tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-62938309083593588112024-03-19T05:03:16.329+00:00Blue MurderA Warcraft warrior's blogEverbluehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12047342316034045107noreply@blogger.comBlogger193125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293830908359358811.post-10534992046292171262011-01-25T09:19:00.002+00:002011-01-25T09:21:13.703+00:00Single Minded FuryFury is in kind of a strange place right now with two distinct specs - single-minded fury (or SMF) and Titan's Grip (TG).<br /><br />SMF seems like it was bolted on quite late in the day to the normal fury spec and suffers from balance issues. I am SMF at present in my dps spec, having been TG in the previous xpac and while levelling, and SMF plays quite differently to TG. It also seems like fury was designed and balanced around TG, and the developers have not paid enough attention to how SMF works in practice.<br /><br />Firstly, note that raging blow and slam are attacks based on weapon damage, whereas heroic strike and bloodthirst are based on attack power. Admitted SMF slam hits with two weapons instead of one, but my experience is that at present bloodthirst and heroic strike blow everything else out of the water - to the extent that raging blow crits for me hit the same as bloodthirst hits non-crit. I have actually taken raging blow off my action bar because it's just a waste of rage to use it.<br /><br />My rotation at the moment is bloodthirst > heroic strike, with slam when it procs. I also use colossus smash to boost damage and refresh sunders, but that's all.<br /><br />This is kind of strange, and defeats the whole purpose of the new fury design which is that you are supposed to have to manage your enrage state. I just don't bother at the moment.<br /><br />It will be interesting to see what happens in the patch - based on current PTR releases it looks like SMF itself is getting a flat out dps buff (approx 4%), and bloodthirst, raging blow and slam are all getting very large dps buffs (around 20 - 30% I understand), while heroic strike gets a large nerf. It will be interesting to see if post-patch raging blow will be better than heroic strike - if it is better then I will need to put it back on my action bar, but if not then the rotation will remain bloodthirst > heroic strike, and it is likely that SMF damage as a whole will be too high and need a nerf.<br /><br />Sub-20% my rotation is execute spam with colossus smash when available. SMF's flat +damage bonus really shines when executing and in this phase you can put out really high dps.<br /><br />One final thing to note was a tip I picked up on Kadomi's blog and relates to sunder armour. The wording Glyph of Colossus Smash says that it refreshes the duration of any sunder stack on the target, but that's not quite what it does. What actually happens is that the Glyph adds a stack of sunders if there is already at least one stack on the target, or refreshes the duration of a maxed out stack. So you need to sunder once at the start of the fight, and then when you use colossus smash you will get a second stack of sunders with a refreshed 30 sec duration. The next time you use colossus smash you'll get a third stack of sunders. You therefore only need to hit sunder armour once.Everbluehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12047342316034045107noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293830908359358811.post-88544227848485632322011-01-20T18:42:00.001+00:002011-01-20T18:44:09.071+00:00Farming Bastion of Twilight trashI see a few bloggers saying that they are not "ready for raiding" yet.<br /><br />My raid team is the guild's second team, and we have only just started raiding (two raids so far, Tol Barad boss and Magmaw down) but what we have been doing for a couple of weeks is farming trash in Bastion of Twilight. The trash is easy once you learn the pulls and have a couple of reliable cc-ers, and there is a very high chance of getting a BoE epic - we normally get one epic per run, but sometimes we've had two. We've had a couple of tanking swords, a couple of rogue ranged weapons and a druid tanking helm so far.<br /><br />The best thing is that they are BoE - if no one in your raid wants them, stick them on the AH and use the money to buy an epic you do need!<br /><br />Maybe something to consider if your guild is still gearing up for raiding.Everbluehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12047342316034045107noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293830908359358811.post-89205342357369882412011-01-19T13:28:00.002+00:002011-01-19T13:30:39.462+00:00The basics of tanking (draft)Disclaimer - this is being written for the benefit of a new prot warrior in our guild. It is intended to serve as a guide to the basics. If you want to know more, then try Elitist Jerks (whose prot warrior guide is getting better as it gets longer and harder to read) or Tankspot. This is a draft version of the guide.<br /><br /><strong>Ratings<br /></strong><br />Your rating stats, in the order of best to worst are as follows:<br /><br /><em>Mastery > Parry > Dodge > Hit > Expertise<br /></em><br />You should always reforge away hit or expertise - into mastery where possible. All items have two rating stats on them - the best items have mastery and parry, the worst have hit and expertise. Always look for mastery on your gear where you can.<br /><br />Parry is better than dodge because of the Hold the Line talent.<br /><br /><strong>Attributes<br /></strong><br />Stamina gives you health, obviously. Agility gives you dodge, but you shouldn't gear for it or gem/enchant for it. It just turns up on gear sometimes. Strength is a threat stat, and again, don't ever gem/enchant for it.<br /><br /><strong>Why is mastery so good?<br /></strong><br />Mastery increases block chance and crit block chance, but let's focus on block chance. The goal at present is for warriors to become "unhittable", that means every attack on the warrior either is avoided, or is blocked.<br /><br />Since bosses are level 88 and we are level 85, they have an increased chance to hit us than you might expect from looking at your character sheet. In order for us to become unhittable our total avoidance needs to be 102.4%. That's quite a lot. A realistic initial goal is for us to become unhittable when you have shield block (+25% block chance) activated. That requires us to have total avoidance of 77.4%.<br /><br />If you remember that there is a base 5% chance for the boss to simply miss with its attack, you need to have:<br /><br /><em>dodge chance + parry chance + block chance > 72.4%<br /></em><br />Once you achieve that, or get very close to it, you will be amazed at the difference. Shield block is up for 1/4 of the time, and while it is up you will be like a piece of iron - your healers will love you. Essentially, shield block becomes almost as good as shield wall once you hit 72.4% avoidance.<br /><br />Mastery is your best way of increasing avoidance - it's relatively cheap in terms of rating requirements, and it is not subject to diminishing returns. Stack it.<br /><br /><strong>Why are hit and expertise so bad?<br /></strong><br />In dungeons and raids, you will get all the threat you need from the vengeance buff (which increases your damage the more damage you take). As a warrior in particular, vigilance will ensure that your vengeance reaches maximum very quickly in raids, and doesn't drop off very often.<br /><br />In theory expertise is a better dps stat than hit, but since we have vengeance and don't need dps stats then hit's other benefit (making our interrupts more likely to land) makes hit more valuable. On fights where interrupts are critical some top players are building special hitcapped sets to make sure their interrupts never miss. You need 8% hit to do this but to begin with it may not be necessary.<br /><br /><strong>Rotation<br /></strong><br />Hit shield slam and revenge whenever they are up, and hit devastate if they aren't. Heroic strike when you have more than 50 or 60 rage. Don't forget about inner rage.<br /><br />Concussive Blow and Shockwave do more damage than devastate and do lots more threat, so ideally you would have both of these in your rotation too. Personally however I prefer simple rotations, on many fights you'll want to save shockwave for adds, and anyway devastate is getting a big buff in 4.06 so the difference post patch will be pretty small I think.<br /><br />There's lots to think about when tanking, so I save my precious brainpower for things other than a super-complicated six button rotation.<br /><br />The cleverer among you will notice that I have not included rend in the above. I don't like the Blood and Thunder talent - I find it fiddly and unnecessary, and it requires me to have yet another button on my action bar. In heroics I maintain AoE aggro with glyphed cleave, revenge and thunderclap. It seems to work fine.