Death Kitty

Arielle's Bear Threat Spreadsheet - V2.0

2011-02-19T01:13:00.001-08:00

Hey kids,

I finally finished out v2.0 of my threat spreadsheet, which is up-to-date with 4.0.6a. I calc'ed out mangle (within a 0.0005% variance - which is good enough for me) and added it to the sheet.

While doing so, I found another bug.

The base damage of Mangle is not multiplied by MSS. It's nothing game breaking or anything, but I mean, come on. It can't be that hard to miss. That's just fucking pathetic.

/rage

Here's the sheet yo.

Tank Threat Part 1 - Scaling

2011-02-10T19:20:00.001-08:00

Tanks serve a really simple function in principle, but a really wierd one in practice.

The principle is to control. Control damage output, where it is directed to, and positioning. The implementation varies from class to class. However there are two basic principles they all share:

1) Damage intake reduction. They should all take fairly similar amounts of damage, although the methods by which this is controlled may vary.
2) Threat output. All tanks should be able to output enough threat to keep the target focussed on them. This of course has to scale upwards to keep pace with DPS output from other classes.

I'm not going to examine the first one, I'll leave that to others. I'm going to focus on #2 - Threat Output.

The first big thing about Threat Output is that it needs to be fun. Now while fun is a subjective term, the universal truth of RPGs is that people like big numbers. Big numbers are awesome.

Now you could just say "Well then make tanks do 0 damage, and just generate threat numbers." That might be enough for some people, but the universal truth about MMOs is that people like competition. They need some way of comparing themselves to others. In WoW specifically this comes down to Damage, and Healing.

This means that just dealing Threat numbers isn't enough. Tanks need to do damage as well. However problems start arising when you need to be able to scale the Damage (and therefore threat) as content progresses along tiers. How do you pick a method to do this that allows your character to grow and progress, but doesn't hamper you or your raid's ability to clear content?

Blizzard has chosen to use something called "Vengeance". This increases a Tank's attack power by a 5% of incoming damage, up to a maximum of 10% of your Base Health + Buffed Stamina. Unfortunately there are inherent problems with this method.

The first and most obvious is that it doesn't scale backwards (or downwards I guess) as well as DPS does. By this I mean a DPS class will continue to do high amounts of DPS at lower tiers of content (be they raids or 5mans), but a Tank will not be able to do as much relative Threat. Of course you could always follow the "tank off your pants" method to solve this problem, but that shouldn't be necesarry. A tank should be able to generate sufficient amounts of threat to hold off equally geared DPS, regardless of the level of content they are doing.

The second is that any Tank that has mitigation that scales off of AP, cannot have their mitigation and threat independantly balanced while Vengeance exists. Increasing mitigation will decrease opening levels of threat, but increasing opening levels of threat to compensate for this makes the Tank completely overpowered at high levels of Vengeance.

I'm speaking of course, of Druids.

If we were to do away with Vengeance, we would have to find some other method of scaling Threat output with gear progression. So what does each Tank have in common with relatively similar values?

- Item Level
- Health
- Mastery
- Incoming Damage
- Outgoing Damage

Item Level is a pretty hokey concept, and I'd rather it remain simply a descriptor rather than an actual gameplay mechanic.

Mastery I like as a concept, but you could only have it increase the amount of threat generated, not damage. This seems to go against the concept of "fun".

We've already tried a combination of Health + Incoming damage, and look where that got us.

But what about Outgoing damage? It's much more constant than incoming damage, making it a much more reliable scalar for both future and past content. But how do you determine how it caps? Well, why not use the existing Vengeance formula?

That means 5% of your outgoing damage is added to your AP, with a maximum cap of 10% of your base health + your Stamina. Thia makes Vengeance:

1) Much more of an "active" scalar than a gear/encounter dependant one.
2) It becomes much more constant and reliable for threat generation. This makes it much easier to balance around.
3) Tank switches become less of an issue since both should be building up equal amounts.
4) Avoidance strings become a good thing and don't cause your threat to suffer.
5) It scales downward infinitely better than the current model.

The only problem is that it becomes more of a constant in PvP. The solution? Disable it when PvP flagged.

And no, I don't give a rat's ass if you want Tank-specs to be viable in PvP.

I'll be making a post later on about what could be done to balance or improve Druid threat specifically.

