The triumphant shopping list

Full disclosure: I stole the idea for this post from Veneretio at Tanking Tips. Eek.

Thanks to 3.2, it’s pretty easy to lard ourselves up with iLevel 232+ epics, because of the delicious Emblems of Triumph. The only real differentiator here between raiders and more social players is what quality of tier you can get, and how often you can get a new item.

For example, my guild raids 25man ToC so I can reasonably expect about 40 emblems or so a week. Some guilds might get similar numbers from doing both versions of the 10man, or all four modes, whatever. Everyone gets a slice of the pie eventually.

With all the different purps available, I thought I’d be useful and offer my shopping list of what order I’m planning to get everything in.

One quick caveat: please, if your guild runs the 25man raid, don’t buy the iL 232 tier pieces. Eventually you’ll win a Trophy and that 232 piece will be a huge waste of badges. If you absolutely must have an upgrade, there are iL 245 pieces you can splurge on.

1. Liadrin’s Shoulderguards of Triumph (45+1 Trophy)

My guild never killed Yogg, so I didn’t have to worry about feeling guilty about ditching the T8.5 shoulders (status symbol that they were), so these were an obvious pick. I thankfully picked up a trophy (actually, two) in ToC25 before people really caught on to how valuable those were. Had I not gotten a trophy this probably would have taken a back burner to #2 on this list, though Shoulderguards of the Enduring Order is not a bad piece. It’d be better if not for the tier bonuses.

2. Libram of Defiance (25)

Ah, Evasion, how I love you. This Libram is basically worth a little more than 4% dodge and it is up constantly, from the first HotR until the end of the fight. It’s a thing of beauty.

3. Liadrin’s Legguards of Triumph (75)

This only on my list because I have that second trophy banked. If not I’d jump down to #4 on the list. Why the legs? Well, for one replacing my current legs would not break my T8 2pc bonus, and secondly with all the new gear my hit rating is taking a severe beating, and I need to buffer it a tad.

4. Clutch of Fortification (35)

Great, great ring. Nice smattering of armor and lots of stamina.

5. Liadrin’s Handguards of Triumph (45+1 Trophy)

All my purchases from here on out are based on the assumption that I’ll be winning more trophies. Once I have another one of those wonderful items, I’ll spend it on these gloves which are the cheapest piece of tier I would still need to get. Instant gratification!

6. Liadrin’s Faceguard of Triumph (75+1 Trophy)

I already have a iL 245 chest so I’ll round out my T9 four set with this last piece.

7. Glyph of Indominatability (50)

The last item I intend to get before I start blowing emblems on my offspec. Lots of armor is nice, but I have a dream one day of pairing the Heart of Iron with the Juggernaut’s Vitality, so this just isn’t a priority like my 4pc is.

Better Late Than Never Friday, 8/28

I originally intended to do the next part in my “Characteristics of a great tank” saga, but then last night I forgot to run over to Elwynn to take some screenshots, and dammit that article is crap without accompanying pictures. So no part two this week, unfortunately.

For newcomers to this blog, BLTNF is when I pull search terms that brought people here from my Google Analytics and answer what they were originally looking for.

vindication 3.2 work on raid bosses now?

Yes, and it’s glorious. While warriors and other classes need to expend a global cooldown to apply their attack power debuff, ours happens automatically. Vindication is a serious mitigation talent and any tank worth their salt should take it.

how to get the new paladin mount in 3.2

Buy it from the Crusader’s Quartermaster in the Crusader tent at the tourney. It costs 100 Champion’s Seals.

shard of the crystal forest good for tankadin?

It’s not terrible, but the neck off of Kologarn-10 or the Malygos-25 neck quest are both better. Especially the latter with a Solid Majestic Zircon socketed.

what do protection paladins gem

I need to update my classic flowchart, but you can basically follow this: Use Endurings until crit capped, then gem Solids. The only time you are not gemming a Solid Majestic Zircon is if you want the socket bonus, which you should only go for if the bonus is +9 or +12 stamina. Ignore all other bonuses. Also, you’ll need one red gem for your meta (assuming you’re using Austere) which you can get from socketing a Shifting Dreadstone.

