Joyeux Noel!

Well, we're almost at the end of Wulfsblood.com's second year.

I haven't really updated much on CD's progress of late, but we've scored kills now on the first two bosses in Serpentshrine Cavern, and we had started some good training on the third.

Here's a shot of us over a very dead Lurker Below:



That said, the training will have to wait for a few weeks since the Christmas break has seen members scatter to the four corners of Europe.

After tonight, I too shall be joining the Diaspora as I dissapear to deepest, darkest Fort William for a few days of "relaxation" with my family.

Have a nice holiday period you all, I shall leave you with a festive message courtesy of Ulu:

Ulu's Tankadin FAQ.

1. How much unbuffed health do I need to main tank blah?

Very roughly:

Heroics - 10.5k
Karazhan - 11.5k minimum, 12.5k for the Prince
Zul'Aman/Gruul's Lair - 14k
Magtheridon/SCC - 15k

These numbers are a guideline at best, and chasing health to the exclusion of all else won't really serve you best as a tank. Look at your overall stats, don't sacrifice too much avoidance, mitigation or threat generation for the health goal. Experiment with your gear (heroics are great for this) to find a balance that works for you and your healers.

2. Are the Justicar (Tier 4) Handguards worth it?

Not really no. Try to get the Gloves off of the Maiden of Virtue. I only use mine when I need to get one of the T4 set bonuses for extra threat.

3. What gem should I put in x?

Assuming crit immunity and uncrushability aren't issues, then +Stamina gems are the way to go. For a more detailed guide, check here.

4. What should I enchant x with?

Generally, if there's a stamina/health enchant for that slot, then go for that. If there isn't, then look at an avoidance enchant. If there isn't one of those available, or your avoidance has already made you crit and crush immune, then get a threat enchant.

5. How do I get my Guild to like me- let me tank?

*shrug* I dunno. It depends. Does your guild have enough active tanks? Were you recruited as a healer? Are they just opposed to the idea of a non Warrior/Druid tank?

If the answer to the first two is "yes" then I'm afraid you're shit outta luck. The tanking team is always the smallest part of any raid group, and if you were recruited as a healer, then it's because the group needed a healer, not a tank. Your options are to either ask them to consider you if a slot ever opens or to apply to another guild as a tank.

The question of prejudice is a trickier one. The only way you can get around that is by being exceptionally good. Try and get your guildmates on side with some imba heroic runs, make sure your tanking gear's top-notch. Do everything you can to show your GM you can do it. And if they still don't want you to do it, look for another group that will let you. Your guildmates pay their money the same as you do and you can't force people to change their mind.

6. My mana and spelldamage go down the plughole as I get more Kara tanking plate to replace my Righteous pieces.

First of all, with the exception of the shoulders and chest, the Righteous set is awful for raid tanking. (I has mp5 on it fercrissakes!)

In Karazhan, with the preponderance of Undead and Demons, you don't need much spelldamage to get threat (love your Exorcism button!), and you'll normally do fine with a spelldamage weapon and 1-2 pieces of spelldamage plate. Once you've farmed Kara to death and got ready for the entry-level 25-mans, you should have been able to grab some of the nice tankadin items available from heroic badges.

As for Intellect, there's no real use for it. If you find you're running out of mana then either your healers are slacking or you're massively ougearing your content. All some extra int will do is give you is more mana at the start of a fight which might give you one more Consecrate or Holy Shield.

Really what you wanna do is downgrade your spells if you find yourself regularly going OOM. On farm content, Ulu normally uses Consecrate Rank 4, which does about 30 damage/tick less than rank 6, but at nearly half the mana. I upgrade to rank 6 only on hard-hitting bosses when I know I'll have the mana income to support it.

Teh Spoilz

This isn't a Wow-related post, but it has something to do with computer games, so I'll toss it here.

My life has been taken over by music from a game I haven't even played.

I intend to pick up the Orange Box sometime after Christmas to try it out, but in the meantime, I'd like to direct folks to this fan video for the closing song. I have located an MP3 for the song, but it is like some delicious sonic candy, I find myself having to use the stop button exactly as the track dies to prevent myself hitting repeat and consuming again.

I should point out to anyone who plans to play Portal and hates spoilers, the song contains some.

Avoidance vs Effective Health

There are two schools of thought about what to prioritise when tanking: Avoidance or Effective Health.

Some people go for avoidance, stacking parry, dodge and defense so that they avoid as many incoming attacks as possible. If you dodge, parry, or are missed after all, you take no damage. However, since it's impossible to get a combined Dodge, Parry and Miss chance of 102.4%, then you have to accept that sooner or later you will get hit, and hit hard.

This is where Effective Health comes in. Simply put, Effective health is a measure of how much damage you can take before you die. This includes Armor and your Shield Block value. The problem with an overreliance on Effective Health is that you tend to become more of a sponge than a tank, requiring your healers to chain their larger, more expensive heals constantly to keep your massive health pool topped up.

In Ulu's regular tank gear, I try to balance both Effective Health and Avoidance along with enough spelldamage to ensure solid threat generation over our sometimes triggerhappy DPSers. I do have specialised sets set up that focus more on either Effective Health or avoidance that I equip depending on the situation.

When deciding what the situation requires, then ask yourself what's killing you. If you're dying to massive spike damage, then it's an Effective Health fight. If you're dying because your healers are running out of mana, then get some more Avoidance in there.

Oh and if you can't be bothered keeping track of all those annoying EH calculations, I can heartily reccomend downloading Tankpoints. Whilst I pay no attention to the actual Tankpoints calculator, it does a great job of calculating Effective Health and uncrushability.

Hammer Time! (redux)

Ulu got his Hamma last night, and with it he broke 400 Spelldamage in his main tank gear (with 15k health and 17k armor to boot).

I'm considering replacing a lot of Ulu's hybrid gems with pure Stamina gems, in defiance of my earlier theory. I may need to secure a couple of alternate sources of Defense before I do this, but the net result should be a profound increase in his health (I've estimated an increase to around 15.5k unbuffed).

There Ain't No Vanity Clause.

Whilst tanking, Ulu wears a bastardised mixture of different sets and asthetics designed to give him the best possible balance between stamina, mitigation, avoidance and threat. The end result ain't pretty, as the cliche goes, but it gets the job done:



However, being something of an enthusiast for the visual, I've collected a couple of cohesive-looking sets from various instances. First up we have "good" Ulu, in a set mainly made up from four-fifths of the Justicar tanking set, with the addition of a cool-looking hammer:



Apart from being asthetically pleasing, I also wear this when I'm required to hit something upside the head with a big hammer rather than tank. Whilst wearing this, Ulu is one Skullet away from looking like the guy in the Burning Crusade opening cinematic.

On the other side, we have "evil" Ulu, in a set made up from a mixture of Karazhan tanking epics, the sword that drops in Heroic Mechanar and the Shield Ulu got from Arenas:



Whilst primarily assmbled for the asthetics, this outfit appears to have some strong avoidance stats, so I'll give it a go next time I'm tanking an avoidance boss (HKM or the Prince).

I Is Can Be Tank Nau?

It may seem like a dumb thing to admit, but I'm finally starting to feel like Ulu is a main tank since 2.3.

Lemme qualify that. He's happily been tanking most instances CD has done, he can single tank Karazhan happily and can zerg any Heroic instance without crowd control. However, pre-2.3 I felt like an Offtank in 25-mans. When you're sitting with 13.5k unbuffed health and the warrior next to you has 15k health in comparible gear, well it's just common sense that I'd let him tank the heavy hitters, since he can do a better job of surviving the massive DPs of Gruul, Magtheridon et al. Since I've acheived health parity with Warriors however, i've managed to do things I'd never done before. I've main-tanked Gruul 2 or 3 times now without dying, and last Friday I finally had a go at tanking Magtheridon.

Maggy's a boss we'd killed three times before. It's a difficult fight which requires some co-ordination. When you start the fight, there are five adds to kill. They don't hit too hard at the start, but as you kill each add, the remaining ones hit harder, and they can crush as well. After a minute, Magtheridon will enter the battle, at which point, your main tank needs to have his add dead and be free to pick him up.

In practise, this means you need three well-geared tanks at least, a main tank on either the first add to pick up Magtheridon after his add's dead, two off tanks on the second and third adds (Feral Druids are excellent for this), and two well-geared tanks on the last two adds. Havind decent, MT grade and crush-immune tanks on the last two adds are important, since the healers will usually have to focus on the Magtheridon tank by the time the third add is dead, which means the tanks need to be able to mitigate a lot of the incoming damage. Druids just fare poorly in this role (they're mana sponges on the later adds).

The problem has been on the last few attempts is that the only MT-grade tanks were myself and a Feral Druid. Whilst the Feral wanted me to tank the big guy, we agreed that he just wouldn't be able to handle the last add. On Friday however, one of our well-geared warriors showed up in time for our final attempt. He took over my place on the last add, which freed me up to have my first go on tanking the big guy. And he went down first try.

I cannot begin to describe the pride or sense of accomplishment I felt.

They'll nerf it in the next patch...

Apparently Feign Death works in real life.

In Other News...

Chaotic Divinity downed Hydross The Unstable last night for the first time. It's been a long time coming, simply because of the insane resistance requirements for this boss. We needed one Tank in full Frost Resist to tank him during his Purified phases, one Tank in full Nature Resist gear to tank him during his Poison phases and at least one tank (Ulu) in a mix of Nature and Frost Gear to tank the four adds he spawns whenever he switches.

