New news

So, they've unveiled another new enchant for 2.4:



Quite nice, more Uncrushability than the Dodge/Agility enchants and it'll also help me swap out my Scarab for the commendation. Here's hoping the recipe is reasonably easy-to-acquire (ie. not a 25-man drop).

Did an SSC run last night, took down the first four bosses. Could have probably taken down Karathress too, but we wiped a few times and Leo and Moro and it sucked some time out of the run.

To keep spirits high, I entertained them with a little ditty I've found:



I don't understand a word he's singing and don't wanna, I just enjoy the exuberance of the piece. And of course, it's from this video that they got the /dance emote for Male Draenei, so it's kinda on topic.

On Downings and Gold spent.

Last night, Ulu entered that rarest of beasts for Chaotic Divinity: a partially-cleared Zul'Aman. Too often when Ulu steps in there it's for a zerg of the four animal bosses whilst racing the timer followed a few fatigued attempts at Hex Lord Malcress. However this week we went in on Monday to clear the beast avatars and ensre that Wednesday's run had a clear shot at the last two.

We attempted to go with the same 2/3/5 tanking/healing/DPS set up we'd used on Monday's raid. However the Feral OT decided at the last minute he'd rather go play outside and we were forced to bring another DPSer. Luckily both Malcress and Zul'Jin are one-tank fights.

Surprisingly, we one-shotted Malcress. We then went on to make our first attempts at Zul'jin. Three attempts later, he too was dead at our feet. The feeling was at once totally awesome and pretty anticlimatic.

After that, the night was young, so I lead a group of people through the daily heroic, Mechanar. We wiped once when a Hunter body-pulled a whole bunch of adds, but we cleared the whole instance in about 40 mins. Not bad going, and Ulu now has 110 Badges stored for next patch. That's the leggings guaranteed and only fifty more for the ring.

And now for something completely different:

Back when Wulfsblood was my main toon, I was something of a respec junky. I would constantly rejig my gear and talents to find the optimal setup for DPS. Now that he's a PVPer, I'm specced fine for survivability and burst damage, so there's no need to play around with him that much.

Since 2.3 with Ulu, I haven't felt the need to respec that much. Most of my desire to micromanage can be taken care of by playing with his gear, and the only time I used to respec was when I switched from a holy/prot hybrid build for PVP/10-mans to a prot/ret MT build for 25mans. That said, on Tuesday it looked like Ulu might need to spec Holy for a Vashj attempt since we were short on healers. It got me thinking about specs again. In the end, I ended up throwing 40 gold to change Ulu's spec from 0/47/14 to 0/46/15. The only shift is switching one point in One-Handed Specialisation (+1% personal damage) for one point in Improved Seal of the Crusader (+1% crit to everyone attacking the debuffed mob). In theory, the slight drop in threat vs the increase in raid damage shouldn't harm my threat lead too much, but we'll see how it plays out in game.

Am I Ready?

This is a question that gets asked a lot over at Maintankadin. Usually, the posters are people who genuinely don't have confidence in their gear or abilities.

To these my answer is this: get confident or stop tanking. The most commonly-referenced comparison to the Tank in Wow is the Quarterback in American Football. Now, despite a brief affection for the Redskins that I shared with my father some 20 years ago, I have little practical knowledge of the sport. From what I've heard however, Quarterbacks aren't renowned for their shy, deferential nature.

Confident doesn't mean being an asshole either though (although many folks confuse the two). In fact if you're confident enough to know you can tank in any given situation, it actually frees you from needing to prove it all the time. In raids these days, I'm generally ambivalent about who does what tank-wise, and I mostly settle who's tanking what on a /roll with the other MTs.

Here are some things to check to bolster your confidence early on.

*Be Imba - Ignore it's hit/expertise obsession and the fact that it hasn't yet got an overview of the Protection spec for Pallies. Scroll down to the "Suggested Instances" part. This tells you where the next upgrades to your current gear is. If this is later in the game than your current content, then you're fine. If it's the same, you should be ok, but you'll want to buff up religiously before each boss fight.

*What killed me? If you're dying a lot in content you're technically geared for, this may help:

1. If you're dying to massive spike damage, gear for more Stamina to absorb it.
1.1 If you've maxed your Stamina and still dying to massive spike damage, then either your healer isn't up to it, or they're being distracted healing other targets.
2. If you're dying because your healer is going OOM, then equip some more avoidance.
2.1 If you've maxed your avoidance and your healer is still going OOM, then they're either undergeared or the DPS isn't putting out enough damage to kill the target in a reasonable length of time.

