Speccing your tankadin at 85

While begging Anafielle for ideas on what to blog about, she mentioned the trouble she went through to hammer out a spec she was happy with. This immediately made me realize I haven’t really talked about optimal specs at level 85. I shall now rectify that.

As you all may know, I’m a sucker for dual-spec prot. Part of that is exercising the luxury of being my guild’s main tank, which means I am seldom sidelined or forced to go offspec–and by seldom, I mean never–which is a blessing and a curse. Blessing because it befits my sloth; curse because I’m so woefully out of practice with the other specs of my class that if I was asked to heal or dps something I’d probably end up accidentally wrapping the mouse cord around my neck and proceed to garrote myself into a coma.

Anyway, as such, here are three specs for you: one for maxing out survival, one for threat and AoE, and one mish-mash of the two. I’ll be using the first two for each of my specs, but any of you pushing the Sisyphean burden that is a Ret or Holy spec up the progression hill might be interested in the third.

The survival spec

0/31/10

I traded Seals of the Pure for Eternal Glory, the reasoning being that SotP is one of our lowest threat talents and is the obvious choice to skip to grab EG instead. EG is amazing for situations where you’re making frequent use of Word of Glory.

Only one point in Improved Hammer of Justice. I like HoJ a lot, but that second point is needed elsewhere.

No points in Grand Crusader. It’s a somewhat negligible threat boost (in the sense that it’s only good for replacing Holy Wrath in the single-target rotation) so it’s an obvious choice to pass over. However, the trade off is you lose from our most frequently available interrupt options, so there’s a tradeoff you might not be comfortable with.

Picked up Divine Guardian. When someone gives you overpowered lemons, you make overpowered lemonade, dammit.

Glyphed Word of Glory instead of Judgement. Judgement was the lowest threat boost of the normal triumvirate of single-target glyphs.

You can also swap out Glyph of Seal of Truth with Glyph of Insight if you’ll be primarily tanking a fight with Insight.

The threat spec

0/31/10

Keep in mind this isn’t a “max threat spec”, there’s probably more tps I could have squeezed out of this. But that would require cuts I’m not comfortable chasing down yet.

Skipped Judgements of the Just. I feel dirty about this, but I’m not using this spec on bosses.

Skipped Hallowed Ground. You might be thinking, “isn’t this an AOE spec?” Well, yes, but my thinking is that I hardly ever use consecration and the threat gain would be so minimal as to completely invalidate any justification for the glyph.

Skipped Divine Guardian. Feeling kind of dirty about this too. The point for it could come Reckoning if you’re uncomfortable with skipping it.

Nothing surprising with glyphs. I went with Hammer of the Righteous instead of Judgement in the primes. That’s the only really notable thing.

The mish-mash

0/31/10

Hrm, seeing a pattern in these numbers. Anyway, nothing really important to note here. I picked the best of both worlds, though there’s still some on the fly customization you can perform with glyphing (for example, glyphing Word of Glory).

And that’s that.

I’m curious how others are speccing/glyphing and if you have major objections to anything I’ve just laid out. One of the major benefits of the stage we’re in right now is that it’s amazing for experimentation. And so, you shouldn’t be shy to try new things before you head into raids and have to ossify into the land of the cookie-cutters, where optimal builds are (rightly) the golden standard. Have fun with your spec now, let your suboptimal freak flag fly… but don’t get your healer killed.

Initial impressions of heroics and survivability

Cataclysm has only been out for a week, and a good portion of my guild is already waist deep in heroics. I’m sure most of you are probably in the same boat, if not already actively attempting raids. Isn’t that crazy? It’s only been a week!

Anyway, last night I went into my first Cata heroics and I must say, any anxiety I had about my own performance or gearing completely evaporated after the first few pulls. Heroics aren’t as difficult as I feverishly imagined them to be, nor are they WotLK cakewalks either. They occupy a plane between TBC and Wrath heroics, demanding attention and crowd control and quickly rewarding any group with good coordination. I’m loving them so far.

Antigen thankfully was kind enough to shepherd me through everything we ran last night, to the point where he marked most pulls for his CC and those of the other dps. Many thanks to him for softening the learning curve of how to handle each pull and which mobs needs to be dealt with in a specific way.

In total we ran heroic Lost City of the Tol’vir, heroic Stonecore, heroic Vortex Pinnacle, and heroic Halls of Origination. Stonecore was probably the one that gave us the most trouble, if you can really call it that, and Halls took the longest (if only because it has 7 bosses). We never really got mired at any point, except for the third boss in Stonecore which I kept dropping the ball on like an idiot during ground slams.

There are a few “trends” (for lack of a better word) that I want to point out from my limited heroics tanking experience. I welcome any insight from others in the comments as well, for the benefit of any tankadins getting ready to take the plunge into heroics shortly.

Word of Glory is amazing. I realize that this declaration is akin to announcing to you all that fire is hot, but bear with me for a second. Healers are dealing with a very loaded deck right now and they need all the help they can get from us. Using Word of Glory is a portion of your health bar returned that they didn’t need to spill mana over. Over the course of a longer fight, perhaps when they have to heal multiple people at once–and hell, any time for this is a good time–the more weight you can take off their already-burdened shoulders the better.

Use your cooldowns liberally! Remember: Divine Protection has a minute cooldown for a reason. If you’re not using it once a minute, you’re doing it wrong. I know I keep saying this, but it bears repeating for emphasis: healer mana is a precious commodity, and the less damage you take over the course of a fight, the better. DP is for rolling, Ardent Defender is for when you’re possibly about to die (the ultimate “oh crap!” button), and Guardian of the Ancient Kings is for big damage moments like a boss enrage that you don’t have a dispel for, or a period of lots of AoE, or the healer’s been stunned, etc.

Tank with Seal of Insight up. You don’t need the threat of Seal of Truth when dps threat is (hooray) back down to manageable levels. Use Insight to take the edge off.

