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.

Blergh

So remember a few months ago when I outlined my philosophy of utter pessimism? Yes, well, we’ve been in one of those upward ascents for a month now, but I’m getting the impression we’re starting to go down the spiraling ramp of the dramacoaster. Blergh indeed.

Despite all this, last night was a great night raid-wise, second only to last week’s roflstomping of ToC, Ony, and VOA. While all in all I’m really proud of how everyone has mastered ToC25, I’m perturbed at how awful people were being on time for the raid. Invites went out at 7 server, Ony was declared the first destination, and everyone was told to start hoofing it in case there was pvp. And sure enough there was, an Alliance squad was camping out on the hill just behind the stone and jumping anyone that went to summon.

Slowly the minutes ticked by and by 7:30 we still had about 5 people scattered about the world. It takes all of five or eight minutes to hearth, port to TB, and fly to Mudsprocket. What the hell takes 30 minutes? Lazy bastards.

When we get to Onyxia we wiped the first time because a couple of people bit it on Deep Breaths (lol) or stood in front of the big adds (lolol) or got cleaved by Onyxia (lololol). I think next time we go there I’m going to have to pass around Amber’s guide to Onyxia. It basically says all that needs to be said about this encounter.

Second attempt we down the old lady. Gear went out and everyone headed over to ToC. By now it was 8 server time, two hours on the clock remaining.

We did two strategies differently from previous weeks. One was on the worms we just burnt down Acidmaw and let Dreadscale soft enrage. I personally found that having the poisons removed early was a huge dps boost, although some perpetually aggrieved healers (ahem) might disagree. This new strat allowed us to kill the beasts faster than we have yet. I’m wondering how well it will translate into heroic 25man…

Other new strategy is a carry-over from the heroic 10man. On Twins we tanked both in the center and let splash damage hit both. We didn’t get the Salt and Pepper achievement (mostly cause some dopey folks got gibbed by orbs) but we did an impressively fast kill. Most of the Twin Pacts were interrupted by the time they hit halfway through their cast bar, and that was without the opposite attuned people changing colors.

All in all, we one-shot the whole place, so well done ES. Now I just wish people could be on time. /grumble

Tonight’s our first foray into Grand Trial of the Crusader (25). I’m cautiously optimistic about how we’ll do, but we’ll see.

Better luck next time!

Well last night wasn’t a complete wash. We got Twins down, and rather easily so once we worked out the kinks in our strategy. Anub we were not so lucky on. Phase 2 was a mess, and that we’ll need more time with.

We had Phase 1 down pat, the shifting of Anub over, dragging the second set of Burrowers away, etc. But time and time again Phase 2 was a cluster-you-know-what. People I think kept panicking and rather than paying attention to spikes or helping kill the Scarabs, they were too busy running around like a chicken with their heads cut off. It also didn’t help that the Burrowers kept Shadowy Striking when I was trying to drag them into position and thus wasn’t on my game to do interrupts. Gah.

The Glyph of Holy Wrath is awesome in this fight (awesome idea, Yoggie). Though… I think I still have it on… eek.

But, Quel’Serrar, Serrar. We’ll put in more attempts this week and hopefully have a better time of it.

Oh, also, had an amusing run in with another pally. This guy initially apped to my guild, and was rejected because we heard he was a little overbearing/bossy. Moreover, he’s currently the leader of his guild, and I’m not a fan of aiding and abetting someone ditching a whole guild of people that trust him as their leader.

So lately he’s been whispering me trying to discuss various things and obviously ingratiate himself with me to get a second shot in the guild. And it almost worked! I was feeling kind of guilty, thinking “oh, he seems like a nice guy” and it wouldn’t hurt to let him reapp. While talking I mentioned casually I wanted the Libram of Valiance for a threat set (I mean, we all have different sets for different situations, correct?) which he interprets as me saying “I can’t hold threat evar HALP”.

So, bless his heart, he looks up my armory and immediately lets me know he’s discovered the problem–my spec is crap! You heard it here first, folks.

Now I’m not the be all-end all of pally tanking. There are folks far, far smarter than I and far better at “the biz” than I am. I’m just the lowly messenger. However, I was a bit incredulous at being told I was “doin’ it rong.” This kind soul informed me that my threat is bad because I have too many points in Ret. Oo-kay. He goes on to let me now SotP is the superior threat talent and I should really be going into that, rather than Crusade.

