What is the Level 80 Warrior Defense Cap?

Here's the tldr version of what defense warriors need to be uncrittable in WotLK at level 80. You can find it lots of places, but I wanted a short quick reference.

Defense skill needed to be uncrittable = 540
Warrior base defense skill at level 80 = 400
Defense skill needed from gear = 140 (689 defense rating)

1 Defense skill = 4.92 defense rating
1 Defense rating = .2033 defense skill

Resilience also contributes to crit reduction, but I've never been a fan of needing PvP gear for PvE content when I can do without it.

While it is often called defense 'cap' it really means defense 'minimum' since you shouldn't just stop at 540, especially due to diminishing returns at level 80 of pure parry/dodge/block stats.

This is How Well my First Wrath Heroic Went

In my desperation just to finally get through a heroic, I jumped into a random pug, forgetting how much of a mistake that is, especially this early on when most people just don't have the gear to compensate for lack of skill.

This was the fifth and final try wiping on the FIRST boss in Nexus. Or sixth. I lost count after I realized the DPS in my group were still in all greens. It was taking so long to drop him that the healer just kept going OOM before we could get him down to 30%. That's the last heroic pug I do without having at least one player that I can trust to not suck.

I told my GL to go ahead and start the third 10-man team without me. I'm just not ready to commit to a grinding raid schedule yet. I really want to get through all the heroics first and also get through most of the remaining quests. The guild is making the first 25-man attempt on Naxx next week. I may go along just to see what it's like. We'll see.

Ding! Now What?

I made it! ...and I'm a little unsure what to do with myself. I have been playing WoW since the original open beta in fall 2004, and I was late getting to both level 60 and 70. I never really raided in vanilla WoW, and by the time I started Kara in BC, a lot of people were going through it for their second time on alts. Hitting the end-game this early is bleeding edge for me and just feels a little strange. It also might be that December just gets a little weird in general with all the craziness going on.

As always, there is a ton to do at the level cap, and it's difficult not to be overwhelmed with information and keeping track of everything I want to do. I've actually only done two instances. I've had such a crazy schedule lately, that questing has been all I can do. I want to see all the others, but I'll probably end up skipping to heroic mode on most of them. I've spent the last couple days looking at the WotLK tanking gear guides and working towards the magical 540 defense for immunity from crits. I did manage to hit it without too much trouble by crafting the +def alchemy BoP trinket along with socketing everything with +def gems and buying a few BoE blues off the auction house. Now all I need to do is to get my base defense skill to level up those last 5 points.

I really like the championing system. It looks like the Wyrmrest accord will be best for some quick tanking gear. Not really sure which way I'll go after that. I still have about half of Zul'Drak to quest in, and I literally have not touched Storm Peaks or IceCrown. That's a lot of lore left to check out and also a pretty steady stream of income for awhile.

I have already been approached by the GM of my current guild to tank for our third 10-man team. He's willing to plan it around my schedule, which is pretty awesome. I'm ready to jump in and check it out, but I also want to make sure I balance it well. Consistently raiding three nights a week can realy be somewhat demanding for me, especially when there are still a lot of non-raiding things in the game left to do. It takes time away from doing 5-man content, which I really enjoy. I'm also not sure what my RL friends are wanting to do, either, and most of my fun in raiding comes from them being there with me. I guess I'll just have to wait and see how it all pans out.

Also, yes, I hit level 80 off discovery XP. I always wanted to hit the level cap with that...

Tragedy at the Wrath Gate

My love,

By the time you are reading this, you will have heard what happened at the Wrath Gate. You should also have heard that I am alive and well. I hope you were not too distressed for long since you knew that I had been in Dragonblight for the last several days. I cannot write much now, but I have a great deal of news to tell of.

While physically unharmed by the event, I am otherwise shaken. A few days ago, I actually caught up with Bolvar Fordragon while working for the Vanguard. Knowing of my recent work at the Wyrmrest temple, he sent me to Alexstrasza for guidance on dealing with scourge frost wyrms that were keeping his forces away from the gate. After assisting her with removing a scourge leader and stopping the wrym attacks, I returned to Fordragon with the news. Shortly after that, he began the assault on the gate while I was left to guard the alliance camp. From the high hills of Fordragon hold I watched the battle unfold. So much death...but of the loss of Bolvar and the surprise attack by the undead you have already heard.

What you may not yet know is who is actually responsible. Stormwind has been slow to release any more information about it. Blame has been immediately placed on Sylvanas and the horde; even Arthas seemed to think they were behind this. But now I believe I know otherwise. When the battle was over, the few alliance forces that were left at camp with me scattered in terror. I ran down to the gate where Alexstrasza had contained the plague to see if anyone had survived - I found no one. She asked me to return Bolvar's shield to the king and sent me by portal. Once there, he sent me with Jaina Proudmoore to speak with the horde leaders in Orgrimmar.

From Thrall and Sylvanas, we heard a shocking revelation of betrayal. The horde have lost the Undercity! Two leaders in the city defected and took a large amount of undead with them. King Wrynn still seems to hold the horde responsible. I'm not entirely sure what to believe myself. An alliance army has quickly been formed to invade and retake the city, and I have been asked to assist them. I write to you now from a camp just outside of the sewers of the Undercity. We are ready to attack in a couple of hours. I expect there will be great resistance, but with such a powerful force including the king and Jaina herself, I am sure will achieve victory and justice for what happened at the Wrath Gate. I disagree with Wrynn on the city, though; it is certainly nothing worth retaking in its current state. The undead have made it unfit even as historical ruins.

I must go now to prepare for the Battle for the Undercity. From here, I will likely travel on to the Grizzly Hills. I have heard it is quiet there, and I wish to try and ease my mind away from these tragic events. I shall write to you again when I arrive. I hope Darnassus is treating you well, and I still plan on visiting next month.

With love,
Vrathmat

WotLK - A Week's First Impressions

In short, I LOVE it. The areas are beautiful. The quests are fresh and interesting without being too gimmicky. Story lines draw me in much better than anything in BC did. Quest giver NPC's actually have personality. The music is perfect, the best I've heard in WoW. Instance runs aren't too difficult and can be done without a 2-3 hour commitment. Like my good druid friend said the other night, "I don't even feel like I'm leveling. I'm just having fun playing a game."