<br /><br /><strong>How to take less damage<br /></strong><br />The Thunderclap debuff and the demo shout debuff should be up on your target all the time. Practice this. They mitigate a huge amount of damage. Make sure that your UI shows those debuffs on your target, and maybe highlights them in some way or makes them bigger.<br /><br />Make sure you are using shield block on cooldown.<br /><br />Use your survival buttons - Enraged Regeneration, Last Stand and Shield Wall are all amazing, and are on short cooldowns. Don't save them for bosses! You can easily use one survival button on every trash pull, and be confident that there will be one available for the next pull.<br /><br />Remember that Shield Wall is more effective if you press it BEFORE you take a big hit. If you have ALREADY taken a big hit and are low on health, use Last Stand instead.<br /><br />Remember that Enraged Regen needs an enrage effect active on you to become available - press Berserker Rage to give you access to the regen.<br /><br />Disarm almost never works on bosses, but normally works when a trash mob is hitting you with a sword or axe. It's a really solid damage reduction button.<br /><br />Kiting! If you are taking lots of damage and near death why not stun the mobs using shockwave and heroic leap away? Or if you are fighting a boss, and the boss stops to cast some uninterruptable spell, why not run away? It will mean you take zero damage for 3 or 4 seconds while the mobs run back to you, giving your healers a bit of a break. Watch your threat while doing this though.<br /><br />Spell reflect! I love tanking casters - zero damage taken, free rage and high dps.Everbluehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12047342316034045107noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293830908359358811.post-15861165475873270112011-01-10T19:05:00.002+00:002011-01-10T19:10:39.859+00:00Warrior nerfs in patch 4.06There’s a decent analysis of the prospective nerfs <a href="http://wow.joystiq.com/2011/01/08/the-care-and-feeding-of-warriors-testing-4-0-6-ptr-changes/">here</a>.<br /><br />As usual - this is PTR, things can change, not set in stone, blah blah blah.<br /><br />For fury the patch notes look pretty unpleasant, since the buffs (raging blow being improved by war academy and the buff to mastery) seem to be outweighed by the nerf to heroic strike. I am slightly biased however, since I think the fury rotation’s dependence on enrage effects is pointlessly complex and difficult to work around, and there is no comparable difficulty in any other class that I can think of right now. It’s not simply a priority system based on procs, as every other class has, but you also have to manage your enrage state which is pretty ridiculous. Anyway, that’s a rant for another day. We are also hugely dependent on hit apparently (I haven't got enough fury experience in Cata to talk about that as yet, but it was true in WotLK and it makes sense for it to be true now).<br /><br />The nerfs to heroic strike and cleave are also somewhat annoying for prot. I currently think cleave is a brilliant attack for prot right now – it hits hard but not too hard, it hits multiple targets, and it’s therefore great for AoE tanking. It also feels fun, for some reason - not sure why. Clearly therefore it needs a nerf for PvP reasons. This is somewhat depressing. I’ll probably still use it on cooldown when AoE tanking though.<br /><br />The heroic strike nerf is pretty lousy, and makes the prot rotation complicated again – I will now have to try to decide whether heroic strike is better or worse than concussive blow or shockwave. I prefer the simpler prot rotation of shield slam > revenge > heroic strike, but it seems we are back into needing a six button rotation.<br /><br />The buff to devastate, while probably not enough to compensate in theory, actually in reality is very good for me because I tend to lose my rotations under pressure and spam devastate mindlessly in panic. Now at least I will be suffering less of a dps loss. In addition, it’s a minor buff to the impending victory talent. Since you need to hit devastate to trigger impending victory then sub 20% you’ll basically be spamming devastate and hitting victory rush when it procs (which actually is surprisingly often – you are healing 7% of your health every 6 seconds or so). Spamming devastate is bad, but by making devastate more attractive, impending victory becomes less of a dps loss.Everbluehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12047342316034045107noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293830908359358811.post-22442339858964345372011-01-07T13:41:00.001+00:002011-01-07T13:50:27.968+00:00Impending VictoryYes, it's a bad talent. Yes it forces you to use a sub-optimal rotation. Yes, it's only very good for a comparatively short time on bosses. Yes, it's in my spec.<br /><br />So far I'm finding that I am dying a lot, but I'm not threat capped at all. I'm doing loads of damage, and loads of threat, on either single or multiple targets. I'm therefore dropping dps talents and scratching around for any survivability I can get, and quite often in the last 20% of a boss's life I'm so far ahead in threat that my personal dps can drop a bit without a problem. The small 7%-ish heal you get from victory rush doesn't sound like much, but it's available every 6 seconds or so and just gives the healers some breathing space in that period, especially if I follow it up with shield wall or shield block.<br /><br />It synchs with power auras - you can set your power auras addon to recognise the buff (it's called "victorious") to show you when the buff is active.Everbluehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12047342316034045107noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293830908359358811.post-4341867979509976662010-12-14T13:33:00.002+00:002010-12-14T13:38:20.358+00:00Tidyplates fixLike many of you, I use the Tidyplates addon when tanking as it makes it very easy to see who you have aggro on and who you need to taunt back. It's excellent. Since the 4.01 patch however it's been broken because of the issue of overlapping nameplates - rather than staying next to the mobs they represent, the nameplates wander around the screen when tanking large packs, which makes the addon pretty much unusable.<br /><br />The problem appears to be due to changes Blizzard made to the default UI, and I've discovered that entering the command<br /><br /><em>/console spreadnameplates 0</em><br /><em></em><br />should fix the problem. I'll check this later when I get home.<br /><br />If you don't use Tidyplates, here is <a href="http://www.tanklikeagirl.com/2010/01/07/addon-corner-tidy-plates-threat">Kadomi's review</a> some time back.Everbluehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12047342316034045107noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293830908359358811.post-52303625568924384252010-12-01T10:18:00.000+00:002010-12-01T10:19:22.802+00:00Shameless recruitment postThis is a post that Griffinheart (one of my officers) put on our forums front page. As you can see, my guild is recruiting - we have loads of great dps but are seeking a couple of tanks and healers to round out our raiding teams. In WotLK we killed everything on normal mode and most things on heroic - culminating in our Frostwyrm mounts from ICC. If you are interested there's a link to our forums on this page - cross-server apps would be very welcome.<br /><br /><em>"After a bumpy year and, eventually, a split, Immortal is bent on reinventing itself. A core of adult players who have been playing together for almost five years is seeking to shoot new blood into its veins, with its sight set on the imminent Cataclysm.<br /><br />Our intention is to reopen the doors of our guild and to turn it again into a suitable platform to enjoy the upcoming expansion, in an attempt to reconcile both the raiding and the social aspects of the game. Mind you, we are not recruiting as such; we only would like to add some more like-minded individuals to our particular roster of characters.<br /><br />What remains of Immortal is a set of around 25 players from very diverse countries, all 18+, many of us actually 30+. Most of us have jobs (or had), better halves, mortgages, children and a nasty set of real life problems from which we like to take a break two or three days a week by killing stuff for a couple of hours or three. Even though we have very different schedules, all of us have been making the time for years to spend some hours together every week, to enjoy the special atmosphere Immortal has traditionally enjoyed during its existence.