Hiatus of a sort.

I haven't posted on this blog for a bit, and I don't know if I will much in the future. Simply put, Ulu hasn't raided since September and he probably won't be raiding again in the future. I've set up a new blog to follow Graysun's exploits as I master the fine art of DK DPS. If you're interested, it can be found here:

Shadows & Dust

Thanks to everyone who has read or commented on this thing over the last three years!

Sick of 'See You In The Cataclysm'

In many ways, I curse Blizzard for ever announcing the forthcoming Cataclysm expansion before Icecrown even hit the PTR. In many ways it gave people the perfect "jumping off" point. The figure raiding doesn't matter when they can see the reset button coming in less than a year.

Anyway, Smart Casual's been hit by a rash of them recently. Lots of folks getting tired and wanting to leave for a while, each saying they'll be back when the expansion comes round. In all case, I'm left in two minds. On one hand, they're friends, people I would happily choose to play with. On the other, in order to keep raiding in the here and now, I'm forced to replace them, and whilst I may not always be crazy about the folks who do replace them, it's not like I'll be able to turn around to them in six months and say "sorry, but it's time to make way for the guy you replaced."

If you're gonna quit, quit, but don't say "see ya in the next expansion" like I'm supposed to hold a door open for you.

There's "Retirement" and there's "Retirement".

I'm on a break from Ulu. I log him in once a day to do Jewelcrafting quests and to use his Titansteel cooldown. Once a week, I'll go do Wintergrasp with him to get honor which I can then turn into epic gems. I'm not exactly bored with him, but I'm kinda tired of tanking, having done it for two and a half years now, and whilst it's pretty functional, I find Ret to be fairly unfulfilling as a DPS spec.

I've taken time off from raiding to work on Graysun, my Death Knight. When last we left him, he was an alt tank for Naxx runs and the occasional heroic a guildie wanted to go to after Ulu got saved. Both his specs were Unholy, using a 2-hander and he just felt like Ulu but less in most respects.

That said, I was looking for a DPSer to have fun with, and it was either work on Graysun, or level Wulfsblood. I tried the latter for a couple of days, but I just found it too annoying. Pet management's become too much of a chore in WotLK, and going through the WotLK content for the third time didn't appeal. Besides, Gray was semi-geared, and had a tanking spec to boot, so finding PuGs would be easier.

To get him out of the "he's just like Ulu" funk, I decided to try a 0/53/18 Frost Dual Wield spec. I figured since Smart Casual didn't have any fulltime Rogues, Enhancement Shamans or DW Death Knights, someone should be around to pick up all the one-handers that dropped. And that someone might as well be Gray.

I spent the last fortnight running every heroic and Trial of the Champion I could with him in order to get his gear to a level I'd consider "acceptable". Last night I took him into Ulduar 10, and his DPS aquitted itself nicely against the other, better geared members of the guild, which was good to see. After this week, I'll be in Australia for three weeks, but hopefully after that, I'll be able to use Gray as my main raiding toon.

PuG Justice

Oh hai!

Haven't updated this thing in a while. I've been on a break from raiding since the summer well and truly burned me out. On top of that, playing a Paladin constantly for the last couple of years was starting to bore me, so I decided to focus on my Death Knight, Graysun for a bit.

More on that in another post (maybe). In the process of gearing up Gray, I've been getting my ass in every heroic PuG I can get. Some have been awesome, some have been painful, but none annoyed me as much as one I went on on Saturday night.

It was to Nexus. The group was a Feral Druid tank, a Boomkin, a Shadow Priest, Gray and a Shaman Healer. I figured it would be an easy five badges and best of all, Gray wouldn't have to tank. We kill one mob, and the Shaman leaves the party. No words, just leaves the party and hearths out. That's pretty much the end of that PuG.

The next day, one of our priests asks for a Tank to do the daily heroic. Gray's already saved, so I pull Ulu out of mothballs and everybody's chuffed to see a Tank with 34k health join the party. Then I notice the healer is the same Shaman as bailed on the group last night. I have a quick chat in guild with my Priest buddy and explain the situation. I then confront the Shaman about the pug they bailed on without a word. They're relatively unrepentant, said they had to eat and didn't have time to explain (bullshit, if you've got time to hearth, you've got time to say "sorry, I've got to go now".) I say I don't want to group with them, and we proceed to punt them from the group. Priest buddy offers to heal, but we manage to get another healer from /LFG, so no need and the rest of the run goes without a hitch, despite the Shaman whispering me every couple of minutes with apologies and asking to be allowed back into the group.

Ultimately, the ability to deliver pug justice was worth the run in and of itself. If you have to bail on a group, have the decency to explain yourself. I am a vindictive bastard and I will punish you if I can.

Block Rating, more like Suck Rating!

If there's one question doing the rounds at Maintankadin at the moment that makes me especially sad it's the perennial "Is my Block % too low?"

The answer is simply this: no, never.

I can't blame the players. A disproportionately high amount of Naxx and even Ulduar gear has this crap stat on it, especially our Tier 7 and Tier 8 sets. If you started tanking to get your guild through Ulduar in a set made from Naxx25 cast-offs, then you'd end up thinking it's a useful stat, especially when you see that several of your prot talents play off blocks.

Block Rating has, (or rather, had) a place. For Heroics and Tier 7 content, getting your Block, Parry, Dodge and miss chance to add up to 102.4% guarantees you significant damage mitigation. But really, if you're going to MT anything past Naxx, then drop the block first chance you get. Even with the increase to Block Value on items in 3.2, it's still better to avoid one hit than block two-three.

With Ulu currently, I have replaced every piece of Block Rating gear on him, except his T8 shoulders and helm, and the first chance I get, they'll be gone as well. Getting high avoidance and enough health to survive reasonable damage are always my priorities. Block Rating is something I'll take if I really have no better option.

I've handed in my notice

Greetings gentle readers, sorry for not updating recently. The summer and the normal soul-crushing grind of trying to get people willing to raid have kinda sapped my enthusiasm. Again.

Patch 3.2: The Stopgap Whilst We Work On Icecrown has been released. Demand for heroics has increased about 400% and Ulu's tanking her pretty little ass off most nights. I've also finally got over my cockblock on the Argent Tournament quests and I've been doing those daily when I can.

But all in all, I need a break from the game. Leading the guild, whilst rewarding has also been emotionally and intellectually taxing. Added to that, the care and attention in this tier of content has left me cold.

Ultimately, I've informed my guild that I'll be cancelling my subscription in September, and I've started trying to help them take steps to ensure they can continue raiding after that time.

I Hate Summer

I have massive hay fever and a propensity for wearing black, so I'm naturally ill-disposed to the few weeks of the year where the sun dares to shine on the Northern Hemisphere. In recent years, my annoyance has been compounded by the fact that it also means that people I can otherwise rely upon would rather be outside than playing.

Now before you call me a total no-life jerk, I'm not suggesting they stay shackled to their desks when the sun's blazing, but it baffles me that they're mostly unwilling to spend 3 hour a night 2-3 times a week indoors.

I'd hoped that this year, with the guild in place the situation would be mitigated, but it appears my hopes were in vain. Sign-ups are in the toilet and conservative recruitment during the busy times has lead to a deficit of raiders. We've had cancelled raids several times in the last few weeks and this is a pattern I can see continuing.

