown (via Recount) at the end of a few trash pulls. No Cleave, no Heroic Strike, and no, his valiant Devastate spam wouldn't be enough to secure a mob for him to tank. Furthermore, to my horror of horrors, he used Taunt to pull the first pack of trash in the Military Quarter. That was... very very bad.

It was even more interesting at Patchwerk, where B stated (for assignments), and I quote: "Whoever's threat is lower will be the hateful tank." At that point, we all knew among ourselves that it most definitely wasn't going to be me, and so it was: Me serenely pressing buttons, him desperately trying to chase my threat (and failing).

The crux/most interesting part came only at Thaddius. K was complaining throughout the whole instance that the warrior's threat was very low. It only occured to me how low it was when, after the first Tank Throw, Stalagg went for K before I landed on the platform, forcing him to Feign Death, and me to Taunt, immediately after I landed. When both sub-bosses were down, the other warrior got the first few hits on Thaddius (his sub-boss died 5% before mine), but the boss came to me after a few more seconds (!!!), and when he Taunted the boss halfway through (I have NO idea why), Thaddius of course refused to stick to him, preferring to hit me instead =P.

The whole point of that story, people, is that there is no shame in asking for help or advice. It will not make you look like a fool, nor will you be labelled a noob. Shelve your pride, and ask the better tank how he manages to do what he does so well, and you will be well on your way to becoming like him. As I have said, I am a sucker for politeness and humble people, and will gladly take someone with low DPS/lousy tanking skill but willing to admit it and to learn, rather than that mediocre DPS/tank who thinks he/she knows it all and insists on erring time and again, with no inclination to learn or self-improve.

0/71/0, or any variation of that...

...is almost certainly a very bad idea, no matter what class or spec you are playing. Whenever I see someone sporting a 0/0/71, I have a strange urge to give them a piece of my mind on why that is such a waste of talent points. Simply put, no matter what role you wish to fulfill, whether it be a normal tank/heal/DPS spec or a gimmick spec, there will always be talents in your main tree that are useless to you, and the talent points spent in those talents would be better served in another tree.

Especially when it comes to warriors, nothing irks me more when I come across such a thing. It only takes mere common sense to understand the futility of a 0/0/71, and apparently common sense is hard to come by nowadays. Of course, there are all sorts of people in this world, and I have seen warriors that included those who:

1) Had Spirit in their gear (post-level 60)

2) Socketed AP instead of Strength (raiding warriors, both before and after the buff to Improved Berserker Stance)

3) DPS'ed in Battle Stance for a Fury spec

4) Socketed Agility

5) Didn't socket their gear at all (plenty of those people of all classes running around, actually)

And I really really felt like bashing hitting some sense into those people. You want to play a class, fine; so learn to play it properly!

In my own words: Warriors are a tough class to learn to play, and even tougher to master.

Challenge yourself today by learning how to play one!

More 3.2 goodness

"Overall, we think avoidance is too high and the game would work better with lower tank avoidance" (Source)

Gasp! Tank avoidance is going to be lowered while block is now going to be more of a mitigation stat. This may be good, or it may not. We will have to see how it pans out. You can also read more here.

In the meantime, I've been levelling my level 13 shaman that hasn't felt any love for the past year or so, and it's happily sitting at level 51 now :P

As a side update, "tanking" in the aforementioned DnD game last Saturday was kinda fun, and successful to a large extent. Lots of status effects to befuddle enemies with =D

Paper tanks

No... not model tanks made of paper (is that kind of origami even possible?), but tanks who are squisher than normal.

Couple of weeks back, I was bored, and decided to PuG something that was easy to heal, since I wanted to fine tune a new healing style (HoTs instead of direct heal). It worked very very well in conjuction with Bob, a paladin friend of mine since BC times. In the two test instances that I ran with him, and K, namely heroic Violet Hold, and heroic The Culling of Stratholme, which is notoriously difficult to heal, I was *gasp* complaining that he wasn't taking enough damage, since all I had to do was to keep up Regrowth, Rejuvenation, and Lifebloom (1) on him, and I could happily fire away with Hurricane. Bob's pally isn't uber geared; he's roughly in 2T7 with a smattering of heroic gear, and same goes for me, with a smattering of 25man gear. He wasn't taking huge spike damages, and by the time I wanted to Nourish him, my HoTs already did the job for me. Previously, all I did was cast Regrowth, Nourish, and Wild Growth, which was a more hectic way of healing heroics, IMO.

