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The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Gearing for Karazhan, Fury/Arms pt 2
Once more into that there breach what with the dead already filling the walls and suchlike.When last we left our intrepid band of heroic warriors (that's you guys) they were about to head into Karazhan and hit stuff. We've already covered what to wear if you're one of those warriors who hits things and gets hit back in return, and last week we did an overview of the main slots (head, shoulders, legs, chests and hands) for your aspiring breaker of limbs. Whether it's arms or fury you intend (or some weird hybrid of the two like the spec I'm currently playing with on my tauren) you need attack power, crit chance, hit and other good things on the armor and other gear you choose to help you achieve your aim of wanton re-slaughter. I assume it's re-slaughter. I mean, most of the stuff in there has died at least once.
Blood Pact: Gearing a Lock for Karazhan, part 2
We continue with our look at how to get your Warlock up to speed for Karazhan content and beyond. Note that the recommendations here are intentionally narrow. I'm focusing on the easiest and surest way of making progress in the gearing game, without relying too much on dungeon drops or grind-to-exalted rep items. Yes, there are better pre-raid items out there in the various heroics - Magisters' Terrace is probably the best instance to get quality non-raid loot. Badge loot is also another good avenue for outstanding upgrades. Unfortunately, heroics may be challenging affairs for a fresh 70 lock, unless you have a group of geared friends or guildies who are willing to "carry" you through those runs.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Gearing for Karazhan, Fury/Arms pt 1
I am a tank first and foremost. I tank on my human warrior, I tank on my tauren warrior, I even tank on my paladin and baby druid. Tanking is what I do in game nowadays. I even tried tanking on my shaman yesterday and achieved passable results. (I successfully tanked Captain Galvanger and Drek'Thar. Good healing on that one, boy.) But nobody can tank all the time without going bloody insane, and so I make sure that my tauren is an off-tank, that he gets as many chances to DPS as is possible without making raiding impossible. In the process, I'm learning the strengths and weaknesses of a non-prot tanking warrior in Burning Crusade at tanking raid content - yes, Virginia, an arms warrior can tank Nalorakk in just the gear that drops in Karazhan. If his healers are insanely awesome, thank you so much Vito, Tear and Veks. I'm sorry I didn't respec for that fight, but a man needs to hit things from time to time.I geared my tauren for pure DPS all the way back in pre-Burning Crusade content. I ran LBRS and UBRS constantly for gear upgrades, PvP'd for the epics, collected an assortment of dps rings and trinkets. I was fortunate to be playing horde side with a talented and well-practiced undead warrior who primarily wanted to tank, and so I could work on being DPS in my own unusual idiom... I've always preferred two handed weapons over dual wielding, even though I don't dispute the incredible damage potential of the DW builds. It comes down to two things: can you still do significant damage with a two hander, and what looks cooler?To me, the answers were always yes, and a big honking sword or axe smashing down in a tauren's gigantic armored hands. I'm glad to say it still holds true, especially when that great honking sword or axe is Jin'rokh, Now that my human has progressed beyond Kara it's still fun to come on runs in DPS gear, spec arms and crush things into paste. We don't always have the luxury of coming to Karazhan massively outgearing the instance, however.
Blood Pact: Gearing a Lock for Karazhan, part 1
'Grats on your new 70 Warlock! You've just turned experience into gold (at least until WotLK lands) and unlocked the wonderful world of BC raiding and Arena PvP. What do you do now? Gear up, of course! I've touched on some general gearing guidelines for the pre-Karazhan Warlock in "Locked and loaded", it's time now to drill down to the specific pieces, especially since the introduction of Battlegear with patch 2.4.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Gearing for Kara, Prot Warriors part 2
Last week, for our fiftieth post, we spent so much time talking about prot gear to get ready to tank Karazhan that everyone went mad and the moon cracked open and rained fire upon the Earth. So get ready for part two! (Note, it's possible that didn't actually happen. But it felt like it did.)This week, we're going to be covering gloves, boots, helms, capes and tanking weapons. Last week's column and this column from a while back cover the other slots you'll need for tanking gear to allow you to step into Kara and begin annoying mobs with your irritating taunts while not dying immediately when they start punching you in the face.Without further ado, let's get down to business.