Ultimately, i don't see a way out of it. I dislike resenting people for enjoying the summer, but damn it, if you can't be where you said you'd be then why did you say it in the first place?

All in all, I've pretty much had enough of it.

Are we "done"?

So I looked at yesterday's official Paladin Q&A and I was struck by one thing: there was barely any mention of Tanking.

There was a lot about Retribution and Holy in PVP and PVE, but there was barely anything about Protection. This annoyed me a wee bit until I had a think, and I asked myself "well what needs to be done to us?"

I'll admit I could think of some nitpicks (another low-cooldown interrupt would be nice, some kind of gap-closer as well) but ultimately I think Paladin Tanks are in a good place when compared to other tanks. 3.2 gives us another "cooldown" in the reworked Ardent Defender, Blessing of Sanctuary gives Stamina so I never need to choose between it and Kings, and there's a Demoralizing Shout effect in easy reach with the reworked Vindication. Our cup runneth over.

It's a weird feeling to have nothing really to moan about. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Faction-Switching coming soon!

Well on the back of Ulu's adventures in Character Re-Customization, I awoke and read this Blue post this morning:

We wanted to give everyone a very early heads-up that, in response to player requests, we’re developing a new service for World of Warcraft that will allow players to change their faction from Alliance to Horde or Horde to Alliance. There’s still much work to do and many details to iron out, but the basic idea is that players will be able to use the service to transform an existing character into a roughly equivalent character of the opposing faction on the same realm. Players who ended up creating and leveling up characters on the opposite factions from their friends have been asking for this type of functionality for some time, and we’re pleased to be getting closer to being able to deliver it.

As with all of the features and services we offer, we intend to incorporate the faction-change service in a way that won’t disrupt the gameplay experience on the realms, and there will be some rules involved with when and how the service can be used. The number of variables involved increases the complexity of implementing this service, but we plan to take the time needed to ensure that it lives up to expectations before officially rolling it out. We’ll go into much more detail on all of this here at http://www.WorldofWarcraft.com as development progresses. In the meantime, we wanted to let you know that because this type of functionality requires extensive internal testing well in advance of release, you may be seeing bits and pieces of the service in the test builds we use for the public test realms moving forward.

Up until now you've only been able to change non-gameplay-affecting elements of your character. You can change your character's hair style and coloring in-game, or change elements like your gender, name and even server via account management for a modest fee.

The prospect of changing your faction throws up all sorts of interesting questions. Will your race change as well? (If so, will this lead to people being able to alter their race whilst remaining in the same faction?) Will the option be limited based on the current faction balance of the server you're on? How does this affect people on a PVP server where you're limited to toons of one faction or another?

It's a weird one all right...

Smart Casual Recruiting

I don't normally like doing this, but I figure I'll throw this out there and see if it attracts anyone:

Well Summer's upon us, and like a lot of guilds, we're sufferring from people losing interest or going on holiday. Since we're currently working on Yogg-Saron in 10-man, we need bodies to keep up momentum.

1 Tank (We currently have a Warrior, Paladin and DK MT team and a Boomkin who offspecs Feral, so we'll consider most decent tanks).
1-2 Melee DPS with short-CD interrupts (Yep, we're thinking about General here.)
1 Holy Priest (Our healing team's relatively well-stocked, but it lacks a full-time dress-wearer)

We may also consider 1-2 ranged dps with good gear.

What we expect:

*Gear ready to start Ulduar 10. You should ideally be in at least full Naxx10/Heroics gear as a minimum. DPS should be hit-capped, Tanks should be uncrittable with about 28k health minimum. All gear should be enchanted and gemmed to a decent standard. Decent offspec gear is a bonus.

*A decent standard of written English. We understand that for a lot of people in the EU, English isn't your first language, but that's no excuse to use txt/l337 speak!

*Attendance: We run three progression raids per week from 19:30 to 22:30 server time, invites go out at 19:15. You should ideally be signing for at least two of those raids.

*Guild Membership: We ask that any raiding toons you have join the guild. You're welcome to keep any alts in whichever guild you want.

What we offer:

A fun, friendly atmosphere to raid ten-man content. I know the requirements above sound strict, but to keep the group effective with our casual hours, we need everyone giving 110%.

If you're interested in applying, please head over here and read the "Read this first" thread.

I Feel Pretty

The time came for a change...

Before:



After:

Patch 3.2: Enter the Casual Colloseum.

MMO champion has the full 3.2 patch notes here. There's some sexytime changes for Paladin Tanks, but I'll go over them in another post, there's something I wanna talk about first:

# Emblem System Changes

* Both the 10 and 25 player instances of the Crusaders' Coliseum drop a new Emblem of Triumph.
* Any dungeons that previously dropped Emblems of Heroism or Valor, such as Naxxramas or Heroic Halls of Stone, will now drop Emblems of Conquest instead. Emblems of Conquest can still be converted to Valor or Heroism.
* The heroic dungeon daily quest will now reward 2 Emblems of Triumph and the normal daily dungeon quest will reward 1 Emblem of Triumph.
* The existing achievements to collect 1, 25, 50, etc. Emblems of Heroism, Valor, and Conquest have been converted to Feats of Strength since Heroism and Valor Emblems are no longer attainable.
* New achievements have been added to collect various amounts of any combination of emblems.

I'm deeply conflicted about the change. As a GM, I'm glad that raid-level gear will be easier to get for new members or alts. As someone who raids 2-4 nights a week, I'm glad I can do something meaningful to improve my character on my nights off, and as a raider, I'll be happy to never see the inside of Naxxramas again!

On the other hand though, I hope they don't take the change too far. I kind of liked the fact that you weren't able to get cutting edge gear out of casual content like you could in The Burning Crusade.

Eh, i'll have to see how this change unfolds before I make judgement.

Summertime: The Coming of the Alts

What's there to say on this thing?

Ulduar's going... ok. We've managed to clear to Yogg-Saron fairly seamlessly and we've also got phase 1 of the fight underway, but it still feels like a long while until we'll be killing him. Summertime's started to interfere with our plans though, and it's something I'll be keeping my eye on in the weeks to come.

Now that Ulu's pretty much got everything he needs from PVP grinding, I need a project in-game. To that end, I've created Walstafa, a Human Rogue to keep me amused in between raids. I've really been bitten by the Melee bug, and Rogues are one class that never fails to annoy me in PVP, so I'd like to understand them better.

I'm enjoying him thusfar, but I'd forgotten how annoying Elwynn Forest and Westfall were to level in. I should really drag Ulu around some PuG heroics to get enough emblems for the nice heirloom items.

The Grind Is Over... The Fun Begins!

Quick Warning: This post is mostly* about PVP again.

Well last night Ulushnar and Ebil knuckled down to do some serious Arena grinding. Figuring we weren't going to get better at playing together unless we practised, we used an evening off raiding to play 93 games over about four hours. That's more games than Ulu has played all season.

A two-DPS team in 2V2 can have a fairly "challenging" time, especially when you break the 1000 rating barrier. We lost the occasional match through mistakes (my years as a Paladin tank haven't taught me much respect for sheeps), and occasionally through being plain outclassed (a full Furious 2k+ rated DPSer helping out his healer mate).

