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.