Wait a minute, I remember this nonsense

So there we were, in the mountains. Ulduar, to be precise. The mission was to continue our lockout from two weeks ago and finally finish the damn place once and for all. As I have recounted in the past, our history in that place is a bit checkered. Between the endless weeks of attempts to kill Thorim, and the most hellish night ever on Vezax, we hadn’t even seen Yogg in a 25man context.

That was all going to change however.

Actually, no, I lie. No change yet. Instead, true to form we headed into the Conservatory of Life first to knock off one of the two Keepers we needed to drop to head into the basement. “20 minutes, tops!” the rallying cry went out. Ahem.

Once we were done with the six or so wipes we suffered in that room we then one-shot Freya. I tanked all three of the elementals, which might have been a bad idea. Snaplasher still hits for a ton, so sadly I needed to bubble and beg Pain Suppressions for those moments.

Clearly we were more interested in just brute forcing our way through the trash. Sadly, being a tier and a half ahead doesn’t give you as much currency with trash as you’d think it would. Once we actually, you know, coordinated a bit on the pulls, and used some (ahem) CC, the pulls were obviously a lot smoother. Also, it helps when I don’t assume Demo is DC’d (seriously, if we go 20 seconds without him saying anything in vent, it’s safe to assume something is wrong) and pull a different mob nanoseconds before he charges after one of his own choosing.

Mimiron was similarly choppy. It took us a while to get down the hallway because someone started up the tram before everyone was on board, and left myself and the healer contingent behind to rot on the platform. Once we actually grouped up and started the fight, despite warning vociferously about the Shockwave/Nova thing, people still died to it. It’s a ten minute long fight, so I hope they thought about while they did while hugging the floor.

FINALLY after about two hours (two Keepers in two hours! arrgh) we finally got down to Vezax’s room. Cleared out the trash with a liberal application of CC and coordination, and set up for the big guy himself. Interrupt rotations were assigned: three groups of three interrupters basically ordered to get their interrupts off as soon as possible. Everyone is pumped to go…

And then Demo DC’d for 10 minutes. Le sigh.

Alright, well, then he got back. Ok, show time, let’s do this.

First Searing Flames comes up and I’m watching the cast bar and suddenly time slows down as eat decimal on the countdown begins to reduce. Nines become eights, and the numbers to the left of the decimal point get smaller. Oh god, flashbacks. A cloud of red surrounds my field of vision. The blood drains from my face. All I can hear over the ringing in my ears are the screams of pain and horror as a wave of Searing Flames washes over the raid.

Flashbacks. What the flying feck just happened?

Next cast–ok–that was a blip.

Another flame sears us all. Oh god. Interrupters–DO SOMETHING. Anything!

Eventually, Vezax has the compassion to put us down.

Once I’m down having a nervous breakdown on vent, we regroup and lined back up in front of the boss. We rush back in and start going through the motions. First interrupt, group one is up. They nail it. Group two next. Next flames is cast, and interrupted. I breathe a sigh of relief. It’s going to be ok.

We unfortunately wiped on that attempt, cause a few folks didn’t know the deal with Shadow Crashes and mana loss, so burnt out early or got burned up early. Either way, lost a lot of dps early and wiped at 3.6%. Gandy, one of the rogues, actually evasion-tanked Vezax from like 7% to 4%, holding threat only with a wave of the pigtails. Pretty awesome.

Alright, we got it this time. Everyone lines up, charges in. Interrupts go flying. Finally, finally, Vezax drops.

That night the top alliance guild on the server got the server first for Yogg+0. Interesting juxtaposition.

What’s the uptime on Quel’Serrar’s Sanctuary?

I picked up the Gleaming Quel’Serrar from Ony10 last night, and while its threat capabilities are subpar, I’m enamored with the potential of the Sanctuary proc. So I trudged over to the old digs in Silvermoon and sat in front of a dummy for 30 minutes, seeing what the uptime on the proc would work out to.

In case you’re wondering, I wore a set that was hit capped, expertise soft-capped, but not expertise hard-capped. This is per usual for me in raids, though YMMV.