Don’t forget about Holy Radiance! With mana free-flowing as it is, the cost is negligible. Pop it when you cap, especially during portions of lots of AoE to (as I keep saying) take the edge off and help the healer. A great time for the spell, I would say, is during the first boss of Vortex Pinnacle when you stack up on his hit box as the tornados collapse in.

Try to cleanse yourself. Broken record, I know: healer mana is precious, ours is more of less infinite–try to cleanse yourself when possible. But, be sure to vocalize you’re doing so, because the healer’s cleanse will go through too even if there’s no debuff there to remove.

Remember, you’re not going to get 2-shot. This is perhaps the biggest tectonic shift in psychology we have to jostle with since the debut of the expansion. In Wrath every fight was you versus the precipice. Now we can sit at the 50% health mark for a moment without being in immediate danger. Healers are currently rewiring themselves to not expend all their mana pushing everyone up to full health as soon as possible, and we need to (on the flip side) realize that we don’t need to start sweating or excreting other anxiety-triggered bodily fluids if our health dips down a bit. Keep calm and WoG yourself a bit for some breathing room, pop a cooldown, whatever. You’ll be fine, and the heals will come in due time.

Someone said this on Twitter an hour ago (but I can’t find who): if you’re taking regular, manageable increments of damage, you’re tanking something correctly. If you’re taking MASSIVE HITS TO THE FACE, you’re doing or standing in something you need to correct asap before you get yourself killed.

And like I continue to blather on about, a healer’s mana bar is like a mini-soft enrage timer for each fight. Once their ability to heal the group is exhausted, you’re in trouble. Postpone that as much as you can, for as long as you can!

As for heroics, I’m sure a lot of the difficulty of them (ie, just about all of it) will be mitigated quickly by increasing gear levels, especially once we start picking up purples from the raids. Which is kind of sad in a sense, as I’m loving the difficulty level at the moment. Heroic 5mans actually feel heroic again, take more than twenty minutes, and provide a suitable challenge. While it’s obvious they’ll get easier, I just hope they won’t get too much easier.

Tankadin pre-raid gear list

Here’s my gear list for prot paladins to use while gearing up for raids. Unlike my previous list which focused primarily on iLevel 333 gear and 346 stuff that came from vendors, this list is for any and all gear that does not drop in a raid. Much like the previous list, I won’t be ranking the pieces, but they are listed in descending order based on iLevel.

For stats, I looked for gear that had any combination of parry, dodge, hit, mastery, and expertise as secondary stats. Some will be better for threat, some for survivability, although granted that’s not as life-and-death as it might be in raids. Grab what you can, diversify sets where you will.

Head

• Reinforced Bio-Optic Killshades — Made by engineers, BoP
• Helm of Setesh (h) — Drops from Setesh in Halls of Origination heroic.
• Headcover of Fog (h) — Drops from Grand Vizier Ertan in heroic Vortex Pinnacle
• Grinning Fang Helm / Crown of Wings — Sold by Dragonmaw/Wildhammer quartermaster
• Helm of the Proud — Sold by a vendor in your capital for 2,200 Justice Points

Cloak

• Wrap of the Great Turtle — Sold by Guardians of Hyjal quartermaster (requires exalted)
• Burned Gatherings (h) — Drops from Karsh Steelbender in heroic Blackrock Caverns
• Billowing Cape (h) — Drops from Asaad in the heroic Vortex Pinnacle
• Twilight Dragonscale Cloak — Made by leatherworkers

Necks

• Carrier Wave Pendant (h) — Drops from Ascendant Lord Obsidius in heroic Blackrock Caverns
• Darkhowl Amulet (h) — Drops from Temple Guard Anhuur in heroic Halls of Origination
• Elementium Guardian — Made by jewelcrafters
• The Lustrous Eye — Sold by vendor in your capital for 1,250 JP

Shoulders

• Pauldrons of Edward the Odd — World BoE drop
• Earthshape Pauldrons (h) — Drops from Drahga Shadowburner in heroic Grim Batol
• Raz’s Pauldrons (h) — Drops from Ascendant Lord Obsidius in heroic Blackrock Caverns
• Sunburnt Pauldrons — Sold by a vendor in your capital for 1,650 JP

Chest

• Hardened Elementium Hauberk — Made by blacksmiths
• Icebone Hauberk — World BoE drop
• Beauty’s Plate (h) — Drops from Beauty in heroic Blackrock Caverns
• Chestplate of the Steadfast — Sold by vendor in your capital for 2,200 JP

Wrist

• Sandguard Bracers — Sold by Ramkahen quartermaster (requires exalted)
• Alpha Bracers (h) — Drops from Anraphet in heroic Halls of Origination
• Armguards of Unearthly Light (h) — Drops from Isiset in heroic Halls of Origination
• Shackles of Undeath (h) — Drops from Lord Godfrey in heroic Shadowfang Keep
• Terborus’s Rotating Bands — Dropped by a rare gyreworm named Terborus (in Deepholm, I assume)

Gloves

• Fingers of Light (h) — Drops from Rajh in heroic Halls of Origination
• Gloves of the Greymane Wall (h) — Drops from Baron Ashbury in heroic Shadowfang Keep
• Numbing Handguards — Sold by vendor in capital for 1,650 JP

Waist

• Hardened Elementium Girdle — Made by blacksmiths
• Iron Will Girdle (h) — Drops from Lord Walden in heroic Shadowfang Keep
• Sand Dune Belt (h) — Drops from Augh in heroic Lost City of the Tol’vir
• Girdle of the Mountains — Sold by vendor in capital for 1,650 JP

Legs

• Triton’s Legplates (h) — Drops from Neptulon’s Cache in heroic Throne of the Tides
• Greaves of Splendor — Sold by vendor in your capital for 2,200 JP

Feet

• Boots of the Sullen Rock / Gryphon Rider’s Boots — Sold by your Twilight Highlands faction quartermaster (requires exalted)
• Baron Silverlaine’s Greaves (h) — Drops from Baron Silverlaine in heroic Shadowfang Keep
• Darksky Treads (h) — Zone drop in heroic Vortex Pinnacle

