Anticipation...

So looks like tonight may be the big one for our little raid group. We're actually going to make our first steps in ToC10. We're behind the times but hey, we just started!

Anyway, my question to you guys is this. I've done a lot of research on the encounters in the raid and have made the following notes to help me with explaining fights, etc. So take a look and let me know if you see anything wrong or that can be done more easily. Now I doubt we'll make it all the way through but I wanted to be prepared!

Go team!

Beasts of Northrend
Phase 1
Main Tank: Gormok
Off Tank: Gormok
Ranged DPS: Adds when up, Gormok
Melee DPS: Gormok
Healers: Focus on tanks and mana conservation. There should be little raid splash damage as long as people stay out of the bad stuff on the ground.

Points of interest: Range MUST focus on the snowbolds when they spawn. The snowbold will target a player and attack their back, that player can’t single target them off. ALL RANGED stop and kill the snowbolds then back to the boss. Gormok will do a thunder stomp ability, stay at max range to avoid this. Tanks switch on 3 – 5 stacks of impale.

Phase 2
Main Tank: Acidmaw -
Off Tank: Dreadscale - Starts out mobil
Ranged DPS: Acidmaw till dead then -> Dreadscale
Melee DPS: Acidmaw till dead then -> Dreadscale
Healers: Watch the party for members with burning bile, otherwise focus on the tanks.

Points of interest: Spread out! Dreadscale will be the boss that starts off mobile, he will put a debuff on people called burning bile, that deals fire damage to you and everyone close to you. Acidmaw will put a debuff on people called “Paralytic Toxin” which will slow your movement and do nature damage. If you get paralytic toxin you can remove it by moving near someone who has burning bile on them. In the beginning of the fight, the only person who will have burning bile on them will be Dreadscales tank because he needs to tank them away from the party. So move to the tank if you get the toxin. The worms will randomly burrow under the ground and switch places, when this happens STOP dps so that the tanks can get agro back on their target. Acidmaw dies first, Dreadscale will enrage doing more damage to healers be prepared for the spike in damage to the off tank.

Phase 3
Main Tank: Icehowl
Off Tank: DPS and Emergency Backup
Ranged DPS: Nuke when boss is stunned
Melee DPS: Nuke when boss is stunned
Healers: Heal the tanks and watch the party, this can be a boring fight for healers.

Points of Interest: Icehowl has three abilities. 1st is an AOE whirlwind attack. 2nd is an Ice Cone that will deal heavy damage to everyone affected. Stay spread out to avoid this and healers must heal through it. 3rd he will throw us all back, randomly pick a target, turn towards them and howl, then charge the targer. MOVE!! He will charge the spot you were standing in so RUN to the right or left so he hits the wall. This will stun him and he will take increased damage. Burn cooldowns and whatever you have when he is stunned.

Lord Jaraxxus
Main Tank: Lord Jaraxxus
Off Tank: Adds
Ranged DPS: Adds then Lord Jaraxxus
Melee DPS: Adds then Lord Jaraxxus, 1 interrupt on Jaraxxus at all times
Healers: One on MT, one on raid, party healer focus on the person with Legion Flame/Incinerate Flesh

Points of Interest: Ok, first off, we need one interrupt that will stay on Lord Jaraxxus as ALL times. At all costs your job is to interrupt his firebomb. Everyone else, adds will spawn throughout the battle. Off tank, pick up these adds and ranged take them down, they are your top priority.

Abilities: He will do Incinerate flesh on a random target. If you get this buff please call out. Healers will need to heal this person up to 70,000 health within 15 seconds or they will blow up hurting every party member. 2nd he will attack someone with Legion Flames, if you have this debuff, move to the back wall till it goes away (or we can stand still and be healed through it to avoid flame trail)


Faction Champions
Main Tank: Keep one of the melee busy or assigned as interrupts on one of the healers. In DPS Gear.
Off Tank: Keep one of the melee busy or assigned as interrupts on one of the healers. In DPS Gear.
Ranged DPS: Nuke Healers first while throwing out CC at designated targets.
Melee DPS: Nuke Healers first.
Healers: Heal like mad and don’t get taken out

Points of Interest:
Resto Druid: Banish if possible, if not kill first. (use bloodlust here)
Shaman: Kill 1st or 2nd depending on if the druid is present, he will use heroism and buff his group with his totems.
Death Knight: Will do the most damage to your party? Should be the first damage dealing to go down?
Hunters: Will go after casters and cloth wears should die after DK or 3rd if no DK present.
Shadow Priest: Usually dies last
Paladin: CC if you can, otherwise one of the first healers to die

Use your crowd control, banish, fear, yank, frost trap, etc. Don’t be afraid to fear targets to get them off of you. Keep interrupts on the healers. Focus target. Make sure you are always killing the marked targets.

Twin Valkys
Main Tank: Lightbane
Off Tank: Darkbane
Ranged DPS: Kill opposite color twin of whatever buff they have
Melee DPS: Kill opposite color twin of whatever buff they have
Healers: One per tank and one on raid heal

Key Points:
Key abilities used once every 60 seconds at random:
Vortex: During vortex all DPS needs to switch to that twins color (ie, light or dark). Vortex does AoE damage to the entire party in the same class as their color (ie, Darkbane will deal dark AoE damage)
Twin Pack: All DPS switches to the portal color of the twin casting pack. DPS nukes down here shield and someone must interrupt her heal. Then DPS can switch back.

DO: Touch orbs that are the same effect as your portal color. This will stack a buff on you and when you reach 100 of this buff, it will give you a damage increase. Tank you mob near a portal of the opposite color, this will allow the dps to switch quickly.
DON’T: Touch orbs of a different color.

Twins share a health pool. Any damage done to one contributes to the death of both twins.

Anubarak
Main Tank: Anubarak
Off Tank: Adds
Ranged DPS: One assigned to ice clouds making sure that we have enough patch’s of ice but on boss when fine the rest on Anubarak unless little adds need AoE.
Melee DPS: Adds, big ones, little ones, medium sized ones, whatever, these DPS go on adds and then boss when they have spare time.
Healers: Only two needed, one on tanks and one on raid, in P3 make sure you don’t heal everyone up to full all the time as Anub will regain some health from this

Key Points:
Phase One: Ranged will need to shoot down the orbs hovering over the head of the boss. Orbs will leave a frost patch on the ground, there should be a frost patch down at all times. Tank, pick up the big adds and drag them onto the frost patch, this will prevent the adds from burrowing into the ground. Kill adds as quickly as possible, this will prevent the debuff from stacking up too high and increasing the party damage.

Phase Two: Anubarak will burrow under the ground, the entire party wants to huddle up on top of a frost patch. This will prevent Anubarak from impaling a player. This is importat because the falling damage can me instant death for that person. The impale will cause the frost patch to go away, move to another frost patch ASAP, if one is not available ranged shoot down an orb. Burn the adds as quick as possible, AoE the Swarm Scarabs. Once all adds are down, Anubarak will resurface and we return to phase one.

Phase Three: 30% health, Anubarak will no longer surface. At this point we need to kill any remaining adds ASAP, then bloodlust will be cast. All cooldowns and procs need to be used and nuke the boss as quickly as possible. The boss will use Leeching Swarm Releases swarm of insects that leech 10% of targets’ current health each second (minimum 250 health) and heals Anub’Arak. The target of attack will feed 10% of his/her health back to the boss every 10 seconds. Healers, keep these targets up but do NOT fill their health back to full as the more health they have the more they are feeding to the boss.

Lets Talk Tanking

I ran an instance last night...get this...as DPS...*gasp*. That's right, I put aside my tanking boots and ran a lower instance (UK to be exact) on my DPS shaman. Now, it's been a long long time since I put on my dps but honestly, I had a great time.

Now, no this doesn't mean that I'm giving up tanking but the point of this blog actually isn't about my DPS or tanking.

You see, the new LFG system paired Eto and I with a new level 72 warrior. How do I know he was new you ask? Because his tank weapon was a level 70 WHITE trash sword. His gear, also is not the topic of my post. It's more his attitude.

For once, I saw a newbie tank, with a great attitude trying to tank. At the end of the instance, he willingly admitted it was his first time tanking. Though I wasn't' surprised, simply because of the gear he was in (mostly level 70 BOE greens). Though he was knowledgeable and patient. If it had not been for the druid healer and myself back up healing when he went OOM, I'm sure this instance wouldn't have gone as smoothly.

