All the complaints from warrior tanks...

Hey everyone!

Been a while since my last post, but I've been busy with work and my birthday as well (trips to IMAX to see Avatar - omg go and see this in 3D at an IMAX) but I wanted to say some things about all the negative posts I've seen about warriors over the last few weeks.

So, yeah - it DOES suck when PVE is hurt a little because of PVP and the warbringer change is not welcome.

BUT...

Warriors are amazing tanks, no, really - I have started to gear up pretty seriously now, and in the better quality gear I have it is showing me that I am one of the most versatile and mobile tanks going. I've a paladin and a druid, both tank specced and although they are easier to play, now I know this warrior - they are no where near as fun and active.

Warriors do need to work at it during tanking, but my survival rates are amazing and abilities are so diverse that I have something for every situation in the game.

Heroics are fun as a warrior - ICC 10 and 25 is great with my threat easily pushing over some pretty serious DPS. On single target bosses I've even had to scale it back when tanking with a partner due to the risk of pulling aggro back after their taunt runs out.

Single target bosses in ICC 25 I have regularly pulled 11 to 12k threat per second sustained - ok, on movement fights this dips to 7k tps - but I am still learning :-)

AOE threat does suck a bit, but I've learned to tab cleave/shield slam per mob as I rotate when it comes off cool-down (not tab devastate, it is way too slow with packs in excess of 5 mobs)

Really, I can see myself scaling with gear faster than the paladin or druid tanks we have - I believe that the primary problem warriors have is that in the end-game gear they are the best, but the scaling of warriors is very poor compared to any other classes. You'll suck in low end gear compared to a paladin tank in similar gear.

Give you the best - which, lets face it, with the emblem system, you will eventually get - and you will rock and roll.

I do not believe that warriors are poor, nerfed for tanking or in any way a downgrade for the fights that count (bosses) - I would go so far as to say that for tanking progression content a warrior is one of the best choices.

Don't worry guys, if you have rolled warrior - work on the gear and have a smile on your face as you upgrade - because gear really does matter to us, and it makes it fun when you get something - not like other classes where gear hardly notices as you upgrade.

For example, I got a new 2H dps Axe from 10 man for my Arms off-spec - rocked into PVP after the raid and went from zero with my old weapon to hero with the new one.

Cheers!

Mist

AOE Tanking in Heroics and Raid Trash

Hey everyone - hope you are having a great week!

I thought it might be useful for those budding tanks out there now that I'm gaining a lot of experience to discuss a topic I know is close to all warrior tanks hearts - AOE/Trash pack tanking.

I admit, when I was new to this tanking thing I struggled with trash tanking - mainly because I suck with a boss tanking spec only because I was pvp'ing with arms.

Well, now I carry a small pile of glyphs into dungeons to re-glyph and I re-spec frequently - but I will be changing to a pure two spec tank builds, one for bosses and one for trash in the future.

So, what is my heroic/trash build and glyphs and why?

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#LVMhzfZhZVItMx0zidIzsGo:dMfzmo

This is my heroic's and trash build - it is a little unusual in that it has anger management, but combined with the glyphs of cleaving and sunder armor I find it remarkably good for trash. The deep wounds build is much discussed on tanking forums and having tried other builds I find this one the best by miles.

Note that I do NOT take improved revenge in this build - I find in the gear I am in right now I get rage starved in heroics quite easily and a stun on a mob at the start of combat on a pack is less incoming rage and annoying if you are trying to position a large group and one gets left behind.

I've maxed out shield specialisation for this build - again for trash packs blocking with your shield is wonderful.

I would also recommend picking up a mod like this:

http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info15610-TidyPlatesBeta5.9.html

and then combine it with this:

http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info14984-TidyPlatesThreatPlates.html

follow all the instructions and you'll end up with nameplates over the mobs that change size depending on the level of threat you have on them - in very large mob groups it is pretty helpful to see which mobs are about to escape.

As for main boss/raid tanking builds, well - I'm still experimenting at the moment and spending a small fortune in gold respeccing as I try them out - these are the two I am playing with at the moment:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#LAM00fZhZmItrx0zidIzsGo:doAzmo

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#LAM00bZhxZMItrx0zidIzsGo:doAzmo

I do not have a survival/cooldown build as I personally believe if as a tank I have to rely on 2 minute shieldwalls to survive then there are massively bigger problems in the raid than tanking.