<br /><br />Our targets for Cataclysm are still in great part to be decided, but all things are pointing towards a 10-man raiding guild running 2-3 teams, with at least one of them aiming to cover the whole nine yards for every raid dungeon: hard modes, meta-achievements, penguins… the whole shebang. If we manage to actually run two top-notch teams, we will consider the jump to 25-man raiding again, as it has been a guild constant since Vanilla. Many of us are experienced players with a hunger for blood and power, and will go to shameful extents in order to inexorably and ruthlessly achieve our goals: going on sick leave for a couple of days to practice tactics, or peeing in buckets next to our PCs to save AFK time (mental note: make sure my push-to-talk option is enabled on Teamspeak next time). Other than that, we are normal people.<br /><br />We currently run two teams in ICC 10: one of them made of mains, running 2-3 evenings a week and just two blue dragon kills away from the Glory of the Raider achievement; the other one is made of alts and raids whenever we get the critical mass and minimum balance for it. Generally speaking, anyone with a real craving for raids has several chances every week to kick some (mostly) undead arses.<br /><br />So, this is us. We are looking forward to having a lot of real fun in Cataclysm, and to share it with anyone weird enough to feel at home here –just like we do. If you are a decent human being with a passion for raiding or hanging out in World of Warcraft, and the strange gut-feeling that you could fit in Immortal, do not hesitate and post an application on our forums.<br /><br />We are dying (really often) to meet you!" </em>Everbluehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12047342316034045107noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293830908359358811.post-47174192516333592972010-11-24T14:04:00.001+00:002010-11-24T14:06:43.084+00:00To the ground, baby!Well, the nerfs are in and to paraphrase Zapp Brannigan - the warrior nerfs are like the warriors' love - hard and fast.<br /><br />You can read the full list in all its horror in the patch notes. Most of the nerfs reduce damage done by 17%, but some are different. I'm going to look at Fury and Prot since those are the specs I have experience of. Assume that all abilities are reduced in damage by 17% unless mentioned.<br /><br /><em>Fury</em><br /><br />Raging Blow is reduced by 27%<br />Mastery is buffed by 50%<br />Slam rage cost reduced from 20 to 15<br /><br />This is a very heavy nerf for raging blow. It may be that the changes to mastery (extra damage while enraged) balances this out, but looking at some napkin maths I doubt it. The effect on our rotations is hard to see at present - previously the fury rotation was<br />Raging blow (where available) > Bloodthirst > Heroic strike. It may be that raging blow drops from being the main nuke to being a filler.<br /><br />I still can't see a place for slam - the problem with it has been that heroic strike is so good that rather than being a way to bleed off excess rage we want to hit it on cooldown. If we are doing that we just don't have the spare rage to hit slam as well (or at least I don't) and you therefore drop slam altogether. I've seen the suggestion that slam procs need to cost zero rage and I agree with that. On the basis that we have more rage now than we will have at any time in Cata (crit, hit and haste are higher now than they will be) I can't see this change making slam attractive.<br /><br /><em>Prot<br /></em><br />Devastate is unchanged<br />Revenge is unchanged<br />Shockwave is unchanged<br />Shield Slam is unchanged at 85 (not sure about at 80)<br /><br />The only ability that prot uses which was nerfed is heroic strike. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Currently like for fury heroic strike is so good that it distorts the rotation - Shield slam > revenge > heroic strike with devastate being relegated to maintaining the debuff.<br /><br />It may be that the nerf to heroic strike is enough to change the rotation but frankly I doubt it because heroic strike is simply so far ahead of devastate and shockwave at present. It should also be noted that the cookie cutter prot spec at the moment includes field dressing and blood craze, and so most raiding tanks (including me) haven't taken the war academy talent, which when maxed boosts heroic strike by 15%. The net effect of taking warbringer will bring us back to where we are now - that devastate is there just for the debuff (or can be dropped if you have the right kind of hunter pet with you), concussion blow is a stun only and shockwave is for utility and AoE tanking.<br /><br />Oh, and finally, the rend nerf should pretty much kill off Blood and thunder as a prot talent I think!Everbluehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12047342316034045107noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293830908359358811.post-42552897631846282042010-11-16T13:25:00.002+00:002010-11-16T13:28:04.522+00:00Arthas at 85Tobold is a good blogger, in that he writes interestingly and well on varied subjects. I check his blog most days. I get quite frustrated about his attitude to raiding however. His comment about raiding in WotLK is <a href="http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2010/11/grapes-of-wrath.html">as follows</a>:<br /><br /><em>"I wouldn't say I have "finished" Wrath of the Lich King, for example I am not among the half million players who killed Arthas. But that was definitively due to lack of even trying, as I found WotLK raiding not that much fun: Too much "Super Mario Brothers" or "Simon Says" or "Don't stand in the fire", however you want to call that, and not enough focus on actually playing your class, if you know what I mean. I'm looking forward to Cataclysm, where at least healing appears to require more thinking (3 of my 5 level 80s are healers), and hope that Cataclysm raiding has a bit more tactical fights that require players to think on their feet instead of raid encounters resembling some sort of complicated ballet where the most important thing is that everybody stands at exactly the right position at the right time. Maybe I'll get to kill Arthas when I'm level 85 in some fun guild outing."<br /><br /></em>Tobold seems to like tank and spank fights. He doesn't like to have to run around much, he doesn't like to have to react to scripted attacks, and he doesn't like to learn a "best" rotation for his class. What he likes is to make decisions on the fly about what's the best spell or ability to cast, which for him makes interesting gameplay. I disagree, but it takes all sorts to make a world etc etc.<br /><br />What I find interesting is that he thinks that he'll be able to come back at level 85 and kill Arthas for fun. I actually think that Arthas farming at level 85 will not happen very much at all. Consider the following:<br /><br />- It's a long instance. You need to kill 11 bosses pre Arthas (and Sindragosa will be no pushover at 85 either).<br /><br />- There are mechanics that can kill you that you can't outgear or outlevel. Defile will still kill you at 85 if you stand in it. Soul Reaper will still take off 90k of tank health in a few seconds. The necrotic plague does 50k damage to you when it ticks, or more if it has already killed some ghouls - that will still hurt at 85. The Val'kyr can drop a level 85 person off the edge of the raid. If you get hit by an ice sphere it's still a one shot kill. The fight is hard. It will still be reasonably tough at 85.<br /><br />- It's hard to underman the fight. You still probably need 2 tanks for phase 1 (otherwise you are going to get plague in your melee or your tank is going to need to be cleansed all the time leading to higher boss melee damage). You still need 2 healers, since one healer might get grabbed by a Val'kyr in phase 2 or ported into the sword in phase 3 and you'll need another to cover.<br /><br />- He doesn't drop anything cool or unique like a legendary weapon or a rare mount. The weapons don't have unique models either - they look the same as the normal raid drops.<br /><br />And finally...<br /><br />- Most good raiders have killed Arthas already. I'm sorry, but if you haven't killed Arthas yet then either you aren't a very good player, or you are new, or you have had some kind of unspecified other problem like a guild split or personal issues. Assuming that they do indeed remove the kingslayer title then there will be little incentive for experienced or talented raiders to go back and kill Arthas on a new alt. This means an Arthas pug will probably be an utter disaster.Everbluehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12047342316034045107noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293830908359358811.post-32775046421626752652010-11-10T13:19:00.000+00:002010-11-10T13:20:18.742+00:00Some simple tanking macrosSome very basic tanking macros I use. Nothing particularly clever, but you might like them.<br /><br /><strong>Warbringer<br /></strong><br />Credit to Veneretio of the now-defunct TankingTips for this one.