As this log shows, I’m happy to report that I got an uptime of 64.5% on the proc, which works out to a “constant” 64.5 defense rating and 903 armor, which is not too shabby. The defense will obviously not help you get uncrittable (seriously, don’t use this sword unless you’re already at 5.6% uncrit, you can’t depend on the proc to bridge the gap), but it is worth 1.57% avoidance. Also not too shabby.

I’m pretty happy with the sword, although I’d prefer the 245 version. Alas, beggars, choosers, and whatnot.

Bring back grinding for your tier

And I don’t mean farming heroics for badges.

It’s obvious that Blizzard wants to move away from the overused model of hoping your tier token drops and turning it in for an item at some vendor. The first step back from this was in Coliseum with tier being farmable by anyone for badges, and a more premier version of the tier being obtainable in conjunction with a Trophy.

Now Blizz, it’s time to go the next step and make getting tier truly different from normal item drops.

Stick with me here. We know that the T10 sets are themed to look like Scourge minions. Well, how about to get the pieces we have assemble them, in order to create a sort of “disguise” (though without any practical effects like that) that would allow us in terms of lore to slip into Icecrown. Much like T9 were military uniforms for a united Argent Front, T10 is the uniform of the strike teams that are working their way through Arthas’ hometurf.

Now, let’s say an item drops like “Carapace of the Nerubian Crusader” or “Sundered Breastplate of the Vargul” that the tooltip reveals should be a chest piece. You take the item to an Ashen Verdict Quartermaster who tells you that in order to “repair” the item you need to bring him a set number of quest items that drop from Scourge similar to the item you’re trying to make, along with various other materials (some of which would have to be acquired from crafters).

Then–why not?–it needs to be reforged at some particular spot in a raid instance. Maybe give some use again to that named anvil in the military quarter in Naxx. We have to go back there every so often for weekly raid quests, so it wouldn’t be such a pain.

Once that’s all done you get your fresh new tier piece. And, because you have to put so much work into creating it, they would all be 6 iLevels better than their non-tier equivalents.

Probably a stupid idea, but I think it would add a small degree of complexity to a very dumbed-down process for acquiring what should be our best gear. It wouldn’t kill WoW to bring back a little grindyness.

A look at T10 bonuses, and the DivSac nerf

• Your Hammer of the Righteous ability deals 20% increased damage.

I’m a very big fan of this bonus. HotR is one the biggest contributors to our total threat in AOE situations (presuming we’re not talking about dealing with 50 whelps here, then obviously Consecrate is king) and any boost to the damage of our cleave will be a nice pad on the threat meters. I especially like the thought of having this as an opener at the beginning of a trash pack, giving dps a higher initial threat window.

• When you activate Divine Plea, you gain 12% dodge for 10 seconds.

There’s a pretty tedious debate roiling the tanking forums over this bonus, with all the Pallies saying it’s pretty “meh” when viewed in comparison to the damage reduction bonuses that the other three tanking classes get, and all the other tanks complaining about how overpowered Ardent Defender is. But then again, that’s the kind of intellectual discourse one can expect out of that hive of scum and whinery.

I’m not surprised that Blizzard didn’t give us a damage reduction bonus, because honestly the furor that would have risen up would have been deafening. All the various aggrieved DKs and Warriors would have whipped out their little calculators and furiously pounded out a myriad of numbers indicating that suddenly Paladins had widened the mystical EH gap (while Druids sat chuckling quietly to themselves in the corner). And so the effigies would be erected once more against us,

So much easier to just give Pallies a so-so avoidance boost (I say so-so because avoidance is still, when reduced to the lowest common denominator, RNG). Less trouble this way.

Don’t get me wrong, 12% dodge is nice, especially with no diminishing returns. But I’d prefer a damage reduction any day of the week. There’s just no comparison between the two kinds of bonuses.