Rings

• Entwined Nereis (h) — Drops from Lady Naz’jar in heroic Throne of the Tides
• Phosphorescent Ring (h) — Drops from Corborus in heroic Stonecore
• Ring of Three Lights (h) — Drops from Siamat in heroic Lost City of the Tol’vir
• Umbriss Band (h) — Drops from General Umbriss in heroic Grim Batol
• Elementium Moebius Band — Made by jewelcrafters
• Felsen’s Ring of Resolve — Sold by Therazane quartermaster (requires revered)
• Red Rock Band — Sold by Ramkahen quartermaster (requires revered)

Trinket

• Darkmoon Card: Earthquake — Made by scribes
• Lifebound Alchemist Stone — BoP, made by alchemists
• Mirror of Broken Images — Sold by Hellscream’s Reach/Baradin’s Wardens quartermaster (requires exalted)
• Earthen Guardian — BoP Jewelcrafting item
• Leaden Despair (h) — Drops from High Priestess Azil in heroic Stonecore
• Heart of Thunder (h) — Drops from Asaad in heroic Vortex Pinnacle
• Impetuous Query (h) — Zone drop in heroic Lost City of the Tol’vir
• Porcelain Crab (h) — Drops from Mindbender Ghur’sha in heroic Throne of the Tides

Relic

• Stalagmite Dragon (h) — Drops from Slabhide in heroic Stonecore
• Notched Jawbone — Made by scribes

Weapon

• Scimitar of the Sirocco — (Sorta, not really for tanking but it works.) Can be found via Archaeology.
• Sun Strike (h) — Drops from Rajh in heroic Halls of Origination
• Smite’s Reaver (h) — Drops from Admiral Ripsnarl in heroic Deadmines
• Mace of Transformed Bone (h) — Drops from Erudax in heroic Grim Batol
• Elementium Fang (h) — Drops from High Priestess Azil in heroic Stonecore
• Cookie’s Tenderizer (h) — Drops from “Captain” Cookie in heroic Deadmines
• Aze of the Eclipse (h) — Drops from Altairus in heroic Vortex Pinnacle

Shield

• Blockade’s Lost Shield — World BoE drop
• Elementium Earthguard — Made by blacksmiths (requires a Chaos Orb)
• Bulwark of the Primordial Mound — Drops from Earthrager Ptah in heroic Halls of Origination
• Shield of the Iron Maiden (h) — Drops from Rom’ogg Bonecrusher in heroic Blackrock Caverns
• Shield of the Four Grey Towers — Sold by vendor in your capital for 950 JP

The first 24 hours (and then some more) of Cataclysm

Dusk of the last day

Monday night, before the expansion officially launched, we had our final ES Games. This time the game was hide and seek and so everyone decamped to Winterspring and found a good spot to crouch in while I waited in Orgrimmar. At the start time, I ripped through space and time and landed in Everlook, ready to begin. To quickly gloss over the rules, I start as the only seeker and as new people are found they join my ranks until only one hider remains.

We went through the whole zone with a fine toothed comb multiple times and I personally found the first person at the bottom of the barrow dens just about right off the bat. I stumbled upon my second person when running up that ramp with the pink energy balls. I got struck by one of them, knocked back into a crevice, and landed right next to Ongus who was lying down, naked, under the ramp. Dumb luck!

Of course, my luck continued when suddenly the sky went red and Deathwing flew through the zone and immediately roasted half of the players.

By 10:30 we still have four people hidden, and with the zone slowly descending into PvP chaos (thanks to my seekers indiscriminately killing any 80s they came across) I declared a “lightning round” to finish up the game. All the hiders immediately left their spots and started running for safety. The half of us not currently being corpse camped by a newly arrived Alliance raid of PvPers went and rounded up the last four folks.

I then returned to Org and doled out the last six Sealed Chest/Shadowmourne items in the guild bank to the winners and we officially severed our last ties to the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. All that was left was to wait for the dawn of the new day.

And… they’re off!

Unfortunately, I had ordered a CE from Amazon with their release day delivery, so I wasn’t going to be able to see expansion content until around 6pm Tuesday. Combined with a need to work productively the next day, I bid everyone good luck and logged off for the night.

Now, Ana already recounted how the actual launch left so I won’t pretend that I know anything of that.

Instead I rejoin the story the following day once I cut my way through the jungle of plastic sealant and cellophane and was finally able to install and authorize Cataclysm on my account. Once in game, the very first thing I did was buy my Flight License from (a very much alive) trainer and then did the Fishing and Cooking dailies in Org while I waited for Cendra and Ildara (my leveling buddies) to get their ducks in a row.

Once we were all settled we headed into the depths of Vashj’ir to begin the grind. Mumble was flush with everyone leveling and yakking to keep their minds off the millions of experience still ahead of them. The three of us settled on a specific goal: hit 81, run some dungeons to recharge, and get back to the grind.

The leveling went generally okay, but the quests were a pain with the legions of players competing for mobs and quest items. Not to mention on a pvp server you’re living with the ever-looming specter of an all out war grinding your leveling to a complete halt. Thankfully though, everyone behaved and we all went on our merry way of getting through the quests.

Finally, at 9:13 pm I dinged 81. About two and a half hours in.

We returned to Orgrimmar to grab our level 81 spells (Inquisition hoooo) and then sped over to the Abyssal Maw to discover the entrance to the Throne of the Tides. Summoned two more guildies and zoned in to do a quick-recharge dungeon.

Personally, I remember Throne from beta and it was no cake walk when we did it. Imagine my shock between Ana’s description of the place being a complete faceroll and then seeing it for myself as we just AOE’d down everything in our path without a second thought. It was somewhat anticlimactic. Hopefully the heroic is a bit more painful.