For the record, about 90% of Tank death isn't the Tank's fault. It's a team game and it takes 5, 10 or even 25 people working together to screw it up.

Changes ahead?

Chaotic Divinity is a casual raid group, I'm no longer sure how much longer than can be the case.

We post four official raids a week and for the last few months, they've been exclusively for Serpentshrine Cavern or Tempest Keep. Karazhan, Zul'Aman, even Magtheridon and Gruul have been relegated to free-for-all raids on offnights.

We have a core of people who show up for around 75% of those official nights, learn the tactics get flasks/buff food and make sure their gear is fully enchanted. In as much as you can apply the term to someone in a casual group, they are the hardcore. And I suppose I'm one of them.

Then we have those who because of commitments outside game can only show up for maybe one or two raids per week. Those people are usually in over subscribed classes and end up being rotated out of some of those raids they do sign for. They'll occasionally go a week in between raids, and their gear suffers as a result of it. If they're DPSers, then their DPS usually sits noticably below the main block of DPSers and just above the tanks.

The core of CD as it stands pretty much outgears the Tier 5 content thanks to drops, badge rewards and the like. With the removal of attunements next patch, there's an overwhelming urge to say "screw Tier 5, let's go gank Mount Hyjal!". Of course at that point, the genuinely casual player probably doesn't have much hope of seeing a raid. They're barely contributing in SSC, so what chance do they have in MH? At the same time, I can appreciate the desire of our regulars to push on with the new content, being one of those myself. I've been wanting to tank Mount Hyjal waves since I first heard about it!

There are, of course, Tier 6 level badge rewards being introduced next patch, but even they'll require extensive farming, which a lot of the casual players won't have a chance to do.

I can feel a split coming in CD's near future and I'm not sure how I feel about it.

Weekend Instance Runs.

On Friday night, we went into Tempest Keep for some Al'ar Training/VR killing. The Al'ar training went ok. Ulu was in charge of add-tanking for the fight and we were consistantly getting him to Phase two. At that point it's just a matter of keeping everyone alive and co-ordinated. I reckon we'll get him before much longer.

After about 3-4 attempts, with a half hour on the trash spawn timer, we decided to go farm Void Reaver to end the raid on a high. Void Reaver's a fun fight, since it's basically a case of all the tanks fighting for threat whilst the DPS goes nuts and tries to kill him before the timer. He'll periodically knock the main tank back, reducing his threat, which requires a second tank to be ready to grab him. This time I decided I wasn't gonna make it easy...

I assembled a spelldamage/threat set out of 4/5 of my Justicar Armor set and a few other items. Ended up losing about 1k health and some avoidance to block rating, but I ended up with about 500 spelldamage, and the 4-piece bonus. I was producing upwards of 1k Threat per second and the other tanks just couldn't get him off me. I ended up holding him from 100%-12% when I finally died (still not sure how that happened).

Saturday afternoon, I arranged one of my "Badge-azhan" runs. With the badge rewards in 2.4, there's actually some interest from people to run Kara with their main raiding toons. In fact I had a slight problem of too many healers signed (I normally prefer running with 2 healers to maximise DPS) and not a great variety of DPS.

Three of the healers signed were friends and I didn't wanna let any of them down, so I spoke to one of the Priests who is a great player and always up for mad stuff (She once solo-healed a Kara run for a laugh). I asked her to spec DPS for the run, but not to spec Shadow (which is, in my honest opinion, too much of a boring "big-boy raid" spec for a fun run like this. She came up with a Discipline/Holy mix that seemed to do the job. Horribly mana-inefficent in long fights, but fun in short ones with the ability to act as an effective off-healer when required.

From there, we proceeded to one-shot all the bosses and clear the instance in about 3 hours. Would have been less if not for some crappy wipes on trash, but it never stopped being fun.

On Sunday, I went back into Karazhan with Wulfsblood to help another Tank with his badgeazhan, another 3-hour clear. In the process, I got the rest of the badges required for the new cloak I mentioned in the last post. Whilst I've been giving the new badge reward Crossbow in 2.4 some longing looks with Wulf, I've pretty-much accepted that Wulf is now a PVP-only toon. Ulu's more needed in raids, and it's also generally easier to get a Heroic started with him than with Wulf.