• Divine Guardian: This talent no longer increases the amount of damage transferred to the paladin from Divine Sacrifice. Instead it causes all raid and party members to take 10/20% reduced damage while Divine Sacrifice is active.
• Divine Sacrifice: Redesigned. The effect of Divine Sacrifice is now party-only and the maximum damage which can be transferred is now limited to 40% of the paladin’s health multiplied by the number of party members. In addition, the damage transferred to the paladin is now reduced by 50% before being applied to the paladin. Finally, the bug which allowed Divine Sacrifice to sometimes persist despite reaching its maximum damage has been fixed. Divine Sacrifice will now cancel as soon as its maximum damage value is exceeded in all cases.

This is a lame change. While it may seem like an improvement over the old DivSac (ie, no longer needing to Divine Shield to use it for maximum benefit), it’s a pretty big nerf for all intents and purposes. To get the best version of this spell, Ret and Holy would have to go 17 points deep into the Prot tree, which I sincerely doubt is feasible at this point, so the pool of how many people will be using this will be severely shrunken.

Moreover, it went from a flat 40% raid damage soak to a 20% damage reduction. Again, huge nerf. The only upside is, like I said before, the removal of needing to burden yourself with Forbearance to use the spell, but just about everything else is a downside. Thanks Blizz, for crippling one of our best utilities.

Adgamorix did a great analysis about this change that was a bit more upbeat than my take. I suppose the buff to how damage you can nab from your party is nice, but I’d still prefer a 40% raid damage soak.

I could say that this joke was running

Disclaimer: I wrote this post yesterday in its entirety, and then a power flash ate it. The subsequent rampage took up all my remaining posting time yesterday, but let me assure you, Rhi did most certainly smash.

So Tuesday’s raid night was awesome (let’s not talk about last night) to the point where we pulled another one-shot three-fer, knocking out Onyxia, the Coliseum, and VOA 25s in one night. We were such a well oiled machine we burnt through all three over the course of about two and a half hours, with Coliseum only taking an hour and fifteen minutes. And as we’re roflstomping all this undertuned content, I noticed how relaxed the atmosphere was. Just to speak for myself, I tend to shut down and lock up on progression stuff, focusing more on the fight to the detriment of you know, actually enjoying the game. I stress out a bit.

Not Tuesday though, everyone was joking and laughing and some of the same running jokes that make an appearance in almost every raid were rolled out. Which then got me thinking about how many in-jokes my guild has, and how it’d make great post fodder in a sure-you-have-no-idea-what-we’re-talking-about-but-I-swear-it’s-funny sort of way. Here’s a bunch of them (and I invite my guildees that read this blog to contribute any I have missed):

“Zilga down!” I’m not entirely sure Zilga ever really died as much as Falowin did, so the origins of this are a mystery to me. Nonetheless, this is the universal “oh everything is going great” comeback. E.g., “5% left!” “Zilga down.”

“Back in my day…” One of the raiders, Valgard, has a visceral hatred of addons, for good or ill. He wouldn’t use an equipment manager until Blizzard came out with its own and would manually change gear piece by piece. It was painful. Demogar shot back at him with an impression of an old man (or perhaps a grizzled prospector) saying “Back in my day we didn’t need no dagnabbit addons!” The charm has faded since the first time it was done, but the bite of the indictment lingers to this day.

[Random awful Valgard joke]. Speaking of Valgard, boy does he love his bad jokes. It’s an accepted fact of life that at least once per raid we’ll be subjected to a quality joke as “Master looter? More like master tooter!” Groans aplenty, I assure you. One day he’ll make an actual good joke and the fabric of space and time will collapse on itself. No one will ever know.

“Loot pinata.” This is my fault, I came into some boss fight in Coliseum (not sure which one–was probably pre-nerf Faction Champs) with a cup full a’ hubris, insisting that said fight was so easy it was a loot pinata. It was not. I have yet to live this pronouncement down.

“20 minutes, tops.” Back during Ulduar we used to have the worst time with Freya’s trash. People got too antsy and would stand in the thunderstorm or forget to re-CC. Bad things happened, and one night it was proclaimed that the trash would take twenty minutes tops to get through. It took two hours. I left a little piece of my soul behind in that garden.

