tanking
Latest
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Exploring the PTR
The Care and Feeding of Warriors just wanted to point out that the Headless Horseman dropped my beautiful hat last night. This doesn't have a lot to do with today's column, which is about warriors in 2.3 and beyond. Matthew Rossi is actually dancing with glee, which makes it damn hard to type.Before we get rolling I wanted to link to this site. He doesn't always have complimentary things to say but I find the candor refreshing, and it's nice to see this post. Yes, a paladin/warrior team does well in the arenas. No, it's not the end of the freaking world. Quite honestly, anything that gets paladins and warriors to cooperate is a good thing in my opinion. There are some good posts back in the archive there on PvP builds, various spec issues, patch notes and so on. And this post about Black Morass and Shattered Halls mirrors my own views exactly. If you're interested in warriors, especially arms warriors, you should go give it a look see.Now, to discuss the warrior. Specifically, the future of the warrior in 2.3, as I managed to port my horde warrior over to test this week and played around with specs as much as my limited gold allowed (getting an initial free respec helped). Things to tell you up front: a 41/5/15 arms/fury/prot build can tank heroics with average tanking gear now. I'm talking Latro's Shifting Sword as a tanking weapon average. I did heroic Mana Tombs and heroic Sethekk on test with minimal issue (the warlock pulled aggro a couple of times, nothing earth shattering, I got it back) and so far as I could tell without being able to use a threat meter because I forgot to install one, Mortal Strike is getting the threat bonus they promised from Tactical Mastery.So it seems to me that, if things continue as I've experienced them, we may be looking at the return of the Arms warrior as the default, cookie cutter spec. And to be honest, I don't know if I like that idea.
Community class review from the EU: Druids
The EU community MVP Schwick is really great at compiling lots of good info. In the past, he's done compilations on issues raised by the community for Hunters, Priests, and Rogues, as well as a bunch of other stuff. Now he's come up with the first draft of his compilation on Druids. He asked forum-goers what their main problems with the Druid class are, sifted through all the responses, and put them together in a very readable format for the Blizzard devs (and other players) to have a look at.It seemed to me that most of the Druid issues had to do with items and abilities not scaling so well in endgame raids after Karazhan. There were some points that addressed other general issues, as well as arena PvP, but overall casual druids seemed pretty content. There wasn't even any mention of the graphical updates to the shapeshifted forms that many druids have been asking for.Keep checking the thread to see what additional thoughts the players had, and to see future drafts of the compiled suggestions.
Spiritual Guidance: Threat and you
There's a lot of content in World of Warcraft that you can do all by yourself -- you can easily get to level 70 without ever joining a party. But there's plenty of content along the way that can only be accomplished in groups, and group play is, well, a bit different from solo play. To succeed solo, all you really have to do is kill your target before it kills you -- but in a group, every player has a specific role to fufill to make the group as a whole function. You've got someone to absorb damage (your tank, decked out in gear to help him or her mitigate damage), several someones to do damage (your DPS, which can come from nearly any class), and someone to prevent everyone from dying in the meantime (your healer). And regardless of whether you're healing or flaying minds, you're cloth-wearer who can't take a lot of hits. What does this mean? Well, my friends, it means you need to know a little something about keeping monsters on your tank and off you. And you're in the right place, because today we're going to talk about threat.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Aggro!