Armed with this newfound confidence, I ventured forth into a PuG for heroic Nexus, with a paladin tank with some pretty nice heroic gear. Alas, it all went awry, when even on the 4-mob trash pulls before Grand Magus Telestra, the paladin tank was taking such huge spike damages that I couldn't even stop for a second to cast my HoTs, but had to use direct heals all the way. This trend continued all the way to the end of the instance. After a minor conference with some people who do know something about healing and paladin tanking, aka B and Z and Bob, I came to the conclusion, that it really wasn't my lack of healing, but rather, that said paladin tank in heroic Nexus was not consistent about keeping his Holy Shield up, resulting in large spike damage.

The point is, if you are armed with an array of abilities that enable you to do your job, use them! There's not much point in shying away from them, such as -2000 points, unless you want to make your healers work harder. Speaking of -2000 points, new evidence has come to light that he actually really does have a tanking macro, and has put Taunt inside it.

Geez... if you want to tank, learn how to take less damage, not more! Since almost all of my friends have healers, they know how irritating it is to come across a paper tank, or worse, be actually healing that paper tank. This actually reminds me of the time I was healing a paper death knight who was tanking 25m Patchwerk, and his HP had the annoying tendency of dropping from 100% to 10% in less than 1 second, and this happened roughly 15-20 times throughout the whole fight.

Moral of the story: Learn when and how to use your tanking abilities, learn to use the correct gear for each individual boss (more on that next time), and above all, if you want to tank, do it properly.

Aggro, and what happens when you have it

Whenever you get into combat, monsters automatically create a "hate list". They will attack whoever is on top of that list (exceptions apply). Everything that you do in combat moves you higher on the hate lists (aggro) of each and every monster in combat, for example, drinking a potion, using Bloodrage, healing, dealing damage, etc etc. Monsters will attack you if you are right at the top of their hate list, unless you are

1) In melee range (5 yards I believe) and at less than 110% of the aggro of the guy the mob is currently hitting (tank)

2) More than 5 yards away and at less than 130% of the tank's aggro.

Therefore, if you are not the tank, you don't want to be at the top of a mob's hate list. Here's a nice list of the threat modifiers of each class if you're interested.

What we should be interested in, however, is what happens when the fit hits the shan and you pull aggro from me (or your tank). In patch 3.0.8, all player taunts were changed such that they not only work in melee range, but work up to a range of 30 yards, like for example, Taunt. What's going to happen when you pull aggro from a caster mob is that I will taunt it back, and continue building hate on it since it is casting a spell at you and wont move out of my melee range.

When you pull a melee mob, however, it will turn away from me, and walk towards you. What happens here, is that I will taunt the mob, expecting you to either 1) stop hitting it NOW, or 2) Feign Death, Vanish, threat wipe, etc etc, such that the mob walks back to me and I can continue hitting it.

I'm sure I speak not for myself, but for every other tank since Wrath, when I say that people who pull mobs away will continue hitting the mob, harder if need be. If you have played a tank and have been in such a situation, you know that the next thing that will happen, is that said mob, will walk back to you for 1 or 2 seconds, and then turn around and look for the DPSer who didn't stop attacking to bash his/her skull in. At this point, there is very little you (as a tank) can do except to move there ASAP and blow a second taunt, right?

Moral of the story: If I taunt a mob back to me, stop hitting it!

Of course, blowing a second taunt is not the end-all be-all solution, since warriors have many ingenious ways of handling such ridiculous nonsense *ahemBahemZ*. I thank the people who have so far managed to do what it takes to have the mob come back to me, such as K. When forced into such situations, however, you are forced to be creative to find ways to handle it...