That said, we ended up winning more than we lost, and finally inched our Team & Personal ratings over the all-important 1250 needed to get Ulu's Deadly Gladiator's Libram of Fortitude. That was originally my reason for starting Arenas with Ulushnar, since it's pretty much Best-In-Slot for Retribution. that said, I've really enjoyed the games and I fully intend continuing the 2v2 for as long as Ebil can stomach it.

*Ok, so I lied about the "mostly" part

Bye, Bye Vindication!

Well last night Ulu and his Mage cohort, Ebil played some Arenas, about 29 all things told, with our normal 40% win rate. Still, we're having fun and slowly getting to useful ratings (over 1k team rating thanks to the assistance of my higher-rated Ret Buddy, just under 1k personal rating).

Ironsoul really helps Ulu's burst damage and I think I've found a good mix of Resilience and DPS gear so that I can survive a decent amount of focussed fire and put out a solid amount of hurt.


And then this morning, I woke up to find they were nerfing Vindication:

We are in the process of completing a hotfix that could go live as early as this afternoon that will make the Paladin talent Vindication no longer reduce Intelligence or Stamina from the target it is applied to. The talent will continue to reduce Agility, Spirit, and Strength as it currently does. We felt this change will help balance the ability out, especially in the lower arena brackets where they are very prominent, while not being a negative impact on a Retribution Paladin’s PvE dps.

Once this hotfix is live, the tooltip will be incorrect until we can update it in the next content patch.

Why with Ret is it always a hotfix for any other class it's ok to let them dominate an entire arena season?
Increasingly it felt like someone playing against a Ret-Pally really only had 60% of their health bar because Vindication took away 20% from the start and then Hammer of Wrath kicked in when they had 20% left. This change was something we could confidently hotfix and would have a minimal to no impact on the PvE side of things.

Thanks Blizz, along with Eye for an Eye, that's 5 points I can move from PVP talents into PVE ones. *sigh*

Now I appreciate their logic, I can even appreciate why they felt it was "safe" to hotfix now, since it will have a negligable impact on Ret PVE performance, but this is the latest in a long line of nerfs of Retribution Paladins since 3.1. Exorcism, Eye For An Eye, Hand of Freedom and now Vindication and Hammer of Justice (yep, the interrupt part won't work on players who acquire stun immunity via Diminishing Returns).

Now, We've got the carrot of promised changes to the Paladin combat system in "the next content patch" (I'm willing to bet that gets shifted to 3.3 rather than 3.2), but right now the constant niggling nerfing of us feels like a death by a thousand cuts. Of course the Schadenfreude of members of other, as-yet-unnerfed classes doesn't help (I'm looking at you Rogues, Discipline Priests and Resto Druids).

Our burst damage is ok, but nothing to write home about (I'll never call out the silly 9k crits of my Mage partner). We have two stuns, one on a talented 40 sec CD and one on a 6 sec CD. Ok we can use Seal of Justice, but that just seems to be a fast ticket to diminishing returns.

More and more in arenas I feel like I'm just there to keep my Mage partner alive whilst he does the killing. If that's the case, I might as well go Holy.

Still alive!

Oh hai, haven't updated this for a bit! Here's a brief summary of what's been going on in Spacegoatland:

*The week after the Mimiron kill we managed our first General Vezax kill and got a look at the Yogg-Saron fight. Didn't get through Phase One due to people not dodging clouds correctly.

*The week after that, Ulu's Ret set got a boost in the form of Ironsoul. Mimiron proceeded to be an asshole and it took about 5-6 hours spread over three raids to finally down him. No General kill this week. Still, he gave Ulu a nifty hat, which also gave him a 2-piece bonus.

*After the adjustments in 3.1.3 this week, Mimiron went down first try last night. Presently only Freya stands between us and the General. Hopefully we'll get some decent attempts on Yogg again this week!

A Kick in the Jewels...

First up, they announced at the weekend that they'd be nerfing Jewelcrafting:

In the next major content patch we will be removing the prismatic quality of the jewelcrafter-only Dragon’s Eye gems. Like other gems, they will have to match the socket color to receive a socket bonus. When this change occurs, players with qualifying jewelcrafting skill will be provided a yet to be determined amount of Dalaran Jewelecrafter Tokens as compensation.

[...] Nerfs are rarely (if ever) something that returns positive feedback, but we feel this change is necessary to bring this profession more in-line with the bonuses from the other professions. The stat bonuses are meant to stand on their own, not provide extra socket bonuses or ignore meta-gem requirements.

It now goes from being an overpowered profession to a merely useful one. A nice offset to this change would be the introduction of mixed-color Dragon's Eyes (ie: green, purple and orange), but I'm not about to hold my breath over that one!

In response to Galo's remarks on my last post:

Could be a idea maybe Macroing it to target target cast and putting a line of text in the macro that yells out that said spell is casted on tank so the raid is aware for obvious reasons of the spell. That may be a idea.

I know I redid most of my macro's for Divine Protection, DS/DS I have a line of text in the macro that yells out it's casted so the raid and especially the healer is aware spell is casted in case tank really needs extra attention. May have to do that with LoH as well.

I already have a line my Divine Protection/Divine Sacrifice macro warning my healers in /rw that I'm using DS so they can adjust healing appropriately. I've also macro'd Hand of Salvation with a /rw warning to the DPS, although I usualyl find I have an exceptionally healthy threat lead early in the fight.

I don't bother with Target's Target on my HoS macro, but that might be an idea to get double use out of it...

In other news, I stepped into Arenas again on Friday with the Frost Mage who also hangs out in my 2v2 team. We spent the first six games getting our asses handed to us before we clawed back wins in the last three. It's inspired me to make some changes to my Retribution Spec to make it more PVP friendly (there's no point in having a raid-optimized Ret spec when I PVP in maybe one fight a week.) In the end, I went for this: 0/20/51

What I lost:

Improved Blessing of Might: It's nice, but not mandatory for Arenas
Swift Retribution: The haste is good for sustained DPS, but not big for burst
Righteous Vengeance: Great for sustained DPS, but again, not a big burst talent.
Divinty: 5% extra heals is covered by one of my other choices below.
Divine Sacrifice/Divine Guardian: I'll miss my 1-minute Sacred Shields, but I wanted to try some other toys.
1/3 Two-Handed Weapon Spec: I needed to trim points somewhere, and Crusade gives better bang for the buck.

What I gained:

Vindication: I figured I'd experiment with this talent. Debuffing someone's Stamina can mean them dying more quickly.
Eye For An Eye: A quintessential PVP talent, and it should be nice vs the low-end folks in high-crit PVE gear.
Divine Purpose: Turns Hand of Freedom into a "mini-PVP Trinket" on a short cooldown.
Stocism: Less Stun time makes me a happy fellow.
Guardian's Favor: Boosts Hand of Protection and Hand of Freedom, your go-to buttons in Arena.
Improved Hammer of Justice: More Stuns = More Happy Times!
Improved Righteous Fury: An extra 6% damage reduction's pretty much a no-brainer.
Improved Devotion Aura: This is the only talent I'm not 100% sure of. The healing boost makes up for the lack of Divinity, and the extra mitigation might help when we're against a tough physical DPS team. It also means if Ulu does go ret for a boss fight whilst raiding, he can still give the healing bonus.