The Care and Feeding of Warriors is brought to you by the letters A, G, G again, R and O. It is supported by a grant from Wowinsider, and the support of readers like you. Matthew Rossi would like to thank his trusty iPod for helping him grind his way through another day's respec money.Am I the only one who ever wonders what, exactly, I am saying when I taunt a mob?Is there a school somewhere in Azeroth that teaches you exactly how to insult, say, a mindless undead? The other day, while running yet another Black Morass to try and get my Burnoose of Shifting Ages I started wondering how my tauren knows the draconic phrase that gets the mob to turn back and attack me instead of the dude who just set him on fire for 8000 damage. I mean, what could I possibly have said to that guy? "Your ass looks really fat today.""I heard that your mom is sexually attracted to iguanas.""You are a total poopy head."It's a mystery. How do all my warriors manage to assemble a list of catchphrases guaranteed to irritate all but a select few of the vicious denizens of Azeroth and Outland? Do we get together with Paladins and Druids and Hunter pets and discuss just how to attack the self-esteem of even the most self-confident foes? I imagine a wizened old gnome in full plate resting against a stump somewhere and reading from The Big Book of Bitching Out Beasts while I take furious notes on the inside of my shield."...I had no idea Belan shi karkun was so offensive! That's the last time I feed a netherdrake. Gotta make sure I remember that for Aeonus..."At any rate, the facts remain the same. If you're interested in running PvE content, sooner or later you'll probably have to tank it. You may end up being just one of many tanking options in your guild (if you're guilded) or you may be called upon to be one of the primary tanks for most runs you do. Either way, you need to know how to tank. Part of the job of tanking is knowing how to mitigate damage, and part of it is holding threat. We've talked about the basics of tanking before so now I'll just go into a little more detail on generating hate.
The Light and How to Swing It: How to tank as a Paladin
Before the Burning Crusade, Paladin tanks didn't really exist. Players certainly could spec into Protection (and some did, I'm sure), but the player base as a whole wasn't ready to even accept the possibility that a Paladin could or should tank. The gear didn't really exist for it, the Protection tree was weak, and most seemed willing to accept their role as heal / buff bots in raids.Protection was even more laughable than Retribution is today, if you can believe it. You think finding a group as a Retribution Paladin these days is tough? I can't think of a single group I ran in before BC that had a Paladin tank, and I ran a lot of groups.However, that all changed with the introduction of the Burning Crusade, and the redone talent trees...
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Gearing Up
Every week Matthew Rossi writes The Care and Feeding of Warriors, and while leveling three warriors to 70 he has spent a lot of time grinding for armor. It's the curse of the clanking classes. He's ended up wearing that wolf hat from Terrokar more than he would have ever thought possible.Eventually, you'll get up to 70 if you keep playing your warrior. And when you do, you'll find yourself starting a whole new game. The difference between leveling up and preparing for the instance you'll be expected to run is that you can no longer simply go off and grind and hit the AH for the gear you'll need to fulfill your chosen role, be it tanking, PvE damage or PvP. (You can use the AH still, but most of what you're going to want is dropped in instances.) I was talking with another warrior about what gear you should be working to acquire before raiding seriously, and he reminded me that you first have to get the gear that lets you get the gear, so to speak, and so I thought I'd discuss a few easily obtained starter pieces and then what's out there to upgrade from them.As always, there are going to be differences of opinion as to what gear is an upgrade depending on what your personal preferences are. For instance, I love +hit on my tanking gear. I hate to miss when I'm tanking, it makes it much more likely that you'll lose aggro. But how much is that +hit really worth? Partially that's a matter of opinion. If you don't feel that you miss often enough to hurt your aggro, then you might prefer a piece with more dodge or block over a piece with +hit. I've decided to err on the side of caution and list alternatives so that everyone can try and find that piece that works the best for them. This column, we'll be looking at various breastplates you can get and how to get them.