I went for a nap after the run and ended up missing the Serpentshrine Cavern run that night. Luckily they managed to get Leotheras, Karathress and Morogrim down without me (an alt Tankadin handled Moro's Murlocs). As it now stands, CD are ready to train on Lady Vashj again this Tuesday. I've signed as a reserve for the run. It's a 2-tank fight and Ulu already has everything he needs from her (courtesy of a trial run he did with another group).

From next week, we're changing our schedule from 3 nights SSC/ 1 night TK to 2 nights SSC/ 2 nights TK to break out of the monotony of constant SSC farming. I'm looking forward to trying more of the fights in there.

Post-weekend gear check.

Few changes to my gear over the weekend.

*Thanks to the Scarab of Displacement, I was able to switch the +Defense enchant on my Bracers to +Stamina.

*I also replaced the Nethercleft Leg Armor on my Unwavering Legguards with a Runic Spellthread. After 2.4, these leggings will become my Block/Threat leggings as we move into Tier 6 content. Right now Ulu comfortably overgears Tier 5 Content, so it makes sense to drop some health for more threat. I have another Nethercleft waiting in the bank for my Inscribed Legplates of the Aldor.

*Looked at the Brooch of Deftness as a potentially viable upgrade to my Stamina/threat stats, but ultimately decided to leave it until I had enough badges for my 2.4 shopping list.

*In other news, Wulfsblood finally scraped the badges together for his Dory's Embrace, which will boost his PVP gear nicely.

Bye-bye Defense Worries.

So last night we entered into a fresh SSC. As has been normal for CD since the year dot, our progress is pretty much two steps forward, one step back. Last night we killed Hydross and Lurker and then spent the rest of the run wiping on Leotheras, losing DPS to dumb mistakes and healers to their inner demons.

Still, on the plus side, Ulu won the Scarab of Displacement from Hydross, which has pretty much replaced his Moroes' Lucky Pocket Watch. I feel a little dumb buying another avoidance trinket when I'm pretty much planning on farming a Commendation of Kael'Thas to replace my Avoidance trinkets next patch. Ah well, if nothing else, the Scarab helps me out with the lack of Defense on my current gear.

In my Boss Tanking set, I'm currently sitting on about 4% above uncrushability, which means I can afford to lose the massive amount of Block Rating on my Unwavering Legguards for a lesser amount of Dodge on the Inscribed Legplates of the Aldor.

2.4 Shopping List

Well World of Raids have a list of the available badge loot and their cost now. The Tankadin-centric stuff seems to be overloaded on the Spell Hit front, and the Warrior stuff seems to have a load of Melee Hit and Expertise. Whilst these aren't terrible stats, they're fairly low down my Priorities for Ulu as an MT. After some thought, I'm gonna go into what I'm getting for Ulu:

1. Chestplate of Stocism One of the Warrior-itemised items, but it the massive amount of Defense rating means it gives me a bit more flexibility on other itemization. With a Stamina gem it'll give me equivalent stamina to Ulu's current Chestguard of the Stoic Guardian, but the BV means I can use it to replace my Panzar'Thar Breastplate as well. This will become my chest of choice for hard-hitting bosses and AoE trash I think. - 100 Badges

2. Inscribed Legplates of the Aldor The only Paladin-itemized piece that's taken my fancy tbh. The decent Spelldamage will see them replace my Justicar Legguards for my threat set, whilst the Dodge makes them more appropriate than my Unwaverring Legguards for hard-hitting bosses. - 100 Badges

3. Sunwell Badge Loot - Tank Ring I assume they're gonna fix the name before it goes live. It'll replace my Violet Signet of the Great Protector in my boss-tanking set at least. No Defense, but the new chest will take care of that. - 60 Badges

4. 2x Nether Vortex for the Belt of the Guardian I mentioned in the last post.

There you go, 290 Badges. I'll get a load of them before the patch, but I'm not too bothered, since every raid boss will drop badges next patch.

Killing Technology

Well Saturday's plans of leading a Karazhan zerg for badges were scupperred when my trusty old desktop PC started cranking out approximately 1/8 FPS. Spent the rest of the day running disk defrag and pretty much every anti-virus/anti-spyware/hardware optimisation doodad possible to no avail.

At the height of my despair, I tried a Dell Laptop a friend of mine bequeathed to me, and it worked great. I was chugging out up to 30 FPS with non-crappy graphics settings in a raid environment, so I was at least able to go on last night's Serpentshrine Cavern run. So thanks man!

Talking over my Desktop's symptoms with a friend today and it seems that a full reformat and reinstall's in order. Guess that'll be tonight's job then. Thankfully, I've recently required an external harddisk, so my 40gig music collection's safe.