Now, why am I bragging on this guy? Simple, he had the guts to actually play a tank. I'm sure people are gawking at me now. But it's true. The number of players willing to tank these days is pretty low. That shows with the 30 - 45 minute queue times for DPS trying to get into random dungeons. I think Eto and I waited about 30 minutes before getting this group last night and about 30 on Sunday when we got into Nexus.

Why do people not want to tank? That's also a simple, long list, of answers.

Let me see if I can break this down for those who haven't tried tanking themselves. As I do, I'm sure a lot of people will get a reality check and find themselves thinking.."oh, yeah I do this" or "Oh, I saw this happen the other day".

1. DPS and Healers have very little patience when it comes to a new tank.
2. They won't tolerate well a tank that mismarks/does not mark targets.
3. They are looking for speed runs. Constantly hearing, "go go go" even annoys the seasoned tanks. Seriously, shut up!, we'll go when our abilities are off cool down and when that person in the back that is responsible for keeping our butts alive has enough mana to do so!
4. Will bitch about a tank with low health (less than 30K). You know this is just H-UK right, now trying to tank Ulduar.
5. People don't understand that tanks don't magically get gear dropped in their laps as soon as they hit 80. They have to gear up and unless they do that as dps and off roll on tank gear, they have to run with lower stats for awhile.
6. Aggro isn't instant. DPS that start their rotation with an AoE attack 1.5 seconds after the pull will cause aggro issues and then what happens? They will blame the new tank. It isn't the tanks fault that they have to BUILD up aggro.

So, what can you do to help out those up and coming tanks, prevent them from saying "screw this" and going dps instead? Here are a few ideas.

1. BE PATIENT!! This goes a long way. Remember they are learning, you were there at one time.
2. Don't push your luck with them. Give them some space and allow them time. This means don't' pull for them, don't push them to speed up and don't keep screaming "go go go". If you don't have time for this then run with your guildies, friends or people you know. You shouldn't be queuing up for a random dungeon expecting to be done in 15 minutes.
3. Offer helpful advice, in a kind indirect way. No one wants to be told they are doing something wrong. But if you offer advice indirectly, people are going to see you as helpful more then bossy. IE - Should we kill that drake first, I remember he hits pretty hard and does AoE damage. This sounds a lot better then "Hey, kill that drake first, don't' you know that?"
4. Watch your aggro. Don't start your rotation with an AoE attack 1.5 seconds after they pull. If they aren't marking targets, kindly ask them to or tab between targets whenever you get close to the aggro level of the tank.
5. If you pull aggro, for Elune's sake DON'T RUN AWAY! Use your aggro dump abilities and if you don't have any, stop attacking and stand still or at least move towards the tank. If you keep attacking, even if they taunt you run the risk of bypassing aggro level of the taunt.
6. Learn to assist! It's a simple macro, all dps can use to help them attack only the mob that the tank is targeting.

Set focus to the tank when you enter the instance then create this macro:
#showtooltip Attack
/target [target=focustarget, harm, nodead]
/startattack

Casters change the macro to:
/target [target=focustarget, harm, nodead]

It's that simple. You can easily help the tank and not look like the jerk.

Now, tanks...there is a couple things you can do as well.

1. Be honest. Let people know you're still learning or let them know if you don't know the instance. Hopefully, there will be someone in the group willing to help you with marking targets and boss advice. If not, at least you warned them and they know from the beginning.
2. If someone pulls aggro, taunt off them once. If they continue to pull aggro without care to what you're doing, LET THEM DIE. They will learn their lesson the hard way.
3. Wait for your healers and casters to get mana. No matter how much you have that jerk screaming "go go go", take your time, you're the tank.
4. Let people know your kill order from the beginning. That way they know to kill in the order you target and have less of a chance to pull aggro.
5. Ask them not to pull the mobs for you and warn them if they continue to do it you won't taunt off of them. If they throw a fit, scream or yell, you have the right to vote kick or leave the group. You are the tank and the time it takes you to get into another random instance is a lot less then the time it will take the group to find another tank.
6. Don't play God. Just because you're the tank doesn't give you the right to be a jerk either.

Hopefully, people will take some of this to heart. Tanking is not easy, it's got a high burn out rate and a lot of people just don't like to do it. Help those new tanks when you can, you may need them tomorrow!

Happy hunting and /hug to all the other tanks out there.

Aggro Issues

Grrrrr

What do you mean I have aggro issues? *sigh*

My biggest frustration with my DK at the moment. Don't get me wrong, it's not all the instances, it's not all groups. But it seems the new stuff, H-PoS and HoR are causing me major tanking woes.

Even on normal, Halls of Reflection is causing me aggro issues. The fight is a pain, credit given. But are other tanks having these aggro issues with the waves of trash that come before boss 1 and 2? It seems I can't get and hold aggro on all those mobs for the entire pull.

It goes something like this. Our last group make up was myself, Eto (as enhancement), a disc priest, arms warrior and a mage (sorry don't remember the spec). We did everything we were suppose to. Ran into the corner on the left. The mobs would make their way to us, I'd drop Death and Decay, toss out a Howling Blast to try to give a little extra glue to the mix, then start my normal rotation. Icy Touch, Plague Strike and then pass Pestilence, rinse and repeat with a blood boil thrown in here and there when it's off cooldown.

Even doing everything listed, I'm still loosing aggro on one mob or another. Normally, it's early on. I wish I could say I was loosing it to the super mage AoE or to the warrior spinney attack but I was even loosing it to Eto's off spec attacks. He's not the worst enhancement shaman but his DPS isn't that great. Not enough that I should be loosing aggro to him.

I have commonly had issues with aggro against dps in pugs that pull 6.5K or more. I've had issues with pugs that start their rotation with AoE or a big crit. Those things I can understand. I don't like them, but I can understand them.

So my concern becomes what to do now? My gear is pretty good. I have the dodge, parry, health and armor to tank but the aggro issues blow my mind. Sheesh, there has to be something I'm doing wrong.

Elitist Jerks has always been my go to for tanking troubles. But the DK tanking post is leading me to believe I've hit the content level that is going to require me to go duel wield in order to maintain my aggro level. Seriously?

Anyone that knows me knows what a creature of habit I am. Changing spec or rotation or whatever is required to duel wield, will be like learning a new character all over again. I had just gotten to the point where I thought I knew my class. Two-handed, frost tanking. That's what I am, that's what I know. Please don't' tell me I have to change to keep up.

So lay it on me. Give me your thoughts. Tank in need of a little help here!

Falling Victim

Looks like on or both, Eto and I, are falling victim to the "oh, meh this is below our content level, we don't really have to try" bug.

What do I mean by this? I'm sure most of you have done it at times too. You go into a heroic or lower level raid that you have done more then a few dozen times and don't pay attention, fly through, over pulling, under healing, being distracted, etc.

Maybe it's because my gear has gone up tremendously or because I'm getting 'too easy to heal' or just because I'm overconfident in myself, but it never fails it seems in at least 1 heroic a night one of us royally screws up.

Last night it seemed to be me. On 2 heroics, UP and HoS, we wiped a total of 4 times. I can't even remember the last time I had a group wipe in a heroic.

Granted, I had never done HoS on heroic because I think that place is the devil, but still..gah! The first wipe was do to a bad pull on my part so I aggro'd 3 groups and the second was a "near" wipe, somehow the mage survived long enough to end the event with the Dwarf. Have I mention I HATE the cooldown on D&D. *sigh*

No, UP I had no excuse for. Both wipes came on the Gauntlet boss. Eto wasn't healing in the beginning we had a druid healer from the guild. Now I may do this differently then most but I run half way, kill the mobs, the gather up the rest and run into the room at the end of the hallway. Because if D&D is on cool down it's easier for me to have the mobs in a confined room so that I can blood boil and pick them up. The druid couldn't see in the room so he stayed outside. We had Eto picking up the harpoons and when he finally got the guy down on the ground the healer was out of mana so we lost the entire group. Rinse and repeat again before Eto switched to his healing gear and we downed the boss with little to no problem.