<br /><br /><em>/castsequence [harm] reset=15 Charge, Intercept; [help] Intervene<br /></em><br />If you press the button it casts charge. If you press it within 15 seconds it casts intercept. If the target is friendly it casts intervene. Note that if you have gyphed charge for a shorter cooldown you should change it to say "reset=14". Also, don't spam the button otherwise you'll cast charge and then intercept on the same target straight away.<br /><br /><strong>Cooldown macros<br /><br /></strong>I macro a warning to my healers when I use a cooldown. Stuff like<br /><br /><em>#showtooltip last stand<br />/cast last stand<br />/s Everblue used Last Stand<br /><br /></em>I think it helps your healers to know you are using a cooldown so that they can adjust their healing strategy accordingly.<br /><br /><strong>Startattack macro<br /><br /></strong>If you use a special ability and you have enough rage then you'll cast the ability and begin attacking your target with normal melee attacks (if you weren't already). If you don't have enough rage to cast the ability then you will not start attacking your target with white attacks either, and thus you won't start gaining rage. You'll just stand there like a lemon.<br /><br />I therefore macro the startattack command to devastate (or bloodthirst in fury spec, or mortal strike in arms spec) as follows:<br /><br /><em>#showtooltip devastate<br />/cast devastate<br />/startattack<br /></em><br /><strong>Lucky charms<br /></strong><br />One final tip. Via the keybindings in the normal blizzard UI it's possible to bind "set the skull raid marker" to a key. I've bound this to the "8" key in my UI, meaning that it's relatively easy to get the dps to focus fire on one target without messing around with menus during a fight.Everbluehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12047342316034045107noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293830908359358811.post-26726113130221025772010-11-01T00:08:00.000+00:002010-11-01T00:09:19.658+00:00RedAll hail the <a href="http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=27509091494&pageNo=2&sid=1#26">red shirted guy</a>...Everbluehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12047342316034045107noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293830908359358811.post-74494674896322061832010-10-29T13:18:00.003+01:002010-10-29T13:24:15.681+01:00Warrior tanking newsSome warrior news.<br /><br />Firstly the shield slam nerf is confirmed as expected - base damage will be increased but AP scaling will be decreased. This will signal an end to the massive shield slams we've been seeing on live, but should also improve burst threat on the pull.<br /><br />Next come the changes to block. There are three, and I confess I'm not sure what the design intent behind the changes is.<br />- The increase to block chance provided by shield block is being nerfed from 100% to 25%. This shouldn't affect most warriors on live at the moment as avoidance in ICC gear is typically 40-45%, with a minimum 30% block and 5% miss chance. It might be a fairly severe nerf to warriors at level 85, and certainly makes shield block much less effective as a cooldown if total avoidance + block is materially less than 75%. Nevertheless it's not something to worry about yet - we'll find out about tank balancing at 85 in a couple of months' time.<br />- The second block change is that when you cast shield block, and it takes you over 100% avoidance + block (presumably this "100%" figure should actually read "102.4%" for bosses) then the excess block chance is converted to crit block chance. This is quite nice now, but it's hard to see that at level 85 it's going to be relevant at all. Blizzard have said that avoidance levels in Cata will be lower than today, and so given that we wouldn't expect to be unhittable at level 85 it's not easy to see why this change has been made. It's going to be a slightly weird mechanic if you have mobs of different levels attacking you (eg if you are tanking a boss at level 83 and adds at level 80) since you'll have different crit block levels between the different adds, but that's something that's always been in the game I guess.<br />- Mastery is being buffed. It now increases block and crit block by 1.5% per point of mastery (up from 1.25%). This makes mastery even more attractive for warriors - with mastery at 1.25% on live at the moment, dodge and parry are probably better for overall mitigation, but mastery is better to avoid damage spikes. This buff might make mastery just outright better than avoidance.<br /><br />Thirdly, shield wall is being buffed. This is part of an overall adjustment of tanking cooldowns, and brings all four classes into line.<br /><br />Fourthly, Vigilance is being nerfed, but wrongly. They are removing the 3% damage reduction proportion but leaving the Vengeance transfer. The Vengeance transfer is far far too good and it will be nerfed hard soon.<br /><br />And finally - we started working on LK heroic last night. I'm not sure if we'll get him, but it's something to keep people interested for the next few weeks. At the end of phase 1 (with all the damage buffs on him) Arthas was meleeing me for 42,000 damage per swing (on 10 man). It's going to be really tough. Best try so far - 71%.Everbluehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12047342316034045107noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293830908359358811.post-30482935091031805262010-10-18T13:23:00.003+01:002010-10-19T09:13:00.436+01:00ReforgingI haven't done any reforging yet. Nevertheless, I have some Thoughts:<br /><br />1) Stamina is still king<br /><br />You can't reforge primary stats, including stamina. You can reforge everything else.<br /><br />I actually think that reforging therefore narrows gearing choices, since in a world without reforging you might have wanted some threat stats such as hit on a gear item, or defence, or in the bright and shiny Cataclysm healing model a ton of +dodge rating might have been superior. You might therefore have worn an item with these stats. Not so now - you can get your threat stats, or your avoidance, by reforging. You can't get stamina so it will still be the case that stamina is better than everything else.<br /><br />I imagine that there will be a similar rule for most classes where the most useful gear attribute is a primary stat.<br /><br />2) How much hit is still needed?<br /><br />**<em>Caution, what follows is based on my understanding of hit mechanics, which is a little rusty.**</em><br /><br />The glyph of taunt has gone. I've got about 6% hit I think, which means that since taunt used to use the spell hit table I would therefore think that I had 11% chance of taunt missing a boss. I have not had a taunt miss yet (2 raids so far) so I wonder if the developers have simply made taunt hit all the time, which is something that GC said he might do.<br /><br />The reason I am musing on this (aside from worrying that I'll miss a tank swap) is that since as a threat stat <a href="http://www.tankingtips.com/2009/01/07/expertise-is-always-better-than-hit/">expertise is twice as good as hit</a>, and I am under the expertise soft cap, perhaps I should be turning some of my hit into expertise. I don't want to do that however if I'm going to muck up my taunting.<br /><br />3) What is the parry diminishing returns curve?<br /><br />Dodge, for me, is not as good as parry. Dodge avoids the next attack, whereas parry avoids the next attack and procs Hold the Line. Parry is therefore better.<br /><br />However, on live pre-4.01 parry had a much more severe diminishing returns curve, meaning that you needed more parry rating to get an effective 1% of parry than you needed of dodge to get an effective 1% dodge. I wonder if that will continue into Cataclysm - if so, it means that gemming and reforging and enchanting dodge will still be better than stacking parry. If not, it means that dodge will be unquestionably worse than parry for me in the expansion.<br /><br />I still therefore don't really feel like I have enough information to go out and pay cash to change my gear via runeforging. It might be different in Cataclysm if survivability is a massive issue, so we're adding avoidance to everything at the expense of threat, but at present I hope that some clever people at Tankspot and EJ will apply their ginormous brains to get an idea of the mechanics of tanking in Cataclysm.<br /><br />EDIT - Ah - some of the information may be <a href="http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=27292689704&sid=1">here</a>.Everbluehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12047342316034045107noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293830908359358811.post-64583161752627516772010-10-15T13:28:00.002+01:002010-10-15T13:32:35.983+01:00Some first impressions of tanking post 4.01We had a very laid back and addon-less ICC10 run last night. Lots of silly pulls, people not knowing their class changes (hello there Mr DPS DK in blood presence!) and 8 bosses killed. With that in mind, here are some thoughts.