3.2 Engi changes for tanks (updated and bumped!)

Updated: In the original version of this post I derided the Engineering changes of the first 3.2 ptr build as half-measures. What they’ve added in the last two days though, I would regard those as genuine buffs. I can honestly say I am happy with my decision to drop Mining for Engineering now.

Here are the item enhancement/tinker changes:

• Flexweave Underlay now gives 23 agi (up from 15).
• Reticulated Armor Webbing now gives 885 armor (85 more).
• New helm enchant: Mind Amplification Dish. Adds +45 stamina and an on-use mind control function to a helm. Will not stack with the Arcanum of the Stalwart Protector.
• Potion Injectors now increase the amount gained by 25% when used by engineers.

Also, some fun new things:

• A Jeeves robot that can be summoned once per hour to repair/sell reagents and gives bank access to skill Engineers.
• An Engi-only AH in Dalaran.
• A wormhole generator for Northrend on a 15 minute cooldown.
• Rocket boots now add a passive +24 crit rating. Pretty nice for my Ret set!

The buff makes the Engineer cloak enchant best in slot for avoidance (assuming you’re block capped and crit immune). Titanweave gives .39% avoidance, Greater Agility .42%, and Flexweave Underlay gives .44%. Also, the Underlay gives .44% crit chance and 46 armor. Pretty nice if those numbers make live.

As for the Webbing, it was already best in slot for EH, and definitely an ideal glove enchant considering how unnecessary increasing our threat is. 85 more armor is miniscule, but I’ll take it.

The helm enchant is nice too. If you’re crit capped it’s probably a fair trade to get some more stamina plus the MC effect in return for giving up some negligible avoidance. More stamina is always, always a good thing.

Lastly, as somewhat icing on the cake, the Injectors are being changed to offer a +25% effect to health and mana potions. Not life changing, but can be a nice boost for times when you run out of mana (as rare as that is) or need a quick shot of health (pun intended).

This is MADNESS

Been busy with some non-Uld25 things lately, the least of which being the fire festival. I’m a huge fan of anything that gets me to explore Azeroth and be reminded of how vast it is, especially if there is a fair bit of coin involved as well. And oh boy is there, I’ve already made up a huge chunk of the hit my wallet took after stupidly buying those six runed orbs.

Only drawback: farming Slave Pens to get my pet-crazed friends their scorchlings, haha. As you can see above, we’ve made some progress. (Grats Gul, I hate you).

On Friday one of the officers has been doing a semi-hardcore/semi-fun run of Ulduar 10, with the goal of knocking off a few hard modes. Hanging out with a friend this past Friday, we decided to jump into the run.

Raid started off trying two towers on Flame Lev which we initially wiped on because we didn’t notice that someone who had never tossed a passenger before was riding a catapult. Oops. You can imagine how that went. I managed to pull down some obscene dps in my demolisher thanks to my mostly-226 gear. It’s kind of satisfying seeing 100k crits when you’re usually stuck with the low numbers in normal raid circumstances.

We then ran up to XT with the goal of downing his hard mode.

Our first two attempts went well, we had the dps (even with three healers) but the raid damage was apparently too much for the healing set up we had going. After a dps had to drop out we brought in Ildara with her crazy hots. One-shot XT after that.

Best strategy seems to be this: tank XT like normal on the wall. Melee dps XT on his back right, ranged directly in the back with a healer on the north side and one on the south side. After the heart is shattered, whenever a light bomb hits someone, they run over by the north scrap pile (just far enough away not to damage anyone) and when the spark spawns melee quickly takes it out. If someone gets hit with a gravity bomb they run over to the south scrap pile and drop the void zone there.

All in all, the fight is pretty simplistic. I wasn’t taking much damage and usually got lucky with no large robot spawning off the first heart drop. If a robot does spawn, have a hunter MD it to you then focus it down to minimize how much damage you’re taking/stress on the healers. You can kill it yourself as long as you pay attention to your threat levels on XT.