Phat Loot Phriday: Gnomeregan Auto-Blocker 600
When you need to block, look no further than this amazing tanking trinket, used by aggro-grabbers the world over. Could it be the only thing the Gnomes have made that actually works?Name: Gnomeregan Auto-Blocker 600Type: Epic TrinketDamage/Speed: N/AAbilities: Equip: Increases the block value of your shield by 59. Use: Increases the block value of your shield by 200 for 20 seconds. If we're going to talk about why this trinket is so phat, we've got to talk about Block-- blocking is when your shield absorbs part of the damage that you've been hit with. The math gets complicated (it's not just a reduction in the block value, as your opponent's strength plays a part as well, and while some blocks can completely negate damage, not all do), so I won't go deep into it here, but higher the block value, less damage done when you block (and when you do is determined by your block rating, not your block value). Additionally, certain talents can add to your block value as well, as a percentage of what you've already got. So this trinket (with talents) adds a whole lot of damage reduction. But wait, there's more-- Warriors have an ability called Shield Slam, which adds your block value to the total damage of your slam. Since popping this trinket adds 200 to your block value, that's 200 directly pushed onto the base damage of your slam. If you build up a good base block value (350 is pretty good), add this on top of it, throw in Shield Master (the Warrior version of the block talent), and throw in a crit for good measure, you're talking a Shield Slam of around 2500. You're beating people down with just your Shield! And there's even more. Shield Slam isn't even a damage ability-- it's a threat ability (even better than Sunder Armor). You better believe a 2500 Shield Slam generates aggro. Pop this trinket, crit them with your shield, and not even that smarmy DPS clothie who refuses to install KTM will be able to peel that mob off of you. How to Get It: Heroic badges again, which means you need to down bosses in Heroic dungeons. And this ain't no walk in the park-- you need a whopping 41 badges to get this one. Then again, if you're a main tank who's good enough to want this trinket, you'll probably have no problem running all those dungeons.Getting Rid of It: You probably don't want to-- even if you have DPS trinkets to switch out, trinkets like this are always good to have around, just to see how much you can max out things like Block. But if you do have a sudden aversion to anything Gnome-made, you'll have to destroy-- vendors won't take it back.
Things I learned from WoW
Sydney has a cool list over on WoW Ladies LJ, about what she learned from videogames, and most of the items sound specifically like they're from World of Warcraft. Diplomacy and Leadership are probably pretty obvious, and we've already heard that some companies are seeing a stint as a GL in WoW as a bonus to the resume. But Sydney also learned the value of a savings account (because saving up for an epic mount might be the biggest amount of saving some players have done), math and economics from WoW. There's no question that the math can get pretty complicated, and if you can wrap your head around how much agility you need to break 25% on your Dodge, you're definitely on top of algebra, if not a little bit of calculus.But the two items I was most surprised by were that Sydney says she learned vocabulary and problem-solving from videogames. I don't doubt at all that they're true, but learning vocabulary is not something that's normally expected from playing games, either online or offline. Still, words like "mitigate" (her example) are used all the time when theorycrafting, and while there are a lot of jargon words floating around (you'll probably never use "tanking" in a real life conversation), just using that vocabulary can help. And problem-solving is obvious, not just in WoW, but in all videogames-- you could argue that all videogaming is simply being presented with a problem for the player to solve.I'm not saying that we should all play WoW all the time instead of going to school (sorry kids). But when people with self-control and a good center play videogames (as opposed to people who don't), all kinds of good can happen.
Avoidance: do you have enough?
By way of Blessing of Kings (why are all the good blogs about paladins?), here's a nifty macro to tell you if you have enough avoidance, as a paladin tank. How much is "enough"? Basically, enough to ensure that you avoid all crushing blows. If you pump up your dodge, block, and parry, you can push crushing blows entirely off the attack table, which goes a long way towards reducing the spikiness of incoming damage. More predictable damage = easier healing = fewer deaths. So let's see that macro:/script DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage("Need 102.4 combined avoidance. Currently at:",0.8,0.8,1) /script DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage(GetDodgeChance()+GetBlockChance() + GetParryChance() +5+(GetCombatRatingBonus(CR_DEFENSE_SKILL) + 20)*0.04,1,0.5,0)A couple caveats: in "(CR_DEFENSE_SKILL) + 20)", the "20" represents your defense from the Anticipation talent. Adjust accordingly. Also, if you want Holy Shield to be taken into account, you have to turn it on first. This macro was made by Raymond of Nazjatar, so all props to him. I love math.
Forum Post of the Day: New hunter role... MT!
