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.

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!

Where to go from here.

I'm feeling at a crossroads atm. Friday's Karazhan re-awakened my love of playing Wulfsblood again. I felt fairly useful with him in a way I hadn't in ages.

As it stands, the tanking shortage in CD that prompted me to roll Ulushnar has diminished. It's no longer a massive issue, and having more than one protection-specced character on a 10-man run is a detriment to the group's DPS.

Tanking has, of late been more frustrating than anything else. I'm not sure if it's a problem on my part or on that of the rest of the group, but Ulu has struggled his way through encounters which have proved no problem in the past. My last few excursions as main tank on content that was in any way challenging have been doomed to constant wipes and frustration.

I wouldn't mind playing Wulf more, except that the tanking shortage in raids doesn't seem to extend to five-mans. When it comes to those, folks always seem to want Ulu, and rarely do they need wulf. Part of me kinda regrets not taking the offer that was alluded to in an earlier post.

But only part of me.