In the end, we started training him last Thursday, continued on Sunday after a quick Gruul kill and then finished him off last night. Not bad going for us, and luckily after this, it seems that none of the other bosses have such insane gear requirements.

Ulushnar's Unified Theory of Gem Sockets.

As a hangover from the days when Paladin's had the weakest health of the three tank classes, Ulushnar's gemming choices could be best expressed in three simple words: Solid Star of Elune. (Well ok, it's four words, but the "of" doesn't really count does it?)

Since 2.3, with the Paladin Stamina boost and the shiney new badge rewards, I've had to rethink this somewhat. The biggest concern with the new badge stuff is the relative lack of Defense on the pieces. As mentioned earlier, Ulu's Defense score is dipping dangerously below the 490 cap for crit-immunity. The Resilience on his PVP shield allows him to remain crit immune, but unlike actual defense, it doesn't add anything to his overall avoidance, which is annoying.

This has caused me to develop a slightly more sophistocated thought process:

1. When raiding, Stamina is still king. No matter wether Ulu's fighting something that does magical damage (Hydross), fast physical damage (Prince Malechazzar) or slow massive physical damage (Gruul), his healthpool dictates how long Ulu can give his healers to land a heal.

2. If the socket bonus offers Stamina, then it's permissable to socket hybrid gems in the non-blue sockets, provided the total socket bonus is at least 3/non-blue socket. (IE, Unwavering Legguards have two non-blue sockets and a +6 stamina set bonus. It's acceptable to put two hybrid gems in those sockets. Wrynn Dynasty Greaves have three non-blue sockets and a +6 stamina bonus. That's only 2 Stamina/non-blue socket and therefore not worth matching colour imo.)

If the Socket bonus isn't Stamina and it isn't immediately useful (ie a few points in avoidance to make you uncrushable or a few points of defense towards the cap) then don't bother and just socket Stamina gems in all slots irrespective of colour.

3. Only ever use stamina-giving hybrid gems for non-blue slots. The shortlist of gems I'd use are:

Red Slot:

Shifting Nightseye - +4 Agility(0.16% avoidance)/+6 Stamina - Crafted
Glowing Nightseye - +5 Spell Damage/+6 Stamina - Crafted
Defender's Tazanite - +5 Parry Rating(0.2% avoidance)/+6 Stamina - Drops in Heroic Mechanar (Unique-Equipped)
Regal Tazanite - +5 Dodge Rating (0.26% avoidance)/+6 Stamina - Drops in Heroic Shadow Labyrinth (Unique-Equipped)

Yellow Slot:

Enduring Talasite - +4 Defense Rating (0.26% avoidance)/+6 Stamina - Crafted
Enduring Crysoprase - +5 Defense Rating (0.33% avoidance)/+6 Stamina - Drops in Heroic Old Hillsbrad (Unique-Equipped)

Obviously the Enduring Crysoprase and and Regal Tanzanite give the best "bang for your buck" as far as avoidance stats go. Unfortunately they're rare drops from two of the harder heroic instances and the unique equipped limitation means you can only benefit from one on your equipped gear at any time. Of the craftable red-slot gems, I'm leaning towards Glowing Nightseyes for my red slots. The avoidance the Shifting Nightseyes give is negligable, but the extra spell damage on the Glowing Nightseyes is always nice as the DPSers get better and better gear.

In summation, 2.3 has been interesting in that it's created new itemisation challenges for the pre-T6 Raiding Protadin. Stamina is still all-important, but it's definately worth balancing that with the need to stack enough avoidance and Defense to get the job done.

Cruel Gods, How You Mock Me!

Bluebottle wrote:

I has a hamma!

Was going to use it for grinding, but would you suggest replacing my Kings Defender (+spelldam enchanted) with it for the times I do need to tank?

How many ways can I say: of course, absolutely, uh-huh, yup, indeed and do eeet. Well ok, that wasn't that many, but i'm tired and somewhat pre-occupied atm.

Simply put, a Spelldamage weapon is the single-largest source of Spelldamage (and therefore threat) available to a Tanking Paladin. The non-spelldamage weapons may help a little with mitigation or avoidance, but we can get plenty of that from our armor. Frankly the Amani Punisher is the best-itemised Tankadin weapon pre-Mount Hyjal thanks to it's spellhit. The caster swords from Gruul and Leo-Emoboi in SSC are ok, but they both emphasise crit over hit, which makes them less desirable imo.

Into Zul'Aman - Eventually.

I'm falling behind on my instance write-ups somewhat, so I'll throw one together about my impressions of Zul'Aman.

ZA feels cramped, both by the standards of Karazhan and it's spiritual predecessor, Zul'Gurrub. The small size is probably due to the fact that it's designed, with practise, to be clearable in two hours on a strict time-trial. I did a full clear in my brief time with Force of Will, but today I'm going to concentrate on the bosses that CD has worked on.

The first boss, Nalorakk is basically the Attumen The Huntsman of the instance. He's a gear check for the tanks and the healers, and if you can't get him down, then you've no business going further. He hits at about the Nightbane/Prince level but has two forms. His troll form does a debuff that increases bleed damage, and his bear form does a massive bleed DoT. You need two tanks to get him, taunting back and forth as he switches shape, since it's almost impossible to survive the DoT for long if you also have the Debuff.

Next up is Akil'Zon the Eagle Avatar. Before him is a punishing gauntlet which proves to be happy Aoetank times for a Paladin. The boss itself is a coordination/DPS check. The group has to be ready to collapse to a single point every 45 secs-1 min when he does an AoE and then spread out again to avoid chain lightning attacks. Of all the bosses in the instance, he's the one I'm most keen to kill with Ulu for his shiny Hamma.

Next up, we've tried Jan'alai, the Dragonhawk Avatar. This is another complex fight, but one where it really helps having a Pally tank. He summons two hatchers that will begin to hatch eggs nearby and flood the raid with Dragonhawks. Whilst they're easy to kill, it's usually best to let them let a few out and AoE tank them. Once the boss reaches 35% health, he will unleash all the remaining Dragonhawks, which can wipe a raid (there are 40 of the feckers in total). CD haven't managed to kill him yet, but we got some good practise in on Monday and I think we'll manage a kill next time we face him.

Special note should be made of the trash towards him. There are non-elite scouts on a fast respawn timer who have to be killed quickly. If they manage to reach drums, they'll summon two nasty elites. This is what happened when we lost focus and got 10-12 of those Elites:



(POV courtesy of our dead OT)

I like a good AoE tank as much as the next insane Pallytank, but this pull lasted about 6 minutes!

Beware the advice of successful people...

...they rarely seek company.

Well ok, that's possibly not true, but I should warn folks who read my instance write-ups hoping to glean some smidgeon of strategy: I am conciously and willfully reckless.

Well at least, in content I overgear which is everything up to and including Kara/Heroics. I usually run these with friends who are equally overgeared and it's just more fun if you don't micromanage every pull. I almost never, ever use crowd control, unless it's funny (Priests using Mind Control and Warlocks using Enslave are funny, sleep/sheep/sap/trap are not).

I AoE tank everything I can, using Consecrate to get the mobs attention and Ret Aura, BoSanc and Holy shield to make sure they stay there whilst my DPSers go AoE nuts on them. I make pulls on half-mana sometimes if i feel the pace is flagging, trusting on my potion cooldown and the inevitable crudload of damage i'll take to see me through.

I am a paragon of some of the worst excesses of our class, and I love it. It's also probably the reason why i'll never feel at home in a more "hardcore" group.

Careful What You Wish For...

So Nibulca you wanted to know about the speed run to Kara?

Ok then. The group was as follows:

Ulushnar - Protection Paladin (Main Tank)
Astjoem - Feral Druid (Off-Tank)
Vitality - Restoration Shaman
Messi - Restoration Druid
Kirali - Holy/Discipline Priest
Danae - Rogue
Hanumen - Enhancement Shaman
Raist - Frost/Arcane Mage
Rizzlakh - Affliction Warlock
Etynn - Affliction Warlock

Good balance between ranged and melee DPS. Feral Druids are my off-tanks of choice for two reasons:

1. They do better DPS than a Prot Warrior when not tanking, and they tank better than a DPS warrior when they are tanking.

2. There's a minimal overlap in the stuff we can use.

The first reason's important, because having two Protection-specced tanks can really hurt some of the DPS-race fights in the second half of Karazhan. The Prince in particular is a nightmare without at least 5-6 decent DPSers going all-out on him.

Anyway, up to Attumen, I just AoE tanked the trash. In my haste I didn't always mark the DPS targets and as a result, we lost a couple of our clothies. The raid leader then had the common sense to start marking targets. Attumen himself was a short fight, I AoE tanked him and the Horsie and we just burned 'em down. Loot was some cloth healing gloves and leather caster bracers that were sharded. And we all got one Badge of Justice too.

After that, we cleared to Moroes, who had invited a Retribution Paladin, an Arms Warrior, a Holy Paladin and a Holy Priest to dinner. Again, the fight was no real challenge, although there was a little bit of trouble when the Retribution Paladin Stunned me and proceeded to run to the healers. Luckily, our Melee DPS caught him and stopped him from causing too many problems. Loot was sharded, we gathered a further two badges each, and off we went!