Past XT the raid was pretty straightforward in the consistency of our roflstompings of the various bosses. I used Thorim as a chance to study the Evokers a bit (a little anthropology outing if you will). It looks like they don’t put up the Rune Shield immediately so you have a small window to burn them down before they become a huge pain. Not sure if they’ll exhibit the same behavior in heroic mode. Further study is clearly necessary.

The last boss that we attempted that night was Mimiron, which I was dreading. I still clearly remember how awful that fight was when we first tried it and how painful it was to work our way up through the phases. I know they nerfed the fight a bit but… honestly Blizzard? We one shot the guy… with no difficulty. It was a total cake walk.

I suppose I should be relieved to have downed this boss after all the anguish he inflicted on us. At the same time the victory feels a tad hollow, considering how obviously nerfed to hell this once mighty foe was. Rest now, sweet prince.

Nonetheless! After Mim we called it, because it was 2:30 in the morning, and dammit I needed my beauty sleep. Saturday they went back and down Vezax (woo hoo) which left us last night to try Yogg-Saron.

A slight diversion if you’ll grant me the luxury: I hate multi-phase fights. With a passion. They go on forever and it’s a bitch to progress in them because you have to hope that someone doesn’t screw up an earlier phase so you can get to the phase you need to work on. I understand why they exist, they make the fight longer and more epic. And obviously the last fight needs to be that much more difficult, but it’s such an artificial difficulty increase.

Perhaps I’m venting because this fight wasn’t the cake walk that that little voice that tells me to burn things, or commands me to steal from old people, let on.

I hate you. Yeah you, you toothy bastard.

So I don’t sound so downbeat I should emphasize before we hit the “oh god I’m so sick of wiping, let’s switch to wiping on phase 1 so it takes less time” point, we were doing pretty well. We hit phase 3 pretty easily a few times. Phase 2 is pretty much down, phase 1 depends on how much everyone is paying attention. Also would have helped if the DK wasn’t playing with 1000ms… but I digress. And Phase 3 is terrifying and I never want to go there again.

We’ll get him eventually. Though, I can’t even begin to imagine this fight on heroic difficulty.

It’s all right to be wrong

Really, there there. Everything’s going to be a-ok pal. World’s not gonna end. Happens to the best of us.

Just like everybody poops, from the lowliest Victorian chimney sweep boy to the King of Siam (ok, my copy of the book may be a bit outdated), everyone is wrong about something from time to time. Honestly, it doesn’t make you less of a person to admit you were mistaken.

I like to think I’m pretty open to admitting my own faults. Hell, I’ve been wrong about stuff on this blog, and I’ve admitted as much!

Nonetheless, the reason I’m delving into this topic of self-delusion is based on an incident this weekend in guild and a personality trait I’ve noticed in one guildee that seems to surface more often than not.

The other day I was minding my own business in Un’goro, passing through to snuff out some bonfires, when one of the officers asked in guild chat why the Naxx run scheduled on Thursday was cancelled. I didn’t remember anyone intending to cancel it so I checked the calendar. It was still there. A couple of people, myself included, piped in saying we could see it still.

“Nope. It was cancelled. I got a cancellation message in the mail.”

But… it’s there… look, I can sign up and remove my name from it!

“You’re wrong.”

But if you’ll just open your calendar and look at it…

“Calendar must be wrong, I got a cancellation notice.”

If everyone else can see this event, maybe, just maybe [honored guild colleague], you’re incorre–

“Nope. And nope.”

Okie dokie. Obviously not going to win this one, someone is clearly a little too invested in their own veracity. Can’t damage the brand name, and all that.

Along this vein there is one person in the guild who also has a zealous, Scarlet Crusadesque devotion to that great whiteboard in the sky where some seraph is tallying up how many arguments he’s won. Unlike example A, this gentleman likes to counter opinions to the contrary with waves upon waves of misinformation. And any facts that don’t prove his point are dismissed as false data.

For example, someone was asking about the Paladin judging system, having just rolled a wee little Pally themselves. He Who Knows All informed the questioner that they should be picky with which judgement they use (not seal, judgement) because different judgements do different damage. As you, my fellow seasoned Paladins, know, what you judge only affects what dot you put on the mob. What damage the judgement does is based on the seal.