<br /><br />1) Shield slam is amazing. Simply amazing. With a full stack of vengeance and the heavy repercussions talent my shield slams are 16k - 20k during shield block. That's without inner rage. That is also NON-CRIT. I had a 37k non-crit shield slam on Festergut last night with 7 stacks of gastric bloat. The new shield slam is awesome once you stack vengeance to sufficiently high level. Since my other attacks were hitting for up to 7k I think, shield slam is a huge proportion of our dps now and catching those SnB procs is vital. I can't believe they won't nerf this.<br /><br />2) The new heroic strike is really good - I like the fact that you don't wait for the next weapon swing, but it's just an instant whack in the face that's off the gcd. I have incite so it crits pretty often, and it hits hard enough to feel like a proper meaty attack. I need to get into the rhythm of hitting this button every 6 seconds instead of every 1.5 seconds and deciding when to cleave, but currently it feels like a positive change.<br /><br />3) I've always liked cleave-type attacks, and with the glyph of cleave being major rather than prime, it's now available for prot warriors. Cleave therefore hits three targets and is pretty great for AoE pulls. Revenge still hits hard and the "revenge cleave" is still lovely for big pulls.<br /><br />4) Single target threat isn't too bad at all. I didn't have any problems last night once I'd found out where all my buttons were and got my UI in order. It's definitely no longer straightforward to keep aggro on multiple mobs, but if people are following a kill order it's usually ok. By the end of the raid I was no longer losing mobs on AoE pulls, but of course if someone was going single target there would normally get aggro.<br /><br />5) Rage generation was fine when tanking. When not tanking I still felt like I had enough rage to use a decent spread of abilities, although as ever having to drop revenge from my rotation in those circumstances was annoying.<br /><br />6) I suggest that you don't bother with rend or blood and thunder, and that you ignore thunderstruck. A cookie cutter 31 points in the prot spec will have 4 utility points - I went for gag order (even though it's not particularly useful at present) and hold the line (which was up about half the time I think last night).<br /><br />7) Thunderclap's been nerfed quite a lot. The damage is pretty poor (although as noted I haven't specced into thunderstruck) and so even though it does a lot of additional threat you'll need to tab target and cleave to keep aggro.Everbluehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12047342316034045107noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293830908359358811.post-47257680768169840182010-10-14T13:17:00.001+01:002010-10-14T13:33:08.914+01:00Some thoughts on the new prot talentsOne thing I've learned from this beta process is to refrain from blogging on mechanics that are not implemented yet. One week you write a brilliant deconstruction of the new ability or mechanic, and the next it is gone. (In my defence however, many of the things I posted on the official forums about have happened - new attack for fury, furious sundering gone as an ability, gushing wound gone, heroic leap usable in combat and in any stance.)<br /><br />Now however, with the testing process aparently now continuing on live servers with the release of patch 4.01, it's worthwhile putting down some notes on the (hopefully final) talents. Focussing on the prot tree for now:<br /><br /><strong>Rank 1</strong><br /><br /><em>Toughness</em> is required. Max this out.<br /><br /><em>Incite</em> is apparently amazing for single target threat, and syncs very well with shield specialisation, see below, and war academy in the arms tree.<br /><br /><em>Blood and thunder</em> seems too fiddly for me. Assuming it's an AoE pull, once you've charged you won't want to hit rend before your first thunderclap since you won't get AoE aggro, so you'll want to hit it before your second thunderclap. It might be slightly better at level 85 when you can pull using heroic leap, but then at least pulling with charge->thunderclap gives you plenty of initial rage. Much will depend on how out AoE threat pans out in the final numbers, but unless our AoE threat requires running a spec that is focussed on AoE threat, I don't think I'll take this talent. It's probably a decent AoE talent for arms spec warriors though, since thunderclap is their main AoE and they'll normally have rend running anyway.<br /><br /><strong>Rank 2</strong><br /><br /><em>Shield specialisation</em> is possibly a little overpowered in its current format - bear in mind that with shield block up you will block almost every attack, so this talent provides pretty much infinite rage while you have shield block up. This should allow you pop Inner Rage (once you have it!) and get a few heroic strikes (some of which might be criticals due to incite) in for a big damage boost. It also syncs with heavy repercussions, below. I suggest you try to max this talent out since it is the best "extra rage" talent you can get at present.<br /><br /><em>Shield mastery</em> is required. Max it out. You may not be aware that our shield block ability has been nerfed - it now only increases block chance rather than block amount, which means that the ability is less useful against weak-hitting attackers but remains very strong against bosses.<br /><br /><em>Hold the line</em> is an AoE threat talent I think. When you are being hit by multiple enemies at once your likelihood of keeping this up is very much higher, whereas a single enemy hitting you will probably mean that the buff falls off from time to time.<br /><br /><em>Gag order</em> is a great utility talent for 5 man instances. I remember heroics at 80 when they weren't totally AoE gankfests and this talent is really helpful for gathering caster packs together in 5 man dungeons.<br /><br /><strong>Rank 3<br /></strong><br />Just take all of these talents. You need all of them. <em>Concussion blow</em> might be a bit weak now, but the stun will be required for levelling and the damage it does has been doubled on the PTR.<br /><br /><strong>Rank 4<br /></strong><br /><em>Improved Revenge</em> and <em>Devastate</em> are required, obviously.<br /><br /><em>Impending Victory</em> is an odd talent. Victory rush ("vrush") does 45% of attack power as damage at present, as compared to shield slam which does 100% of attack power (I believe, although possibly shield slam has been weakened recently). On those numbers, using vrush will be a significant dps and tps loss over normal attacks. Added to this is the relatively small heal, and the fact that you can only use it sub-20%, and the talent looks a little expensive. Vrush syncs with a talent in the arms tree that you'll be taking anyway (field dressing) and one that you might also be putting some points in if you are speccing for single target threat (war academy). It's also possible to use the new major glyph of vrush which increases the heal by 50%. If you take all the talents and glyphs that support vrush (and assuming they all stack!), then you might be looking at an ability that heals you for 8-9% of your health and hits for about 52% of attack power, but you can still only use it for at best a fifth of the fight.<br /><br /><strong>Rank 5</strong><br /><br /><em>Thunderstruck</em> has a great name but is also an AoE only talent. It stacks 5 times, but the buff lasted 20 seconds on the PTR as opposed to the shockwave cooldown of 30 seconds. This means that if you want to keep this buff up on a fight where you aren't doing AoE threat, then you'll need to thunderclap 50% more than is normally required, which is a dps loss. Again, keep an eye on this in case they change the buff duration.<br /><br /><em>Vigilance</em> is an amazing amazing talent for raiding now. Vengeance is such a huge buff, and afaik we'll be the only tank class to retain vengeance when we don't have aggro. I can't believe they won't nerf this, but for now it will be useless while levelling, useless in heroics and amazing in raids.<br /><br /><em>Heavy repercussions</em> is a really strong talent. It's even better if you have maxed out shield specialisation talent since while shield block is up you'll probably have inner rage active too. This means your shield slam will be hitting for 230% damage during shield block.