Blood Beast Control on Saurfang 25H

Hello everyone. Anafielle takes over the blog yet again, inflicting yet another novel of a post upon Rhidach’s unsuspecting readers! Ha ha! The ursurper tank strikes again! So let’s talk about Saurfang 25H, a fight that’s been very much on my mind lately, even though Enveloping Shadows has supposedly had it on farm for weeks.

Flashback to the First Kill: July 27th

Our first Hard Mode Saurfang kill occured about a month ago, when Rhidach was gone, an odd week when I found myself main tanking a raid I was still getting to know. Without Rhidach there, I was hoping to very quietly main tank while someone else Raid Led – after all, the main tank doesn’t have to be the raid leader, right? Yet I reluctantly found myself in the driver’s seat. Saurfang was, at that time, progression. I had taught two separate 10 mans how to do this fight on Heroic, so I was without a doubt the resident expert. I also have more than my fair share of “Well, if no one else is going to do it, I sure as hell will” in my personality.

So when we got to Saurfang, I took the lead. We killed him, and it was a point of pride for me that we progressed without Rhi. Many gloating messages and kill screenshots were text messaged to him that night. I do so enjoy misusing peoples’ phone numbers.

Rhidach eventually got his revenge. Somehow Saurfang has remained my job regardless of whether Rhidach is there. My illustrious cotank leads the entire rest of the raid, but when we get to Saurfang, he just waits for me to step up. I envision him sitting back and relaxing when we get to that 4th boss, cracking a beer and calling for his girlfriend to bring him a sandwitch while he lets his overworked and underpaid offtank do all the work for a moment.

I guess part of raid leading is delegating, and Saurfang gets delegated to me! Well, I’m not complaining. Much.

Blood Beast Blues

We’ve killed Saurfang every week since that first kill without too much trouble. So, technically, he’s on “farm.”

However, every kill is messy – and I mean 6 or 7 marks messy. We’ve even wiped a few times. This is the least “farm” fight of any of our farm fights, and that includes more recent kills.

This is totally unacceptable to the relentless perfectionist in me. Beasts are not being CC’d enough and they are not dying quickly enough – leading to dead ranged and thus Blood Power, or ranged who have to kite towards other people, which leads to Blood Nova, which leads to Blood Power.

So, I sat down this week to overhaul my strategy. This meant pulling out my Raid Leading notebook (yes, I keep a notebook next to my desk) and taking a good look at my list of Blood Beast Control Methods – a list of stuns, slows, snares, immobilizations, and general tactics to keep those beasts away from the ranged.

Blood Beast Control: A List

If something on this list is wrong, for god’s sake, comment and let me know. I don’t have every single stun, snare, slow, or tactic for this fight memorized. A great deal of thanks goes to my twitter feed for helping me out with tactics I didn’t know of & clarifying things for me. The idea is to build a useful list for everyone, and here’s my start. I’ll edit as people comment.

Knockbacks

• Boomkin: Typhoon
• Ele Shaman: Thunderstorm, if de-glyphed (every other spawn)
• Fire Mage: Blast Wave, if specced

Slows

• Mage: Slow, if specced (single target)
• Shadow Priest: Mind Flay (single target)
• Shaman: Frost Shock (single target)
• Hunter: Concussive Shot (single target)
• Frost DK: Chillblains, if specced (AoE)
• Hunter: Frost Trap (AoE)
• Shaman: Earthbind Totem (AoE; can be specced to immobilize)
• Fury Warrior: Piercing Howl, if specced (AoE)

Stuns / Ways to Immobilize

• Desto Lock: Shadowfury (AoE)
• Prot Warrior: Shockwave (AoE)
• Prot Warrior: Concussion Blow
• Paladin: Hammer of Justice (every other spawn)
• DK: Chains of Ice
• Fire Mage: Dragon’s Breath (AoE)
• Druid: Roots
• Frost Mage: Frost Nova (AoE)
• Tailoring Nets

Random Other Stuff

• Melee can taunt beasts back towards them.
• Hunters on two sides can trade Distracting Shot.
• Rogues can stick a crippling poison on a weapon, trade it in and Fan of Knives.
• Warriors, Feral Druids and Demo Locks with Felguards can do a difficult-to-pull-off intercept-type stun.

Our Strategy

In general, I like to assign 1-2 knockbacks per spawn, some way to AE slow them all (plus as many single target slows as I’ve got), and lots of stuns to keep them immobilized. A new tip I’ve learned from Matticus: Ranged DPS on the right side should prioritize the left beasts, and vice-versa, so the beasts have a little bit further to run.

I could not imagine doing this without a boomkin – preferably, more than one boomkin – for Typhoon. Ele shammies usually glyph out of Thunderstorm’s knockback; they should reglyph for this fight. Ellies will also only be able to knock back every other spawn; Boomkins can handle every wave.