“greater inscription of the gladiator” defense cap

The Glad inscription gives you .18% crit reduction, so you need 5.42% from defense. I just wrote a lot of fractions in front of me to figure out how much defense skill that is, but I ran out of stickies and have no answers to show for it. I think it’s somewhere around 538 or so. Just refer to your character sheet to make sure your crit reductions add up to 5.6% or more.

Also (sorry, as a tank on the intertubes I am legally obligated to say this) there’s no such thing as a “defense cap”. Defense minimum!

how much defense = dodge

41 defense is 1% avoidance, or .33% dodge, parry, and miss. 123 defense rating is 1% dodge, parry, and miss (so, 3% avoidance).

2 bindings of the windseeker one clear

If this is true, I hate you. With all this Door Boss nonsense I’ve severely fallen behind in my Bindings farming. It’s kind of stressful thinking it’s going to be impossible to get Thunderfury once Cataclysm hits, so I have a very limited window (less than a year possibly) to farm these pieces. With a theoretical 52 tries remaining, each week lost to Door Boss’s cold, icy reticence is one week too far.

3.2 is hit rating important for protection paladin

Not so important you should gem or enchants for it, but it is definitely nice to have. Hit means more (consistent) threat and more successful taunts.

3.2 seal of righteousness tanking seal?

No. Maybe for quick-dying trash, but if you have enough time to apply a 5-stack of SoV, you should be using it.

are socket bonuses that good?

Depends on the socket bonus. +block rating, +hit, +expertise, +dodge, etc., are all bust. Only +9 or +12 stamina are worth going for, because if you’re gemming an Enduring or Shifting, you’re invariably losing 15 stamina. However, if the bonus reduces that then 3 or 6 stamina is a good trade for 10 agility or 10 defense rating.

Oh, goody: SoV bug in ur threat, gimpin’ ur tps

Next time your threat feels sub par, you now know who to blame: the Ret Pally.

The Seal of Vengeance proc is currently bugged so that if there are two or more SoV stacks on a mob, the proc does the damage of the lowest stack.

So say you’re diligently keeping a five-stack up, and a Ret Pally runs off to kill an add and lets his stack fall off. He comes back and starts swinging again. As soon as his SoV dot applies once, your threat drops as your proc reverts to the damage bonus of a one-stack.

And because Ret has such a higher wind up time, it can be a good 15 seconds before you start seeing five-stack procs again.

Something to look out for.

This is how I spent my night

Staring at Vezax’s cast bar, watching it tick all the way to the full two second cast of Searing Flames and then bathing us all in the warm, glowing, warming glow of his massive aoe.

Then suddenly Demogar is dead, because of course, this cast happened during a Surge of Darkness. And I’m on my fifth t-shirt of the night because the previous four are soaked in sweat and tears, and honestly who wants to wear a wet, salty t-shirt? This isn’t the beach for chrissakes.

Allow me to paint you a picture–nay, allow me to MS Paint you a picture.

This is how I spent my night:

Arrgh.

I’m so happy my one interrupt is on the GCD. It made me nigh useless in this fight because by the time it became apparent that everyone freaked out and blew their interrupts on the last cast I’m still .7 seconds into my global and there’s only .6 seconds left until Vezax gives us a nice area of effect wtfpwning.

On the bright side, we left early enough that I could get the other Col10 team done for the week.

I am so done with Ulduar.

The beatdown goes on

Or, how I learned to stop worrying and love severely undertuned new bosses.

I know, I know, the Coliseum is meant to be easy on normal settings. Heroic mode is where the wheat is separated from the chaff. Still, I feel dirty after how easily we roflstomped the Twin Val’kyrs. I had high hopes that after the drubbing the Champions gave us last week that maybe the challenge was ramping up a bit. But, alas, no.

After the standard “we don’t know where the bosses appear” wipe, and the supplementary “testing out every aspect of the fight until boss enrages” wipe, we then killed it with ease on the third try.