I piped in to correct him, and to prove my point I linked the three judgement spells. He immediately logged off and onto his Paladin to assuredly go wail on a target dummy for a few hours to hopefully find someway to prove his point. I never heard from him again on the subject.

It’s unreal the lengths people will go to delude themselves, and attempt to delude others, into believing what they assert. The world would undoubtedly be a much better place if once and a while everyone could swallow their damn pride and admit that, yeah, they were wrong about x or y. Honestly, there’s nothing wrong with being wrong. You’ll survive if you admit it, I promise.

Ow, my face

He exclaimed, after hitting the brick wall.

Actually, I’m being too harsh. Wednesday’s raid went extraordinarily well. We one shot Ignis again, despite some hecticness with the add management. Out of the three people that handle the adds (myself, another tank, and a boomkin for rooting/zapping them) only I was on vent. So it was really hard to coordinate the tanking and the rooting, and the zapping. Very messy but we got ‘im down.

And then we headed over to Freya with the memory fresh in our minds of last weeks roflstomping at the hands of her voluminous trash. Last time around it took us around an hour so to clear out all her little buddies, and then we had trash respawns come up during out 8 or so attempts. Total shit show.

This week however we did much, much better. Trash was cleared out in about 20 minutes with no accidental body pulls of Elder Stonebark or additional trash coming in to join the fun. CC was cleanly done and reapplied on the fly with little trouble. Altogether, it definitely was a good portent of how the night would go.

When we finally got to Freya we adopted the strategy of if the fight turned sour (like two waves of adds at the same time) we’d run out to reset it. We ended up doing this a few times initially because we had a couple of new folks who didn’t know the fight. After the first handful of false starts we got our house in order and pushed the fight all the way up to right before the last phase. She had about 30 or so stacks left and the last wave of adds were almost dead, but we lost a few folks, didn’t kill them in time and a wave of detonators was summoned.

Shouldn’t have been a big deal, we finished the wave that held us up, started to down the detonators, and then all of a sudden a green flash and most of the raid was dead. Turns out the stacks were reduced to 0 after that last pack of adds, so she dropped the exploded pods everywhere while we were occupied with the detonators. Woops.

After that attempt, with revenge searing in our hearts, we then went and took her out in one clean go. It was a thing of beauty, every add was reduced to the proper health percentage and targets switched like we called out. Detonators were killed quickly, but slowly enough that healers didn’t fall behind. And no one died to explodey pods. Always a plus.

With Freya freed from the whammy and having bid us adieu, we cracked open her cache and distributed the loot. Among the booty was the token for my tier 8.5 legs which I bid 100 dkp on, though truthfully wasn’t really interested in winning. For one I think we can all agree that the 4 piece bonus is unmitigated crap, so that had no bearing on my decision. Moreover, I’m pretty enamored with the EH of the Saronite Plated Legguards. Lastly, I’d rather not tank in a dress. As a blood elf, that’s a little… on the nose… dontcha think?

In any case, as luck would have it (and I mean that sarcastically) I won the legs. I immediately pawned them off to the #2 bidder who would get much, much more use out of them. Lesson learned: don’t bid on gear you’re wishy-washy on.

After Freya the next logical step was Thorim so we headed over to his (thankfully) trash lite hallway and forced our way into the arena.

Right now Thorim is totally and completely our brick wall. Like Hodir I am beyond confident that its not ability keeping us from his cache, but execution. We’re having serious issues with Evokers overrunning the arena and making it impossible to kill trash. Demo and I did a lot of research, and I think the next time we head in there we can do it. I’ll post more on the strategy if it works.

Even if we don’t down Thorim, this has definitely been our best week in Ulduar to date.

Better Late Than Never Friday 6/26

Holy cow has it been a while since I’ve done one of these. Every time I put it off I hope that expanding my date range on keywords in Google Analytics will yield better searches. This time I was sort of right, but oh boy was it a pain reading 933 keywords to pluck out these eight.

can steel breakers fusion punch be dodged?

