tank
Latest
Vote for the best piece of advice!
Last week I asked you to leave a comment with tips of anti-advice you could give to players. Things like "Be sure to move in the flame wreath so you're not cold when the blizzard hits!" or "Just walk up to Archimonde, he won't agro until you hit him." You all responded in force and gave lots of good tips and pieces of advice. Now for fame and no-fortune, lets vote for the best one!I'll close the voting next weekend and announce the winner on Monday April 21st. Vote now! I did! %Poll-12641%
Center your tanking
While I'm pushing through Black Temple and Mount Hyjal nicely as my guild's tank, I am still trying to improve my style and playing elements. There's not much more I can do to build threat – the Devastates, Shield Slams, Revenges, Heroic Strikes, etc., are all going off at the right time. Gear is fine, I can pretty much tank anything in the game at this point and succeed. So why am I still dying? Why am I missing that critical moment when I could put up my Spell Reflect and live a second longer?I think I've found it.It's all about eye movement. Try this: focus your sight to the upper left hand corner of the screen, and now move your sight down to the bottom of the screen. If you have a large enough monitor, you completely lose focus of the text and items near the upper left corner. This is problematic for tanking in that the unit frames (those things that tell you who's in your group and who you're attacking) are by default located in the upper left corner, and the action bars are located at the bottom. So if you want to make sure you're going to hit something – or even look at your keyboard for a moment – you're moving your eyes quite a bit.
The Light and How to Swing It: Badge rewards in 2.4
Now that the patch is upon us, it's a good time for reflecting upon all the new badge rewards available to us in the near future. As a hybrid class with 3 main viable specs (healing, tanking, DPS), it's no wonder that there's a lot of new badge gear for paladins in this patch. Allison did a fantastic write-up of new badge gear for druids a few days back, so I figured I'd follow her format as it relates to paladins! HolyItemization for Healing specs has been pretty solid when it comes to badge gear, and the new stuff is no exception. Just like the Pier 1 set that 2.3 introduced, you'll find lots of healing, spell crit and mana per 5 on the new gear... just more of it.
Defense cap defined
Many WoW players (and several of our readers) often comment that there is no such thing as a defense cap. This is true in the strict sense that there is no upper limit on how much defense you can have, nor any statistical diminishing returns. However, that's not to say that there's not a point where the utility provided by more defense starts to fall off – so there is a point where the utility given by more defense actually provides a practical diminishing return, and that point is referred to as the defense cap.What is the magic number? 490 defense for Warriors and Paladins, and 415 defense for Feral Druids. To come about this number, you need to do a little math. First, it's important to note that a raid "boss" mob is considered three levels above the player. This means that the math is based off the boss mob being a level 73 mob, and the player being level 70. A player's base defense is defined by the formula Base Defense = level * 5. A player that is level 70 would thus have a base defense of 350 (70 * 5 = 350).
Maximum stamina
If you want to live through any boss fight as a tank, the one thing that you need above all else is health. Stamina, which gives ten health for every one point of stamina, is by far the most important stat that a tank needs in order to do their job well. No matter if you have reached the armor and defense cap, or if you're producing more threat than your DPS can keep up with, you won't live for a lick if you don't have enough health.Defining minimum health is an important concept in end game raiding and groups. For most instances, a minimum of 10,000 to 11,000 unbuffed is needed. This will at least let you take a few blows from a boss before dying, hopefully enough blows that the healer will be able to get off a few heals on you. For more entry level raiding environments, it's necessary to have unbuffed health between 11,000 and 12,000. If you've got 11,500 hit points going into Kara, you'll probably be able to reach 13,000 health fully raid buffed. This will let you survive a good portion of Kara, which means you can get more gear, which begets more health in the long run.
Shield me, my love
Warriors of all shapes and sizes have one thing in common, their need for a good shield. They are the life blood of any tanking strategy. They give us health, protection, and threat. For a protection warrior, the shield is often time the most important part of their inventory. This is both a blessing and curse. While a good shield can't help a bad tank become good, a bad shield can easily make a good tank bad.There are a few key stats in a shield to look at. First, the armor – one of the most important stats for a tank. It lets us take less damage from each hit, which means our health lasts longer and our raid survives more. Block Value is another important stat, and helps determine how much damage a shield will outright mitigate when an attack is blocked. Finally, stamina and defense are also always present on a shield, and are again, a key stat for a warrior.While these stats are beautiful all in their own way, their infrequency in upgrades presents a problem for some warriors. To show what I'm talking about, let's take a look at what shields are available for the protection spec warrior at level 70.*
Shifting Perspectives: 2.4 Badge-A-Palooza, Druid style
Every week, Shifting Perspectives is written by someone who is not me. Except for that one time. Rather an addictive experience, stealing this column. Does anyone even read the italicized portion at the top? Hello? Nobody? I'm just gonna sing. "My baloney has a first name, it's O-S-C-A-R, my baloney has a [censored over copyright infringement] (ed. just do the column, please).While I sincerely hope the rumors about the patch hitting soon aren't true because I'm sitting on all of 43 badges of justice right now (g@^#(*% mother-expletive piece of $%^@ fire resistance set), I am forced to admit that the times may possibly have caught up with me. I confess that for a long time I hadn't even looked at the new badge loot that will become available ingame, partly because things have gotten markedly busier with my guild of late and partly because I'd planned my 2.3 badge acquisitions very carefully and wondered if I could get away with keeping myself somewhat unspoiled for 2.4. That lasted until I found out just how expensive the 2.4 gear is actually going to be ("150 badges for a new weapon, Zach? Are you @*(#&#% kidding me?"). Noble effort while it lasted, though. Well, no more. If 2.4 does hit next week, I'm going to be ready to stand in front of the badge vendor and know exactly what I can't afford to buy for all three specs.This treatment looks exclusively at the new leather gear offerings available in 2.4 and assumes that you won't have access, or at least immediate access, to the new 25-man raid Sunwell Plateau. For my part I am still using six -- count 'em, six -- pieces of badge gear for various tanking purposes in Tier 6 content, which either says a great deal about the general quality of badge gear or says a great deal about how bad feral itemization is in endgame content. I'll be magnanimous today and say it's both.