Seriously, Blizzard did this one right. I've been pleasantly surprised and impressed by Wrath. I've had more "Woah...awesome!" moments than I've had with this game in a very long time. The quests have probably been the biggest surprise for me. Blizz really put some focus on giving us better quests than "kill X of these..." or "kill these until you get the item that has a 2% drop rate."

I know a lot of players just made a goal to get to 80 as fast as possible. I think that would be a mistake. There is so much here to enjoy. We'll all be raiding at 80 soon enough.

Why I Will be Tanking in Wrath

Yep, I changed my mind, but Blizzard really came through for protection warriors. I expected them to fix a few things for Wrath, but I never expected them to totally revolutionize the way the class was played in such a great way. The protection warrior changes in Wrath are absolutely fantastic. These are the things that made me love tanking again:


Charging in Defensive Stance - At first, I thought the warbringer talent wasn't that big of a deal and would mostly help warriors while farming in their prot gear. I was wrong. It's completely awesome, it's a great rage generator, and I find myself using it quite often.

AoE Tanking - Shockwave and Unlimited-Target Thunder Clap. Not to mention glyphs like this. It's about time. I can't explain how satisfying it was to run through heroic shattered halls and mount hyjal while trying these out.

Removal of crushing blows/Better tanking rotation - In BC, warriors had the most ridiculous ability rotation of any class in the game, especially for bosses. First, you constantly kept your global cooldown occupied with this: SS->rev->dev->dev all while spamming shield block (not on the GCD) every few seconds to keep from getting crushed. On top of that, there was this list of other stuff to keep up with: renew tclap and possibly demo shout on the boss every minute, renew commanding shout every two minutes, hit trinkets every 2 minutes, drink pots, use healthstones, and watch for the best place to hit last stand and shield wall.

Thankfully, Blizzard recognized this. Crushing blows are history, and shield block is now on a 60 second cooldown and now gives a really nice block value bonus. We also got a new talent that keeps things a little more interesting by creating a random chance for SS to be refreshed and free!

All Content in 10-man form - I was really excited about finding this one out. I have always had a lot more fun in 10-man raids than 25-man ordeals. It's very cool being able to see all the content without having to necessarily jump that hurdle from 10 to 25. I'll still eventually want to check out the 25-man versions, but at least I won't feel like I have to just to see everything.

Dual Specs - When the rumors for dual specs came out, it was too good to be true. But now we've all heard the devs promise this to us, and it sounds nothing short of amazing. Being able to instantly switch over from Fury to Protection wherever I am is revolutionary. If I'm in a raid and there are too many tanks, it's not a problem anymore. It apparently will even remember your glyphs!

Reasonable Threat vs. Avoidance trade-off: Much of the warrior community debated this for years. Many protection warriors (me included) felt that it wasn't fair that they always had to significantly 'downgear' when fighting anything other than the hardest boss they were currently working on, lest they be completely rage starved and the raid get angry at them for not pumping out enough threat. The argument was that DPS classes really didn't have this problem. I think most of us were actually fine with needing several 'threat' type gear pieces, but I always felt that I was having to spend too much time constantly adjusting my gear to find that perfect balance depending on if I was in a heroic, Kara, or SSC. Not finding that balance either resulted in getting squashed too quickly or not getting hit hard enough, which was sometimes a very slim window, especially if running with a weaker healer and insane DPS. Some warriors felt special by having that extra challenge. I thought it got incredibly old.

This problem has essentially been eliminated. The concept of having to maximize threat is pretty much gone since defensive stance gives more base threat and all classes were basically given Blessing of Salavation permenantly. Outgearing content is not really an issue anymore with Damage Shield. Rage starvation is much less of an issue in general, with several glyphs to help out with it. I'm guessing we'll still have our separate avoidance and threat gear to some extent, but the trade-off should be much more reasonable and won't require so much attention, which is fine with me. There's plenty of other more interesting stuff out there to concentrate on.

Expansion Eve

I was kinda hoping for a slightly sentimental last goodbye to Outlands tonight - to hearth to Shatt one more time and maybe fly over Zangarmarsh, Nagrand, and Hellfire (probably too lazy for any further out than that). In 24 hours, all these zones will fall away into insignificance, only visited by players passing through to level 80 or else occasionally by those who want to take a quick trip for fun or an achievement. I thought maybe I would do one last daily bombing run or perhaps even a quick heroic before I respec'd to fury and went through my gear inventory to decide what gear I would be using to level with.

But of course, the servers are down. Thanks, Blizz. You guys really know how to keep your reputation up for being rock solid at when crunch time hits. It's true that BC has really been stale the last several months, especially before the 3.0 patch, but I had a lot of great times in Outlands. Anyway, I guess I'll do an abbreviated /farewell tomorrow when I get home from work and log off in front of the boat that will take me to Northrend. After that, it's off to a midnight release! ...followed by a really, really long day at work, which I couldn't take off.

So worth it.

Blizzcon Thoughts

A lot has changed since the last time I wrote here. I went to Blizzcon. My Warhammer account was suspended after the trial because of some credit card confusion, and I never bothered to look into it. I traveled to Canada for my job. The 3.0 patch was released. I started a position on a new team at work. A new president was elected. It's all been a blur really. But since this is mostly where I wrote about WoW stuff, I'll mention my trip to Anaheim.

Blizzcon was awesome. Tons of fun. While there really weren't any bombshell Blizzard revelations, I did get to play all three games under development:

Starcraft II - This brought back so many memories for me. Starcraft is so old now, I forgot what it felt like when everything was fresh and new. I was really surprised at how polished it was. Really fun to play. As part of going to Blizzcon, I did find out I'll get to play in the Starcraft II beta whenever it starts!