In other news, I've been slowly collecting badges. There's a few interesting-looking items in 2.4's badge rewards, but most of the Tankadin stuff seems to lean too heavily on Spellhit for my liking. On the plus side, Nether Vortices will apparently be bind on equip next patch and will be purchaseable with badges. In preparation for this, I've gathered the materials for a Belt of the Guardian, since the pattern refuses to drop for CD. Now all I need is to find a friendly crafter post-patch.

Re: The Faceguard of Determination

Since both Galoheart and Alystira have asked about it, I loved my Faceguard of Determination for the longest time. It has a quite silly amount of Defense, Block and Dodge ratings, which makes it amazing for attaing Uncrushability, along with a solid amount of Stamina and decent Socket bonuses. It's only been in the last couple of months that I've been able to seriously consider replacing it in my raid-tanking gear. Of course it was one of the few decent tanking rewards from badges pre-2.3. It's worth it if you're hurting for uncrushability, which I guess you both will be at this point, but it just feels a bit meh for 50 badges compared to the new, shiny T5-quality stuff.

As for Alystira's other uncrushability concerns, there's two bits of gear that'll help you immesurably. First up is Andormu's Tear which you should have already. It's got no Stamina true, but Uncrushability is worth more than an extra 2-300 health. The other is Figurine of the Colossus which may take a few Shattered Halls runs to get, but you absolutely should get it. Not only is Shattered Halls incredible fun as a Tankadin, but the trinket offers about 4% towards uncrushability.

Gear update.

Well, with the Tankatronic Goggles made, Ulushnar is back to 490 Defense. This means that I can equip the Bulwark of the Amani Empire for my day-to-day tanking and save the Merciless Gladiator's Shield Wall for my Resistance Gear sets, or when I need a back-up shield.

Along with the 490 Defense, Ulu now has 16k Health, 17k Armor and over 50% pure avoidance unbuffed. His total uncrushability is sitting at around 104.99%, which means that when 2.4 rears it's ugly head, Ulu will be able to switch his Moroes' Lucky Pocket Watch for the Commendation of Kael'Thas and retain uncrushability. Further to that, I'm considering switching the Dodge enchant on his cloak for an Armor one, since he doesn't need the excess avoidance.

My current goals with Ulu are to continue farming Defender's Tanzanite and Regal Tanzanite ahead of the change in 2.3 that makes them non-unique. I'd also like to find a way to squeeze about six more Stamina out of my current gear so that I can swap out the Stamina enchant on my Bonefist Gauntlets for the Threat Enchant. I'm also going to farm some Badges, but I'm waiting to see what form the badge loot takes when it arrives.

Yes, that was a gratuitous amount of item links in one post, but with CD in a raiding slump at present and the Karazhan guide written, I'm at something of a loss about what to write about.

The Evolution (?) of Ulushnar's look.

I'm updating the side picture for the first time in a while:



This is Ulu just after he got his Tier 4 shoulders back in June/July. Note the heavy presence of the red/black tanking epics from Karazhan. His helm is hidden in the shot because, despite the fact it was an incredibly useful piece of kit, the Faceguard of Determination is not incredibly asthetically pleasing.




This is Ulu now, and the Tier 4 shoulders are the only constant. Along with my new goggles, I'm wearing a set made up almost entirely of Heroic Badge drops, which have been styled after some kind of "jungle hobo knight" asthetic. Still, I like the goggles and I like having a hat I can leave show helm on for.

Re: Adventures in Engineering

Leon wrote:

New engineering googles look damn good but its annoying that both the smelting & google upgrades recipes are raid drops. Think im the only tanking engineer in the raid tho.

I'm personally hoping that they hit the AH within a few months of 2.4 opening.

That said, they're worth it even without the upgrade. Playing around with Warcrafter suggests that once I get the Goggles gemmed and enchanted, I'll be able to replace my S2 shield with the Bulwark of the Amani Empire whilst being uncrittable. The total Stamina gain will put me over 16k health unbuffed again and I'll have enough Avoidance/Block to be able to wear the Commendation of Kael'Thas next patch in place of my Pocket Watch and still hit uncrushable.

Adventures in Engineering

Got Ulu's Engineering up to the 350 mark this morning. When I get back from work, I'll be making the Tankatronic Goggles. And then I'll have to gem it and sort out a head enchant.

It'll be worth it in the end though, I imagine.