The set-up

Before you start, split the raid up into two equal groups.

The thick black bar represents the large wooden doors that bosses enter the Coliseum through. Edyis Darkbane will appear on the left side and Fjola Lightbane on the right. When the fight starts, also, four portals will spawn. Two are light (white) and two are dark (purple).

The group on Darkbane stands on the left side of the Coliseum facing the door, Lightbane’s group on the right. When the fight starts the portals spawn and the doors open. Quickly click on the portal in front of your group (light for Darkbane, dark for Lightbane) and then run down to the portal by the door (dark for Darkbane, light for Lightbane) to pick up the boss.

What to watch for

There are two major events in this fight. I’m going to pair these explanations with what Demo would bellow as they were happening since it was a good way to simplify the event and let everyone know what to do.

“EVERYONE SWITCH TO [Light/Dark] [if you'd be so kind]”

Either boss will periodically summon a Vortex of their polarity which will do massive AOE damage to anyone who does not share the same polarity as the casting boss. So, for example, Darkbane will cast Dark Vortex. Immediately, everyone with Light Essence should click the portal next to Darkbane to gain Dark Essence. Then, while she’s casting Vortex still, run down to the light portal that was clicked at the start of the fight, and after the Vortex hits, click it to gain light essence. Then, bring Darkbane back to the dark portal.

“EVERYONE ON [Lightbane/Darkbane] [thanks in advance]”

Either boss will also cast a spell called “Twin Pact” that will put a shield on them and begin channeling a 15 second heal. The shield needs to be dps’d down and the heal interrupted before it goes through, or the Twins get 20% of their hp back. When one of them starts casting it, everyone on the opposite side of the room needs to click the portal next to their boss and run over to the casting boss to break the shield off. You won’t be able to do effective dps against the shield unless you have the opposite polarity of the boss.

So, for example, Darkbane casts Twin Pact. Everyone dpsing Lightbane clicks the light portal next to her and dashes across the room to Darkbane and breaks the shield down. The heal is interrupted, then Lightbane’s dps clicks the dark portal next to Darkbane and runs back to their original boss.

Other things to watch for

As a tank be careful for Twin Spike, which is a damage increase they get from time to time. According to the buff they get +100% weapon damage, but honestly, I didn’t ever feel like I was in any danger when this occurred.

Moreover, a boss will occasionally put a “Touch of [Light/Darkness]” on a random person in your group. Make sure everyone knows that if they get this debuff they need to run away from their group, because they’re going to do nasty damage on anyone with the opposite polarity of the touch they received.

Lastly, orbs will spawn from time to time and fly around the boss. They do negligible damage in normal mode, so just tell people to try to absorb as many as they can, light or dark, before they reach the boss. If the boss gets too many orbs of their polarity, they’ll soft enrage. But we spread out enough we didn’t have that issue last night. Moreover, if you catch enough orbs of your polarity you’ll gain an Empowered buff that will increase your damage by 100%.

But seriously

As complicated as I’ve made this seem… it’s not. It is a total and utter loot pinata, and as soon as your raid gets the mechanics down, you’ll one shot it every week.

Coming changes are catacly–no! I won’t do it!!

You can’t make me make the “cataclysmic” pun… I refuse! Damn you Blizz and your siren song of easy jokes.

Having eagerly digested all the information from Blizzcon that I could, I’m happy to report the following game changes. (And, by report, I mean regurgitate everything you’ve already read.)

Block is changing

Block rating and value is being folded into one stat. Now instead of having x chance to block for y, you’ll have x chance to block for a steady percent of damage reduction. What that number is, we don’t know yet. Great chance for raid bosses, but kind of crappy for heroics and outgeared content.

Defense is gone

Gone baby, gone. Now all tanks get a crit reduction talent a la Survival of the Fittest. I’m mostly in favor of this, because it’s a huge pain trying to maximize stamina and avoidance while staying crit capped. But then again, juggling is half the fun of the mini-game we call raid gearing.