There are a number of ways to AE slow all the beasts, which is critical. Our Frost DK has a Chillblains offspec and uses it on this fight to slow every beast by 50%. We raid with a shadow priest and 2-3 mages, and I also assign each of them a specific beast to slow.

Pally stuns are excellent, although pallies will have to trade off. Generally Rhidach and I get one beast, and our two DPS pallies stun another beast. Chains of Ice is also great, although it’s a bigger DPS loss, especially for a frost DK. Obviously having beasts snared is far more important than DPS, but I like to keep these things in mind.

Very important: stuns are safe in melee range; snares which immobilize are not. If the beast is unable to move yet active, it will eat a melee regardless of who is at the top of its threat table. Pally stuns and Prot warrior stuns are safe, and Chains of Ice is safe too because it’s just a glorified slow. But nets, Druid Roots, and talented Earthbind Totem are not safe in melee. You can still use them, but use them outside of melee range.

Taunts should be used effectively. Hunters can Distracting Shot a beast that’s far away, and melee & tanks can taunt a beast getting too close to some ranged. I end up taunting a fair bit, which occasionally bites me on the ass if the beast makes it all the way back to me without dying.

Tonight

We’re changing things up tonight. One of our healers is going boomkin, and everyone has decided not to move near as much to keep that vital 12 yard separation between the ranged. This means those beasts are just going to have to be flawlessly knocked back, stunned, slowed, and killed before they get to a single ranged or healer. I have faith it can happen, especially considering we are working under a 30% buff. And damn the haters, I don’t care if we wipe until it’s right.

I’ve gotten a little bit of flak for complaining about a farm fight, but I don’t care – even a farm fight should be done correctly.

The heavens burn, get some ointment!

Halion is a different ball game. Something I don’t think many guilds were expecting, or prepared for. The rumors abounded that he was EZ mode, a quick walk in the park, easily dispatched. And then after the Ruby Sanctum was released, word started to trickle out about trash you had to actually CC (horrors abound!) and mechanics that couldn’t be steamrolled in the usual sense that we were accustomed to. OS 2.0, this was not.

The trash just by itself I could write a blog post on. If you’re not using some good ol’ fashioned crowd control, you will get stomped by the Commander packs. Basically, the way you handle trash is this:

• Assaulters get pulled aside by one tank and saved for last. They cleave, so dps and heals cannot stand in front of them.
• Invokers need to have dedicated interrupters on them. Their blast waves hurt. Focus these down first.
• Commanders need to be CC’d the duration of the pull. Start the pull by having a druid Hibernate one at range, and then grab the Assaulters and Invokers as they rush over. have druids keep Hibernate up.

We wiped a few times on trash because we got careless and thought we could AOE faceroll it down. Don’t make the same mistake.

Baltharus the Warborn

Mark this guy before you pull, since he has a mechanic of making copies of himself. When he attacks a tank he puts a stacking debuff on the tank that reduces the healing you take and increases the damage Baltharus does. And then, to top it all off, he has a Whirlwind where he’ll attack much, much faster. Combined with the debuff, you could be in trouble. Strategies I’ve seen recommend a tank swap on Whirlwind, but honestly it didn’t give me too much trouble. I was okay just using a cooldown.

OT picks up copies, dps stays on the marked one, everybody wins.

Saviana Ragefire

The easiest of the three mini bosses, for sure. Have a Rogue equip Anaesthetic Poison and you completely negate the enrage mechanic to point where you’ll ask “did she ever enrage?” If she does get an enrage off, she’ll splash crazy fire AOE on your raid and probably kill them all. When she goes up in the air, spread out. If you’re MTing and get hit with the Conflagarate, have the OT pick up Saviana until the effect wears off.

General Zarithrian

We did not do this guy correctly, at all. I tanked him by where he stood, Anafielle picked up adds. Once my stacks got to three and I had 60% of my armor gone, I just taunt/bubbled to clear my stacks and hold him. Then the second time I called for Ana to grab him but died before she could. Adds swarming everywhere, dps ignoring them for some odd reason. I get brezzed, pop back up, start grabbing adds. Trying to encourage dps to kill them, but someone shouts “BURN! NO TIME!! AAGGHHHH” and I die on the inside.

I continue to grab adds, eventually tank swap with Ana, and with about 20 adds up and half the raid dead he drops.

The way this should be done is tanks swap at about two stacks of the armor debuff, and ranged burns down adds immediately. Because the adds are casters, they don’t need to be tanked, per se, just controlled. Playing taunt tennis with the dps will suffice.

Anyway, once we stumbled through that fight it was time for Halion.

Yes. Halion.

First things first, I split up my tanks, heals, and dps into two groups: Fire Team and Shadow Team. Mostly this plays out in P3, but it’s important to be prepared.

This guy’s got three phases of fun. The first phase the Fire Tank grabs Halion and positions him so his side is presented to the raid like a juicy steak. People take care not to stand in front of or behind the boss, standard dragon rules apply. Especially with a scorching flame breath.