Gearing towards the future.

Well, as of last night's activity (a guild run to VoA10 and an OS25 semi-pug) Ulu sits about four Emblem of Valor away from his final tanking purchase: Kyzoc's Ground Stompers. I'll get those tonight in Ulduar, and after that, I'm planning to get some more Retribution toys. First up will be the Libram of Radiance. I've pretty much given up on getting the Deadly Gladiator's Libram of Fortitude due to scheduling issues with my 2v2 arena partner.

Been playing around a bit with Chardev to see how Ulu would sit once he has all the tanking drops he wants from Ulduar 10 normal mode. This seems to be the ideal setup, but wether or not he'll get there any time soon is another matter. (Thusfar in Ulduar, after five weeks of clearing bosses we've had precisely one Conqueror tier token drop!) I wish Blizz would let you buy the 10-man T8 with Emblems of Valor, it'd take some of the pain out of the RNG, and equipping around 17 people on five tier tokens a week!

I'm also considering replacing Ulu's Glyph of Exorcism with a Glyph of Salvation to give Ulu another minor "oh crap" button for Ulduar. To be honest, threat hasn't been an issue to date, and working Exorcism into my normal tanking rotation has been more effort than the reward merited.

Mimiron down!

So last night, on our fourth night of training, we downed Mimiron.



I think it ranks as the most complicated normal-mode fight in Ulduar 10, and it's going to take a long time for us to get it completely under control. That said, the presence of both a Restoration Shaman and a Holy Priest on healing made life much easier given the large amount of raid/aoe damage doing the rounds.

We finished the night with a couple of goes on General Vezax. He looks relatively straightforward once you learn the gimmicks, so I reckon we'll end up killing him this week.

I'm really pleased with Ulduar thusfar. Progress has been steady without being frustrating. I can't wait to down Yogg-Saron so we can start work on the Hard Mode encounters.

People Who Aren't You Have Won The Game!

Sorry folks, been only holiday last week celebrating my 32nd Birthday. Back in the saddle now with some venom

So last night, I took part in a joint Naxx-25 run with a friendly guild (Smart Casual members ended up hoovering most of the loot, including two pieces of Tier 7.5 for yours truly.)

As we were finishing up, our new Hunter mentions in /guild his dissapointment that Ensidia (the guild formerly known as Nihilum/Curse) downed the 10-man version of Alganon The Observer this week, five weeks after Ulduar's launch on the live server.

In response, I've been quick to point the following out:

1. They're pro gamers. Beating content quickly is what they do.
2. They were taking on a boss that was designed for people who have cleared Ulduar 10 including some hard modes.
3. They've been clearing Ulduar 10 and 25-man since launch, including hard modes in both. They're geared beyond the stress level for the encounter.
4. They're not us.

And that last point is the thing that bugs me the most. People have been jumping up and down about Ulduar's difficulty not being all that high. Moaning about how groups like Ensidia et al cleared it in their first week. And most of the people who were moaning weren't actually in the guilds doing the clearing!

From the point of view of someone who was actually wearing 10-man gear for that first week, it certainly didn't feel easy. A lot of the bosses came down to the knife's edge and some unlikely raid compositions (a shadow priest switching to holy to give us four healers on Ignis for example). By the second and third weeks, they'd actually managed to tune it down a bit to the level it was supposed to be: challenging for a group in Naxx10 gear.

Ultimately I don't care who's beaten the content before me, I just care about when I get my turn! I'm on a backwater RP-PVE server and so far from the cutting edge it isn't funny. The upside is I can relax, let someone else worry about world firsts and just concentrate on having fun. That's why we play this game, right?

30k Health woo-hoo!

Ulushnar hit 30k unbuffed health last night.

OK, so I'll admit I hate tanks who go on about their hit points like it's the only thing that matters. Still, it's nice to get there under my own standards.

* I only have one Stamina trinket equipped.
* With the exception of his Tier 7.5 gloves and Naxx25 ring, all his gear is from 10-mans.
* He has the minimum Defense needed to be uncrittable to raid bosses.
* He's block capped with raid buffs.
* His avoidance doesn't totally suck ass (just under 52% unbuffed).
* He doesn't have any Tier 8 yet, and maintains his T7 4-piece bonus.
* All enchants/gems are best-in-slot. No +sta armor kits on the gloves.

Utterly crushed six bosses in Ulduar 10 last night. Left a few farm bosses for the follow-up raids and a bunch of training time on Freya and Mimiron, our current targets.

Prot... PVP?

So last night, I started doing 2v2 Arena with a Ret Paladin friend of mine. I'll never be a hardcore PVPer, but the Hateful Gladiator's Libram of Fortitude is the best Ret Libram Ulu will see this side of spending Emblems of Valor, so it's worth a few weeks of humiliation.

So we started, and as two melee DPS without any sort of healer-killers, we got our asses handed to us. After a few games, I had an idea. I switched Ulu back to Protection Spec, equipped my Block Value gear and swapped in my PVP trinket. The upshot was, we started surviving. I could do some burst, but most importantly, I could survive any meleer who decided to unload on me whilst throwing cleanses and heals to my Ret buddy.

We still lost a few games, but we also pulled some wins out of our hats as a result of the switch. I'm going to have to try a few more next week, but I found Arenas as Prot surprisingly fun. In DPS vs Healer games, the DPSer usually spent too long trying to kill me whilst my buddy killed the healer. In two DPS games, we could outlast some of our competition. Our tactics are kinda rough, but I've been thinking about doing more with it.

It's even had me considering switching my Ret spec for a PVP-oriented Prot Spec, but I think the versatility of being able to switch from Tank to Healer is too nice for raiding right now.

The Dark Side of the Tank

Initially I was going to write a post about Smart Casual's progress in the second week in Ulduar. We downed a further new boss each night, adding Kologarn, Aurianya, and Hodir to our list of kills. I've really enjoyed the fights, it's amazing watching the chaotic early attempts give way to a smooth(ish) takedown.

But instead, I'm going to switch tack and talk about Death Knights. Yep, with Dual Specialization, I decided to give Graysun a tank spec again and see where that led. As it turns out, it led to a Naxxramas raid for Smart Casual's alts.

Currently he's specced 53/8/10 for Blood-Tanking funsies. I've always had a weak spot for Blood Spec, with it's combination of Ret Paladin damage tropes and vampiric healing. And it's great for many things, Gray's base health is awesome, and his single target threat is pretty solid. However, it's kinda let down in the AoE faceroll department. I have to blow about 5-6 global cooldowns to get solid AoE threat. And if you try asking an alt DPSer to wait that long, you might as well ask a Crocodile to help you translate Urdu.

So I'm regrettably I'm considering a switch to something slightly more Unholy, like 10/8/53 to get the best AoE threat abilities. Blood will have to wait until the day Graysun steps into Ulduar. (hey, it could happen!)

3.1.1 and Other quick updates

So we had a mini-patch on Wednesday, dropping some nerfs to the Ulduar bosses and a PVP nerf to Paladins (Exorcism can no longer target other players). I get why they did it, but losing one of Ret's few ranged PVP moves kinda sucks. They're promising to reverse it when they have a chance to make Ret DPS more "interesting". Given they've be wrestling that one since Classic, I'm not holding my breath.