After Throne, one of our group suggested we try some more dungeons, so we went over to Blackrock Caverns to give that a go. By this time, Ana had come on and organized her own 5man, who then joined us in vent while they were getting everyone together. Three of her group were there in that messy BRC run that Ana described in her last post and I could hear them licking their lips at the thought of my group getting rofl-stomped by all the encounters they had previously cut their teeth on.

But, in their eye, we had no issues. The biggest hiccup we had was on the first boss when no one ran out of the Skullcracker (I plead ignorance for not knowing the mechanic) and everyone went splat except for me. With the boss at around 50%, I and Word of Glory guided him down to 0 and wrapped up the fight. I’m told that it was more epic than the time Demogar finished off the last 3% of Icehowl by himself, which is good enough for me.

After BRC we went to Vortex Pinnacle, getting there the same time as Ana’s group. We then began an informal race through the dungeon, doling out strategies as we went and trying to break through the boss fights faster than the other team. Finally on the last fight the other group stalled (perhaps due to overtiredness) and we pulled out the win.

Once that was done we had to jump through some hoops to get to Stonecore, using the other team (once they were done in VP) to help us summon half of ours, who were 81 still and thus ineligible to start the breadcrumb quest that lead to Deepholm. We then reformed our two groups and ducked into the instance.

Stonecore was a breeze as well and in a short amount of time we had finished up the dungeon. With that complete, the group split up and Dara, Cendra, and I went back to questing in Vashj’ir, hopefully to finish as much questing there as possible before Ildara had to crash for work tomorrow.

Just after 2 am I hit 82, and shortly Ildara and Cendra followed suit. Having reached that milestone, Dara logged off for the night and Cendra and I headed over to Deepholm to keep the party rolling.

Deepholm was exactly as I remembered it in beta, and went pretty quickly since I could remember just about everything about the quests we were doing. Within no time the hours began to tick away. At this point Ana joined Cen and I in our quest grind.

Sidenote on guild experience gains: they suck. The rate is way too low. I understand the need to “balance” levels between zerg guilds and tiny RP guilds, but it feels like there was absolutely no attempt to find a happy middle and instead the cap is capriciously low and exceedingly punitive to a guild with more than 10 active members. The daily cap unlocked at 4:00 am (local time) that morning for us and so we could begin racking up points for ES.

At 4:25 am the guild dinged level 2, which was great and exciting and immediately kicked a 5% boost in our shorts.

And then at 4:42 am we hit the daily cap again. It’s obviously going to be a while.

At around 5:00 I was starting to hit the wall. The endless quests were taking their toll and I was getting ready to throw in the towel at any moment, but then I hit my second wind. Determined to hit level 83, I dragged Ana and Cendra with me through another swath of quests. Eventually Ana rebelled and logged off for the night, but Cen and I persisted. We kept going until I finally dinged 83 at just after 6 am.

My goal complete, I deserved a little cat nap. So Cen and I parted ways and agreed to meet again in the morning.

Three blissful hours of sleep later…

I woke up at around 9:00 am and logged on to run a few dailies while I waited for Cendra to get up. When he logged on an hour later or so, we grabbed a third, Gandy the rogue, and headed down to Uldum to start the grind anew down south.

Uldum definitely took questing a step up from the previous zones and the whole place was immensely fun.

I could have done without the 400 cutscenes though, they really nuked the fridge on those. But then again, it was definitely an inventive way to tell the story behind Uldum. If I was reading any of the quest text and not just bulldozing through all the yellow exclamation points I could get my greedy hands on, I’m sure I would have appreciated them a lot more.

Later that day, at just shy of 5 pm I hit level 84. Gandy and I still had a chunk of quests to complete in Uldum, so we continued to bat away at them. Eventually we wrapped up the last major quest chain and were free to head over to the Twilight Highlands to hit the home stretch.

There’s not much to say about Twilight Highlands other than I’m loving it so far. It’s the first zone so far that doesn’t cram Alliance and Horde together at every single questing hub, which is a nice breather from the last few zones. Similarly, there’s some fun Horde-centric lore to be had with the Dragonmaw Clan and helping them overthrow their fel orc masters and formally join the Horde.

Wednesday night I capped out my evening by doing the Crucible of Carnage chain with a few guildmates and a pugged healer. It was… interesting. The area was swarming with Alliance, and the whole place stank of a powder keg just waiting to blow. If the Alliance could have killed every Horde there to finish their quests faster I’m sure they would of. And we’d likely have done the same.

As we were waiting to finish the last two of our quests, the people going before us bugged out the last fight, leaving the arena covered in magma for just about everyone. Not cool.

Somehow we managed to finish, and with a huge chunk of experience points to boot. The chain pushed me just over the halfway mark and I was able to log for the night with the endgame firmly in sight.

Last night I didn’t get to play much, just enough time to run some dailies and do a batch of quests in Twilight Highlands. When I logged after a few hours I somehow managed to be three blocks of experience away from level 85. The finish line!

Tonight I will ding the level cap once more, and that is tremendously exciting.

Hopefully everyone else is feeling similarly productive!

Your pre-heroics shopping list

I’m currently sitting at halfway through 84 and need to start thinking about gearing myself for heroics and then raids. Personally, this is one of my favorite parts of the expansion, where the upgrades come fast, plentifully, and in great numbers. To ease the gearing process for myself and my beloved readers I have listed below iLevel 333 (or above) gear that I can use to get ready for heroics. I’ll be doing a separate post in the near future with gear that drops from heroics and elsewhere that you can use to gear for raids.

For stats, I looked for gear that had any combination of parry, dodge, hit, mastery, and expertise as secondary stats. Some will be better for threat, some for survivability, although granted that’s not as life-and-death as it might be in raids. Grab what you can, diversify sets where you will. Items are listed in descending order based on iLevel, not any arcane ranking system.