No, unfortunately not. It’s going to hit, and it’s going to hurt. Make sure to cleanse that dot off asap!

do pallies use divine sacrifice

They better. DS is an amazing skill that can do wonders for raid survival in tough spots with lots of AOE damage. I (as I’ve written about before) use it all the time in raids, and it’s been a tremendous boon to our healers and their stress levels. In my tank-biased opinion, every raiding Paladin should have this in their build, regardless of spec.

gaelic word for righteous

Fíréanta. Cool word!

how to grind defense skill wow

Let stuff hit you, haha. When I hit 80 I needed to grind out the last 5 skill points so I could start heroics so I ran a normal instance and by the time I walked out I was at 400/400 defense skill. Just make sure it’s level 80 mobs hitting you, you’ll gain the skill much faster than if you aoe farmed Stratholme.

shield of righteousness expertise

ShoR does not depend on expertise because it can’t be parried. It can miss though, so hit rating will affect it.

righteousness can remain a tanking seal typo

Yeah, I’m not quite sure what Blizzard meant when they said that. I’m hoping what they meant was “Seal of Righteousness is primarily used to tank” not “tanks primarily use Seal of Righteousness for tanking”. I suspect they just worded it poorly.

shiver vs titanguard paladin

Shiver is better for survivability because you can put a stamina gem in there. Would be better for threat too actually if you gemmed strength (which you shouldn’t!). I’d go with Shiver. Side note: I envy and loathe anyone with this dilemma.

any tanks wear archaedes

If there are tanks running around with an extra 50 defense or so in their gear and can afford to wear these pants, then more power to them. Unless they’re Paladins, because these pants have expertise in spades, which is ultimately a junk stat for us (in comparison to other tank stats, that is).

How to get epic gems in 3.2

As you all may know, one of my many hats is that of a Jewelcrafter. And as a JCer and a stam-whore tank, my primary concern on patch day won’t be tier 9 or Emblems of Triumph or baby raptors. Nay, my driving focus once that last bit of patch is downloaded and installed will be the relentless pursuit of epic gems to give me some delicious additional stamina. Here, my friends, is a four step guide on how to attain raw epic gems in order of least to mostly costly:

1. Buy gems with Emblems of Heroism

This is pretty straightforward and the main benefit is you don’t need a profession to get you the gem color you want. If you’re like me you have a bunch of Heroism/Valor badges saved up with nothing to spend them on. I’ll probably be able to replace all my superior gems with epics on badges alone.

2. Buy gems with Honor

Same deal as Emblems of Heroism, but 10k honor a pop. I have 20k honor saved up that I can spend, but I think I’d rather hold onto them for shoulder enchants. Although, I can always cash in my Stone Keeper Shards for honor tokens and then gems.

3. Prospect Titanium Ore

When Blizzard first announced this was one of the ways to get epic gems, the price of Titanium Ore skyrocketed across every server. I think it’s going to turn out that this method for obtaining the gems is going to have a terrible return on investment. Moreover, with RNG coming into play as to which gem you’ll get, you’re bound to be unhappy if you’re depending on a stockpile of ore to deliver the goods on patch day.

4. Transmute

This is where knowing or being an Alchemist comes in handy. The transmutation formulas we know are as follows:

• 1 Majestic Zircon = 1 Sky Sapphire + 1 Eternal Air
• 1 Ametrine = 1 Monarch Topaz + 1 Eternal Shadow
• 1 King’s Amber = 1 Autumn’s Glow + 1 Eternal Life
• 1 Eye of Zul = 3 Eternal Life
• 1 Cardinal Ruby = 1 Scarlet Ruby + 1 Eternal Fire
• 1 Dreadstone = 1 Twilight Opal + 1 Eternal Shadow

All the transmute formulas except for Ruby will be purchasable from the trainer. The Ruby formula comes from a quest that requires the Alchemist to transmute five epic gems. Everyone will probably have these on patch day, then.

