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1 0 Tag Archives: enchants
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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.

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December 3, 2010
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Blood Draining is not worthless

I spotted this thread on the WoW tanking forums and it brought up something I haven’t post on in a while: weapon enchants. Believe or not, a lot has changed and weapon enchants are a bit murkier now than they were a few months ago. Let’s talk about each of the major contenders.

Mongoose/Exceptional Agility

Up to the early days of ICC, Mongoose had an uptime of about 52% for us, which was damn good. These days, thanks to the retooling Ret got to defang Bryntroll for them, it’s down to as low as 25%.

Mongoose generally is, as Dirgen says in his epic enchants thread on Maintankadin, no better than Exceptional Agility now in terms of average Agility gained. And unlike EA, Mongoose might not be there when you need it. If you want an enchant for armor, I would go with Exceptional Agility.

Blood Draining

I’m a fan of Blood Draining right now because of the content I’m currently tackling and will be tackling in the near future. The beauty in BD is that it’s a free heal when you need it the most, under 35%. And, not to mention TBtL makes its crits 30% more effective. While we can’t stack it as fast without bleeds, having an extra oomph to the heal is a worthy trade-off, I would wager.

Accuracy

For farm content, threat sets, and sets you need to be hit capped for. The best threat enchant, but obviously weak for survival needs.

Conclusion

If feasible, I recommend keeping a stable of three weapons. A slow dps weapon with Accuracy, a tanking weapon with Blood Draining (for dangerous bosses), and a tanking weapon with Exceptional Agility (for less mortality-inducing encounters).

Ditch ‘goose, the RNG has won this battle.

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Armory datamining tells all

Last week, Armory Data Mining updated itself for patch 3.3.3. The site is fascinating and I recommend checking it out to see how everyone out there is speccing, gearing, gemming, and the like. It’s an interesting peek into the vast multitudes that play this game and how they play it. And, most importantly, it provides a view of how many people are playing the game correctly–ie, by the established and settled baselines widely understood among more top-end players.

While poking through the site I was floored to see just how many people were “doin it rong,” so to speak. As a caveat, I know a lot of surveyed characters may be fresh 80s, or abandoned characters from when the standards were different a year ago (or whenever). However, in the grand scheme of things, it’s shocking how many widely recognized “knowns” are ignored. I’m going to go through a few data points in this post just to show the more interesting things I noticed.

(Note: Unless otherwise stated, percents given are of level 80 Paladins.)

No one is using Shifting Dreadstone. For gems, the popularity (according to the site, popularity correlates to total numbers of gems compared to the number of characters with at least one gem) of red slot gems are 38% for Regal Dreadstones, 21% for Defender’s Dreadstones, and 15% for Dreadstones. Shifting isn’t even on the board, it’s popularity percentage is less than 10%.

You and I both know that when you’re gemming a red socket and going for that socket bonus, you want a Shifting Dreadstone. According to Theck, Agility is 83% as effective as Dodge for avoidance and, thanks to Agility giving Armor, each point of Agility is 4% more effective than Dodge when it comes to reducing damage. The fact that this information is so widely unknown among the surveyed masses is discomforting.

35% of Prot Paladins are using a +stats chest enchant. Look at those numbers. This I can only explain via simple ignorance. The standard for chest enchants should be this: if you’re under the crit cap, enchant +def, if not, enchant +health on your chest. Never, ever should you use +stats. Much for the same reason we avoid Nightmare Tears, the stat spread just isn’t as good as solid defense or solid hp.

63% are using Armsman on their hands. I can see the allure to this enchant, and hell, even at end game there can be some honest disagreement over what is better. Nonetheless, personally, I would always rather enchant for survival than for threat. So while this isn’t egregious or anything (definitely not on the level of no one gemming Shifting), it’s still fascinating to see how vast the appeal of this enchant is.

32% are using Blade Ward. This I’m sure can be explained away by those 32% being completely ignorant of how awful this enchant is. Which is a shame, because if they even did a cursory Googling, they would find that Blade Ward is widely derided as a bad enchant.