The thing I am really not sure about is having deepwounds for a boss vs having bigger chance to crit. I don't have spreadsheets to crunch or a huge amount of experience yet - what do you all think?

cheers!

Mist

Warrior tanking in ICC - second impressions

Hey everyone!

Well, last night saw me tanking in ICC 10 again and I thought it might be useful to someone out there to give some perspective on the trash and the bosses as a warrior tank that is still learning.

Trash - just right!

I love the trash in ICC - it hits hard and there is not too much of it, just enough to give you something to do and challenge that aoe trash pack management of a warrior. The best mobs by far are the giant skeletons that come awake at the start of the lower spire before Marrowgar. Last night we lost our other tank because two spawned right at the same time as we were searching for traps. I managed to grab both and tank them from 100% to 0% on both with out loosing my life. The healers were the best obviously, but it was fun.

Ok, so off-tanking Lord Marrowgar - well, this is all about managing your threat, positioning and the dps being fast to get people out of spikes. If they do that then the fight is not really all that hard. I did notice that spike damage was not too bad. The other tank and myself pre-agreed which way we would run when we got Coldflamed - I suggest you do the same, it helps.

Lady Deathwhisper is a little tricky - as a tank, you need to pick up the adds at the side, but make sure that you keep the Fanatics away from everyone as they do a nasty melee aoe. When you get a Deformed Fanatic, taunt them and kite them.

The boss is burned as we go, and when phase 2 pops I grabbed her first - when you get 3 stacks of her Touch of Insignificance you get the other tank to taunt off you - rinse and repeat. Be careful of the pillars - we tanked her a little forward to avoid line of sight problems that some healers had with melee had last time we were here.

Oh, and interrupt her frost bolt casts - and co-ordinate that, we (tanks) were both interrupting the same cast last night by mistake - hehe! (and watch for the little ghosts)

Gunship battle - is a fun fight, I was the add tank here, so had the easy job - grab the adds as they spawn, tab through them for threat and spam cleave. One thing, sometimes when you are waiting for a mob to spawn you spam an attack button. This doesn't work here. You see, the axe throwers on the other ship keep hitting you and you will auto target those when you take damage. So, be careful and select your target - the adds move fast when they spawn.

I did have to jump across last time we were there and you need to tank Saurfang (Muradin for other faction) - just make sure you tank him in range of your healers - and be careful of his buff - leave the ship if it gets too high - but tell people what you are doing.

Only thing as an add tank here - they do aoe whirlwinds - move them away from people when they do - healers often forget to move.

Deathbringer Saurfang is my favourite fight so far in ICC that I've seen as a tank. This is perhaps because both tanks are equally important - making sure you have enough hit so your taunt doesn't miss is important - but not hugely essential as you can taunt again - you just need better dps if this happens. When one of the tanks gets Rune of Blood, you need the other tank to taunt the boss off as soon as possible - and back again when he gets it.

There does appear to be a bug with this fight with taunts - we have had this happen every time we have been here. Occasionally you will taunt - you will see the taunt debuff on the boss, he will turn to you, hit you once and then immediately go back to the other tank. This happened to both of the tanks this time and also last time we were here. It seems to be a bug because the taunt does not fail - and it does not last the duration it should do.

Quick note on this fight - the dps have to be good - we do this on 10 man with just two healers - and near the end of the fight (from 25%) you WILL need your cooldowns as a tank, do NOT blow them all at once, rather carefully manage them and chain them together when you are tanking.

So, watch for that one, and I have not been in a raid that has tried the other new bosses yet!

cheers and have fun!

Mist

Back from the USA

Thanks for all the emails and in game mails while I was away - landed this morning from the USA after a week away on business.

Hope you all had a lovely week!

cheers,

Mist - Jet-lagged-like-mad!

Looking For Group - "Special" Achievements

Now I'm pugging a LOT as a tank for badges for a dps set for the times I'm asked to off-spec - after a couple hundred instances I've noticed some pretty funny things - I've categorised them here for you as my top five new "Achievements"

1) Down Ranker!

This one drives me nuts - I downloaded and installed a brilliant addon called Rank Watch a couple weeks ago - and I would say 2 or 3 out of 5 groups someone is using the wrong rank spells.