After that it was onto Maiden of Virtue. More aoe Tankage in the corridor and then fighting the gargantuan bitch herself. This is, I have to say, one of my least favourite fights to tank in the instance. The continual silences from her AoE make building aggro a chore. Still she went down fast, we got badges and our first usable epic of the night (some healing item for the Resto Shaman iirc). Badge count was now sitting pretty at five. Another four and Ulu would be able to buy the leggings.

After that, it was Opera, for, it turns out The Big Bad Wulf-erm I mean Wolf. Unsurprisingly for the Opera boss who's plagued us the most, we downed him easily, although we did lose a couple of DPS when they got turned into Little Red Riding Hood, but he died never the less. The rogue looted his rifle, the tanking helm was sharded, and everyone got another two badges.

After that, we had our first break, with four bosses down within the first hour. Five minutes later, we started clearing the trash past Opera, including the Gold-heavy Philanthropists. Next stop was the Master's Terrace to summon and spank Nightbane. Through a combination of Ulu's new PVP trinket, the newly nerfed Fear Ward and our Shaman's Tremor Totems, he didn't prove to be much of a challenge. He died, he dropped a nice plate chest for Ulu and the eight and ninth badges of the raid. Ulu now had what he required for the Unwavering Legguards and everything else from this point was, as they say, gravy.

Next up was clearing to the Curator, and would you lookit that, more annoying trash! The elementals with the Manashield and the mana-draining fishes are an interesting encounter design, but ultimately a boring one. Me losing all my mana just makes things go slower! Curator wasn't much of a problem, we spanked him hard and, quell surprise, got moar eppixx and two more badges.

Every time I come to Karazhan, I find the trash clears some of the worst part. It always feels like there's about two packs more than there stricly needs to be in there. Case in point is the gruelling clear between The Curator and Shade of Aran/Illhoof. It's not tough, it's not complex, it's just dull and it makes even farm runs like this a chore.

Illhoof himself was fairly easily done. We had great DPS, great healing and me tanking nearly everything. He died and we got badges, there was some caster trinket I think and something else I can't remember.

Aran was a little tough, we were low on interrupters so it wasn't our smoothest kill. Still he died with about four of the raid left standing), we got badges and the loot was put to use iirc.

It was easy street from this point. We cleared to the Chess event, got our free epics (which were sharded) and two more badges, then cleared the half-dozen mobs before the Prince.

I would love to say we one-shotted the bastard, but it wasn't to be. The first infernal landed in the middle of our caster camp just as the first enfeeble hit. The resulting mess was a wipe. We pulled ourselves together though and killed him on the second attempt. There was a nice healing mace that dropped, a crappy DPS cloak and the Mage/Warlock/Hunter T4 helm token. Oh, and three more badges.

To be honest, I'dve been happy if we'd finished then. In three and a half hours, we'd cleared to and killed the Prince. But the rogue wanted the sword from Netherspite, so we backtracked and proceeded to wipe repeatedly for an hour before killing him. Some of the wipes were down to poor execution and some were down to bugs and bad luck (the Feral Druid disconnected twice immediately after a pull). There was a healing necklace and some other piece of crap loot I forget, and of course two badges for a grand total of 22 in a little over four hours. I couldn't have done as well out of running heroics over the same length of time.

So there you go, the reason I don't tend to write detailed reports on long instance clears? They're boring as fook to write and no doubt to read.

Welcome Home?

Mass Effect is a very, very nice game. It's very familiar to anyone who's played any of Bioware's console games, but it takes it to the next level. I especially like the way that the Player Character is actually voice acted this time, it feels more cinematic than having gaps in the conversation where you add your choice.

That said, I haven't had as much time with it as I'd like. CD's needed me again, so I've answered the call.

Yesterday, I took part in a controversial Karazhan run with some friends from there. It was controversial in that it was arranged behind the scenes by a bunch of folk who wanted to try a speed run through the instance, much to the changrin of the altoholics. For the most part, Ulu was the sole tank, which suited me fine. He picked up a nice Chest and the final badges he needed for his new Leggings.

The final result of this is:



Ulu now has nearly 15.3k health unbuffed, 17k armor and 586 Shield Block Value. I honestly can't wait to try him out on a boss now.

The Effect of Mass

With the recent hijinks and the imminent arrival of Mass Effect, I've decided time's due for a break from WoW. My current subscription ends on the 3rd of December. In that time, I'm gonna work on doing the last few Battlegrounds I need to get Ulu his new hammer, and maybe a few Heroics on the side when my friends are up for it.

When I next renew my sub will largely be down to my ever-changing moods.

Endgame 1 - Ulushnar 0

I've been meaning to do a post on Zul'Aman for a few days now, but something bigger's come up.

A while ago, I posted an application with a group that contains a couple of RL friends. They're one of the more advanced groups on the server and currently are doing Black Temple and Mount Hyal. They were looking for a Protection Paladin, and I was frustrated with CD's lack of progress so I made the offer. I wasn't that well geared at that point though, so ultimately I got knocked back.

I recieved notification last week from my friend that they were re-examining old applications and again looking for a Protadin. I figured I'd be turned down again, but then on Saturday my mate called me and told me the Melee Rep wanted to interview me for the slot.

One interview later and I was being asked to come on an attunement run to Serpentshrine Cavern and Tempest Keep that night. I regretfully posted the news on the CD forums and decided to go for it. It was met by some snide comments and some sad-but-supportive remarks. I think some of my friends there were hurt by my defection, but I knew if I didn't take this chance now, then I'd regret it and end up resenting them more.


After that, I read up on the boss tactics and prepared myself for the night ahead.

It seemed no amount of preparation would be enough.

We started with Fathom-Lord Karathress who went down first time. My job on the kill was to tank one of the adds, who summons a pet to help him. Was a fairly straightforward (almost boring) kill, which netted me the first part of the quest to get attuned to the Black Temple.

After that, it was on to Lady Vashj. It's a fairly complicated fight and at least a quarter of the raid was new to it (other potential applicants along to get attuned). I think it took us eight attempts to down him and you could tell the veterans of the fight were getting irritated and frustrated. That, said I managed to net the token for my first piece of Tier 5, so that was nice!

After that, it was on to Tempest Keep to down Al'ar and High Astromance Solarian. Al'ar went fairly smoothly, even if I was in part responsible for a wipe on the first attempt. After that, Solarian was a joke, although it was a lot of fun to AoE tank the adds she summons.

We were tired at that point, so it was decided to leave Kael'thas until monday. Some of the guys were still up for a raid, so I ended up joining them for my first Karazhan run since 2.3. We cleared the entire place in three hours. Would have been faster if not for my mana breaks and a couple of dumb wipes. Still it was fun, and I noted with wry amusement that Moroes dropped his dumb belt now that I no longer needed it. I also got a quite silly 22 badges to add to my collection.

Yesterday, I ended up going on a run with some of them to Zul'Aman. We cleared all the bosses easily enough, with only the last three (Dragonhawk, Hexlord and Zul'jin) requiring more than one pull to accomplish. No loot to speak of, but another 18 badges for my collection. I may be able to afford the leggings sooner than I thought!

Last night, I was supposed to be going to Tempest Keep with them to finish off Kael'thas and complete my attunement to Mount Hyjal. But in the end, I decided to cancel my application. They're a great group, no doubt, but their attitude's kinda foreign to me. I miss the few friends I have remaining in CD I guess, although my bridges there are probably well and truly burnt. I play this game to relax and unwind from my intermittantly stressful job, but raiding on their level as a relative newbie is almost more stressful than work!

So I'm currently sans raidgroup and enjoying it. I'm currently taking Ulushnar through the Battlegrounds so that I can earn enough honor to grab a nice mace when Arena Season 3 opens up. I'm also enjoying the new Daily Quests for Battlegrounds and Heroics, although I do tend to cherry pick the Heroics that I enjoy doing.

Into Zul'Aman, part 1.

Well last night, I got home, installed the patch, and logged on to the cacophany of my Bugcatching mod warning me of thousands of UI errors. Yep, patch day = broken mods day.

I had barely got through the lagfest that was Shattrah to the Heroic Items vendor before I was invited into a Zul'Aman raid. I quickly (well as quickly as possible) went to Lower City to grab some more Symbols of Kings and a Quest for Zul'Aman and then was summoned to Zul'Aman without further ado.

There was no time for a respec, but luckily during my last respec, I'd accidentally included Weapon Expertise, so I was set to get the 10% stamina buff this patch. The overall effect of the new talents and items was that I now had 14997 health, 3 short of my 15k goal!



Still, I was chuffed to find that I had more health than the Warrior who was also tanking!

I'll go on about the raid itself later.

Like a Kid at Christmas

Well Patch 2.3's here, technically, although I won't get to experience it for another couple of hours or so. I feel like a kid at christmas waiting to open his new presents.

Managed to get the last six badges I required either side of last night's Tempest Keep raid (we tried Al'ar, and got him to the end of phase one. Not a bad start).

As soon as the patch is installed tonight, I'll be grabbing the belt and boots I've mentioned in previous posts. I'm especially chuffed about finally upgrading my belt, since I've had the old one for ages.

After that, we're off to Zul'Aman to hopefully pwn the first two bosses. More on that tomorrow!