Sadly, it again puts a doubt in myself and my ability to hold threat. *sigh*

So chalk it up to silly mistakes because we are over confident in ourselves or because we're not paying attention or even because we're tired I suppose, but it's never really a good thing for the ego.

On a bright note, I ran into a guildie from the Alliance side last night on his Horde toon. He is one of the MTs in Whispers of the Fallen on his warrior and also the raid leader. he took the liberty of inspecting my gear and I was pleasantly surprised when I got praise from him. Why did this delight me so? Well awhile back I wrote about how he had politely and kindly implied that my lock's gear wasn't "good enough" to throw at their T9 progression group. So getting compliments on my gear from him was a nice change of pace. He made a couple simple suggestions, like switching out my belt, which I did and tada...Blizzard's LFR Finder says I can queue up for ICC10. You know, if I ever decide I need to commit suicide.

Besides that? We've got 9 of our 10 spots filled for our raid team! Yay! It's possible we might have the 10th spot as well I just need to talk to a guildie to find out if he is going to raid with us. The break down goes like this:
TANKS:
Kalyara - Main Tank (DK)
Kiwalski - Off Tank (Warrior)

HEALS:
Etolani - Tank Heals (Shaman)
Savilla* - Tank Heals (Disc Priest)
Raggy - Party Heals (Druid)

DPS:
Merkit - Ranged (Warlock)
Shayloah - Ranged (Hunter)
Kat - Melee (Paladin)
Crobin* - Melee (Warrior)
Reyfentasma - Melee (Rogue)

* - These toons are level 65 and very quickly leveling their way up

Happy Tuesday!

Dungeon Dummy Finder

I have officially determined the new LFG system has a few major perks and a major downfalls.

PROS:
1 - I can pug a random heroic or dungeon and have little to no wait time. I think the longest I've waited for a group is 1 minutes 12 seconds.
2 - Easy way to gain extra emblems. Gaining 2 extra emblems on every heroic as long as you do random is crazy! That makes every run 5 - 7 emblems each.
3 - Getting gear is too easy!! I've gotten my second T9 piece and I'm only 19 emblems away from my 3rd. That's with me not really "grinding" the heroics. I do a couple a night then head off to do other things. So, if someone wanted, and I know a couple who have done so, they could have their entire T9 set in just a couple days of long heroic grinds.
4 - The groups are pretty well balanced. I have only had a couple groups where we've had one person be seriously over our gear level or slightly under. Meaning, we've had one or two groups where someone is pulling 2K more dps then everyone else and only 1 or 2 where someone is way under on dps.
5 - Meeting new people!

CONS:
1 - LFG Random allows idiots to get groups when everyone on their normal server has already blacklisted or put them on ignore. (examples to come)
2 - Getting gear is TOO easy! That's right, it's a pro and a con. I've seen too many people with good gear, good emblem gear, that still don't know how to play their class. Cause you know, gear can only get you so far. If you're decked out in all emblem gear and still only pulling 1K - 1.5K dps, then it's not the gear, is the player.
3 - Everyone thinks their a rock star! Or better yet they get the power of Group Lead and think they are the Almighty. (examples to come)

So, anyone else seeing these things? Don't get me wrong, I love, love, love the new LFG system because it makes getting into chain heroics no longer require you to find 4 other people that want to run them back to back and then waiting 20 - 30 minutes while people afk or while you look for replacements when someone has to go.

Now, as I said LFG seems to be Blizzards way of throwing idiots, who would not normally get to run instances/heroics, off on the rest of us who work our butts off to get where we are and did it by being NICE and knowing how to play. Why do those "idiots" not normally get to run? Because everyone on their server has already put them on ignore, won't run with them, won't guild them, etc.

Why are other players doing this to them? Because those idiots are just that - idiots. They are the mouthy, know-it all, holy-er then thou, rude, abrasive, bossy players that have no clue how to play their class.

To the other extreme, you have those people that have super dps but are only worried about pushing those high numbers and don't care what they have to do to get it. They have no regard to threat at all. They will start their rotation, pop AoE or toss their highest crit attack without waiting to make sure the tank has aggro.

These extremist, in most cases, are worse then the idiots we've found. I've had Paladins pulling 6.5K dps that pay no attention at all to their treat. They will randomly pull mobs, lay the smack down before I even have time to pass pestilence or even mistarget and decide they need to OT one of the mobs. Not to mention the mages and warlocks that will down one target and instead of loosing the proc that will ensure them the massive crits, turn and automatically cast it on a group that I haven't pulled yet, just because it's too important not to loose that boosted arcane barrage or incinerate.

So, we have the extremists and the idiots. Now I won't spend a lot of time on the ones that have just decided that having a random group of people they will never see again means they can be rude and abrasive. Those are the ones that have no courtesy and think that they don't need to watch their language or that downing other players is acceptable. This group is also where we find the "I have the power!" players. These are the ones that got designated party leader in the random build of the group and think that this give them the ability to boss everyone around, pull the mobs and bitch when the tank doesn't pull them off. This is the crazy dps Paladin pulling 896 dps in ToC who took it upon themselves to start every encounter without allowing time for the healer to get mana, etc. Sorry dude, group lead doesn't make you God!

Seriously, people! Just because you're in a random group with other players you are likely to never see again doesn't mean you can act like complete morons! What happened to courtesy and patience? If anything, having the random LFG system should reinforce that. We have to explain these fights, we have to mark the mobs because we're not use to running with each other and I'm not use to your spiky damage that may pull aggro so give me a chance to build up some cushion!

*sigh* Think I'm going to need the ability to ignore more then 50 people Blizz.

Gear Score Junky

So I've officially depressed myself. =P

Gear scores are the devil! Even to those of us who use to use it to judge content level ability.

So my DK's WoW Hero's score is 2361. Her BeImba! score is 537. Not too bad, or so I thought.

Until I made the mistake of checking another frost DK on the sites. Now I greatly respect this player and consider her a friend. She's a reader of my blog and a member of my guild (on an alt) but OMG, her gear score is 2710!!

Now, don't start screaming at me. I know I really can't compare my gear score to another toon who is doing much higher content then me. But, seriously, thats enough to humbled someone! =P

Oh, well, so I've been humbled for the day. *sigh*

Happy Friday!

Like Mother...Like Son?

So, I'm so extremely excited about the Christmas present that Santa is bringing to my oldest son this year. Any guesses?

He's getting a laptop! Why does this excite me so much? Because I can play WoW with him!!

I have no idea why I am so giggy excited about the idea of rolling another lowbie toon to play with him but I am.

I know this will probably be a toon I never get leveled past 20ish and seriously will never see level 80, since he will roll his toon on Eto's RaF account which doesn't even have BC, but I'm still excited. The idea of being able to spend time with him (he's 9) in the game, showing him around and seeing the world through his eyes, is awesome!

Update:
The guild is doing awesome. We got the 80 Party Heal Druid and the wonder boy OT warrior into the guild last night. Sav and Cro are into their mid 40s on their RaF toons. That puts us even closer to being able to raid consistently.

We lead our first random raid last night. It was the first time I've been a raid leader since BC. Kind of excited and scary at the same time. We only did FL and XT, since XT was the weekly raid. However, just doing those was awesome! Oh, and guess what...we did FL on HARDMODE! Yay, go us.

Afterwards Eto, Merk (the warlock), Raggy and Kiwi (druid and warrior) hit up the new 5 man instances.

Let me just they...the first time through, Blizzard really made it feel like an epic encounter. Forge of Souls and the second dungeon are pretty simple. The Gauntlet run through the tunnel in dungeon 2 can be a little tricky but otherwise pretty easy. And Merk was right Lady Sylvanis did show up to save him and us while she was at it.

HoR on the other hand was a totally different story. I HATE that place. In the first round you're in a room doing a battle similar to VH. You get 5 rounds of mobs, containing mages, priests and hunters. Sheesh, does Blizzard just hate us tanks? Then on round 5 and 10 you get a boss. The bosses are pretty easy but it's the casters that really hurt you.

Then it's off to fight a few more trash mobs on your way to save Lady Sylvanis. After you finally find her, it's another gauntlet run but this time...(shield eyes if you don't want spoilers) you're running from the Lich King. It makes for a totally epic feel to the fight. You have to periodically stop and fight while Lady Sylvanis breaks downs some wall. The whole time Arthas is coming towards you, spawning Abombs and Witch Doctors.