The award goes to an elemental shaman on my realm who insisted on using rank 1 of all spells and doing a dreadful job (obviously) in Pit of Saron. When pushed as to why he wasn't using the max rank spells his answer was this:

"This is an Alt character and I can't afford the spell upgrades, they are too expensive"

And he was serious!

2) A Righteous Fury

This one just cracks me up. So as a tank, I very very often come across a retribution paladin that has been tanking and joins an instance and forgets to remove Righteous Fury - who then keeps pulling aggro and moans until someone in the party points out that he has this buff on - they either leave with embarrassment or say sorry and we all carry on.

However, there are those really special cases - had one today - that say "I'm not removing it because I do more damage with it enabled"...

Oh My God

3) Dude, where's my spell...

This one kills me... It is incredible how often when as a tank I ask a party member to do something in the group that I know you can do, and they end up arguing with me and the 3 other players in the group, that their class can't do that - I'll give you a few examples from this last week alone:

Last boss in Forge of Souls - the Devourer of Souls - heroic mode. Druid healer dies with a bad luck Wailling Souls+Lag - we are at 5% - and kill the boss with no issues. We ask the Retribution Paladin, please can you res the druid after we are done.

"No"

"Err, why not?"

"I can't"

"Why not?"

Only holy paladins can do that.

Five minutes later the druid corpse runs...

Or the shadow priest who joins us in Halls of Reflection heroic and I ask him to please CC one of the targets at range.

"Priests can't CC you noob."

O'RLY?

"Yeah, I'm not a Mage ffs!"

Someone else in the group says - err, they are undead.

"I'm not undead I'm a Nightelf you idiot"

VOTE KICK

4) GEARED!

This achievement goes to the person that joins your party and straight away announces that "he has the highest gear score" - then spends the rest of the instance either afk, or "just a sec" or doing such a terrible job that you wonder "ebay much?"

5) Pull faster noob!

This is the last and my all time most hated thing as a tank - I have started to let people die because of this it has got so bad in some randoms.

Every 10th group or so you get someone - and it is (sorry to these classes) almost always a retribution paladin, hunter or rogue. Who decides that they are responsible for the pulls (and they never misdirect or do it in such a way that it is helpful.

Believe me, I really don't hang around in instances - I chain pull and often pull two or three groups at once depending on the healer. These "special" players are the ones that no matter what jump off and pull more mobs.

A rogue did this to me in an instance recently - Fan of Knives on every single trash pull - regardless of number of mobs, and regardless of whether I'd got aggro. When I pointed out that this was silly he claimed that "yeah, but I ALWAYS misdirect them onto you first" - for the rest of the instance he did - but he sure hadn't up to that point - guess he forgot - pfft.

Or the paladin that I left tanking a trash mob in Pit of Saron he pulled (and then taunted - ffs) - because "I can handle the elites here" - the healer left him there and the other dps. He joined us about 5 minutes later as we looted the boss calling us all arse holes with 10% health and no mana.

There you go - my top five (in no special order) things that I see again and again in PuGs.

cheers!

Mist

Raiding for real

I miss the lovely people over at Scooby Snacks (the casual heroics guild I joined on my warrior) - but last night the guild my wife and I have joined (more of a raiding guild called "Raid And Not Paid") took me into ToC 25 - after the previous evening clearing the first wing of ICC 10.

Firstly, ICC 10, the first wing. Just LOVED it. Great fun to tank, quite hard hitting mobs, and compared to their other tank who is sitting at 50k hp with lots of tanking experience I was clearly under geared.

But, we managed it all, with some very good moments. I didn't loose the aggro and didn't screw up - so I guess raid experience helps, regardless of the role you'd done it in before. I firmly believe PVP experience helps a LOT for raiding - it sharpens you up, improves your situation awareness and makes you faster on the keys than many other players.

I walked away with some lovely new items and a big boost in HP.

Last night we went to ToC for a "tanking test" as it turned out. They asked me to take some of the choices and be one of the primary tanks for the instance. This was great for me, having seen this instance on heroic and completed Dedication to Insanity with the amazing players like Onck, Toxin and Azybubbles (among others - you know who you are) in Orbis - seeing this from the eyes of a tank was great.

