This week has been an adventure. I have taken myself all over Azeroth and found myself fighting so many enemies that I became increasingly angry. Finally I couldn’t take it anymore and the anger within manifested itself and I became a hulking manifestation of death.
Pop Quiz: Where am I in this screenshot? Continue reading ‘Popquiz: The Green Me!’
Today marks the advent of the 3.1 major content patch going live on the Public Test Realms for the first time. With this patch we see massive changes to most classes and specs to improve or nerf their viability as tanks, healers and dps. While there are bigger changes to many other classes, the big changes for Warriors have thus far only been given to us by new glyphs.
Glyph of Heroic Strike – Increases the critical strike chance of Heroic Strike by 5%.
The soul change to our glyph repetoire. This glyph used to be a bread and butter for the 10 rage it gave when Heroic Strike critically hit. We now have something that will not only help Fury and Arms warriors, but it represents a signficant increase in threat production.
Glyph of Barbaric Insults — Your Mocking Blow ability generates 100% additional threat.
This used to change Mocking Blow into another taunt ability. Why they are changing a less than stellar glyph from a semi useful glyph into one that makes it so much less useful I do not rightly know.
Glyph of Shockwave — Reduces the cooldown on Shockwave by 3 sec.
The impact of this new treat is yet to really been number crunched. Yet, I would not be going out on a short limb if I said this is really just not worth it. Changing Shockwave from 20 seconds to 17 second cooldown should not signficantly impact a tps rotation that is dominated by two six second cooldowns.
Glyph of Vigilance — Your Vigilance ability transfers an additional 5% of your target’s threat to you.
This is a complete waste of a glyph. Well correction, with current threat parameters we really have little use for changing Vigiliance from a 10% to a 15% reduction in a single person’s threat. This glyph may find a use if the threat ceiling falls signifcantly with Ulduar’s opening.
Glyph of Enraged Regeneration — Your Enraged Regeneration ability heals for an additional 10% of your health over its duration.
A purely PvP orientated glyph if I ever saw one. There is really no real use for this glyph in a tank’s glyph set. There are much better choices of glyphs out there.
Glyph of Spell Reflection — Reduces the cooldown on Spell Reflection by 1 sec.
This glyph is just plain too much of a drop in the ocean to be worth anything. Reducing a lot of cooldowns by 1 second may be worth more. However, reducing this with a glyph slot is far from worth the cost of any other glyph.
Glyph of Shield Wall — Reduces the cooldown on Shield Wall by 3 min, but Shield Wall now only reduces damage taken by 40%.
The be all end all of the new glyphs. Combined with Improved Disciplines we now have a signficantly less powerful damage reduction tool on a cooldown equal to that of a Death Knight’s Icebound Fortitude.
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With the addition of Glyph of Shield Wall we now have the option to have an extremely short cooldown ability with strong mitigation benefits. Why should we be concerned over this?
Simply put, we all got together and whined and complained about Warriors getting the rear end of the stick when it came to Effective Health and overall burst mitigation. What we got was a forced clone of a Death Knight ability. It may look really nice, and it may actually prove to be a boon to Protection Warriors, but we need to think about what this really means to us. This glyph becomes as mandatory to protection warriors as Meditation is to priests of any spec.
This is a glyph that we will be balanced around. Do we really want to be balanced around having a specific glyph? Are other classes being balanced around them? To some extent, but it is still an option for an Elemental Shaman to pick up Lightning Bolt or Flametongue Weapon.
This fundamentally changes our skill toolbox. While the new version of Shield Wall will be of great use, we are sacrificing our “Oh #$#!” button for something that will be a basic part of our survivalbility. Ask yourself, how much do you think the average Death Knight tank uses Icebound Fortitude? That’s right, the answer is pretty much every cooldown. Can they survive without it? Yes, but they also have multiple other cooldowns to work with. If we become balanced around using this every cooldown, where will Warriors be?
It is finally done…
The recent changes to some of the achievements required to accomplish for this Meta achievement both helped and hurt our eventual obtaining of the Drake.
The biggest three changes of course have to be with Gotta Go!, Watch Him Die, and Ruby Void.
The change from 2 minutes to 4 minutes was a huge one. Most people couldnt get much under 3 minutes before the change (myself included). This has gone from the single most difficult achievement to obtain to one a lot of groups just happen to get while completing the dungeon.
This is now the second most difficult of the Heroic Achievements. Where it was once possible to use pathing to gain an advantage by having your healer stand on the ledge. Blizzard has seen fit to place an invisible wall preventing use of the ledge and other areas in the battlefield to your advantage.
So now you are left with 3 distinct strategies. The “Kite Strategy”, the “Kill Adds Strategy” and the “Pure Zerg Strategy”.
