The Karazhan Guide Pt 6 - Shade of Aran

The Shade of Aran is the boss you should probably take next after The Curator. Terestian Illhoof is geographically the next boss to take, but Aran is a more vital target for two reasons:

1. Once he is dead, almost all the trash between there and The Curator stops spawning.

2. Once he's dead, you can speak to the Doorman by the stairs to the Ballroom to be teleported straight there, making a faster corpse run for any attempts on Illhoof, Netherspite or Prince Malechazzar.

As for the fight, well I hope you brought an alternate set of gear, because there's nothing to tank!

Well ok, that's slightly untrue (details later), but this fight is basically a raidhealing/DPS race. The Shade has no aggro will switch target randomly. When we first attempted him with Ulu, I used to strap on my healing gear and spam my targetstarget healing macro (see the Opera guide) on the Shade (thus healing his current target). These days, I slap on my spelldamage-heavy 5-man/solo gear and just go at him with Seal of Vengence and Exorcism. Judgement of Wisdom or Light on the boss is also a good thing.

He'll alternate between Arcane Missles, Fireballs and Frostbolts as his main attack. It's a good idea to have Shamans, Warriors or Rogues interrupt the Fire and Frost attacks. The Arcane Missles is the easiest of the three to heal through, and if you interrupt all three, he'll run around the room, to melee whoever he's targetted, which you don't want.

He also has three big attacks, here's how you survive them:

Flame Wreath: Stand perfectly still, you can cast spells freely but don't move at all.
Blizzard: This moves round the outskirts of the room, run through the boss to the other side when it gets near you. If the boss is in the centre and you're in melee range of him, it shouldn't be a problem. P.S. Don't move during Flame Wreath.
Arcane Explosion: He teleports everyone to the centre, casts a mass slow and then begins channelling a massive explosion. Immediately turn and run to the wall (the slow can be cleansed) to avoid it. P.P.S. No move-o during Flame Wreath?

At 40% health, he'll summon four Water Elementals. These can be tanked, but Aran continues to do his normal attacks (including Flame Wreath et al). Get your ranged DPS to burn them down quickly, or fear/banish them. They will despawn after 90 seconds (a Warlock can take two out of the fight with Fears and Banishes and two Warlocks make the Elementals trivial).

When his mana gets down to 20%, he will polymorph the entire raid into sheep and take a drink. You'll recover health and mana during this time, but once he's finished, he'll cast a mass Pyroblast that'll hit everyone in the raid for about 7k damage. Make sure before you go in that all your raiders have at least 8k health buffed to survive this.

Ideally he should die before his mana gets that low, but you may find this difficult on your first few kills. It's a fun, if chaotic fight, which'll prove a challenge to a new group in Kara.

The Karazhan Guide Pt 5 - The Curator.

I dislike this part of Karazhan. The Curator himself is not particularly hard, but the mobs before him are a bunch of mana-draining bastards and some of the mobs after him are immune to magical damage.

The Curator himself is a Gear check for the entire raid. He hits hard-ish (about 3-4k on plate), but he shouldn't present any real problem to a decently-geared tank.

There are a few wrinkles to the fight:

Hateful Bolts: He will regularly hit the second on the Aggro list with a Hateful Bolt which does 4.5k-6k Arcane Damage. We normally have either a Warlock, Shadow Priest or Melee offtank fighting for second place on the aggro list. Arcane Resistance gear will help the Bolt tank, but isn't really necessary if they have a decent amount of health.

Arcane Flares: These will spawn every 20 seconds and randomly target a member of the raid and move towards them doing arcane AoE damage along the way. They have 12k health must be dealt with as soon as they spawn, and I'd reccomend the DPS classes with the highest burst damage focus on them.

Evocation: Every 90 seconds, he'll Evocate for 20 seconds. During this time he won't attack, but will do take triple damage from any attacks.

If you're in the early stages of gearing up for Kara, then you'll need most of your DPS (except for the Bolt Tank) focussing on the Flares to make sure they go down fast. We also found having a Shadow Priest for the Healers was invaluable since this is a pretty mana-intensive fight.

Handling the adds quickly is the first priority and then hitting him is the second. Have your DPS finish off whatever add is up and then burn him down asap. Blowing cooldowns during evocations is heartily reccomended.

A group starting on him will usually kill him in 4-5 Evocations, whilst an overpowered group will only need one. As your group gears up,you'll be able to have all the less burst-intensive DPS (Rogues, Shadow Priests, Affliction Warlocks, Hunter pets etc) stay on the boss whilst Mages, Hunters, Arms Warriors and Shamans kill the adds.

The Karazhan Guide Pt4 - The Opera Event

Ok, this is gonna be a long one, since I have to explain not one boss fight, but three. Each fresh Karazhan reset, you will encounter one of three separate fights in the Opera event. There's absolutely no clue as to which fight it'll be until the Stage Manager announces it, so you have two options:

1. Get a Rogue/Hunter/Mage/person with enough bagspace to strip naked to talk to the Stage Manager to start the event, and then have them Vanish/Feign/Turn Invisible/die to reset the event. The rest of the raid waits a safe distance outside.

2. The entire raid goes in and improvises a tactic on the spot depending what encounter there is.

Groups starting Kara may prefer to go with 1. but I tend to go with 2. these days.