I'm sure when every warrior visited the official Warrior forums today and saw this thread started by Nokoma, claiming that a Hunter's turtle pet successfully main tanked SSC, there were a lot of angry Warriors thinking about how they were quickly becoming obsolete. But then they checked the video link, and hopefully LOL'd as much as I did. While I'm sure pets can be viable tanks in certain situations, I don't think any associated video wouldn't be nearly this amusing.[via Severkill's Blog]
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: If you build it...
Every week Matthew Rossi brings to life The Care and Feeding of Warriors, a column meant to help our friends and even sometimes our enemies, the women and men who don't know which end of a prayerbook is which, couldn't backstab you if you turned around and wore a target on your spine, and who think Arcane Brilliance really should make them glow in the dark.Last week, we talked about builds. This week, we'll look at a few first hand. I do think, in general, that many warriors are feeling the pinch between speccing for as much tanking viability as possible and having talents and abilities that allow them to grind and solo/quest in a timely fashion. I definitely think there's an entire column to be had in discussing this factor, but for now I'll just say that I am attempting in selecting these specs to err on the side of overall viability. I may have skipped a few obvious talents for ones that I thought helped provide more general ability, and I especially welcome commentary and suggestions.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Tanking 101
Each week, Matthew Rossi will be bringing you a whole new column about our clanking friends, those men and women who managed to learn how to say something profoundly foul in dragon, undead, even the clackity speech of giant bugs. Amazingly, 'so's your mother' will offend a giant statue enough that it ignores being lit on fire and frozen at the same time, if you say it in the right tone of voice.If you've been tanking forever, have done all the 60 and 70 endgame instances, and are wearing purple and orange all over your 'toon as if you were the offspring of a traffic cone and Grimace, then this installment of The Care and Feeding of Warriors is going to be telling you things you already know. It seemed important to spend at least a little time going over the basics of tanking, however, for all those people who have picked up the warrior class and now find themselves strapping sword and board on and heading into an instance for the first time. I promise, we'll get to issues of PvP balance, DPSing, and other fun stuff in the future. But the main role of the warrior is to tank. If you're in a five man, you're usually there to tank the instance, and if you're in raid, you will probably be asked to tank from time to time even if you're a full DPS spec. Tanking is neither everything nor the only thing warriors do, but it is the most common and the role we're most associated with, and all warriors need to be good at it.Warriors are unique among the classes in World of Warcraft due to the rage mechanic. While druids sometimes find themselves using rage, warriors are the only class that hasn't an option to switch to something that starts at full like mana or energy. As a result, a warrior starts every fight at his weakest and gets stronger as he takes and deals damage. While this difference is essential to just about every aspect of the class's performance, it is in tanking that it becomes the most crucial. In effect, a warrior tank starts out with less rage to use his abilities, while everyone else in the party starts out with their gas tank full, so to speak.
Shifting Perspectives: Awesome tanking gear and how to get it easily
Bears make some of the awesomest tanks around. There are advantages and disadvantages to having a druid tank as opposed to a warrior, or maybe even a paladin, and we can leave the discussion of which is best for another day. You are probably aware, though, that one of a druid's main advantages in tanking is the extremely high armor he or she can achieve in bear form. Shifting to bear form increases the armor of a druid by 400%, and there are a number of leather items out there which have a higher-than-average armor that can send our physical damage mitigation through the roof.Let's just assume that you're leveling up your feral druid, thinking about when you reach 70 and wondering what kind of gear you're going to need going into the high-end 5-person instances and raiding. The thing you might not know is, as you're leveling up towards 70, some of the best of these high-armor items are easily available through quests. These may be "just green" in some cases, but that armor rating makes them extremely valuable for a druid for a long time. They often outshine their bluer or purpler counterparts in their bearish tanking power. Continue reading for a short guide to these what these items are how to get them.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Ooops!