The “Kite Strategy” is where we found our success. By having myself pull the watchers and adds, intervene and run to the zoneline while using cooldowns, and a speed potion we were able to heroism and down the boss with 1 person alive. Not the prettiest of kills, but it got the job done.
Once one of the easiest achievements in Oculus, now is probably one of the single most difficult achievements in the meta. Where you were once able to use 5 greens and dot and kite, you are no longer able to do this.
The 5 Amber strategy is the only feasible strategy to use on this encounter now. You can not rely on “overgearing” the instance like you can for others. You can only rely on the compentancy and coordination of your group. (As well as their willingness to work on it til you got it done.) This task took our group hours to get down correctly. We had multiple close calls, but in the end it was only with a little luck of the RNG on when he spawned adds did we get the win.
Take a look at this video. Done by a fellow tank, the video guide is invaluable in making the 5 tank system work. We however inverted the channel cycle to make our kill happen.
Now That I Am Back… Stay Tuned For A More In Depth Guide To Each Heroic Achievement.
When Blizzard recently announced their new paid character recustomization, I honestly did not think twice about it. Then… I realized something. Human men are ugly. Just plain ugly. If you aren’t a “beardo”, you look like you were slapped in the back when you had bitter bear face.
I have always played female characters. In Final Fantasy XI my main character was a Mithra. Yeah in that game you are forced into a female role. Well, my theory has always been, you play how you want to play. Personally, I believe being able to look at your avatar and not cringe at its ugliness, or being willing to wear such ugly helmets such as the Battleworn Tuskguard because the alternative looks worse, are both signs that things need to change.
So yes, I “recustomized”. My warrior is now a girl. Human females got the shaft in the new hairstyles added in the barber shop. Yet, I like my new cut. As our only “real” female warrior called it, “Its the Soccer Milf Mom look, its so cute!”
Our guild’s raid week has been continually condensing itself down into fewer days. The last 2 weeks we have had 3 day weeks instead of four. Last night we came to a crossroads as to condense ourselves into a mere 2 days for all 25 man raid content, or do something fun.
We chose the fun.
Racing against a Trade Channel PuG, we circumnavigated Azeroth leaving death in our wake. We laid siege to each of the 4 Horde leaders like they were nothing.
Defacto leader of the blood elves now that Kael’thas has shown his true colors. Lor’themar is the weakest of the 4 Horde leadership. While he is the only leader to have more than 1 guardian, both Halduron Brightwing and Grand Magistar Rommath are rather weak. Rommath is a lame Magistar and hardly (if ever) casts anything.
Lor’themar and his guardians are the easiest of the four. His court and city guards are actually 5 levels lower than those of the other cities, being only 75. Ride right up to the door, training any and all guards you get, and AOE the cityguards down. They have ~12-15k health total and are easily dispatched.
The newly reminted and sexy as hell Sylvanas is still a pushover. Her room however is full of a few more guardians and Battleground NPCs so they make her a little more difficult as the Battleground Master NPC’s are a heck of lot more hearty than the level 80 city guards that will arrive to protect her. Unlike Lor’themar and Thrall, she has no secondary boss near her to deal with.
Tip to anyone that attempts her. She vanishes, give her a raid mark. She dissapears and drops threat at an extreme rate at times. Having a mark on her will allow you to find her a lot easier and get the encounter done and get back out of Undercity.
Logistically the most difficult task of the four. Where in Silvermoon City and Undercity, you probably did not have many players add, Thrall almost always will have players trying to thwart your advance. This is made worse with Winterveil being an Orgrimmar centered event. You WILL get horde. Use whatever methodology you see fit to stop them. Typhoon and Blastwave spam at the door will do you well to a point, but having specific group set aside to kill people works as well.
Or you could do what we did, and had all of our mages just spam aoe and offtanks solo the healers. (Holy Priest vs Prot Warrior = dead holy priest.)
The biggest issue with Thrall is not Thrall himself. It is not even the PvP element of the encounter. It is Vol’jin. Unlike the guardians of Lor’themar, Vol’jin is a serious threat to your raid. He will cast an AoE Hex periodically. So if you value your raid, not only have offtanks standing by. But have a druid tank. Multiple tanks using PvP trinkets or Every Man also will work well here.
Thrall himself is a push over. He does not have near the power he does inside the Mount Hyjal raid. He will periodcally cast Chain Lightning. This has an extremely long cast time and really is no threat to your raid regardless.
Cairne can knock you off Thunder Bluff.