CC: How to run instances without a net
Running 5 man instances is the bread and butter of gearing up any PvE character. There are some short instances, and some longer ones. There are some bosses that are ready for fun, and others that like to die fast. Many people consider it a universal truth that all you need to do these instances is solid crowd control. When you're faced with a pack of six or seven level 70 elite mobs, the last thing you want is one or two of them running loose.But what can you do if you don't have any CC available? Are you just out of luck? Nope! There are a few tricks to running instances without CC, and if you pay close attention, you won't miss the lack of sheeps at all.In fact, you might just start preferring to run without crowd control entirely.
A night on the town, Karazhan style
We've talked about 2 manning Karazhan, Shaman-tanking Karazhan, and Paladining Karazhan. But just when you thought it was safe to grab a plain old boring 10-man Karazhan group with actual varied classes with decent gear and consumables and stuff, here comes one more permutation, and this one perhaps the most offbeat we've reported on yet. It all started, Don Claus of the Stormwardens guild on the US Dragonmaw server tells us, with a pretty simple comment: "I'd love to see Tankin tank Prince in a dress." The Stormwardens decided to take it one step further and just slap suits on everyone. What followed is a story of a group revellers seeking to join the fabulous night life of Karazhan.
G15 Tanking
Last week I covered playing with your mouse, and playing with your keyboard. In my keyboard post I mentioned that I would share with you all my Logitech G15 keyboard map. For those of you who don't have a G15, the keyboard is unique in that there are 18 programmable keys located on the left side of the keyboard. The keys looks like those pictured to the right.Each of these 18 keys can be assigned three independent functions – based on selecting "M1", "M2", or "M3" at the top of the keyboard. This gives a whooping 54 possible key combinations and functions. I don't use all these though, only the first 18 for most everything, and then the second for some random addon and programming things. So without further ado, here's what my G15 keyboard map looks like:
The Daily Grind: What's your favorite archetype?
It seems like no matter what game you spend time in, the majority of classes fall into the "trinity" of archetypes. You have your damage-soaking tanks, standing on the front line, drawing aggro and taking a beating. Then you have the DPS classes, who can generally DoT, fear, kite, sneak, stab, shoot, and a myriad of other nasty things to bring the pain. And without the third part of the trinity, the healers, the other two would spend most of the time dead on the floor or fighting mobs while using lots of bandages, med-packs, potions or the like. Once in a while you'll find one class that are a "hybrid" these abilities, taking one or all of the three unto themselves, making for a more solo-friendly character.Personally, I've played all three primary archetypes as well as hybrids. While I've really enjoyed them all, my heart keeps coming back to pure DPS classes, with a close second in hybrids. Whether with stabby knives, flowing robes and fireballs, or carrying a gun, the straight damage classes are fun to me when I've got a good group to run with. When I need to get into a game and see how it works, I tend to go hybrids for their self-reliance. How about you? What's your favorite class archetype (or archetypes) and why?
Forum post of the Day: Tank shortage
In World of Warcraft if you want to find a group, roll a tank. Tanks are hard to find and good tanks are worth their weight in gold, even Tauren tanks. Goosesausage of Cenarius posted some suggestions he believes might resolve the current lack of meat shields. He suggests that non-protection specialized Warriors would be capable of tanking if the Sunder Armor buff was tweaked a bit. The poster reported that he has a hard time finding heroic groups since his warrior character is currently specced for DPS. To resolve this issue, Goosesausage suggested that removing the cost of changing one's specialization might resolve the issue. I both agree and disagree with this suggestion. True it's pretty expensive to switch back and forth from prot to DPS and back regularly, but thanks to daily quests money is not nearly as short as it once was. Just make sure you do your grinding before you spec to prot. Even if there was no respeccing fee, tanks would need to acquire two sets of gear.