Being the anal, obsessive geek I am, I've already run a spreadsheet (made by another anal, obsessive geek) to calculate Ulu's new stats post-patch. The numbers look encouraging, although his Defense score continues to dip below the required 490. It's currently 489, and with the new gear it'll probably be 488. In practical terms, this isn't too much of a concern, since I have Resilience on my current shield to boost my crit-immunity, but if that shield gets replaced, I may be in trouble unless I use a defense/stamina hybrid gem in place of one of my stamina gems.

Speaking of stamina, I'm looking forward to Ulu getting a lot more of it. He currently sits comfortably at 13.5k health unbuffed, whilst the equivalently-geared Warriors in CD sit at nearer 15k. Whilst I've never been asked to sit aside because of Ulu's stats, I always felt bad about bringing Ulu as a Main Tank to progression fights over tougher tanks. After tonight, I doubt I'll have much reason to.

Pre-2.3 update.

Two updates in as many days? Madness I tells you!

Well last night's Karazhan was surprisingly fun. We one-shotted the Shade of Aran, the Prince, Netherspite and Terestian Illhoof with relative ease. Sadly the Prince didn't give Ulu his T4 hat, but he did offer him a brand-new hitting stick by way of compensation. Just the thing to while away those boring parts of fights where my off-tank target is dead and I've nothing better to do than refresh judgements.

Tonight's another attempt at our second Void Reaver kill in Tempest Keep. Sign-ups aren't amazing though, and I'm almost hoping it doesn't go ahead. Patch 2.3 hits the EU realms tomorrow and I still want six badges!

Speaking of 2.3, despite the very sexy changes to the Retribution Tree (especially the new Improved Seal of the Crusader and Pursuit of Justice), it looks like I'll be going with a bog-standard 0/49/12 spec. But the extra 100-ish stamina will be nice, not to mention the increased stamina from the new Heroic Badge items. I figure I'll manage to break 15k unbuffed Health tomorrow!

Almost There...

Well two nights left until the patch and I'm tantalisingly close to the 120 badge goal I'd set myself. I only require 6 badges, which could be done easily, were it not that tonight and tomorrow are raid nights.

Well to be fair, tonight is Karazhan, which I could bypass if I really wanted, but I really need to visit a vendor deep in the instance to get my hands on a nice Gem design.

Oh the dilemma!

A Kitten is for Good Times.

I can, on occasion, be a dour, grumpy bastard. (Well, ok, I am one most of the time.) But even I can appreciate the pure pleasures of Kittens, 16-Bit JRPG soundtracks and insane AoE Tanking.

Which is why this video of the occasionally-entertaining Invisusira
taking on the first three bosses of Heroic Mechanar at the same time amused me:



Enjoy!

Even More Heroic Deeds

I've been focussing on Heroics recently for a number of reasons. The most obvious one is that with 2.3 round the corner, I want to get as many badges as possible.

Also CD's raiding has kinda hit another slump. A lot of folks are bored with Kara right now and our 25-mans have been sufferring since two of our main tanks and another raid leader have been taking breaks. This has lead to more pressure/responsibility on yours truly, which is tiresome. As a result, I really don't wanna raid right now.

Still, Heroics prove to be a nice way to let off steam with a small group of friends and a minimal commitment of time and effort. Last night, I started, as I often do, with a run through Shattered Halls Heroic with some CD folk. This instance has many groups of hard-hitting melee mobs. In short, it was designed for a Paladin to AoE tank in.

After that, since it didn't look like the raid was going to happen, we took the same group to Mechanar Heroic for some quick badge farming. All in all, including changeover time, we managed to collect ten badges in about three hours. We won't be setting any records, but I was happy nonetheless. I also managed to grab a nice gem which will be going into my new boots in 2.3.

After that, I had Peter asking me to come tank for him, Bluebottle, and a couple of friends from their new raid group. In the end, we settled on Heroic Blood Furnace, an instance I had very little experience with. We wiped a few times, partially because we were tired, partially because it was getting late and the server was getting laggy in the way it always does just before Wednesday morning maintenance. Still we cleared it in the end, and I got another three badges added to my collection.

I'm hoping tonight I can do Shattered Halls again, and maybe Mechanar, they're both fun, fast and five badges worth of goodness apiece.

Edit: Changed the link from BBCode to HTML. Urk, spending too much time on forums these days.

Patch incoming!

Well it seems that Patch 2.3 will be arriving during next week's maintenance. This is pretty sweet (Ulushnar's Health will skyrocket and Wulf's going to gain a whole wealth of nice PVP tweaks), but it means I have to step up my badge farming somewhat. Ulushnar currently has 79 Badges (after a mammoth three-instance, 13-badge grind last night), and I'd ideally like him to have 120 by this time next week. This means for the next six days or so I need to average about seven badges a day.

Ah well, hopefully I can up the average with some hardcore Heroicing this weekend.

In other news, Ulushnar got his Jewelcrafting to 360 last night and was able to craft a Falling Star to replace the stamina/defense gem in his bracers. The result is that he now has 13.9k health unbuffed, but only 489 Defense. That said, the Resilience on his shield should still make him immune to Critical Hits, but I'm going to have to watch his defense in future, a lot of the new items seem to be light on defense rating.

Events are proceeding as I have forseen.

Well it's been over a fortnight since my last post, guess I should update on my progress:

Wulfsblood has completed the list of things mentioned in my last post. In addition, he's spent a lot of time in the Battlegrounds and Arenas building up a strong PVP set. This has become important since he seems to be the first target for 90% of the Arena teams he faces.

As a result of the time spent PVPing, Ulushnar has done less well. He's only gathered another 30 badges since last we wrote, putting his total at just over 60. However, he was lucky enough to get the Tier 4 Chestpiece from CD's second Magtheridon kill, which has changed his priorities somewhat. I've decided to focus on getting the Boots and Belt first of all on Patch day. This, combined with the changes to the Paladin class I mentioned previously will put him at over 15k health unbuffed, which will be exceptionally respectable. It'll also give him a lot more Spellhit, which will help his aggro generation.

Along with the T4 chest, Ulu was able to grab the leggings from a Gruul Kill, so I now have 4/5 Tier 4 (all except the Faceguard). This means I've been able to create a threat set, which focuses on getting as much spelldamage as possible and utilising the two and four piece set bonuses. Whilst in this outfit, Ulu sacrifices a lot of health and avoidance over his regular tanking set, which makes it bad for bosses. On the flipside, the higher damage output and decent tanking stats make it useful for clearing trash and also for tanking content where Ulu is currently overpowered (regular five mans and the easier Heroics).

Finally, I've dropped Blacksmithing with Ulu in favor of Jewelcrafting. If nothing else, mining and prospecting gives Ulu access to a supply of cheap gems for his gear, and in six more points, I'll be able to make a nice 18 Stamina gem for one of his gem slots (I'm currently considering replacing the +6 Stamina/+4 Defense gem in his bracers for a tasty 12 Stamina boost.)

Pre 2.3 To-Do List.

Wulfsblood:

*Get the materials together for the 24-slot Ammo Bag and Quiver.
*Get enough Cenarion Expedition Rep to get the pattern for Nethercleft Leg Armor.
*Obtain a decent stock of Primal Nethers to make the aformentioned Leg Armor.

Ulushnar:

*Gather as many Badges of Justice as possible for the following items:
1. Chestguard of the Stoic Guardian - 75 Badges
2. Unwavering Legguards - 75 Badges
3. Girdle of the Protector - 60 Badges
4. Sabatons of the Righteous Defender - 60 Badges
5. Slikk's Cloak of Placation - 35 Badges

Admittedly some of these badge rewards can wait until after 2.3, where my badge income will be greatly supplemented with the badge drops in 10-mans, but I'd love for Ulu to have the Chest at least, and possibly the legs as soon as 2.3 opens. At present, I'm averaging about five badges a day, thanks to Shattered Halls Heroic, so it'll take 24 days to get the 120 badges I still need to get Chest and Pants on patch day. Hopefully some determined grinding over the weekend will supplement that.

In other news, CD got Magtheridon to 4% last night. I reckon there'll be a kill on Fridays attempt.

Two Point Three - Oh Em Gee!

Well, i have to say that I wasn't especially looking forward to patch 2.3 when i heard that proposed Prot changes had been moved to a later patch. I figured the best I could wish for is that the new badge rewards would offer Ulu a nice chestpiece.

When I saw the patch notes for the forthcoming patch, I got my wish and more to boot:

Paladins

* Blessing of Light: Lower ranks of Flash of Light and Holy Light are now properly penalized when used with this Blessing.
* Cleanse and Purify range increased to 40 yards.
* Crusader Strike (Retribution) cooldown reduced from 10 to 6 seconds.
* Exorcism mana cost reduced.
* Hammer of Wrath mana cost reduced.
* Holy Wrath mana cost reduced.
* Improved Seal of the Crusader (Retribution) benefits folded into the base spell. This talent now gives the benefits of the Sanctified Crusader talent instead.
* Judgement of Light: The combat log will now show the mana gained from rank 5 of this ability as Judgement of Light instead of Seal of Light.
* Pursuit of Justice (Retribution) is now 3 ranks and increases movement speed by 5/10/15% and also reduces the chance you'll be hit by spells by 1/2/3%.
* Sanctified Crusader (Retribution) renamed Sanctified Seals, which now increases your chance to critically hit with all spells and melee attacks by 1/2/3% and reduces the chance your Seals will be dispelled by 33/66/100%.
* Vengeance (Retribution) duration increased from 15 to 30 seconds.
* Vindication (Retribution) frequency and duration increased and now reduces all attributes by 5/10/15%, not just Strength and Agility.
* Weapon Expertise (Protection) renamed Combat Expertise, now increases expertise by 1/2/3/4/5 and total Stamina by 2/4/6/8/10%.