<br /><br /><strong>Rank 6<br /></strong><br />I can't make up my mind on <em>Safeguard</em>. I think it will probably help in 5 mans from time to time, especially since vigilance doesn't transfer threat now. Nevertheless, I think it's probably overbudget at 2 points and it questionable that there will be situations where the ability to intercept a blow will not save your group mate but the 30% damage reduction will. Unless there are 85 heroics where perhaps the boss targets someone other than the main tank with a channelled spell (or something) then I will probably skip it. It's great in certain encounters, but pretty much you might spec for those encounters.<br /><br /><em>Sword and board</em> is good. Take it.<br /><br /><strong>Rank 7<br /></strong><br /><em>Shockwave</em> - take it, obviously.<br /><br />There'll be more to come on this once I've had chance to raid.Everbluehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12047342316034045107noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293830908359358811.post-30622801488104599512010-10-11T13:20:00.000+01:002010-10-11T13:21:42.957+01:00Warrior raid buffs in 4.01There is an excellent post at <a href="http://pwnwear.com/forum/finalized-raid-buffs-debuffs-for-cata-t673.html">Pwnwear</a> about raid buffs and debuffs on the PTR at present. The key facts for warriors are<br /><br />1) Battle shout changed - this is now +str and +agi instead of +AP. It shares stats with shaman totems and the DK ability horn of winter.<br /><br />2) Commanding shout changed - this now adds stamina, and shares stats with the priest spell Power Word:Fortitude and the warlock imp.<br /><br />The effect of this is that if you run with a priest in your raid there is no need to buff commanding shout at all, except perhaps after a combat rez. If you raid with a DK then given the short duration of horn of winter, it's possible that the buff will fall off during the fight if the DK is not paying attention. Since shouts give rage now (20 rage I think) then using battle shout from time to time should ensure that the buff stays up and should give you some extra rage.Everbluehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12047342316034045107noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293830908359358811.post-66698071591962795412010-10-10T21:02:00.003+01:002010-10-10T21:05:15.689+01:00End game<div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr63zPYZgcOwvq4mIVUFiK3Jf8tQTS4NRxYhH3vMsJ22Ln9-h1h4KntCG_35E4MW03J-BsK7BWUBH0XHtZC9RUpR2MQU-ulQex_nNqgjcJU-dsmOR0ycJ1j6w-k3YsCVDCf-1SxRYKc4fh/s1600/WoWScrnShot_101010_201038.jpg"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; FLOAT: left; HEIGHT: 200px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5526510764043710594" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr63zPYZgcOwvq4mIVUFiK3Jf8tQTS4NRxYhH3vMsJ22Ln9-h1h4KntCG_35E4MW03J-BsK7BWUBH0XHtZC9RUpR2MQU-ulQex_nNqgjcJU-dsmOR0ycJ1j6w-k3YsCVDCf-1SxRYKc4fh/s320/WoWScrnShot_101010_201038.jpg" /></a><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAyQtOuxRTZy5dzipX1pRtW_VYStyCs_bcB7TUGdaLIgb41eVO_CpAm82KrtsSs0YrHniP6h_phUdiS58wWlJ4l0m4kQ1wfAVofK-TThujIADfSL1jXzJqbhMzQJ0lU8zPOqo7ydZgY-dh/s1600/WoWScrnShot_101010_210031.jpg"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; FLOAT: left; HEIGHT: 200px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5526510952861447074" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAyQtOuxRTZy5dzipX1pRtW_VYStyCs_bcB7TUGdaLIgb41eVO_CpAm82KrtsSs0YrHniP6h_phUdiS58wWlJ4l0m4kQ1wfAVofK-TThujIADfSL1jXzJqbhMzQJ0lU8zPOqo7ydZgY-dh/s320/WoWScrnShot_101010_210031.jpg" /></a></div></div>Everbluehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12047342316034045107noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293830908359358811.post-24781429769891156642010-09-27T13:13:00.002+01:002010-09-27T13:19:09.935+01:00Stance dancingStance dancing means switching between stances to use abilities which are not normally used in your stance. For example a fury warrior (who would normally fight in zerker stance) might wish to use rend (only useable in battle and defensive stances). It is not an easy skill - you need to be able to switch stances, select the new ability, then shift back to your normal stance very quickly. Spending too long switching means a dps loss, and you need to factor in that when you change stances you lose most of your rage.<br /><br />Stance dancing, while being something the developers say they like as a flavour of the warrior class, is slowly being phased out of the game. Prot warriors no longer need to stance dance to use charge or intercept, and the latest beta build makes pummel useable in battle stance so assuming this makes it to live arms warriors will not need to dance to access their interrupt. Dancing is critical for PvP, but is a neglected skill for PvE. Here are some abilities which a prot warrior needs to stance dance to use:<br /><br /><strong>1) Retaliation</strong><br /><br />This is a fantastic AoE tanking tool which is criminally underused. For the next 12 seconds any attacker hitting you is treated to a mainhand attack in return, with 20 attacks maximum. On a 4 minute cooldown (with the improved disciplines talent) and useable in battle stance only.<br /><br />I normally (umm honesty attack incoming, let's say - "normally <em>when I remember</em>") hit retaliation before I charge into a large AoE pull, so the button sequence is<br /><br />battle stance -> retaliation -> defensive stance -> charge -> thunderclap<br /><br />You can put out a large amount of AoE damage and threat in such situations. Similarly, if you use it just before hitting Challenging Shout you are very unlikely to lose aggro on any mobs within range.<br /><br /><strong>2) Recklessness</strong><br /><br />This ability is more useful in single target situations. It makes your next three special attacks crit (not including heroic throw I believe), but at the cost of increasing damage taken by 20% until your three crits have taken place. Again, a 4 minute cooldown (with the improved disciplines talent) and useable in zerker stance only.<br /><br />The +20% damage taken is scary at first glance, and puts people off, but bear in mind that the debuff only lasts until you have crit three times (about 5 seconds), and you might only expect to take 2 or 3 boss hits in that time. Add to the fact that if you use it on the pull you will probably be pre-hotted and pre-shielded, or with a prayer of mending on you. You will also have shield block available so you can use that to mitigate the extra damage you'll take from using this ability. I believe that shield wall has a shared 12 second cooldown with recklessness and retaliation, so you cannot use shield wall at the same time as recklessness to mitigate the extra damage, but I could be wrong on this. I still think the extra damage shouldn't be a problem though.<br /><br />Three crits in a row means that your first shield slam will be huge, and you should also be able to get shockwave and revenge crits too. This will give you a very large initial threat lead on a boss.<br /><br />It's not that well known (it certainly isn't on the tooltip), but this ability also makes you immune to fear. An interesting point that is almost completely useless for prot warriors since when feared you won't be able to shift to zerker stance to use it but nevertheless may come in handy if you are fury spec sometime.<br /><br /><strong>3) Shattering throw</strong><br /><br />The armour reduction from shattering throw is in addition to the armour reduction from sunder armour. This makes shattering throw a valuable dps cooldown for your raid. Use it during heroism to make yourself very popular with dps warriors, rogues and hunters.<br /><br />Since it has a cast time, your avoidance will be zero during the cast so you'll take more damage than normal for a couple of seconds but this should only be for one hit given the short casting time and so I don't think that this is a particularly important feature.<br /><br /><strong>4) When not tanking</strong><br /><br />If you are in a tank swap fight then one of the deadly sins of tanking (ooooh - idea for a blog post!) is to overaggro your fellow tank when it's his or her turn to tank. Generally, Something Bad happens when you do this, at the very least your tanking partner and your healers will know you're a muppet.<br /><br />Simply shift to battle stance or zerker stance when you aren't tanking to increase the damage you are doing, but reduce the threat of your attacks and reduce the chances of you accidentally overaggroing. This is particularly important for Festergut, since otherwise the massive dps boost you get when offtanking will lead to huge aggro problems for you. Helpfully, it will be easier to get to shattering throw or recklessness during this time, but remember to plan ahead and be ready to shift back to defensive stance well before you need to taunt the boss back.Everbluehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12047342316034045107noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293830908359358811.post-11007624096167269512010-09-23T10:46:00.002+01:002010-09-23T10:50:10.384+01:00Dyumedes<a href="http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Hellscream&gn=The+Edge&cn=Dyumedes">This is Dyumedes</a>.