Meteors will come down on spots marked with a pulsing orange rune, making a giant flaming X much like Marrowgar’s coldflames. Don’t stand in those. There’ll also be a debuff called Mark of Consumption which stacks as time progresses and it is not dispelled. The person with the Mark has to run out of the raid and drop it as far as they can.

At the 75% mark, Halion disappears into the Twilight and the raid should follow through the portal. Because of the way phasing works, if you click the portal while close to the middle, you’ll immediately aggro Halion upon transitioning. So, be sure to run to the wall next to the portal, then click it, so you won’t aggro on entry. Get yourself in position and engage, as you want to keep Halion dead in the center if possible.

There are no meteors in the Shadow world, but there are two spinning orbs along the perimeter of the battlefield. Every 30 seconds they’ll create a beam which will invariably kill anyone standing in it. As the tank you have the most important job of the fight here, with the success of this phase resting on your shoulders. You need to spin Halion so that the beams will always pass diagonally through his body, giving your raid a safe spot to stand in.

The way I did this was level my camera off, and try to keep the orb behind Halion visible over his right side. That way the left was generally clear for melee. Something I found (thanks to Purraj for suggesting it) very helpful was turning on RP walking so that I was turning the boss at the same speed that the orbs were revolving.

Rotating is rough on your raid because they need to constantly stay moving and be always cognizant of where the beam could be. If they get trapped by the beam they might end up in front of Halion’s face or tail, and that’d be trouble.

In phase two, there is also a shadow version of the Marks of Consumption for the raid to deal with. Don’t let someone get trapped by a beam while dropping off their mark.

Once you hit 50%, portals will open again and a Halion will appear in the physical realm. Fire Team goes through the portals and the Fire Tank picks him up. At this point, there’s a “corporeality timer” up at the top of your screen. You want that number between 40% and 60%, though preferably on 50%. Your two teams just need to, like Stalagg and Fuegen, keep their dps balanced and not let one side surpass the other.

In phase 3, Meteors, Marks, and Beams continue apace. Just keep dps consistent, sweat like you’ve never perspired before, and eventually you’ll get him down.

Ultimately, this fight is all about the shadow world and rotation. We found that was the hardest part of the fight. Once I stopped screwing up rotating (honestly, something about me and dragons that need to be moved just does not mix at all) and got a good pace going, we went from wiping at 30% to easily killing him.

Good luck in there, it’s no cake walk!

ICC25HM: Rotface

So, what’s different?

• Vile Gas–so keep people at ranged
• Raid damage is higher, especially the ooze rockets
• Big Ooze can one-shot your tank
• Ooze spills reduce movement speed a lot more

For positioning the raid in this fight, I have two ranged park in front of each of the three skull/barrel spots in the cardinal points of the room, as well as in front of the door. When spills come down they can just side step out of them. Melee stacks on one of Rotface’s legs, then when a Big Ooze ruptures and the rockets hit the air, they immediately shift to the other leg and hopefully avoid any splash damage.

Now, let’s practice maintanking this fight. Stand up from your computer. Face whatever door you used to enter the room you’re in. Now stand there. Now, hold that position. This’ll get tough, but I recommend practicing for about two hours a day for the next week to perfect the technique.

While MTing, since your job is cake, you have the spare time to make your healer’s lives easier. Use a mouseover Cleanse macro and take it upon yourself to immediately Cleanse people as they get diseased. It’ll save the healers some GCDs, and it’s not like you have anything better to do other than maintain a high threat ceiling.

While, it’s stupid easy to maintank this fight, thankfully, offtanking is another matter. The poor OT will be circling the room, doing their best to zip through ooze spills with minimum contact and minimal slowdown. Having Hand of Freedom is a must, as you do not want the Big Ooze catching up with you while dashing through a spill. Same rules for Ooze Kiting apply in heroic mode. Ultimately, don’t let it catch you, and try to keep a wide berth of the ranged and melee to prevent a Vile Gas from splashing onto you.

If you do get pinched by the Gas, have your bubble/cancel macro ready to go to quickly knock it off. You do not want the Ooze catching you, or your kiting career will be cut to an abrupt end. Likewise, if an emergency occurs and for some reason you need to change directions while kiting, pop a cooldown to pass by the Big Ooze.

As a whole, this probably one of the easiest hardmodes. The first time we did it, we almost downed it after losing most of the raid around the 30% mark. Just keep the raid from standing in an ooze rocket, or from screwing up delivery of their little oozes and you’re golden. Autopilot to victory!

The lewt!

• Bile-Encrusted Medallion (BiS neck!)
• Blightborne Warplate

ICC25HM: Festergut, like Brutallus dual-wielding Algalons

I must say, I am disappointed I didn’t face this boss back when the buff wasn’t at the absurd heights it is now. There something I’ve always found appealing about being reduced to a fine paste between the ulcerated knuckles of an infantile flesh giant.