Only 15% are using the pvp shoulder enchant. Again, this is probably one of those counter-intuitive, makes no sense to the layman kinds of things, but unless uncrittable, you really want to have that +30 stamina shoulder enchant. The return on investment is much better than any of the Hodir shoulder enchants. It’s somewhat distressing on 15% of the Prot pallies out there have gotten that message.

On the other hand, there is the “holistic” gearing argument–that most of that 85% are T10-geared tanks that have enough stamina and are scaling back to emphasize damage reduction through things like avoidance–which is a valid philosophy at a certain gear level. Nonetheless, I find it hard to believe that that 85% is made up of just people who need the defense and people who are being holistic.

Glyph of Divine Plea is nowhere near as popular as it should be. GoDP has a popularity (same formula as gems above) rating of 63%. Judgement 60%, Seal of Vengeance 48%, Righteous Defense 26%. Those are my big four. Contrawise, here are some facepalm ones: Holy Light 25%, Flash of Light 19%, Consecration 29%, Seal of Wisdom 16%. The list goes on.

Only 18.4% of Prot Paladins use a 53/18 build. And of those, only 10% use the cookie cutter build we know and love. The rest somehow are across the board on 53/18.

34% of Prot Paladins take Seals of Pure, while only 24% take Crusade. And as we all know, Crusade builds are more threat than SoP builds.

1% of Prot Paladins take Eye for an Eye. What is this I don’t even. I’m hoping this is from a pvp Prot build… oh, how I hope.

62% of Paladins put points into Divinity. There’s some merit to this talent in harder content where trickle-down deaths are frequent and every ounce of healing matters. 62% of Prot Paladins are not currently in that content. This is another case of the talent “sounding” good and people putting points in without determining if the talent is best for them or the content they are currently tanking.

22% of Prot Paladins take Vindication. Sigh.

85% of Prot Paladins take Judgements of the Just. This is somewhat heartening.

54% of Prot Paladins take Divine Guardian. This makes me sad. This talent is so key and has so many, amazing uses that it’s a shame for anyone (let alone 46% of all Prots) to pass this up.

Ultimately, what I’ve learned from perusing the wealth of information compiled by this site is the wide disconnect between those that look up information on the net, and attempt to better their character and playstyle through the resources available to them, and those that wing it or (more likely) are unaware of what kind of treasure troves exist out there for the taking (or have consulted out of date/just plain wrong resources). A lot of what I listed above will more or less seem obvious to you or me (with some debatable exceptions), and yet it all might be considered arcane knowledge to others.

There are many horses out there that must be brought to water, methinks.

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Better Late Than Never Friday, 4/9/10

Better Late Than Never Friday is a random monthly feature where I pull a bunch of search terms from Google Analytics that landed folks here and try to answer questions that may not be directly answered at this site, as gleaned from their keywords used.

best paladin tank enchant waist 3.3

Well, technically the only waist enchant is the Eternal Belt Buckle. If you’re an engineer though, you have two supplementary choices for some additional AOE damage. Using the Frag Belt or Personal Electromagnetic Pulse Generator tinkers on your belt (stacks with the buckle) can give your big pulls a little more oomph. The former obviously summons a bomb for you (with a neat little stun) and the latter can set off an Explosive Decoy for a chunk of physical damage. Both pretty handy.

nightmare tear does it give 10 to dodge also?

No, but it does give 10 Agility, which translates to some dodge. Though, not as much as 10 Dodge Rating would give.

glyph of judgement or command low level

Command is pretty nice at low level for the free mana it gives. That’ll make the early levels much easier to suffer through when going OOM is a constant, looming shadow.

sindragosa parry haste

Sindra does indeed parry haste (confirmed in this thread). This shouldn’t be much of a worry for two reasons: her breath is her biggest source of damage rather than her cleave, and dps will die if they sit in front of her, so you don’t need to worry about a clueless warrior causing you trouble, he won’t be up for long.

what kind of damage is putricide dealing? amplify magic

To the raid it’s either Shadow or Nature damage, depending on the attack. Your tanks will be taking a huge chunk of Physical damage from Putri’s melees, but even then there’s a lot of magic damage (especially in phase 3) and you don’t want to risk a tank gibbing ruining your attempt. I would recommend against amplify magic, honestly.

can i exchange my voa sanctified for emblems and mark?