I'll now cover the boss fights in order of ease:

1. Big Bad Wolf

This is a basic tank and spank fight, which only needs one tank. Every so often, the Wolf will turn one member into Red Riding Hood. At that point, their armor is reduced to zero, they can't use any abilities and their run speed is significantly boosted. The Wolf will proceed to chase the Hood around the edge of the stage until she shifts back.

It's imperative for all the healers to focus their heals on Little Red Riding Hood. The hood needs to run along the walls of the Opera stage, without cutting corners to avoid most of the Wolf's attacks. If I haven't been Hooded, then I'll normally toss an Avenger's Sheild at the Wolf, and then use a macro like this one to heal the hood (and build aggro):

/cast [target=targettarget] Flash of Light

As a tank it's important you keep up aggro, since your DPS will probably be going hell for leather during the Hood phases. I've had a lot of practise with this guy because when Ulu started Kara, we got nothing but BBW for three months.

2. Romulo & Julianne

Three phases to this fight:

Phase one, you fight Julianne. She casts healing spells (for about50k), so if you have any interrupters, have them focus on her. Phase two, you fight Romulo, who is a fast melee attacker with some nasty selfbuffs. Phase three, you fight both and you have to make sure they die within ten seconds of each other, or the dead one will ressurect with full health.

With Holy Shield, a Tankadin is a natural to tank Romulo and a Warrior who can interrupt will do a great job on Julianne. Whilst it's possible to AoE tank them both, I'd reccomend waiting until you gear up a bit for that. DPS-wise, I'd focus melee DPS on Julianne and ranged on Romulo as a general rule, but try to spread it evenly so that both go down at the same time.

3. The Crone (aka. "Oz")

This one needs some coordination. Phase one is handling and killing A group of different adds:

Dorothee - Doesn't need a tank, just burn her down quick. She'll summon her dog, Tito, who needs to be killed after her or she'll enrange. Tito can be tanked by any meleer pretty much.

Roar - Can be offtanked, or kept busy with Fear. Since he's a Beast, either a Hunter or a warlock should be able to keep him chainfeared.

Strawman - Will be disorientated by fire damage, so have Mages and Warlocks spam fire spells on him to kill him and keep him out of the fight.

Tinhead - Gains a rust debuff that slows his movement, enabling a tank to kite him around. He has a cleave so make sure people stay out of the way of his kiting path.

The Crone - After all the adds are down, the Crone will appear. She'll Cyclone random people, knocking them into the air for a few seconds and she also casts chain lightning. Just spread out and burn her down.

The Karazhan Guide Pt3 - Maiden of Virtue

This fight, like Attumen, but unlike Moroes, is completely optional. You don't need to kill the Maiden to progress further and are at liberty to ignore her. That said, she drops two really nice peices of Tanking loot, which Ulu still uses:

Iron Gauntlets of the Maiden and Barbed Choket of Discipline

That said:

IHateherIhateherIhateher!!!


The Maiden of Virtue fight stands as the first real tanking gear check of Kara. Some of our Warriors early on in quest/instance blues had real problems with her, since she hits fairly hard and the Aoe Stuns can leave you without healing for several seconds.

she's doubly annoying to a Paladin tank since she emits a Holy Ground effect constantly. Holy Ground is basically a Consecration-like AoE which silences for 1 sec on each tick. That means one second out of every three, you can't cast. Couple this with the Global Cooldown and you're going to spend half this fight spamming your keys in frustration to activate your next ability. Make sure Melee watch their aggro on this fight, since they'll suffer if you struggle.

If you have another well-geared tank, then get them to tank her and help with cleansing the Holy Fire. Another thing I used to do as an off-healer was cast Blessing of Sacrifice on the tank. That way when she did her Repentance (AoE stun), the BoSac would wake me up and I could heal the tank until the healers get unstunned.

If you're intent on MTing this bitch, and you don't badly outgear the place then you're going to have to come up with a way to survive the Repentances.

1. If you have another Paladin in the group, have them keep Blessing of Sacrifice on you, and then heal you during the Repentances.

2. If you don't, then you're going to need to move over to your healers so that the Holy ground touches them and wakes them up. After you've moved them out, move them back quickly so the healers aren't silenced by the Holy Ground.

As long as the tank survives the Repentances, the Holy Fires are cleansed and the DPS behaves, she'll go down. If not, did I mention this fight is totally optional?

Further notes on Morogrim.

Morogrim got short shrift on my write-up. Being the last boss of four, I was rushing to finish it. Here's some more stuff to know.

For AoE tanking the Murlocs at Tidewalker, I use a set that mixes up threat stats and Block Value. The Murlocs hit for about 700 damage on plate, and my BV sits at about 726 in that set, so I'm pretty much mitigating them fully.

One of the nice things about the set is that it has enough Block Rating in it to make the Libram of Repentance unecessary, so I use my old Libram of the Eternal Rest in it's place for even more AoE threat. I also use this set for Multi-mob pulls and Heroics.

One other thing I forgot to mention is mana. Try and get a Shadow Priest, or at the very least a Resto Shaman in your group for Morgrim. Spamming Holy Light is mana intensive and the little green bastards don't hit hard enough for you to regain much mana through healing.

Serpentshrine Cavern - One Night, Four Bosses.

Well last night we went down to Serpentshrine Cavern and Cleared out the first four bosses: Hydross the Unstable, The Lurker Below, Leotheras The Blind and Morogrim Tidewalker. This is pretty much unprecedented for us.

