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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Game over man, Game over!

So this weekend Ulu did a few more heroics...

This included a PuG run to Ahn'Kahet: The Old Kingdom. It started with the normal question about Health, which I passed with flying colors when I said "26k".

Anyway, it was a slightly wipey run. Partially down to a couple of dodgy pulls and partially down to the fact that none of the DPSers were able to create more than 1.1k DPS whilst Ulu was sailing ahead at the 1.6-1.8k mark without trying.

*sigh* Ah well, at least the Bracers of the Herald dropped. Also whilst doing heroics later with Guildies, Ulu got the last few badges for his Heroes' Redemption Handguards. That's ulu at 2 pieces of Tier 7 before he's even set foot inside Naxxramas.

Sunday continued in this vein, In between heroics, Ulu did daily quests and spent the gold on materials to level Wulfsblood's Leatherworking. This may be inefficent, but it beats levelling Wulf so I can get him into the zones that drop decent amounts of leather. In the end, I was able to make the Durable Nerubhide Cape for Ulu.

Finally on Sunday night, I did a Violet Hold heroic run and finally Lavanthor showed up! After we beat him up, he apologised for his tardiness by giving Ulushnar his Talisman. With it (and with swapping back to his Titansteel Shield wall Ulu stood within a couple of % of the point where normal hits cease to be an option.

The talisman was also the last tanking drop that Ulushnar wanted from Heroics. From this point, he's in them purely to help guildies get their stuff, and of the occaisional DPS drop along the way.

New toys!

So Ulu got some new toys tonight...



The Red Sword of Courage



The Royal Crest of Lordaeron

And also the Chained Military Gorget, but that one doesn't have a cool graphic.

I cannot begin to describe how much more bad-ass Ulushnar looks with Lich King gear!

Post-Weekend update 01-Dec-08

So last night, Ulushnar got the loot 100 Emblems of Heroism achievement. Given he hadn't set foot in a Heroic before last Monday night, that should give you some idea of what he spent a lot of the last week doing...

...Yeah, Ah well, it's winter and being outside isn't good anyway.

Still on the plus side, ulushnar now has the T7 chest and is currently working on badges for the neck. At this rate though, he'll outgear Naxxramas 10 before the guild's ready to set foot in it.

This week I'm going to try and tone it down a bit. There's a couple of target heroics that I'm going to run, but I also wanna spend time helping the last few guildies not at 80 to get there so we can all join the Heroic frenzy.

I've also been logging in Wulfsblood a bit. I haven't really been levelling him so much as committing mass genocide on the Rhinos of the Borean Tundra. Our guild's only leatherworker has been having connection problems, and some members of the guild want the epic cloaks available at 440 LW, so I put my nose to the grindstone and got it done. Wulf's currently at 423 LW, and is working through my backlog of Eternals from Mining and Engineering to get to 440.

Into Heroics...

I've been meaning to post screenshots of Ulu's bad-ass new gear. The problem is as soon as I take one, he gets something new.

Case in point, I took this yesterday morning:



And I've already replaced my trusty lvl 74 quest reward axe with a Heroic Utgarde Keep drop!

Yes that's right, last night Ulu assembled a few level 80 guildies and went to test the heroic waters. And we found them both hot and full of sharks. Well metaphorical sharks at least. And metaphorical heat as well I guess.

The party was Ulu, Buachampoo (Holy Paladin), Frozt (Elemental Shaman), Eleinya (Demonology Warlock) and Vordar (Resto Shaman). That's right folks, two healers. Possibly not the best optimized group but since they were:

a) The only available level 80s in my guild and
b) Two couples who were unwilling to play separately, I took what I could get.

We tried Azjol'Nerub first, since that was the daily. We got owned hard and often on the mini-boss waves before the first boss. We just weren't able to clear one group before the second spawned. With more DPS it might have been more managable.

After a few wipes, we gave up and tried Heroic Utgarde Keep. It was more of a leisurely stroll than the zerg we normally do, but it was manageable. Didn't feel significantly harder than a normal lvl 80 instance, although saying that, I was restrained and only pulled one group at a time rather than my normal 2-3. Also as I mentioned, the first boss gave Ulu a shiney new sword, and I spent the night levelling ulu's sword skill from 373 to 400.

Our spirits bouyed by this success, we pressed on to try Heroic Utgarde Pinnacle. And for a while it seemed fine. The first two bosses and the trash surrounding them wasn't difficult. However, when we hit the gauntlet around Skadi the Ruthless and wiped. And wiped. And wiped some more. I think it took us an hour to finally bury that bastard, first it was surviving the Gauntlet long enough to get the 5-6 harpoons needed to dismount him, secondly it was getting him under control fast enough so he doesn't kill half the group when he lands.