Team Waffle Podcast Episode 4

2011-02-08T01:02:00.001-08:00

Is now up.

Check it.

http://teamwafflecast.com/?p=103

Arielle's Threat Spreadsheet - V1.1

2011-01-16T15:06:00.000-08:00

I updated my spreadsheet with more accurate Live values, mostly at Reesi's behest. I was slacking >.>

Most of my calculations were accurate within a very, very tiny variance (less than 1%). However Thrash is just completely messed up.

I've tried every way I can think of to use Blizzard's datamined Tooltip information, and I just can't get correct values when I use it. Not even close. It doesn't make any sense.

If anyone has any insight they'd like to share with me I'm all ears.

I've also added Pulverize damage with 3 different weapons (Heroic Seliza's, Malevolence, and Herioc Malevolence). I was going to add Mangle, but I had a small damage variance that I just couldn't account for. Maybe I'll try and figure it out again later, but eh. Part of me feels like it's counting the bonus from MSS twice. Maybe I'll respec later to test that theory.

Anyways, here is the sheet.

Team Waffle Podcast - EP#2

2011-01-13T23:01:00.001-08:00

Hey Ya'll,

I forgot to tell you, but Episode #2 of the Team Waffle Podcast is now available.

Check it here:

http://teamwafflecast.com/?p=78

Gearing your pre-raid Bear Pt. 3 - Post-Raid

2010-12-21T18:22:00.001-08:00

I've constructed a normal mode raid gear list that has what I am pretty sure are the BiS items/enchants for a Bear. This list was constructed with the following restrictions:

1) No BoP profession specific items. This is not a "is Profession X better than Profession Y" debate.
2) Randomly enchanted BoEs from Temple of Wind were ignored. These cannot be relied on. In some cases they will definitely be better than the static drops, but are incredibly random.
3) No PvP gear was used. I'll be making a post later on regarding PvP vs PvE gear.
4) Avoid Haste if it all possible. It is a terrible, terrible stat for Bears.
5) The least desirable secondary stat was reforged to Dodge Rating, regardless of what it was.
6) This is for maximum MITIGATION, not THREAT. If you are having threat issues when you start raiding (not likely) you can drop some of the Hit / Expertise reforges.

Gemming:

For the most part gem Agility, unless the socket bonus warrants something else. If you are having survivability issues (ie. not enough health), then switch to primarily gemming Stamina unless the socket bonus warrants it. You will still need 2 Yellow (+Dodge) gems to make your Meta work.

Reforging:

As previously mentioned, reforge the least valuable secondary stat to Dodge Rating.

Item List:

Helm: [Tsanga's Helm]
Reforge: 67 Crit Rating -> 67 Dodge Rating
Obtained: Trash Drop in Bastion of Twilight.

Necklace: [Necklace of Strife]
Reforge: 50 Haste Rating -> 50 Dodge Rating
Obtained: Valiona in Bastion of Twilight.

Shoulders: [Poison Protocol Pauldrons]
Reforge: 59 Crit Rating -> 59 Dodge Rating
Obtained: The "Tron" encounter in Blackwing Descent.

Back: [Cloak of Biting Chill]
Reforge: 50 Crit Rating -> 50 Dodge Rating
Obtained: Maloriak in Blackwing Descent.

Chest: [Sark of the Unwatched]
Reforge: 79 Crit Rating -> 79 Dodge Rating
Obainted: Atramedes in Blackwing Descent.

Wrist: [Parasitic Bands]
Reforge: 50 Crit Rating -> 50 Dodge Rating
Obtained: Magmaw in Blackwing Descent.

Hands: [Double Attack Handguards]
Reforge: 59 Expertise Rating -> 59 Dodge Rating
Obtained: Chimaeron in Blackwing Descent.

Waist: [Belt of Nefarious Whispers]
Reforge: 73 Hit Rating -> 73 Dodge Rating
Obtained: Leatherworking.

Legs: [Stormrider's Legguards]
Reforge: 75 Critical Rating -> 75 Dodge Rating
Obtained: Purchasable with 2200 Valor Points.

Feet: [Storm Rider's Boots]
Reforge: 59 Haste Rating -> 59 Dodge Rating
Obtained: Halfus Wyrmbreaker in Bastion of Twilight.

