tanking
Latest
Shifting Perspectives: Bear Tanking Strategies Part 1
Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week John Patricelli, sometimes known as the Big Bear Butt Blogger, launches into part 1 of a 2 part discussion on Bear Tanking Strategies. I'm going to go over a lot of information related to how Bear Tanking works over the next two articles, because I am often asked about how all of the various elements of Threat management fit together. Much of this discussion will center around tanking after reaching level 70, but the foundation of this series will explore information valuable to bear tanks of all levels, including exactly how Threat works, various methods of pulling, and how to work with your group to keep the target's attentions on you, and not your squishy friends. Part 1 will focus on the most basic fundamental issue of tanking; How Threat works in a group. Let's go ahead and get started after the jump!
Phat Loot Phriday: The Decapitator
After a short hiatus last week (due to the Friday evening patch 2.4 mayhem), the phat loot is back, this time with an axe that not only has one of the best names in the game, but can give you a little ranged help as well.Name: The Decapitator (Wowhead, Thottbot, WowDB)Type: Epic One-Hand AxeDamage/Speed: 167-312 / 2.60 (92.1 DPS)Abilities: Improves crit strike rating by 27 Use: Hurls the axe through the air, directly at a target's head (very "vorpal," if you get that reference). Causes 513-567 damage with a 3 minute cooldown. It's a 40-yard range, instant cast, so definitely very nice for pulling. Shows up as a black version of the Paladin's ranged attack. And it was rumored that this was counted not as a melee attack, but as a spell. However, players have apparently confirmed that spell damage does not add to it, although we're still not sure if spell crit helps the percentage. Maybe commenters can shed light on that one-- I don't have this one around for testing. Bosses, as you may expect, are immune to the throw. But it is pretty easy to put together a macro which will let you use the throw ability to pull, and then switch over to your usual tanking weapon. How to get it: Pretty simple-- drops from Prince in Karazhan. People are downing him with PUGs nowadays (and odds are your guild, if they're raiding at all, has like three groups clearing it every week), so hope for the 13% percent drop chance to kick in, win the roll (tanks and shammies might be rolling on it, but by now, everyone who wants one probably already has it), and it's all yours.Getting rid of It: Sells to a vendor for 12g 44s 56c, and disenchants into a Void Crystal. That's all I got-- I guess you could destroy it if you want, but this is the kind of item where the proc would probably come in handy at almost any level. Have a good weekend.
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.
Is your main your favorite character?
It seems like a strange question, but think about it. Is your main your favorite character?For me, the answer would be a No. This isn't to say I dislike my main, I simply enjoy my alt more. My gut told me originally that I only thought that way because my alt was something I didn't get to play as much, something new and exciting. As the months went on, though, I came to realize that I simply like my alt better.My main is a DPS class, my alt is a tanking hybrid. As most of my friends could tell you, tanking is in my blood. In WoW and other games, tanking is kind of my 'thing.' Its been suggested to me a number of times that I just change mains, making my paladin my primary character. I like the idea and considered it, but there are other things that have kept me from doing it. My guild needs a shadow priest for the raid far more than another paladin, and at this point in the game, there's no closing the gear gap to catch up and continue raiding with a new main.There are other reasons, too. Emotional attachment is a big one. Its a bit shameful to admit you care for a character that much, but after three years of Warcraft, the thought of shunting my main to the background is a bit painful. Maybe that's just the roleplayer in me, but you never know! I'm sure there are PvPers that feel the same somewhere out there, right?Am I the only one in this boat, or are any of you guys in the same position? Is your favorite character secondary to your main for one reason or another?