As promised to Leon, I'll go over my tanking roles in each fight in order:

Hydross the Unstable

Hydross is the boss that kept us out of SSC for the longest time, as it requires tanks with maxed-out Frost and Nature Resistance (350 Resistance fully buffed).

This is the first resistance fight anyone who started tanking in TBC will likely face, so I'll speak briefly about the basic gearing philosophy.

Good News: Elemental melee attacks can't crush. No need to worry about 102.4% here.
Bad News: Elemental melee attacks can crit. Reaching crit immunity via Defense and/or Resilience is imperative.
Good News: Elemental melee attacks can be dodged/parried normally.
Bad News: Elemental melee attacks can't be blocked or mitigated by armor. Resistance Gear is the only viable form of mitigation.

In the fight, Ulu acts as an Add-tank mostly, so I've aimed for him to have around 180 unbuffed resistance to both Nature and Frost, which gets buffed to 250 with the help of a friendly Shaman and his totems. I try to keep aggro on 2-4 of the adds Hydross spawns, which without Holy Shield or Blessing of Sanctuary is quite tricky. For this fight I need to rely on Max-rank Consecrate and Retribution Aura to build aoe threat along with tab-targetting between adds with Seal of Righteousness. I try to hold the adds around the boss so that the AoE DPS can kill the adds and damage the boss at the same time.

The only real trick in this fight is to make sure that all aggro is stopped when it's time for a Tank transition. And that means all aggro, we've been wiped at least twice in the past by a Searing Totem pulling him from frost to poison and landing eight adds on us. There's plenty of time for DPS to kill him before the enrage, so there's no need for them to be careless.

The Lurker Below

This fight is basically Ragnaros-meets-Blastoise. Any decently-geared tank can tank the guy, and additional tanks are handy for dealing with the adds he spawns when he dives.

When Ulu's main tank, he tends to wear his "default" tank gear that balances avoidance, health, armor and threat (the stuff that's normally on his Armory Profile). I tend to tank him in the water in the middle ring, since this seems to significantly reduce his periodic knockbacks, plus it makes Spout dodging a breeze.

When not maintanking, Ulu wears his five-man tanking set, which has him uncrittable with about 550 holy damage. I keep up judgements on the boss whilst he's on and then tank an add when he's down.

The adds on the centre ring will pretty-much one-shot a clothie, hitting for about 4k on plate with a nasty frontal cleave. Tank them with your back to the inner water and enough space for the melee DPS to get behind them.

The only real issue with this fight is the Spout. When you get a Spout warning, everyone has to get in the water or suffer a bad case of watery death. Once your raid has managed to coordinate the spouts, then this boss will be easy. There's no enrage timer, so take it nice and steady.

Leotheras The Blind

I love to beat up Blood Elves! But to be fair, this guy has it coming.

This is a rhythm fight. He switches forms and aggro fairly constantly so you need to be ready with some snap aggro to make sure the boss doesn't go anywhere.

When Ulu MTs this fight, he wears a more threat-heavy set, since you can't afford to lose any time on pick-ups. Much as we were cursing them on Hydross, a Shaman's Searing Totems can be incredibly useful here, since they'll drag the boss back to them after he whirlwinds round the room making pick-ups a breeze. If that doesn't happen, then a quick Avenger's Shield will have him on you like Michael Moore on ice cream.

During the Demon phase, we have a Warlock specced Siphon Life/Soul Link tank him at range whilst the melee get stuck into him. If Ulu gets an inner demon, it's not normally a problem, since they're vulnerable to Holy damage. Exorcism, SoR and Holy Shield tend to make short work of him. When DPS on Leo stops prior to transition, then just keep swinging with SoR and judge it just as he switches to ensure solid aggro.

If he's not tanking, I just strap on Ulu's five-man set again and let him go hogwild on pseudoDPS.

Morogrim Tidewalker

This is a fight built for a Protadin. Being a fast, hard-hitting boss, Morogrim is a perfect boss for a Tanking Paladin. That said, our more usual role in the fight is to tank the swarms of Murloc adds that he spawns at regular intervals.

For phase one, Ulu stands at the bottom of the ramp to the left, with his pet Warlock lifetapping (we normally have the Lock who specced SL/SL for Leo on this job since his DPS will generally be the lowest). After the Earthquake, I begin casting a Max-rank Holy Light on the Warlock, which generates enough healing aggro to make the Murloc swarms charge towards me. After three Holy Lights and I have all the aggro I need on the Murlocs (especially if the priests have remembered not to put Prayer of Mending on the tank after the Earthquake), and I can start consecrating to hold them on me as the AoE kill them.

At 30%, we all move inside the corridor at the north end of the room to avoid Moro's new AoE attack. This creates a new wrinkle in that I'm now too close to the north Murloc spawn to get off three Holy Lights and too far from the South one for the healers to hold off on their big heals. In our last two kills, we've lost a few people to this problem, but i think I've found a solution. Next time I'm going to stand with the Melee, which should give me the time to get off enough heals to aggro the northern murlocs as well as forcing the southern ones to run through my consecrate and get further aggro'd.

The Karazhan Guide Pt2 - Moroes

Moroes (or "Moron" as we know him) is the second boss in Karazhan and the first real test of a raid's ability to coordinate. On the way to him, you'll come across a lot of non-elite mobs that you can AoE and win some friends amongst your Mages and Warlocks over. Be ever alert though, because there's a bunch of hard-hitting elites that patrol amongst the groups.