Totem Talk: Stuff to wear to kill stuff in Karazhan Pt. 1
Last week, we talked about preparing for a shaman's roles in raiding. This week, we'll be talking about what gear to wear when you're stepping into Karazhan for the first time. Since shamans have three very different specs, this will inevitably be a multi-part series. Thankfully, some of the work has already been done for us: here you can find a list of pre-raid belts, bracers and boots for the aspiring raiding shaman.If you look at the picture of my newly elemental shaman to the right as I took him out of his first Karazhan run, you'll notice he's wearing a goodly amount of cloth. However, since this series would become impossibly long if I listed every possible leather and cloth drop that would be good for a shaman, I'm going to prioritize mail until the end of the series. If there's enough demand, I'll continue and conclude with a 'leather and cloth' post covering pieces that are good for a shaman. (The pieces I'm wearing there? They lack in MP5. Not all that great. You should have seen the crap I was wearing before this run.) I'm also going to try and avoid any badge gear that's superior to Karazhan level gear, because that kind of gear seems to me to be what people run Kara to be able to buy, not what they buy to be able to run Kara.This is not meant to imply that leather or cloth aren't often 'best in slot' for a shaman. Please have mercy on my poor aching fingers which toil endlessly compiling such lists! I don't want to go on the cart! I feel happy! I feel happy!Anyway, on to our gearing story.
Gearing a Holy priest for Karazhan, part one
Hello, fellow Holy priests! Are you interested in Karazhan, but have never gone yet? Maybe you want some Badges, maybe you want some nice epics, or maybe you just want to hang out with nine other folks and have some fun. But what to wear? Well, the good news is you don't need amazing gear to start KZ. In fact, healing KZ can be easier than healing many heroics, in my experience, if only because you have another healer or two there to help you out. Of course, the better your gear is, the better your performance will be, but there are many easy-to-reach pieces of gear that will perform fine, and several that will perform amazingly, for Karazhan. Join me as I step through some recommended options.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Gearing for Kara, Prot Warriors part 1
The Care and Feeding of Warriors embarks on a massive multi-part exploration of how to gear your new level 70 to tank and DPS in the 10 man raids. Matthew Rossi begs your forbearance, as this sucker is going to be insanely long when it is all said and done.Karazhan is fast becoming the new UBRS. The ten man cap on the raid and the fact that the gear from Kara was necessary to begin thinking about 25 man raids (now, the badges from Kara are - Karazhan is the rough equivalent of five heroic dailies in a two to three hour run once you've gotten the place on farm status) makes it the gateway through which both serious endgame raiders had to progress and a dandy place for smaller guilds to clean out, and were it not for the raid timer I'm sure we'd see guilds running Kara repeatedly in a week, and the only thing that stops daily Kara PuG's is that same timer. Now you've reached level 70, and you want to tank or DPS in Karazhan.Well, first things first: I'm going to have to disappoint you a little. If you're a DPS warrior, there's not a lot of DPS plate in Karazhan. There are some nice weapons, yes, and you're going to want the badges to buy gear with, but you're not going to find much in terms of plate in here for your DPS needs aside from some boots and the Tier 4 DPS options, which in many cases you will replace as soon as you have the badges or the Gruul/Mag runs to do so. Still, the weapons are nice. For a tank, Karazhan has more goodies in store. But first, you have to get into the instance.The minimum tanking requirements for Karazhan (literally, for stepping in the door and tanking Attumen) are 490 defense, 12k health and armor. It would be nice to have at least 400 shield block value and you should be uncrushable with shield block up. This is achievable with drops from the 70 five man instances, heroics, and reputation rewards. I'm not going to list a lot of badge gear here because, frankly, if you have 100 badges to spend on a breastplate you probably are already tanking in Karazhan. Likewise, while I will list the tanking drops in Karazhan, I won't do that until after I've listed the options outside it first. Those drops will be considered as upgrades you'll probably need before tanking Prince Malchezaar. Before we get started, here's a list of rings, trinkets and necklaces that will still be of use to you.
Getting defensive about Zul'Aman tank gear
Player Faldomar of the Cenarius server has very unhappy to see that much of the tanking gear dropping in Zul'Aman is lacking in Defense. How is a tank supposed to do their job if they can't get the uncrittable benefit of 490 Defense as well as the boost to Block, Parry, Dodge and chance to be Missed?Community Manager Bornakk responds that Zul'Aman gear is not meant to be a full replacement of Karazhan tanking gear. In fact, the low occurrence of Defense was intentional. Instead Blizzard wanted to offer pieces that filled other stat gaps to compliment alternate tanking styles. Examples are Hit Rating, Stamina and Block Value.While it would be nice to have a full set of armor catering to our exact needs, the reality is that there are different styles of tanking (as well as healing, dps, etc.) Blizzard has chosen to service all those styles with their current system of modular mixing and matching. And if equipped armor doesn't put your stats where you want them to be, there is also the gem socket system to customize your toon even further.Moral of the story? Don't expect a custom suit off the rack. An outfit that is going to fit you like a second skin is going to come from attention to detail on your part.