Diablo III - While I did pay a little Diablo I and II, I never got too deep into them. The Diablo III demo was awesome as well. The guy sitting next to me actually got lucky enough to find some rare in-game item and won a poster signed by the devs. /jealous

WotLK beta - Since there's so much information about the Wrath beta out there already and the expansion was so close, I really wasn't all that excited about this. You got to log in and pick a pre-made level 80. My first time in line, I picked a mage. The first thing I noticed was the graphical overhaul. I didn't realize how much of an upgrade that really was. The pre-made was frost spec'd. I didn't have much time, so I just flew around aimlessly until I came upon an area with level 78 elites. I forgot how much fun it was to endlessly kite mobs with frost spells. Mirror image is pretty sweet. I also really like the random instant-fireballs from the Brain Freeze talent. My second time through, I went with a warrior. He was arms spec, which was actually pretty lame. I flew up to the frozen throne, but that was about it. The third time, I went in as a death knight. Talk about overwhelming. It was pretty fun, but I was just randomly pushing buttons. Those things are seriously hard to play without starting them from the beginning.

During the convention and also at Disneyland the next day (we were right there! How could we not go??), I thought a lot about what class I wanted to devote my time to. I was most assuredly done with the protection warrior. However, the prot warrior in Wrath has transformed into an entirely different class than the warrior in BC. On the other hand, while mages have historically been screwed in the DPS department, they finally got a lot of love in the latter stages of the beta.

In the end, all I could think of were the times where tanking was just plain awesome. I thought of how much fun it was to figure out the best place to use each ability, the way to generate the most threat possible, where to find the best gear, how to throw bonuses to the wind and cram +STA gems into pretty much every single socket I had, and how to best combine gear into avoidance, effective health, threat, and dps gear sets. I thought of the first time I killed each boss in Kara and the first few in ZA. I remembered what it felt like to successfully tank and defeat Magtheridon with a random, mismatched raid I assembled for my title. I remembered why I originally left my DPS/CC/Vending role to take up a sword and shield and be the first one in the raid to charge into a group of elite mobs or the boss. I remembered all those things and knew I had to try and keep them in spite of all the crap that goes along with tanking. What is it exactly that makes us forget the sharpness of painful memories and remember the good ones? As time passed, my tank-burnout has faded remarkably well, much of it credited to several incredible changes to the class mechanics.

That's right. I'm keeping the warrior.

WoW Off-Season and Warhammer

It's been over a week since I've even logged into WoW. Even then, it was just to do some mindless dailies on my mage. I got bored and didn't even finish all of them on the isle. In preparation for the pre-Wrath patch, I dropped skinning and power-leveled herbalism to 375. Once it actually hits, I'll drop mining and pick up inscription.

I haven't even really been motivated to log in and check out Brewfest. Aside from being busier than normal with RL stuff, I've also been playing my bright wizard in Warhammer and having a lot more fun than I thought I would. Mythic seems to have gotten the glass cannon DPS class right, unlike Blizzard. The damage is aboslutely ridiculous, and I die in about 2 hits from any melee class. I have a feeling they'll get nerfed a bit. During one of the last RvR (like WoW BG's) scenarios I ran, I did 3 times the amount of damage than the second place person in there. Granted, I was at the level cap for that zone and most others were several ranks below me, but still...that's an extremely wide gap. As I walk around incinerating trolls and searing monsters to a crisp before they even touch me, I get a feel of what it must be like to be a Warlock in WoW. It feels good to be OP.

The game isn't perfect. It's still somewhat buggy. When I root something, my screen shows it as still following me, so I can't tell where it's actually been rooted until after the root breaks. Quests are sometimes tedious and annoying to figure out exactly what it's trying to have you do. The interface itself tends to feel clunky at times, certainly not as polished as WoW. I'm still enjoying it, so I'll keep playing and see how it goes.

I've tossed around the thought of reversing my decision and pushing onward into Wrath with my warrior as my main, especially with things like removal of tclap limit, general increasing of damage dealt, removal of crushing blows, aoe ability, etc. It looks like Blizzard is finally coming through for the prot warriors. In the end, though, I think I would still get burned out. Raid tanking can be very rewarding but takes too much commitment for me.

Blizzcon is coming up very soon. It's gonna be an awesome trip - can't wait!

Not much else to add. It's very much WoW off-season. Even PvP is basically worthless since it was recently announced that honor points are being reset for the expansion. I'm guessing patch 3.0 will hit either next Tuesday or the week after, which will give a month to mess around with it before the big event November 13. Until then, I'll keep running around in Warhammer.

Why I Won't be Tanking in Wrath

My thoughts on playing a warrior tank have really boiled down to two things:

1.) I have no interest in being an off-tank. Ever.
2.) I don't necessarily want to be the main tank for every single raid I go to, and I don't always want all the extra responsibilities that fall on the MT position.

These statements do not exist well with each other.

Put a different way - I don't want to tank half-way, but tanking all-out is just too demanding to keep up. At least, not as long as I want to have a life outside of raiding.

You can't be a raid's MT only when it's convenient for you. A boss tank's consistent attendance is probably more important than any other position for most fights. It's hard enough to work up to a MT spot to begin with - if you miss a week or two, you'll probably find yourself replaced. WotLK will likely be this way, too. Guilds put an awful lot of reliance on one or two main tanks. It's not really their fault; the game was just designed that way. I really liked being that tank. It was a lot of fun, and I got very good at my role. But I realize I can't have it both ways.

That's why I've all but finally decided that my mage will be the first one I take to Northrend. I'm sure I'll still take my warrior to 80 to satisfy the occasional urge to tank, but my main activity will be burning, freezing, and blasting mobs to pieces. I'm looking forward to the change of pace. Now I just have to figure out whether to take up enchanting or inscription...

WoW is Boring

It's been over three weeks since the last time I went on a raid -- the longest I've gone in over 8 months. I didn't realize how little time I've spent logged in until yesterday when I discovered that I've had the same Flask of Fort buff for the last two weeks.

I am absolutely amazed with how quickly the game has gone from immensely fun and satisfying to painfully boring, meaningless, and empty. A lot of it is definitely due to WotLK rapidly approaching. I remember feeling this same way in the months before BC was released. Even still, a big part of why I think I've dropped off the raiding calendar is the guild.