To start, I apologize for skipping the three fights between this and my first ICC25HM strategy post–ie, LDW, Lootship, and Saurfang–but of those Lootship is a joke and a one sentence post seems like a waste of the tubes it could have potentially been printed on, and the other two I’ve yet to do. 10s hardmode, sure; not 25s. And I’m surely not going to write how to do a fight I’ve yet to do myself. What do I look like, a paid WoW writer?

Another sidenote: I can’t take credit for the subtitle to this post. I first read that phrase in this thread on the tanking forums way back in February and it remains one of the more hilarious descriptions of the fight I have ever seen.

So, what’s different?

• Festergut hits like a Mack Truck
• Raid-wide damage is much more intense
• Putricide tosses Malleable Goo at players

First, let’s talking about this fight from the tank’s perspective. It hurts.

Sorry, I can be more descriptive. Thanks to this buff that Festergut will be stacking up to three in a rotation, by the time he gets to the third stack he’s going to be mashing you into hamburger. Lets look at a log snippet.

[20:53:19.080] Festergut hits Rhidach Parry
[20:53:19.954] Festergut hits Rhidach Dodge
[20:53:20.932] Festergut hits Rhidach Parry
[20:53:21.844] Festergut hits Rhidach 36036 (B: 2028)
[20:53:22.840] Festergut hits Rhidach 29806 (A: 2818, B: 2028)
[20:53:23.725] Festergut hits Rhidach Dodge
[20:53:24.743] Festergut hits Rhidach Parry
[20:53:25.649] Festergut hits Rhidach Parry
[20:53:27.131] Festergut hits Rhidach 31705 (B: 2028)

You might look at that and say, “oh 36k, that’s not that bad.” Check the times between attacks–he hits every 9/10s of a second.

Even with phase 3 being so ominous, the hardest part of the fight for your healers will probably be two stacks, when the damage is still rampant for the raid and the tank is being hit 60% harder. Try to avoid panicking and popping a cooldown early, you’ll need it very shortly.

When the third inhale happens and Festergut is rocking a 90% buff, you’ll probably need to rotate cooldowns. I’m a huge fan of using everything at my disposal: raidwall, an armor pot, bubblewall, my 4pc bonus, and external cooldowns. Don’t blow everything at once, obviously, but pay attention to the damage as it’s coming in and choose which card to play wisely.

Still, chug that Indestructible Pot ASAP. A healer will probably external cooldown you right off the bat (or, at least, mine do–they barely trust me to tie my shoes in the morning). Follow that up with a bubblewall, then close with popping a trink or the 20% absorb of your raid wall. With the buff at 25%, this should be pretty smooth sailing.

With all the excitement of this fight, it’s easy to forget the rest of the raid has a role to play as well. (Ah, the joys of tank checks.)

To start, position Festergut on the far left wall, facing the skeleton face, with the melee stacked behind him and the ranged in an arc behind that. Ranged needs to be conscious of Vile Gas, just like in normal. Don’t get that in melee!

As a whole, the raid will be most concerned with two things: beating the enrage timer, and dodging Malleable Goo. Failing at the latter will likely make the former impossible, because every time the Goo splashes on a character their casting and attack speeds are slowed 250% for 20 seconds. That is crippling in a dps check.

For melee, they should stack on the boss’ leg. Start on the left leg, diagonally left of it so the space in between Festergut’s legs are absolutely clear. Then when Goo is cast, strafe over to the right leg and stand right of that. Every Goo cast should be met with a strafe.

When spores go up, the way we handled them were ranged would stack on one spore in the back. Melee would get another one. And whichever spore was extra in ranged or melee would dash to the tank and stack on them. This way everyone got their inoculation and we didn’t have to worry about extra damage from someone getting two spores. The only downside is one Malleable Goo can hit all your ranged or melee when they are at their most vulnerable, so coordination and attention is so very key to make sure people more out of any incoming Goos.

The entire fight is much like normal: a dps check coupled with a tank check. Dodge Goos, don’t get crushed into kibble, and you’ll be golden. Victory in this fight is directly, inversely proportional to how many people get hit by Malleable Goo. If you’re missing the enrage timer, that is the likely culprit.

The lewt!

• Belt of Broken Bones

ICC25HM: Lord Marrowgar

This is the first in a series of guides to the bosses of Icecrown Citadel 25man Heroic Mode. I’ll be adding more of these as time goes on and as we down new bosses.

So, what’s different?

• Bonestorm will probably kill anyone in the epicenter
• Coldflame does more damage, stays up much longer
• Bone spikes occur during Bonestorm

Group composition we used: 2 tanks, 6 healers, 17 DPS.