In the end I used the following macro to get him under control:

/target Skadi
/cast Exorcism

And we killed him without any deaths. He even apologised for his rough treatment by giving Ulu a new belt. After that we cleared to King Ymiron, and after wiping a few times to his glowy ball o' death he too kissed floor in our honor. Sadly he didn't drop his sword, but I guess two weapon upgrades in one evening would have been silly.

So there y'go, some highs, some lows. The group wasn't perfectly optimised, but we had fun, and I ended up with seven badges towards Ulu's Libram. Only eight more to go! Heroic's seem to be the way forward for a group of 80s with decent gear and their heads screwed on. Also the rep gains are tremendous. Mobs give 2-3 times the rep they do in normal, and bosses give 5 times the amount.

Violet Hold's the daily Heroic today. I wonder what it's like...

Ding & Stuff

Well a lot got done this weekend.

On saturday morning, Ulu did a couple of circuits of Lake Wintergrasp, the world PVP zone. He wasn't hunting Hordes however, he was looking for the abundant Saronite and Titanium nodes the zone contained. After an hour's mining, he returned to Dalaran and started working his Engineering to 440 so he could make the Armored Titanium Goggles. I had more than enough Titanium and Ulu had been lucky enough to find two Sky Sapphires whilst mining. I had to get the Frozen Orb and Heavy Borean Leather from the Auction House, but it wasn't much of an expense (well ok, the Orb was 1.1K, but hell, it's only Gold, right?). Still, getting the Goggles at level 79 was fairly decent.

After that, it was back to the grind. Saturday's pretty much a blur for the most part. I did some quests in Icecrown I think and I can remember stepping into CoT: Stratholme for the first time with some guildies (fun instance, I really liked it!) and I also did an Utgarte Pinnacle run with a PuG (which actually wasn't horrid, despite a few wipes on the gauntlet.) What I do remember clearly was that Ulu hit 80 in Drak'tharon Keep whilst doing a run for some lower-level guildies.

After they went to Bed, Ulu returned to Icecrown and ended up doing a lot of quests for both The Argent Crusade and The Knights of the Ebon Blade. He ended up Honored with both, which earned him some nice Legplates and Boots.

Yesterday, A guildy managed to get his Blacksmithing up to 440, and was able to make me a Titansteel Shield Wall (this time the Frozen Orb was a more "reasonable" 740G). He even loaned me a Titansteel Bar while my own smelt was on cooldown. I'd been 80 for about 12 hours and I already had two epics!

After that I decided to put the Championing system to the test and work Ulu up to Revered with the Argent Crusade. Championing gives you Reputation with a faction if you wear their tabard in a level 80 Dungeon or Heroic. Ulu needed about 7k rep to get there, so it wasn't easy. He ended up running The Oculus (three times!), Utgarde Pinnacle (twice), CoT: Stratholme, and the Halls of Lightning. After running those seven instances, Ulu was still about 1k short of his rep goal, so I had to finish things off with a daily quest in Zul'Drak and a quick wowhead-assisted scour of Icecrown for any quests I'd missed. I managed it in the end and crowned Ulu's goggles with a shiney new head enchant.

The moral of the story is this: Short, trash-light Dungeons may make for fast clears, but they're murder to grind rep in.

As of last night, we have seven level 80s in the guild, with another few on their way. With a slightly larger population, it might be possible to start Heroics!

The Rep's the thing.

Ulu's not even level 78 yet (about 2/3rds of the way there) and I'm thinking about rep grinding.

Looking at the (very healthy) list of Tanking rep items, two factions stand head-and-shoulders above the rest as ones to get Revered with ASAP.

The Wyrmrest Accord have one of the best pre-raid tanking cloaks at Honored and a really nice tanking chest at Revered. Luckily having done almost all the Dragonblight quests at this point, I'm just past Honored with them.

The other faction, the Argent Crusade will be a bit more work. I'm not even Friendly with them yet, although there are quest chains in Zul'Drak and Icecrown I haven't yet touched. Still they have really nice legs at Honored and the Tanking head enchant at Revered.

Luckily both factions are championable, so once Ulu starts the level 80 Dungeons he'll be able to get rep with them faster. I think I'll make Wyrmrest my first goal before settling into getting the Crusade to Revered.

Still weekend's coming. I wanna get Ulu to 80 and do some instances with friends. I'm also tempted to brind Wulfsblood out of mothballs and bring him to Howling Fyjord for a cooking/skinning/leatherworking zerg. I have almost all the mats now for Ulushnar's engineering goggles, but I need Leather badly.

Get a Venture Co. Libram of Protection!

Ok, so you've hit level 75, you've got your shiney new Shield of Righteousness and you're wondering how to give it more oomph.

Well if you're like me and were never lucky enough to get the Libram from Mother Shazzrah in Black Temple, fear not, there's a nice option that will only take about half an hour to get.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Venture Co. Libram of Protection!