Every week Matthew Rossi will be writing The Care and Feeding of Warriors, a column dedicated to the lumbering, clanking, mana-deprived folks who spend a lot of time yelling at monsters to ignore the people in dresses and that guy stabbing them a lot in the back.Introductions are always hard, especially when you're about do something ludicrously arrogant like presenting yourself as an expert on something. Still, it's better to do something all the way then it is to tenderfoot it, so here goes. I'm Matt Rossi, and I'll be writing about warriors for WoW Insider. I've played two to 70, have another to 68, a Draenei I'm letting rest at 51 for now and another who I left on an RP server at about 60. Basically, I love warriors, always have. Every time I play my pally or shammy alts, I keep muttering but where's my charge gone in my best Johnny Depp lamenting the loss of his rum voice. Warriors have had their ups and their downs... who can forget when we lost all rage on a missed execute? But I've played since my wife brought her copy of the game to move in with me, and all that time warriors have usually been my mains.I wanted this first column to break the ice a little, so instead of writing a deep treatise on tanking basics, or the merits and drawbacks of various tanking specs, or how playing another class can help your tanking, or the mythology that's built up in players from other classes about how amazingly awesome plate armor is in game, I decided today would be a good time to humiliate myself in public with one of the biggest screw-ups I've made as a warrior. This way, we can all laugh at what a cretin I am together! Since I'm sure I'm going to post something that will convince you of that sooner or later anyway.
Build Shop: Druid 0/47/14
Last week I asked for Druid builds. How many of the builds I got do you think were Feral? That's right, all of them. Never let it be said I can't take a hint; here's a Feral build for this week. The tree is enjoying a justifiable period of popularity right now, I think. Every druid I regularly group with is Feral, and bear tanks do a great job. Tanks are in demand on my realm, so I haven't seen many druids get a chance to go kitty and shred some face butt, but when I have seen it it's been pretty impressive. And of course, like any other class that can heal, if they carry a healing set they can be pretty solid off-healers.I got two 0/47/14 builds from two different people. One build included Intensity and Savage Fury, while the other one had Brutal Impact and Natural Shapeshifter. For reasons I'll get into later, I prefer the first variant, by Athaliana of Moonrunner, so that's what I'll look at here. Oh, and to answer your question, bwest0526, there is, as you can see, no set reason why builds have to be 0/41/20 or 31/0/30 or other such patterns like that. However, talent trees are designed such that particularly appealing one-point talents are placed at 11, 21, 31, and 41 points into each tree, so many builds go into trees with the goal of getting one of those talents, and then put the rest of their points in a different tree for some other purpose. The 21, 31, and 41 point talents especially tend to be very good values in many cases.
Hybrid Theory: Why paladin tanking needs buffs
Each week, Jason Lotito contributes Hybrid Theory, a new column on hybrid classes in World of Warcraft.Prior to the expansion, paladin tanking wasn't something many people took seriously. A few daring paladins tanked and kept alive the hope that one day the paladin class would be a serious contender for the role of main tank. With the expansion, paladin tanking was suddenly taken seriously. Being a protection paladin was no longer considered just a gimmick, but a real spec with the very real goal of main tanking. For many paladins, this was a welcomed change to the class. Making paladin tanking more appealing to the masses pushed the stereotype of paladins being strictly healers out the door. With the expansion, paladins started working together to find what worked, and more importantly what didn't work. Of course, any discussion of tanking would lead naturally to comparing the class to a warrior. Druids went through the same treatment at the start of The Burning Crusade. Though, in the case of druids, the consensus was druids being able to spec for both tanking and DPS with the same build was too overpowering. Through the first couple of patches, druids and warriors were balanced out, and in the end, both were made comparable. Druids come away still being viable tanks, and protection warriors still retain the role they feared losing. During this time, protection paladins didn't see much in the way of any changes despite much feedback. But I'm geting ahead of myself.
