Post-Weekend stuff,

Another busy weekend.

Friday night saw Ulu back in Karazhan with the early shift. We took down Attumen, Moroes, the Opera event (Oz again this time), The Curator, Terestian Illhoof, The Shade of Aran, Chess Event, and then the Prince. The Prince has thusfar confounded me, but last friday we were able to kill him first attempt. Knowing he has the ability to do effectively 12k damage in a quick burst allowed me to tell the healers "keep me at above 80% health at all times". I was spam-healed to hell and back, but it worked.

After that, flush with success, we went on to down The Maiden of Virtue and call it a night. Ulu didn't get much loot of note, except for a trinket from a quest relating to killing the Prince and a new ring from hitting Exalted with The Violet Eye.

On Saturday, Ulu tanked a couple of Heroics, gathering the last few badges for his new helm. It was a hellish grind, but it's done and the avoidance on the helm means I can stack both his Stamina trinkets whilst remaining immune to crushing blows. Ulu now sits at 12.8k health and 14k armor unbuffed, which is very nice.

Flushed with the success of this as I was, I'm feeling kinda meh now. As it stands, Ulu has no real upgrades for his tanking gear outside of raids. The only upgrades to his chest and legs come from Nightbane and The Curator respectively. There's a belt upgrade from the last boss in Heroic Black Morass, but that seems to be one of the harder heroics. There's also a nice Hammer and Shield from the Arena rewards, but I'm having difficulty finding a team for that.

Anyway, on Sunday we went back to Kara, and we killed Nightbane after 3-4 attempts. After that kill, we tried Netherspite, but one of our member's connection died and we couldn't get a replacement. After the raid was called, I went to Shattered Halls Heroic with a few guildies. We wiped a lot, but we got to the end eventually.

Quick update.

I'm about go do RL stuff. Couple of things of note:

1. Tanked the Prince in Kara last night and we owned him! Another tanking Everest has been overcome!

2. Just got the last badges needed for my Faceguard of Determination. My tanking gear is even more imba now.

Details to follow on Monday probably.

More Heroic Deeds

Last night, after chasing up a crafter for a few days, Ulu got some epic bracers made. With their acquisition, one of the less-satisfactory gaps in his tanking gear was closed. I also changed a lot of his avoidance gems for stamina ones, and switched in a couple of items that emphasised Shield Block over Dodge/Parry. The end result is that Ulu has roughly 16% Dodge, 16% Parry and 23% Shield Block along with 12.3k health unbuffed and nearly 14k armor.

I've been reading a lot of stuff from raiding tanks atm, who suggest that mitigation (armor, block) and health are better to stack than avoidance (dodge, parry). The theory is that when you're tanking High King Maulgar or Prince Malchezaar, you don't get healed reactively. It's therefore better to work on reducing incoming damage rather than giving a chance to avoid it altogether. In theory it seems sound, we'll see how it holds in practise.

After getting my new precious, Ulu ended up running two heroics in reasonably rapid succession with the same group: Ulu Tanking, A Resto Druid Healing, a Feral Druid switching between DPS and Off-Tanking as required, an Enhancement Shaman switching between DPS and Off-Healing and a Mage on DPS and Crowd Control.

Whilst the runs weren't exactly flawless, the fact that the group had a lot of versatility really counted in our favour. We went through Mana Tombs first and after struggling with the first boss, we killed the next two easily enough with only a few deaths to carelessness on trash.

After that, we decided to keep the group together and try the Underbog. Once again, we struggled a bit, but almost all the bosses died first time, except for the last. Wasn't many drops of note, but hey, that was seven badges total. Ulu just needs 9 more to get his epic helm.

Raiding-wise, I'm uncertain what to do. Part of me fancies taking Ulu on an early shift run for a change, but the late shift is struggling and needs help. I'm undecided about wether or not to be a "James Blunt" about it or not yet.

It takes guts to do it right.

One thing I've come to realise recently is this: Stamina is good for all classes.

Whilst there's an overwhelming urge for classes to focus on their "active" stats, be they Intellect, Healing, Damage, AP, MP5, etc, there's one universal truth in raids and heroics: sooner or later you will get hit.

Wether it's an AoE, a random targetted ability like a charge or some other trick, most encounters are designed so that the tank can absorb most, but not all of the damage an encounter puts out. If Blizz didn't do this, then all healers would have to do is target the tank, spam their heal buttons and victory would be assured.

In Raids and Heroics, the mobs hit hard, and a cloth-wearer with 5-6k health can easily be one or two-shotted. If that's a damage-dealer it's annoying. If that's your only healer, then chances are a wipe will ensue. Swapping some DPS/Healing gear for some with more stamina can turn a loss into a win. Ideally, a ranged character should have at least 6.5-7k health unbuffed, and a melee character should have between 7-8 to survive in Karazhan or Heroics. Beyond that point I'm not sure, but you can't go wrong with survivability.

Congratulations!

So I missed last night's follow-up to Friday's raid due to spending time with folks in the real world. (OK, we were techincally playing RPGs, but that still counts, right?).

As a result, I missed CD's first kills of Prince Malechazzar, Nightbane and Terestian Illhoof.

Congrats guys!