New ways to advance our characters

Blizz isn’t adding another tier of talents (no 61 point talents) so all we get are 5 more talent points to spend as we will. SotP I guess would be the obvious choice if we had those extra 5 points with today’s menu of options. However, the trees are probably going to be shifted a little with some things moved to the new mastery system (as I understand it) so talents are less “improve x by y%” and more “when you do x, y might happen”.

Path of the Titans is one new way we’ll be advancing our toons, choosing a Titanic cult (I call the Cult of DiCaprio, /swoon) and researching “ancient glyphs” to plug into spots we research. MMO-Champ has two example glyphs that are tank oriented, one giving a passive 4% damage reduction, and one that makes a new Divine Sacrifice-like spell. Pretty cool shift.

So many questions…

Will there still be tank weapons or will we be sharing weapons with dps? How much will the prot tree change? Will there be a “tanking” Path of the Titan to focus on?

The beta will be interesting.

Call me Ishmael

Some weeks ago — never mind how long precisely — having little or no gold in my bags, and nothing particular to interest me in Northrend, I thought I would raid a little and see the inside of Ulduar. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation.

Demogar castigated us, “But what’s this long face about, Enveloping Shadows; wilt thou not chase the white whale! art not game for Thorim?”

He went on to explain, “Aye, aye! It was that accursed watcher that razeed me; made a poor pegging lubber of me for ever and a day!” Then tossing both arms, with measureless imprecations he shouted out: “Aye, aye! and I’ll chase him round the Storm Peaks, and round the halls of Ulduar, and round the inner sanctum, and round perdition’s flames before I give him up. And this is what ye have shipped for, guildees! to chase that Thorim on both sides of land, and over all sides of earth, till he spouts black blood and gives up his purps.”

All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Demogar, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Thorim. He piled upon the watcher’s white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Cairne down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart’s shell upon it.

“Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering Thorim; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee.”

Four characteristics of a great tank, part 1: A sense of ownership

With the addition of dual specs in 3.1 and the influx of easy purples in 3.2, there’s been a wave of new folks strapping on the defense plate and stepping to the front of the group as a meat shield. And sure, these people can do the job of tank–they can hold threat and not die. But as a tank they don’t excel. It takes more than 540 defense rating to make you a great tank, it’s also philosophy and attitude.

I originally conceived of this series as just one long article, but then I decided I was in sore need of blog fodder and it’d be best to stretch this out interminably. Or at least until I do all four parts.

To get to the meat of this post, the first characteristic I wanted to discuss was a sense of ownership. By ownership I don’t mean bossing around your party or raid members, or being in charge of direction and strategy. No, I mean something more existential. As a tank you are charged with the defense and well-being of your friends. As the adage goes:

My comrades are my weapons and I am their shield.
While I draw breath, they shall not perish.

That is, in a nutshell, what I mean by a sense of ownership. These folks in your group are depending on you to keep them alive in a way that is divergent and yet fundamentally more critical than what the healer does. If a healer dies, the tank and dps can get by for a short period of time through the use of cooldowns. If a tank dies, the boss is going to run around and begin one-shotting the dps and healer.

That’s not to say you should be some giant ego monster because you are well nigh indispensible. Far from it. You have a responsibility to the group, one you must rise to.

Now, how to integrate this philosophy into your playstyle?

For one, I recommend organizing your unitframes so your focus frame is sitting somewhere convenient and within your normal line of vision, so it never is out of view. Then set the healer as your focus. If this is a five man, there’s only one to choose from but in a raid the choice is a little more sticky. If a healer is specifically assigned to you, focus them; if there’s one that tends to be a little squishy, that’s your focus.

Now that you have that little focus frame sitting where you can see it at all times, keep an eye on it. If the healer’s health begins to falter, confirm if it’s an add, and then quickly slap a taunt to strip the offending mob off. Of if there’s a period of raid damage (such as a Tympanic Tantrum) consider BOPing them. Perhaps a Hand of Sacrifice. Maybe toss them a Lay on Hands if things look really bad.

Mainly, the key point here is to keep an eye on them.