I am looking forward to the nerfed Ulduar bosses though. It's not that I don't like a challenge, it's just that I think the 10-man was tested by people in 25-man gear for the most part (given how easy Naxx25 was to pug). It was definately doable, but the margin for error felt a little tight. I'm hoping the balance is now a little more towards the "fun" side of the spectrum.

Ah well, we're back in tonight, let's see how it goes.

3.1 - Ulduar and one week in...

Well my original intention was to do a big post detailing the boss kills we've done in Ulduar 10 since it was launched last week, but a punishing raid schedule, a busy work week and a newly-blooming social life have pretty much confounded me. Suffice to say:

* Smart Casual have now downed five bosses in their first week in Ulduar: Flame Leviathan, Razorscale, XT-001 Deconstructor, Ignis the Furnace Master and the Iron Council. The fights are relatively complicated and fun for 10-man fights, reminding me a lot of the Zul'Aman fights. They're tuned to be pretty challenging for a group which is only wearing 10-man drops.

* I also love the new Wintergrasp boss, Emalon the Storm-Watcher. It's a real test of skill, especially for the typically melee-heavy PVP pugs who are used to doing it. I'm glad I do it in guild groups for the most part.

* Retribution Paladins are up there with Death Knights as the most common DPSers in PuG raids and Wintergrasp. Much as I love my Ret offspec, I feel like a fecking sheep! It's almost enough to drive me to Holy!

* Add the new 2-min cooldown Divine Protection to the "Things I like about 3.1" list. It's the mutt's nuts, and it synergises nicely with Divine Sacrifice. I'm going to chain the two together in a macro for those times where the raid damage is more dangerous than the boss damage.

Things I like about 3.1 so far...

Well we europeans got 3.1 last night and although I didn't do any raiding, I got to play with the new mechanics. These are the things I love so far:

* Dual-Speccing: I am addicted to this feature. Having the ability to switch between Retribution and Protection with a 5-second cast is seriously fun. I've always liked Retribution, but having carved Ulushnar a niche as a decent Tank, I was unwilling to ever give that up. Now I no longer have to worry about it, and I'm actually considering some casual PVP as Ret with a friend. In fact I suspect armory lurkers will probably see Ulushnar in his Ret gear as much as his Prot gear.

* The new Guarded By The Light: I'd read about it, but some part of me refused to believe it. A 100% chance to refresh Divine Plea just by hitting someone?!! It sounded like madness but I now have the evidence of mine eyes. This is the kind of skill I've been wanting since Chaotic Divinity's Gruul days. I can finally keep up a solid threat rotation as an off-tank without going out of mana.

* Sacred Shield/the new Divine Guardian: Ok, so Sacred Shield got nerfed to one target per Paladin. But it was also made useful to Retribution and Protection Paladins with two sneaky buffs. The first was the fact that it now benefitted from the spellpower given by Sheath of Light and Touched by the Light. Wether this was a concious change or a bug fix I don't know but it was overdue. The second was the Divine Guardian talent, which now forms a staple of both my Protection and Retribution specs. It increases the duration and effectiveness of Sacred Shield. Of course it also makes it another button I have to press in my crowded rotations, but I can probably spare the Global Cooldown once a minute.

Tonight, we're going to Ulduar, let's see how that works out.

On timing...

So Blizzard release 3.1 and suddenly I go from scraping eight people together for Naxx to having 13-15 signs for each day. If I wasn't already a withered, bitter lump of Scottishness I'd go on a rant against human nature. Instead I'll complain about how this patch hits just after the beginning of the financial year, so I'm pretty busy at work, and spending all my spare time doing Guild admin for my freshly-interested guildies.

Further to my last post, I've revised my planned Protection spec to a slightly more cookie-cutterish 0/53/18 after being convinced of Crusade and Conviction's superiority over Seals of the Pure. I'm not getting rid of Pursuit of Justice though.

3.1 Preparations

Well, 3.1's been confirmed as incoming this week, and we'll finally be able to see if it was worth the wait.

Of course, along with Ulduar, the big change in 3.1 is the introduction of Dual specs, the ability to store and switch between two separate specs, with their own action bars and glyphs. With this in mind, here's my thoughts on how Ulu will be speccing come 3.1:

Tank Spec: 0/53/18

I really like Pursuit of Justice, and I've missed it since I specced out of it. Yes, I could get a run speed enchant, but it's just not the same thing!

Major Glyphs

Glyph of Righteous Defense -> Glyph of Divine Plea Righteous Defense barely gets used since Ulu got Hand of Reckoning, so it seems a good place to swap in the new hotness.
Glyph of Judgement -> Glyph of Exorcism If you use Exorcism ever second cooldown, then this glyph wins over the Glyph of Judgement. It's also nice for more burst at the pull.
Glyph of Seal of Vengeance -> Glyph of Seal of Vengeance Still absurdly overbudget and I'll probably use it until I end up with a prohibitive amount of Expertise from gear.

DPS Spec: 0/17/54

I know some folks are going into Holy for Aura Mastery, but the extra healing from Divinity will be nice with Divine Storm, JoL and Art of War. Plus I'm tempted by seeing how Divine Sacrifice can help out in a splash damage-heavy fight, and Divine Guardian will be nice now that Sacred Shield is single target-only.

Major Glyphs

Glyph of Seal of Blood - Now that Rets don't have Spiritual Attunement, it's going to be important to get some mana back.
Glyph of Exorcism - More damage is always good.
Glyph of Judgement - See above.

Minor Glyphs (both specs): I don't see these changing, given that the selection of Paladin minor glyphs are less than inspiring.

Glyph of Blessing of Might
Glyph of Lay on Hands
Glyph of Sense Undead

Frequently Uttered Questions - United. (or F.U.Q-U)

1. What do you say if someone asks you if you're a good tank?

I tell them how many HP, duh!

2. What do you say if someone asks you how many HP you have?

I tell them to shut up because they know nothing about tanks and I wouldn't tank for them if they were the last pug on earth.

3. Aren't points 1 & 2 contradictory?

Yes. What's your point?

4. Ohhhh-kay, moving on, what should I be stacking, stat-wise?

In order:

a) Defense: Always have at least the minimum Defense needed (535 for 5-mans, 540 for raids). This is non-negotiable, even if you have to give up 5k health to get it. That wasn't 5k health you had, it was 5k health you borrowed from the Healer's mana pool. If you can, get more, but I'll cover this in point c).

b) Effective Health: Enough Stamina and Armor to survive a reasonable amount of burst damage from whichever boss is the instance's real meat-grinder. In practical terms, I find 21k health is fine for 5-man heroics and you'll be in easy street in raids with 24k+.

c) Avoidance: Now that you have enough EH to survive a few hits without a heal, it's a good idea to make those hits less frequent. Get what you can in Dodge, Parry and Defense rating. A mod like Tankadin will keep you right on how your total avoidance is shaping up.

d) Primary Threat Stats: Strength and Block Value. All of your damage-causing abilities scale off strength in some way, either via Attack Power, Shield Block Value or Weapon DPS. Block Value also increases your mitigation versus melee attacks significantly, especially if you're Block Capped (see below).

e) Secondary Threat stats: Hit and Expertise. I've ranked these bottom of the pile. Whilst they are nice to have, they aren't as critical to us as they are to our Warrior brethren. A missed attack doesn't dent our TPS that much, and between Combat Expertise and the Seal of Vengeance glyph, we have 16 Expertise without gear.