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: What's not broke
The Care and Feeding of Warriors is our weekly foray into warriors. This week, we discuss good things about a class in World of Warcraft. I know, I was as shocked as you are, but it's apparently possible. Matthew Rossi seems to enjoy them a great deal. I was planning to talk about Warrior DPS specs this week, but then I saw yesterday's moviewatch and started thinking about class balance. Specifically, warriors and how they balance against other classes. The issues mentioned there... static threat vs rising DPS, shout duration, better tanking gear actually hurting your threat generation....pretty much work for me as issues. It would be nice if those got fixed. There are a few others that bug me, but watching the various lists of class woes made me realize that, basically, I love my warriors. What's so great about a warrior? Is it the thematic unity of a class that's all about the heavy armor and weapons, that doesn't use mana at all, that wades into the thick of combat and turns loose untrammeled martial expertise and inner fury? Is it the thrill of a 1k shield slam crit turning a mob back to face you? Is it managing to get that last big MS hit off on a warlock to drop him before dying yourself, knowing that you're not playing an escape class? When warriors use our fear we're doing it to buy a few more seconds to kill someone, not to run away. Warriors don't run away. We'll take the beating and come back for more. Is that what's so great about us?
2.4 gives tanks some love
Whether you're a bear or you clank around in plate, the two rage-based tanking classes have some changes incoming in patch 2.4, according to Bornaak. First up, you druid tanks, Lacerate is seeing a damage increase to scale with attack power, which should help you whether you're a tank or not, but since lacerate is a key threat move for bear tanks it seems like good news on that front.Secondly, for warriors, two new changes in 2.4: Endless Rage is finally going to be adjusted to work as the tooltip indicates (so less of a buff than a bug fix, but still welcome) and more importantly, a long time problem, offhand critical hits from attacks like Whirlwind will now proc Flurry and Rampage, a nice improvement for Fury warriors everywhere. Seems like both bear druids and warriors will be seeing improvements to both tanking and DPS options with these changes or fixes.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Rage and how to use it
The Care and Feeding of Warriors is as always here for you, the reader, oh and also because Matthew Rossi is some kind of demented idiot who will do something like get out of tanking a raid and then spend two hours grinding on some Blade's Edge quests on his draenei warrior before logging onto his tauren for some PvP. We figure it's best to let him do all his rambling about the class in one place before he has an aneurysm. Reader Arnold Luschin emailed in recently with what seemed to me a worthy topic for this week's column. Rather than mangle what he said, I'll reproduce it here.Having played a druid to 70, and done a lot of tanking, I am familiar with aggro/rage etc, but I have a warrior specific question for you. Could you possible cover the basics of warrior tanking/fighting ability rotations (i.e. the names of the abilities, and the best time to use them in tanking and grinding/questing)? E.g. for warriors, one would use sunder whereas for us bear tanks the most equivalent ability is lacerate (which we incidentally don't get till about level 66 or so...).And the answer is, sure, I can do that. The first caveat is that warriors tend to be the twitchiest tanking class, especially as you first learn the class. It can often feel like you have to mash buttons constantly in order to hold onto your aggro lead, and even then adds will often peel away from you when they'd stay right in place for a bear or paladin tank. It takes time to really learn and get comfortable with the somewhat frenetic style of the class, and to a degree this translates out into soloing or questing, depending on what spec you're using. I'd suggest checking out Tankspot and browsing the forums, although the theorycrafting can get pretty thick over there. This article is one of my favorites, though. Bookmark it.
Me, myself, and Quel'Serrar
Playing a warrior since WoW was released has gotten me a lot of gear over the years. One of my greatest accomplishments in the game was getting my hands on a Quel'Serrar about two years ago. When I got this beautiful piece of equipment I had been 60 for about three months, and had done nothing but grind for gold. After saving up just over 2,000 gold, I bought the Foror's Compendium of Dragon Slaying. By todays standard 2,000 gold might not seem like a lot, but back then it was more gold then most people would ever see. Using my Quel I raided happily until Burning Crusade came out. Being such a stickler, I used it for tanking all the way to 70, and only replaced it with Grom'tor's Charge. To this day its still sitting in my bank. I've recently taken it out and gave it some use in the early trash in The Eye. I found that its actually not that bad of a weapon still. Granted it doesn't proc as often as it used to, and its stats are not that great compared to Mallet of the Tides. Happily however, it still kept the threat up against all those over zealous DPS'ers. Having all that fun with my Quel again got me thinking... is there any chance for an upgrade? There have been rumors that there will be an upgrade quest, but nothing substantive yet from the mouth of Blizzard. Until someone in Blue posts on the official forums and makes all of us warriors happy, for the time being we'll have to just get along with dreaming for an upgrade quest. And maybe, just maybe, someone from Blizzard will see this and decide that Wrath of the Lich King needs another feature.Do you have other cherished items that you dream about Blizzard updating?