For warriors:

As always, don't panic. At this point, your Taunt is already on cooldown, and the first thing you should do, is to check for your Charge cooldown. If it's available, Charge that offending DPSer mob, and introduce him to your Shield Slam and/or Revenge. If not, check your Heroic Throw. If it's up, use it. That should buy you a couple of precious seconds to let your Charge or Taunt come off cooldown. If Charge and Heroic Throw are both on cooldown, Intervene the mob, and you will charge towards that DPSer, and now, Concussion Blow or Shockwave it before pressing Mocking Blow to shift the mob's focus back to you, and finally Taunt it back when your Taunt comes off cooldown.

Certainly I don't expect you to master this overnight, so practice, practice, practice. Encourage your DPSers to pull aggro so that you can practice (within reason of course). Make sure your healer is symapthetic too.

For paladins:

Since I don't play a paladin, the best I can help you with (to my knowledge), is to hope the mob isnt too far from you, and use Hammer of Justice on it to stun it, and you should be near enough by now to bring it back under control. If that fails, use Hand of Protection on the offending party member.

For death knights:

If you used Death Grip to pull, and your Dark Command is now wasted used on that offending DPSer, you can either use Chains of Ice/Icy Touch on it, or if your frost runes are on cooldown and you don't feel like blowing your Empower Rune Weapon, feel free to sit back and watch that DPSer die. No I'm kidding =D. Why are you still reading this!? Chase after the mob and make sure it doesn't kill that idiot who pulled aggro!

And finally, for druids:

There's really not much you can do save for using your Feral Charge on the mob that decided the mage in cloth was juicier. If you used your Feral Charge to pull (shame on you!!) or have no rage for it, there's nothing else you can do except chase after the mob and Bash it while waiting for your Growl to come off cooldown, or use your Challenging Roar.

Hopefully, this will give you peeps an idea of what aggro is like, and how messy it can be when people pull aggro all over the place, and some ideas of how to handle it when it happens. For DPSers, if you are reading this, you now know that a tank's job is not just to sit there and take punishment, so do whatever you can to make his/her job that much easier. He/she will thank you for it.

Tidbits

Had first DnD game on Saturday. My Barbarian was able to dish out an impressive amount of damage, and he hasn't even unleashed his full potential yet.

Still no Nightfall title for me... yet. Am hoping we will get it soon.

S is now 5 achievements away from the Red-Proto Drake. Looking forward to it.

PTR, and what it means for warriors

Or, as we all know it by its full name, the Public Test Realm. No, I'm not referring to the WoW PTR, yet. Having suffered through 2 browser crashes, this is the third time I'm typing this all out. GAH! Anyways, what I'm talking about, is Dungeons and Dragons 4th Ed. The last of my DnD group has recently come back from the US, and this means that we are able to restart the DnD game. I'm sure they are all as eager as me to break out their gear and start adventuring again. This new game will feature me as either a DPS Barbarian, smashing the faces of baddies, or as a prot-warrioresque Warden, defending the frontlines while my party reduces enemies to dust. Having met at our Dungeon Master's place for a "PTR" combat round last Saturday, I have gained some insights that will hopefully allow me to maximise my own characters when the real game begins this coming Saturday.

Now that we're done sidetracking, its time to move on to the real WoW PTR. As you may, or may not know, the 3.2 PTR is all the rage nowadays. With a multitude of changes promised, it's quite safe to say that warriors are one of the classes receiving the least overhauls. However, one of the dangers of writing about the PTR is that what is discussed here could very well be old news tomorrow. That notwithstanding, let's look at some upcoming changes that I know you'll all like:

Protection

• Devastate now causes 60% weapon damage (up from 50%) plus 121 (up from 101) at max rank. Lower ranks increased accordingly.
• Shield Specialization now has a 20/40/60/80/100% to generate 5 rage (up from 2) when a block, dodge, or parry occurs. (Old - Only proc from blocks)

Glyph

• Glyph of Command - Increases the duration of your Commanding Shout ability by 2 min.
• Glyph of Battle - Increases the duration of your Battle Shout ability by 2 min.