Head

• Grinning Fang Helm / Crown of Wings — Sold by Dragonmaw/Wildhammer quartermaster
• Helm of the Proud — Sold by a vendor in your capital for 2,200 Justice Points
• Helm of Setesh — Drops from Setesh in Halls of Origination

Cloak

• Wrap of the Great Turtle — Sold by Guardians of Hyjal quartermaster (requires exalted)
• Twilight Dragonscale Cloak — Made by leatherworkers
• Cloak of War — Made by leatherworkers
• Shade of Death — BoE world drop
• Shroud of Dark Memories — Zone drop in Grim Batol

Necks

• Elementium Guardian — Made by jewelcrafters
• The Lustrous Eye — Sold by vendor in your capital for 1,250 JP
• Mountain’s Mouth — Sold by Guardians of Hyjal quartermaster (requires honored)

Shoulders

• Sunburnt Pauldrons — Sold by a vendor in your capital for 1,650 JP
• Earthshape Pauldrons — Dropped by Drahga Shadowburner in Grim Batol
• Pharoah’s Burial Shoulders — Quest reward in Uldum

Chest

• Chestplate of the Steadfast — Sold by vendor in your capital for 2,200 JP
• Breastplate of the Witness — Quest reward in Twilight Highlands

Wrist

• Sandguard Bracers — Sold by Ramkahen quartermaster (requires exalted)
• Terborus’s Rotating Bands — Dropped by a rare gyreworm named Terborus (in Deepholm, I assume)
• Alpha Bracers — Dropped by Anraphet in Halls of Origination
• Armguards of Unearthly Light — Dropped by Isiset in Halls of Origination

Gloves

• Numbing Handguards — Sold by vendor in capital for 1,650 JP
• Fingers of Light — Drops from Rajh in Halls of Origination
• Gloves of Gnomebliteration — Quest reward in Uldum
• Oath-Bound Gauntlets — BoE world drop

Waist

• Girdle of the Mountains — Sold by vendor in capital for 1,650 JP
• Belt of Guardianship — BoE world drop
• Sand Dune Belt — Drops from Lockmaw in Lost City of the Tol’vir

Legs

• Greaves of Splendor — Sold by vendor in your capital for 2,200 JP
• Stone-Wrapped Greavers — Sold by the Earthen Ring quartermaster (requires honored)

Feet

• Boots of the Sullen Rock / Gryphon Rider’s Boots — Sold by your Twilight Highlands faction quartermaster (requires exalted)
• Ramkahen Front Boots — Quest reward from an in-dungeon quest in Lost City of the Tol’vir

Rings

• Elementium Moebius Band — Made by jewelcrafters
• Felsen’s Ring of Resolve — Sold by Therazane quartermaster (requires revered)
• Red Rock Band — Sold by Ramkahen quartermaster (requires revered)
• Ring of Three Lights — Drops from Siamat in Lost City of the Tol’vir
• Temple Band — Zone drop in Halls of Origination
• Umbriss Band — Drops from General Umbriss in Grim Batol

Trinket

• Darkmoon Card: Earthquake — Made by scribes
• Lifebound Alchemist Stone — BoP, made by alchemists
• Mirror of Broken Images — Sold by Hellscream’s Reach/Baradin’s Wardens quartermaster (requires exalted)
• Earthen Guardian — BoP Jewelcrafting item
• Elementium Dragonling — BoE Engineering item
• Impetuous Query — Zone drop in Lost City of the Tol’vir
• Throngus’ Finger — Drops from Forgemaster Throngus in Grim Batol
• Za’brok’s Lucky Tooth — Quest reward in Twilight Highlands
• Heart of Thunder — Drops off Asaad in Vortex Pinnacle
• Leaden Despair — Drops off High Priestess Azil in the Stonecore

Relic

• Notched Jawbone — Made by Scribes. Best pre-heroics option.
• Halted Clock — BOE world drop, check your local auction house
• Blackblood Freedom Standard / Shore-Cleansing Standard — Quest reward from Twilight Highlands

Weapon

• Mace of the Gullet /Dragonscorn Mace — Quest reward in Twilight Highlands. Easy starter weapon!
• Sun Strike — Dropped by Rajh in Halls of Origination
• Mace of Transformed Bone — Dropped by Erudax in Grim Batol

Shield

• Elementium Earthguard — Made by blacksmiths (requires a Chaos Orb)
• Shield of the Four Grey Towers — Sold by vendor in your capital for 950 JP
• Twilight Mirrorshield / Truthbreaker Shield — Quest reward in Twilight Highlands
• Bulwark of the Primordial Mound — Drops randomly in Hall of Origination

Twas The Night Before Cataclysm…

Hey guys! I played from server launch last night up to about 10 AM this morning, when I fell asleep, exhausted from work.

Here are some brief impressions of my first six hours with the game. Unedited since I must go back to leveling!

Monday Night, Preparing for Launch

My laziness knows no bounds– I had reserved a copy of Cata at the local Best Buy, but I didn’t want to leave my apartment. So I didn’t. Trashed my preorder and ordered it online. It took about ten seconds. I regret a bit the whole waiting in line with real life wow players, but I got that at Blizzcon. Way to go with the digital downloads, Blizz!

I also cleaned out my bags and bags of gear.

Stuff that was hiding in my bank:

• My old block set
• My old avoidance set
• My Ulduar tier gear
• Five entire 264 tokens
• Tons of 264 items which I had upgraded to 277
• Three copies of Harbringer Bone Band. * (kidding… kidding…)
• No less than five separate weapons for Ret, all ilevel 264 or above.

Tear. Goodbye, my gear. My guild was calling me a hoarder…..

So — I was ready. So ready. Armed with snacks, smokes, and empty bags, I made my way to Orgrimmar to wait for launch.

3 AM Madness — Cataclysm Launches!

The servers came up at 3 AM my time. Of course, until 3:18, all I could see was this:

In the words of a twitter friend:

When the servers came up, I found myself at the flight master like the other million and a half people on Lightninghoof. And he was dead. Dead! Thanks, allies! I gave up on flight and went off to Vash’jir to get my leveling kicks.