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: When tanks aren't tanking
The Care and Feeding of Warriors comes to you again on the horns of a dilemma. Matthew Rossi has found himself playing his human warrior more often when he plays, and being sucked back into raiding again. This has led to him strapping on his DPS gear and dual wielding while still prot spec, and other anomalies he wants to talk to you about.It's one of the ironies of my time playing warriors in World of Warcraft that I often find myself doing exactly the opposite thing I expected. Recently, due to time constraints and personal issues I haven't been able to play as much at night, and have found myself online at a whole different time of day. As a result I've tended to play Alliance again because there's more people online on my Ally server, and my poorly geared human protection spec warrior has found himself somehow raiding again. It began with a few heroics that impressed some people, a guild tryout I didn't really think much about that consisted of tanking Black Morass over and over again, and now I find myself in Kara, ZA and even Gruul's or Mags as a pure prot spec warrior. I'm starting to remember it all again, how it feels to hold aggro against well geared DPS, the thrill of using your abilities to keep a mob stuck to you while properly keeping those crushing blows off of the table so that your healer whispers you after the fight and tells you he barely had to break a sweat keeping you up despite your horribly awful blues. Seriously, I'm still wearing a green ring here.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Saying hi to the new boss
The Care and Feeding of Warriors comes to you this week to discuss preparing to tank a new boss for the first time. Matthew Rossi has ended up dead under the feet of some jerk with a fancy name enough times to know that you need to be sure you're ready before you step into the instance. Learn from his boneheadedness.One of the drawbacks of playing a tanking warrior (or any tank, really, but I'm not writing the druid or paladin columns, after all) is needing to have a certain threshold of gear in order to do the job. You might well know how to hold aggro exceedingly well, but if you don't have the armor, defense, mitigation stats and health to stand up to the pounding then you'll die and dead warriors are insanely bad at hold aggro.No, not undead, just plain dead. Undead warriors are no worse at holding aggro than anyone else. (Sorry for the mix-up, Vish, you know I know you're awesome.) Being that holding aggro is thereby a function of not only generating threat but surviving as you do so, there are thresholds below which you won't survive tanking a boss encounter. If a boss can possibly unleash 12k damage (I'm looking right at you, phase 2 Prince) then you'd need, at a minimum, something like 16k health to tank him, buffed. I'd prefer more. (The MT on our Prince kills has about 17k buffed.) This level of health is necessary to provide room for your healers to get those heals off after a huge damage spike.
Ask WoW Insider: Do you tip your tank?
Welcome to today's edition of Ask WoW Insider, in which we publish your questions for dissection by the peanut gallery. Last time we discussed identification with your virtual self, and this time we turn our attention once again to an issue of instance etiquette; James wants to know if it should be customary to tip your tank after a run: Hey guys, I was wondering if there is some standard etiquette for tipping your main tank after instances. The repair bill for our much-loved meat shields is usually much higher than the bill for me and my clothy brethren, so I'm curious if most PUG's will throw the MT a few gold after a run. To be honest, I don't normally tip the MT (and in my experience, they don't expect one) but is this something we should do? If so, what's a good amount? What's the verdict: do you tip your tanks, or do they not deserve the special treatment? Are there any circumstances in which you'd feel more likely to tip? What's a reasonable amount, and does it vary by instance? Got questions? Don't wait! Send them to us at ask AT wowinsider DOT com and your query could be up in lights here next week.