In one fell swoop, Blizz have enabled Paladins to close the HP gap between them and Warriors. Also on top of that, there's additional heroic badge items which show that Blizzard has finally understood what Paladin Tanks need:

* Stamina by the truckload
* Solid Avoidance stats
* Spell damage and Spell hit for threat generation

I'm now off to grind a crapload of Heroics with Ulu to get the necessary badges together. I wanna be able to buy the chest at least by patch day.

Parting thoughts.

Replies to yesterday's comments:

@Galo:

Yeah, the endgame can get a bit tiresome, although with the impending introduction of a second 10-man raid instance, it seems that there's a lot for the casual raider still to do. As a tank though, I find it pretty much impossible to be casual. Tanking is a continuing race to keep your gear as close to the cutting-edge as possible. If the tank can't take the pummelling, then it doesn't matter how good the rest of the raid is.

@Andrew

Where are you?

@BB

I've missed playing with you too dearie. CD ain't the same these days. Ah well, I'm sure I'll be back on ER in a week or two.

On a different note, I made a post after trying to explain crushing blows and gear optimisation to another potential Tankadin recruit.

As I've mentioned there, as well as here in the past, it's mind-boggling the amount of maths and theorycraft required to play an effective Tankadin at a raiding level. I personally don't mind it, since build analysis, min-maxing and gear optimisation fit my personality quite well after eighteen years of RPGs. For someone without those tendancies, I can't imagine how they cope.

Time for a break...

I'm winding down my WoW playing, and certainly my raiding for a while to come. I've just got tired grinding the same instances over and over, which, after two-and-a-half years playing the game should come as no shock.

So I'm taking a few weeks at least as a break from Raiding to play other games. First up is Neverwinter Nights 2. I originally got it last year, but the clunkiness of the engine rendered it all but unplayable on my PC. Since then they've patched the game into playability and released an expansion, so I'm going to get stuck into that.

Also, I've had some friends attempt to tempt me to the Dull Side by investing in an XBox 360 and Halo 3. I don't have a massive love for FPS's, but if I can get playing with enough of my mates I'm sure it'll become tolerable.

During my "break", I'll probably still be playing wow, just not as extensively and probably not raiding. It'll be more upkeep play until I return or decide to quit permanently.

Loot Musing

Regarding Galo's comment on my last post:

"Seems to be a common thing in the endgame progression, people getting tired of all the endless runs. Over and over to get that piece of gear they need.

You'd think Blizzard would make it so players be able to do a complete run maybe like 3 times and get all your gear through some means. Than to have people getting burned out in the end from the endless tried night after night."

Wonderful though that would be, it would completely fluff up Blizzard's model. Although they can't officially admit it, repetetive grinding is a part of the game, wether it's instance drops, reputation, honor/arena points, or crafting materials. The more incentive you have to come back and keep playing, the more money they get.

What I hope for in 2.3 (if/when it ever gets here) is for more Badge of Justice rewards that bridge the item gap between normal level 70 blues and Kara/ZA level drops. It'd be nice if, for example, despite not being able to get Nightbane to drop his chest after a couple of dozen clears, I'd then be able to use the badges earned from those clears to buy a better chest (even if it isn't quite as good as the one from NB).

We'll see what happens. Blizz has made some steps towards reducing the random factor of loot by replacing the Tier armor peice with tokens that multiple classes can use.

TK = Trash Killing.

Didn't have the Warlocks for Magtheridon, so we instead headed over to Tempest Keep for our first solid attempt at Void Reaver.

The trash clear was, as ever, both boring and painful, but in the end we got through it and made three attempts at him. Our best attempt had him around 54% health, which promises a kill in the coming weeks.

I'm not sure if I'll be joining them. More and more I'm feeling the need for a break or a change. I'm tired of running Karazhan (although both my toons still need drops from there) and I'm tired of Gruul's Lair.

Qapla!

Well was away with friends on Saturday, and I got back one hour before our Gruul's Lair attempt on Sunday. I decided to bring Wulf to the raid since three full tanks would have been a waste and high DPS on Gruul's a good thing. The raid started at 20:00 CET...

...And by 21:15, Gruul lay dead at our feet. We had one wipe at Maulgar and one at Gruul, but both died on subsequent attempts with only a couple of player deaths. The DPS was especially high and Wulf in particular finished third in the DPS stakes behind a Rogue and a Shadow Priest. Wulf was rewarded for his efforts with his T4 leggings, which stands as one of his last few available upgrades atm.

Afterwards, he took a run to Heroic Mechanar to help a tank acquire a new sword. The sword didn't drop, but the run went smoothly.

And tonight, we try Magtheridon for the first time!

One night, Three Heroics.

Well last night's raid didn't go ahead, so I assembled a team and headed off to Heroic Black Morass. Along with Ulu, there was a Holy Priest, a Shadow Priest, a Frost Mage and a Fire Mage.

We did good at first, killing up to the second boss with no problems, but the boss himself proved to be problematic. His Mortal Wound debuff stacked too many times, and quickly became too much for the healer to manage. We wiped and then went again, this time we managed to take him thanks to some judicious use of Sheilding by the Priest.

After the second boss, we were able to quickly move through the waves with the aid of our beacons and take on the last boss, who was, by comparison, a piece of cake. Sadly Ulu's belt didn't drop, but I feel happier about taking this instance on in the future.

Flush with that success, we moved on to Heroic Slave Pens, one of the easier Heroics. Nothing really of interest to note here, except the Shadow Priest had a lot of fun mind-controlling various mobs to fight their friends.

After that, we decided to do one more, and went for the fairly-hard Heroic Shattered Halls. By this point, we were tired and the mobs can be fairly brutal. We failed to complete one of the time-trial quests in there due to a few wipes, but overall, it was a good night. Our shadow priest ended the run with a couple of new epic cloth items and we all got ten Badges of Justice for our collections. A really fun way to spend an evening.

Routine Raiding

Well last night Ulushnar was back in Kara for another routine first-night run up to the Curator or Aran depending on how well we do. We were short on healers as well as tanks, so I specced Ulu to his 20/41/0 hybrid spec so he could heal and tank with relative success.

Attumen went fairly cleanly, but I'dve been surprised if he didn't. Moroes proved to be interesting. We technically killed him first shot, but doing so cost us most of the raid and his adds killed the last couple of us. Still one corpse run later and we got lewt, including a nice trinket for Ulu, but sadly no belt. Maiden went smoothly as well, Ulu got healing bracers from her. Opera event was Big Bad Wolf this week, which I brought Wulfsblood to in hopes of getting the gun. Sadly no gun, but another first kill. Curator also died smoothly, although the biggest challenge of the night came from the trash after him. There were a lot of magic-immune mobs and our group was heavily stacked towards magical DPS. Still, we got past them and cleared to the Shade of Aran.

It woulda been nice to one-shot him as well, but it wasn't to be. Our interrupters we're fast enough on the first attempt to keep his damage to a managable level, but we were able to take him down on the second attempt before calling it a night.

Raid's supposed to continue tomorrow, but I can't make it then, and neither can a good chunk of the group, so I don't know if it'll go ahead. If tonight's raid doesn't go ahead, I plan to try to get a group going to Heroic Black Morass, to see if Aeonus is any less stingy with his belt.

Adden-dumb.

Yesterday's indignation has cooled somewhat in the face of reason. I feel some folks missed the point of my rant and that was in part due to my own, unfocussed, caffiene-less style of ranting.

I just got upset that the Raid Leader would rather bring in a tank at the last minute who hadn't signed rather than go with the two signed and prepared tanks there.

I completely appreciate why she did, the Druid has unquestionably the best stats for the encounter, but in doing so, she sent the clear message to me at least that she believes the encounter is insurmountable without him. Hence the "Not all tanks are created equal" remark.

Maybe it is, I dunno. For the next week I'm gonna try to take a step back from the raiding game. I look at our raid schedule and I just can't bring myself to sign for anything.

In slightly happier news, Ulu got his fugly new shield today!

Oh and Etynn, I wouldn't say we get less avoidance than a Warrior (although the +5% to block you guys get from talents would be nice), but we do need to stack more to get crush immune, which hurts how much stamina we can stack elsewhere. That, plus the basic fact we have 1.5k less base health than a Warrior, is what hurts.

All tanks are not created equal...

So last night we were going for our third Gruul kill. Our deeply imba Druid tank hasn't signed so it's down to me and our best-geared Warrior to tank him. I know it's gonna be hard, but not impossible. I grab a few stacks of Ironshield pots, some unstable flasks and farm enough stamina food for the night's attempts.

Then at five minutes to go time, the Druid saunters online and I'm being told I have to switch to my Hunter. ><

I appreciate the reasons for the raid-leader's lack of confidence in me and the warrior doing it. A lot of our DPS sucks and even successful attempts can go to 13-14 growths. In that scenario, then I can appreciate having the desire to have the Druid on Hatefuls, but it sucks that they won't even try.

Still we got him down after five attempts. I'm not sure what I'm gonna do though. As a tank I'm always gonna be thought of as third to the warrior and the druid. I'd be happy to take a 20/41 OH/OT spec, but the sad fact is that if either of them can't make it or decide to play their DPS toons, then I have to pick up the slack, so I have to show up to raid night prepared to MT.