Onck, as a tank - if you ever read this - /salute, there are some pretty intense moments, especially that first boss, he hits like a truck - and fighting against 7 to 9k dps players for aggro made me sweat a little. But - I managed my abilities and cooldowns and was not 1-shotted. Held the aggro no problem and we marched all the way to the last boss.

I was asked to main tank the boss at the end and had one of my best moments as a tank so far. Popping shield wall at just the right moment to save a wipe and pulling 13,000 threat per second for part of the fight near the end when blood-lust was popped.

Tanking is very intense, like healing I would say - and like healing - so far it is very rewarding. You do get abuse in heroics sometimes from pugs (always blame the tank) - but overall, if you want to roll a tank - right now, I'd say "go for it".

Oh, and for the many many tanks out there that have complained about the Glyph of Vigilance, I tried it for the first time yesterday - why would you not take this for main tanking is something I now wonder - it will be in my main glyph slot instead of revenge for 25 man raids (not 5 mans).

cheers,

Mist

Some usefull warrior notes - hit caps and more

Some notes I kept to help me remember stuff about warriors - maybe others will find this useful as well!

Glyphs:

Trash/5-man Setup

Glyph of Blocking

Glyph of Sunder Armor

Glyph of Cleaving

Boss Setup - EDIT!!!!

Glyph of Blocking

Glyph of Revenge or Glyph of Vigilance (after testing this for 25 man - I'm impressed)

Glyph of Heroic Strike

Dodge caps

123 Expertise Rating (15 skill)

+ 3/3 Vitality + 5 Skill Racial (Orc/Dwarf) = 3.75% + 1.5% + 1.25%

140 Expertise Rating (17 skill)

+ 3/3 Vitality + 3 Skill Racial (Human) = 4.25% + 1.5% + 0.75%

164 Expertise Rating (20 skill)

+ 3/3 Vitality = 5% + 1.5%

214 Expertise Rating (26 skill)

= 6.5%

Parry caps

435 Expertise Rating (53 skill)

+ 3/3 Vitality + 5 Skill Racial (Orc/Dwarf) = 13.25% + 1.5% + 1.25%

451 Expertise Rating (55 skill)

+ 3/3 Vitality + 3 Skill Racial (Human) = 13.75% + 1.5% + 0.75%

476 Expertise Rating (58 skill)

+ 3/3 Vitality = 14.5% + 1.5%

525 Expertise Rating (64 skill)

= 16%

Hit Caps

230 Hit Rating

+ 1% Racial (Draenei) = 7% + 1%

263 Hit Rating

= 8%

1) Hit rating.

You need 8% for an Arms/Protection spec, while you only need 5% in Fury (assuming 3/3 Precision).

2) Expertise

A mob cannot parry from behind, therefore you only need enough expertise to stop a mob from dodging when you are behind it; as a mob cannot parry when you're behind it. The magic number here is 26 expertise.

Summary

Arms

Hit cap – 262.32

Yellow cap – 262.32

Expertise Cap – 215

Fury

Hit cap – 786.96 with 3/3 precision. This is not plausible so aim for around 260-300 with 3/3 precision.

Yellow cap – 163.95 with 3/3 precision.

Expertise cap – 215

cheers!

Mist

Happy new year! And what a way to start for me :-)

After literally months and months of farming for this on my shaman, I logged in on my new warrior this morning - popped over to ZG on the off-chance it would drop with the help of my wonderful wife.

Guess what...

On the 01/01/10 - I became the proud owner of a new tiger!

I hope you all had a good new year celebration.

Mist

Happy Christmas and I wish you a great new year

I wanted to wish everyone the very best of new years and I hope you have a peaceful holiday season.

If you are in a part of the world that does not celebrate this time of the year then I wish you the very happiest of times and a wonderful end of the year and good new one.

Well, what has it been like as a warrior tank then?

Amazing really. If you are considering a re-roll, then warriors are a good choice.

But what about tanking then? Well, compared to

druids and paladin tanks I find that tanking large groups is very challenging, but I think probably more fun. We have to cycle through the targets and keep the threat up. It is a very active tanking class. However, when you are trying to pull large groups that involve more than 1 caster they really shine. Charge, shield bash silence, heroic throw silence another, intercept on a third caster - they all come to you.