Item

• Item - Warrior T9 Melee 2P Bonus (Berserker Stance and Battle Stance) - Berserker Stance grants an additional 2% critical strike chance, and Battle Stance grants an additional 6% armor penetration.
• Item - Warrior T9 Melee 4P Bonus (Heroic Strike and Slam) - Increases the critical strike chance of your Slam and Heroic Strike abilities by 5%.
• Item - Warrior T9 Tank 2P Bonus (Taunt) - Decreases the cooldown on your Taunt ability by 2 sec.
• Item - Warrior T9 Tank 4P Bonus (Shield Block) - Decreases the cooldown on your Shield Block ability by 10 sec.

Blood Frenzy - 10% attack speed modifier now only affects melee attack speed
Armored to the Teeth - now Increases your attack power by 3 for every 108 armor value you have. (Old - 3 AP every 180 Armor)

There is also this, as quoted from here, by GC:

There are some mechanics we'd like to change with warriors, as I have already stated. Having to spam Heroic Strike is definitely one of them. Rage starvation is never fun (which is not the same as "I can ignore rage.") This is a slightly different argument that whether or not warriors have the stats they need to do the job, which seems to be the bigger concern in this forum at the moment. I am personally not particularly interested in who is the "easier" tank. I don't think any of them are significantly different from each other. You still have to know when to use your cooldowns, when to swap your gear, how to coordinate with your raid and when it's you that's the problem and not your class.

I think it's easy to argue against your point that warriors have not gotten a pretty hefty overhaul this expansion. We changed the warrior Protection tree a lot more than the paladin Protection tree or the Feral tree. We made you press Shield Block less often and Shield Wall more often. We changed Thunderclap and Devastate and Shield Slam and so forth. My point here is: don't dilute your arguments. I hear a lot of players saying that warrior survivability is lower than other tanks. Okay, that is feedback we can use. I hear them saying, as you did, that some of the mechanics still need to be updated. That is feedback we can use. Saying you are neglected or somehow other tanks got more changes than you or whatever... that is hard to use. We don't balance around "neglect." We balance around numbers. Theorycrafted numbers and simulations are valuable. Actual encounters with a boss are even more valuable.

Supplemented by GC with this:

I’m not sure that statement is accurate, but here is the problem. There are A LOT of warrior tanks. They are tanking every fight in Ulduar. If warriors were too low and if we buffed them, I don’t see how that would increase the numbers on the other tanks. I don’t think the conclusion to be drawn is that warriors are overpowered. I think the conclusion to be drawn is that warriors were the traditional tank and lot of established guilds have established MTs who see no reason to reroll the FotM. It’s not actually a goal to have 25% of each tank in Ulduar, but is also seems strange to buff the most popular tank. Won’t that just make them more popular? Again, don’t misinterpret that as GC sez suck it up warriors. It is something we have to keep in mind, however.

Block is a systemic problem. We're not sure we can make it a very compelling mitigation stat in a world where tank avoidance is so high and bosses hit so hard. However I will say that the Coliseum fights should focus less on the blow-your-cooldowns-or-die style of encounter.

Rage starvation is a problem. Frankly, we're not sure a model where you have to get hit in order to tank is that compelling anymore. Something that has come up a lot is changing rage (even for Prot) to damage done. This is a slight nerf to the PvP mechanic of being punished when you hit the warrior, but there are other ways to solve that as well. Again, we're talking a big change here. I'm not sure we're comfortable jacking with such a core mechanic before 3.2. (Source)

However, the most important change that I want to talk about, is this:

• Block Value: The amount of bonus block value on all items has been doubled. This does not affect the base block value on shields or block value derived from strength.
• On-Use Block Value Items: All items and set bonuses that trigger temporary increases to block value have been modified. Instead of increasing their block value amount by 100% like other items, they have all had their effect durations doubled. This applies to Glyph of Deflection, Gnomeregan Autoblocker, Coren's Lucky Coin, Lavanthor's Talisman, Libram of Obstruction, Tome of the Lightbringer, Libram of the Sacred Shield, the tier 8 paladin Shield of Righteousness bonus, the tier 5 paladin Holy Shield bonus, and the tier 5 warrior Shield Block bonus. (Source)

What this means is you'll see bigger Shield Slams (yay!) and more threat all around (from the buff to AttT). What this also means, is that there will be warriors who don't know how to tank, but are now marginally able to hold aggro, with this change. IMO, more threat is good, but this will increase the number of warrior 'tanks' who have no idea how to tank properly in the first place, but claiming they can tank.