Ring: [Hornet Sting Band]
Reforge: 52 Haste Rating -> 52 Dodge Rating
Obtained: 1250 Valor Points.

Ring: [Signet of the Elder Council]
Reforge: 50 Haste Rating -> 50 Dodge Rating
Obtained: Exalted Reputation with The Earthen Ring.

Trinket: [Tia's Grace]
Reforge: Nothing
Obtained: Heroic Dungeon drop from Siamat in the Lost City of the Tol'Vir.

Trinket: [Fluid Death]
Reforge: 128 Hit Rating -> 128 Dodge Rating.
Obtained: Purchasable with 1650 Valor Points.

Weapon: [Malevolence]
Reforge: 91 Crit Rating -> 91 Dodge Rating
Obtained: Halfus Wyrmbreaker in Bastion of Twilight.

Relic: [Relic of Golganneth]
Reforge: 28 Haste Rating -> 28 Dodge Rating
Obtained: Purchasable with 700 Valor Points.

Additional Trinkets that you will want to pick up, should you need them:

Trinket: [Symbiotic Worm]
Reforge: Nothing.
Obtained: Magmaw in Blackwing Descent.

Trinket: [Mirror of Broken Images]
Reforge: Nothing.
Obtained: Exalted with Baradin's Wardens.

Trinket: [Vial of Stolen Memories]
Reforge: Nothing.
Obtained: Valiona in Bastion of Twilight.

Trinket: [Essence of the Cyclone]
Reforge: Nothing.
Obtained: Halfus Wyrmbreaker in Bastion of Twilight.

Notes:

There is very little choice when it comes to gearing your Bear at T11. Since our stat priorities are very clearly defined, there is only 1 piece of gear that fits those priorities per slot. In some cases, there's only even 1 option (Relic, Weapon). Talk about removing "choice" from gearing. Jeezus.

The two trinkets listed in the main set are what I would use for regular tanking. The additional trinkets fill niches that you may find uses for. Additionally, the BiS Heroic Level raid set will be identical to this one except with Heroic versions with the exception of the helm. The helm will be replaced with the T11 helm.

Team Waffle Podcast - Ep 1

2010-12-21T14:28:00.000-08:00

Hey y'all,

I wanted to let you know that I finally finished the post-production Team Waffle's first podcast episode.

Get it here.

Arielle's Spreadsheet V1.0

2010-12-14T23:26:00.000-08:00

So I did a spreadsheet. It shows the AP coeffecients for our threat abilities, except Mangle. I chose to ignore Mangle since it is far, far, far and away our best Threat ability, so modelling it is kind of pointless.

So what I've found so far while doing this, after hours of math:

1) Thrash does not currently consume Omen of Clarity procs. This has to be a bug.
2) The bleed portion of Thrash is affected by Armor. This is contrary to the very definition of a bleed. This has to also be a bug.
3) Pulverize scales like crap. Although since its only purpose is to grant 9% Crit, that doesn't really matter.
4) There's a breakpoint around 9500 AP where Thrash becomes better than Lacereate for Threat. However since Lacerate will trump Thrash for mitigation this won't really matter until possibly T13 or T14.
5) There is also a breakpoint around 20,000 AP where FFF becomes better than Lacerate for threat. However again since Lacerate is better for Mitigation, and that this also depends on the Spell Damage debuff existing, it doesn't have any practical application.
6) All of the Bear damage ability tooltips are incorrect, except FFF.

You can find the spreadsheet here. Let me know if you find anything or have any questions.

EJ = Sad Panda

2010-12-06T16:32:00.000-08:00

Took EJ off my link list because their theorycrafting is mostly crap now.

Plus they use Rawr for choosing tank gear.

Gearing your pre-raid Bear Pt 2: Items

2010-12-05T12:54:00.000-08:00

I've constructed a pre-raid gear list that has what I am pretty sure are the BiS items/enchants for a Bear. This list was constructed with the following restrictions:

1) No BoP profession specific items. This is not a "is Profession X better than Profession Y" debate.
2) No crafted items that require BoP materials. This means nothing that needs Chaos Orbs.
3) No enchants that need Maelstrom Crystals. I'm pretty sure they are not reliably obtainable outside of raiding, and since this is a pre-raid gearset, well, you see where I'm going with this.
4) Avoid Haste if it all possible. It is a terrible, terrible stat for Bears.
5) The least desirable secondary stat was reforged to Dodge Rating, regardless of what it was.
6) This is for maximum MITIGATION, not THREAT. If you are having threat issues when you start raiding (not likely) you can drop some of the Hit / Expertise reforges.