Last night, the guild was in Black Temple for the first time. I didn't sign up because there were already three other tanks on the list, as usual. I logged in to check some mail and got an invite -- "Can you come in to help clear trash?" Great, now I really am just the guild trash b****. I accepted just because I wanted the chance to say I've been inside BT. After getting summoned and being useless for ten minutes since I wasn't even given a dedicated tank target, we were at a boss. I got another whisper, "Thanks for coming. Would keep you if this boss needed more than one tank." I told him I was probably done with tanking and logged out. And people wonder why there is a 'tank shortage'. It's because there are plenty of spots for tanks in 5-man opportunities, but those spots do not scale with 10 and 25-man raids.

It's sad, really, thinking about how much fun it used to be. All that effort put into this character going to waste on trash mobs. Not exactly how I would have imagined my time in Outlands would end. At least I had a blast while it lasted.

There are good things about it I suppose. I have time to do other things and kill time with other games. Warhammer is coming out soon, so I'll be trying it out. It's nice to have a break from raid schedules. November will be here before we know it, and it will start all over again.

A Protection Warrior's Guide to PvP

So you're a raiding protection warrior and you've realized that thanks to Blizzard's terrible PvP/PvE balancing, some pieces of PvE gear you've gotten are not as good as the welfare epics you can get just by mindlessly running around in battlegrounds. The most obvious piece is probably your shield because the Season 2 shield is arguably better than anything you see until T6 content. You probably don't like PvP, but you've decided you'll suck it up and grind for the gear.

Hold on there! I see you running to your warrior trainer to respec. Stop! Don't waste your 100g switching back and forth - it's not worth it! It's more important to me to have the option to unexpectedly jump out of PvP and do a spontaneous guildie heroic or raid. Nope - don't put on your random assortment of DPS gear either. You won't be needing it. Do grab your trinket, though, and stick that thing somewhere easily accessible on your toolbar. Once ready, jump in the queue and get started!

Now, if you've had any visions of doing damage or actually killing someone in PvP - forget them. It won't happen. You should do your best to make PvP as close to PvE play as possible where you're taking/avoiding/mitigating a lot of hits and the rest of your team isn't - because that's your biggest strength. Your role in PvP is not to be a damage dealer - it is to be an incredibly annoying, ridiculously-hard-to-kill obstacle.


Some general tips:

• The small amount of damage you do put out should typically be focused on enemy players that are already near death. I strongly suggest pressing v so you can always easily see the lowest enemy health bars.
• Shield slam is your best chance to actually do more than tickle someone (and dispels as an added bonus!), so a few pieces of extra shield block value are nice. Every once in awhile you can ninja a killing blow.
• Disarm often, especially those epic'd out rogues who are actually doing some damage to you. They may be immune, but try anyway.
  
• You're going to get feared. A lot. This is what your trinket is for, but that two minute cooldown can feel like an eternity, so know when to use it. Alternatively, one of my favorites is spell reflect on warlock fears, although it can be hard to time it right if you've got multiple casters on you.
  
• If you can get close enough to an enemy healer, focus your energy on interrupting their heals.
• Everyday pvp'ers will be amazed when they see you over 20k health when you get buffed with things like Stormpike Salvation. They are definitely not used to seeing that kind of hp. Some people may laugh at you when they see you come into the battle with all tanking gear, but they'll stop laughing when they see your ability to hold a strategic position.
  

Arathi basin

Get to a flag your team controls and sit on it. When the enemy comes and starts trying to grab it, begin spamming tclap. Throw out random shield slams and devastates if you've got extra rage. Once the casters start targetting you, spam spell reflect - constantly. When things really start to get crazy, keep aware of the status of the rest of the battle to know if it's worth it for you to really dig in. If you're holding a really critical spot, use last stand, shield wall, and fear bomb everyone away from the flag. (Remember, though, that the player you have targeted will only be feared in place without running away. For this reason, I usually try to have a nearby hunter's pet targeted, because pets aren't trying to grab my flag.)

If you get feared, keep an eye on the flag. As long as no one is trying to cap it, just let the fear run out. If someone's going for it, hit your trinket and stop them. Also, if it's death coil, you can probably let it run out since it's usually short enough for you to get back.


Warsong Gultch

You have one purpose here - to be an impossible-to-kill flag carrier. Get over to the enemy base with an ally or two and grab the flag. Try and stay near your escorts. Keep commanding shout up. Spam tclap. Flip around for a second to stun rogues. Use cooldowns/trinkets. If the enemy has your flag and you can't cap, run on up to your roof to hide and keep your back to a wall. Be careful about running away from your teammates as it will probably just leave you more vulnerable. If your team gets your flag back, run to the edge of the roof and make sure your path to the cap spot is clear. Don't jump down if 4 enemies are there - they'll probably grab your flag again before you can cap anyway. If the enemy team is mostly melee and you have at least 1 or 2 teammates willing to heal, you will be totally unstoppable.


Eye of the Storm

This is probably my least favorite as a prot warrior. The ideal way to win is to hold 3 towers for most of the time, but that pretty much never happens for me. Your team will need to balance holding 2 towers and making at least a small effort on the flag, depending on what the other team is doing, which is hard to do without a pre-made. There are no specific strategic points to defend people from capping, so your best bet here is to be as annoying as possible. If your team already has plenty of people going for the flag, your most useful role is probably chasing down healers and interrupting/stunning them.


Alterac Valley

This is the easiest one, because it behaves more like PvE tanking than any other - you even have a boss at the end! It's also my favorite because it's pretty much the only BG that alliance can win in my battlegroup. Mount up and run straight to Galv/Belinda. I've never tanked Belinda, so my experience is limited to Galv. Once you've got a healer or two, start the fight. For Galv, the most critical thing here is to be ready to hit your trinket as soon as you get feared. All too often, people get feared straight out of the keep, which resets him. If you forgot to equip the trinket, just tank him against the far wall so you won't run all the way out when you're feared. Help your team secure the towers and then rush the graveyard inside their base. If I'm in the lead, I usually ride right past the flag and pull the guards away so someone else can cap. Find a tower flag to defend while it's being destroyed and do your tclap spam if enemies get too close.

Once the towers are all down, go for the boss. It's nice to announce you're available to tank so the one or two healers that are actually reading chat will actually throw some heals on you. Tank and spank your way to the end.