I highly recommend that everyone follow the dialogue on these instances your first couple times through. It's totally worth it, even if you're not so into the lore.

Icecrown 5 Mans

Done some research and I think I'm about as ready as I can be to go into the new 5 man instances. Granted, no where near ready for the raid but the strategy on the 5 mans content won't be totally overwhelming for me.

Thought I'd share this research with you guys. Now I don't claim to have done these instances myself, so this is jut what I've read.

Forge Soul: There are only 2 bosses in the first encounter of the 5 man citadel instances.
Bronjahm the Godfather of Soul
This is the first boss encounter in the new 5 man content. From everything I've read he kind of works like the guardians in Ulduar with the spark that goes between thm.

Bronjahm needs to be kited around the round slightly. he will randomly rip a spirit soul from a player and draw this to him. The Tank will need to kite the boss away from the soul while the DPS focus on taking it down. If it does reach him, it will heal him for a substantial amount of health. When he reaches about 25% health he will start doing AoE damage to the entire party so this is the time to pop your cooldowns. bloodlust, etc.

Devourer of Souls
Seems the second boss encounter in the instance is going to be a little more tricky then the first.

First off, he does a "Mirrored Soul" attack. This will share any incoming damage dealt to the boss with a random party member. Luckily, it seems he will jump targets from the tank to the member who will be his victim a few moments before he casts the spell. This should give healers a heads up and allow them to focus their heals on the target.

Secondly, he will call forth dozens of intangible spirits that will attack the entire party. Sadly, there is nothing that can really be done about these because they are not targetable. So, keep your party up as best you can and carry on.

The biggest annoyance for this boss, or so it seems to me, is that he, like C'thun's Eye and Mimiron's Lasor Barrage, shoots a pew pew beam that travels counter clockwise around the room. This needs to be avoided at all costs.

Pit of Saron: There is 3 fights in the second encounter.
Forgemaster Garfrost
The first thing for tanks to be aware of is that the boss has several adds near him that when pulled, will trigger the fight.

Now this fight seems to be very similar to Volkhan in Halls of Lightning. Surprise, surprise Blizzard likes reusing their stuff, who would have thought!

He has three major things to take into consideration. He does a knock back ability, a stun and AoE debuffs that stack and increase vulnerability to frost.

The dps and healer can clear the debuff stacks by standing behind the large saronite boulders he throws at them. However, the tank can only clear his/her debuffs when Garfrost punts them backwards so that he can run to the forge to get another weapon. At this time, the tank needs to run behind the boulder in order to reduce the number of stacks he/she is holding.

Krick the Ick
Yay for the Ick.

This guy is very straightforward. Don't stand in the nasty pools of ick on the floor and run away from his bombs. How simple can you get? Just be sure to pay attention as the bombs do AoE damage when they explode, otherwise tank and spank!

The Guntlet/Scourgelord Tyrannus
So I'm not going to go into a lot of detail about why you do what you do here because it could be considered spoilers. But here is the general run down.

The tank is going to really have to prove himself/herself here. Every will be running to avoid falling objects, the tank will have to pick up the mobs while running and pull them along in order for the party to escape safely.

It is important here for the DPS to remember the tank does not have time to build sufficient aggro so DON'T DPS, just run. The same applies to the healer, heal as little as possible to avoid pulling aggro on yourself. If the tank is geared well enough, avoid Renew, Earth Shield, etc. This will reduce the amount of heal aggro generated.

Once out and adds are killed, Tyrannus becomes the focus of your dps. It's another DPS race, pop your heroism if you have it and kill him as quickly as possible otherwise your group becomes overrun with undead zombies and will be a wipe.

Well, that's the insight I have into the first two encounters in the new Icecrown Citidale 5 man. There is one wing left, Halls of Reflection, that I will update on later.

Until then, have fun!

Possible DK Tanking Changes with the Patch

So I found this in a "blue" post on MMO-Champion:

Effective Health and Tanking
Too many of you are using EH (which is a very powerful concept for purposes of trying to decide how to gear your tank) as the number that indicates tank awesomeness. The higher the EH, the better tank I must be. It's just not that simple.

I have yet to see any data that suggests warriors wipe relatively more than other tanks. What so many of these posts say are:

1) I wipe a lot. It must be my class.
2) Because my EH is lower, I am guessing that I wipe more often.
3) I'm not sure if I wipe more often or not, but please just give me a buff so I feel better.

The only argument I have seen so far that seems at all reasonable is that stamina scaling or other factors might eventually lead to warriors (and DKs) having a problem, and that "eventually" could happen in Icecrown. Unfortunately that's impossible to prove or disprove at this stage since it's all speculation. It's definitely something to keep an eye on though.

So the part that is of concern is highlighted in the last paragraph.

"The only argument I have seen so far that seems at all reasonable is that stamina scaling or other factors might eventually lead to warriors (and DKs) having a problem, and that "eventually" could happen in Icecrown."

It appears from reading through the post, a lot of warriors are complaining that their tanking ability isn't as high as Druids, Paladins and possibly DKs.

I'm not sure if I agree or disagree with that statement. I believe all tanks have perks based on their class. Druids have ungodly amounts of health and armor. Paladins have great AoE ability and not to mention Lay on Hands. Deathknights have Death and Decay combined with Pestilence and Rune Strike. Warriors have shield bash in the mix of other class specific abilities.

So I'm not sure I agree with the logic behind the complaints but what does worry me is that they are talking about stamina scaling us?!? Seriously, we don't have any more stamina boost than a Paladin has. We sure don't have the amount of boosts that a druid gets.

Yes, Frost Presence does give me an added 6% boost to my stamina. 6%! That really isn't that much! I've picked enchants and gems to help it boost where I can. I currently have all epic stamina gems in my sockets...that gives me +32 stamina each. I am using 2 dragon's eye gems for stamina that gives me +52 stamina each and I have a couple stamina boost enchants.

Rightfully, I've worked hard to get my health pool up to 32,000+ self buffed. Compared to many of the other tanks I pass in Dalaran and near summoning stones for raids...I'm not nearly as high as most of them.

So with that being said, if you "scale" my stamina boosts too much, that nice little health pool that I've been trying to build up could drop back below 30,000.

I'm not sure what boosts warriors get but I'm sure they wouldn't be too happy to see their health pool dropped either.

On the reverse of this. Deathknights do have a large mitigation percentage. The idea for me is to NOT get hit but when I do, to have the health to buy time for a healer to recover me.

With a druid, their avoidance is much lower, but they can take more hits and still recover.

Paladins and warriors have the ability to block. This is a stat that I can't get. I don't have the ability to carry a shield. Not to mention Paladins want to get hit in order to help them gain threat.

All things being said and considered, this could be a big downfall for DKs more so then warriors I think. It's not unusual now to see "LF Tank for xxxx (no DKs)" in the looking for group channel. Lowering our stamina could make this even more common. We're already classified by many of our fellow gamers as "dumbknights", why give them another reason to doubt our abilities?

Maybe it's time for me to rethink the idea of rolling a Paladin.

I may be totally off here and they are talking about the nerfs that have already taken effect, and I hope that's the case. Maybe they aren't leaning towards nerfing our stamina pools again. If that's the case, then I'm ok with where my stamina pool is now, just don't lower it again!

Holy Hiatus...

Wow, I haven't updated in an entire week! What's wrong with me? I've been on vacation.

Though, not totally from WoW.

I did spend a lot of time trying out The Sims 3. Which, I will say, is pretty dang awesome. I was a long time Sims player, well before I found WoW. Played the original Sims and then The Sims 2 but waited a long time before trying the third one. To say the least, I am very impressed and LOVE the game.

Though my week long vacation did entail it's fair share of WoW time. Especially over the weekends while Eto was home with me.

Where to start....

Bountiful Harvest Festival -
I got my DK from 1 - 350 cooking doing nothing but cooking the silly Thanksgiving food! Wow, Blizzard must really want to give people and easy way to up the skill. Not that I'm ungrateful, just seriously in shock. I leveled my lock's cooking the old fashion way and was a little annoyed that pretty much anyone can get max cooking skill with little to no work.