There is a 20hr cooldown on transmutes in the latest build of the PTR. That unfortunately makes this the slowest method of obtaining gems.

Best raid night in a while

Last night was hands down the best raid night we’ve had in a while. Consider this: last week on Tuesday we downed up to Kolo, save Ignis. Then Wednesday we did Auriaya and Hodir. Last night we did FL, Razorscale, XT, Iron Council, Auriaya, and Hodir. That’s right, we did in one night all the bosses we did in two last week.

Definitely a nice antidote to worries that like to fester in the dark recesses of your mind after a bad raid night (like Sunday was). Yeah, this is basically farm content, but we’re improving to the point where we’ve knocked out all the farm bosses in one night, rather than two. That’s definitely progress.

Sidenote: Patch 3.1 came out on April 14th. It’s been 2 months and 10 days since the patch dropped, and thus what, 10 FL kills? Not once have we seen Titanguard. I think at this rate I’ll see Sorthalis before I see that sword. (But I digress from my whining!)

This is most certainly a huge step up from a month ago when every raid seemed to be a limbo contest. Despair had set in, some of the more gloomy gusses (myself included) were typing the introductory sentences in the guild obituary. Basically, things looked like they were on a downward spiral.

Thanks to the efforts of a few of us who took the reins–well, mostly Demo… he’s the brains in this operation, and I’m more the Natasha to his Boris–the guild is once again on the upswing. Last night just proved that.

Falowin likes to make fun of Demo’s optimism every so often by declaring in raids that “god himself cannot stop us” whenever we’re on a roll. In this case I think he may be right.

Lastly, a hilarious MT in guild chat last night. I’m sticking this under a read more tag because it’s kinda crude. Name’s hidden to protect the guilty.

[...]

When your guild hits a raiding roadblock

It’s the same damn thing every time. New content comes out and your guild goes rushing in head-on and promptly knocks themselves out on some obstacle they weren’t prepared for. Sometimes the object blocking your progression is a glass door, which isn’t really an obstacle at all, just something you need to slide open and slip through. Othertimes you’ve got a brick wall in your way.

For my guild the Keepers of Ulduar (heroic) are proving to be a mix of the two. Hodir we initially considered a giant, frozen brick wall, but with the assistance of our new strategy the fight was simplified to the point of absurdity. I can’t count how many times in my “WoW career” I’ve been in a guild that’s stuck on a fight, and with one teeny tiny stupid little change to the strategy the whole fight opened up.

Like, for example (and this is embarassingly obvious in hindsight), on Akilzon in ZA we used to switch to dpsing the birds which would prolong the fight until mana ran out and we all bit the dust. Then, one day we realized “hey let’s ignore the birds.” And we one-shot Akilzon. /facepalm

But those are the happy happenstances when the difficulty of an encounter is how you approach it. Worse are the ones that you can’t overcome due to the unwillingness of mathematics to get out of your damn way. That is, sometimes you don’t have enough healers, or the dps isn’t pulling their weight (while the tanks, of course, remain infallible!) and progression suffers as a result. Those times, what do you do?

As I see it, you have only one option, keep trying. (Disclaimer: I’m a bit of a masochist.)

Yeah, we can’t down Freya consistently, or Thorim at all, and the thought of Mimiron in 25 man causes me to lose control of my bladder, but damned if we’re not still getting gear from the first two sections of Ulduar. That’s not a bad thing, and after enough time you’ll be able to drag The Numbers into a side alley and beat them into submission while no one is looking.

And then before you know it you’ll be rolling in tier 8.5 gloves.

Of course, the major threat to the guild during week after week of fail is that people will get frustrated and stop coming to raids. Thus, the delicate balance must be preserved between progression and wiping.

The solution, moreover, is definitely not to slink back into older content (as I’ve seen suggested in my guild). Yeah we can do the safe thing and farm Naxx25 and Malygos, but why? What’s the point of spending two nights in that floating hellhole at this point in the game?