That aside, I'm going to agree with Matt Rossi here, that all these changes are starting to feel more and more like a band-aid fix on warriors main tanking cutting edge content. Having been through all that, my warriors feel lacklustre when it comes to tanking Ulduar bosses. Sporting one of the lowest Effective Health (EH) values and lowest avoidance values among the four classes, I would say that if raid content continues this trend, warriors could be effectively dead by Coliseum. After all, if you can't stay alive, you can't tank. All is not lost, however, since "the Coliseum fights should focus less on the blow-your-cooldowns-or-die style of encounter", which probably means that warriors can go back to stacking EH, instead of avoidance like in Ulduar, in order to make them marginally useful. Having H in EH gear for Ulduar-10, I could already feel the pain of each boss hit, and had to swap in some avoidance gear to stay alive. That said, my primary gear set has been, and will continue to be, based on high EH, and maybe, just maybe, we'll see a reversion to EH being better than avoidance for future raid bosses.

Woe betide me

Tried zerging Sarth +3D on late Friday evening/early Saturday morning with me tanking. Almost had him a few times, best attempts were 100k HP remaining, or 3%. A few wipes caused by me, some by others, kinda normal for a learning raid. Called it a day and decided to try another time.

Did Ulduar-10 on Wednesday evening again with me tanking. Wasn't so bad; cleared FLV, Razorscale, XT, Kologarn and Auriaya with a few wipes here and there. Bear in mind this was an impromtu raid with people who have never played with each other before, and with undergeared people and people who have never stepped into Ulduar before.

Continued Ulduar-10 Hodir, Thorim, and Iron Council yesterday evening. To say that it was a fiasco (on my part) was probably an understatement. Some wipes caused by me, some by others; a bit more than I would have expected, but then again its a learning raid for some of us. We ended up calling it at 4am. We started at 10.30pm, and only killed one boss in all that time. Not good. Someone called me a bad tank. Maybe I am, maybe I am.

Note to self 1: Don't ever try to tank when exhausted/sick. Bad for me, bad for everyone.

Note to others 1: Don't ask me to tank when exhausted/sick.

Note to self 2: Never agree to tank when exhausted/sick.

And the list goes on...

Parry, or rather, Parry-haste

Since you people have been so good, I decided to reward you with another post :)

Here's all you ever wanted to know about parry. What I'm interested in talking about, is this hidden mechanic all tanks used to know and fear (ok maybe not all, there will be some scrubs who choose to remain in the dark about important things): Parry-haste.

What Parry-haste simply means, is that when you parry an attack, the remaining time on your current swing is reduced by 40% of your weapon speed, unless this would result in a reduction to less than 20% of your swing time remaining.

For example, I'm using a 3.00s speed weapon, and have just started my weapon swing. At the same time, I parry a mob's attack. My swing speed for this next particular attack, will now be reduced by 40%, leading to a new speed of 1.80 seconds.

As another example: I'm using a 3.00s speed weapon, and I am 2.00 seconds into my weapon swing. At the same time, I parry a mob's attack. The remaining time on my swing timer is now 1.00s, and according to parry mechanics, this is reduced by 40% of my weapon speed which is 1.20 seconds. However, this violates the rule "unless this would result in a reduction to less than 20% of your swing time remaining," and therefore, my new remaining swing timer is instead reduced to 20% of my weapon swing speed, which is 0.60 seconds.