An entire day spent tanking
My wife works in retail, which means that the Christmas season is a bleak, wintry hell of surly, desperate customers for her, people who come to her department (electronics and home appliances, basically) and ask her where the yarn is. As a result, she doesn't have a lot of time to play the game, and I'm forced to PuG without her, which is a special kind of torture for me as I enjoy having the DPS in the same room with me so I can yell at her when she pulls aggro.I never said I was particularly smart.Anyway, the other day was unusual in that my human warrior tanked Heroic Sethekk, Heroic Underbog (not swamp or vale or forest of logs, it's your old friend, Underbog), Heroic Mechanar (and no, of course the sword didn't drop, why would the sword drop?) and Heroic Ramparts, followed up by Shattered Halls, in it's vanilla variety. This was unusual because I didn't know anyone in any of the groups, and also, it was more unusual because it was essentially the same group all the way through all of these instances.
Phat Loot Phriday: The Unbreakable Will
This is the definition of what Phat Loot is all about-- a big old sword to swing around.Name: The Unbreakable WillType: Epic One-hand SwordDamage/Speed: 112-209/ 1.60 (100.3 DPS)Abilities: 308 Armor (yes, on a sword) +33 Stamina Increases defense rating by 21. So as you've probably guessed by now, this is definitely a Hunter weapon. No, of course we're kidding. This is a weapon for a main tank, and it's definitely one of the hottest tanking weapons in the game. Plus, for a tanking weapon, it looks pretty hardcore. It's not really meant to do all that much damage (it's the armor and defense that define it, but with that sleek blue glow, I'd think twice about seeing it swinging around in battle. How to Get It: Drops from Anatheron in the Mount Hyjal instance. Anaetheron, if you didn't already know, was a Dreadlord who came with Archimonde to the battle at Mount Hyjal, and who, like many other demons, fell prey to the forces of good. We're not sure where he got this weapon from (maybe someone whose will he'd broken?), but it does kind of look like it came from a place called the Twisting Nether, doesn't it?It's about a 10% drop, just like most of this high end stuff. But the good news is that if you're main tanking at a level where you can use this, your guild will be happy to give it to you anyway. And if not, just hold the whole guild hostage-- what are they going to do, run something without an MT?Getting Rid of It: Sells to vendors for 13g 90s 81c. Disenchants into a Void Crystal.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Heresies
The Care and Feeding of Warriors is all tired after a long night stabbing things in Kara. Matthew Rossi finally actually got a drop out of that instance. which, after several months now he was beginning to think didn't actually have loot, just badges. And they just put the badges in, so for a while, he didn't think anything dropped in there.There are aspects to every class that are hard to explain to someone else, things you just learn as you play and which you incorporate into your playstyle through intuition. One of the reasons I am so unmitigatedly awful at playing a rogue and leave it to the talented rogues I know like Voi and Vizz is that I simply don't understand how to make use of those intuitives. I'm awful at understanding how to make use of things like combo points, for example.Last night I respecced to bring my warrior into Kara as an offtank/DPS. Part of the reason was that I wanted to try out a 5/41/15 build that I thought would work well for offtanking. It seemed to do fairly well, I died once on a bad pull, but I also managed to grab agg on another bad pull when Vish, our MT, went down and saved a wipe, so I give the build a cautious 8 out of 10 stars. (I may tweak it more to be a more dedicated DW build, as right now it lacks talents in that area.) One of the things I noticed was that I have at this point entirely unlearned the process of both DPSing and tanking as a warrior. Not that I don't know how, but that I don't consciously think about them at all. I've even memorized specific patterns based on what my spec is, and when I have certain spec specific abilities like Shield Slam or Revenge, I don't even have to consider where on my bars to put them or when to use them, it's entirely ingrained.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Tanking knicknacks
The Care and Feeding of Warriors is the column for warriors. It has warrior in the name, even, it's baked right in warrior goodness. Actually, now that I think of it, how good would it be to bake warriors right in? I probably should have used an entirely different saying there. Matthew Rossi has been leveling two new warriors over the week (when he had internet at all, that is) and can feel your burning eyes upon him, judging, always judging..Yes, for those of you who always find it hard to believe, I'm actually working on two lower level warriors at the moment, in addition to trying to get my NE, my human and my tauren properly geared up for their various chosen roles I'm bringing a draenei warrior up (he's through the Dark Portal and newly 60 as of today) and working on my first undead character, a level 20 warrior. Part of the reason I'm doing it is to make sure that things I tell you