WoW Rookie: Forming a Group
In the last two weeks we've discussed where to go for an instance and what to do once you get there. Since dungeon runs usually require five members, this week we'll talk about how to find people to go with you. Remember that the typical instance group is made up of a tank, a healer, and three DPS members. It's not always easy to find people that match those requirements. Since there is a shortage of tanks, it's probably easiest for tank classes to find a group. That also means it's hardest if you are not a tank to find someone to play that role. The next most difficult is a healer. There's usually plenty of DPS to go around. It can take some time to make a group, but since dungeons provide excellent loot and good experience it's usually worthwhile to stick with it.
The strange art of marking
I like Nikol's writeup of her experiences marking targets in instances. There really is an art to laying down those icons in a group, and it requires quite a bit of knowledge to do right. You need to keep group makeup in mind, know the abilities of all the classes involved, pay attention to what individual members want to do and even how they're specced, and have a basic knowledge of the instance and how it works. There's so much that goes into it that it's basically an art in itself -- do you sheep the caster and take out the minions, or focus on the big bad first and then move on to trash? Do you have the group to interrupt and pull a caster to a trap, or do you need to get the mobs out of the way before the patrol comes through?It's complicated and fascinating stuff, and this kind of group coordination is why some players choose to play PvE rather than PvP -- because while yes, the mobs are predictable (and players aren't; as much, anyway), the fun is in the planning. And when you get a good group to go with a good planner, then things really get interesting. There is an art to laying down marks, but once you study what a good marker does, and get the hang of it, you're that much more helpful to any groups you're in.
Breakfast Topic: Wipeout Poll
It's amazing to me exactly how hard instances can be. Not the mobs, but the group. We've all been in ugh-PUGs before. Some players don't understand how to use their class or play nicely in an instance. That's only on regular dungeons; heroics have their own set of potential disasters. Sometimes you just have to give up. Putting a group together for instance can be extremely difficult, and sometimes you have to take what you can get. While there are many excellent tanks out there, the shortage on my server makes for slim pickings. Folks who think that pulling aggro off the tank is an honor make up another problem. I am occasionally guilty of trying to heal and DPS at the same time. I'll admit to causing a wipe or two because of it.
WoW Rookie: Knowing your place in an instance
Last week on WoW Rookie, I showed you the instances you might want to run in your first forty levels. This week, I'd like to tell you more about what to do when you get there. As you level up, playing your intended role becomes more and more important. There are three (or four depending on who you ask) main roles in an instance: tank, heals, damage (dps), and crowd control (cc). The typical instance team includes a tank, a healer, and three dps/cc characters. Read on for more about these specific roles.
A small defense skill change in 2.4 could herald larger things
It seems like a small change, but it could be the herald of something larger. It's a change to the way the defense skill is described in-game in patch 2.4, as reported by World of Raids. I'll let them describe it: * Old value: Higher defense makes you harder to hit and makes monsters less likely to land a crushing blow. * New value: Higher defense improves your chance to dodge, parry, and block attacks, makes you harder to hit, and makes monsters less likely to land a critical strike against you. So what does this mean? They've added things that have always been part of the skill, but have not been explicitly mentioned on the defense tab before, but what's most intriguing is what they've taken away. I'll explain after the jump.
Build Shop: Paladin 0/46/15
So recently I put together a list of all the Build Shop articles that have ever been written on WoW Insider, and I found out something surprising -- there hasn't been a Build Shop for paladins! Today, I correct that grave injustice by looking at a heavy Protection build. Without question, a Paladin is my favorite type of tank, especially for 5 mans. Who needs crowd control? Just have the Paladin consecrate everything and let the AoE attacks fly. For those of you who haven't experienced that joy yet, I highly suggest you find a good Prot paladin and let him tank your instance.I covered Paladin tanking techniques in a past article, so I'm just going to jump right into the build. This is one that people are sure to have mixed feelings about, but then again, that usually happens on Build Shop. The most scandalous suggestion I'm making in this build is not picking up Reckoning, but I have a few reasons why -- read on to find out.
Valkyrie of the Battlefield has best collector's edition ever
Why wait? Order the Valkyrie of the Battlefield collector's edition right now! If you call in the next five minutes, we'll throw in a FREE TANK!!! But wait ... THERE'S MORE!Not only will you get a copy of the PS3 exclusive strategy game AND A TANK, you'll also get A FIGURINE of the main character, Alicia. That's not enough?! THERE'S STILL MORE! In this special limited time offer, you'll also get a FREE GUIDE BOOK! All this for a low, low price of 9980 yen!Seriously, the goodies that Sega has come up with for this game's special edition puts other collector's bundles to shame. Each premium looks exactly that -- premium. Unfortunately, there's no US release scheduled yet, but the Japanese will get their hands on this primo set at the end of April.[Via NeoGAF]
Breakfast Topic: Your class role
Ah, the class trinity. The three basic group roles that seem to be set in stone throughout MMOs. On this sunny Sunday morning we won't stress your brain too much -- we're just asking which part of the class trinity you find yourself on. Is tanking the way to play? Is healing the most fun? Is DPS your thing? Cast your vote and we'll see which of the trinity wins out!%Poll-8232%