One of my buddies once remarked about a particular fail tank in our guild that the key flaw in his method was he “didn’t care about healthbars.” This particular tank was perfectly fine with raid members dying, because he assumed that they had done something wrong and deserved it. He was, in short, a subscriber to the old phrase that the tank was only responsible for the healer and if a dps died “it was their own damn fault.”

He is wrong. A tank must be concerned with the wellbeing of all your party members. Each person is key to the success of the endeavor. No matter how stupid or aggro happy they are. Even if they rip a boss off you, vindictiveness does not supercede your responsibilities.

Remember, as a tank the survival of the party ultimately lies with you. You need to keep the dps from pulling aggro and getting pounded, or the healer from being instagibbed by an add that came unseen barreling down a hall. Consider your comrades your responsibility, act as their shield, and always care about the healthbars.

Down goes Faction Champs

Gone, all gone! I spent almost every bit of my dkp last night on two Trophies of the Crusade, so I am now sitting at 17 dkp. Egads.

Totally worth it though, the T9.45 shoulders are sezzy. Also have a Trophy banked for the eventual acquisition of the Legguards, so I think I’m in a pretty good spot. Even if I’ll be getting the other tank’s leavings for the next few resets. At least I’ll have my 2pc bonus… soon enough…

… I’ve made a huge mistake.

Um, but I digress. Per my post last week I’ve already swapped out the Glyph of SoV. After equipping the shoulders I was at 32 Expertise, so ditching the glyph dropped me back to 22. Another Col25 piece will put me back over the top, so I’m happy where I am right now. And yes, I did replace it with the Glyph of Righteous Defense.

Also, speaking of loot and the side effects thereof, I’m sitting at 37.7k unbuffed hp right now. That is simply ridiculous. I remember walking through the Dark Portal at around 4k hp, stepping off the zeppelin in the Howling Fjord at about 18k, and walking into Naxx the first time with 25k. With all likelihood I’ll probably be walking into Icecrown Citadel with 40k hp. The number inflation is insane. Can you imagine what tank hitpoints are going to look like at 85 (or whatever the level cap is next time around)?

Last night we walked into the Coliseum ready for a better night than last week’s roflstomping. No need to relearn the fights, we know the mechanics now. One-shots inc! … right?

Er, not entirely the case. We lost a few folks on the Jormungars because they had never done the fight before and didn’t realize turning green was a bad thing. We entered phase three with half the raid dead somehow and I eventually got my face smashed in by what stank of parry haste. I wish WWS wasn’t failing to split the fights up properly. All I have to go by is Recount saying the two attacks were .1 seconds apart. It hurt. More likely though, he just used an instant attack right before meleeing me.

Jaraxxus on the other hand was a total rout, an easy one-shot. That fight is hilariously undertuned.

With the two farm fights out of the way it was time for some serious progression: the Faction Champions. I had originally perhaps set expectations a little high, dubbing the encounter a “loot pinata”. Oh, how I was wrong.

I mean, the PTR version I understand was pretty easy. It seems like these guys were buffed between testing and live.

When we first started the fight I was standing over where they dropped down, so of course the whole lot of them lept down onto me, and promptly began to tear me apart. It was horrifying. That first attempt quickly ended in a wipe.

Originally Demo and I switched to our dps offspecs for this, anticipating that we’d be more useful that way. After the first few wipes (yes… I said few…) we realized that prot was a better choice because it gave us the ability to harass the healer npcs. As prot, I was able to use a full suite of abilities on this fight: Avenger’s Shield for silences, Hammer of Justice with 40 sec cooldowns, Divine Sacrifice for the initial pull–and additionally Arcane Torrent and my engineering Frag Belt. I was pretty useful as healer control.

One huge caveat in this fight: watch Shaman totems! The healing stream one in particular does huge chunks of healing, and will make it impossible to kill anything. Keep nameplates on so you can see them. (Moreover, both Shaman npcs drop healing totems, so don’t assume the Enhancement one won’t!)