Ye gods no.

does armor penetration stack with hammer of the righteous?

The damage is Holy, so it’s already penetrating armor.

does judgement proc seal of command cleave?

It does if you have at least one point in Judgements of the Just. It isn’t the judging the procs the cleave, it’s the application of the JoJ debuff. Probably a bug, but I’m not complaining.

festergut melee parry gib?

Festergut has parry haste turned off, so there is no danger of that.

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Better Late Than Never Friday, 1/22

Better Late Than Never Friday is a random monthly feature where I pull a bunch of search terms from Google Analytics that landed folks here and try to answer questions that may not be directly answered at this site, as gleaned from their keywords used.

righteous defense taunt small ooze

The Small Ooze is taunt immune, so unfortunately that won’t work. The only way to get rid of them is to merge one into a Big Ooze.

best libram tankadin

Eternal Tower is, technically, the best for survivability (although the ramp-up time is annoying and can cause issues). It’s a marginal upgrade over Defiance, however, and not worth getting until you run out of better things to spend Emblems of Frost on. Just farm Triumph badges and get the 245 dodge libram. Contrawise, Valiance is the best threat libram right now.

how to use righteous defense

Back in my day to use Righteous Defense you had to target the person being attacked, and if you wanted to directly taunt the attacking mob you’d have to use a /targettarget macro. Thankfully, Righteous Defense was changed a while back. It’ll work the same if you use it on the mob or the mob’s target.

armour penetration for tankadins

Bad stat for us, don’t even think about it! The same reasons that make ArP bad for Ret Pallies bad for us–our threat derives primarily from Holy damage, which pierces armor as is. It’s for this reason I always cursed the tanking gloves off of Ignis that had ArP on them.

does the hp5 on purified onyxia blood talisman work in combat

Yes. But you shouldn’t use it unless you’re soloing old content, or something equally frivolous. hp5 is not a tanking stat.

festergut amp magic

Bad idea, amplify magic will make the various raid damage attacks do even more damage. The only fight amp magic is good for is Saurfang, because every attack in that fight is classified as physical damage.

20 defense vs titanium plating

Neither, go with the BC-era +18 stamina enchant if you have the defense to spare. Otherwise get the +defense enchant.

22 agility titanweave dodge

Agility if you have enough defense, Titanweave otherwise.

3.3 divine sacrifice worth it?

Absolutely! Assuming you get Divine Guardian as well, it’s like a free 20% damage reduction cooldown for us that benefits the raid as well. DS/DG is a mandatory talent for raiding.

blacksmithing vs engineering tankadin

I’m partial to engineering, myself, for the cool toys and the armor glove enchant/agility cloak enchant. However, you’d probably be better off if min/maxing just to go with the straight +60 stamina of blacksmithing.

seal of righteousness vs seal of vengeance

Seal of Vengeance is still our best single-target threat seal. Seal of Righteousness has it’s uses though, particularly on Rotface if you’re kiting the Big Ooze. You can’t melee it, and because SoR’s judgement offers the most damage in that situation, it’s the best choice.

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Bryntroll change nerfs our enchants

Ah, Blizz, the best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley, eh?

Bryntroll was proccing too much for Unholy DKs and Retribution Paladins we were told, specifically in the latter’s case because refreshing Holy Vengeance (or Blood Corruption) was making the axe proc.

So Blizz changes it so Holy Vengeance/Blood Corruption cannot proc the weapon anymore, and at the same time makes it so those two effect applications cannot proc weapon enchants anymore. This was probably unintentional, because I don’t think there was a major outcry on Ret enchant uptimes. But, the fact remains.

Sidenote: I wonder if this will reduce the uptime on Rune of the Fallen Crusader for dps Unholy DKs?

Nonetheless, unintended consequences abound. Of course as anytime something affects Ret, we are inadvertently hit as well. This change now means Mongoose and Blade Warding have significantly shorter uptimes.