Once you've cleared the Dining Room you can decide what to do about Moroes. He will always have four adds with him from a potential pool of six, each with a different class and abilties.

All the adds are Undead and are as a result vulnerable to Shackle Undead from Priests and Turn Undead from Paladins. I wouldn't reccomend using Turn Undead much though, since I've seen it occasionally cause an add to run out of the dining room and reset the encounter. They're also vulnerable to Hunter traps, so keeping one chain trapped with a decent Hunter is also an option.

The Adds

Baroness Dorothea Millstipe - Shadow Priest: Her Mana Burn is nasty, and she needs to be killed first. She doesn't have much health and does next to no melee damage, so any Meleer could tank her.
Lady Keira Berrybuck - Holy Paladin: She casts Blessing of Might on Moroes, Heals adds and cleanses shackles. Kill her asap, but she also doesn't hit hard, so once again you can have any meleeer tank her.
Lady Catriona Von'Indi - Holy Priest: Her Dispel Magic and Heals will make her annoying, but once again, anyone can tank her, so kill her.

(After any or all of these three adds are down, I tend to reccomend that DPS focus on the boss.)

Baron Rafe Dreuger - Retribution Paladin: He hits hard so will need an actual tank on him. He also stuns and sometimes cleanses. Either chain trap or shackle him and kill him last.
Lord Robin Daris - Arms Warrior: He hits hard and also does an evil whirlwind that will decimate your caster camp. He must be kept CC'd for the entire fight.
Lord Crispin Ference - Protection Warrior: Hits for about 1k damage on plate. I tend to offtank him along with Moroes, and DPS deal with him during Moroes vanishes.

The Boss

The boss is a dirty, smelly Rogue and deserves to die (again) for that! He hits for about 2k on plate, but does so fairly often as a dual-wielder.

He also has two abilities which directly make tanking him an annoyance: Gouge and Blind. He will periodically Gouge the tank, stunning him (and temporarily dropping aggro) for about 5 seconds. He will also periodically Blind the nearest non-tank target to him, confusing them and dropping their aggro. Blind is a poison effect, so a cleanse, cure/abolish poison or a poison-cleansing totem should remove it.

You'll want an "offtank" for this fight (really, any melee DPSer with halfway decent armor/stamina will do.) Before you engage, make the following macro:

/cast [target=focus] Blessing of Sacrifice

And then make your chose "offtank" for the fight your focus. Cast this after you've engaged the boss, and every time you get gouged, the next attack should go to the focus, which will break the gouge via the Blessing of Sacrifice damage. Please make sure your healers know to keep the focus cleansed at all times, because if he's blinded when you're gouged, then Moroes will ignore both of you and likely go for the healers.

The one last wrinkle to point out is that Moroes will periodically vanish and apply a Garotte to a random raid member. This will cause 1k bleed damage to the affected target. Paladin Bubble and Dwarven Stoneform can remove this though.

The Fight

Ok, you've worked out how to handle the adds, you're ready for the bosses tricks, now you have to tank him. From the podium where he starts, I tend to pull the boss with an Avenger's Shield, and then pick up the Prot Warrior (if he's there) with a quick Exorcism. If you're using hunter traps, then don't use Avenger's Shield unless you're sure you'll miss the trap target.

I tend to yank the boss and any other adds I'm tanking up to north end of the dining room, beside where the first pair of Stewards were. This gives me a free space to consecrate to my heart's content. I just build aggro on the boss and renew BoSac on the OT whenever it's low.

Before too long, the DPS should have taken care of the adds that had to die and will join you on hurting the boss. Your DPs needs to be quick on the add handling, because the longer this fight goes on, the more stretched healer mana will become due to Garrottes. Also, at 10 minutes after the pull, he goes Berserk and starts doing massive damage to both the tank and the raid.

At 30% health, he enrages and does a bit more damage, so try to make sure any adds you're offtanking are dead by then.

After he's dead, deal with any CC'd adds and loot him. Huzzah!

More Requests

Heh, now Leon's asking for a Tankadin perspective on Serpentshrine. :)

Ever the obliging host, I'll try to remember to take pictures during our first night clear tonight and make a post tomorrow.

The Karazhan Guide Pt1 - Attumen The Huntsman

Well, since Alystira asked, I'm going to put up some strategies on the Karazhan bosses. I've resisted doing this in the past because hey, there's a million and one walkthroughs on the subject already. For each one, I'm going to list the "Sensible" way to tank them, and the "Other" way to tank them. The second way is only reccomended once you've geared up a fair bit.

First up gear: You'll want to be immune to critical strikes and that requires 490 Defense. You'll also want to be as close to uncrushable as possible. Since the 2.3 Stamina boost, it's no longer strictly necessary to be completely uncrushable for any boss before Nightbane/Prince Malechazaar, but it definately helps, and the Libram of Repentance is still the best badge investment you'll make.

First up is Attumen the Huntsman. Bluntly, if your group can't defeat him, you have no reason to be in Karazhan, go back to the five-mans and gear up some more.

To do this the sensible way, you'll want two tanks. I'm assuming that you as a Tankadin will be one of the two. You start the fight by pulling Midnight. When Midnight's at 95%, Attumen spawns.