As a third example: I'm using a 3.00s speed weapon, and I am 2.50 seconds into my weapon swing. At the same time, I parry a mob's attack. 20% of my weapon swing speed is 0.60 seconds. Since I have gone beyond 20% of my weapon swing speed remaining, I will instead continue to land my attack 0.50 seconds later. It's like the game says (and I quote Disquette from EJ here): "Hey, parry can't reduce you below 20%, so just let the swing land like it's supposed to."

This has been extensively verified, especially at EJ here, starting from post #7, and I hope that clarifies it a little for you people new to this.

Lets reverse the situation a bit, and imagine you were swinging at a boss, and the boss parried your attack. (Yes I can hear many of you going "Aha!")

If the boss is one with an infamously fast weapon swing speed, such as Prince Malchezaar in phase 2, or Morogrim Tidewalker in SSC, you could find your main tank dead very very fast even without crushing blows, if you constantly attack from the front and aren't expertise capped. Now, in Wrath, crushing blows no longer exist, but raid bosses are hitting harder and harder. Imagine having your main tank take 12k 5 times in two seconds from XT-002 in Ulduar. Bad, isnt it?

I can't stress it enough: Never ever DPS from the front of a boss unless you absolutely have to, such as in Kologarn or Mimiron in Ulduar. You lose DPS, and risk killing your tank. If you absolutely have to do so, any extra expertise gear you have lying around will be doubly or even triply valuable.

As a tank, trying to reach the expertise cap of 13% for Parry is unwise and ill-advised, because it will more than likely gimp you in other areas. Strive for as high a number as you can get, without compromising other stats. Parries are to be expected, so try to minimise them as much as possible. Your healers will thank you for it.

Unorthodox tanking

A while ago, I mentioned that Unrelenting Assault was something of an unorthodox tanking talent. Matt Rossi has tried it out not so long ago in a spec something like this, and I can't seem to find his post again, but I vaguely remember what he said. According to him, it was fun, but the rage coming in didn't seem to be sufficient because his Revenge was stunning almost everything in sight.

Let me explain. What he basically did, was combine UA and Improved Revenge, such that he would be basically spamming Revenge every GCD.

Fast forward abit: I was in my second warrior, X, DPS'ing a Naxx10 raid, just killed Grobbulus, and about to proceed to Gluth. Since it was a raid mostly composed of friends, I volunteered to kite tank the zombies that Gluth spawns. Throwing on my tank gear, I realised, to the horror of horrors, that X has dual specced into PvE Arms and PvP Arms. "Oh well, how hard can it be, right?" was what I thought to myself. In we go, and to my surprise, I actually had a lot of fun spamming Revenge on the zombies.

Taking what Matt did a step further, using my same warrior X, I managed to tank the whole of heroic Gundrak in the cookie cutter PvE Arms spec. Threat output was slightly lower than normal, and damage taken was quite abit higher than I would have liked, but Revenge spamming was seriously fun (keep in mind that Thunder Clap and Cleave are essentials in holding mobs too, and even more so in this case). Kudos to B and Z and whoever else went with me (I can't remember, sorry).

As a final note, UA is NOT meant to be a main tank/progression tank ability. It can, however, provide tons of fun if you do choose to mess around with it in a 5-man or 10-man farming raid offtank (make sure your party members are sympathetic though!).

Midsummer Fire Festival

In case you're wondering where I've disappeared to for the past 6 days, I've been working on the Midsummer Fire Festival. Since this is the only holiday that I ever did, and probably will ever do, I decided to do a little something more this year. Last year, I only had 4 toons, that did most of the fires, while my rogue did all, inclusive of stealing the enemy capital cities' fires.

This year, I am proud happy to announce that all my 8 toons now have the achievement "The Flame Warden", along with the brazier and the pet from the vendor. It's taken awhile, but it was kinda fun while it lasted =D

Happy Father's Day!

Happy Father's Day to all you daddies and budding daddies out there!