Theck crunched the numbers over at Maintankadin and came up with (for hit/exp capped tanks) a drop from 61% to 42% for Mongoose and 44% to 31% for Blade Warding. The numbers are worse, of course, if you’re neither hit nor expertise capped, which you probably will not be in a survivability-minded gear set.

The aftermath

Does this change how we approach enchants at all? A little. According to Theck, if you’re enchanting for threat, Accuracy is once again far and away your best choice, with even the lowly Titanium Weapon Chain beating out Mongoose.

If you’re enchanting for survivability, Mongoose is probably still your best bet, because even with a diminished uptime, it’s still the only enchant that gives effective health. Blood Draining is more appealing and worth getting if you’d prefer the gimmicky heal over the cold comfort of occasional dodge and armor.

As for Blade Warding… this benighted enchant went from crap to super crap. Continue to avoid it.

And as for me, I have posts to edit. Sigh.

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January 12, 2010
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Back to the future with Mongoose

One of my aspirations in TBC was to have enough threat that I could get away with tanking using a Sun Eater enchanted with Mongoose. Unfortunately, that day didn’t come until 3.0 when my trusted Merciless Gladiator’s Gavel was retired. But the dream lived on!

Last night in heroic ToC-10 (hopefully the last time we run that as current content), I scored the heroic Ardent Guard. Such an awesome weapon. As for enchanting it, I am terribly bored with the thought of Blood Draining on yet another weapon, so I decided to take a different route: finally giving Mongoose some time in the sun.

I’ve done a bit of poking around on weapon enchants, and what really piqued my interest was this threat sim run by Theck which shows Mongoose as being our second best (practical) threat enchant, only trailing Accuracy by a tiny margin. Combined with the armor and dodge granted by the proc, it seems worthy of a trial.

Update: Some actual numbers would be nice, eh?

  • It’s been calculated that thanks to the change in how SoV is handled, Mongoose’s proc time has jumped to 52% since 3.2 (why it’s good all of a sudden)
  • This means that the enchant is worth ~62 “constant” agility (120 agility x .52 = 62.4)
  • That’s a “constant” 124 armor and 1.04% dodge and 1.19% crit
  • In reality, when it procs, you get 240 armor and 2% dodge and 2.3% crit

Not too shabby!

I probably won’t get a decent test of it until Icecrown on Tuesday (crossing fingers) so I’ll let you all know how it goes.

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December 3, 2009
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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.

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Better Late Than Never Friday, 7/31

On a house keeping note, I’m going to be on vacation next week. I’m trying to decide how to handle my absence, which I’ll probably either fill by making 5 posts this weekend and spacing them out with “Publish on x day” settings, or maybe with teeny tiny awkward posts on my iPod’s wordpress app (whenever I can find wifi in northern New Hampshire). I’m personally hoping I choose the former and then the patch comes out next week, while my (transparently) pre-written posts are about “How bad expertise sucks” or “If only we had a second cooldown.”

Although I could probably do a mad-libs raid recap… hrm… the possibilities.

does it matter if i don’t get my socket bonuses

Not particularly, assuming that bonus isn’t stamina. Avoidance is nice, but stamina is better. And block rating or hit/expertise aren’t worth gemming to achieve. Refer to my flowchart here for when to go for socket bonuses.

enchant weapon – blood draining does it increase with spell power?

I looked at a WWS from a recent raid to compare the heals that both I and Demogar (warrior tank) received from Blood Reserve, which is the heal the enchant gives. As you can imagine, I’m rocking about 860 spellpower (from stamina, I swear!) and Demo has a pitiful 0. Srsly, what a nub. Anyway, while just skimming through the WWS and writing down some numbers, for a one stack heal I got back around 391-466 hp, he got 405-412; two stacks I got ~894 and Demo ~900; three stacks 1215 verse 1243; four stacks 1665 versus 1650; five 1941 versus 2299.