Granted, I can only keep this up for so long until I become bored to tears, but it at least gets me the honor I needed for those few pieces of gear. I really hope Blizzard adjusts this system in WotLK. It's ridiculous for me to spend a couple days in BG and come out with a T6-level shield, especially when a T6-level PvE shield is crap in PvP since it has no resilience. If I had it my way, PvP gear would either be unusable outside of PvP or else would have stats that are totally worthless in PvE. But for now, we're stuck with it, and an upgrade is an upgrade, so you may as well make the most of it.

How Blizzcon Wiped My Raid

This past weekend I decided I would make the 2000+ mile journey to Anaheim in October and nerd-out with a great friend of mine and thousands of other people at Blizzcon. I've never been to CA before; my friend moved out there a couple years ago, and I have been wanting to visit. So yesterday, I spent all day trying to get a ticket. It was awful. While I've never tried in years past to actually get a ticket, I can't imagine it could have possibly worse than Blizzard's huge bag of fail this year.

The online store opened with tickets at around 8:00 am central time. From the very beginning, the site was plauged with errors. It was a nightmare just to log into the store. Eventually, I got in and started feeling pretty good entering my character info only to slam into another wall of random murloc error pages. After hitting refresh three or four hundred times, I would finally make it all the way to payment selection only for the site to crash completely, sending me all the way back to the beginning. Ugh.

This went on until almost midnight, when Blizzard annnounced they were closing the store until the start of business next day. While I'm glad I didn't have to stay up all night, I'm frustrated to still be ticketless after 24 hours. My friend, however, had a moment of luck and actually got his somehow, just minutes before the store site went down for the final time last night. As an unexpected side-affect, doing so also happened to wipe my raid.

I was in SSC at the time on Leo. The normal MT had stepped out because we were tank-heavy (as usual), and I was the primary tank picking Leo up in human form. It was actually going pretty well considering we've only downed him once before. We kept getting him right to his split phase when things would fall apart. Everyone had gotten a pretty good handle on transitions, but people were still dying to inner demon and whirlwind. On one particular try, we were doing extremely well. Everything was going abnormally smoothly - he even seemed to be coming straight back to me at the end of each whirlwind, making it way too easy to pick him back up. Then, my phone rang from across the room.

I knew what that meant - it would be my friend alerting me that the store was up again for tickets. I looked over at my laptop on my desk which had been auto-refreshing the store page for the past three hours. Sure enough, one of the windows was showing the store front instead of the SCV Maintenance page. An AIM window poppped up "DUDE I GOT MY TICKETZ!" I hit a fresh shield block/shield slam and quickly typed back, "boss fight." I couldn't believe it - after waiting all day, this had to happen during the one time in weeks that I'm actually MT'ing something, and we were just over halfway through the fight. My mind quickly tried to figure out how I could somehow login to the store while still taking care of Leo. I knew I had plenty of time during demon form as long as I didn't get inner demon. I could totally buy the tickets during that phase! Suddenly I tuned back into vent. "Warlock doesn't have him. Demon form - why doesn't the warlock have him? Why is V still tanking??"

In the chaos, I hadn't even noticed that demon form happened, and I just kept right on going with maximum threat. I stopped attacking and glanced down at Omen. It was too late - I had completely left the warlock in the dust. A rogue was killed by the AoE on me. I backed away from Leo and hit last stand and shield wall. Amazingly, the warlock pulled him back after about 10 seconds. We moved on all the way down to 15% for the split. That's when the warlock died. I held on to Leo while two other tanks bought some time tanking the demon until they went down. Then, he came after me. I didn't last long, and we wiped at 9%.

While my mistake may not have immediately and directly caused the wipe, it definitely wasted my two biggest emergency buttons when they may have helped me last just long enough in the end to finish the fight. If anything, I at least threw off our groove mid-fight, and I felt pretty badly about it. We never did get him down. At least we did manage to take out Karathress, where I got my T5 legs. I definitely luck'd out and all 3 tokens were priest/warrior/druid.

As a sidenote, it was incredibly fun tanking a boss again, even one with very annoying threat transitions (something about beggars not choosers...). It makes me even more hesitant to abandon my tank for WotLK. Then again, the only reason I had the chance was that the MT basically didn't feel like it and wasn't needed. Do I really want to go into 25-mans as a spare tank for the leftover bosses? Not really.

So yeah, I'm still putting my mage down as my main character for all the Blizzcon stuff.

Identity Crisis

No, I'm not going to raid as a DPS warrior.

The problem I mentioned in the last post is getting worse. Last night was the third time I've had to sit out of a raid since the new guild, either being booted at boss fights or not taken at all. After the hour and a half spent on trash and Hydross/Lurker, we were standing in front of Vashj when I heard the dreaded "Hey, we only need two tanks here. We should replace the two extra." Naturally, since I wasn't in on the first Vashj attempts on Thursday and thus hadn't yet actually experienced the fight, I thanked the mage for my portal and logged out. Of course, I wasn't in on the fight on that Thursday because I was again left out since I wasn't needed for Leo -- and once they downed him, they just kept the current group and went on to Vashj.

I can't handle being left out of progression raids again and again. I purposely keep those nights open with the full intention of spending them in a raid. I didn't put all this effort into my character to get to 25-man content only to tank a few pieces of trash and then have to hearth out so the real players can come in and take the boss down. Being there with your guild for the first kill is the most satisfying part. After it's been done once, it's no big deal. Not everyone can be there for every first, but I'm seeing a disturbing pattern for me. It's not anyone's fault; this is just the nature of the game. I can't change that, but I can change the class I raid with.

All this is really to say that it's gotten so bad I'm seriously considering leaving my warrior behind for WotLK and picking up my mage again.

I've been thinking about it a lot the last few days, and it's not an easy decision. I have put a ton of effort into becoming the best protection warrior I can possibly be, which has always paid off... until now. I really love tanking, and I love the extra things about leadership that it's taught me. I love the challenge and the respect that comes with tanking. I don't love that I will probably never MT a high-tier 25-man raid, not without starting my own guild or playing on a more hardcore level than is possible for me to do while staying married. If I'm not the MT, I'm wasting my time as a warrior. There's just no fun in it when I could be playing a mage instead.