I suppose I should have posted this earlier, but my 3rd warrior has been 80 for a full week now, and has already been sufficiently geared up from heroics (and Naxx10 to a certain extent) :)

For some reason, B has recently taken to taken to asking me to tank for heroic achievements, something I swore I would never do again after my first warrior, H, completed all of them and gotten her Red Proto-Drake. Looking through all my toons, I realised that most of them have had more than half of the heroic achievements done, and my third warrior, S, has had, as of this moment, 38/51 of them complete. I must say that the prospect of a second Red Proto is quite appealing...

DPS as a Warrior (Part 4)

Warriors are an easy class to learn to play, but are extremely difficult to master. It takes lots of practice, practice, practice, and then more practice. It involves a lot of reading up on class mechanics to really understand what's going on and why you need to press something at a certain time.

Admittedly, my Wrath experience has been limited to heroics, Naxxramas and certain fights of Ulduar, but from what I can deduce, Fury still has a slight edge over Arms at the highest of gear levels. Below that, Arms is probably a better choice if you want to maximise your DPS. Granted, the recent Fury buff has reduced the gap somewhat at lower gear levels, but truth be told, I had favoured Fury over Arms from day one. Arms did feel more dynamic, but it lacked a certain oomph that I felt while playing Fury.

To add on to all that I've said regarding both trees, one must note that there is absolutely no benefit for you to be hitting a boss from the front, and doing so WILL lower your DPS. Therefore, always make sure to hit mobs/bosses from behind, where they are unable to parry your attacks. They will, however, still be able to dodge attacks, and this is where your Expertise comes into play.

Also, for you budding and veteran warriors out there alike, DO note that warriors are one of the most, if not the most, gear and buff dependent class, to produce maximum DPS. The DPS jump from ilevel 200 blues to ilevel 200 epics is larger than that from ilevel 200 epics to ilevel 213 epics. Raid buffs like Might (Battle Shout), Kings, MotW, Trueshot Aura, Sunder Armour, etc etc, would almost double your DPS at most gear levels; credits for this go to Landsoul's warrior spreadsheet which can be found here. Go on, try it out on a heroic dummy, and then try it on a raid boss fully buffed. You'll see what I mean.

Having said that, it is easy to see why warrior DPS can seem so inflated on certain fights, because of the way the fight mechanics/buffs scale with the rage mechanic. This can be read here. Matt Rossi has kindly explained that with a white damage buff from fights like Thaddius or Loatheb, a warrior would have more rage to convert into specials, which converts into even more DPS. I can understand Blizzard's need to respond to all the complaints about warrior DPS being too high, but come on! You designed these fight mechanics, and didn't see this coming? And now you, in the interests of having to pacify all these other classes, are nerfing warrior DPS where it didn't really need a nerf. Warrior DPS WILL be exceptionally skewed on fights like these, and you need to explain that fact to other classes, instead of hitting us with such a bad nerf and then applying some band-aids over it because you thought warrior DPS was a tad too low.

Since I've almost always been a Fury/Prot warrior, I'm just going to put my trust in Blizzard again and hope they do something about it. I understand warriors are ridiculously difficult to balance, but I'm sure they'll come up with something.

As for you folks out there, my advice is: Try both trees out, find out which one you like more, and stick with it. After all, there's not much point in playing a style you dislike, is there?

DPS as a Warrior (Part 3)

After a long bout with throat infections and flu, from which I still have not recovered, and some desktop problems, this is finally here. Enjoy.

Warriors have been around a very long time, so naturally it follows that Arms warriors have been around just as long. PvP veterans of old learned to fear and revere Arms warriors for their deadly Mortal Strike. In those days, Arms was THE warrior PvP tree, and PvE Arms was non-existent. Come Wrath, and especially patches 2.4 and 3.1, Arms was no longer a PvP only tree. Now, there isn't any one talent that really defines the tree, except maybe for Bladestorm, and even that is a point of contention among many warriors.