Short answer is no. Actually, long answer is no too, but I’m pretty sure we get an additional 30% benefit to any crit heals from Blood Reserve. And yes BR does indeed crit. For example I received 1755 hp from a two stack crit. Not too shabby!

hit cap on righteous defense

17%, or 446 rating. Please don’t try to reach this. It’s not worth it.

glyph of seal of vengence vs glyph hammer of righteous

I’m very partial to the latter which is very, very useful for snap aggro in AOE situations. For example, on Kologarn when I pick up the rumbling adds that spawn, the glyphed HotR plus a Consecrate guarantees that I pick up every add before they have a chance to make a break for a healer. The SOV glyph isn’t as good right now because expertise is kind of bleh. But, in 3.2 it’ll be much more useful because we’ll be more dependent on the 5-stack SOV proc for threat. In 3.2 you’ll want that glyph. To actually answer the question, I’d get both.

paladin stamina to health conversion

For a Paladin 1 stamina is 10 hp. With the proper talents, 1 stamina is 11.4 hp.

how often do saronite plated legguards drop

If you’re in my guild, only once.

mongoose at level 80 tankadin

I know some people are very attached to this enchant for tanking (for the avoidance) but I’m just not a fan. It’s worth 120 agility when it procs, which is 2.3% dodge. Thanks to PPM it’s basically like adding .76% dodge to your character sheet, which I guess is nice overall. Based on what I’ve read it’s the best avoidance enchant but my biggest beef with it is the fact it’s proc based. You need avoidance the most when you have low health, and there’s just no guarantee that Mongoose will up to maybe give you that extra oomph to avoid the next hit. You have just as much a chance for it to proc at 100% health as at 5%. I’d recommend getting an enchant that’ll be there when you need it most and actually provides some EH; namely, Blood Draining.

seal of righteousness verses seal of corruption for tanking

SoC/V for sure. Righteousness is good for trash when stuff will die too fast for you to build a five stack and maximize the threat potential for that seal, but on longer living trash or bosses SoC/V is far and away your best choice.

tankadin effulgent skyflare diamond

Thankfully this gem is no longer bugged. Before 3.1 it used to, laughably, increase your resistances by 2% rather than reduce spell damage. Now it’s working as it should be. Does that make it a good gem? Eh, not particularly. You’ll in the end get more mileage out of the Austere meta. This gem seems too situational.

trouble picking up kel’thuzad adds

On 10man the trick is to fall back and watch both halves of the room. When an Icecrown Guardian spawns you have a few seconds to run over and pick it up before it beelines for a healer. Then immediately run over to the opposite end and grab the one that will shortly spawn there. Use Avenger’s Shield, Exorcism, and Reckoning to get their attention. In 25man you’ll probably be on one side with a different tank on the other, so there’s less running. As a fail safe, set the healer with the highest global aggro as your focus so you can watch their health and see if a Guardian snuck over to them.

ulduar demo driving

The trick to driving a demolisher (which I always do in our raids) is use your mouse buttons to drive forward and turn/aim and use keybinds to fire boulders. Time spent keyboard turning and fumbling to target something is time lost dpsing. Demolishers are slow so your biggest priority is cutting movement corners when you can.

why wont titanguard drop

I swear this isn’t me! I feel your pain, my friend. :(

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PVP vs PVE shoulder enchants

Here’s something you’re seeing more and more of recently: raiders forgoing the Greater Inscription of the Pinnacle and instead nabbing the Greater Inscription of the Gladiator for their shoulder enchants. My first thought when I saw this was “resilience in my pve gear?!” but at second look it’s not such a bad idea.

If you break down the numbers, the Pinnacle enchant gives you:

  • .86% avoidance (from dodge and defense rating)
  • .12% mitigation (block from def)
  • .12% crit chance reduction

The Gladiator enchanter gives you:

  • 342 hp
  • .18% crit chance reduction

So the big question here is what’s more worthwhile having, the avoidance and mitigation of Pinnacle, or the health of Gladiator? Personally, I’m thinking that in terms of heavy hitting Ulduar bosses, I’d rather have the assurance of the extra health (and that’s before Kings) over the RNG-ariffic avoidance.

It’s only 10k honor to purchase a Gladiator enchant from the PVP vendors in Org/SW. I think I’ll switch that out tonight when I log in.

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June 8, 2009