If you have a Warrior tanking, then you'll want him on Attumen, since Disarm and Spell Reflect can help here. If you don't have a Warrior, then you should be on Attumen, since you can leave a Consecrate down that should pick up Attumen before he goes for a healer. Whoever is tanking Attumen should take him away from the rest of the group, since he has a nasty frontal cleave.

After Attumen spawns, we have DPS focus on Midnight until it reaches 25% health and they rejoin. Other groups focus on Attumen so that it eliminates his annoying charges. Play around it and see how it works for you.

Phase three is back to one tank, as Attumen mounts up. He still cleaves, but now he also charges. The charge has a 8 yard minimum range, and will usually one-shot a clothie in kara starting gear. You'll want everyone except the tank to gather round the back of him within 8 yards. Hunters need to stand just outside minimum range to dps, or if they've specced 3/3 into Hawk Eye, they can stand at maximum range and outrange the charge.

Apart from that, this phase is simple tank and spank, burn him down, and collect the epics.

And now for the Other way to do it. When you've geared up a bit, and are comfortably sitting at about 14k armor and 15k health buffed, you can try tanking them both during phase 2. Pull Midnight with an Exorcism, and then lay down a consecrate, keep the Consecrate and Holy Shield up and when Attumen appears, quickly hit him with an Exorcism before concentrating your aggro on Midnight, occasionally tab-targetting Attumen to hit him with some more aggro stuff. Nice thing about doing it this way is your healers have one target to concentrate on, and your OT can provide more DPS and kill the boring bastard faster.

Well that's Attumen, he shouldn't provide a problem for any semi-decent group. Next, I'll cover Moroes.

Managed Expectations.

If you'd asked me three months ago if I thought Chaotic Divinity would make it into The Black Temple before the next expansion, I would have said "no". At that time we were working on Magtheridon and still completely failing to get enough geared tanks together to start training Hydross the Unstable in Serpentshrine Cavern.

Now we're more than halfway through the Tier five content, with 5/6 bosses in Serpentshrine down and training on Vashj beginning in earnest. With Karathress' death last night, the Black Temple attunement chain was opened, and it suddenly doesn't seem like an impossiblity any more.

Over the next few weeks, the goal is to learn the Lady Vashj encounter and get it as tight as possible. In the process, we'll hopefully refine our kill time on the other bosses enough that we can reduce SSC to a one or two-night clear. Once that happens, it'll be off to Tempest Keep. We can already kill Void Reaver (although we rarely bother) and High Astromancer Solarian doesn't seem to be a difficult fight. Al'ar seems trickier and Kael'Thas is, by all accounts a nightmare.

Still, it'd be nice to at least see the inside of Mount Hyjal or the Black Temple by May, and it doesn't feel impossible.

Wulfsblood.com: Now with n% more Wowhead!

Amani Punisher

OK, after Galo and Leon's nagging, I appear to have this widget working. :)

I have to confess, I saw it on one of Galo's posts a while ago, but lazy bastard that I am, I never bothered to update it until now.

In related news, there appears to be a Goldspammer posting on Blogger. I wish there was a way to ban users from psoting on Blogs.

Woot!

Well tonight, we went to try Fathom Lord Karathress. We'd made a couple of tentative attempts aftere Morogrim on Sunday to get a feel for the fight, but we had a few new folks in on the training. I expected a night spent wiping, but instead we managed to down him on the third attempt! That's a brand new boss down in five attempts. Gotta be a CD record.

After that we decided to take a look at Lady Vashj, but she proved to be more awkward. Still we got her to phase two of the fight and managed to get a couple of cores passed. This might take 2-3 weeks, but I reckon we can take her.

I cannot begin to describe how chuffed I feel. After a long time spent languishing, we've finally started making serious progress.

Miscellania 22-01-08

*Last night I picked up the Bracers of the Ancient Phalanx after completing a dual Old Hillsbrad/Black Morass heroic run. The bracers were the last of the new tanking items introduced in 2.3 that Ulu had to pick up. That means that since turning 70, I have collected and spent some 550 Badges of Justice. Admittedly, 340 of those came after 2.3 when Karazhan was giving us 20-22 badges a week. Still, not a bad acheivement.

*On Sunday night, we downed Morogrim Tidewalker on our second attempt. Sunday was our second night training him, so it's nothing to be sniffed at. I had promised a Tankadin guide to this, but I forgot to make screenshots. I'll provide one after the next kill.

*Tonight we start training Fathom-Lord Karathress. It's a simple fight from my PoV, but it looks like merry hell on the healers. He might take us a bit longer than two nights.

For Alystira (pt 2)

Ok, so I hate doing conversations in blogger comments due to the lack of threading, so I'm going to respond to Alystira's comments in fresh posts.

Ulu, thanks so much. This past weekend was huge in the learning process for me as I got my first taste of tanking. My first run was to normal Setthek Halls and cleared it without any wipes. Beginners luck, lol? By the time the weekend was over I managed to tank my first heroic successfully (Heroic Mech). The Sun Eater dropped and I was awarded the prize. This brings up a question...I know that our threat generation is based off of Spell Damage so I threw on +40 spell dmg to weapon. Is the Sun Eater a good choice for me? I was using the Continuum Blade (121 spell dmg and I put +40 spell dmg on it) and working on Lower City rep (i'm about 5k away from Exalted) to get the Gavel of Unearthed Secrets. So should I still go for the Gavel or is the Sun Eater going to work? Thanks again.