Weekend lootfest.

Well on Friday night, Karazhan finally bent over for Ulushnar and gave him the leggings he'd long saught. Nightbane also dropped a nice shield, which Ulu passed to the Warrior in the raid. Why? Well Ulu was supposed to tank Gruul on Sunday, and he had his eyes set on his shield. Failing that, then he would finally have enough Arena points on Wednesday to buy the Arena shield if all else failed. All in all, it was worth passing on a very temporary upgrade.

Didn't do much on Saturday, but in a frenzy of preparation on Sunday, he got the last few tokens for and Epic Necklace that gave a small, but significant increase to his stamina.

Then it was off to Gruul's Lair. I won't pretend it was our smoothest kill, but we got High King Maulgar down on the fourth attempt I think. Once again, he dropped the Paladin/Shaman/Rogue shoulder token, and once again, Ulushnar rolled second-highest. This time however, the Rogue who won the roll decided to pass to him, so Ulu got some epic shoulderboobs! I was so chuffed and grateful it's untrue, since those shoulders are currently the best pallytank shoulders until Tier 6.

So visually there's a subtle difference from before:



To after:



The shoulders look ridiculously huge on a Draenei male, but I've heard they're fixing that slightly next patch.

After that, we went on to Gruul, but he refused to drop. We'll hopefully finish him off tonight!

I'm (not) A Survivor

Last night, I quit Surprised Survivors, the guild Wulf has been a part of for nearly two years. There is a member of the guild who spends his time on the channel either spouting inane bollocks, or whining constantly. It's not entirely his fault, he's both slightly autistic and teenaged which is not a great combination. However, over the period of our association, he has worn down all tolerance I had to him. Kicking him from the guild wasn't an option, he would only start bugging me in a day or two to be allowed back, or worse, take his crap to the general CD channels.

ultimately I decided to take the path of least resistance and leave. Not sure what I'll ultimately do guild-wise, but I'm enjoying the quiet right now.

After that mini-drama, it was off to spend a night wiping in Tempest Keep. It was CD's first look in there, and I don't think we did too poorly. It took us two hours to clear to Void Reaver, (affectionately/derisively known as "Loot Reaver" because of the ease of the encounter), but in the end we were defeated. Not by the boss itself, but rather than the last few trash packs before him. They're pretty tough without a second Warlock and our focus, somewhat degraded in the long time away from serious raiding, had atrophied. We'll hopefully be back in there tonight for another crack.

Square Pegs and Round Holes.

I'm in somewhat of a fix recently. CD is starting to move towards 25-man content more and more (we downed High King Maulgar and Gruul in the same night last night). I'm honestly not sure if Ulu's ready for it, but I don't have much of a choice since I'm one of three tanks with consistant enough attendance.

Karazhan is currently the home of most of the decent tanking upgrades for him. Karazhan has also been the source of most of his frustrations, since with the exception of his bracers, it hasn't given him any upgrades in about two months. With my most finely-tuned setup, I still end up with the same amount of stamina as a less well-geared warriors. Given the amount of runs Ulu's been on, he should have statistically seen every piece drop twice over.

Meanwhile, even though he could use a couple more upgrades, Wulf is still ranking as one of the better DPSers in CD. Much as I love tanking, I'm honestly not sure if Ulu's up to the role in the later content. So instead I kinda navel gaze and wonder if it's more helpful to CD to bring a struggling tank or a fairly competant DPSer to raids. Last night I did both, bringing Ulu to offtank one of Maulgar's adds before switching to Wulf to bring the pain to Gruul himself.

On a similarly maudlin note, I'd like to wish Bluebottle good luck. She's just left CD to apply to the raid group her Husband recently joined. It's a shame, but ultimately understandable. Hopefully they'll find the time in their busy schedule to drag Ulu to Arenas.

More Downing, More Shouting

Chaotic Divinity downed Gruul last night and I was main tank, kinda.

Whilst I would love to take credit for it, I spent the last 25% of Gruul's health where I'd spent it on every other attempt, face down in the dirt in a pulped mass of blood and plate mail armor.



Still, the energy and excitement of that kill has eclipsed any I've participated in since Vaelestracz.

Quick Stop! Hammer time!

Ok, references to crap Rappers of the 80s aside, Ulu got a new plaything this weekend:



Getting the last of the rep meant running Shadow Labyrinth about 5-6 times, one of my least favourite instances. Still I got it done and I'm never setting foot in that hellhole again! Hahahahahahahaha!

*ahem* In other news Ulu also completed the Furies Deck. I'll be able to hand it in next monday for a nice Trinket. He's also managed to max out his mining and get his Blacksmithing up to 360/375. Not bad progress all things told, but the last fifteen points will be the killer. I'll save up my materials and do em slowly. After missing my arena games last week, I managed to grab the necessary games for Wulf and Ulu. Another three weeks and Ulu should get his shield.

Karazhan and High King Maulgar continue to be unforthcoming where loot is concerned. Maulgar again dropped the Paladin token last night, but I was outrolled. I wish we had DKP. Still I got the chance to tank Gruul last night. Our best attempt was 14 growths and 26% health. The problem didn't seem to be tanking or healing, just DPS, we'll see if we can get that fixed tonight.

The Eternal Balancing Act

Ulushnar has too much gear. No scratch that, Ulu has too much comparable gear.

Thanks to the lousy, unitutive nature of Protadin itemisation, the priority list goes thus:

1. Do I have enough Defense Skill to eliminate Critical strikes? (This is 490 for Raid bosses and 485 for five mans/heroics)
2. If I'm raiding does my chance to Dodge/Parry/Block/Be missed add up to 102.4% with Holy Shield active?
3. Once those two thing are taken care of how much Stamina can I stack?
4. Oh, don't forget to stack in some Spell Damage/Spell Hit where possible to boost your threat output. After all, that's where our hype lies.

So as it stands, number 1 is fairly straightforward. Most tanking gear out there gives some +defense, so you can normally stack 490 Defense fairly easily. Similarly for number 4, before you start getting access to class-specific armor and tier 5 instance drops, the most spelldamage a Paladin can stack is in their weapon, a couple of enchants and maybe a piece or two of the Righteous set. The problem with the Righteous set is that whilst it stacks some Defense, it doesn't have much avoidance, so it hurts priority number 2.

The conflict between priority number 2 and 3 is the biggest problem for the low rung Protadin. Protadin's already have the lowest base health of the tanking classes, and the need to stack a massive amount of avoidance & block to reach uncrushable status causes us to neglect more. I've found this thread in particular helpful for noting the relative usefulness of various items in avoiding crushing blows.

For example, at present, Ulushnar has three breastplates available to him:

In an ideal world, I'd wear Breastplate of the Righteous, since with three +12 stamina gems, it gives me a whopping 66 base Stamina, as well as some more spelldamage and a nice set bonus since Ulu already has the Shoulders. Sadly the lack of Crushing Blow Avoidance (CBA) means that I'm forced to relegate this to my five man/heroics set.

So for raiding, it comes down to a choice between Jade Skull Breastplate and Vindicator's Hauberk. In terms of pure numbers, I should almost always pick the Jade Skull. It's CBA is about 0.5% better, and it has 11 more Stamina. That said, sometimes I'd still take the Hauberk for times I want pure avoidance over the JSB's block rating.

I'm also torn on the ring front. If I equip my long-saught Elementium Band of the Sentry over the "well no-one else wanted it Shermanar Great Ring then I lose 12 Stamina and 223 armor, but I gain 0.8% CBA.

Equipping both those items gives me the CBA to allow me to equip my Battlescar Boots over my Boots of Elusion, which whilst they lack avoidance make up for it with extra Stamina thanks to two more +12 Stamina gems.

The grand effect of these changes is to allow me 17 more Stamina whilst maintaining Crushing Blow Immunity at the cost of 223 Armor. I think this is the best balance currently available to me. Of course, being a finicky bastard, I'll probably change my mind in a day or two, or when the next gear upgrade forces me to examine the careful balancing act of my gear.

I'm honestly not sure how much thought non-Paladin tanks have to put into their gear.

Ever-decreasing Full Circle.

Well I decided to rejoin Chaotic Divinity last night. I realised that there were only two other raid groups I'd consider applying to. One was less-advanced than Chaotic Divinity and was, by all accounts, having similar problems to us. The other one has a few ex-CDers in it with whom I'm less than friendly, and if I joined it would only be with Wulf, leaving Ulu hanging around in limbo doing heroics with friends around raids.

All in all, despite my problems with CD, I anticipated greater problems elsewhere. So I returned, predictably, to my safe place.

So we went to Gruul. Originally, I had intended taking Ulushnar, but it turned out we didn't have any Hunters in the raid, so I ended up bringing Wulfsblood instead.

After a couple of accidental pulls by yours truly, we ended up taking High King Maulgar down on the first attempt. Wulf's job was to act as back-up "tank" on Kiggler The Crazed, but when the first tank (a Moonkin Druid) died early, it was up to Wulf to step up and take over.

So I didn't play Ulu, but i did get to tank. Luckily the shoulders token for Paladins didn't drop, so I didn't feel too bad about missing it.

After that we made about 5-6 attempts on Gruul himself. We did pretty well, getting him to 37% on the last attempt. Biggest problem seemed to be that the warrior acting as MT just didn't have the Stamina to survive his damage.