“RISE FALOWIN!” I did a haiku on this way in the past, and alas the basis for this in-joke has essentially passed, because Falowin is stubborn and refuses to die as often. In any case, in Naxx, whenever there was a Dark Touched Warrior in the trash pack, you knew–KNEW–that Falowin was going to die. He was like a side character in a Final Destination movie. He just had no effing chance. It happened so often that Morvain, one of the DKs, made a Raise Ally macro that would turn Fal into a ghoul and /yell “RISE FALOWIN!” It remains epic to this day.

“God himself cannot stop us.” This is another Falowin-related joke, pursuant to the ridiculous hubris that infects our ranks sometimes. To make fun of Demogar’s various pronouncements of confidence, Fal would then declare “god himself cannot stop us.” And then he would.

“I don’t give a bitch.” This one only started Tuesday, but it has legs (as they say). One of the warlocks was telling a story of a ten year old in a class he teaches trying feebly to swear derisively. The little boy declared that he “didn’t give a bitch” about something or another and an epic joke was born. We already spent most of the day yesterday scrawling this across the guild forums.

“Oh, I know what we’re doing wrong.” If we’re starting to wipe on a boss for stupid reasons, Demo like to refocus us a bit by putting a skull on the boss. Which is super helpful, because sometimes I get confused and try to tank one of the hunter pets. It’s good for a laugh though, and helps dispel some pent up tension over wipes.

“Dental plan!” “Lisa needs braces.” Kind of a stupid one. During Icehowl I would say in vent “massive crash” which apparently sounded an awful lot like Lenny saying “Dental plan!” in that Simpsons episode. So someone replied “Lisa needs braces” and another stupid in-joke was born.

So that’s just a smattering of my guild’s nonsensery. Do your guilds have any silly running jokes?

How to tank Nerubian Burrowers like a pro

Now, my guild hasn’t downed Anub10 heroic yet, unfortunately, but if all the blood, wipes, and tears have imparted anything to me, it’s how to tank the Burrowers like an effin’ pro.

The little (ok, not so little) buggers have a pretty set pattern. Twice per above-ground phase they come up in pairs and b-line for the raid member with the highest global aggro. As the OT in this fight your job is manifold: one, to pick up the Burrowers, two is to position them on ice where dps can kill them, and three is to not die to their various tricks.

Now on top of that delicious sundae of pain may I offer this cherry: you can handle interrupts on both of them as well. No seriously, you can.

Let me back up. On the first point you need to grab the attention of the Burrowers before they dig a hole in the face of some unlucky Resto Druid. To do this make use of our two best ranged attacks–Hand of Reckoning one and Avenger’s Shield the other. This’ll drop enough threat on both that they’ll follow you back to the ice patch that Anub should be tanked by.

Once you have both adds wailing away at you you want to get them dead center on the ice (well, maybe no dead center, but their hitbox needs to be sitting completely on top of the permafrost). Then open up on both until dead.

At this point your guild’s strategy may differ. The way mine does it is I hand of freedom myself and run off to pick up the next two adds and bring them back to the same permafrost patch while the MT and dps wrangle Anub towards the back of the room and off the ice. Now that I have the Burrowers all to my self, the responsibility for dealing with the Shadowy Strikes falls on my spiky, crimson shoulders.

How does one person not only watch but interrupt two Burrowers? Simple! First, glyph Holy Wrath to have a 15 second cooldown. Use that when they start to cast and you’ll easily interrupt them both. How can you tell when either is casting if you’re not currently targeting it? Also simple! Face them away from the raid, and if a Burrower is looking to gank one of your raiders, he’ll turn and look at them. Also they’ll start glowing all shadowy, but either way, it’s a huge warning sign.

I’ve yet to see them attempt a Shadow Strike more than once every 15 seconds, I always had my Holy Wrath up when needed (although Arcane Torrent made a fine off-GCD back up, and yes it does interrupt). Moreover, I’ve never seen a Burrower cast Shadow Strike when Anub was underground.

As for the third responsibility above (that is, staying alive) you have a powerful tool at your disposal: Block. The way the mechanics of the Burrower’s fearsome Expose Weakness attack is currently programmed, they’re debuff’s additional damage is applied to the unblocked remnant. Thus, if you’re block capped and shave say 3000 off of a 4000hp hit, the remaining 1000 damage is multiplied by 225% assuming you have a full nine-stack and you “only” take 2250 damage. This is definitely a fight you want to stack block value in!