The trickiest part of this fight is going to be the Bonestorm. You’d think Marrowgar would hit harder on the tanks but, honestly, he doesn’t. He was hitting me for an average of 26k last week, which on a tank pushing 70k hp is a tickle. I’m very comfortable two tanking this fight and freeing up one dps, rather than splitting the Sabre Lash three ways.

Coldflame turns into a fun game of hop-skotch. You and your partner tanks will be spending any non-Bonestorm moment of the fight strafing left or right. Likewise, I usually mark myself and the other tank, and then (because such is privilege of MTing) I call out in vent which way I’m going during each burst of Coldflame. Usually left four times, then right, rinse, repeat, etc.

To make it easier on the rest of the raid, they can just hide in the red circle under Marrowgar. Coldflame trails form just outside it. Tanks could theoretically do this too, but with only the two of us I’m worried about the tight confines of the inner hitbox leading to accidental Sabre Lashings. Plus, strafing is much more fun.

So, like I said: Bonestorm hurts. But, thankfully, it’s easily mitigated by a strategy posted by Rilgon on Stabilized Effort Scope. There is a cast time when Bonestorm is about to happen, so as soon as I see him casting it, I split one way, my co-tank splits the other. We spread to opposite ends of the room along the base of the ice. Likewise, a pre-appointed Hunter goes to one side of the door, and a Boomkin heads to the other. Four points to a square. Everyone else clumps in the middle.

The reason four of us spread out is Marrowgar will generally target the person farthest away from him to park a Bonestorm on top of. If it’s a tank, great; if it’s the boomkin, he can Barkskin; if the hunter, he can use Deterrence.

Ranged need to kill spikes that pop up in Bonestorm ASAP. Coldflame likes to worm its way under those people. If the Hunter or Boomkin that eat Bonestorms get spiked, I throw a Hand of Sacrifice on them to be safe.

If Marrowgar jumps into the middle, I pop Divine Sacrifice (the whole thing, not just Divine Guardian) and soak up some of that damage. Putting your healers in a group with you isn’t a terrible idea to give them some breathing room in those “oh crap” moments.

Honestly, this fight is a cakewalk and you’ll probably one shot it on your first attempt like we did. The hardest part for your raid will be scattering out of the middle of the Bonestorm if Marrowgar dives into the quivering pile your raiders are surely forming.

The lewt!

• Legguards of Lost Hope
• Bracers of Dark Reckoning

How to tank Putricide in Phase 3

Well, I can claim some authority on this based solely on how many times I’ve done this fight now… although, actually I suppose that’s a lot like Danny DeVito’s character from The Rainmaker claiming authority on taking the Bar Exam. Er, but I digress. Putricide. Phase 3.

Putricide in Phase 3 is a bastard if there ever was one. Basically as soon as everyone gets control of their characters back after the tear gas transition, you have 120 seconds (give or take) to drop Putricide or you’ll terrifying–and perhaps a little joyfully–rack up killing blows against every member of your raid. Not to mention triumphantly top the healing chart for that attempt.

If you’re doing 10man, you want to space out the Mutated Plague debuffs across two tanks like so: 4 on one, then 4 on the other. This will give you the smoothest transitions for the benefit of maximizing dps.

For 25man you need 3 tanks splitting the stacks like so: 2/2/2, then 4/4/4. There are more arcane patterns you can do if you want to squeeze every last drop of dps out before the soft enrage, but the textbook way is good enough.

Do note: if any tank gets 5 stacks it’s generally lights out.

Now, when the phase starts you’ll want to immediately run towards Putricide as a group and take him to the wall. Start slowly kiting him backwards, barely moving only if a puddle or flasks are dropped. Make sure to beat it into your dps they want to be directly behind Putri, because those flasks will pop up next to his legs and the middle is a safe zone. If any of your dps eat a -75% hit debuff that is murder in such a tight dps race.

Likewise, during tank transitions avoid those flasks at all costs, or else pray for the gods to look kindly upon your taunting attempt.

Keep pacing him around the wall, with no jolts or dashes ahead that will pull Putri out of range for your melee. Tank transitions should be clean, with you stacking on the current tank and then taunting and continuing the kite flow.

Once you get the 4/4/4 range don’t be afraid to pop Divine Sacrifice/Guardian. Your healers will thank you.

I’m not going to lie, Phase 3 is rough at first, and could take a few attempts to get the flow down so no one trips up on anything or eats a wayward flask. It took us quite some time to get down pat on 25man. Best of luck!

When to use Divine Sacrifice in ICC

Since the 3.3 changes to Divine Sacrifice, the spell has become a much bigger part of my arsenal than it was pre-change. With a two minute cooldown and no need to take, DivSac should become one of your most oft-used spells in Icecrown as you work your way through Arthas’ minions.

But wait, doesn’t DivSac do damage to me?