SimTank
As a project while learning Java programming, Morn of Executus-EU decided to create a tanking simulator and run some experiments. The simulator, which can be downloaded here, lets the tanking classes input their "to be missed", block, dodge, parry, block value and armor, and run it against the boss's attack damage range and speed. You can also use it to compare how much damage/crushing blows/burst damage paladins, druids and warriors would have while tanking the same fight. As a cool side bonus, the site also shows a "combat log" of the fight against the boss, complete with your hits, misses and damage. A better theorycrafter than I could have some fun with this, but Morn found that assuming comparable gear, a druid takes 15 percent more damage than a warrior and 10 percent more than a paladin. He notes that it could be a good way for tanks to figure out what stats they need to improve to become better at damage absorption. Who do you think makes the best tank? What information can you gain from this simulator?
The continuing saga of Druid consumables
Druids make great tanks. Like any other class, they have strengths and weaknesses, and one of those weaknesses is that they can't use consumables, like health potions, in feral forms. A while back there was some buzz about the devs letting them use some potions in forms, and just having to decide which ones; that's been the Blizz party line for a while now. Now it looks like that may not be happening after all, basically because Druid tanks are currently working as intended™:Unfortunately we do not yet have much new information available regarding this topic. The developers are still evaluating which pots and procs should be usable in forms, but it is not an easy evaluation process because for the most part Druids currently appear to be performing where the developers want them to. Because the Druids appears to be performing the way the developers want, then they have to be very considerate and cautious in the evaluation process in order to avoid potential balance issues, which means that they also have to consider whether or not pots/procs in forms is even necessary anymore. I know that this might sound like bad news to some of you, but please remember that the evaluation process has not yet finished so it is still too early to proclaim doom and gloom. Druids, what do you think? Do you need pots, or are you doing OK without them?
WoW Insider Guide to Paladin Tanking
With the many changes already made to the paladin class in WoW 2.0, and the new paladin tanking itemization that's been promised for 2.10, we felt it was about time that paladin tanking was given a thorough looking over. With great help from master mathematician Ananke, we've been able to put together the first in what's sure to be a long list of WoW Insider Guides.With your protection tree firmly in hand, you can take a look at how Seal of Righteousness compares to taunt, how your Consecration can act as a great aggro builder across multiple mobs, and how you can tank *and* dish out the damage. Complete with graphs and an explanation of each of a paladin's primary tanking skills and spells, we're sure you'll find this guide helpful whether you're a paladin tank, or just grouping with one.Click on the read link to see how a paladin can stack up to a Warrior, WoW's traditional tanking class, and look at the numbers behind the essential paladin tanking skills.
Warriors kill 99% of PUGs
Hey it's been at least a few days without a patented "Mike Schramm Troll Post," so let's go at it. Xylox over on the forums says that if a PUG wipes, 99% of the time it's because of the warrior. He says it's the hardest class to play within "a group environment," and that if you're a warrior who thinks you don't have to be prot and you don't need a shield to tank, you're the reason your PUGs keep wiping.Now, I don't know if I'd go all that far-- my warrior has tanked plenty without being specced protection, so that's definitely possible. But he does have a point-- a shield is just plain necessary for tanking. If a tank doesn't know how to keep aggro, isn't ready to take damage or pull mobs off the healers, or thinks taunt is a damage spell, the group is in trouble.Of course, most players aren't so nice to Xylox-- they say that though warriors do need to know what they're doing, so does everyone else. If a warrior can't keep aggro because the DPS is clueless, or doesn't get heals because the priest is in shadow when heals are necessary, it's not his fault. And still other players say that the reason lots of warriors don't know what to do right away is because tanking is one of the only skills in the game that you can't learn solo-- you've got to have a helpful group to teach you how to do it the first few times.No one actually calls Xylox out for posting like he's the warrior master on his level 10 Shaman (that's what I'd do), but the thread really does provide some interesting thoughts from both sides. Bottom line: the best way to keep from wiping is to make sure everyone in the group knows what they're doing. All should be responsible for aggro control, all should know where to target DPS and when, and everyone should play their part well. It's true that an unskilled tank can be the first to mess up a group (because if she can't hold aggro, it's over right then and there), but everyone's got to do it right to get it done.