All in all, the raid was excellent, and hopefully the shape of things to come.

Now I spend my time looking all around.

Well on Saturday, Ulu was knocked back for the raid group he applied to. Lack of gear and experience it seems. Was kinda expected but it does mean that Plan A went out the window.

I ended up taking Wulf to Karazhan on Saturday night to help CD out. Went pretty well, we ended up killing the Shade of Aran, Prince Malechazzar and Terestian Illhoof. It reminded me why I liked CD, but it also annoyed me that we can't perform like this most of the time.

On Sunday, I decided to take a change of pace, and I returned to Moonglade, home of my Horde toons. There I did the unthinkable and rolled a Blood Elf Paladin. Worse than that, I intended to make him a Retribution-specced one. Naming him Rachskind (butchered German for "Revenge Child", which I use to evoke both "Retnub" and my favourite Iron Maiden song.) In one day, I got him up to level 16. I'm intending on getting him to level 19 and then taking a break from levelling to concentrate on doing some PVP in Warsong Gulch for a bit. Once I get bored of that, I'll level him to 29 and do the same thing again.

Tonight though, it seems CD are short of tanks for their attempt at Gruul's Lair, so I'll be loaning them Ulushnar again for that.

Now entering freefall.

I've been playing around with this decision for the last week or so, but I've now decided, as of this morning, to stop raiding with Chaotic Divinity.

CD has been raiding Kara now for about 4-5 months, and I've been running it with Ulu for three of those. We've sufferred from a lack of interest/numbers which has seriously hurt our progression beyond that point. With a good group we can kill The Prince and Nightbane, most of the time however, it's the same run up to Aran/Chess and then annoying wipe after annoying wipe. We've managed one kill of High King Maulgar and one other night of about half a dozen wipes on him.

I've heard all the excuses, even made a few of 'em myself:

"It's summer, folks would rather be outside than raiding"

Completely understandable, but I'd like to raid more than six months of the year.

"I don't care about progress, I just wanna play with my friends"

Once again, completely agree, and I hope my friends in CD will still make time for me in Five-Mans and Arenas. That said, if the raiding side of CD isn't happening then I don't see a point in being a member of the CD raid group.

Ulushnar has an application sitting with a group doing SSC/TK which contains a couple of RL mates. If he gets in, great, if he doesn't, then I'll look into my other options.

Tanking Projects

Feeling a slight surge in interest in tanking again. My experiments with a Holy/Protection hybrid build for Ulu were fine, but ultimately it causes me to sacrifice more health than he can really afford to whilst raiding. To this end I've went to a 10/41/10 build that gives Spiritual Focus (a must for any PVP healer) whilst allowing me Deflection, which allows me to shift some of my Block gear back to Stamina. Currently, Ulu has 14k Armor and 12.5K health. This is respectable, but it could be improved if the current week's Kara is in anyway good to him.

Current projects for Ulu include getting his Blacksmithing up to 375 and collecting the Furies Deck so Ulu can get an imba tanking trinket. As well as that, he's slowly acquiring Arena points at an average rate of around 250 a week. He's just broken the 1k mark, so it's going to be another 3-4 weeks before he can afford the shield.

In terms of drops, as well as some of the nice Kara tanking items, I'd really love Ulu to get his hands on the T4 tanking shoulders. As it stands, they're better than the T5 ones and the avoidance would allow Ulu to wear the gloves he already has. Together, the spelldamage and the two-piece set bonus would give him a substantial boost in the threat department.

Back to the Beasts

Well, after spending a week catching up with the current theorycraft regarding Hunters, I respecced Wulfsblood to Beastmastery. With Feature, his trusty old Ravager in tow, Wulf's DPS shot up by around 200 in Karazhan. Quite impressive. I've since started training up a Scorpid to be his instancing pet, since apparently the Scorpid Poison ability does nice things with the Spell Damage bonus pets get from the Hunter's Ranged Attack Power. Can't wait to give him a trial at some point soon.

Apart from that, Ulushnar's Mining and Blacksmithing grind continues intermittantly. He's currently sitting at 224 Mining and 243 Blacksmithing. Once I can get his mining past about 245 and start mining Thorium, then things should speed up for a while.

Kara Hates Teh Tankadin.

Well last night's Kara was short of healers so I brought Ulu so that he could offtank on trash and then off-heal on single boss fights.

First boss of the night dropped nice tanking bracers. I rolled the highest, but ultimatley passed to the other Tank (a Warrior) because he didn't have decent bracers yet. I figured that we'd be doing up to the Curator, so there would be another three bosses with tanking drops I needed...

...Turns out that was the only tanking drop of the night. *facepalm* Ulu did manage to get his second set of Tier 4 gloves (this time I sensibly picked the healing set.) This seems to be par for the course. If I bring wulf to Kara, he gets gear upgrades out of his kiester. If I bring Ulu, he ends up with some new healing gear and that's about it.

I'm wondering if I shouldn't just take the easy path and spec him Holy. The paladin Holy tree is one of the more finely-tuned healing trees out there, and Paladins are some of the most mana-efficent and powerful single-target healers in the game. I personally don't mind healing, and unlike our tanking, there's a wealth of itemisation to support it. Everytime I bring Ulu to a raid I feel like I'm bending over backwards to attempt to make him as useful as a halfway decent Warrior or Druid is in the tanking department.

Arena Angst and Redoubt Rant

Ulushnar's been doing Arena's now for three weeks, Wulfsblood joined the team last week. We've averaged something like 270 Arena points a week, which leaves Ulu just over halfway towards his new Shield, but Wulf a little under a fourteenth of the way towards his new Crossbow.

The grind's long, no doubt about it, although I've heard a rumour that some of the Hunter-friendly arena weapons may be getting a pricecut to compensate for the fact that we have to buy 2-3 weapons (a ranged weapons and 1-2 melee weapons). I'm intrigued to see if this will happen. That said, i'm also going to sign Wulf up for a 5v5 team to help boost his income.

Rumors continue to abound of an reexamination of the viability of Paladin Tanking in the endgame. A thread has been opened here discussing vital and useless talents in the various paladin trees, prompted by one of Blizzard's own Community Managers.

I only hope the overwhelming amount of Tankadins who tell them that the present form of Redoubt sucks will cause them to rethink it. As it stands, it's useful for a levelling tank, but it's near useless in the endgame. Because it's a proc, you can't count on it being there in boss encounters. As a result, a raiding tankadin has to stack enough avoidance to become uncrushable without it. As a result, if it procs then it's wasted, since you already have enough block/parry/dodge with Holy Shield up that the extra block gets pushed off the table.

Why do I even bother with this useless talent? Because it opens up Shield Specialization, which provides some useful mitigation when we do block. Ah well, it'll all come out in the wash, hopefully no later than patch 2.3...

Old Skool Shennanigens.

So last night, given that a lot of our active raiders are on holiday atm, we decided to have a fun-run to some old content. We decided to make a return to Blackwing Lair, a dungeon that was, in many ways, the apex of CD's old-world raiding acheivements.

Only one problem: Ulushnar wasn't attuned to BWL. The solution, we proceeded to AoE zerg our way through Upper Blackrock Spire to perform the attunement quests. I think first-to-last pull was about half an hour, which didn't suck.

After that we had a short break whilst I took care of Ulushnar's commitment to Dat was by dose, and then it was on to Blackwing Lair.

The first boss, Razorgore the Untamed spawns about 40 adds that have to be controlled for the first phase of the fight. My solution: Tank em all!



I assure you that Ulu is somewhere beneath that boiling mass of Dragons and Orcs!

After Razor went down, we went on the the next boss Vaelastrasz the Corrupt!

Sadly this was a fight we couldn't get past despite half-a-dozen attempts. It's a fight that guarantees five deaths a minute no matter what, so it really requires more than the 20 people we were able to muster for the fun run. Ah well, was still a fun way to spend an evening. Spirits were high and the banter flowed freely.

In the manner of Columbo...

Just one more thing. Ulushnar has also changed his professions recently. Instead of Herbalism and Alchemy, I've switched him over to Mining and Blacksmithing, which I'm slowly grinding up.

In the long run it should pay off since some of the higher instances have some nice patterns for a tankadin.

Back in the Saddle.

Been on holiday for two weeks. I'm not going to fill you in on all my doings over that time, but I'll go over the key points:

*Wulfsblood completed his Epic Leatherworking set. Along with a few more epic items picked up in Karazhan, he now stands as one of CD's better-geared Hunters. He's altered his talent spec slightly for something that's slightly more optimised for raiding damage whilst still giving him trapping utility and enhanced survivability.

*Ulushnar and Wulf have both joined an arena team with a few folks from Surpised Survivors. We pretty much suck, but we have fun and it opens the door for teh imba purplez.

*Because of a lot of our main raiders being away, CD hasn't done much more than Karazhan for the last few weeks. Since we normally have tanks that need the Kara gear more than Ulu, I've been bringing Wulf more to them. I'm really enjoying Wulf again after months of not being able to stand playing him.

*Ulu's changed spec to a Holy/Prot Hybrid spec. Losing the parry talent means I have to sacrifice some of his stamina gear for block and dodge value to maintain uncrushability. Ultimately he can Main Tank Karazhan fine, but I'll probably relegate him to an Offtank in the bigger dungeons. The side benefit of his spec is he's a more effective healer in Arenas and can probably offheal when not required to OT in raids.