Yeah, you have to kill level 1 critters to get the turkey but that's it. Then Bam! level 350 cooking and you're on your way to the Northrend stuff. Enough said.

Kalyara also got her dumb title and the crazy turkey pet. **Let me just say, standing around watching a DK kill 3 guards, in a no stat dress and hat, waiting for her health to get down to 15,000 before flagging yourself and commencing to pull out your wolves, fire elemental and your JC boar in order to prove how awesome of a Shaman you are...is so totally cool!**

Yeah I may be a little bitter about that. I had done nothing to all the Alliance toons running into our cities to sit at our tables. But then it was my own fault, as I had gone to the wrong place thinking it was the IF table causing myself to aggro three guards that I had to kill in order to sit at the table. But waiting for my health to drop, pulling out all your cooldowns and then only managing to kill me because you got the heal off before I could silence you...nice. Though I will give her credit for being smart enough to run into IF for safety before I could recover my body.

Ulduar Updates:
We actually got another fight down during last weeks Ulduar raid. We managed to get Razorscale down as well as our normal FL and XT. I'm pretty sure we could have gotten further but had a healer that had to bail on us. We had no wipes up to that point. I was very impressed and curious to see how far we get this week.

We did what?!?:
So, Eto and I had this crazy idea to attempt Kara, just for fun, with only the two of us. Well..I was very surprised that we not only managed to clear it, we managed to clear it with only 2 wipes. Neither of which, were on Price. We had a little trouble with Curator, before finally getting Eto to switch to his healy spec and then we had a little trouble figuring out how to manage Morose.

But otherwise, it was a blast!!! Thankfully, Morose was nice enough to give me Mongoose on my first attempt! =)

Next adventure....Zul'Aman. /nod

We're now adding Kara to our weekly duo raid/rep grind. Still trying for the mounts in ZG.

Well I'm sure there is stuff I am forgetting but I'll think of it later.

Ohh...3 days away from getting my Tier 9 shoulders!

and the beat goes on...

Looks like it's been a few day since my last post.

Interestingly enough, I haven't played much over the past 4 days but what little I have played has been productive.

First on the Warrior-Wonderboy front:
It's a little odd who you end up making friends with. Eto and I have spent a lot of time with our new warrior tank and his boyfriend the awesome "Party Healy Druid" from the Ulduar raid.

Seems that we actually kinda like these guys. Once I spent some time talking to Raggy (the druid) I found out they were fun and interesting people. So when I said we somehow managed to lock ourselves to helping Kiwi (that's not his toons name, it's something like Kiwlaski or something but Kiwi is what I call him) get his tanking gear, I mean we locked ourselves to helping them.

Which I won't complain out. It's actually been kind of fun and I'm very proud of his progression. It's taken a little bit of education and some coaching from Eto but he's getting some really decent gear.

So far we've been using the shopping list located over on the Tank Like a Girl blog. Since I'm not a warrior and have never played one, I wasn't sure exactly how much like DK tanking warriors were. Thanks to Kadomi's shopping list we knew exactly what to start looking for.

He's gotten the helm for H-ToC, I've made him the Titanium Earthguard Ring and he's gotten enough emblems for his T8 chest. We've enchanted (properly this time) and put nice epic gems in the gear as well. I'll be excited to see what kind of gear score he has now...as soon as he logs off in his Prot gear and not in his Fury gear. =P He may just be Ulduar ready by this weeks raid after all!

So, as for myself? I got my T8 head last night. I'm pleasantly surprised at my own stats lately. My avoidance, stamina, hit, defense..they are all pretty good. I'm a little below my hit cap. Still need to work on that. But my total avoidance is over 40% now and Eto is complaining that I'm getting boring to heal.

We took the weekend off from raiding. Since we did end up raiding 4 nights last week. Naxx on our lower 80s on Monday, Ulduar on Tues and Weds and then Ulduar on Thursday with out Alliance toons.

Ulduar on Thursday went pretty well. Our Alliance side guild has most of Ulduar on far. We downed 7 of the bosses this past Thursday. The only thing they have issues with...Yogg, of course. But still it's fun to go in with them and just have some fun. Definitely, less stressful then Ulduar Horde side.

Our break from raiding, wasn't a true "break" really. We spent Sunday night 2 manning ZG. So still a raid but without the stress. And I did solo Hakar, well after I killed Eto anyway.

He has decided that getting out toons to exalted with the Zandalar tribe is a good goal to hit before Cataclysm. With the idea that we get the nifty shoulder enchant and put it on the heirloom shoulders we plan to give to our Goblins. Even though this enchant won't activate till they hit 55, but oh well. Still something to do.

Happy Thanksgiving! And have an awesome week!

The Continuing Saga...Oh, the drama!

Ulduar - Part 2

The night fell, clear and cold in Northrend. Kalyara was feeling a little weary from her previous failures the night before. She couldn't let this hold her down. She had done her best, she had held her head high and done her part. She couldn't, no wouldn't, keep beating herself up. No Sir! She was going to go back in there and show them!

Maybe, just maybe tonight she would have stronger allies, surely it would go better tonight...surely...

We'll skip past the painful group formation of this raid. Since previous history proves that our raid leader, from here out known as Dr. Don't-Know, is seriously unable to form a decent group because he's trying to play the "nice" raid leader and take anyone and everyone, regardless of gear or skill.

Fast forward to the first mob encounter. Again, we're in the same position as last night, posed to try to get to Ignis because Dr.Don'tKnow read on line that we need to pull one of the Molten Colossus all the way back to XT-002's door to prevent the healers being silenced by them both back to back. Yay! No big deal right?

*face palm* The OT, our beloved, well skilled though under geared, warrior from the previous night isn't paying attention and I end up dragging both the monsters towards XT's door. Now I realize I have them, I avoid all multi-target damage so that I don't build too much aggro on the second one and stop moving. Finally, our warrior-wonder-boy, finally realizes and taunts off me but only to die an almost instant, painless death because his health is still way too low.

Now, insert the Full-of-himself-retardin, and I use this term lightly. Normally, I avoid using acronyms for any class, I don't believe in retardins, huntards or dumbknights. But this guy's attitude, if nothing else, earned him this beloved title.

Mr. Retardin, looses his patience, after one pull..which I can't blame because I was begging Dr.Don'tKnow to try to find us another OT and let Warrior-Wonder-Boy dps instead. I just did it somewhat tactfully in whispers and not openly in raid chat. And I didn't blast his gear and tanking abilities to the rest of the raid either.

So, Mr. Retardin, has a tanking set. Wow! Nice to know now, could have told us last night before the wipefest! And...it's not a bad tanking set. His stats are pretty good for a tank. Maybe..maybe...dare I say...will we make it after all?

We successfully pull the Molten Colossus and manage to kill them both with no problems! Mr. Retardin goes back to his ret set and leaves the off-tanking to our warrior-wonder-boy. The rest of the trash is no problem and we are ready to pull Ignis.

Dr.Don'tKnow, goes through is explanation, we remind him of a few things he didn't know about and I pull the boss. I'm not having any problem with Ignis himself but I'm also getting and holding the aggro on the Iron Constructs. Not surprisingly, we wipe.

No big deal, that's alright. Now the group has seen the fight. We know where to move, when to move and we got him down to 78%. My hopes are up.

*Release and run back into the instance*
Raid Warning: Let's move on to the Antechamber, we can just skip these harder bosses

What?! We are going to give the boss one attempt and pass him up for more trash and an attempt at another boss that people have never seen? Ugh! I'm all for progression but sheesh, give it at least one more go before giving up.

On to the Antechamber, trash clears go fine. We make it to the Assembly of Iron. Again, Dr.Don'tKnow explains the fight. I'm going to take on Steelbreaker while our warrior-wonder-boy takes on Stormcaller Brundir because "he'll do the least amount of damage in the first phase". I have my instructions...pull the boss to the right of the door keep him out of the blue circles, avoid getting close to the other guys, etc. Once Steelbreaker goes down I need to pick up Runemaster Molgeim. Got it.

