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.)