Are you prepared?

If there's one kind of thread that annoys me (well not exactly annoys, more disheartens me) it's the proliferation of "am I ready for ?" threads.

Maybe I've been blessed with indulgent (or tank-starved) friends in this game, but my "readiness" has never been a factor in my calculations.

My first level 70 instance with Ulushnar was tanking Warlord Kalithresh in Steamvaults at level 67. I was undergeared and succeptible to crushes from him, but dagnabbit, I went in there anyway. The week after that, I got the wind knocked out my sails when I tried Shadow Labyrinth at level 69, but I went back a few days later at 70 and totally killed him.

I was still crushable when I first entered Karazhan, and this was before the 2.3 stamina. I still had a ball and ended up outtanking the Warrior we had with us!

Any time I've had to face new content with Ulu, I've rarely asked anyone "am I ready for this?". I read the strats, dive in there, and if it all goes wrong, I then ask for advice on how I can improve.

And that's the best advice I can give anyone. Don't worry if you're ready to do something: try it and then find out. If it all goes to crap, then go and ask someone how to do better.Kalithresh

Waiting for WotLK

Every time they mention a new WotLK ability for Paladins, I get a little bit more scared. They're giving us everything we could ever want. Crushing Blows gone, Stamina as a threat stat, a ridiculous Strength to BV ratio, Lay on Hands on a 20min Cooldown, a fast mana recovery ability, Two new, on-demand single-target threat abilities and the news that most of our spells will scale with Spellpower and Attack Power.

And yesterday, they gave us a Shield Wall on a five minute cooldown.

Why am I scared? Because it's frankly too much. If we get all this, we'll overshadow Warriors as the Tanking class in WotLK. This is something that I just don't believe Blizzard will allow. It's gonna get scaled back, I can feel it in my bones. But hell, I've got hope.

Now please Blizz, hurry up and bring out WotLK. Every time I see what we will be, it makes it harder to go back and play what we are now.

I am not an Agony Uncle...

Anyone who's met me IRL or listened to me rant in Vent will know that I am not someone you need to turn to for reassurance and advice.

People asking me about ignorant guilds not giving them a chance or the idiotfest that is the pugging lifestyle are unlikely to be patiently indulged.

I have been part of the same raid group for just shy of three years now. I've gone from A.N. Other Hunter to one of the group's main tanks. I have never encountered any significant Tankadin prejudice. Our first and second Prince kills were with a Feral Druid and Ulushnar respectively tanking. Similarly, I never pug these days since if I can't get my friends interested in an instance, I'm not interested.

I am therefore not the person to come to when someone lols you out of a Pug in favor of a green-geared warrior. I am also not the person to ask if your guild's giving you grief or refusing to let you tank the big boys.

My standard advice in that situation would be:

Grow some balls. (Or y'know if you're a girl whatever works in that place. Ovaries maybe?)

The high-end raiding scene is full of the kind of social retards that make me look like the Dalaih Lama. They will take exception to any johnny-come-lately storming in and bidding on their epics. Take it on the chin, and stick to your guns if you believe you're right. That said, don't stick to your guns so much that you fail to realise when you're wrong.

Before you realise it, you'll be the jerk lording it over the new guy.

Plans for WotLK.

Well, on CD's forums, folks have started talking about plans for WotLK. I figured I'd share mine with all of you lot.

Well no surprises, mine begin with getting Ulushnar to 80. My current plan for this is to do all the lvl 70-72 quests, and then do the rest of my levelling by either running instances or solo grinding. This way I'll save the maximum amount of quests for gold at lvl 80. I think I'll stick with Engineering as one of Ulu's professions, but i'm torn between keeping enchanting or taking up mining again. Mining offers a buff to Stamina in Wrath, plus it'll make levelling Engineering much cheaper.

After that, I'll do the rounds of the level 80 instances with my friends to get geared up, and hopefully I'll be knocking on Naxx's door within two months. After that, I think I'm going to focus solely on the ten-man versions of instances. Getting a decent group together for 25-mans has proven to be a hit-and-miss affair at the casual level, but getting a solid ten-man would seem to be easier.

In between doing all that, I'll start a Death Knight once the initial surge has died down. I hate alting as a general rule, but since they start at lvl 55, the pain is somewhat mitigated.

What I probably won't be doing is levelling Wulfsblood any time soon. I'm just not a big fan of playing DPS any more, so he'll get a break until I feel the need to go back to him.

What bee's in your bonnet?

There seems to be, broadly speaking, three schools of thought where it comes to Paladin Gearing. At various points in Ulu's career, I've pursued them all.

