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.