about lower level warriors still hold true at the moment, but that's not the real reason. The real reason is that, eventually, I want to have a level 70 warrior of every race that allows one. I have toons of other classes, obviously...two 70 shamans, for example, with a third shaman being worked on, various paladins in the high 40's or low 50's, a hunter I really enjoy sitting in the inn soaking up rested state at the moment... but my obsession with this class predates the actual existence of World of Warcraft and I won't pretend that it's not a little weird. Whether you're standing up in front of a big monster and keeping its butt turned towards the raid so that they might fill it full of arrows, ice shards, and stabbings (I'm not even going to speculate as to what warlocks are doing to it) or pulling out the big two hander or second weapon and wreaking unholy havoc upon unsuspecting gold-stuffed piñatas, I enjoy the warrior so much I actually enjoy leveling them over and over again.Heck, I even picked up the Boots of Valor for my draenei today even knowing he's never going to wear them, he aleady has better green boots from Outland. But I eventually want to get him the entire Valor set.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Making life easier for your healer
The Care and Feeding of Warriors is all about your favorite meatshields. Matthew Rossi used to tank for people who called him that all the time, and honestly, he didn't like it all that much. He preferred 'Dislike Management Engineer', but folks are still gonna call you meatshield so you might as well get used to it.After a burst of frenzied PvP activity to get the Gladiator's set, I've found myself in a cooling off period towards it. My wife and I are exploring the arenas on the Alliance side, but as for the Horde, I have to admit I haven't been PvPing much at all lately. So the other day I went ahead and respecced prot to get back to my roots as a tanking warrior. As arrogant as I am, I was still a little worried that I'd be rusty, but a quick trip into Heroic Sethekk convinced me that yes, Virginia, I still know how to tank. As i gear up to start tanking in ZA and maybe SSC (crossing my fingers) I wanted to talk about the other half of the equation of tanking. The first half is making sure you generate threat. After all, you're there to keep the mobs focused on you instead of the rest of the party.The other half is in being hard to kill. You need to be as hard to kill as possible, because your healer has limits, and anything you can do to reduce incoming damage to a steady, manageable level is something you should do. In addition, anything you can do to make it so the healer has more health to work with is also something you should do. You must maintain threat, of course, or even the best healer can't prevent a wipe. But even if you're a genius at generating hate, if you only live for a few seconds once you have focus fire on you, then your healer is again unable to prevent a wipe.
Rawr, a gear application for tanking Druids
Amanna has mentioned an awesome little tool for tanking Druids with a great name: Rawr. It's a completely separate application for Windows (sorry Mac users) that will pull down your gear from the Armory, and help you not only see your tanking strengths and weaknesses, but help you choose upgrades, both in terms of gear and gems on it.Astrylian of Kilrogg put it all together, and it looks like a really amazing tool for bears. Unfortunately, no other classes or Druid specs are supported yet (Astrylian says cats are next on the list), but if you're a bear who's been trying to make some good gear choices lately, this could be just what you need. Rawr is still in beta and available as a free download on the Druid wiki.
Ask WoW Insider: Proving your worth
This week on Ask WoW Insider, we've got an interesting question about how to get along with PuGs in game. As you might already know, in patch 2.3, players will be able to see everyone else's spec simply via the Inspect screen without leaving the game. This information has already been available on the Armory, but in 2.3, it'll be just one click away. And that's got reader Mylittleponykiller worried:Hello. I play an MS warrior, currently specced for PvP, but I also tank for pugs in non-Heroics and offtank in Karazhan when needed. I do a fine job, and often on the journey from 1-69.99 I was mistaken for Prot when I tanked instances (as Fury). However, in 2.3 I know that I will get kicked out of/not invited to PuGs if I am not Prot. I have spent hundreds of gold and many hours getting geared to tank and to DPS, and now it seems half of that might just go to waste. What can I do to prevent this from happening or at least prove myself as a tank to PuGs (even though I have over and over again)?Interesting question. First of all, readers, would you kick a warrior out of the group if he was there to tank and not specced Prot? When you have the ability to see someone's spec at a click, will you use that information to determine what other players can and can't do in your groups?And if so, what can those other players do to "prove" that they can tank, or main heal, or do DPS? If you are going to make judgments based solely on spec, what can "offspecs" (haven't heard that word in a while!) like Mlpk do to "prove" that they can fill their roles?