The tree has seen many changes, notably, the changes to Poleaxe Specialization, where it previously gave +5% crit, it now also gives +5% crit damage, the introduction of Taste for Blood, making Rend and Overpower now primary skills in the Arms arsenal; whereas previously Arms warriors had no defining stance for DPS, they now almost always use Battle Stance. There was also Sudden Death and Unrelenting Assault (UA is an interesting and unorthodox tanking talent too, more on that next time), Wrecking Crew, and Juggernaut, which provides much-needed mobility.

Previously, Juggernaut provided a +100% chance to crit, but patches 3.1.2 and 3.1.3 reduced that chance to 25%, and increased the cooldown on Charge by 5 seconds, respectively. Needless to say, this must have been an attempt to balance for PvP. Still, it is a great PvE talent, and that is what we are interested in.

The Arms DPS cycle is somewhat more complex than its Fury counterpart. In a nutshell, you simply Charge a mob, Rend, followed by Mortal Strike, while using Execute/Overpower procs when they become available, refreshing Rend when there is less than 6 seconds left, squeezing Slams in whenever possible, and using Bladestorm, combined with Sweeping Strikes if there are additional mobs around. It therefore naturally follows that you will be specced for Improved Slam and have the Glyph of Rending to go along with it.

It must be said that Slam, however strange it may seem, is essentially a large part of Arms DPS and cannot be ignored. Since Arms warriors generally have no rage issue without environmental raid damage, Slam is an effective way of burning excess rage. With the 2T7 bonus, which increases Slam damage by 10%, a 2/2 Improved Slam + a queued Heroic Strike after will provide some nice damage along with burning excess rage. What I've noticed people saying is to use Slam instead of Heroic Strike. I respectfully disagree... I use both! Its true that Slam>Heroic Strike for rage dump, but if you can somehow manage to get both to come off together, which I've been able to pull off on multiple occasions, that would increase DPS and burn more rage (for situations with extremely high raid damage).

Of course, there is also a question of prioritizing procs. This is where the fun starts. The Arms DPS cycle is so hectic that you'll probably never ever have a free global cooldown. So then, what happens when Execute lights up, Overpower lights up, Rend has less than 6 seconds remaining, and Mortal Strike is off cooldown at the same time? First things first, don't panic! Always prioritize it such that Execute is the highest on your list, since Sudden Death can proc off itself, then followed by Mortal Strike/Overpower in no particular order, then refreshing Rend, and finally Bladestorm. Bladestorm is last, because while it may be a nice DPS boost on paper, you are unable to do anything for that 6 seconds, save white attacks and moving around, which also means you will be unable to press Execute and Overpower... the list goes on.

All weapon specializations in the Arms tree were not created equal. Sword spec may look nice, but is very lacklustre. Mace spec provides more oomph, but the work done by Landsoul and many others over at Elitistjerks have shown that the ArP is insufficient to justify speccing into this, so we are only left with... Poleaxe specialization. 5% crit chance is big, but 5% extra crit damage is enormous, or so the experts say. I'm just going to trust their math on this one, and say that Poleaxe spec is THE 2H spec.

A standard Arms spec would look something like this. Note that the points in the first two tiers of the Arms tree are mostly fillers, as are the points in the second tier of the Fury tree. Also, it is VERY IMPORTANT to note that Trauma is provided by Feral druids in the form of Mangle, and Blood Frenzy is provided by Combat rogues in the form of Savage Combat. If you have those two in your raid, feel free to stick the talent points elsewhere; Anger Management would be a good choice. If you are intending to go it solo, or have neither of these in your raid (unlikely), I recommend you take the 2 points out of Improved Execute and stick them into the necessary abilities.

With regards to gear, there are two schools of thought: Armour Penetration and Strength. While the kind folks at Elitistjerks have already concluded that gemming (and looking for) Strength on gear is generally superior to ArP, it might have changed since this was written. 8% hit is the absolute maximum you should have, 7% with a Draenei in your party. Mix and match your gear with Weapon Mastery so that you'll sit at 6.5% expertise, which is the dodge soft cap.

Glyph-wise, never leave home without Glyph of Rending, Glyph of Mortal Strike, and Glyph of Execution. For minor glyphs, you can use the same as those for Fury, which are here.

Next: Conclusion!