Gemming:

For the most part gem Agility, unless the socket bonus warrants something else. If you are having survivability issues (ie. not enough health), then switch to primarily gemming Stamina unless the socket bonus warrants it. You will still need 2 Yellow (+Dodge) gems to make your Meta work.

Reforging:

As previously mentioned, reforge the least valuable secondary stat to Dodge Rating.

Item List:

Helm: [Helm of Numberless Shadows]
Reforge: 72 Hit Rating -> 72 Dodge Rating
Obtained: Heroic Dungeon drop from High Priestess Azil in Stonecore.

Necklace: [Pendant of the Lightless Grotto]
Reforge: 44 Crit Rating -> 44 Dodge Rating
Obtained: Heroic Dungeon drop from Ozruk in Stonecore.

Shoulders: [Embrace of the Night]
Reforge: 52 Hit Rating -> 52 Dodge Rating
Obtained: Purchasable with 1650 Justice Points.

Back: [Cloak of Thredd]
Reforge: 44 Crit Rating -> 44 Dodge Rating
Obtained: Heroic Dungeon drop from Helix Gearbreaker in Deadmines.

Chest: [Vest of Misshapen Hides]
Reforge: 64 Crit Rating -> 64 Dodge Rating
Obainted: Heroic Dungeon drop from Erudax in Grim Batol.

Wrist: [Double Dealing Bracers]
Reforge: 44 Crit Rating -> 44 Dodge Rating
Obtained: Heroic Dungeon drop from Lord Walden in Shadowfang Keep.

Hands: [Stormbolt Gloves]
Reforge: 67 Haste Rating -> 67 Dodge Rating
Obtained: Exalted Reputation with Wildhammer Clan.

Waist: [Sash of Musing]
Reforge: 52 Expertise Rating -> 52 Dodge Rating
Obtained: Purchasable with 1650 Justice Points.

Legs: [Leggings of the Burrowing Mole]
Reforge: 64 Expertise Rating -> 64 Dodge Rating
Obtained: Purchasable with 2200 Justice Points.

Feet: [Boots of the Predator]
Reforge: 52 Hit Rating -> 52 Dodge Rating
Obtained: Heroic Dungeon drop from Baron Ashbury in Shadowfang Keep.

Ring: [Elementium Destroyer's Ring]
Reforge: 35 Crit Rating -> 35 Dodge Rating
Obtained: BoE from Jewelcrafting.

Ring: [Signet of the Elder Council]
Reforge: 50 Haste Rating -> 50 Dodge Rating
Obtained: Exalted Reputation with The Earthen Ring.

Trinket: [Leaden Despair]
Reforge: Nothing.
Obtained: Heroic Dungeon drop from High Priestess Azil in Stonecore.

Trinket: [Tia's Grace]
Reforge: Nothing
Obtained: Heroic Dungeon drop from Siamat in the Lost City of the Tol'Vir.

Weapon: [Seliza's Spear]
Reforge: 54 Crit Rating -> 54 Dodge Rating
Obatined: Heroic Dungeon drop from General Husam in the Lost City of the Tol'vir.

Relic: [Sandshift Relic]
Reforge: 25 Hit Rating -> 25 Dodge Rating
Obtained: Heroic Dungeon drop from Ascendant Lord Obsidious in Blackrock Caverns.

Gearing your pre-raid Bear Pt 1: Stats

2010-12-05T01:32:00.000-08:00

There are a number of pre-raid gearing guides floating around out there. Some of them (like Ri's) are good. Some of the other ones (like people assuming parry-haste still exists) are not.

I've put together a gear guide for a "pre-raid" bear using Fasc's spreadsheet. You may not choose to believe me, but I've tried pretty much every viable combination including gems. I do not however claim it is perfect, and there may have been something I have overlooked. If you think something doesn't fit please do not hesitate to contact me and let me know (see the right hand side for how).

I've split this into two parts. Part 1 will discuss the various stats, what they do, and their relative values. Part 2 will have the actual gear list. So here weeee goooooooo!