Last night for example, I was tanking in a PUG to the Pit of Saron. If you have been there, after one of the bosses there is a slope that leads to a gauntlet style run through a tunnel to the final boss. On that slope are two Ymirjar Deathbringer packs. Each Deathbringer summons in two Ymirjar Flamebearers and two Ymirjar Wrathbringers. Well, these two packs are quite hard to tank, but a mage with this group was fire and had not glyphed to remove the knock-back on his spell.

Guess what he did? Yeah, knocked back the mobs into the second pack. Well, I managed to gather them all up using silences from throw, shieldbash and charge then intercept and intervine on the healer. It took some concentration and was tricky, but we managed it with only one death in the group (a DK who carried on max dps on a single target while all this happened)

It showed me right there what a warrior tank can do with mobs that are spread out and not all in thunderclap range. I'd be interested to see what a paladin or druid would do in such a situation - I've played a druid tank and it would have been a lot harder. Not sure about a paladin.

Single target tanking is truly where warrior tanks shine. Very high threat per second if you know what you are doing is pretty ok to manage. But the REAL advantage of warrior tanks that I never appreciated until I rolled one is to manage incoming damage. Healer focused on the group? No problem, disarm (much to my amazement many bosses can be disarmed) Boss casting a spell and your health is low? Spell reflect... Again, to my amazement many boss spells cast on me I can reflect.

Big spike of damage coming? Shield block, trinket. Spike threat? Shield block, shield-slam, revenge, concussive blow (massive threat in just a few globals) Oh - and the best bit? Interupts on a very very short cool-down. Solo tanking Lord Jaraxxus in ToC 10 while our other tank took all the adds showed me I was able to interrupt every single cast he does - that makes a big difference to the healers.

My tank is now fully geared with full T9 and a block set as well delivering over 26% block. My avoidance set now runs me at 35k health (unbuffed) with 84% unhittable. This puts me up there with most good tanks.

I've discovered that a lot of tanks stack HP at the expense of avoidance which seems a little strange to me. I've got to the point now in my block/avoidance set where trash mobs (not bosses) hit me maybe 1 or 2 times before they die - very often they don't hit me at all, which is pretty damn funny. The healers often find themselves doing some dps in my groups - haha.

The biggest things I've struggled with are trinkets and rings. It took me ages to get good ones - and I'm still after another ring. Pug groups are fine once you explain the tactics to new players to an instance - and the new LFG tool (as a tank) is just awesome - instant dungeons - any of them, any time of the day. I've been told it is hard as a dps to get a group sometimes.

I love the new instances except for the first waves of adds in Halls of Reflection heroic (which is insanely hard with most pugs where the dps just nuke random targets before you pick everything up and frequently find themselves 1 shotted)

All in all the tanking experience as a warrior is intense, satisfying and fun. Takes a while to gear up and people treat you like crap sometimes when you turn up to an instance in blues as you are gearing up. I learned to stack HP and flask for those early gearing runs because then people shut up (even if you know that you will take shit loads more damage because you have compromised other stats) Once geared and with some experience it makes the world of difference.

Happy new year everyone - and many many thanks to all those people that stopped by the server I am on to wish me the best - I wish you and your families a great time in 2010!

cheers,

Mist

Successful Trial of the Crusader 10 man on the first ever run!

So, last night the "We Love Scooby Snacks" (name of this new guild I am in) ran Trial of Crusader 10 man. Half the team had never stepped into the instance. I have never tanked it before and my wife has never healed there.

We had a few wipes throughout the instance, but because I knew the tactics (as did the other tank in the team) - with some coaching, we killed the last boss at midnight!

Great run, was fresh and fun to see people in a mix of blues and epics get excited about bosses that I've breezed through in the past. You forget how hard some of this content is when you don't have a team that has known each other for 3 or 4 years with tanks like Onck or Azybubbles that are just SO damn good you wish you knew how they heck they do what they do.

I miss the Orbis guys quite a bit. Toxin, Azy and the others were kind of like family after all that time. Artfool popped over to the server to say hi yesterday so a big /hugs to him! But it did make me miss the guys even more.

But there we go, they are in a guild now that is full of class leading super uber geared players and here I am proud I've just broken the 30k health mark as a tank - hehe.

Well, at least it is fresh :-)

Cheers Team Scooby for the fun last night.

Mist