Congrats on the tanking successes!

In answer to your question, I personally enchanted my Sun Eater with Mongoose. In terms of pure avoidance stats, The Sun Eater is the best weapon in the game. It's my go-to weapon on fights where threat isn't an issue, but avoidance is (examples off the top of my head are Prince Malechazaar phase two, High King Maulgar and Magtheridon). My day-to-day tanking weapon was first the Continuum Blade, then the Gavel of Unearthed Secrets and finally the Amani Punisher.

As to what's better for you, it depends what you use most of all. I don't have much (read: any) experience of Seal of Blood, since it's Horde-only, but from what I understand, the Sun Eater may be a better weapon for those situations due to it's higher base DPS. For Seal of Righteousness tanking, the Continuum Blade would be better. The Gavel's kinda slow for SoR tanking (I used it mainly for Seal of Vengence), but it might be a good option for boss fights.

So all in all, in an avoidance-heavy fight, you might wanna look into using the Sun Eater/SoB combo, but generally a spelldamage weapon with SoR will offer good, consistant aggro. You might wanna read up on the viability of Seal of Blood vs Seal of Righteousness tanking at Main Tankadin.

Spell Rotations and AoE threat

I recieved a comment over the weekend from Alystira asking about spell rotation and multi-mob aggro. There's a couple of different rotations I use.

If I'm able to use Avenger's Shield, then it goes as follows:

1. Avenger's Shield
2. Holy Shield and Seal of the Crusader up as the mob approaches
3. Judge Crusader (or Judgement of Wisdom if the raid has a Retribution Paladin)
3. Seal of Righteousness
4. Consecrate (if no CC'd mobs near)
5. Judge Righteousness
6. Renew Holy Shield
7. Repeat steps 3-6 until the mob's dead.

If I can't use Avenger's shield, then I'll do the following:

1. Seal of Righteousness and Holy Shield up as I approach the mob
2. Judge Righteousness
3. Seal of Righteousness
4. Consecrate (if CC allows)
5. Switch to Seal of the Crusader (or Wisdom) just before the Judgement cooldown's up.
6. Judge Crusader.
7. Seal of Righteousness
8. Renew Holy Shield
9. Renew Consecrate (if allowed)
10. Judge Righteousness
11. Repeat steps 7-10 until mob is dead.

I used to really like Seal of Vengence, but I've found it's pretty situational, and I only really use it on fights like Warbringer O'mrogg in Shattered Halls where there's an aggro switch. Generally, SoR gives faster and more reliable aggro generation, which you need with trigger-happy nukers.

As for AoE tanking, I find it incredibly straightforward. The basic tools are Holy Shield, Retribution Aura and Consecrate. If you outgear the content you're AoE tanking, or you have multiple Paladins, then Blessing of Sanctuary can also give you some valuable aoe threat.

Consecrate is basically the bait to lure the mobs towards you. It offers a good amount of threat and scales decently with Spelldamage. However, make sure if you're using any CC, that they know to apply it before the mobs reach you. Failure to do this will result in annoyance and in extreme cases death. Probably not your death, since you'll be being spam-healed, but some caster's death.

Holy Shield and Blessing of Sanctuary are the meat of your AoE threat. Holy Shield does the most damage, but it only has a limited amount of charges, so if you tank a lot of mobs it'll get burned through very quickly. Blessing of Sanctuary on the other hand gives about one-fifth the threat of Holy Shield, but to any attack you block. In massive AoE situations it can be the difference between a mob sticking on you, or it coming loose and gibbing a Mage.

Finally, we have Retribution Aura. Again, this is a situational flavor. If you're feeling undergeared, you may prefer Devotion Aura, but these days I use Retribution almost constantly. It gives you a flat 26 Holy Damage on any attacker hitting you, which is about 50 threat. With the 2-piece T5 bonus, this become about 80 threat, which is a small, but significant amount of aggro.

Generally speaking, you should be able to generate enough passive aggro from these abilities to get the job done. If you find yourself losing aggro on mobs, then I'd reccomend tab-targetting between various foes and hitting them a couple of times with Seal of Righteousness, or even a Judgement if it's available.

All in all, there's not a big mystery to Paladin tanking. Just watch your cooldowns and try to spread the aggro around as liberally as possible. I'm probably going to get flamed by some Pallytank with a more complex analysis of the subject, but from my own experience, the above works fine for me.

Zul'Aman != Hell?

Well as I mentioned, last night I led a raid into Zul'Aman. I've had something of a checkered history with ZA. We'd gone into it expecting something that was the next stage up from Kara, that is to say something that people in full Kara gear could go and have a chance to defeat. What we found was an instance more tuned around being challenging to a group of people with a lot of the Tier 5 content under their belts.

We dutifully retreated, and apart from the occasional run at the first two bosses, we ignored it in favor of farming Karazhan/Heroics for badge gear on our offnights.

After last weekend's Kara run, I decided to give Zul'Aman another shot. Kara now offerred no new drops for Ulu and running the place was dull as hell. It was frankly embarrasing to me that we were making solid progress in Serpentshrine, but we couldn't scrape up ten decently-geared people people to try ZA.