If you want to buy it, you have to accumulate 30 Venture Coins, which are obtained by doing PVP-type quests in Grizzly Hills. These are easily obtained by doing three quests in the Venture Bay subzone:

Smoke 'Em Out - This is easy, just throw smoke bombs into groups of the Venture Co. Stragglers. If you get too close and aggro some, just throw them at your feet and they'll go running. (Horde Equivalent)

Keep 'Em At Bay - Kill ten Horde units or players. I opted to kill units because I am a carebear at heart, but even if you opt to kill players, this is easy as pie. (Horde Equivalent)

Down with Captain Zorna - Kill an elite standing on the docks by the Horde ship on the bay. She wasn't hard, I managed to duo her with a Prot Warrior no problem and she can probably be solo'd. (Horde Equivalent)

Each of these quests gives you 10 coins, for a total of 30 coins which will let you get your Libram. The only wrinkle to these quests is you have to be PVP flagged whilst you have them in your logs. On my server the folks there were more concerned with doing the quests but your server may be different. If you're doing this as Prot, it may be worth roping a few mates in to help.

For Posterity.

Ulushnar's stats, unbuffed at the close of 2.4.

We'll see what the story is in 3.0 on Wednesday.

Dual Talent Specs & the cusp of 3.0

So it was Blizzcon over the weekend and they confirmed that they'd be be doing Dual Talent Specs at some point in Wrath of the Lich King:

The Dual-Talent spec feature will let you switch between your two specs without having to go back to town. You can perfectly do it between fights in a raid, however it won't be possible to switch specs in the middle of an Arena Match. Your keybinds and glyphs will be saved and automatically switched as you change your spec. An itemrack-like mod might also be added to the game to make switching even easier.

This is certainly more than I expected from the idea. I figured they'd put a massive cooldown on it, but they definately seem keen to let folks play with being hybrids. As someone who's focussing on 10-man raiding in Wrath, knowing that spare tanks/healers can switch to full DPS specs on fights where they aren't needed is massively welcome. I really cannot wait until this feature goes live.

In other news, I've slowly been vendoring/destroying unneeded junk/items in my bank in preparation for 3.0/Wrath of the Lich King. I've also altered my gear slightly, swapping Ulu's Illidari Runeshield for his Bulwark of the Amani Empire and his Wristguards of Determination for his Bracers of the Ancient Phalanx. I've also set up an altered outfit for after the patch on Wednesday which switches a few more items around. I'm actually considering using the Shard of Contempt in Ulu's tanking gear.

I really can't wait for this patch!

Beta: Size Doesn't Matter..

Well at least as it applies to Mana pools for Tankadins.

I was quite shocked at the outcry from elements of the Tankadin about this weekend's changes to Tankadin itemization. I expected the people moaning about the way we've seemingly been homogenized in with Death Knights and Warriors, but I didn't realise there were so many people who liked +Intellect on their gear.

If I may speak to that section of the Tankadin community for the moment: you're all idiots operating under false assumptions. (Nice save man, you think they noticed?)

Intellect has never really helped our longevity in fights. It's been good for unloading burst threat, but that extra mana will only delay you going out of mana on content you outgear by a few seconds at best. That's why virtually no Tankadin itemization since the T6 set was finalized has included any. It was 15-20 item points out of the budget per peice and it did little good. More to the point, it was 15-20 points per peice that Warriors could have in Stamina, avoidance, threat or mitigation stats, further increasing their slight advantage in progression boss tanking.

WotLK/3.0's solution is far more elegant. It treats a Tankadin's mana pool like the Blue Rage bar we've always joked about it. A finite resource we refresh by doing the things Tanks do: taking damage, hitting stuff and avoiding damage.

Admittedly, the taking damage part of that, Spiritual Attunement is as old as The Burning Crusade/2.0.

We now regain mana by hitting stuff either by casting Judgement of Wisdom on a target, using Seal of Wisdom as our seal of choice, or hell, doing both. Admittedly we've had a version of both JoW and SoW since classic WoW, but these versions both scale, and with Hammer of the Righteous allowing you to proc seals on three targets at once, SoW is massively more effective.

Finally, the biggest and best change is the Blessing of Sanctuary change. We now have an ability that will allow us to regain mana when we successfully avoid or block an attack. This actually scales with both our Avoidance and the number of mobs we're facing.

These abilities mean one thing: Intellect on our gear is irrelevant. And I for one couldn't be happier. I know we've all hit situations where we've found ourselves gasping for mana at some key point in a farm boss fight on Live. We've all found ways around it, from "sit n' crit" to "tanking without pants". I can categorically say that this will almost certainly not happen after 3.0*.

*Unless they really screw the pooch and revert a bunch of the current changes.