Now, if only the rest of the fight was this easy.

Most delicious tank ever

I can’t believe I forgot to post this.

My girlfriend is a savant when it comes to baking, and for my recent birthday she clandestinely wrangled my buddy into secreting her a screenshot of my character. Which she turned into this:

A work of art! I’m a lucky guy.

How to gem, via a flowchart

This is a rehash of a spectacularly crappy (but very popular) flowchart I did back when Solid Sky Sapphires were the gem di tutti gems. Now +30 stamina may be the order of the day, but our priorities are basically the same: cram as much stamina in your gear as humanly possible. This gem will show you have to do that intelligently, while taking little stam hits for worthwhile avoidance trades.

Like I indicated last time around, there are two caveats:

• This is hyper-simplified and assumes that you’re not heavily depending on gems or socket bonuses (despite the jokey line) for being uncrit.
• I couldn’t find a good way to express this, but if you have two gems slots (or, hell, three) and one of them isn’t blue, unless the socket is +12 stamina, put Solids in both/all.

Quel’Delar is a huge tease

(Image ganked from mmo-champ.)

When I first heard of this sword, my initial thought was “Tank legendary!” (I am prone to delusions). Then, reports of a quest to purify it in the Sunwell further piqued my lust. And, then I read the chain of datamined quests.

Somehow you get the hilt, and then a series of quests occur where you learn about the sword and how to reforge it. Materials are gathered, the ghost of either Uther or the Blood elf that wielded the sword at the Sunwell visit you, depending on your faction. You then go to the Sunwell itself and dip the blade into the sacred font, making it pure oncemore.

And then you give it to the Argent Cruade.

Efff. What a tease.

While I wasn’t expecting a Legendary forged through five-mans and old raids (even though it looks like you won’t actually have to raid the Sunwell), some kind of usable item would have been nice. A new Quel’serrar-esque tanking weapon perhaps.

Nope, another toy for Tirion. I hate that guy.

Not all Onyxia drops suck

I may have been a wee bit rough on the Purified Onyxia Blood Talisman. Yeah, hp5 is utter garbage, and that trinket isn’t ideal for anyone except those that need the defense or heretics from the Church of Effective Health (stamina be stacked upon It), but it’s not the end of the world to own one. The talisman has its uses.

Now, as for some of the other items in Onyxia’s loot table, well they’re interesting to say the least. Some are great, some are situational, and one is garbage. I’ll go through them all.

The Good

• Judgement Heaume (10: Judgement Helmet) — This head piece has something that tier9 gear desperately needs: hit rating. Grab this as soon as possible for the hit rating, hold on to it for the generous stamina budgeted. All around great helm, and best of all: it looks badass.

The Meh

• Burnished Quel’Serrar (10: Gleaming) — Not a bad sword overall, but there are better ones at lower iLevels. QS suffers because most of its item budget is spent on a proc, which gives when up 2.7% avoidance and 1500 armor, a heaping helping of stats. Unfortunately, the uptime is about 55% according to most tests. Moreover, you can’t rely on the proc to make you uncrittable, so 540 defense would be a prerequisite for any sane tank to wield this. Moreover, threat-wise, it’s a little lacking. The slow weapon speed is nice for big SoV procs BUT the lack of any threat stats on the sword itself makes it fall behind other weapons of its iLevel, and even below its iLevel. Check out this post by Theck over at Maintankadin for a ranking of weapons according to threat. Overall, I would definitely use this sword for survivability over the 232 Ardent Guard (missing threat can be made up elsewhere). Though, I would probably not choose it over the 245 AG. That much stamina is too hard to pass up.

• Signified Ring of Binding (10: Runed) — Awesome ring for magic damage heavy fights (Hodir springs to mind immediately). Probably be useful in Icecrown, because dammit you know they are going to have at least one fight with massive amounts of frost damage everywhere.

The “Oh god, kill it with fire!”

• Shiny Shard of the Flame — No! Don’t even think about it. Put it down and slowly back away.