Yes and no. We’re not really concerned with Divine Sacrifice, per se, but more with the Divine Guardian effect that kicks in when DivSac is activated. If you make a quick cancelaura macro from DivSac like so:

#showtooltip Divine Sacrifice
/cancelaura Divine Sacrifice
/cast Divine Sacrifice

… and then hit it twice in rapid succession you’ll turn on DivSac, then off (cancelling any damage), but Divine Guardian will stick and the whole raid will benefit from the 20% damage reduction effect.

Best times to pop DivSac in Icecrown

This list may or may not just turn into a list of high raid damage moments in ICC boss fights–though, six of one, half dozen of the other, I suppose. In any case, I’ll update this list when I see more of the boss fights.

Marrowgar

• During a bonestorm
• When two or more healers get spiked

Lady Deathwhisper

• When the exploding ghosts spawn

Deathbringer Saurfang

• When tanking DBS during the sub-30% frenzy period. Damage you take it carried across to anyone with a Mark, so you want to minimize how much damage you–and they–take.

Stinky

• Right after a decimate so the next pulse of his aura doesn’t hurt as much

Festergut

• When Festergut is casting his exhale to do the massive raid-wide damage. Helps if anyone missed an inoculation.

Rotface

• During an ooze explosion, in case rockets hit anyone

Professor Putricide

• Right before a green slime reaches its target and knocks everyone into the air. Proper stacking minimizes damage, but applying the Divine Guardian effect on top of that can’t hurt.

Blood Council

• If using a ranged tank, during their turn, while Keleseth is casting an Empowered Shadow Lance
• If an Empowered Conjured Flame looks like it’s getting too close to too many ranged at once

Blood Queen Lana’thiel

• When she goes up in the air and starts casting bloodbolts at people

When used correctly, and at the most optimal times, Divine Sacrifice/Guardian can give your healers some much needed breathing room. Depending on the moment, DivSac can even help prevent wipes. Use it like the dead vote in Chicago, early and often.

Tankadin leveling 51-80: coming of age

Where we left off last week: just dinged level 50, rocking a 0/41/0 spec, enjoying our brand new Avenger’s Shield spell, and obtaining a new minor glyph slot. Today I’m going to show you have to jump those last thirty levels and hit level 80 specced and glyphed and ready for raiding.

Levels 51-60

51 — Redoubt (3/3) [putting last point in there]
52-54 — Touched by the Light (3/3)
55-57 — Shield of the Templar (3/3)
58-59 — Judgements of the Just (2/2)
60 — Hammer of the Righteous (1/1)

Nothing much exciting happens in this bracket, other than at 57 or 58 you can head over to Outlands. At 60 you get the Hammer of the Righteous spell which is amazing for heroics. Go ahead and drop your Consecration glyph for the HotR glyph. It’ll make dungeons that much easier!

Note that we’re skipping the Guarded by the Light talent for now, since we won’t have Divine Plea for another 10 levels.

Levels 61-70

61-65 — Deflection (5/5)
66-67 — Improved Judgements (2/2)
68-69 — Heart of the Crusader (2/3)
70 — Guarded by the Light (1/2)

We have everything we need from the Prot tree, so we can dip over to Ret and start picking out some new toys over there. Divine Plea is coming at 71 though, so the talent point you get from 70 should be spent getting ready for that.

If you’re Alliance, at level 64 you get Seal of Vengeance, which will replace Seal of Righteousness as your primary tanking seal for basically the rest of the game. If Horde, you have to wait until 66 for Seal of Corruption, our version of SoV. Crusader Aura at 64 is pretty nifty, as well.

At 70 we get a new minor glyph slot. There are really no good choices for this, you might as well dump the Glyph of Blessing of Kings in there. Alternatively, whatever Blessing you use the most.

Levels 71-80

71 — Guarded by the Light (2/2)
72 — Heart of the Crusader (3/3)
73 — Seal of Command (1/1)
74-75 — Pursuit of Justice (2/2)
76-77 — Conviction (2/5)
78-80 — Crusade (3/3)

Big milestones this bracket. At 71 your mana problems disappear forever thanks to Divine Plea (and Guarded by the Light giving it generally constant uptime). At 73 you get our old friend Seal of Command back, which will return to being your primary aoe seal (with SoV/C still better for bosses and single targets). At 75 you start moving 15% faster, which is always awesome for leveling. Moreover, at 75 we get Shield of Righteousness, out highest damage single target attack.

Now that you’ve hit 80, you should have a spec that looks like this. Well, that’s good for leveling, but now that you can run heroics and raids, it’s time to respec.

Pick up the cookie cutter 0/53/18 spec and recalibrate your glyphs to: Divine Plea, Seal of Vengeance, and Judgement. If you’re sticking to heroics, you might find Hammer of the Righteous is a better fit for that last glyph slot instead of Judgement.

I hope this guide was of benefit to you levelers out there. For more information once you hit 80, check the Guides tab above and don’t be afraid to kick me an email (rhidach at gmail dot com) if you have questions about what you’re next step is.