The Karazhan Guide Part 10 - Netherspite

Of all the bosses and events in Karazhan, Netherspite is the one I love the least. We usually do him last in the night and then only if people can be bothered. The fight is easy, in theory, if your raid co-ordinates. If it doesn't or if something goes wrong, then it's pretty much doomed.

There's a detailed description of it here which I'm not going to repeat. Instead I'm going to focus on the things you'll need to know as a Tanking Paladin. Tip one: don't bother with Blessing of Salvation on this fight. He'll only ever aggro on the person who takes the Red Beam.

Portal Phase

This phase lasts for one minute.

As either MT or OT, I'm assuming you'll be on the Red Beam during this phase. The Red Beam is the tanking beam, and the following rules apply to it:

Red Beam

* Perseverance (red) - Tank beam:
o Lasts for 20 sec after leaving the beam.
o Hits Netherspite:
+ Damage taken reduced by 1% per tick.
o Hits Player:
+ Netherspite will aggro you.
If no one is standing in the Red Beam, Netherspite uses his standard aggro table.
+ Damage taken is reduced by 1% per tick.
+ Defense is increased by 5 per tick.
+ Health is modified - the first application gives +31,000 maximum health, with additional stacks reducing maximum health by 1000 per stack.
+ Replenishes full health every tick.

(Quoted directly from WoWWiki.)

Now ideally you don't want to take more than 31 stacks of the debuff, so you'll have to get used to dancing in and out of the beam. The best thing to do is to strafe in and out of the beam (using your Q and E keys), returning into the beam when you need healing. In this way, you should be able to avoid getting too many stacks and ultimately dying to the splash damage doing the rounds. Don't stay out too long, or you'll pick up the Nether Exhaustion debuff and you'll be unable to enter the Red Beam for 90 secondss.

The only real complication to this is, because you're using the Red Beam for healing, you won't be getting much mana back via Spiritual Attunement. However, since you don't need to generate much aggro (you have aggro as long as you have the beam), I'd reccomend just using Holy Shield and maybe Seal of Wisdom in this phase to keep your mana up.

The only other thing to keep an eye out is the Void Zones. Like the first boss of Arcatraz or the first boss of shattered Halls, he'll peridoically spawn big black holes on the floor that do shadow damage to everyone standing on them.

Banish Phase

This phase lasts 30 seconds.

Spread out to avoid the Nether Breath cone and get your DPS to open up as much as possible on him. Make sure the next Red Beam Tank is ready with some burst threat to get his attention before the portals appear.

After a Banish Phase, he goes back to the Portal phase and resets aggro. He'll alternate between these two phases. As long as you can keep the raid alive and do enough DPS to kill him in nine minutes, you can get your loot.

Update 11-Feb-2008

The weekend's done, here's some bullet points:

* The patchnotes for Patch 2.4 appeared, and there was much rejoicing.

* Of special interest the Engineering Goggles are now upgradeable. Also, the third boss of the new 5-man instance drops a sweet trinket on Heroic mode. I will be grinding that place like silly.

* As a consequence of this, Ulu has dropped Jewelcrafting and currently sits at 302 Engineering. I subsequently found out that both the upgrade pattern and the recipie for the Hardened Khorium needed to make it are dropped in the new 25-man instance that CD will be lucky to get into any time soon. Still I was thinking of making the basic Tankatronic Goggles anyway. They have more Stamina than the T5 helm and enough Defense to sort my current deficit in that area.

* CD's raiding's currently stuck as a bunch of our regular raiders have all picked the same week to go on a break. We've spent nights wiping against farm bosses. On the bright side, in 2.4 it'll be substantially easier to kill Kael and Vashj, plus they won't be required to get attuned to the T6 instances anymore.

* I promise you, I will try to finish the Kara guide with a Netherspite write-up today.

Why Do I Fight?

Galoheart, by way of Kaziel asks why do you fight?

For me, it's PVE all the way. Ever since I started playing video games in the early 90s I've found games that allowed cooperative multiplayer to be the most interesting and satisfying. There is no better feeling for me than being in a group that's perfectly coordinated and dedicated to defeating an encounter.

I PVP a bit with Wulf, but that's mainly for relaxation and to remind me that however much CD frustrates me on occasion, there's much worse out there. I'm not passionate enough about PVP to subscribe to another game to play it, unlike the crowd who are waiting on Warhammer Online.

In fact, if there's a game that's likely to tear me away from WoW, it's Age of Conan. And that simply because I've always enjoyed the source material and the vaguely Lovecraftian overtones of the setting. It's far more interesting to me than Warhammer's Nihilism for Teenagers background.