Effective Health gearing is the most pervasive. These are the folks who will stick +Stamina gems and enchants everywhere they can. They also tend to aim for uncrushable by the cheapest method possible, so they quite often stack Block Rating, and look for extra mitigation via Block Value. For ten mans and the vast majority of 25-man bosses up to T5, this actually works great. There's rarely any bosses (save for the "big two" of Gruul and Magtheridon) that hit for more than 5k a hit and if your healers are on the ball, you're gonna be fine.

The problems with EH freaks are two-fold. First of all, there's a heavy reliance on non-spelldamage "warrior" gear. A few pieces is fine, but you need to be sure you're not threat-capping your DPS. Secondly, the lack of Avoidance means your healers are going to be constantly spamming high-rank heals to keep you up. In terms of raid set-up, you may want an extra healer to keep your massive health pool topped up, which can hurt the amount of DPS you bring to raids. Also on fights like Teron Gorefiend (or even Gruul in the later growths), it doesn't matter what your health and block value are like, 3 unavoided hits in a row will probably kill you.

Next we have Avoidance gearing. This is just taking things the other way and going for a crapload of +dodge itemization, with some parry where possible. In general Avoidance gearing is worth it for any fast-hitting mob, where over the course of the fight, you will see a decent reduction on your incoming damage.

The downside of focusing on Avoidance to the detriment of EH is that you will eventually have to take a hit. Avoidance is always just a chance to dodge/parry/be missed. Even if you somehow manage to squeeze out 70% avoidance, then sooner or later you'll get an unlucky hit streak, and you'll need to rely on your armor and health to take it. Also, and this is less of a concern, Avoidance tanks are going to find themselves the most mana-starved in farm content.

Finally we come to what is the current bee in my bonnet, Threat. CD has recently recruited a full T6 Bear tank and this has caused me to suddenly pay attention to my threat. I'm naturally a bit competitive and whilst the rational part of my brain accepts I'll never beat her, it doesn't mean I'm not going to damn-well try. So at the moment a few of my red gem slots are at home to Glowing Shadowsong Amethysts and I've recently started using my Illidari Runeshield as my main shield (it doesn't hurt that it has an enormous amount of armor to boot).

As a downside, my health's taken a bit of a nosedive to a stable 16.2k unbuffed, and I'm about 0.8% below uncrushable unbuffed (which is something I always advise against), but it seems to work fine in a raid environment. Although I'm already seeing the DPSers riding Ulu close on boss fights where we don't have many Hunters. I'm just going to have to keep pushing this envelope I guess.

So that's me, what bee's in your bonnet currently?

The (Long?) Road Out of Crushability.

Typhoonandrew wrote:

Friggin shame that 102.4% is so darn hard to get to. I've been over the 490 def point for months, but still struggling to get to the Uncrush point. And that leaves me as the OT in places that otherwise I'd love to be MT.

It really isn't with a little perseverance. You have to be willing to watch your HP drop a bit, but that's preferable to leaving you open to a crush. Remember, you only need your uncrush gear if you're main-tanking a raid boss (anything three or more levels higher than you). For heroics and offtanking, you can afford to be crushable, since the chances of you tanking a "skull" mob are low-to-non-existant.

I used to pour over this guide daily looking for items within Ulu's grasp that would get him there and I managed it within my first couple of weeks of Kara. That said, maintaining uncrushability whilst working in gear upgrades was something that would bother me for months following.

A lot of the good items are drops. I drove myself nuts grinding Steamvaults for the cloak and Arcatraz for the damned ring. I was Exalted twice over with the Cenarion Expedition and the sha'tar before they dropped. I've similarly heard horror stories about people chasing the trinket in Shattered Halls, although I was lucky on that count at least.

I also threw my undergeared ass through every Heroic I could get into to get badges together for the helm, which in terms of raw uncrushability is still only beaten by the helm from Illidan. This was back before 2.3 when there were no other decent badge rewards and Paladin HP was the lowest of any tank class.

Yep, it's a lot of work, but if you put it in, you'll get there. Or you can wait until WotLK, where they're moving crushes to mobs that are at character level +4, effectively eliminating them from raid bosses.

Not that excited about the Beta

So the Beta's been released and invites have gone out to people who were at the WWI/Blizzcon and select other folks. I've opted in to the "lottery" of Beta keys, but the more i think about it, the less bothered I am if I get in.

It'll of course be nice to play around with the new Tanking toys and see the new content. On the other hand, I remember a year and a half ago when TBC went live and me and my friends took our first steps into Hellfire Citadel. It was pretty special to experience it all fresh for the first time and I'm looking forward to that again.

Of course, saying all that, if I end up with a Beta key, I'm gonna use it. By the same token though, if I don't get one, I'm not going to be that bothered.