Goes something like this -
Kalyara runs in, grabs Steelbreaker and kites him to the right of the door.
Warrior-Wonder-Boy runs in....dies...two shots.
Healers die.
Kaly dies.
Raid Wipes.
Release and run back in.
"So I guess I'm going to have to tank this too, huh?" - Mr. Retardin
"OMG, I'm sorry but there are two people in this group that I never care to play with again"
Druid Party Healer leaves the group.
Warrior-Wonder-Boy leaves the group.

Thus the drama begins to unfold...
Now to this point, Mr. Retardin had been tanking the trash, which I was unaware of. But did explain why the trash pulls leading up to the Iron Council were going so well.

As for the Druid Party Healer apparently she is the real life girlfriend of Warrior-Wonder-Boy and didn't like the fact that Mr. Retardin and the other druid had commented on him not being geared well enough to be tanking this far into Ulduar.

If that's not enough, now we have Dr.Don'tKnow pulling the drama queen (king)/oh poor me routine. "I can't handle this right now", "sigh, sorry that I took up everyone's time", "I don't pick people based on their purples, they have skills" and my favorite "if you want to be an elitist jerk then feel free to leave".

I attempt to make the point to Dr.Don'tKnow that we're not being elitist jerks but that he has thrown warrior-wonder-boy to the wolves. He knew his gear was bad. But still he brought him into something well above his gear ability and expected him to OT.

His gear was barely good enough to do heroics with. He was defense capped but that is about all he had going for him. His health pool was extremely low, 23,000 buffed, his gear score was only 355 and he was not enchanted or gemmed.

Now I'm not saying anything was wrong with the warrior. Honestly, I like him as a player. He has the potential to be an awesome tank. I commend Dr.Don'tKnow for wanting to help him gear. That's awesome but that's also what heroics, emblems and crafted gear are for. You can't bring a seriously under geared tank into something above his level.

It's easier to carry dps and even one healer, if the tanks and main healers are well geared. But you can't do that when you're the tank. Not when you are that far below.

So, thus ends our Ulduar group for the night. A few angry people because they are now locked to Ulduar and didn't down a single boss. A couple more angry people because they feel like they have been shunned. Then a few that just think the entire group is full of dumb asses.

I get a whisper from the Druid Party Heals shortly after getting back to Dalaran. Wanting to know my opinion on her boyfriend's tanking. I kindly tell her what I honestly believe. He has skill, he has potential, that's not easy to find. Now he needs the gear to back it up. That's the easy part.

And somehow...I've committed myself to helping him learn and get that gear. *sigh*

Happy Thursday!

Ulduar - Annoyance and Excitement

Eto and I got hit up, by the same weekly PUG group last night, to come tank and heal for their Ulduar run.

Don't get me wrong I was very leery of going along with this guy for various reasons.
1. He doesn't really understand balanced group make up.
2. This is the group that I had the problems with Oingaboinga the previous week.
3. They did Ulduar 2 nights last week and only downed FL o.O

Now granted they had bad tanks the week previous and on the second night ended up running with 4 warriors but still. Oingaboinga was not on the line up for the night so I agreed to main tank it as long as Eto was my healer.

*sigh*

We ended up with a brand new level 80 Disc Priest. When I say brand new, I mean he hit 80 a few minutes before joining the group. The Armory still showed him as 79.

The OT that we had was "a great warrior" the RL found. Who sadly had a gear score of 355. He was pretty squishy and ultimately, ended our progression for the night when he had to start actually tanking things.

So this is how the night went:

Take 30 minutes after the group fills to finally get everyone inside the instance. Had one person afk and never come back. Wait another 15 minutes to get a replacement and get them summoned. The RL begins explaining the the FL fight and instructs people to just pick a vehicle it doesn't really matter. Who cares that gear score of the driver plays a part in the amount of health of the vehicle? "That only matters in hardmodes" so says the RL. After 3/4 of the group wipes on the trash while trying to take out the towers, we finally get to FL. Now I realize that the newbie priest and warrior are teaming up for a demolisher. The Priest informs the group that her gear may be playing a part in the health of the machine. But again the RL insists it doesn't matter. We shoot down the pyrite. Not nearly enough if you ask me but he instructs us to pull.

We pull the boss, the first two pursuits go pretty well then he goes after the priest/warrior vehicle, they die after one hit from him. *sigh* We're down a demolisher and the pyrite is gone. Insert wipe number 1.

Rinse and repeat...6 times! We wipe 6 times on FL before some how Finally we convince the RL that we MUST HAVE MORE PYRITE! Eto and I some how manage to keep FL pissed off enough that he pursues us 3 out of the 4 times, allowing everyone to finally down the damn thing.

Sheesh, Flame Leviathan really should not be this difficult.

Moving on to XT-002. I love this fight. I'm not sure if it's her silly animations and voice overs or the mechanics of it. But I love the XT fight.

The RL does his run down of the boss fight and we get started. Things go pretty smooth, loose our RL/Mage pretty early on but manage a battle rez and he's back up. The OT is keeping the bomb bots occupied, heart takes considerable damage and then boom, we loose the OT and a couple DPS.

Now we have her down to about 16% when the RL automatically starts talking about what we need to do differently next time. He wants to wipe it and start again, but did he forget we have an all powerful, all amazing feral druid among us. Now this is why I love druids! He quickly switches from kitty to bear and rounds the bomb bots back up.

XT has eaten a couple by this point and gained some of her health back but we're not giving up. I refused to give up as long as Eto was alive and keeping me up, we had a few good dps and a 3 minutes left on the enrage timer.

It's slow going, gain a little, loose a little. The druid is putting forth an amazing effort to jump between bear and kitty. Tanking the bots when he has too and still trying to dps as much as he can. We're down to about 10% and a minute or so left before she goes ape shit on me.

At this point I don't see any reason not to burn everything we have. Pop the ghoul, pop the army, burn your cooldowns, if we don't beat the enrage timer I'm toast and it will be a wipe. We have two healers up, Eto and a Resto Druid. 3 of our dps are still going at it. We can do this..we can do this....


WE DID IT!! And the awesome thing? We did it on our first attempt. This is what you call people being on the ball. The few people that knew the fight and knew their class...they were the ones that made this one possible!







Now I wish I could say we had as much luck with the rest of the attempts we made in Ulduar last night but sadly we didn't. The lack of AoE dps made Rasorscale pretty much impossible. We didn't have the DPS to down the Dark Rune Sentinels, plus the other adds, quick enough so the dragon wasn't taking enough damage while on the ground. We wiped this one 3 or 4 times, never getting him below 72%, before the RL decided to move on.

Ignis. What can I say about this one? Sadly, we couldn't make it to him. The OT didn't last more then 2 hits from the guardians before he was down.

With all that being said, I wouldn't call it a waste. People got to see a couple bosses fall and I did get the tank bracers off of FL! =)

So, we'll try again tonight and see what happens. Though I'm pretty sure I'm in for another couple hundred gold in repair bills! Fun time with Ulduar, oh my!

The Perfect Pug?! *sigh*

Ulduar last night didn't go so well.

This was the weekly raid group, Horde side, that Eto and I were approached to join. A little background information on this group may be helpful. It's a new guild leader, never before raid leader, trying to build a raiding guild. As we all know, if you read my blog, recruitment on Horde side is a pain in the ass since there are so many new guilds.

Anyway, we pick up group and the RL starts inviting the 6 people that signed up to attend. The OT was suppose to be another Dk that we had ran Ony with the week prior. Well he informs the DK that she could DPS tonight since Oingaboinga was going to come along to tank. Oingaboinga was the warrior tank the RL had told us about before. He joined his guild, yada, yada, yada Well a couple days after joining the RL's guild, Oingaboinga did a ninja quit to join another entry level raiding guild.

So I said whatever and went about my business fishing stuff for Eto to make Fish Feasts for the raid. A couple minutes later Oinga joins the group and automatically starts instructing the RL on what classes we "must" have and advises that getting a Bear or Paladin MT needs to happen and no more DK dps.

Well, I politely advise that I am not DPS and if he is a tank then we don't need anymore tanks. This turns into a huge one way debate on his part about how we must have a druid, a paladin and a priest in the party cause we can't do Ulduar without their buffs. I switch from my fishing pole to my tank weapon to bring my health back to it's normal unbuffed state and kindly advise we are geared well enough for entry level Ulduar and that this is a pug and we can't be super picky on what classes we accept.