*Blizz announced the new expansion and I'm underwhelmed. Another ten levels, another bunch of new zones and a new profession. The Death Knight Hero Class might be interesting but I'll await more details before I get too excited.

Forclosure of a Dream?

Well last night we went to Gruul's Lair again. We made about a dozen attempts, but Maulgar refused to go down. Quite often, Ulu was killed within the first three seconds of the pull, which tends to spell a wipe since he's Main Tank.

I've hit something of a quandry with Ulushnar's tanking. Paladin tanks are something of a challenge. We have the lowest base health of any of the tanking classes and we need to stack the most avoidance to avoid crushing blows. Add to this our reactive threat model and it it puts us in a difficult position. We need to be hit in order to do damage, but with a lower base health, and less health in general thanks to the avoidance we need to stack in our equipment, we have less of a buffer to take damage.

Then there's the math. Lots of it, I spend more time than is strictly necessary going over my gear with a fine toothcomb making sure that it's optomised to give me the best avoidance, mitigation and health possible. As it stands, I've ground my ass off to get him the best possible gear pre-Kara, and whilst I had some initial luck with Kara tanking drops, that seems to have all-but dried up. Ulu's gear is good, but a Warrior in similar gear would probably outperform him as a raid boss tank.

Raid tanking's a bit too intensive sometimes. If you die, there's usually no-one else to pick up the slack, and it's a wipe. It's more pressure than i feel strictly comfortable with atm.

Grinding and Downing.

Last night was all about teh Wulf. I started grinding the Primal Fire he needs for his Epic set. After stumbling around the various prime grinding spots I found one that was out of the way, not extensively farmed by other and with a lot of mobs. In two hours I was able to grind enough motes for four Primals. Not a bad start, I now only need another 18 to be done with that. Then it's on to the Primal Shadow!

After doing this for a while, I went off the Karazhan to help the Late Shift again. We downed the Curator on something like the fourth attempt, and then went on to do the chess event. It wasn't exactly the smoothest run, but we're definately learning the encounters at a similar pace to the early shift raiders.

Weak-end.

Well this weekend Ulu played the game of "no loot for you" in Karazhan again. Bosses died, DPS was given happies over the shinies, but nothing dropped of interest to Ulu. I'm kinda tired of the place and I've decided now to stop running it for a while and let other tanks in CD get the chance to kill bosses over and over for nada.

I don't mean to sound like a shallow, purple-chasing lootwhore, but I am so that's kinda how it comes out.

Speaking of Purple-chasing, Ulu joined up with a couple of friends to try 3v3 Arena. He was supposed to be a healer, but I frankly sucked the big one. We only won one of our ten games (for some reason the opposing team consisted of one suicidal Troll Mage). Ah well, apparently even if you suck, the points roll in, so in a few weeks, he should be able to acquire a nice epic Shield.

In other news, after making a sizeable dent in the Nagrand Clefthoof population, I finally got Wulf's Leatherworking up to 375 and made the bracers of his Epic set. Currently I "only" need about another 20 Primal Fire and Primal Shadow to make the rest of the set. It's a shame that Primal Fire is one of the most expensive and heavily farmed primals in the game. Ah well.

Bye, bye Ret!

After some rejigging of Ulushnar's gear, I've found it's now possible to completely eliminate the need for the +5% parry talent from the Retribution tree. This allows me to invest a full 20 talent points in the Holy tree, giving Ulu the option of being a passable healer.

This is his new spec, and I'm planning to give it a go over the weekend when I start farming arenas with a couple of friends in a 3v3 team.

You Don't Have To Be An Arrogant Prick To Tank Here...

When I started Ulushnar, I never intended him to be one of CD's Main Tanks. I envisioned him as a support healer/offtank. As it turns out, my normal goal-oriented playing style (must go here, get this, etc) combined with some lucky loot drops (Karazhan loved me in the first few weeks) and a not-considerable amount of gold spent has seen him outgear most of CD's tanks.

However, I fear this has either exacerbated or enabled my tendancy to be an arrogant arsehole. As a tank, you're percieved as the lynchpin of any group. You've got to be able to survive a beating well enough for the healer to keep you alive, and generate enough hate that healers and DPSers don't pull aggro off you. It's a challenging role and I've seen the mentality described recently as being like the Star Quarterback. You come to see any role other than MT as somehow beneath you.

Thinking back over CD's history, many of our best tanks have developed a bit of arrogance about it, a sense of entitlement even. There's room for one, maybe two main tanks in a raid, everyone else is an offtank. Cooperation with another main tank has always been a problem, since there always seems to be that attitude of "well I'll just go in there and grab aggro to see if I can". I've certainly been guilty of it and I've seen others do it to me. It's fine on Trash fights, but it can be a problem on challenging bosses.

This ties into Tuesday's Gruul's Lair run. I was basically an Offtank for the High King Maulgar kill, so once the first two adds were down, I was basically sidelined for the rest of the fight. I didn't have the gear with me to usefully perform a secondary role. Then on the Gruul attempt, the other MT, a Druid, ended up aggroing off me early on and taking over. Once again there was nothing useful I could do in that case.

I'm honestly giving consideration to stepping back from being MT atm. It brings my arrogance more to the fore than it ever was with Wulf and I'm obsessing about loot way more. It just doesn't feel healthy.

Comments on "Downings"

Peter Wrote:

"Hum. My understanding is that if we do it right and you *do* get the hateful strikes, then the damage from those should be enough to keep you in mana for aggro."

It really wasn't a mana issue. It was a reactive threat generation one.

I was supposed to be MT, Naava was supposed to be on Hateful Strikes. Since Naava took early aggro, I wasn't getting hit, which meant no Blessing of Sanctuary or Holy Shield damage, which amounts to about 600 threat every time I'm hit. It's almost impossible for me to get above a Rogue on threat unless I'm being hit regularly.

Annoyingly for a class that's supposed to be "superior Off-Tanks", a great chunk of our threat generation is reactive. I think if we do it again, I'm either gonna need to get some time with him before the offtank/melee DPS starts, or sit back and heal whilst letting people with a more proactive threat-generation method step up.

Downings

So CD went to Gruul's Lair last night for it's first proper go at High King Maulgar. It's a fairly technically demanding fight, and it took about eight attempts over two and a half hours but we ended up killing him.



Ulu was tanking the first Add to be killed, Blindeye the Seer. He's a healer type and you have to keep him stunned/interrupted until DPS can take him down. He dies fairly easily, after which Ulu went to help tank Olm The Summoner, a Warlock with a couple of pet demons. After he was dead... well there wasn't much for Ulu to do. In his tanking gear he can't heal or DPS very effectively, so he was basically reduced to cheerleading and throwing weak heals from the sidelines when his mana allowed.

He went down and I felt... bored, empty. It wasn't exciting like the Prince fight, and I didn't honestly feel like I'd contributed much to it.

After the fight, we went on to try Gruul. Our first and only attempt got him to 76% before we wiped, but it was a disaster from Ulu's pov. Somehow the Off-Tank got the aggro and became the Main Tank. As a secondary tank (ie one not being hit very often), Ulu can't generate and maintain good aggro. As a result, our Rogues kept getting the Hateful Strikes that the OT was meant to be absorbing. It wasn't the cause of the wipe, but it certainly didn't help.

Well it was a long time coming, but I've decided to stop procrastinating and work on Wulfsblood's Leatherworking. He's been stuck at 366/375 for a while now, so I bit the bullet, got a load of Primal Earths cheap off the AH and started grinding his skill. As it stands, he's at 375 and I'm going to try and grind another couple of points worth before tonight's raid. Ultimately, the set he gets to make at 375 isn't the best for his current spec, too much focus on AP over Agility, but the Stamina and Intellect alone should help his raiding performance.

Speaking of tonight's raid, we're going to try and make a run at Gruul's Lair. Initial sign-ups look promising, but only time will tell if we're standing over High King Maulgar's corpse tonight.

Honestly, though, I'm starting to feel the need for a break from the game. We'll see how things go and wether or not I get envigorated again.

Comments on "More Heroic Deeds"

Comments on Thursday's post went as follows:

Bluebottle:

For the two weeks prior to this one, I've had Ulushnar saved to the Late Shift. I even brought Wulf to the Early shift last week. Admittedly last week you may not have noticed because I was busy on Saturday and just too tired to raid on Monday. Looking at the amount of tank specs atm, we have two dedicated to the Late shift (Swentha and Ktharious) and two on the Early (Enoad and Naavaparta) with me and Cearran floating between them.

The complaints I've heard about the late shift aren't that the tanks are crap, but that the DPS/CC is limited. I'll be bringing Wulf from this week to bolster that side of it.

Galoheart:

Yeah you don't get much stuff with +Block Value/Rating pre-70, but here's my theory on it's usefulness:

When you're tanking a powerful, hard-hitting boss like High King Maulgar or the Prince, then there's next to no reactive healing going on. The powerful healing spells take 2-3 secs to cast and a tank could honestly die in that time if he's not kept topped up. Avoidance therefore does little good. It doesn't matter if you dodge/parry or are missed, you're still going to get healed as if you'd been hit. By blocking, you remove a significant % of the incoming hit consitantly, healer mana isn't wasted and you build more threat through Holy Shield.

Also, Block Rating is the cheapest way to get crushing immunity, since it's 8 points to 1% Block as opposed to 19 points for Dodge rating or 24 for Parry. This gives you more room to stack Stamina, which we already lack as Paladins.