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Plate
The Care and Feeding of Warriors is being written right now on about 2 hours of sleep because Matthew Rossi has discovered the joy of introducing a new cat into a home that already has one. Oh, it's delightful, let me tell you, to listen to the high pitched shrieks of welcome and to constantly have to take part in the ritual greeting of cats, which apparently is where Blizzard got the idea for the Rogue class' Blade Flurry ability. Seriously, you haven't lived until your arms have been covered in scratches while two cats beat each other up like it's Marvin Hagler weekend and Sugar Ray Leonard just crashed it.What defines the warrior class?Is it poorly made PvP videos of big mortal strike crits with loud nu metal playing in the background? You know the ones, that conveniently edit out all the times you spend running away death coiled or the twenty seconds you spent as a sheep while your healer discovered a whole new and very painful definition of 'two for the price of one'. No, any class can make a bad video. Is it big weapons? Sword and board? Good fury DPS? Let's look at this another way. What's the first thing other people complain about when they think of warriors?"You shouldn't be able to do that and wear plate."Even though paladins wear it too, and I'm sure they have to put up with their own version of the lament, since this is the column about warriors I'm going to discuss it from our side. Plate. It's what we get at level 40 that sets us apart from rogues, enhancement shamans, druids, not to mention those guys in dresses. Plate is where our high armor scores come from. Plate is one of the signature elements of the class.Plate really is good for one thing, ultimately, and that's PvE damage mitigation on melee mobs. Combined with a shield it can allow a warrior to take more of a beating than anyone except a druid or paladin, but in PvP the high armor rating is much less useful against anyone, between armor penetration abilities like Expose Armor or Faerie Fire and the fact that unless you've decided to stack resistance gear, you're more or less naked to a caster. (And if you do PvP in resist gear, I admire your willingness to try and kill a warlock with 800 AP, if not your common sense.) The fact that Season Three of Arena gear seems to be stacking on the armor penetration as well means that any possibility of armor inflation is being kept to a minimum there as well.
Should there be Tanks in World of Warcraft?
Do we need tanks?Blizzard says we do, and it's an old standard of the MMO genre that someone stands up front and annoys the monster into hitting him, so that healing can be concentrated and DPS doesn't have to take a beating that would likely kill it. But do we really need tanks, or should the game move away from emphasis on the tanking/DPS/healing troika?Everyone in the game can DPS and many choose to: DPS classes seem to be the most popular. We could debate why all day, but at the end whether it's 'big number syndrome' or it comes from a desire to feel more like you're actually hurting the monster than simply poking it with a sharp stick and calling it names (or any other reason) the facts remain clear. Now, removing tanking from the game would mean many, many changes. Healing would have to become much more dynamic and would need the ability to either switch targets more rapidly or more area of effect utility. DPSers would need to be able to take more of a beating, making the cloth DPSers more vulnerable. Raids encounters would in many cases have to be entirely rethought.As someone who spends about 75% of my time in World of Warcraft tanking, it would be a big change for me. I'm PvPing more and more now than I used to (especially now that there's actual, honest to murgatroyd players standing in my way in AV... I spent an hour in one match today crawling up to that flag over hunter bodies, it felt like) but I still tank and frankly enjoy tanking when I'm with a good group. I don't think I would like to lose that role from the game, even if I do sometimes wish I'd rolled a mage or warlock instead. Generally my answer to the question is yes. Not only do I personally like tanking, but I think the game has been designed and has evolved around the tanking idea: the paradigm shift would require too much alteration to the game at this point. What do you guys think? Should WoW move away from the three role mindset or should we keep on tanking?