In the mean time the RL invites another Shaman to join the party. Oinga asks if he's DPS and is informed no he's a healer. The "I'm too awesome for you" warrior attitude continues to get worse and he insists having two of the same class healer is a waste of space so the RL boots the shaman from group...YES HE BOOTED HIM!

I was shocked. I don't even think shocked is the right word for it. Seriously, we just turned away a well geared healer because Mr. I'mtooGood thinks having two shaman healers is stupid?

Next strike against the warrior, he begins debating that the two healers we have, a priest and a shaman, need to be party heals and that we have to bring in a Paladin for MT healing. *sigh* This is what really gets me started.

I can't stand a know-it-all in the group that thinks he know exactly how every single class plays and stereotypes them based on their class. "A shaman is not MT heals, cause they can chain heal..he's on party". "A holy priest is not built for MT healing, he's on party".

Again, I advise that my holy priest does awesome at MT healing and if you don't' play the class don't assume you know what the person is good at. When it comes down to it, the class build plays a minor part in the performance of the player, yes. But in the end, it's really what the player is use to doing.

I have always healed MT as holy. Yes, my mana conservation is not as great as a Disc priest. My damage mitigation to the tank is not as awesome but I know how to conserve my mana and when to start healing the tank. Priests drop huge heals all at one time. If we know how to time those heals with our HoTs, they are better spent on a tank then tossing around in party.

This debate continues on and on, while the warrior continues to insist we get a Druid (boomkin, he doesn't want a druid healer) and a Paladin (for healing not for DPS). Now it doesn't' matter what position in the group those two classes play if you're wanting them simply for their buffs.

My entire point in this whole argument was that the group is a 100% pug. We don't have the room to ensure that we have only one of every class in the group. If we have two shaman, two druids or two DKs, so be it. As long as we have the numbers to down the bosses and keep moving, it really doesn't matter. If your gear is so dependant on the buffs of other players that you can't preform with out them...YOU DON'T NEED TO BE IN A ULDUAR PUG!

If the truth be known, which I never brought up, Oninga's gear score was only 480. He was the lowest scored member in the raid. Yes he had stamina. He had 1000 more health unbuffed then I did. But if you're valuing health over other stats, you have a more serious problem then getting paladin auras and druid buffs in the raid.

Needless to say, I politely excused myself from the raid group, wished them all luck and went back to playing my lowbie Alliance hunter.

I play this game to have fun, not to listen to a big headed, bossy ass, want-to-be raid leader turn my fun game into a job.

Wanna know what really gets me pissed off...assumptions. If you don't know the class, don't play the class and don't know the player...don't assume cause you're making and ass out of yourself!

Circle of Tanks

So I was tagged for this one....(thanks Askevar!) This should be fun.



Circle of Tanks?
What is the name, class, and spec of your primary tank?
Kalyara, Frost DK, 15/51/05

What is your primary tanking environment? (i.e. raids, pvp, 5 mans)
10 man raids, heroics

What is your favorite tanking spell for your class and why?
Wow, this is a hard question. Honestly, I love all my DK tanking abilities. My all time favorites would have to be Unbreakable Armor, Death and Decay, Obliterate and Bloodboil. Why? Well obviously Death and Decay allows me to get aggro on multiple mobs at one time and in an AoE friendly game, that's important. Unbreakable Armor because with my already high Dodge/Parry percent and that added armor I feel the ultimate power when I watch my health meter NOT move. Obliterate because even as a tank...I can generate some decent damage every now and then. Bloodboil..because it's fun! =)

What tanking spell do you use least for your class and why?
Tanking spell...hmmm. Not sure I have a specific tanking spell that I use the least. I love my Army of the Dead but sadly only get to use it and my ghoul (glyphed for of course) in last ditch efforts.

What do you feel is the biggest strength of your tanking class and why?
We do not need rage or mana!! Enough said. No down time for a DK tank!

What do you feel is the biggest weakness of your tanking class and why?
This one is a hard question for me. I haven't played any other tanking class personally. I have very little to compare it to. In my opinion, from what I do know of other tank classes, DKs are pretty well balanced in the AoE and single target fields. We do decent damage and generate decent threat from it. We also have respectable Dodge/Perry numbers even if we can't get the Block value. I'd say we have few weaknesses that I have come across.

In a raiding environment, what do you feel, in general, is the best tanking assignment for you?
I think this depends on the other tanks in the group. Sadly, DKs make decent OTs because we can AoE tank. I hate this. I hate people assuming we have to be OT because we can AoE tank when the warrior/druid can't. But we do also make great one target tanks. I have ran VoA and other raids with a warrior/druid who held the adds easily while I MT the one target boss. So, we can go either way...as long as people don't "assume" we have to be the OT because we can AoE tank.

What tanking class do you enjoy tanking with most and why?

I am going to pick a DK of course. Since playing my boyfriends Paladin once or twice in a heroic doesn't really count as tanking experience, DK tanking is all I know.

What tanking class do you enjoy tanking with least and why?

If I had to "guess"...I don't like the idea of having to play a warrior or a druid tank. Mainly because the idea of having to get rage before I pull sounds like a pain to me.

What is your worst habit as a tank?
Forgetting my cooldowns. Yeah I'm really bad at that. I rely on Eto (my personal pocket healer) alot when it comes to saving my ass. My second worse habit...the yank ability. It drives people crazy. I'm pretty yank happy.

What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while tanking?
Face pulling...dps pulling..."oh I can tank it". I get very angry if we have dps in the group that decide to pull for me. I also get aggravated when other DKs decide to yank something. You know what. I'm tanking, loose your yank button unless you're pulling off the healers/casters. I might also get aggravated with trigger happy DPS. *sigh* I have a lot of tanking pet peeves.

Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other tanks?
Yes. We're not as simple as Paladins but I think we're all pretty equal in the end. We all have our strengths and weaknesses. That's what makes each of us an asset.

What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a tank?
Omen. I leave and breath Omen and grid. I want to know if I'm loosing threat before it happens. I also rely on Eto a lot to let me know if someone has aggro since he stares at grid most of the fight, he knows as soon as some else gets the aggro indicator on their name.

What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your class?
Death Knights are a "give me" class. They assume all DKs are worthless noobs. That makes me sad. I agree to some degree that getting a freebie level 55 toon gave us a lot of level 80s that have no idea how to raid/instance etc. But some of us really spent the time to learn the class and how to play it well. I hate when people assume everyone in a certain class is the same. Kind of like the "Huntards"...you can't group everyone together...we're not all the same.

What do you feel is the most difficult thing for new tanks of your class to learn?
I think DKs have a disadvantage on this front. You start at level 55 and do not have as much time to get use to your spec as other classes. For this reason I think it's very important for a tank DK to start and level with the spec they intent to use at 80. Learn it and live it. It's the only way you can really understand it in 25 short levels.

Effective Health or Avoidance and why?
I like to balance between the two. But in the end I love health!

What tanking class do you feel you understand least?
Druids. I have played DKs, have a boyfriend that played a Paladin through BC and was guild leader for a warrior tank that needed a lot of help. So I've read a lot on warrior tanking. Druids...they just confuse me.

Do you strive primarily for balance between your tanking stats, or do you stack some much higher than others, and why?
Defense, defense, defense. After that I try to balance them out. I love Dodge more then parry, not sure why. In the end I tend to lean towards stamina a lot for gems. I figure if I am defensed capped and I have a decent avoidance rate then leave the rest up to my stamina. Give the healers a little extra room when I do get hit to heal me back up.

Go Tank GO!!

Wow, yesterday was busy, busy, busy!!

I think I've overcome my fears. For the most part. Last night was full of enough WoW to make up for any lack I had there of this weekend.

Started off simple. Let's run H-DTK, it's the daily, and would put me 1 emblem away from my Sigil of Insolence. Would have been the last I needed, IF I had remembered to pick up the daily heroic quest before running AN the night before. But it went pretty smooth, even with the stupid server lag that keeps sneaking up lately. The funny part of the entire run? It was ALL DKs, with the exception of Eto healing. Kinda nuts. Maybe I need to /who the people that whisper me before joining. I had the first 3 people, all DKs. One dropped, so I invited the next person to whisper me...also another DK.