In a way I have to choose my class based on whether I want to bother with 25-mans or not. As a wise druid pointed out to me last night, with every raid being available as 10-man groups, there will be twice as many groups running at once, meaning there will be a bigger need for tanks than ever. I'm sure I would have a blast, just like I did learning Kara and ZA. What happens, though, when we finally have nowhere else to go but to 25-man mode? I will have hit my peak and will be back exactly where I am now. I am not about to spend another year building a character up only to hit a wall.

There are other issues that make me look longingly at my mage again. I don't like the feeling as a MT that if something comes up and I can't get to a raid, the group can't go because of me, or at least they aren't as successful. This happened several times in my last guild. I guess I really wouldn't mind it if I knew I never had any family events that might randomly pop up and mess with my schedule. My wife does not raid, therefore being in a raiding guild is a constant balancing act of scheduling this hobby in such a way that my reputation at home remains friendly. A good main tank requires a more stable and reliable schedule than that.

While it may not be as complex or demanding to play, I still love the mage class. It's awesome burning faces off monsters. I know there's a lot more I could learn about the class, and I could definitely be a great mage if I really invested some effort. After I got booted from SSC last night, I logged over to him to blow off some steam and PvP for some welflare epics. My mage is actually still in my old guild, and I ended up getting an invite to Gruul's with them. It didn't go very well. From what I heard, my guild didn't do great on Vashj either, only getting 2 of the generators down at the most before adds overtook them. I didn't have an awesome time wiping on High King, but at least I was doing something.

Two years ago, I was a mage. For the last year, I've been a warrior. What am I going to be 6 months from now? Right now, I'm definitely leaning towards the mage. If I intend to reach as far into progression as possible, it can't be both.

The Plight of the Off-Tank

Every raid loves their good off-tanks. They make trash easier. Bosses that spawn adds are manageable. CC isn't as important. Off-tanks are great for tedious tasks like clicking on a cube or mindlessly standing away from the rest of the group to soak hits from that gimmicky trash mob that charges the raid member farthest away.

If you still have a person or two in your guild who fills this role, appreciate them. Once they realize how excruciatingly boring it is, they probably won't keep doing it for long.

Druid tanks can deal with this problem the best; they can at least go kitty form and do some amount of damage. Prot Pallys don't do crazy damage as off-tanks either, but they're totally ridiculous at AoE tanking (again, gimmicky fights, wouldn't want to do it if I could).

But oh, the warrior off-tanks.

/rant on

What do we do if there is no boss for us to tank? Pretty much waste a raid slot, that's what. If there is no other tank, we can take one or two adds, although in a boss fight situation, the adds have to be taken down so fast (and usually with AoE -- Pally preferred!), that we end up running around endlessly, desperately trying to hold a mob --any mob-- to feel like we're contributing. When the adds are down and everyone shifts back to the boss, the most we can do is swap out our shield with another weapon and dance over to fury to contribute that extra 50 dps for 30 seconds until the adds respawn. Since we are still occasionally tanking something, we have to keep wearing just enough survival/threat gear to keep from actually doing damage to anything.

It's nearly impossible to really quantify off-tank performance improvement over time except for maybe burst threat, which doesn't matter past a certain point and not at all if your add isn't the first thing being killed. DPS classes, however, can easily watch with satisfaction as their damage numbers increase over time with gear. It's also often hard to feel like your job matters to the raid much at all as a warrior off-tank. I once read a book called The 4 Signs of a Miserable Job. Having a job that is immeasurable and irrelevant are two of those signs, and yep, it's pretty miserable to experience.

Yes, there are bosses that require multiple tanks, but nobody really likes those, especially if the raid has to deal with threat management or taunt resists. You also have to figure out what you do with your second tank on all the other bosses in that instance that only need one tank. The answer is obvious - bring a druid!

I've read a few things about Blizzard wanting to make tanks more useful while not actually tanking in WotLK. I just don't see how this is possible. Even if I could do damage while off-tanking, it doesn't remove the boredom factor. It also ignores the fact that any tanking gear I manage to get is probably worthless. I'll never wear it if I'm never the one tanking the boss because it will be avoidance overkill on trash.

/rant off

Since joining a very tank-saturated guild, I have been experiencing this problem a lot lately. Maybe it's just worse for me because I got used to the main tank spot. All I know is I'm really not enjoying the game like I used to, and I haven't figured out what I'm doing to do about it.

Things I've Learned as a Raid Leader

I haven't done a huge amount of raid leading, especially lately, but I've done enough to figure out a few things. Leading raids is difficult. It's a pain to get groups together. It's hard to deal with people who are always late or sign up without actually showing up or are just generally annoying to play with. It's difficult because you're interacting with real people with different personalities. On the other hand, successfully pulling a group of 25 people together and killing a major raid boss is extremely satisfying.

I write this from the perspective of a raid leader who is also the main tank, mostly because this is my experience but also because a lot of raid leaders do actually also happen to be the MT. The reason for that seems to some combination of research (good tanks already know the fight and naturally guide the rest of the group) and tradition (people just seem to be used to the image of tanks being out front and leading). Most of this is also fairly obviously, but I write from the view of someone with a smaller guild who is just starting to lead, which was me not too long ago.

The role of raid leader various across guilds. It doesn't have to be the main tank or even necessarily the person whose chat color is red. I generally see the raid leader as the person who the group trusts to hold the raid together and push the group to boss kills. Sometimes it's multiple people.

The most important thing I've learned as a raid leader is delegation, so most of what I've written can be summed up with just that. It's insane for one person to take on everything, especially in 25-man content. Here are a few things I've figured out:

Don't get discouraged - Sometimes it's easy to get a raid group together, but other times it can be heartbreaking when you schedule a 25-man raid and log on to see only 9 people signed up. Don't immediately give up. Start spamming guild chat. This is also where your friends list comes into play. Your biggest hurdle is crossing the 10-15 people mark. Once you've got that, you should have momentum to make it easier to fill the rest. Don't be afraid to go ahead and run with 2 or 3 slots unfilled.

You won't be perfect - And your group will understand this. I was very anxious the first few times I led Kara groups and was totally stressed out the first gruul raid I tried to help run. While you should at least have a decent idea of the trash pulls and boss fights of the raid you're in, no one expects you to know everything. Don't be afraid to ask for help or ideas.