So, why do you fight?

New Shield Blues.

I've been taking it easy since the weekend, not signing for any 25-man raids for a week or so since I was needing some time away from it.

I had already agreed to play Protadin on a CDer's Zul'Aman run, so in went. We did pretty well, managing to take down both the Eagle and Bear within the first and second timers. We lost the timer on the Lynx by a matter of minutes though, but we still managed to get to him and kill him with only two deaths total.

The Dragonhawk boss proved to be more awkward. We had a few first-timers there and it took about eight attempts to finally get him down. He even obligingly dropped the Bulwark of the Amani Empire which our big blue-white hero claimed for himself.

However, flush though I was with this success, I was left with a new problem, my Defense skill. Since the new badge items in 2.3, Ulu's Defense skill has routinely dipped below the minimum 490 needed to be immune to Critical Strikes from raid bosses. I compensated for this by using the Resilience-heavy Merciless Gladiator's Shield Wall to keep my crit level higher. It now looks like I'll have to replace my Violet Signet of the Great Protector with the Seal of Danzalar to maintain uncrittability with the new shield. I just wish they coulda replaced the nigh-useless Block Rating on it with Defense Rating, or shifted the gem socket to a yellow one.

I dream of the day I can comfortably hit 490 Defense again.

Edit: I know this smacks a little of "oh woe is me I have too many epix" in a way that some of my 5-and-10-man running readers will find it hard to empathise with, but hey, it's my blog and you take the useful with the useless.

The Karazhan Guide pt 9 - Nightbane

Nightbane is a boss that is summonable and therefore optional. In order to be able to summon him, you need to have completed the Medivh's Journal questchain, so chances are you won't be fighting him unless you have a few Kara veterans in your group.

That said, I do reccomend training on him as soon as he becomes an option to your group, since he drops two incredibly nice tanking pieces:

Shield of Impenetrable Darkness and Panzar'Thar Breastplate


Gearing for the Encounter.

Whilst not as fast-hitting as the Prince, Nightbane does hit hard, and it's definately worth stacking up as much health and mitigation as possible for him. Uncrushability's pretty much a must here as well.


The fight itself is divided into two phases: Ground and Air.

Landing

Every time he lands, including the initial pull and at the end of every air phase, he resets aggro. It's imperative that there's no Healing over time or Damage over time spells in effect when he lands, and no active totems, since he'll immediately aggro on those. Use a quick Exorcism and Judgement of Righteousness to give burst aggro on him.

Ground Phase

On the ground, he will cleave for 5k damage, and breath fire on anyone in front of him. He will also tailswipe anyone behind him, so it's important to position him correctly. I stand with my back to the railing and have him with his back to the dome wall. This leaves his flanks exposed for your melee DPS to get stuck in without fear of being swiped. He has Bellowing Roar as well, a fear with a 2.5 sec cast and a 30 second cooldown, which you can avoid in one of four ways:

1. Get a Priest to pop a Fear Ward on you.
2. Get a Shaman to place a Tremor Totem beside you.
3. Use Divine Shield to clear the fear effect. (The five minute cooldown means you'll only get to do this once or twice per fight)
4. PVP regularly for a week or two until you can afford the Medallion of the Alliance or the Horde equivalent.

There is also a fifth way:

5. Get a Warrior with a stance-dance macro to use Berserker Rage during the fears. But we shall not speak of this!

Although it's a 30 second cooldown, the cooldown only seems to start when he lands, so in reality, you should only face a fear every 2 minutes or so if your DPS. Since the changes to fear mechanics in 2.3, an unavoided fear is survivable, if annoying. Assuming you comfortably outaggro the rest of the raid, then he should still chase you. Last night Ulu tanked him with no way to avoid the fears except for Divine Shield and it went fine.

Air Phase

When his health reaches 75%, 50% and 25%, he'll take off. At that point, the rest of the raid needs to collapse on top of you. He'll target on party member with a DoT which will also cause Skeletons to spawn around you. Use Consecrate/Holy Shield to gather them up and DPS them down fast. Ten seconds before he returns, the raid should fall back to their original position and you should get ready to pick him up with an Exorcism as he lands.

And that's basically it. This is a fight all about control. As long as your raid can handle the transitions ok, and can survive the fears, this boss is reasonably straightforward.