Anyway, finished up DTK, I did have the quest for this one! Then why not do the normal daily..on heroic, it's HoL and I still want those shoulders. Pick up a much better blended group this time. Run goes super quick. Probably the quickest HoL run I've done yet. Oh, oh, oh, they dropped!! Iron Dwarf Smith Pauldrons off of General Bjarngrim! Yay!

So, get back to Dalaran and realize I'm 1 emblem short of getting my Tier 8 chest. You know we HAVE to do a quick h-VH run! The group we got for this one was really, really low on the dps meters so portals were popping before we had the last mobs killed in the prior one. But I think that's what happens when you run with a feral tank druid in kitty form and a new level 80 warrior. Still didn't have any problems and it gave me what I needed! Dropped my enchant and crap ton of stamina gems into Valorous Darkruned Chestguard and I was finally over 32,000 health unbuffed and over 40% Dodge/Perry. *happy dance*

Our little newbie level 80 warrior asks if we want to do H-CoS. I had previously been avoiding this one but was feeling pretty good about myself so why not? Off we go, adding a lock and another DK to our group. I had no intentions of trying to make the timer for the drake. I was pretty sure with it being my first time tanking it and the low dps from the warrior, we'd never make it. So I didn't really rush but we had good placement of the groups, the DK was kicking out 3200+ DPS and I dared look up at the timer when we hit the town hall...16 minutes remaining...seriously?!? Well the time stop boss went down and we had 11 minutes left on the timer. I eased through the hall, grabbing groups of elites, finishing them off then moving on. I was trying desperately not to give Eto a heart attack. But I must not have been too hard to heal. We down the Drake boss with 6 minutes left on the timer on my first time though!!!

Only myself and the warrior needed the drake, everyone else had it. Sadly, his 91 beat my 42. But oh well, I got the satisfaction of knowing I tanked CoS, timed run, on my first attempt!

So that wrapped up my eventful evening. Eto went on to successfully heal VoA10 while I headed to bed, a very happy and content DK!

Quiet Night

Ran H-HoL last night. It went very smooth. Had a couple great pug people, including a hunter that I enjoy running with. Everyone was patient, we didn't have any wipes and finished in a timely manner even with the horrible server lag.

Sadly, my shoulders didn't drop. Guess we can keep trying. I know the instance and have completed it successfully so no need to avoid it any longer.

Next to tackle...H-CoS and H-OK. We'll see about those.

Gear Upgrades

Looks like I've been focusing on some of the wrong rep factions. I have three substancial upgrades available to me, pre raid. But it means I'm going to have to overcome my fear of two specific heroics.

Breastplate of the Solemn Council - Revered with Wyrmrest. (Sadly I am only honored)
This will provide me:
+73 Armor
-11 Strength
+14 Stamina
+2 Defense Rating
+56 Expertise

Iron Dwarf Smith Pauldrons - Drop off of General Bjarngrim (1st boss in H-HoL ahhhhh!)
I have avoided tanking this instance. Along with H-HoS and H-CoS, simply because I'm afraid of these three. But, this will provide:
+129 Armor
+24 Strength
+18 Stamina
+10 Defense Raiting
+40 Perry
-24 Expertise

Bindings of Dark Will - Drop in H-CoS.
Stats compared to my current bracers:
+75 Armor
+15 Strength
+36 Stamina
-21 Defense Rating
+30 Perry

With that being said, I could work on getting Bracers of Herald, but I'm not sure which heroic scares me more. CoS or H-OK.
Stats to compare to current on this one:
+107 Armor
+7 Strength
+45 Stamina
-16 Defense Rating
+49 Perry

Now just to make myself get in there and do those heroics. Maybe I'll need a drink or two....

Heroic from Hell

Shadow Council has been experiencing some major lag lately. I'm not talking the normal Dalaran lag. Not even the normal holiday lag. It's really bad. Click to loot and wait about 60 seconds, try to send mail and it's going to take about 3 - 4 MINUTES, need to trade...good look.

So, last night, I was all up for logging out and hitting the couch for a movie and a wow free night. However, Eto was 1 emblem away from his Tier 9 shoulders so we were going to do the daily heroic. No big deal, it's DTK, that's simple and fast, right?

WRONG!

We get the group together and into the instance we go. Yank, yank, pull, pretty smooth up to the last group of mobs in the first hallway. By this point the lag is getting so bad, the time it's taking Eto to cast heals and then for them to actually hit me, has my health meter doing crazy stuff. Full one second almost dead the next, etc. Healer reaches over to grab a drink and boom we're all dead. WTF?!?

We corpus run back, rez, rebuff and move on, clear through the next room and the boss pretty easily, nothing major. We down the boss and then poof, the DK dps drops group and just logs out. Nothing is said, no explanation, he doesn't answer our whispers, just logs off. Seriously? Ok, so lets 4 man it. It's just DTK, no biggy.

We move on through the spiders, little to no drama here and then it's the second boss. Hunter takes the top of the stairs while the mage and I take the bottom elites. The shield comes down and the mage and I go after the boss. I see boxes popping up all over Eto's screen..spell book, character sheet, talent tree, etc...he's trying to type to tell the hunter to come down and has missed the enter button to open the chat box. Mage dies, health is low, boss is almost down..Army of the Dead to the rescue! We down the boss, rez the dead and take a deep breath.

Moving on, nothing major till we get to King Dred...let me say, this was a nightmare. There is fear everywhere, he calls the raptors, mage gets aggro, we all start lagging, the next thing I know, I'm dead and Eto and the hunter are running in place. *sigh* Wipe, try again. Goes about the same, one second my health is full, the next I'm on the ground, 2 minutes to try to release. SKIP THIS BOSS!

Next couple of pulls are ok, slow casting, etc. Last pull in the hall before going up the stairs doesn't' go so smooth. I see Eto finally try to sit down to drink...I'm marking the mobs in the group when all of a sudden..*poof* the hunter pops out of thin air in front of me and is shooting the mobs. I run, try...and I mean TRY...to drop D&D..nothing happens...chasing after the mobs who are chasing after the mage who is running. I'm hitting Blood Boil, Plague Strike, Icy Touch..nothing. I'm just running in a circle chasing the mobs chasing the mage. Finally D&D drops..crap it's way over there!! Run towards the red stuff....mage dies, mobs aggro Eto, Eto dies, mobs finally aggro me..but I still can't attack...oh...nevermind..I'm dead too.

It was something straight out of a comic strip. The mage running, mobs on the mage, tank chasing the mobs..we all fall down. That DTK run took an hour an a half! Really, no kidding. We died 5 times in a lowbie heroic....wtf Blizz! Fix our server please!!!

Vault of Archavon

Yep, broke through my fear...baby steps right?

Tanked 10man VoA last night. Well more so off tanked it. There was a pug group in trade looking for a OT and healer. Just so happens I can OT and I have my own pocket healer. So, before I could let my nerves change my mind, we accepted.

It honestly went very smoothly. We had one wipe on Koralon. Which I wasn't really surprised. I figured it being my first time we'd have a death or two. We had him down to about 6% when I died and his next meteor fist strike hit the target for a lot of damage since I wasn't there to split it. Let me just say, trying to stay right on top of another player when they are moving around isn't as easy as it sounded! But it was successful, sadly he dropped Mage and Warlock items and we had neither in the party.

Emalon, oddly, was a piece of cake. I took the boss and the warrior took the adds. I found this a little unusual, I figured I would take the adds since I've always considered warriors to be better 1 target tanks. Regardless, we downed him on the first try. He did drop PvP pants for me, since I was the only DK and caster gloves for Eto, who was also the only Shaman in the group.

Now Archavon, he was a little confusing. I had seen this fight a ton of times on my lock, and pretty much knew that the tank would get yanked up and the OT would taunt when the aggro dropped. But we just went charging in and occasionally I would get a whisper that said "taunt" from the MT, then he'd taunt back off of me. I think, from what I've heard, normally the tanks keep aggro till they are yanked up, then the other picks up and keeps it till he is yanked, etc. So I assume because most people were over geared for this fight and ready to go, we just went with it. Was slightly odd that they instructed the healers to dps as well.

Anyway, I have pretty comfortable with that raid now, on 10 man at least. My next task, Naxx. I think I should be able to handle that pretty easily since my gear is pretty much above the Naxx10 level.