Let someone else ML- You should be taking a break during looting and also getting the next trash mob group marked.

Let someone else assign heals/misdirects - You should take care of tanking assignments and marking, but that's it.

Let someone you trust call out critical events in the middle of boss fights - As has been said before on other tanking blogs and forums, when your entire screen is filled with the crotch of a huge boss, you're not in the best position to physically see what's going around you. Besides, the tanking rotation is more complex than any other class, so you've got plenty to do without having to worry about making sure you tell your cube clickers when to click.

Don't lead every raid - Even if you don't notice it, leading raids takes a toll, and you're asking to get burned out if you never take a break. Every once in a while, do a raid where all you have to do is show up on time, follow instructions, do your thing, have fun, and leave with some badges. This also gives raid lead experience to others.

So what does that leave to be done? - Plenty. Things like:
-Inviting/organizing the raid
-dealing with all the whispers you get
-getting each trash mob group marked quickly
-keeping an eye on your off-tanks to gauge their ability for future reference
-filling open raid spots from members who drop or have to leave early
-deciding which strategies to use & explaining the plans to the raid

Every guild does it a little differently, but those are the best things that have helped me out.

My Mallet - Let Me Show You It

Won the roll for the sweet mace off lurker last night. Woo!

My WoW Experience

My first character was a Paladin. He made it to level 9 right before WoW's open beta shut down, a month before the game was released in November 2004. Apparently, 9 levels weren't enough for me to figure out that Paladins kinda suck, so once I bought the game, I rolled yet another Paladin. Fifty-five levels later (yep, that close to 60), I abandoned him for a Mage.

I immediately loved the Mage class, actually taking one to 60 on both alliance and horde over the two years of vanilla WoW. I have always been a fairly casual player. When I first heard about raids that lasted over 4 hours, I thought those people were insane; I never joined a raiding guild, so I just ran Strat/Scholo/UBRS over and over again trying to fill the mage class dungeon set. I think I ended up with only 4 pieces (but at least I got something to show for it!).

During the fall of 2006, I got a beta key for the BC expansion. I ran around a bit in Hellfire, but at the time, I was already pretty burned out of WoW in general. Most people at the time were just doing PVP until the expansion was released. Some friends of mine decided once BC hit, we would all roll new characters on a new realm - I was considering a priest or warrior.

A few weeks before BC came out, I actually did go to MC for the first and only time. I loved it. It was like playing a completely different game. I was also very intrigued by the role of a tank in a raid. When I saw the tank charge into the huge raid bosses all alone, I instantly knew I wanted to have a prot warrior for BC. I needed to know what that felt like.

About 7 months after BC came out, I hit 70 on my new draenei warrior. My awesome druid friend got us into a guild that was getting ready to start Kara. After a few 5-man runs where I got lucky to find some tanking gear, I switched from Arms to Protection. I remember the first level 70 5-man I ever tried to tank - Shadow Labs. I fumbled around the keyboard and almost constantly had a full rage bar because I couldn't figure out how to spend it quickly enough ("omg this global cooldown thing sux!"). I was a little apprehensive because I was the newb tank in the guild while there was already a warrior, druid, and a couple pally tanks all geared better than I was. The warrior tank (also GM) introduced me to some weird magical defense number(490). I searched the Internet for level 70 pre-raid gear guides and discovered the wonderful felsteel armor items.

Once uncrittable and ready to raid, I stepped into Kara. It's crazy now to think that we wiped over and over on Attumen's trash and how totally chaotic everything seemed at the time. On the boss fight, I was supposed to pick up Huntsman. I was definitely nervous. The first time, I obviously epic fail'd, and he took out both healers and a dps before I could get to him. Next time, though, I got it right. Once he reunited with Midnight, I suddenly discovered that I had picked him up before the other tank, and I was tanking him! It was my first successfully tanked raid boss.

A few weeks later, the guild main tank wasn't available, so I stepped in to clear trash up to curator. At first, it felt like I was totally naked standing in front of the other 9 people in the raid watching me. I was slow and unsure of the pulls since I had never done them before and because I was very much afraid of making a mistake in front of everyone. Gradually, the feeling passed, and curator went down that night.

Early on, we had our first big guild drama involving a mass exodus. It happened one night after I had gone to bed. Apparently, a lot of people decided we weren't hardcore enough. We got over it, though, and regrouped. I remained the off-tank to Kara, and we forged ahead to kill Illhoof and Shade and began making attempts on Prince (I sat out being the worthless off-tank for that fight). It sounds ridiculous seeing as how now Kara is pretty easily cleared in 3-4 hours or less, but it was difficult at the time because we only raided two nights a week for 2-3 hours, so we usually ended up at prince right at the 6 hour mark (no Nightbane or Netherspite either). We weren't very efficient.

A couple months after the first mass exodus, we had our next big drama event - our guild leader and his wife left the game. We were shocked, and a couple weeks passed without raid nights. But we regrouped again to go back to Kara. With the GM tank gone, it was my turn as the main tank. The first couple times through were slow and awkward. I wasn't used to being in control of the raid's pace and was constantly afraid of pulling too fast or too many. Several times I did pull too many. I felt badly for every wipe and death my noobness caused, but the group was forgiving. While I had seen the last MT pull everything before, watching someone else pull trash through an instance is just not the same as doing it yourself. I gradually learned every single piece of trash in Kara and worked on chain pulling. We never really achieved a speed run (no pally tanks), but we at least got up to a respectable pace. Looking back, I see now that I handicapped us a lot by relying so heavily on CC even after I far outgeared the place.

After a few weeks, I found myself standing in front of the imfamous Prince Malchezaar. Although I was getting quite comfortable with the rest of Kara, everything I had read about Prince and his fast shield-block-eating attacks made me anxious all over again. After 3 attempts, we got the infernal drops we needed and downed him. A few weeks later, we pulled a single long night with our best guild members, one-shotting everything including Prince, skipping Netherspite. We decided to ride the momentum and make a pass at Nightbane (at like 3am). Once on the terrace, we paused to replace a couple members, watch a video, and briefly go over the strat since only about 3 people in the raid had ever seen the fight before (excluding me). I hastily typed up my anti-fear stance dance macro and got ready to use it. We summoned him. 75% - first set of adds. 50% - second set. 25% - last set! We killed Nightbane in one shot on our first ever attempt. That was a high point in the guild.