Ch-ch-changes.

Welp, the old interweb done exploded over the weekend with the new WotLK Paladin talents and skills.

It seems that there's going to be a major shift in Tankadin gearing. The new Touched By the Light talent means that Stamina has become a major threat stat for us. With the elimination of Crushing Blows from WotLK bosses, it seems stamina junkies will have a field day. Of course, there are some people moaning that this new ability also boosts our healing efficency.

Block Value will also become important with the new Shield of Righteousness ability. Tied into that is the news that Strength now gives Block Value at a rate of 2:1 as opposed to the current 20:1 ratio.

Stacking Strength will also apply to other abilties. There's evidence from the Beta to suggest that Seal of Righteousness and Seal of Vengeance now get extra damage from both Spellpower and Attack Power. Also, the new Protection 51-pointer Hammer of the Righteous (god dammit Blizz, come up with some original names!) is based solely off weapon damage. This means that for best results we need to stack Strength/AP and pick up the slowest, highest-DPS one-hander we can find. I can hear the tears of Fury Warriors, Combat Rogues and Enhancement Shamans.

All-in-all, these changes are geared towards standardising gear choices amongst all three plate tanking classes, including our forthcoming Death Knight brethren. Rather than have three items drop with the same item level, but statted differently for different tanking classes, we'll all be able to use broadly the same items. Should be an interesting place to be in.

The changes feel exciting to me. the downside of them is that in the process of changing our talent trees, Blizzard hasn't done much to remove the bloat from Protection. It already seems that if you're not spending at least 56 of your 71 points in Protection, you're not going to be an effective tank.

Gearing 101

Well the last post was a little rant-y. Sorry folks, annoying day on the internet.

As something of a counterpoint to the last piece, I've assembled a little FAQ over on MainTankadin concerning some of the questions neophyte Tankadins ask again and again about their gear.

Here's the finished result. As I mention in the post, the whole thing is my opinion, a slightly more verbose regurgitation of the kind of advice I give to any new Tankadin, along with links to useful information on the subject.

Is Uncrushable/Uncrittable necessary? - A Word to the Neophyte Tankadin...

Yes it bloody well is!

If you're farming the content, maybe you can afford to be a bit sloppy, but for progression stuff (and this is the stuff you're wanting gear checks for, right?) then you need to do everything you can to prevent any random burst damage.

That is always the first concern of a good tank. And you're here because you want to be a good tank, right?

I don't care if leaving you slightly below the crit cap gives you another 500 health, it won't save your ass if that 4k boss hit becomes an 8k boss crit. Passive uncrittability (that's 490 Defense for raid bosses, 485 for everyone else) is so pathetically easy to get it shouldn't even be a question.

Uncrushability can take a bit more work, but it's equally worth it. And it can be disheartening to see all those raiding tanks with 15k+ health whilst you're struggling to break 12k health. However, it's when you have 12k health and trying to tank Prince Malechazzar that you really, desperately need to make sure he doesn't drop a nasty crush on your head.

If you just wanna have a massive health pool that looks impressive when people invite you to PuGs then ignore me. No, seriously, ignore me, ignore the rest of the voices that chant "490, 102.4%" like it's a mantra designed to bring forth some horrid, world-ending god. (and who knows, maybe it is.)

You are a precious and unique snowflake and you will do things your own way. In fact, who the hell do we think we are coming on here and telling you how to be an effective tank?

No raids = no updates.

Well, it's apparently been two weeks since I updated this thing. Time flies when you're not raiding that much I guess.

Yep, CD's 25-man raiding is officially sitting in the toilet, although we're doing things to move us out of that, but the rebuilding's going to be slow. I'm not sure if it's that important anymore since Blizzard seems to be doing it's darndest to get Wrath of the Lich King out before Thanksgiving/Christmas time.

At the moment, I honestly haven't been signing into WoW much, if at all. I have no tank equipment to grind for and whilst I could put some work into gathering more Retribution gear or levelling another alt, none of those options seem to be that appealing.

I briefly considered another Raid group, possibly even another server, but I rejected those notions. It's not going to be worth it for another 4-6 months of raiding. When WotLK comes around, the fact that any raid can be a 10-man raid will help stabilise my situation more. In fact, I have the overwhelming temptation to focus soley on 10-man content in WotLK.

Instead, I've been familiarising myself with the new 4th Edition of Dungeons and Dragons for a tabletop game me and some friends will eb playing. I've also been blasting through some of my neglected Computer RPGs (currently working through Neverwinter Nights 2 and I may soon work up the energy to try the frankly frighteningly open-ended Oblivion).