Kara Hates Teh Tankadin.

Well last night's Kara was short of healers so I brought Ulu so that he could offtank on trash and then off-heal on single boss fights.

First boss of the night dropped nice tanking bracers. I rolled the highest, but ultimatley passed to the other Tank (a Warrior) because he didn't have decent bracers yet. I figured that we'd be doing up to the Curator, so there would be another three bosses with tanking drops I needed...

...Turns out that was the only tanking drop of the night. *facepalm* Ulu did manage to get his second set of Tier 4 gloves (this time I sensibly picked the healing set.) This seems to be par for the course. If I bring wulf to Kara, he gets gear upgrades out of his kiester. If I bring Ulu, he ends up with some new healing gear and that's about it.

I'm wondering if I shouldn't just take the easy path and spec him Holy. The paladin Holy tree is one of the more finely-tuned healing trees out there, and Paladins are some of the most mana-efficent and powerful single-target healers in the game. I personally don't mind healing, and unlike our tanking, there's a wealth of itemisation to support it. Everytime I bring Ulu to a raid I feel like I'm bending over backwards to attempt to make him as useful as a halfway decent Warrior or Druid is in the tanking department.

Arena Angst and Redoubt Rant

Ulushnar's been doing Arena's now for three weeks, Wulfsblood joined the team last week. We've averaged something like 270 Arena points a week, which leaves Ulu just over halfway towards his new Shield, but Wulf a little under a fourteenth of the way towards his new Crossbow.

The grind's long, no doubt about it, although I've heard a rumour that some of the Hunter-friendly arena weapons may be getting a pricecut to compensate for the fact that we have to buy 2-3 weapons (a ranged weapons and 1-2 melee weapons). I'm intrigued to see if this will happen. That said, i'm also going to sign Wulf up for a 5v5 team to help boost his income.

Rumors continue to abound of an reexamination of the viability of Paladin Tanking in the endgame. A thread has been opened here discussing vital and useless talents in the various paladin trees, prompted by one of Blizzard's own Community Managers.

I only hope the overwhelming amount of Tankadins who tell them that the present form of Redoubt sucks will cause them to rethink it. As it stands, it's useful for a levelling tank, but it's near useless in the endgame. Because it's a proc, you can't count on it being there in boss encounters. As a result, a raiding tankadin has to stack enough avoidance to become uncrushable without it. As a result, if it procs then it's wasted, since you already have enough block/parry/dodge with Holy Shield up that the extra block gets pushed off the table.

Why do I even bother with this useless talent? Because it opens up Shield Specialization, which provides some useful mitigation when we do block. Ah well, it'll all come out in the wash, hopefully no later than patch 2.3...

Old Skool Shennanigens.

So last night, given that a lot of our active raiders are on holiday atm, we decided to have a fun-run to some old content. We decided to make a return to Blackwing Lair, a dungeon that was, in many ways, the apex of CD's old-world raiding acheivements.

Only one problem: Ulushnar wasn't attuned to BWL. The solution, we proceeded to AoE zerg our way through Upper Blackrock Spire to perform the attunement quests. I think first-to-last pull was about half an hour, which didn't suck.

After that we had a short break whilst I took care of Ulushnar's commitment to Dat was by dose, and then it was on to Blackwing Lair.

The first boss, Razorgore the Untamed spawns about 40 adds that have to be controlled for the first phase of the fight. My solution: Tank em all!



I assure you that Ulu is somewhere beneath that boiling mass of Dragons and Orcs!

After Razor went down, we went on the the next boss Vaelastrasz the Corrupt!

Sadly this was a fight we couldn't get past despite half-a-dozen attempts. It's a fight that guarantees five deaths a minute no matter what, so it really requires more than the 20 people we were able to muster for the fun run. Ah well, was still a fun way to spend an evening. Spirits were high and the banter flowed freely.

In the manner of Columbo...

Just one more thing. Ulushnar has also changed his professions recently. Instead of Herbalism and Alchemy, I've switched him over to Mining and Blacksmithing, which I'm slowly grinding up.

In the long run it should pay off since some of the higher instances have some nice patterns for a tankadin.

Back in the Saddle.

Been on holiday for two weeks. I'm not going to fill you in on all my doings over that time, but I'll go over the key points:

*Wulfsblood completed his Epic Leatherworking set. Along with a few more epic items picked up in Karazhan, he now stands as one of CD's better-geared Hunters. He's altered his talent spec slightly for something that's slightly more optimised for raiding damage whilst still giving him trapping utility and enhanced survivability.

*Ulushnar and Wulf have both joined an arena team with a few folks from Surpised Survivors. We pretty much suck, but we have fun and it opens the door for teh imba purplez.

*Because of a lot of our main raiders being away, CD hasn't done much more than Karazhan for the last few weeks. Since we normally have tanks that need the Kara gear more than Ulu, I've been bringing Wulf more to them. I'm really enjoying Wulf again after months of not being able to stand playing him.

*Ulu's changed spec to a Holy/Prot Hybrid spec. Losing the parry talent means I have to sacrifice some of his stamina gear for block and dodge value to maintain uncrushability. Ultimately he can Main Tank Karazhan fine, but I'll probably relegate him to an Offtank in the bigger dungeons. The side benefit of his spec is he's a more effective healer in Arenas and can probably offheal when not required to OT in raids.

*Blizz announced the new expansion and I'm underwhelmed. Another ten levels, another bunch of new zones and a new profession. The Death Knight Hero Class might be interesting but I'll await more details before I get too excited.