5. What's "Block Capped" then?

If your Dodge, Parry, Block and Miss chance add up to 102.4% with Holy Shield then you're considered "Block Capped", which means that all hits that aren't avoided by you will be blocked. Tankadins are currently the only tank that can do this, and it's apparently an assumed part of our mitigation when Blizz are tuning the various tanking classes.

In practical terms, it's difficult to get before you have Naxxramas10 gear, but it's a good goal to aim for. Again, the Tankadin Mod will keep you right on how close to the Block Cap you're getting.

6. What's the point of getting the minimum defense, or block capping? My healers are awesome enough to heal me through an occasional crit.

Tanking has two basic subroles: a) generate enough threat to let your DPS go apeshit, and b) remove all unecessary damage. If you get crit when you could have geared to avoid it, or take a hit when you could have geared to block it, then you are failing role b).

Best example I can give from my own experience is at Malygos 10. Maly hits Ulu in the 8-9k range before blocks. He also periodically uses an Arcane Breath for 14-15k with a follow-up explosion for a further 6k. That's the worst burst he can do in a 3 second period, and it comes to 13k DPS. If you block both those melee hits for 1.5k, then you've just shaved 1k off his DPS. If one of those Melee hits crits though, then his DPS over that 3 second burst becomes 16k, and you've suddenly become a lot harder to heal.

7. What weapon is best for me?

The highest DPS one-hander you can wield is always the best, regardless of speed. If you have the choice of a few with the same DPS, then pick the one that gives you the best stats.


8. Should I gear differently for certain fights, trash, etc?

Up to you. Personally, I don't get the point of putting on a different gear set for trash. It's fecking trash! It's only purpose is to eke out the 6-10 boss fights in an evening to a reasonable length of time and to punish you mercilessly if you wipe too many times. If you're wiping to trash out of anything other than carelessness you're either undergeared or Doing It Wrong.

However, if you do feel like you need to tune your gear for different bosses then ask yourself one question: What's my problem?

a) I'm dying to massive burst damage.

If your healers are alive, then the chances are you need more Effective Health. Load up on Stamina, Armor and Block Value (if you're block-capped or close to block-capped)

b) My healers run out of mana/complain I'm too hard to heal.

Sounds like you could use a bit more avoidance in your gear. You could also make sure your healers aren't too undergeared and if possible, try and get someone with Replenishment in your raid. Ultimately though, those factors will usually be out of your hands, whilst the ability to put on more avoidance gear is definately within them.

c) The boss hit his enrage timer.

First of all, was your DPS doing their job? 10-man/heroic DPS should be able to put out an average of 2k DPS each, with better geared people doing much more.

If they were all doing this, but were complaining that you were threat-capping them, then it might be an idea to look into more threat stats.

9. Why don't you mention 25-mans much?

Because I honestly don't have much experience with them. I run a 10-man guild, and although we occasionally take a run at the easier 25-man bosses with around 15 people, I have no desire to put myself back into the insanity which is the "casual" 25-man raid group.

10. Is it just me or...

It's just you. Shut up!

11. You're mean!

And you're and idiot, but after 10 minutes with your mum, I'll be significantly less mean. You'll still be stupid.

Hi, I'm Space Goat!

Well here it is, the much-threatened rebranding.

Drawing on one of the greatest television shows ever as inspiration for the name at least felt right. The content will unfortunately be the same rambling about tanking as a Paladin and running a small guild that I've maintained up until now. I'll try to make it entertaining, but I can promise it'll be self-involved at least!

Well what's there to say? Big changes in the Prot field promised in 3.1.

Divine Guardian is going the way of the Do-do, and it looks like we're getting something similar, Divine Sacrifice as an 11 point talent. The big difference is it isn't tied to Divine Shield so it'll allow us to use this ability whilst keeping aggro.

Why would we want a talent that makes us more damage? Well say you've got a fight where the boss damage is relatively insignificant, but the raid damage adds up (Loatheb springs to mind) then it's a way to absorb some of the damage. Another example would be a boss where you only tank him for part of the fight, like Hydross in SSC.

It's certainly going to give us some unique utility in 3.1, but I don't think (as the Chicken Little brigade may claim) that it's going to make us into off-tanks.

I'm also interested in the new Glyph of Divine Plea that offers 3% damage reduction when DP is up. I wonder if that, combined with the new Guarded By The Light (50/100% chance to refresh DP's duration when you hit a target) is intended to replace Blessing of Sanctuary. It feels a little clunky, but it could be what's on the dev's mind, which concerns me.

Enter Alter Ego!

Imagine a conversation between my plate-clad alter-egos; Ulushnar, a T7-clad Tankadin and Graysun, a freshly-80 Deathnub.

Ulushnar: So Gray, how's tanking working out for you?
Graysun: Not so great as it happens.
Ulushnar: How so?
Graysun: I'm not finding a lot of love in pick-up groups and whenever I try to tank for guildies, well frankly they wish I was you.
Ulushnar: That's fair, I am pretty awesome after all, but honestly, why should it matter in Naxxramas?
Graysun: Y'see, I think that's part of the problem. To the minds of the DPS, it's "just Naxx" so they throw caution to the wind, and splat, we're suddently 8-manning Patchwerk.
Ulushnar: So you were Hateful Strike tanking? I've never done that either and I' probably have f**ked it up as well.
Graysun: Possibly, but burst threat ain't my thing like yours. You might have given the Rogue and Fury Warrior some room to wiggle before they became raspberry jam.
Ulushnar: So that's it, one fight and you're calling it quits?
Graysun: Nah, whilst I accept I'm not an amazingly-geared tank I'm also fairly new on the learning curve Death Knight-wise. They accepted that with Halendir when he started because by the time he was coming into his own, you and Bele were getting bored with heroics, but by now they're purpled-out "pros" and don't like being threat-capped. It's like you always say...
Ulushnar: Gnome girls reach the spots others miss?
Graysun: No, well yes, that too; but what I meant was you've always said "the most important thing for a tank is confidence". I don't have that yet.
Ulushnar: Fair enough, so what now?
Graysun: Well I'm going back to DPS, but probably not Blood. If there's one good thing I picked up from the spec that Halendir gave to me, it's that Unholy's buckets o' fun.
Ulushnar: So you're becoming a Platelock then?
Graysun: Yep, I guess. I specced that way last night. It's pretty sweet, especially with the 2pc Tier 7 I picked up on Sunday. Did a couple of Pugs last night. Occulus was suprisingly decent, we managed to one-shot everything. After that I did Nexus with another group and I had to keep checking I wasn't in Frost Presence, the tank just couldn't keep the mobs off me. The AoE's pretty sick.

Rebranding

Well the old Wulfsblood.net domain finally expired on me. I'll be sorting out a new one in a few days, to reflect the point that I really haven't done much huntering in the last year or so. In the meantime, feel free to point your links at:

http://ulushnar.blogspot.com

Until I can find something better.