So I made a post on our forums stating my case. I asked for SSC-level volunteers in the following makeup:

1 Main Tank - Ulushnar
1 Offtank/DPSer - We ended up getting a Feral Druid here
1 Melee DPS - A Rogue came along
3 Healers - We got a Priest, Resto Druid and Paladin
3 Ranged DPS - A Beastmastery Hunter, Shadow Priest and Mage
1 Random DPS (melee or ranged) - Got a Warlock

I regretted doing this almost immediately. I don't enjoy raid leading, but I usually end up doing it because I don't seem to be able to keep my gob shut on Ventrilo. I didn't especially enjoy ZA, but I saw the fact that the bosses hadn't yet been mastered by CD as a basic affront. Since no-one else was willing to be cutthroat enough to make it work, I was gonna have to!

The end result was that in three hours we managed to get all four Animal bosses down (including CD-first kills of the Dragonhawk and Lynx bosses), and my love of the instance was reignited.

First boss we tried was the Bear boss, the easiest one in the instance. We had one wipe on the trash due to the healers being confused about their assignments (the average CDer possessing as much individual initiative as a sponge, they need to be told which things to heal). That wipe cost us the timer for the timed event, but the Bear Boss himself didn't prove to be a problem.

Next was the Eagle. The AoE gauntlet proved to be no problem with Ulu leading the way, and the Eagle went down smoothly with only one hiccup when somehow Ulu managed to die at 30%. The Druid offtank managed to react quickly and tanked him for the last 30%.

After that we went for the Dragonhawk boss. After getting through the deeply annoying trash packs, we faced the boss, and managed to one-shot him. This was especially significant since the Dragonhawk has been the single-most awkward fight that CD's faced to date.

The Lynx was up next, and after one wipe caused by the offtank's poor positioning, we managed to take him down in a fight that is best described as a frenzied DPS race.

We pushed on and made 4-5 attempts on the penultimate boss, Hexlord Malcross, but he proved too tough for us. We called it a night after three hours in there, two fresh boss kills and general high spirits.

Thinking back to the reasons I disliked ZA before tonight, I realised it came down to the group compostion. I'd spent too many nights in that place with suboptimal groups or undergeared characters. Too many people look at ZA with it's 10-man raid cap and 3-day reset as casual content and treat it as such. At CD's current gear level, we're only going to beat it with a hand-picked and well-geared group.

I'm going back on Sunday afternoon for a two hour clear of the Animal bosses, before doing some serious Hexlord training on Monday. I'm not giving up until Zul'jin's dead.

*As of the past weekend, I'm taking a break from the Tier 4 instances (Karazhan, Gruul's Lair, Magtheridon). At the moment, Ulu outgears the instances something chronic, there's next-to-no drops he requires and CD have an abundance of tanks who can run them. Not to mention the last two times I ran Gruul/Maggy with Cd I ended up running the raid because of the raid leader's incompetance/preoccupation. I fancy a bit more time away from the game this year.

*CD got Morogrim Tidewalker to 38% on our first night of training him. I anticipate a kill next time we take him. I'll post a Pally-tanking strategy when we do, but it's a fun fight from a Pally tank's perspective.

*Tonight I'm leading a Zul'Aman run. We've kinda let it fall by the wayside. It's not an easy zerg like Karazhan is for a group at our level, in fact the groups that farm it seem to be all in T5 or better gear. We'll see how it goes, but I doubt tonight's gonna change my view of the place.

*I should also point out that the recent patch changed Wulf's EZ-Mode Macro. The newer, sleeker version is:

/cast !Auto shot
/cast [target=pettarget, exists] Kill command
/cast Steady shot
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

No need to note speed anymore, since Autoshot should remain toggled now.

And we're back.

To anyone who wasn't following me on RSS or via the basic blogspot URL you may have missed my posts on the last few days. Wulfsblood.com wasn't renewed on the 9th of January (it's second anniversary apparently) and as a result, you were probably getting a lovely blank page.

I've renewed this now, and taken the added precaution of registering www.wulfsblood.net through the lovely people at Blogger as a back-up. I shoulda just registered Wulfsblood.com through them, but I was a numpty.

Elf-Bashing is Fun!

Last night CD took down Leotheras the Blind for the second time:



Again, Ulushnar was Main Tank for the kill. I had originally intended to let one of Cd's other tanks take him this time, but both the Prot Warriors declined for one simple reason: The Inner Demon.

After about 45 seconds, Leotheras turns into a Demon for 60 Seconds. During this time, the Demon's tanked by a Warlock, but he also summons the Inner Demons of five members of the raid. These Inner Demons have to be killed by the afflicted Raid member solo, or the player will become mind controlled and will have to be killed by the rest of the raid.

It's hard enough for a Prot-Specced warrior to take down his inner Demon in DPS gear, and it seems it's impossible for ours to do it in Tanking gear. Luckily for Ulu, the Demons take extra damage from Holy spells, so all Ulu had to do was slap on his Boss Threat set and he had no problem tanking the boss or killing the demon.

The rest is a fairly simple rhythm fight. Whilst he's in elf form, he needs to be picked up quickly with Avenger's Shield and/or Judgement of Righteousness. He's a Dual-wielder, and doesn't hit too hard, but things are complicated by the 2.5k/tick DoT he puts on anyone he hits when he Whirlwinds (every 15 secs during the Elf phase).