Nevermind the mountains of data at Maintankadin, this fellow knew the score.

After that episode I grabbed any lingering guilt I had, stuffed it in a box, and pushed it right out of the sewer pipe leading out of Dalaran. It’s the carrots’ problem now.

Weekend notes

1. Saturday I had the day mostly to myself so I decided to get a jumpstart on making my eventual Troll Druid (woohoo race changes). I rolled the Tauren Druid that morning and by the end of the night I had him at level 21. One thing that really struck me in that period was how much Druids suck for the first twenty levels. Level 1-10 is basically Wrath… Wrath… Wrath… ok… more Wrath.

Then when I got Bear Form I decided to do the next ten levels like that, since I already had the Shadowcraft BOAs equipped. So instead of Wrath spam, it was Maul spam.

It wasn’t too bad, I basically headed over to the Ghostlands and burnt through the next nine levels or so in five hours, basically spending most of the time aoe tanking groups of mobs during quests.

One hilarious mistake I found myself doing a lot: I was trying to solo Knucklerot at lvl 19 and I was doing really well, but at like 30% health I warstomped to stun him, shifted to cast hots on myself, and then… er, ran out of mana and couldn’t shift back into Bear Form. GG nub.

Once I got Cat Form however, the fun really started. Lots of fast hits, a cool looking appearance, and stealth. Boy howdy, I’ve always wanted a character with stealth.

I’m looking forward to getting this guy to 80 asap and then sitting on him until Cataclysm comes out. I doubt I’ll do much raiding with him this xpac.

2. Had some guild drama hit this morning, hurray. The fail DK tank that I’ve mentioned a few times in these pages finally flew the coop. There’s nothing really funny about what brought us to this point, nothing I can document for teh lulz here, which is unfortunate. Just long story short: Failtank got too big for his britches, and combining that with an attitude of “I’m the best, everyone else sucks” with nothing to back it up… it wasn’t meant to last.

The worst part of all this was he took a really good healer with him that I guess he was in a relationship with. I’m not really sure what their deal was, but she was really nice, so I mourn her passing, so to speak. Failtank on the other hand can get pound sand for all I’m concerned.

On the plus side though, no one seems to care in guild. I was worried he might bring other folks with him, but surprise surprise, no one cared much for him.

3. Finishing up Heroic 10man tonight. I’m not sure what to expect in terms of the last two bosses (I hear Anub is intense) but I think Twins will be ok. I would really like to clear the place out tonight (I honestly think we can do it, I just don’t know if we have enough time to get the needed attempts in with 2.5 hours for the two bosses). That may be me being pessimistic though. (What, me? Nevar!)

In any case, if anyone has some pro-tips for Twins and Anub I’d be much obliged.

Do want!

Anyone wanna get me one of these for my impending bday?

Exit question: With diminishing returns, think it’s possible to hit 100% avoidance with that equipped?

hp5 is not a tanking stat

There’s a DK tank in my guild who I reference from time to time. He’s a nice guy, a good player, means well. But, sometimes he has a–oh what’s a nice way to put this–really stupid idea of how tanking works. His latest delusion is that the Purified Onyxia Blood Talisman is a good progression tanking trinket. It’s not.

When it comes to tanking you and I (and him) have two specific jobs: one is to hold threat on the mobs, and the other is to stay alive. To maximize the former we talent for threat, we swap in hit gear, etc. To maximize the latter we stack and enchant stamina to have the highest survivability possible. In this regard, the trinket is a total flop.

As I’ve mourned in the past, EH is king these days. And the reason why is EH is the best metric to determine time to live (TTL), that is, how long you can survive without a heal. When standing up versus a raid boss with silenced healers, what do you think is going to help you survive more: 2000 hp from a trinket, or a tick of 101 hp? The answer is obvious.

We should scorn hp5 for the same reasons we don’t talent into Divinity, it’s just useless overhealing. That tick of 101 hp is not going to save your life unless by some statistical miracle you take a hit that would have been a gib if not for that lucky proc. It’s a one in a million shot. Instead you’re often going to see those magic ticks swept under the ever-rising flood of heals being poured your way.

The only time this trinket should be used is if you’re not yet uncrittable and need the defense, or if you’re farming some vanilla instance and can’t be arsed to self-heal. Otherwise, leave it at home and equipped a stamina trinket.

They call me the Seeker

Hooray, one grind down. And now I have the title of a random Paladin npc from Warcraft III. Great success!