Vashj’ir Blues

I was pretty frustrated for the first two levels of my Cataclysm experience. Sure, the cinematic going out to Vash’jir was awesome! And the zone itself is really, really cool.

But my idea of fun is not getting ganked repeatedly by an army of jerkfaces:

Or, waiting 25 minutes to tag a quest mob with an item before the other hundreds of people get it. Or, disconnecting upon login for over an hour straight. I just couldn’t get into the game. I suspect my little graphics card can’t really handle both monitors, WOW Cataclysm zones at max settings, and sixteen hundred people AEing their opposing faction all at once. I finally got my graphics turned down and managed to stay online.

5 am rolled around. I was tired. I wanted to sleep.

Then one of my guildies whispered me– “Ana, come tank for us! Please!”

Tanking… sounds good!

Five Man Dungeons Make Everything Better

I ended up in a group with my favorite boomkin, in his healing offspec, a rogue and both of our DKs. Armed with our still-overpowered gear and a thirst for new content, the five of us ran Thrones of the Tides.

It was so much fun! I can’t remember the last time I had such a good time in a dungeon. “I’m just glad this isn’t ICC,” one of the DKs sighed happily, and I completely agreed.

Throne of the Tides — First impressions

Throne of the Tides is beautiful. Absolutely stunning. Really, it’s just amazing. It’s also easier than Blackrock, so go here first imo.

I was playing the tanking safe. I was even marking my first target in every trash pull, a habit I fell out of months ago in ICC and which I believe will find new life here in the Cataclysm world of trash. We didn’t have to CC anything, but I have a feeling that’s just a matter of time.

In general, there’s a ton of fire in Cata, both on trash and on bosses. It’s MEAN fire. The fire hits hard. DPS, your ass will die if you stand in the bad. Also, especially in Throne of the Tides, there’s a lot of poison on the ground, which leads to confusion when you’ve got a druid healing you: is this good green or bad green? Will this green heal my ass or kick my ass? Maybe both? Maybe neither?

Throne of the Tides was an awesome experience going in blind. “What’s this?” One of my DKs said. “Defense system?” He activated it, and triggered a freaking badass cutscene. SO COOL.

Then a boss FELL FROM THE CEILING ONTO US. OH, SHIT!

Thone of the Tides — Boss Fights

Preparation? Psh. I knew nothing. “I don’t know what the fuck this boss does, but I vote we pull and let God work it out.” I said. I wasn’t even tabbed out looking for strats. “Pulling.”

DBM will pretty much warn you about all the major stuff. Nuke coming? Interrupt that now!! Unless your healer says something like, “Wait! I want to see how hard it hits her! Don’t interrupt that next one!” The answer is not very hard, in most cases, if you’re curious. Of course, like I said before: 277 gear.

One of the bosses enraged at the end of his health. “Cooldown,” I said. “You didn’t need to do that;” says my healer, disgustedly. “Come on!” I whined. “It makes me feel all special…”

Our healer was having an absolute blast. “Healing is so much fun again!” He kept gushing, and that’s saying a lot considering healing is his offspec. All I know about the healing is that I’m happy when my healers are happy… and he was happy.

The last boss was slightly confusing. Add waves. Tank adds. Bad adds channel bad things; kill adds; do not stand in black void zones. Then suddenly the room turns all dark, you get FREAKIN’ HUGE, you get a nasty stacking dot, and… the first time we did it… nothing happens! We ran around, wondering where the mobs were, and finally the dot stacked up to something like 120 on each of us and killed us.

“What do we do?” We wondered. “Is phase 3 bugged?” It was our first wipe of the night.

Nah… we did it again and figured it out. The phase 3 boss is in the goddamn wall! He’s a huge octopus. You just DPS it until you kill it dead. Easy peasy. We just didn’t know what to hit.

Blackrock Dungeon — First Impressions

This dungeon is a lot meaner. It was nigh on 8 AM by the time we got in here, so I don’t remember everything, but I remember enough.

Everything is darker. More caster pulls on trash. Bosses that hit hard. There’s an ogre friend in here who will kill a lot of the trash for you, too. A very different experience from Thrones, and equally cool. Some of these bosses might actually kill you if you’re not paying attention.

The Boss With The Fire

This one stumped us. Karsh Steelbender.

He is encircled by two Fire Elemental looking things which circle around him and activate oozes on the ground into Quicksilvers which do a nasty, nasty debuff to your health.

“Any thoughts?” I asked in vent, where two other people were hanging out, two people with beta experience. Someone had explained the tanking mechanic, where you have to carefully debuff the boss, without letting it stack too high. I knew what to do with the boss.

But what about these damn fire guys?

“Maybe they can pull separately,” I said cautiously, and pulled one. We killed it.

“Crap, it respawned.” Someone said. So it had. Lo and behold, there was another one.

“Damnit,” I sighed. “I’ll tank it all. Let’s do it.”

In went two wipes with near-immediate death. Jesus. That quicksilver was deadly. And none of the boss fight guides I read online mentioned how to deal with Fire Elementals or Quicksilver! The guys on vent didn’t remember either. “Umm… kite them? Make Morvain go tank and tank them on the side? Burn them down first?” We all had no idea.

As we were preparing for the third pull, I noticed something and immediately started laughing. “Guys. GUYS.” I was laughing so hard, I was almost crying. “There are two of those assholes! Look! Two fire elementals!!”

“What?” They looked.

“That first one didn’t respawn at all. It was just the second one we saw!”

“OH GOD!”

“We can pull them separately after all!”

After laughing for about ten minutes, we did the fight the right way – carefully pull trash and kill trash. Then kill the boss. He’s really not all that hard.

In the words of our healer: “Jeez. We might as well be demoted to Social Raider.”

Taking your tankadin to 85

Here we go, folks, oncemore over the breach. There’s a whole new world out there of zone-spanning questlines, dailies, faction grinds, new 5mans, heroics, raids, and so much more. I for one am pumped and I’m sure you are too.

