3.3.2

This patch dropped into our laps a few days ago, bringing with it some forms of agony, least of which are the protection tanking changes.

No... The major source of pain is due to the changes to the T10 chest and glove pieces. Having lost their defense and dodge respectively for better armour, this presents a huge problem for progression tank gearing. If you, like me, have already bought one or two pieces of the tier, and are disappointed with the changes, don't worry, you're not alone.

Having already bought the helm and gloves for the 2pc bonus, I went to take a closer look at the T10.264 vs 264 Frost items; my gearing plans already thrown out of whack. My conclusion? The 264 offset pieces are superior in EH due to that extra socket, while the T10.264 chest and glove pieces are slightly more avoidance oriented.

Now, I don't know about you, but finishing the 264 offset pieces are now my highest priority, with the chestpiece and gloves left for me, while I will wear the T10.251 helm and shoulders. The offset chest and gloves will only finally be replaced by the T10.277 pieces, with the crafted pants, the Pillars of Might, staying in the leggings slot.

Icecrown Citadel: Avoidance vs EH

First of all, happy new year and happy birthdays to... well... you know who you are.

I know that I really should be discussing the new 3.3 changes since I haven't already done that, but lets do something a little more in-depth this time: Avoidance or EH in ICC?

As you all may or may not know, avoidance tanks suffered heavily in Sunwell back in TBC, mainly because any major gear change from EH to avoidance caused a tank to fall below the EH requirements of the fights. Bosses in Sunwell Plateau didn't hit often, but they did hit very hard.

Now, in ICC, as part of their "new boss design" strategy, Blizzard has come up with bosses that hit less hard, but hit more often. In lieu of this, the EH requirements of ICC-10 are vastly lower than those of ToGC-10. What this simply means is that if this expected trend continues, I would assume that avoidance tanks would be king in ICC. Of course, this is all speculation, without even seeing what ICC hard mode looks like yet. But this shift away from hard hitting bosses has left me very happy, in the sense that I hated tanking those fights where "if you don't press it, you die." It didn't feel dynamic or fun to tank them.

As an example, Lord Marrowgar melee's for significantly less than Anub'arak in ToGC, but has a nasty spike damage that needs to be reacted to. It won't kill a tank instantly, but the next two attacks will be fatal. Here's the crutch: Instead of having the next 18k swing by the boss be fatal, they instead allowed the boss to hit twice for 9k each. Yes, the DPS done by the boss will probably be the same in the two scenarios, but there is always more room to react to two hits instead of one. There's also a higher probability that either of those two hits will be mitigated or avoided, thus, again, giving healers more room to react, rather than a one-hit do-or-die situation. Even on Saurfang at Frenzy phase (sub-30%), my HP barely spiked below half while in my avoidance set.

It looks like we will have to see what the second wing of ICC turns out to be like (which is next week). I am looking forward to it.

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.