Happy tanking!

Tips for Festergut and Rotface

Festergut and Rotface suck. They are hard bosses and require each and every raider to give 110%. Each player needs to maximize the performance of their role and minimize anything that hurts the overall team effort (especially avoidable damage!).

Here are some dopey little tricks you can use to bring your A game to each fight:

1. Use a slow dps weapon for Festergut

Considering how tight the enrage timer can get, dps from every member of your group matters, and as Paladins we have the luxury and privilege of contributing more than our fair share of tank dps to the pile.

While Festergut may hit hard, he only does during a small window of the fight. Assuming you have the defense to spare, don’t be afraid to use a slow dps weapon (the slower the better) to maximize your damage. The slower your weapon is, the more damage each 5-stack proc from Seal of Vengeance/Corruption will do.

2. When not tanking Festergut, stand behind him

You should be soft-capped for expertise anyway, so to maximize your damage done on this fight, stand behind the boss to avoid causing parries for yourself and the person currently tanking.

3. Make the best use of your Gastric Bloat buff

Let’s combine points one and two. When you hit 9 stacks of Gastric Bloat and get the boss pulled off you, jump behind the boss, cancel Righteous Fury, self-cast Hand of Salvation, pop wings, and go to town.

Doing that in the ten man last night, after my tank switch I ended up pushing little more than 8000 dps. You can see it after that second huge dip in my dps, I slid behind the boss and immediately exploded in damage.

4. Make sure to Judge when kiting the Big Ooze

Judging is an important part of keeping threat on the Big Ooze while kiting. If you’re just shield tossing every 30 seconds you’re going to find the healer aggro riding hard on your heels. So, you definitely need to judge when possible.

The easiest way to manage Judging without getting murdered by being too close to the Ooze is to run ahead of it (as you would normally) until you’re just out of range and the Judgement icon is red on your bar. The millisecond it gets color back, click it/hit the hotkey, unleash your Judge, and then keep moving.

You can also use the range on Judgement to safely gauge your distance from the Big Ooze.

5. Use Seal of Righteousness for Big Ooze kiting

Seal of Righteousness will give you the most threat bang for your buck. Since you won’t be able to get close enough to build a 5 stack, Seal of Vengeance/Corruption is useless. Moreover, Seal of Command is only really good for aoe situations.

Thus, the burden falls on the neglected Seal of Righteousness. Each time you judge with SoR you’ll do more threat than you would judging any other seal.

Tankadin leveling 1-50: speccing the early years

I got an email from one of my WoW-playing friends recently who’s leveling his brother’s paladin in his spare time. He wanted to level by sticking to the dungeon finder tool and initially asked if it made sense to go prot and just farm LFD. I kind of scoffed at the idea and told him just go ret/holy (since he’s a healer usually, it’d be more comfortable for him). Anyway, he emailed me again earlier this week:

so i bucked your suggestion and went prot, because the dungeon queues are literally instant, which i like for my xp/hour
i was thinking – you should write a “how to” for baby prots. like what talents to fill out first, what heirlooms to get, what stats to prefer, pre-divine plea mana strats

And so I shall!

First, a disclaimer: I leveled my tankadin (yes, as prot) during the early days of TBC. Back then we auto-attacked until level 40 and we liked it! … Uphill, both ways. And there was none of this “mounts at 20″ nonsense, we ran ourselves from end of Desolace to the other… and we liked it!

Sidenote: I originally recommended going straight prot all the way, but after discussing it with my colleague Honors on Twitter, I was persuaded to his point of view that it makes more sense to hang out in the Ret tree initially. The reasons why are below in the relevant sections.

Pre-game

There are no tanking heirlooms per se, but that doesn’t mean you can’t use some dps heirlooms to speed up leveling and make you nigh-unkillable in the first chunk of the game. I would recommend grabbing:

Venerable Dal’Rends Sacred Charge (enchanted with Crusade) — 40 EoH
Polished Breastplate of Valor (enchanted with Major Health) — 40 EoH
Polished Spaulders of Valor — 40 Emblems of Heroism
Swift Hand of Justice — 50 Emblems of Heroism

If you want to go the extra mile, and already have it, grab Discerning Eye of the Beast as well. But, don’t go out of your way for it. It’s not critical, just the bonus mana is nice and that would normally be an empty trink slot.

With those items you’ll be ready to level in style. For the other slots though, when you get items from the AH or for quests, always take the highest armor class item with stamina and strength. Those are your two biggest stats (the “of the Bear” item class) and should be the two you focus on gear-wise. Avoid any intellect, mp5, spirit gear. Even though are attacks are technically spells, mana shouldn’t be a big concern for you. And spellpower is garbage, avoid that at all costs.

Levels 1-10

Before you do anything, hie thee to a mailbox and grab all your heirloom items (assuming you sprung for them).