That is basically the fight. Cairne is located near a building, tank him inside it. Put your back to a wall. He is the hardest hitting of the 4 bosses. If you can deal with the bursty damage on your tank and handle the periodic threat drops, you will survive to throw some steak on the BBQ.
Again, he is also easy to isolate from incoming players because of the size of his door and the ease at which a pair of mages or moonkin can knock people back from it.
Some interesting things to note about doing these.
1) It is possible to get phased into the Siege of Undercity questline when entering the city via the sewers. This is a real inconvenience. However, you will get credit for killing Sylvanas even if you are phased.
2) The quickest route from Undercity to Orgrimmar is to hop on the Blimp. However, the guards will attack. Also note that Orgrimmar Blimp tower guards both use nets and have a ranged attack that knocks you down. This includes knocking you off your mount. Using vehicles here such as Grand Mammoths and Choppers is a great use here.
Doing this was about the most fun I have had in a while. Beating out the PuG group that was trying made it a little bit more fun, I must admit. Waving at them gathering at the sewers as we left made me smile a little deep inside. I know am I bad or what?
With the beginning of the Arena and PvP seasons today, I thought I would discuss a little about Resilience and the Defense Cap.
The defense cap for level 83 raid bosses is 540 Defense Skill or 5.6% critical hit reduction. This is not so easily obtained these days. With the removal of warrior and paladin talents for pure defense talents this becomes quite a bit more difficult than it was in The Burning Crusade. There have been countless articles on TankSpot.com, TankingTips.com and various tank blogs that give you step by step instructions and gear guides on hitting the cap. But what if you simply can not afford those epic Titansteel pieces? What if drops just are not going your way? Well the solution is here.
Arena gear is now upon us. To be sure, it is no where ideal for PvP. They have made great strides in making the gear to be less attractive than it was in TBC. However, resilience can cover up some early wholes in your gear quite adequately.
Lesser Flask of Toughness:
The easiest of all the resilience methods to become crit immune. At 80 this flask gives you .6% worth of crit immunity. Roughly equal to 15 Defense Skill.
Enchants:
There are 3 Resilience enchants currently available. Two of which are from TBC and are for such small amounts that using them over a defense enchant would actually be worse. The Enchant Chest – Exceptional Resilience is the best you can do currently in Wrath and it is only for 20. A significant amount over the 15 from the TBC enchant, but both have an extremely steep price. Giving .24% crit reduction it is more than the .18% reduction the 22 defense rating to chest enchant gives however. Yet at this point, its a wash and the Defense enchant is much cheaper.
Kharmaa’s Grace:
Another 20 Resilience rating option. It is not cheap though, and it doesn not cost money. For 20 Stone Keeper’s Shards, or about the price of a single heroic run’s worth of shards you willg et .24% crit reduction via a gem. The +16 defense gems on the other hand will give you much less. You will lose the avoidance given by the defense however.
The Lesser Flask of Toughness gives us a different way to look at early gemming and gearing. We all need to be uncrittable. However, it may flat out be better for our early progression to be gemming for stamina and using this flask instead of being forced into gemming for Defense. If you are a good raid tank, you are more than likely going to be using a Flask of Stoneblood to gain your 650 health. Early on you want as much Effective Health as you can get. Now how you get this health is the key. If you do this with a flask, you are gainign 650 health. However, if you decide to use 3 +24 stamina gems instead of those 3 +defense gems you are using, you will gain much more while raid buffed.
Sure you are losing a small chunk of avoidance, but while you are getting your feet wet, this is a better option for your raid as a whole. As you gain more and more defense from gear, you will be better off, and so will the raid. Yet ensuring you are uncrittable with as much health you can get is the key to early survivability in say the Spider Wing of Naxxramas, than that extra 1% avoidance.
With the Paladin reaching level 80 on Sunday I had the opportunity to really sit down and think about what order I was going to be purchasing my badge gear. Let me first say that I know there are a few lists going around the web. I now have two tanks at 80. One of which was geared to the nines with Sunwell level gear, the other starting out in more lackluster gear. This list is geared towards the latter.
I offer you my own personal beliefs on what order you should be picking up your “Badge Gear”.
First off, what can a plate tank get from badges?
Off Set Pieces:
Warrior Tier 7
Paladin Tier 7
We have been working hard at moving forward in progress as a guild since we resumed 25 man raiding. We have no hit the penultimate achievement that Wrath has to give us. Malygos is dead.
We lost 2 people during the fight early, yet both were resurrected. We managed to keep everyone alive and after 3 hours of attempts get her down. While we are definitely not the first, we have finally achieved a feeling of accomplishment in Wrath raiding. Continue reading ‘Mystical Dragon In The Sky…’
After last week’s 10 man clear of Naxxramas, we decided to start up 25 man raiding. We were a little rusty. We had some … ummm… how do I put this? Attention issues versus Thaddius at the end of our raid time. So we came back tonight and finished off the instance with about 30 minutes to spare.