Once he goes Demon, just nuke him hard, unless you have an inner demon to kill. At 15% health, he splits from his Demon. At that point the Warlock picks up the Demon and we just finish off the Elf quickly.

On Tuesday, we're gonna make our first attempts on Morgrim Tidewalker. Should be interesting...

Gratification.

Last post I stated:

Ulu now sits with 15.7k health unbuffed with 17.4k armor in his regular tanking gear. My next goal is to push my unbuffed health to 16k, but my options for doing so appear to be scarce.

Well, I took him to Serpentshrine Cavern tonight where we took down Hydross and Lurker and had a few decent attempts on Leo. One of the trash mobs before Leo dropped a Stamina trinket which Ulu won. I was happy to find I could wear it with my Effective Health gear and still remain uncrushable, which got Ulu's health up to 16.1k unbuffed:



Hmmm... I need new goals, since I don't think i'll be seeing 17k unbuffed for a while...

Miscellania 10-Jan-2008

So what's new?

On Tuesday, CD took down Leotheras The Blind (a.k.a Emo-Boi) on our second-third night of training him. This marks our third Serpentshrine Cavern boss down out of six. Halfway through and the next two bosses don't look too hard.

It looks like we're training Morogrim Tidewalker next, which looks like a fun Pally-tank fight, glad I've updated my Block Value set recently!

Tonight we're back in SSC to clear the first couple of bosses. I'd love to see us get as far as Leo and kill him again, but I'm not that optimistic.

On the gear front, I've decided to go with my Slikk's Cloak of Placation as my main tanking cloak and have relegated my trusty, hard-won Devilshark Cape to my Block set. Whilst the Block Value on the Devilshark may offer better mitigation against weaker enemies, the higher Armor and Stamina on the Badge cloak offer more consistant benefits. Ulu now sits with 15.7k health unbuffed with 17.4k armor in his regular tanking gear. My next goal is to push my unbuffed health to 16k, but my options for doing so appear to be scarce.

Speaking of Badge gear, it seems I'm running out of stuff to buy for Ulu. I have most of the main items I saught from the list of Badge gear, now I'm into the realm of curiosities and sidegrades. I may stop running Kara with him soon...

...But not until after this weekend. On Saturday, one of our Priests is going to try and solo-heal Karazhan (well ok, she's bringing along two Shadow Priests as well). And I am the main tank for the event, should be a giggle if nothing else.

EZ-Mode Beastmastery.

Over the last few days I've been asked by literally two people about Beastmastery shot rotations. In response, I'll point them at the following macro, liberated from TKA Something:

/script UIErrorsFrame:Hide()
/castsequence reset=1.96 Auto Shot, Steady Shot
/castrandom [target=pettarget, exists] Kill Command
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()
/script UIErrorsFrame:Show()

Replace the 1.96 with your ranged weapon speed after any persistant haste buffs (Serpent's Swiftness, Quiver bonus, etc) and spam away. For best results, use a weapon with a base speed of 2.6-2.7.

Where's Wal-erm I mean Wulfie?

Well you may have noticed that since 2.3 I've had a lot to say about Ulu, where does this leave our Titular Protagonist?

The simple answer is: In the Arenas. Whilst 2.3 enabled Tankadins to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the other DPS classes, it also gave some enhancements to the Hunter's viability in PVP.

Given CD is generally strong on DPs, I've repurposed Wulf to pander to my occasional desire for some PVP action. The gearing philosophy's quite different. In raids, my main concern is to make sure Wulf's Hit Rating is as close to the 140 cap as possible, then after that I ramp up his attack power, since that boosts both him and his pet's overall DPS. In PVP, my damage output is secondary to survivability. I've ramped up his Stamina and Resilience, and then focussed on his Crit Rating for more burst damage.

I have fun now when I'm doing PVP dailies or playing Arenas with friends, although scheduling time to play the weekly matches around raids and other commitments is a challenge in itself.

Hmm...

I logged onto the following in Guild chat yesterday (Names have been changed to protect the funny, and quotes have been approximated to the best of my memory).:

[Guild][Holydin] I don't like [New Rogue Applicant], I think he's ebayed his character.
[Guild][Rogue] I Agree.
[Guild][Ulushnar] Why do you say that?
[Guild][Holydin] He was asking earlier what the best belt enchant was...

I predict [New Rogue Applicant] will have a long and glorious future in WoW...

New Year, Same Crap

Happy New Years gentle readers! Well, the season's over and I'm back at my desk for a a two-day work week at what must be the quietest time of the year. Ah well.

OVer the Holidays, I'm afraid I didn't get that much WoWing done. I did however go back to complete Mass Effect and did most of Portal in one sitting. Alcohol prevented me from finishing the last few Puzzles, but I'll work up the time to do it at some point.

With the bulk of CD enjoying their family, I only did a few Heroic instances and one Kara clear with Ulu. I did manage to get him a new belt which has better avoidance stats than the other badge belt he'd bought already. Ah well, the old one will be fine for a Threat set, and with the new one, my Effective Health set is nudging ever closer to 16k unbuffed health, which is nice. My next purchase will likely be a trinket to boost Ulu's Block Value even further.

I also altered Ulu's spec slightly. I went from 0/46/15 to 0/47/14. Outside of 25-mans, I found I was often the only Paladin in raids, except for the occasional Retnub. Under those circumstances I found myself missing Blessing of Kings terribly.