Now, unfortunately, there are no talents at this point in your character’s life. You start off with Devotion Aura, Seal of Righteousness, and Holy Light. Just burn through all the quests and when you hit level 10 you should have your first tanking seal (Righteousness), a judgement spell (Judgement of Light), your first cooldown (Divine Protection), and your extra life (Lay on Hands).

Levels 11-20

10-14 — Benediction (5/5)
15-16 — Improved Judgements (2/2)
17-19 — Heart of the Crusader (3/3)
20 — Seal of Command

At level 14 you get Righteous Defense, your aoe taunt (pulls up to three mobs off a friendly target). At 16 you get Hand of Reckoning, a single-target taunt that does damage (don’t be afraid to use this as an attack when pulling). And, most importantly, at 16 you get Righteous Fury, which you’ll need to hold aggro. Once you get this spell you’re ready to hit the LFD tool with a… er… righteous fury. Lastly, you get Consecrate at level 20, which is key for holding large groups of mobs.

At level 15 you get your first two glyph slots, and for those I’d recommend grabbing Glyph of Judgement and Glyph of Lay on Hands for each.

If you’re tanking dungeons at this point you’ll have to learn how to cope with a limited toolset. Manage pulls by grabbing one add with Hand of Reckoning, judging a second, and then dropping Consecrate. Hopefully the dps you run with will be intelligent enough to know to attack what mob you are attacking. If you lose aggro be sure to quickly pick it back up with either taunt. Be sure to keep Righteous Fury on at all times!

Bless yourself with Might until level 20 when you get Kings, then switch to that.

If you find mana hard to manage, and you’re dealing with lots of downtime, don’t be afraid to judge wisdom. And don’t consecrate for only one mob, because the spell sucks up a huge chunk of mana when you cast it. Consecrate sparingly. However, once you hit 20 and grab Seal of Command, couple that by changing your major glyph to Glyph of Seal of Command. Now every time you judge you’ll gain back 8% of your mana!

Levels 21-29

21-25 — Divine Strength (5/5)
26-27 — Pursuit of Justice (2/2)
28-29 — Conviction (2/5)

At this point we’re just bouncing between the Ret and Prot tree, biding our time until level 30. Enjoy Pursuit of Justice now while you can, you won’t be seeing it again until past 60.

Legel 30: Respec!

Now that we’ve hit level 30, it’s time to hop over to a capital city and ditch our current build so we can reboot as full prot. When you respec, grab these:

10-14 — Divine Strength (5/5)
15-19 — Anticipation (5/5)
20-22 — Improved Righteous Fury (3/3)
23-27 — Toughness (5/5)
28-29 — Improved Devotion Aura (2/3)
30 — Blessing of Sanctuary

Now, the huge, huge new spell at 30 is Blessing of Sanctuary. This becomes your primary tanking blessing for the rest of the game. All the good parts of Kings (stam and strength) coupled with mana return on every block, dodge, or parry and damage reduction to boot. You can’t beat it. This spell will generally negate a lot of your mana concerns and adequately replace Seal of Command.

Another major glyph slot opens at 30, and you can put the Glyph of Consecration in there. That’ll give you a little more return for the massive amounts of mana it costs you to drop a consecrate. Change your first major glyph back to Judgement now that Seal of Command isn’t part of your toolbox anymore.

Levels 31-40

31-33 — Reckoning (3/5)
34 — Devotion Aura (3/3) [this is putting the last point in there]
35-37 — One-Handed Weapon Specialization (3/3)
38-39 — Sacred Duty (2/2)
40 — Holy Shield

Just a note on the 3/5 Reckoning: generally, 3 points in Reckoning will be enough to ensure optimal uptime in aoe tanking situations. The last two points have diminishing returns, we can better use them elsewhere.

At 34 you can get Divine Shield and thus the ability to bubble hearth. Use it well.

And at 40 you get Holy Shield, which is awesome for tanking dungeons. That extra 30% block means more mana from Blessing of Sanctuary, less damage taken, and more threat when Holy Shield does damage to a mob. You’ll find aoe tanking becomes a walk in the park at this point.

Levels 41-50

41-43 — Ardent Defender (3/3)
44 — Spiritual Attunement (1/2)
45-47 — Combat Expertise (3/3)
48-49 — Redoubt (2/3)
50 — Avenger’s Shield

Two awesome talents at this point. Avenger’s Shield is when pulling gets really easy. No longer do you pull one mob then run in to intercept the rest, now you can hit three mobs at once and build a huge pile of initial threat. And with Spiritual Attunement, you’ll find mana is nearly infinite in dungeons.

You also get a minor glyph slot at 50, which you should put Glyph of Sense Undead into. At this level you’ll probably be spending a lot of time in the Plaguelands and the undead-filled dungeons there in. Coupled with your new Holy Wrath spell, you’ll find aoe tanking undead mobs is where tankadins truly shine.

Contine to Part 2: Levels 51-80. >>