I’m sure many of you are planning to pull some crazy all-nighters tonight and push as far ahead of the pack as you can, and the best of luck to you if so. For those of you hitting the ground running at midnight Pacific time, I offer the following advice:

Vashj’ir or Hyjal?

Personally, I preferred questing in Vashj’ir. I thought the quests were more engaging and a lot more fun. And I thoroughly enjoyed the whole under-the-sea mechanic. Hyjal felt a lot like “more of the same”, while Vashj’ir felt like something new. Of course, your mileage may vary, and I’m sure loregasms alone will bring people to Hyjal.

In terms of practicality, Meloree brought up a great point when I was talking to him. Vashj’ir has a lot of Earthen Ring quests, which will get you a head start on grinding their rep before you even set foot in Deepholm. This will probably help cut down the time required to acquire the helm enchant and some handy tanking pants.

Speccing

Start with the following spec: 0/31/5. It’ll maximize damage done while skipping talents otherwise mandatory for serious tanking but superfluous in soloing or group leveling.

As you ding, pick up these talents at the following levels:

• 81, Rule of Law (1/3)
• 82, Rule of Law (2/3)
• 83, Rule of Law (3/3)
• 84, Pursuit of Justice (1/2)
• 85, Pursuit of Justice (2/2)

Rule of Law is the next best dps talent available to us, so it should be a priority to speed up leveling. If you’re looking for actual speed, you could switch and grab Pursuit of Justice first, but with flying mounts available as you level, I can’t see that being as much of a priority as it might be otherwise.

New spells

At 81, we pick up the mythical Inquisition. This is not a substitution for ShoR in single-target, you still want to shield slam away. However, feel free to go hog wild blowing your Holy Power on Inquisition and then HotRing the night away.

At 83, Holy Radiance can be learned. It’s not as game changing as the other two spells you’ll pick up on your journey to 85, but it can have its uses. Mana willing, it’ll lighten the load for anyone you’re group leveling with.

At 85, we get the big daddy–Guardian of the Ancient Kings. This’ll summon an Ancient Guardian to reduce our damage taken by 50%. Of course, by this point, you’ll be 85, so its effect on leveling will be non-existent.

Gear

I leveled 1-70 as tank back in TBC. 70-80 in Wrath, too. And I fully expect to do the grind again as prot this time around. In beta, I found that it was very helpful to collect two kinds of gear as I went. A set composed of plate dps pieces for burning down mobs as fast as possible, and a tank gear set for 5mans and tougher quests/mobs that demand a bit more survival.

Two changes make this a great idea: (1) free uncrittability which we now enjoy via talents, and (2) most gear of the same iLevel and armor class has an equal amount of stamina, regardless of function. Concerning my last point, check out this green versus this green. The only different between the two is the secondary stats. One has avoidance, one has dps stats.

Prioritize gear with expertise and hit for your “Ret set” since those will give us the most damage-dealing bang for our buck. Mastery is also pretty great too. Haste is “meh” for us. As for the baby tank set, bank any parry/dodge quest rewards for when they’re needed.

As for the t10 set bonuses, hold on to the 2pc HotR bonus as long as you can, but don’t gimp yourself to keep it.

Ultimately, you’ll probably find that most of your Wrath gear will be completely replaced by the end of Deepholm.

And they’re off!

The best of luck to anyone tonight attempting to race to 85 for realm firsts. If anyone manages to pull it off, please share a screenshot of your accomplishment (and your Feat of Strength) with me and I’ll put it up. Give those shifty Rets and Holys what-for.

Moreover, please share any other leveling tips you might think of in the comments. Anything you might have picked up from the beta or elsewhere which can make your fellow prot pallies’ lives easier during the grind!

How to gem your tankadin at 85

I first did a gem flowchart last year, and then revised it later when epic gems came out. Cataclysm is a bit easier to decipher when it comes to what to gem and where, if only because the socket bonuses are much better and typically worth it. This is especially true until Cata epic gems come out, when skipping bonuses might become more worthwhile to push more stats out of the gems you can feasibly socket.

Moreover, gemming holistically will give us avoidance and mastery stats from the socket bonus that should be much more desirable this expansion pack, rather than the cram-stam ethos of Wrath.

Like I said, very straightforward: stam for blue, mastery/stam for yellow, and parry/stam for red. The dodge/stam gems are also yellow, but we’ll be getting more value out of mastery (until block capped), so stick with Puissants before Regals.

As for the meta, the Austere is much better than the Eternal Shadowspirit Diamond. This is because the latter is currently bugged to only give 1% more block value.

Jewelcrafters want to continue using the stam version of their exclusive gems, Solid Chimera’s Eyes, in blue sockets.

Lastly, for Engineers, you want to use a Fractured Cogwheel and then either the Subtle or Flashing Cogwheel–whichever avoidance stat is lower–to ward off diminishing returns as long as possible.

Enchanting your head, shoulders, knees, and toes at 85

I’m a little behind in getting this post out, but I guess I still have some time left before the first few tankadins start rolling over to 85 and begin the arduous journey of becoming raid geared. In any case, compiled below is a list of the best survival enchants for you prot paladin for each slot and (in some cases) who sells them or what profession they are exclusive to.

Head

• Arcanum of the Earthen Ring, from Earthen Ring revered.

Cloak

• Enchant Cloak – Protection
• Flexweave Underlay if engineer. (Stacks with the enchant.)

Shoulders

• Greater Inscription of Unbreakable Quartz is the superior shoulder enchant from Therazane when exalted.
• Lesser Inscription of Unbreakable Quartz is the lesser shoulder enchant from Therazane when honored.
• Inscription of the Earth Prince is the best choice, if you’re a scribe.

Chest

• Enchant Chest – Greater Stamina

Waist

• Ebonsteel Belt Buckle is the baseline choice for everyone, regardless of professions.
• Grounded Plasma Shield is the clear choice for engineering belt tinkers. Keep in mind that if the belt backfires, it will taunt all mobs within 40 yards to you.