The full roster we faced was a Warlock and Felhunter, Hunter and cat, Resto Shammy, Holy Pally, Holy Priest, Shadow Priest, Warrior, DK, Rogue, and Mage.

My main job was to assist a rogue in locking down a Shaman. Demo worked on the holy pally by himself, and the dps burnt down the priest first. Once the priest was down everyone moved to the Shaman (who I shadowed on to watch totem drops) and took that out. Once he was dropped, on to the Pally.

The Paladin had a nasty habit of popping Divine Shield when almost dead, and then healing back to 20% health. Make sure someone is on the ball and ready to Mass Dispel or Shattering Throw the bubble when this happens.

After the Paladin dropped we moved over and took out the DK and Warrior to give the healers some breathing room. Then the Rogue, Spriest, Warlock, and finally the Mage went down. The Mage was probably the biggest pain thanks to his Blink with a one second cooldown. He was all over the map when we were focusing him.

We did this fight with six healers, which seems like a lot but your healers are going to be constantly harassed, and will be heavily dispelling. You should definitely help out with Cleanses if you stay prot. I didn’t do as many as I’d like but next time around I’ll be much more focused on this.

All in all, it is a good fight, and definitely a challenge–which is a good thing. The Coliseum needed a challenge fight, and it’ll be interesting to see if the Twins ramp that up, or if they’re similarly undertuned.

After the 25man was wrapped up we started a 10man group and steamrolled everything. Champions were much easier in the 10man, natch. 9 easy badges and I was off to buy my new shoulders.

It was a good night.

Blizzcon, the expac, and lore

I originally wasn’t going to order the live stream of Blizzcon (mostly because I’ll be at work during one of the Con days) but I’m starting to feel like I’ll be missing out on some big things. I’ll probably get it and just listen to it at my desk with the window minimized. Sure, I could wait for the YouTube clips, but… impatience demands satiation…

It’s pretty exciting, all these changes that will be passed down from ye on high in just a few days. Details about class changes, philosophy shifts on certain stats, and of course a big reveal of the next expansion pack.

I’m not sure what to expect from Blizzcon. I can’t imagine Pallies are in line for the same tectonic shift we received at the beginning of Wrath. Blizz will probably move to finally kill off spellpower plate once and for all, and announce a major redo of the Holy tree around that. But, that’s Holy, what about us? Maybe a change to the Blessings system, folding Sanc into something. As TBC was wrapping up it was obvious there were structural weakness to Prot Pallies that needed to be fixed. This time around, not so much.

Something I caught in one of GC’s comments on the forums was when he said in regards to defense, “we have a solution to the ‘defense cap’ [sic] at Blizzcon. :)”. Who knows what that means. I can’t even begin to imagine.

Moreover, everyone’s seen the write-up on mmo-champ about Cataclysm by now. I believe in Boubouille and I’m sure in the end it’s going to turn out he was right about everything: Worgen and Goblins, the new sundering, Tauren Paladins, the works. And then all those WoW forum cretins whose only form of expression is bile will have to eat crow. No, scratch that, they’ll never admit fault. They’ll just move on and find something else to extend their diseased claws into.

There is a certain degree of ignorance fueling this hate that’s directed at the Cataclysm rumors. For example, people are insisting with every fiber of their being there is no lore justification for the alleged new class combos, which seems like bunk to me. There are already Troll Druids in game (see just about every troll raid boss). The foundation for Light-following Tauren was laid out in 3.2 with that dialogue in TB. The next patch will have a similar quest reintroducing Arcane-aligned Night Elves (i.e., the Highborne). The Wildhammer Clan of Dwarves already has shamans.

All these new combinations make sense on some level. Nothing is really, truly “lorelol” in the same way that the sudden introduction of the Naaru and space-faring, retconned Draenei were.

One thing I’d like to see is mirrored Wrathgate-esque, massive quest chains where either Gnomes or Trolls reclaim their ancestral homes. For the former it’s Gnomeregan, the latter the Isles where Thrall first found them. That would be epic.

WoW is getting stale, and definitely needs some new life added to it. Hopefully Cataclysm will be the expac to do it.