Unfortunately, we stagnated for a couple months after that, except for the Netherspite kill we finally took care of. We had a lot of trouble getting past the 25-man hurdle. We would always get to where we could almost run 2 Kara groups, but then people would get tired of not always being able to go, so they would leave to another guild. Dedicated healing was always a major issue. Our best members became very weary of long Kara runs; we kept wiping over and over from stupid mistakes. People began bringing in alts instead of main characters, starting more conflict, especially in terms of looting.

Finally, we made our first attempt on Gruul. It was my first time tanking for a 25-man raid, and once again, I was nervous. About 1/3 of the group was PUG'd, though, and those guys really led us through. High King and Gruul went down easily. Later, we made an attempt on our own with only a few PUG'd. It was up to us to lead, and I was absolutely overwhelmed with trying to set up targets and misdirects for so many tanks and hunters. After a few tries, we were successful on High King. We still had trouble with Gruul, not being able to get him down before the grows became too much, usually a result of having to bring in people on alts or PUG'd members still in green quest gear. Occasionally we got it together and took him down, but it wasn't reliable.

We were also somewhat successful in ZA, downing the first and second bosses without too much trouble.

Eventually, the volatility of the guild became too much. We seemed to have some kind of dramatic event once a month or more. The nature of the guild was casual, but there was always a battle for exactly how casual we were going to be, because several of us wanted to take the game more seriously. To make matters worse, the guild raided on a west coast time schedule, and I was always two hours ahead, which meant I was often staying up for wipefests well past midnight when I had to get up at 5:30 for work.

Early in July, I left the guild after being in it a year and followed my two favorite druid friends to another raiding guild which runs during the week and much, much earlier on an east coast schedule. It was difficult to give up a guaranteed main tank position, even with all the problems of the last guild. The first night of the new guild, I got to see Mag. It was immediately obvious that this guild was in an entirely different league. We killed him on the second try. While it was exciting, I was disheartened to go from boss tank to dedicated box clicker. After the warm-up of Mag, we headed to Hyjal that same night and took down Winterchill (guild's first). The next night I ran Kara with a group that cleared it in about 3 hours. I had to check and see if I was somehow playing WoW on cheat codes. Since then, we've cleared half of TK and are 4/6 in SSC. I never thought I'd get to see these places, but it's been pretty awesome.

So that's pretty much where I've been. We'll see where it goes from here. I was late getting to a lot of the end-game stuff in BC. I'm excited about being able to start over for WotLK and hitting 80 and starting the raids sooner.

Becoming the Champion of the Naaru

For the longest time, I had no idea how people got those weird titles. I never bothered to look them up because I figured it involved a level of raiding that I would never see. Now that I'm in a guild that's actually in SSC and TK, though, I did go find out how you get them, and now all I lack is a heroic SP run to turn in my last quest for the Champion title (yay!).

Several patches ago, attunement requirements were removed from SSC, The Eye, Mt. Hyjal, and even Black Temple. As a reward for players who still go through and complete the quests for those attunements, Blizzard put in two titles - one for SSC/TK attunement quests and a second for Hyjal/Black Temple attunement quests.

Champion of the Naaru (SSC + TK Attunement)

SSC
1.) Get quest from NPC in heroic slave pens (soon after making the big plunge into the pool)
2.) Kill Nightbane and loot
3.) Kill Gruul and loot
4.) Go back to heroic SP and turn the quest in


TK
1.) Do this really long questline in Shadowmoon Valley which opens up Trial of the Naaru quests from A'dal
2.) Get all the Trial of the Naaru quests from A'dal in Shattrath
3.) Kill last boss in heroic Arcatraz (Tenacity) while keeping alive the fiesty little mage prisoner from the final boss fight
4.) Kill last boss in heroic Steamvaults (Strength) and loot
5.) Kill last boss in heroic Shadow Lab (Strength) and loot
6.) Kill last boss in heroic Shattered Hall (Mercy) before all the prisoners are dead. Kill the executioner and loot. You should have about an hour and 20 minutes from the time you enter the gauntlet hall after the first boss. All you need is one prisoner left alive. Yes, this place still sucks on heroic without an awesome group.
7.) Turn in all 3 Trial quests and get the last one for Magtheridon
6.) Kill Mag and loot
7.) Turn in quest to A'dal


Hand of A'dal(Hyjal + BT Attunement)

Mt. Hyjal
1.) Fly to caverns of time and get the Vials of Eternity quest
2.) Kill last boss in SSC and loot
3.) Kill last boss in TK and loot
4.) Return to CoT and complete

Black Temple
1.) Do the long quest line in Shadowmoon Valley till you get to Akama's Promise which you turn in to A'dal
2.) Kill Karathress in SSC. Seer Olum appears nearby. Get his quest.
3.) Go back to Akama in SMV to get the next part
4.) Kill Al'ar in TK while wearing your quest item disguise
5.) Go back to Akama and get the next part
6.) Kill Rage Winterchill in Hyjal
7.) Go back to Akama and get the next part
8.) Go to Ad'al in Shattrath for the next part
9.) Go back to SMV and talk to Xi'ri for the next part
10.) Follow Akama to the entrance of BT
11.) Return to Xi'ri to complete

An Embarassing Tank Moment

While sitting in front of TK hoping for an invite to the guild's run on Void Reaver...

Guild officer: Do you have a dps set?
Me: Well…technically yes if you consider just having some random separate pieces a dps set. It kinda sucks, though. You can come over and check it out yourself.
Guild officer: *inspects* Go ahead and equip your dps stuff so I can see.
Me: ...It’s already on.
Guild officer: Oh.
Me: *flies back to Shattrath*

OH HAI

Welcome!

I've decided to join the many other tanking blogs and attempt to document some of my own tanking thoughts. At first, most of the posts will probably be pretty lengthy since I'll have a lot of things I've been wanting to write about and won't have the self-control to just wait and post gradually, but hopefully they'll get shorter as time goes on.

Hope you enjoy!