Allison, sorry, perhaps in overly-defending myself i wasn't clear. I'd love to be defense capped (or more, because at least one of the pally talents does benefit from more than 540 defense), honestly. I'm rolling N's on items i genuinely need, with an emphasis on my tanking set. If an item drops i need, i go for it. It's not like i'm stacking one stat in favour of defense. Where i can i'm gemming and enchanting items too... it's getting there. :-)

so, i fully understand the necessity of being defense capped. Just at the moment i am not, purely because this toon is so new.

My point is that insistence on this stat is often given more weighting and emphasis than is often required, and i hoped to back that claim up by saying that i'd managed to run these instances in a non-defense capped toon. I wouldn't even say we went to the icecrown heroics hoping to clear them (i'm not arrogant when it comes to things i've no experience in).. rather to see how we'd go in the first instance, and keep doing that for the drops and emblems that we could both earn there. Our group was up for continuing to the next instances as things went well.

> t0xic

you're funny! maybe read the thread next time you get all opinionated.

I'm not 'stacking' anything. I'm using what drops, and what gems and enchants work best for the gear that i can afford.. but after only 2-3 days /played time at level 80 i can see how you might find it annoying that a group of 'under-geared' people can do these heroic instances.

our dps'ers were achieving 1500,2200,2800 and that was fine too, including the fact they barely needed healing. the last part of HoR was tricky, we needed to replace the bottom two DPSers..

get over it.

> Lemonshark

thanks for the cool comment.
it was myself tanking, and brother healing (druid).. having the heal/tank team talking on voice comms definitely helps.. he's a good healer, but he'd agree with saying that he's far from carrying my 'poor' stats, considering his equivalents aren't much better.

gotta love being in a healer/tank group... dungeon finder is pretty much instant every time. :-)

sorry, i should have said heroics.

Yes, i was crit, but with nigh on 40k HP there was no issue. So, i'm going say in this instance (excuse the pun) you're both wrong.

> If you're not going to take the time to gear yourself up to tank heroics, then DON'T TANK HEROICS.

what's the issue? seeing as HoR is probably one of, if not the hardest 5man in the game at the moment, and we were able to do it with me tanking. I'm on a new toon, that only has 10.5 days /played time. fairly well (as in almost go epic achievement, most gear is above ilevel 219). I think some times the issue is that the more well established players don't like to see people skipping the content.. they want to see people that stick with each new instance and raid as it comes out, learning it, and earning the gear the hard way. These people don't like seeing people coming in to the game, and gaming the system by fast earning emblems, or running the likes of HoR when they're slightly underspec.

My take on it... so what? If my toon's ability tank an instance allows me and the rest of the group to complete a series of heroic instances, they're all happy to be there, we all get something out of it... then what do you care? or more accurately, what gives you the right to tell us we're wrong. :-)

the point is.. play the game your way, and don't piss people off along the way. Which, i'm doing, other than this post. ;-)

personally, with a couple of 80s, i still love running olde worlde content, even if i have to do it solo nowadays. The dungeon finder is cool, but i can't help but wonder if the option to support dungeon boosting would be a good idea, even if it meant it required paying some gold to use.

> "I think you need +535 defense to tank heroics,"

tanked all the new icecrown 5mans last night, +defence is currently 528, still 12 shy of the cap.. so no, you don't. Seems a bit weird to write a post like that this that i whole heartedly agree with (especially after getting some awesomely friendly, if under-geared people to run instances with), for it to end on a counter argument about +defence stats.

yes, people should only queue for instances and roles they're capable / comfortable running, and where possible don't flip out at people saying you're under-geared when you know you're not... but equally, don't be the person to throw accusations around about people being under-geared.

i think most business users would rather be on win7 or osx than xp. There are more factors to think about in business tho, than what the end-users would like. supportability, maintenance, training are just three.

working in IT, and having given vista a miss, i will be pushing to get win7 deployed asap.. albeit we're waiting for a CRM solution to be upgraded to support something newer than ie6 first.

likely the software / service implementation on windows phones.

maybe microsoft should release some stats regarding the amount of XBOXs sold vs the amount of XBOXs running wireless adaptors. At the very least it should shut up one camp of people in the above thread. :-)

that and the fact you absolutely, positively get no support, of any kind, at all.

having had a flawless zune30 since launch (bought on ebay in the UK), i opted for a zune80 at launch (bought on ebay). Foolishly i dropped it once too many, and the hdd dive bombed. It was out of warranty anyway, so i purchased a zune16 (ebay uk), only to find the backlight was faulty. No support, no nothing.

for those that want a peace of mind, there are UK based suppliers that will give you a 12month warranty-like support for your device. Just don't hope to get any from microsoft.

And yes, i will be getting a zune HD, and yes, i am an ex-ipod user.