But I digress. Today is the start of another raid week. Tonight we’ll clear up to (and hopefully including) Auriaya, and probably leave Ignis for tomorrow. Then we’ll spend the rest of the week on the “harder” stuff: Iggy, Hodir, Freya, etc. We won’t down Mimiron, Vezax, or Yogg-Saron. And, you know what? I’m ok with that.

Because eventually we will. As long as keep gearing, our day will come.

… But hopefully before 3.2.

Fights I love: Elder Stonebark

One of the best things about Ulduar is the fact that the trash requires a little more than the traditional tank and spank. Now, Elder Stonebark obviously isn’t trash (being equivalent to Sartharion’s drake minions) but the same principle applies. You don’t just sit there and occassionally hop in a portal.

No, this guy you kite.

Elder Stonebark has this lovely ability called Fists of Stone which he’ll cast on average twice in the fight. When he applies this to himself, his melee hits can apply the Broken Bones debuff. All and all, this equals a dead tank.

As Paladins though, we are uniquely equipped to deal with this eventuality. The trick is to sit far back from the fight, at max range for your taunt. When you see Stonebark casting Fists of Stone (using Quartz is very helpful for this), taunt and make a run for it.

Take him back along the lake behind you, and along the shore towards the door. Don’t go too far because Stonebark will despawn if he gets too close to the entrance to the Conservatory of Life.

Fists of Stone lasts for 10 seconds, so the original tank should be prepared to taunt back as soon as it’s safe.

Lastly, always remember to strafe away rather than keep your back to him. You’ll be able to use some avoidance assuming you don’t have Broken Bones. (And keep your Divine Protection handy, just in case).

There’s definitely something to be said about a fight you tank by running away.

Spec possibilities in next patch

All the patch news yesterday lead to the inevitable conclusion that some pretty big changes are happening to Paladin tanking when 3.2 drops. Finally we’ll have a second high-mitigation cooldown to help us roll with the new big-hits style of tanking. I am personally ecstatic at the redesign of Ardent Defender and can’t wait for the first time pink angels descend from the heavens to restore me to 30% health because the healers panicked and switched to raid healing during a flame jet, letting Ignis crush me under his iron boot.

I’m getting carried away though! The changes announced yesterday have some weighty implications on how we spec. Specifically these changes are:

• Seal of Vengeance/Corruption will also do 33% of weapon damage when a full five-stack of the dot is up. This would theoretically make Seals of the Pure a better talent for threat generation than it currently is. Could also be paired with Reckoning for additional threat.
• Improved LoH will now provide a 20% damage reduction effect, rather than +50% armor value, making it a more useful cooldown.

Right now the default spec I see for tankadins is something around 0/53/18, which is a high threat output spec, but this might change. Here are two possible specs we might see becoming viable in 3.2:

Lay on Hands Spec (12/53/6)

Yes, I know, the irony is delicious. I’m not super enamored with this spec just yet, though. One of my big concerns with it is having to dump 5 talent points into increasing our Intellect to reach Improved Lay on Hands. Total waste of talent points considering what a non-issue mana is for us. There’s also the question of whether it makes sense to trade the threat and utility of 6% crit, 3-6% extra damage, and a run speed increase for an 11 minute cooldown.

Vindication Spec (0/53/18)

This spec takes two points out of Conviction and puts it in Vindication for the attack power debuff. Right now I think this looks like a better deal. It’s a little less tps but adds survivability thanks to the Demo Shout effect. And you don’t have to waste talent points on ineffectual talents. And you can benefit from the target effect more than once every 11 minutes.

Ultimately all this hullaballoo is just speculation (har har har). I think a lot will change depending on how much tps the new Seal of Vengeance generates and whether it makes Seals of the Pure or Reckoning viable (it probably won’t). I’m finding myself inclined to agree with the speculation Theck laid out in this thread at Maintankadin:

As the trees stand now, people desiring Vindication will have to go at least 10 points into Ret, unlocking Conviction. If Crusade is still considerably better than SotP (and it will be), it’s likely that 1 Conviction + 3 Crusade will out-threat 5/5 SotP, and give you the added utility of Vindication and SotP.

That’s probably where we’ll stand when the dust settles.