<br /><br />He's been inactive for a while, but back in Vanilla he was pretty much the most famous tank on our server. I knew him slightly - we have some people in our guild who were pretty well known in the vanilla warcraft community such as Mileena and Griffinheart, and these guys knew Dyu and raided with him from time to time.<br /><br />He's a hard man to get on with - I know another tank on our server who asked him politely for gearing advice and Dyu simply put him on /ignore without responding. Dyu was raidleader and GM of the top raiding guild on our server back in Vanilla, before his job (he was in the army) meant he had to take a long break from the game.<br /><br />For all his faults (and he was perfectly polite and pleasant to me), Dyu was and presumably still is a top notch player. I remember Mileena telling me about a time when Dyu came and tanked a ZG run for us. She was seriously impressed I remember - Dyu chain-pulled every group of mobs (this was at a time when crowd control was vital in raiding) until they got to the <a href="http://www.wowhead.com/npc=14509#comments">tiger boss</a>. The tiger boss in ZG had two adds which had to be killed within a few seconds of each other and you tended to split dps and use two tanks plus a dps tank on one of the casters. Rather than assign tanks Dyu just pulled them all and - Mileena's voice dropped here to an awed whisper - Dyu <em>tanked everything himself</em>.<br /><br />This was a time when thunderclap was only useable in battle stance, so you had to stance dance to use it. You had to press shield block every 6 seconds to prevent yourself being hit by crushing blows. Shield wall was on a 30 minute cooldown. Mages and warlocks in raids regularly had to wand for the first few minutes of an encounter to let the tanks get sufficient aggro on a single target. The phrase "wait for five sunders before dpsing" was a dungeon and raid mantra. There was no revenge cleave, no damage shield no threat No Threat NO THREAT!<br /><br />The reason I've been thinking of Dyu recently is that I've been reading the beta forums and looking at the changes to tanking we can expect. Apparently AoE threat has been hit very hard, and crowd control is supposed to be becoming more important. We'll also have threat decay, which will mean that we can never slack off in our rotations later in the fight once we have a good threat lead. All of these things are going to make tanking, particularly AoE tanking, much more difficult which is something that's being hailed as positive in the game - an end to the AoE dps zergs of the LK dungeons and a return to the more strategic encounters of the past.<br /><br />While that's all very well, I wonder how far back we really want to go. Do we want to return to the Vanilla days, when even tanking three mobs could be seen as a major demonstration of skill from one of the server's best?Everbluehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12047342316034045107noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293830908359358811.post-58804725333753436982010-09-19T21:54:00.004+01:002010-09-19T21:59:07.013+01:00PP heroic down!Stupid failtank forgot to FRAPS or screenshot it. Dammit.<br /><br />Amazing fight, cheers on teamspeak at the end. We rule! etc. I'm now 9/12 on heroic, with the guild as a whole being 10/12 (I haven't killed Blood Princes heroic).<br /><br />We are just 3 boss kills away from getting the guild's first Frostwyrm. We tried the Sindragosa normal achievement tonight using the zerg method and got close. We were unlucky on the tombs and I was too cocky as regards the timing of blistering cold. I think it's doable.<br /><br />EDIT - Oh, and I am now swaggering around with an <a href="http://www.wowhead.com/item=50344">improved organ</a>...!Everbluehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12047342316034045107noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293830908359358811.post-33429247290680151422010-09-17T13:11:00.000+01:002010-09-17T13:13:30.669+01:00ConflictI am conflicted.<br /><br />Cataclysm is coming out soon (probably too soon for me to get the Frostwyrm mount, grumble grumble) and worgen, frankly, look cool. I want one. The question is what to do.<br /><br />Should I simply race-change my human warrior into a worgen? This has the advantage that I'd get to keep the history of the character, which is something I wanted to do with my current main - having played a different class in each previous expansion I admire people who've kept the same main character for four or five years and intended to keep this warrior toon as my main permanently. I could RP it a little, and get my doughty human warrior bitten by a werewolf.<br /><br />(Interlude - I am a secret roleplayer. I don't tell anyone or roleplay in game, I just roll it round the inside of my head. I have a back story all worked out for all of my characters which I am too shy to share with the world.)<br /><br />On the other hand, that would mean I won't get to play through the starting area which would be a shame. It might also be fun to level a new character to experience the reworked Azeroth. The problem with that is that there's no point in levelling a caster worgen. None at all. Worgen are savage beasts with massive pointy teeth. There's no way that a worgen is going to hang around at the back casting spells. Worgen should be rogues or warriors, that's all. I've levelled a rogue before and have no desire to do so again. So an alt warrior (probably fury, since it fits with the feel of the worgen race) is in the post in Cataclysm. Everblue will go arms/prot.<br /><br />Raiding update - our best try on PP heroic is 12%. We're getting pretty close to a kill here...Everbluehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12047342316034045107noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293830908359358811.post-77029387502855805212010-09-01T13:38:00.003+01:002010-09-01T15:00:09.328+01:00Looking back at Northrend raidingSome thoughts on the last couple of years.<br /><br /><strong><em>Favourite instance</em></strong><br /><br />Ulduar without question. The instance is stunning to look at and gets off to an atmospheric and impressive start with the vehicle fight. There is nothing else in the game to match the look of Kologarn, XT002 or Mimiron. I also like the genuinely new types of encounter - particularly Mimiron and Yogg Saron. These are really interesting and well put together.<br /><br /><em><strong>Most difficult encounter<br /></strong></em><br />The encounter I've wiped most on without clearing was Anub'arak hard mode in ToC10. We stopped trying it when ICC came out, so while we could have gone back and stomped all over it with our new gear, we haven't. It's not really the same without the challenge I think.<br /><br />We tried the fight for about four raids without success, and came close a few times. We would regularly come unstuck in the kiting phase with stupid deaths - people would use aggro-dropping abilities without warning the raid, so the boss chooses a new target without resetting speed, or people would try absurdly over-ambitious kiting strategies, or people would die to the adds. It was so frustrating.<br /><br />In phase three I don't think we ever really nailed the healing - we had too many people being healed too high so that boss healing was massive.<br /><br />In context though, Anub was nowhere near as difficult as Arthas. Arthas was a worthy end boss for the expansion and probably the toughest fight I've ever seen in any expansion.<br /><br /><strong><em>Least fun encounter</em></strong><br /><br />Ugh, Malygos. Having to move the boss constantly away from the sparks, while allowing the melee to stand in the power circles, and keeping aggro ahead of massively buffed dpsers. An absolute nightmare. Once you'd done all that, you were at the mercy of people not dying on the drake phase, which they invariably did.<br /><br />With hindsight, part of the problem could have been that prot warrior threat generation was dreadful in 3.0 warcraft. If we'd had the dps buffs we have now, keeping aggro could have been much easier.<br /><br /><strong><em>Most fun encounter</em></strong><br /><br />Faction champions I think. My job was always to bully the healers with stuns, interrupts and fears. It was an excellent fight and you really felt that you were contributing if you could tie up one of the healers more or less constantly (mwahaha I own you Mr Priest).<br /><br />I like fights where spell reflect is important too.