The Karazhan Guide Pt 8 - Prince Malchezaar

I'm now going to skip ahead a bit in Karazhan and bypass Netherspite to talk about Prince Malchezaar. Netherspite is an optional boss, and a pain in the ass to explain. We didn't even try him in CD until we had The Prince down.

On the way to the Prince, you'll have to do the Chess Event. I'm not going to go into any detail on this one. It isn't a boss encounter, it's more a reward for persevering this far. You control some pieces, you kill the opposing King, you get 2 free badges and some free epics. If you don't master this within your first visit, I'd reccomend replacing the captain of your brain ship because he's obviously drunk at the wheel!

After all this, you reach The Prince. This is a gear check for the entire raid, since it needs good sustained healing, high, sustained DPS and a great-geared tank to do the job. Back when I acted as CD's tanking rep, I'd require all tanks to successfully tank the Prince before graduating to 25-man content.

Gear Requirements

To tank him, you'll want to be able to reach a minimum of 15k Health buffed. More is always good, but he can hit you for around ~14k in less than a second in Phase two, so 15k is the minimum required to survive this. Whilst you can get through most of Kara without needing to be Uncrushable, uncrushability is absolutely required for this guy.

In Phase 1 and 3, you'll want to use a Spelldamage weapon to boost your threat output, but during phase 2, it's useful to have a decent avoidance weapon like The Sun Eater enchanted with either Mongoose or +20 Agility depending on wether or not you intend to disengage in this phase. (More on that in the Phase write-up).

As for the rest of your gear, I'd emphasise avoidance and mitigation as much as possible. If you can comfortably get 15k Armor and over 20% Dodge for this fight, do so, your healers will thank you. Spelldamage isn't too important since you can spam Exorcism for more threat on him. If you have any items with Expertise, equip them if possible. Less Parries from the boss will help a lot if you stay engaged during Phase 2.

On Consumables, Elixir of Major Fortitude and Elixir of Mastery or Flask of Fortification are the way to go, plus the best Stamina food you have and Ironshield Potions will be your best choices throughout the fight.


The Fight

I'm not going too much into positioning. We learned the fight without the safe spots listed in the WoWWiki article, but if you want to use them, go for it, they'll probably make life easier. I pick a position halfway along the near wall and pull him to there with a quick Exorcism. I nominate one ranged DPs to act as Infernal spotter and to warn the ranged/healer group when they have to move.


Phase 1

This is fairly straightforward. He hits hard-ish, but not too bad. Hit him with all you've got to build up a threat lead. He'll periodically cast Shadow Word: Pain on the tank. If there's a Priest or Paladin in the group, they can cleanse this for you, otherwise, you'll have to do it yourself. Either turn on self-casting in your UI options or make a macro to cast Cleanse on yourself.

Phase 2

At 60% health, the fun really begins. He summons two axes into his hands that boost his DPS through the wall. He gains the Thrash ability which can cause his mainhand to attack a further two times. Since his mainhand hits for around 4k and his offhand for just over 2k, then the result is a 14k burst in less time than your healers can say "oh shit". It's imperetive that your DPS blows all their cooldowns to get him through this phase asap. There's two opposing ideas about what to do in this phase:

1. Disengage. Click off your auto-attack and maintain aggro via Exorcism, Judgement of Righteousness and Holy Shield. This prevents his attacks getting a slight haste from your Parries and will lower his overall damage output. If you're gonna do this, I'd reccomend getting +20 agility on an avoidance weapon to equip for this phase.

2. Engage! Keep swinging and hope for the best! I personally favor this, if I'm not swinging, I'm not tanking. I have my Sun Eater with Mongoose for this phase and it gives me +5% dodge when it procs.

Just ask yourself: What Would Captain Picard Do?



Whatever you do, if you have a trinket with an avoidance on-use ability, try and use it when the Prince hits ~40%. That seems to be when I've died most often.

Phase 3

At 30%, you enter the home stretch. The Axes leave his hands and fly around attacking random party members, so he goes back to Phase one levels of DPS. At this point you just have to kill him before your raid gets swamped by Infernals.

Once he's dead, loot and party, you have just achieved a genuine tanking milestone.

A change in gearing philosophy,

I've gone through something of a shift in my gearing paragdim recently. Before, owing to the fact that Paladins had the lowest base health and mitigation of any tanking class, I focussed on Ulushnar's health and armor to allow him to absorb the biggest hits possible.

About a month ago, I got a new stamina trinket, the Spyglass of the Hidden Fleet and with it I broke 16k health unbuffed. In retrospect, adding a second Stamina trinket wasn't the best move. When I'm at 16k health unbuffed, there's no amount of spike damage I can't absorb unless my healers are either dead or asleep. I was in no danger of dying really, but I felt I was taking too much damage.