I really haven't updated this thing in about three weeks now, so apologies. In the interim, I finally got off my arse and got Graysun, my Death Knight, to 80. Originally I wanted to make him a DPS/PVP character, but the sad realities of getting pugs has forced me to spec him as a tank. I took the advice of our DK tank and specced him Unholy, although now that I've played with him a while, I'm starting to get a better idea of what's required.

I will say though that DPSing/Tanking as a Death Knight has given me a new appreciation of how much easier we have it. The lack of reliable frontloaded aggro is a massive pain when pugging in particular. When I went back to playing Ulu, I almost laughed at how easy it was.

Speaking of Ulu, I've hadd occasion to experiment with him as Retribution in Naxx10-level gear and I really liked the results! I cannot wait for dual speccing in 3.1! Also, Ulu finally got his 4th piece of T7 on Friday past. He now has everything except the crappy helm. I'm looking forward to trying my bubble wall out on something big and nasty before much longer.

3.1 Changes announced.

Ok, so some of the proposed changes to the Paladin class in 3.1 have been announced. It's a weird mixed bag:

* Blessing of Kings – this spell is now a base ability trainable by all paladins.

I'd like to say: Finally! But I'm curious about what our new tier 1 5-pointer will be.

* Exorcism – this spell now causes damage to all types of enemy targets. However, it always critical strikes undead or demon targets. This change should make sure paladin damage doesn’t drop when going from Naxxramas to later tiers of content.

Another awesome change! Giving Paladins another ranged, on-demand damage ability is great. Combine it with the Glyph and we have another interrupt with a 15-sec cooldown. I'm curious about it's use in PVE though, and how one would go weaving it into the normal 969 rotation.

* Shield of the Templar now causes your Avenger’s Shield and Shield of the Righteousness to silence targets for 3 sec. The old damage bonus of this talent has been folded into Holy Shield, Avenger’s Shield, and Shield of the Righteousness.

The change to Avenger's Shield is awesome, it's something we've been begging for since the WotLK beta opened. The change to Shield of Righteousness is beyond awesome, so I'm not sure if it'll stay.

* Ardent Defender, Improved Hammer of Justice, One-Handed Weapon Specialization and more have had their ranks reduced.

This, plus Baselining BoK removes a lot of the bloat from the Protection Tree. It might actually be possible to get all the "necessary" talents for 51 points now.

* Guarded by the Light – no longer reduces the mana cost of shield spells, but now has a 50/100% chance to refresh Divine Plea duration.

Sounds good, but a 50/100% chance on what? On refreshing Holy Shield? On Block/Parry/Dodge? On taking damage?

* Judgements of the Just – now also reduces the cooldown of Hammer of Justice by 10/20 seconds and increases the duration of the Seal of Justice stun effect by 0.5/1 second.

Adds some primarily PVP utility to Thunderjudge. Doesn't make the talent any less mandatory, but it, like the Shield of the Templar change and the Exorcism change makes it more fun to be a Protadin in PVP.

Interesting changes. I didn't think there was anything particularly "wrong" with the state of Tankadins, but the new changes will allow us to pick up more fun talents from other trees at less sacrifice. I might actually be tempted to take Ulu into an Arena again as well.

Now we just have to wait and see how many of these changes make it to live!

A New Direction, or just a Diversion

I've been hitting my head off the notion for the last month and a half that I have nothing really to write about. The first tier of 5-10man content has proven to be trivial (with the exception of Malygos and Satharion +adds), and strategy guides for each of the bosses fill the interwebs. I have no special insight to offer about most of them.

There's no deep mystery about tank gearing either. You get the Defense minimum, you get enough Effective Health to survive the bosses burst potential and then you stack avoidance and threat stats as appropriate. It's effective, but also bo-ring and again, the internet has lots of guides on this. I might write a post at some point listing my preferred stats in order, but that'll be a wee bit down the line.

The only thing I can talk about that I haven't really covered to date is my experiences in leading a small casual guild, which has been something of an eye-opener. I have no intention of making this blog AngryRaidLeader 2.0, but hey, it'll give me something to write about until something interesting happens (like the 3.1 patch hitting the PTR)

Plus ca change...

So Smart Casual's sufferring a little atm. We've had three members go off on holiday at the same time as well as one of our other healers leave. We can still scrape a raid together for Naxxramas, but Malygos is proving to be a real arse and we can't even start work on adding drakes to Sartharion.

Outside of raids, I've only been logging in to do Jewelcrafting daily quests for Ulu, and to abuse his Icy Prism cooldown. I've found him inundated with Scarlet Rubies, so I picked up the Bold Scarlet Ruby pattern this morning and churned out seven of them! Given they're selling at around 100G a pop on my server, I should make back most of the money I threw at learning Jewelcrafting. If I can keep this up for a few weeks, I might even earn the cash needed to get epic flying for Graysun (which would in turn encourage me to get the last level I need with him.)

Even if I don't, I can throw them in Ulu's Ret/DPS gear and still find a use for them.

I've said it before, I'll say it again: I like Jewelcrafting.

Professional Perks

Compared to the time and money it took me to get Jewelcrafting 1-300 on Ulushnar, the post-300 levels were easy. On Friday morning, I used my backstock of green Burning Crusade-era gems to get him up to 350. In the evening, I went to Northrend and got over 400 with some mining. I also did Finish The Shipment, which opened up the first Jewelcrafting Daily Quest. The quests seem all the same: Get a drop from x type of mob, combine it with gems y and z and then hand in for profit and a Dalaran Jewelcrafter's Token. My first two went into learning the Solid Dragon's Eye pattern and the next three went into three Dragon's Eyes to craft them with.

Ulu's now sitting at just under 29k health unbuffed. Glad I switched? You bet!

Typical!

(Warning, the following post has been rated "L" for Linkage.)

So after Ulu dropped Engineering on Sunday, I got a Blacksmith friend of mine to make a Tempered Titansteel Helm to replace his Armored Titanium Goggles. I added an Arcanum of the Stalwart Protector to it and I was good to go.

On Wednesday, when patch 3.0.8 went live and the helm got two shiney new gem sockets, I grabbed a Solid Sky Sapphire and an Eternal Earthsiege Diamond for the slots and I chuckled heartily that my health had gone up from about 26.8k to 28.2k. (Well ok, the new Bracer enchant, the 2% increase in Sacred Duty's stamina scaling and the change in Toughness from health to Stamina helped, but mostly it was the helm).

And then last night in Naxx, Thane's Tainted Greathelm dropped and Ulu won it. As it stands, the Greathelm's avoidance makes it better for general purpose tanking, so I got my hands on another Eternal Earthsiege Diamond, another Arcanum of the Stalwart Protector and an Enduring Forest Emerald for the yellow slot.

But I wasn't done there. After all that, I realised I could repurpose the Titansteel Helm for fights like Saphirron and Malygos where I'm dealing with a lot of unavoidable magic damage. With that in mind, I dumped the Eternal Earthsiege from it and replaced it with an Effulgent Skyflare Diamond. His defense kinda plummets when he wears it though, so I may have to equip his Titansteel Shield Wall for those fights.