<br /><br /><strong><em>Most rewarding boss to tank</em></strong><br /><br />XT002 hard mode / Anub'rekan. We got this achievement around the same time as ToC came out, so we were all still in ilevel 219 and 226 gear. We solo tanked it, meaning that I needed to keep aggro on the boss, and also grab the sparks when they spawned. We also (and this is perhaps my favourite part about the fight) had a *clever strategy* for the fight, which involved special positioning for people who got lightbombed. It was my first hardmode fight, and was the time when my tanking stepped up a bit to take on the MT role in progression content.<br /><br />Anub'rekan is in there because it represents one of my fondest memories of the expansion. It was my first WotLK raid boss, and with my 21k unbuffed health, I just could not survive leeching swarm. However fast I ran I would always get a few ticks and the poison would kill me before the kite was over. So I made a plan - I got one of my healers to stand 25 yards away, and I macroed intervene onto her to a key. I then immediately intervened onto her to escape the swarm and avoid getting any leeching swarm ticks. I love things like that - and that is what ties XT002 hard mode and Anub'rekan together - both fights we succeeded by coming up with a special strategy to beat a particular mechanic. This is perhaps one of my favourite aspects of raiding. It must make it frustrating to be in one of my raids, since I'm always wanting to try some new tactic or strategy, or trying a new positioning idea.<br /><br />Maybe raidleading in 10s is like playing an RTS game on a grander scale. We have units (raid members) and between us we come up with a plan of attack for them. My RTS units rarely go afk for a smoke though...<br /><br /><strong><em>Proudest moment</em></strong><br /><br />The LK kill. After about 85 wipes and 3 months it was a little emotional.Everbluehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12047342316034045107noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293830908359358811.post-13559544956843462912010-08-27T14:09:00.001+01:002010-08-27T14:11:39.270+01:00Tanking Saurfang 10 heroicSome random hints and tips for warriors at tanking this fight. People have been facerolling Saurfang on normal for a very long time and it's easy to forget the nuances of the fight. Actually there is quite a lot for tanks to do here - you don't need to move much, but everything you do has to be perfect, or you wipe.<br /><br />We run with two healers for this fight, which means that you need to have killed the boss before he casts mark of blood for the third time. This means doing everything possible to minimise the amount of blood power gained by the boss.<br /><br />- Let the other guy start tanking the boss at the start of the fight. The reason for this is that Saurfang's abilities are on very strict timers and therefore you can predict when he debuffs the tank - as you know you need to swap tanks when he debuffs his current target. There are two debuff points - after he casts boiling blood, and just after he summons the blood beasts. The tank who starts the fight will be debuffed just after boiling blood, and the OT will be debuffed just after the blood beasts arrive. You will need to be free to do other things once the blood beasts are up (see below) so you want the other tank to take the boss at that stage. That means that you want to be the OT.<br /><br />- When the blood beasts arrive, immediately shockwave one of the beasts ("B1"). It's important that your shockwave does not hit the second beast ("B2"), since you want B2 to aggro on a ranged kiter. If you stun B2 next to your melee dps it might get hit by cleaves etc and aggro the melee, leading to a massive blood power boost and a probable wipe.<br /><br />- Have all your dps apart from the B2 kiter nuke B1. You should help (since by now your tanking partner will be tanking the boss). When shockwave is about to wear off, use concussive blow. This will mean that B1 should be dead before your concussive blow wears off (8 seconds of stun should be enough to kill it). All your dps should then head off to kill B2. If it looks like B2 is going to get into melee range of your kiter you should taunt B2, allowing a few seconds more for your dps to kill it.<br /><br />- Diminishing returns on taunts appears to be turned on for this boss. What this means is that if you accidentally gain aggro when you shouldn't it's a possible wipe, since when the tank taunts back the next tank swap will be in the diminishing returns window and will have a high chance of missing. It also means that if you are a warrior you should not use mocking blow as part of your rotation, as I did (/shame), since this is likely to stuff things up for your tanking partner.<br /><br />- If you have paladins in the raid they can cast Hand of Protection on people who get boiling blood to cut down on the amount of blood power gained by the boss. Clearly they shouldn't cast it on tanks or on your assigned blood beast kiter.<br /><br />- When you are tanking Saurfang you shouldn't use shockwave or concussive blow, or they won't be available for when the adds appear, leading to a wipe.<br /><br />When tanking Saurfang during frenzy you should ensure that you have a cooldown up (or at least available). Good luck!Everbluehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12047342316034045107noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293830908359358811.post-27941935813299110272010-08-17T13:07:00.002+01:002010-08-17T13:10:26.503+01:00Nausea, Heartburn, Indigestion...Since killing LK a couple of weeks back, I've been working my way through the heroic modes in ICC10. Currently I've beaten the first six bosses, and I must say it really adds a great deal of excitement to the encounters. In fact, some of the encounters feel like the heroic mode is the "proper" version of the fight - particularly Rotface and Festergut where the heroic modes have some extra voice acting, and new features which are implemented in an amusing way.<br /><br />I think that LK heroic might be beyond us given the extreme difficulty of the fight (I think only one guild on my server has beaten it so far), but we will certainly try to get the <a href="http://www.wowhead.com/achievement=4602">Glory of the Icecrown Raider</a> achievement, which has a <a href="http://www.wowhead.com/item=51954#screenshots:id=171926">special dragon mount</a> as a reward.<br /><br />The major roadblocks are likely to be Sindragosa heroic and the Sindragosa achievement, both of which look like an absolute swine, but we managed to get one of the harder achievements last night - <a href="http://www.wowhead.com/achievement=4578">Nausea, Heartburn, Indigestion</a>.<br /><br />This requires you to complete the encounter without using the abomination's slow ability on the various oozes and clouds which spawn during the fight. What this means is that you are going to get hit by the adds. A lot.<br /><br />Positioning is vital. When the green oozes spawn then you need to remember that the AoE damage when it reaches its target is split between all players in range. We split the raid into two groups for the oozes - the melee dps and tank in one position, and the ranged dps and healers in another (we used two healers). We normally killed the green ooze before it exploded for the second time, meaning that raid damage was manageable. The orange oozes are tougher, and you need to remember that damage from these mobs is not split between nearby players - thus you need to be spread out when these spawn. You also need to be aware of the DoT effect on the person that the orange ooze is targeting - that person will need quite a lot of healing while the ooze chases them. We used heroism in phase 2 to get the oozes out of the way as quickly as possible, and once you get into phase 3 it's the same as normal (except you won't have heroism available, so your execution needs to be better).<br /><br />It's really quite fun, and makes the old, familiar fight a lot more interesting.Everbluehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12047342316034045107noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293830908359358811.post-2001766483487513922010-08-08T20:44:00.003+01:002010-08-08T20:47:11.447+01:00It is doneMonths and months too late, after guild splits, cancelled raids, teams breaking up and people being absent due to holidays/boredom/starcraft2...<br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-bx6lQ5q_LjInEKxsnf-uqTFWX1SwEnOxFr5r3gAZVtvoqMn2KDC4zOoxFm5sRwbfiSWAXdR_9r8zd8gBX98pDl9rZE6lGNFLyIY193IMyOD1XqNQvPRA9fSqgkhdlXZx9zv68M6_s5LP/s1600/WoWScrnShot_080610_200441.jpg"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; FLOAT: left; HEIGHT: 200px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5503127911231254738" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-bx6lQ5q_LjInEKxsnf-uqTFWX1SwEnOxFr5r3gAZVtvoqMn2KDC4zOoxFm5sRwbfiSWAXdR_9r8zd8gBX98pDl9rZE6lGNFLyIY193IMyOD1XqNQvPRA9fSqgkhdlXZx9zv68M6_s5LP/s320/WoWScrnShot_080610_200441.jpg" /></a>Everbluehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12047342316034045107noreply@blogger.com0