Wrist

• Enchant Bracers – Dodge is probably the best overall survival enchant. There’s also Enchant Bracers – Major Stamina, but in terms of ROI dodge is probably better, especially with any avoidance that pushes you towards block capping being so powerful.
• Draconic Embossment – Stamina if you’re a leatherworker. This is the clear winner.
• Socket Bracer if you’re a blacksmith.

Hands

• Enchant Gloves – Mastery is the best choice for survivability. The Glove Reinforcements from TBC are nice too, but Mastery gives a much larger benefit than what the amount of armor brings to the table.
• Socket Gloves for blacksmiths.
• Quickflip Deflection Plates for engineers. Macro this (/use 10) to Crusader Strike and Hammer of the Righteous so you just use it off cooldown for a rolling average of damage reduction of the course of a fight.

Legs

• Charscale Leg Armor
• Charscale Leg Reinforcements if you’re a leatherworker. Same as the other one, but cheaper to make.

Feet

• Enchant Boots – Mastery if you are specced into Pursuit of Justice.
• Enchant Boots – Lavawalker if not.

Weapon

• Enchant Weapon – Windwalk. Sidenote: the proc‘s speed increase currently stacks with Pursuit of Justice (or so I hear).

Shield

• Enchant Shield – Block is a weird enchant. I’m not sure exactly what block percent the 40 rating turns into [correction: Thanks to a link tweeted to me by Shathus, the 40 rating is worth about .45% block], and with block capping is as desirable as it is, anything that gets us towards that goal is very, very welcome. The alternative is Enchant Shield – Protection when over the block cap.

Coming next week are more posts on gear and gearing for the new end game that will be launch starting Tuesday. Stay tuned for posts on the best pre-heroics tanking gear, the best pre-raid tanking gear, and a new gemming flowchart for Cata gems.

Vengeance, part III: Ghostcrawler Responds!

My battle regarding Vengeance continues! Part I was when I got up to ask the devs about it at Blizzcon, and Part II consists of this post from Meloree on the subject several weeks ago.

Well, here’s part III: Ghostcrawler Responds!

A very nice paladin player asked me recently about Vengeance. She had concerns about the mechanic, which made me realize that we haven’t done the best job of explaining to players exactly what Vengeance is supposed to accomplish……

Source: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/1293873

Huh. Here’s my reply. I posted it here because the comments section murdered it and took out all the freakin’ paragraph breaks.

Missing The Mark

As (maybe) the tank referenced in this post – since I’m the one who berated the devs about Vengeance at Blizzcon – I’m pleased to see a response. :)

Unfortunately, it’s not the response we need.

For reference, please see Meloree’s post on the subject here: http://rhida.ch/2010/11/18/it-burns-how-i-learned-to-love-the-fire/ … he laid out the concerns better than I could, and from the perspective of a main tank in a US top 100 guild. I am an 11/12 HM 25 raider, and I and my cotank have noticed the same things although to a lesser extent. Problems are always clearer at the extremes.

I think you’ve missed our concerns a bit here.

Tanking Is Fun!

No need to be so defensive! We love tanking! Tanking has never been about the rotation. Tanking is about the role you play in the raid. If we think it’s fun, we tank. If we don’t, we don’t. I don’t think anyone is arguing that tanking isn’t fun — I certainly am not! I hope no one is doing that.

I guess we complain. Well, I will moan about boring 93939, and I will moan about Vengeance, because they are concerns and because the devs will listen. Also, because it’s part of the contract I signed when I became a paladin that I would QQ about everything. I’m required to QQ about something at length at least once a day.

The Need for Vengeance: We Agree!

I think you’re not giving the community enough credit. I like the idea of Vengeance and I agree with every reason why it should exist. I, at least, appreciate all the concerns raised by the devs, and I don’t need anyone to tell me why they think threat should be hard – I also liked the Misdirection / Tricks change, because I hated fake threat. I, at least, want it to be a challenge. Witness how the tanking community responded to the threat problem in this tier. We geared for threat on farm fights. We like the threat game.

The problem WITH Vengeance, is not that it exists, but how it works.

A stacking buff that is based on the damage we take has very un-tank-like implications.

Vengeance can contribute 150% of a tank’s natural AP. That’s a pretty absurd amount of threat generation dependent on your damage intake and avoidance. Unfortunately, higher avoidance = less Vengeance.

What this means: The first twenty seconds of a fight can look wildly, wildly different depending on if the tank gets an avoidance streak or not. For a ranked progression guild, this is enough of a problem to wipe it if the tank gets a bad avoidance streak at the start. Is this the spirit of Vengeance? No, I know, it’s not. Will it happen? Oh, yes, all the time. It’s already happening.

I don’t like my avoidance harming my threat generation. I don’t like standing in fire to do more threat. I don’t like being even more inclined to put on Strength gemmed gear, and ret gear, in old content – because it gets Vengeance stacked, and in WOTLK old content, I absolutely need it. Vengeance was supposed to solve this problem – taking off tank gear for old content – and instead it has made it worse.

I do appreciate the big numbers, though.

Not Seeing the Logic

I’m just not seeing the logic behind making Vengeance dependent on precisely what the tank is gearing to avoid. All this does is penalize tanks, threat wise, for doing tank like things, and reward us for doing un-tank-like things. Sure, this is an exaggeration… but that doesn’t make it any less true. I feel like the design is weird, and un-tank-like.

Even if the design is just The Way Things Are Meant To Be, the numbers right now are way off. 150% of a tank’s natural AP is far, far too high a number and makes for huge swings of RNG depending on how your avoidance works out.

Don’t get me wrong – I love the threat game. I love looking for a balance between threat and survivability. I love playing with my gear. But I don’t like my threat being inherently tied to my avoidance. I know in Cata, we won’t be seeing these ridiculous avoidance numbers, but the mechanic remains, and I still don’t like the logic.