That was a lot of resources spent on upgrading two helms over the course of 5 days.

Oh and I've also managed to get Ulu's Jewelcrafting to 352. Total cost to get JC 270-300: around 500g. Total cost to get JC 300-352, around 30g for some Fel Iron Bars I couldn't be bothered farming. Ok, I'll admit I had about 80 uncut green gems from TBC sitting on my banker, but even so!

Still, tonight Ulu starts Northrend JC. Once I've levelled him up and made some of the nice shineys, I might actually be able to use the profession to start turning a profit.

Right in the Jewels!

I think whoever designed Jewelcrafting lvl 1-300 should be put up against a wall and shot. In fact scratch that, whoever designed the levelling progression of all professions 1-300 should be shot.

I switched Ulu from Engineering at the weekend deciding much as Baelor described, that Engineering was really just a profession for PVPers these days.

I decided on Jewelcrafting because at the end of the day it offerred an upgrade I'd always need in PVE (prismatic gems with nice stats), as opposed to goggles that start awesome and then end up underwhelming. The single nicest thing about the Prismatic gems, apart from their vastly-improved stats, is the fact that they count as all three gem colors simultaneously. They're just the thing to put in my red slots until the Soveriegn Twilight Opal becomes available, and they'll really help Ulu activate his Eternal Earthsiege Diamond.

That said, it's slow going. Ulu's currently at 270 and desperately looking for ores/gems to get the last 30 points. Once he hits 300, I can use the stock of Outland gems I've got sitting in the bank to get him most of the way to 350, where he can start on Northrend recipies.

Ah well, hopefully I'll do most of it this weekend.

Game over man, Game over! (redux)

Last night we killed Magylos. It was our third night of training and we beat him in a group that was absurdly suboptimal (one tank, three healers, four melee dps, two casters).

It's a lot of fun, but now we have a minimum of two months farming this stuff before Uldar hits.

*Joy*

Ulu's gearing philosophy in WotLK

I've been kinda lazy about gear in WotLK, I guess.

Now let me clarify that. I enchant all Ulu's gear to a decent standard, put in the best quality gems possible and aim for basic goals like the 102.4% block cap after getting essentials like the 540 Defense minimum. (I was actually tempted to call it "the Defense Cap" to see if certain posters from MTadin read this.)

But I just haven't cared too much about how my stats measured up. Back when I was in 25-mans, I used to build sets for better avoidance, mitigation, health, threat, etc. These days I don't bother. My avoidance scrapes along at a measly 48-50%, my health sits between 25.5k and 26.8k depending on what trinkets I feel like equipping, and I've started stacking Strength and Block Value like it's going out of fashion.

I'm not a threat whore, I'm a DPS whore. One of the nicest things about WoW v3.0 is the ability of Paladin Tanks to do significant damage whilst tanking. Whilst the days where Ulu could top the DPS meter whilst tanking Heroic Stratholme are sadly behind him, any time I can push him into the top five in Naxx10, I'm happy.

Outside of Magylos, it's the only challenge currently in the game for a tank.

Finally a challenge!

So on Sunday, Smart Casual went hunting for Dragons.

First up was Sartharion, who we hadn't faced before. The encounter's interesting in that you can get more rewards if you try engaging him with his adds intact. Since this was out first visit, we took him by himself and two-shotted him. The wipe was caused by our tank tailswiping the raid whilst attempting to reposition him. Once we decided to let the tank eat the lava wall, the fight went much smoother.

After that it was Malygos and we didn't kill him! We spent an hour and a half working on him, but our best attempt was starting phase three. Am I pissed off? Strangely no. After Naxxramas and Satharion, I've been desperate for a challenging boss, like I remember from my 25-man days. There's nothing more satisfying than seeing wipe after wipe slowly build into a kill.

We tried a follow-up to hopefully kill him before the reset, but couldn't get the numbers. Hopefully the group that's in here tonight will get the job done!

My New Hobby

I've started replying to tells/private messages from strangers in l337/txt speak with "I'm sorry, but I don't speak your language."

Am I an old fart attempting to hold back the (d)evolution of the English Language or just an asshole who likes to mock the hard-of-thinking? Or maybe I'm a classhole?

The decision, gentle reader, is yours.

I'm MT

So last night I pugged the Vault of Archavon 10-man with Ulu. I really wasn't that bothered about it, but hell, an ex-raidmate was looking for a tank and I figured I could give them 10 minutes.

So I arrive there and the Warrior says, "I'm MT, Ulu's OT, ok?", I say "'Spose" and then swap JoL and JoW on my action bar so my wacky JoL threat doesn't pull aggro. (Yes I use JoL, but mainly because I run with a Ret Paladin and it's better I use it than he does.)

So we pull the first trash mob. Admittedly I was reckless, dived in with Avenger's shield because I figure "It's trash, who's gonna care?" Obviously he doesn't get aggro back and afterwards I got the reminder "I'm MT!" (He was a man of few words.)

So I figure I'll behave. He goes in, I follow, Judge Wisdom, Shield of Righteousness, Hammer of the Righteous and then I have Aggro. after that there was a

"Don't use taunt Ulu, I'm MT"
"I didn't."

This behavior repeated itself on the next two trashmobs and we're standing at the boss. After reminding me for the umpteenth time "I'm MT" he went in.

And I kept pulling aggro. OK, I can maybe accept that whilst we had equivalent gear, I probably had a higher aggregate gear level with more invested in threat stats, but even so, I don't struggle this much with Smart Casual's Warrior MT.

And what's worse he was sadly clueless. He kept tanking the boss in the Choking Cloud. But hell, he was MT, right?

Because I like a good audience request as much as the next narcissist...

Chefs Oliver and Otto asked me:

Ulu, could you possibly post up your thoughts on the epic tanking weapons and shields in WotLK sometime (if the topic is worthwhile)?

My main point of question is surrounding the Broken Promise as it is kind of slow, but on WoWhead they said this is no biggee for prot pallies these days. I was wondering if you agreed!

Anyhow I hope you are recovering well and I do enjoy visiting your blog. Thanks!

I'm afraid I don't have hands-on experience of Broken Promise since it drops in Naxx25 and I'm pretty much 10-mans only. That said, Ulu did a lot of his levelling and early heroics with the Crescent of Brooding Fury which is slower.

Paladin Tanking is pretty much weapon speed-agnostic. AFAIK, Warriors like a fast weapon because they want their swing time to be as close to the global cooldown of 1.5secs, so that their melee swings don't interfere with their other abilities too much.

With Paladins, the melee swing is a smaller part of our overall threat. There's two things you should look at when picking a weapon:

Weapon DPS: Hammer of the Righteous is the reason you're using a high-DPS one-hander in the first place. It doesn't care about the speed, only the overall DPS.

Secondary Stats: If you two weapons with the same DPS (ie: Red Sword of Courage and Slayer of the Lifeless), then pick whichever one has the more favorable stats. The Red Sword will help more with the Defense Cap, the Slayer has more avoidance.

And that's really all the mystery there is to tanking weapon choices. Pick the one with the highest DPS first, failing that pick the one with the more favorable stats, failing that, pick the one that looks coolest.

Here endeth the lesson.