I missed the handy on-use of my Moroes' Lucky Pocket Watch, and having high health, but relatively low avoidance made me feel a little squishy. I ended up dumping the Spyglass and rearranging my gear for more pure avoidance.

On Sunday, I grabbed the Ring of Sundered Souls from Morogrim, and with that and a couple of Badge rewards, I was able to hit 15987 health with a 21.49% Dodge chance and a 16.72 Parry Chance, which just feels a lot healthier for tanking the big guys. Not only can I absorb a big damage spike, but I can also avoid nearly half the incoming hits.

The Karazhan Guide Pt 7 - Terestian Illhoof

As I mentioned in the Shade of Aran guide, you'll pass Illhoof's room on the way to Aran. Once you have Aran down though, your access to the upper half of Kara is much easier, therefore Aran should always be the first target.

The fight itself is designed primarily to test your DPSers and Healers. You need well-disciplined DPS to switch targets quite often. Ideally you want your DPS to prioritise in this order:

1. Sacrifice Targets - DPS should all make a macro to "/Target Demon" to target the Demon Chains whenever they appear.
2. Kri'lek - Whenever he dies, then Illhoof takes 25% more damage for 45 seconds. You'll probably need the DPS boost to finish the encounter on time.
3. Terestrian Illhoof - He has to die within 10 minutes, or he'll go Berserk and start one-shotting everything.

Handling Kri'Lek

If you've got an OT for the fight, you might want to get him to pick up Kri'lek. He doesn't hit hard and the OT can wear DPS gear whilst tanking him to decent effect. Personally, I tend to AoE tank him as well, focussing my aggro generation on him and chucking Illhoof a quick Exorcism whenever it's off cooldown.

Handling The Imps

These days I AoE tank them as well, and let the AoE classes burn them down. A warlock with Seed of Corruption is particularly valuable here. If you don't fancy that, then get either the aforementioned Warlock, a Mage or a DPS Warrior with Whirlwind to burn them down. If you've got an AoE caster in your group, it's probably worth turning on Concentration Aura to help them get a cast off. Otherwise, Fire Resistance Aura or Retribution is the way to go.

It's a fun fight, especially once you're well-geared enough to AoE Tank it. It's also very easy to tank. As long as your DPS switch targets quickly at the appropriate points and are able to sustain a decent rate of damage, then it shouldn't be a problem.

On Crowd Control in Karazhan.

Jerec asked me:

Just a general question, how do you handle the trash pulls? Do you just pull all trash to you and tank it all. For example I know there are large groups before Moroes room when you need to clear out all those spectral "guests". Do you use any crowd control for them?

I always AoE tank the non-Elite packs before Moroes. That's what they're there for. I remember on my first Kara run with Ulushnar, the Mages and Warlocks were surprised to find themselves alive after we pulled those packs.

I tend to AoE tank most of the Trash in Karazhan these days. The only exception are the Ushers before the Opera Event that catch you in an Ice Tomb. I use shackles and off-tanks there becuse there's no easy way of avoiding them. Then again, Ulu outgears Karazhan badly at this point, and I don't reccomend it to the neophyte Tankadin unless there's no other option.

Update 04-Feb-2008

Sorry I've not been updating much over the last few days. I've been ill in bed/the couch and my mind hasn't turned to completing the Karazhan guides. On the upside, I finally hunkered down and spent eight hours completing Fable: The Lost Chapter on my Xbox.

I'll be aiming to complete the guide on the last four bosses this week: Terestian Illhoof, Prince Malechazzar, Nightbane and Netherspite. I won't be covering the Chess Event because if anyone needs a "click here for free epics guide" they can stop reading this Blog.

As for Alystira's request, I don't normally like doing third-hand advice but generally speaking, if a Paladin needs mana, he's not getting hit hard/often enough, so bravo!

The Dragonhawk fight is pretty mana intensive though, as are a lot of AoE tanking situations. I'd get him to ask nicely if he can get either a Shadow Priest or a Shaman with Mana Totems in his group. I'd also reccomend downranking his Consecrate to Rank 4. It still gets the full coefficent from Spelldamage at that level, but it costs much less mana to use. If he downranks, it's a good idea to acquire and use the Libram of the Eternal Rest from the first boss of Sethekk Halls to boost your Consecrate damage, since crushability isn't an issue for add-tanking.