In 7 total raid hours, alot of “I got a phone call”, “brb, bathroom” and “I gotta change a diaper” downtime and we got the instance fully cleared. Not a land speed record by any means. Yet, we are happy. Next stop Sartharion for our second crack at him in his 25 man version. This time with drakes up. Then on to Malygos for the real test.
Naxxramas is just plain not what it used to be. Ok, let me preface this with admitting that I was not playing the game long enough before TBC came out to have experienced 40 man raiding of Naxx. The farthest I really got to see preTBC was the entry to BWL. I did however, have the pleasure of taking Mihli into Naxx post TBC for several weeks between the levels of 58-63. She managed to walk out of there with the best named weapon in the game “Claymore of Unholy Might“
Now that I have gotten that off my chest, I can honestly say that Naxxramas 10 and 25 are both shells of their former selves. These are true entry level raids. So much so that several wings have been cleared by complete PUGs. I would not be surprised if a PUG has not cleared the entirety of both the 10 and 25 man versions somewhere in the world. The instances are that easy in the early going.
The most difficult fight in Naxx is now Four Horsemen. Not because they hit hard, or because you need 8 tanks, or the strategy is difficult to grasp. It is challenging because of the logistics and communication involved in defeating the encounter. People talking can be a tricky thing to pull of sometimes.
Anub’Rekhan used to be difficult. Now you can fairly easily keep the tank up through locust swarm without any kiting. Grand Widow, is actually more of a logistic challenge in the 10 man version than the 25. A theme that is repeated throughout the instance, including the pinata that Maexxna has become.
Noth used to be harder. At least in the 25 man he blinks around and drops aggro like his old self. Its too bad this mechanic is subpar in the days of all tanks having 20 yard taunts. “Oh my god he blinked… taunt. Problem solved!” Heigan is only a challenge to the movement impaired. Hell his pre-gauntlet is no longer a gauntlet and his aggro radius is so small you can almost walk right up to him and poke him with a stick before he aggros. A far cry from what once was. Loatheb … have I used the word Pinata already? (To be fair, Loatheb can be tricky on the 10 man if you do not have a priest. Between PoH and CoH they can almost solo heal the raid. The other healers just have more difficulty with the fight mechanics.)
Patchwerk is the first boss that is actually difficult in the 25 man. I would not call him a real challenge in the 10 man if you have 2 geared tanks and healers with an ounce of skill you will win. The 25 man version hits so hard that after tanking him you walk funny for an hour. Grobbulus is all about not being dumb with poison. Gluth is a bit more of a challenge, but not to tank or heal him. Just to make sure he doesn’t get a feeding. Thaddius is a stupidity check.
Razuvious, not much of a challenge, Gothik… someone told me from the Beta that he was actually difficult. They lied. As I said before the Horsemen are a logistical challenge. Yet they are still much easier than before. No more lingering ghosts marking people… Just plain makes it that much easier.
Not much has changed from Saph and Kel though. The only difference I can remember is that Kel doesn’t Mind Control in the 10 man version. In the 25 man version he MC’s 2 people at a time with a VERY long cooldown on the ability.
Do not get me wrong here. The instance itself is a heck of a lot of fun. Just for us rolling through it in our first 2 raid nights, just makes me think a little. I wish it was more of a challenge. Thank god for Malygos.
The Loot:Four items per boss… four!. Makes the instance kind of feel like more of a Pinata than it should be. I do have to question a little as Blizzard had said there were continue to be 3 tokens per tier drop and while Gluth can drop 2 random pieces, those 2 do not make up for the fact that the others only drop 2.
I managed to get lucky and pick up the Last Laugh tonight. This axe is so far above any other tanking weapon its beyond words.
Only problem is that I was forced to drop Mongoose on it. It is really sad that Blizzard did not think carefully enough to give us some real end game tanking enchants in the expansion. Greater Potency’s 50 attack power would be interesting. The 26 agility enchant may be intriguing as well. But why not a neo-crusader style enchant. Or god forbid, a 25+ strength enchant. Blizzard, we do not want AP, give us our strength enchant! (While you are at it, give us a new and easier to obtain stamina to bracers enchant.)
A good number of my guild-mates have been complaining about not being able to exit vehicles. We even had one person who had to literally have his dragon die each time he flew around in The Occulus because of this bug. One of them found this macro that allows you to exit any vehicle without the exit vehicle button.
/script VehicleExit();
It needs to be capitalized in the right spots, or it will not work.