Stats:

Agility:

Agility is the "bread n butter" stat of any Feral Druid, be they Cat or Bear. It increases Attack Power (AP), Critical Strike Chance, and Dodge %. The amount of Agility is mostly tied to the iLvL (Item Level) and quality (Uncommon / Rare / Epic) of the gear. There can be some variation but there usually isn't much. At entry-level raiding Agility is an amazing stat because it has such a huge impact on Savage Defense uptime and effectiveness. You will find yourself mostly gemming Agility in your gear, unless the socket bonus warrants otherwise. Actual stats below:

1 Agi = 2.5 AP (2.625 AP) [2.8875 AP]
1 Agi = 0.0030783% Crit (0.0032323%)
324.85 Agi = 1% Crit
1 Agi = 0.0041054% Dodge (0.0043106%)
243.58 Agi = 1% Dodge

Strength:

Strength is now the bastard step-sibling of Agility for a Feral Druid. It grants Attack Power but nothing else. In the past it actually granted more AP per point than Agility, but no longer. You will only find it on cross-class tanking accessories. However those accessories are generally sub-par when compared to an Agility-based accessory of the same level due to how awesome Agility is. For the most part avoid it like the plague unless the secondary stats on the item warrant it.

1 Str = 2.5 AP (2.625 AP) [2.8875 AP]

Stamina:

Stamina increases your health. It also has a side-effect of increasing the amount of Attack Power granted via Vengeance. So in a roundabout way it is a mitigation stat. However it is not as effective as actual mitigation stats like Mastery. Stamina is directly linked to the iLvL and quality of the item.

1 Sta = 17.1402 Health (17.99721)

Critical Strike Rating:

Critical Strike Rating increases the chance that you will critically hit an enemy. This makes it a valuable threat and mitigation stat for Bears as crits proc Savage Defense. It is generally the second most important secondary mitigation stat behind Mastery.

1 Crit Rating = 0.0055779% Crit
179.28 Crit Rating = 1% Crit

Haste:

Haste is garbage. Avoid it at all costs. It is the crappiest secondary stat for Bears by a factor of 4. STAY THE HELL AWAY FROM IT IF IT ALL HUMANLY POSSIBLE.

128.05701 = 1% Haste

Dodge Rating:

Increases your chance to Dodge. At a pre-raid level of gearing this will be the stat you Reforge to. Reforge everything except Mastery to Dodge. Mastery is the second most valuable secondary stat behind Dodge, and since every piece of gear will come with 2 secondary stats, you pick whatever isn't Mastery.

1 Dodge Rating = 0.005687% Dodge
176.71899 Dodge Rating = 1% Dodge

Hit Rating:

Increases the chance to hit your target. It also increases your White and Yellow crit caps. However that isn't something you have to worry about in a pre-raid environment. As Hit is only the 2nd least valuable secondary stat, reforge it into Dodge whenever possible. If you find yourself having threat problems, get more Expertise before you get more Hit.

Increases chance to hit.
120.109 Hit Rating = 1% Hit
1 Hit Rating = 0.0083256% Hit
8% Hit = 960.872 Hit Rating

Expertise Rating:

Expertise reduces the chance a mob will Parry or Dodge your attacks. Since Yellow attacks are on a "2-roll" system, it is actually more valuable for mitigation than Crit until you reach the Expertise "softcap" (6.5%). However since Expertise (specifically Expertise+Mastery) pieces are so rare, it isn't a stat you should be actively seeking out, let alone reforging/gemming for.

30.0727 Expertise Rating = 1 Expertise

Level 85 mob = 5.0% (Dodge) / 5.0% (Parry) = 601.454 (20) / 601.454 (20) Expertise Rating
Level 86 mob = 5.2% (Dodge) / 5.2% (Parry) = 631.527 (21) / 631.527 (21) Expertise Rating
Level 87 mob = 5.4% (Dodge) / 5.4% (Parry) = 661.599 (22) / 661.599 (22) Expertise Rating
Level 88 mob = 6.5% (Dodge) / 14% (Parry) = 781.890 (26) / 1684.071 (56) Expertise Rating

Mastery Rating:

Mastery increases the amount your Savage Defense bubbles absorb. This is great. You should be seeking it out on gear, and reforging whatever it comes with to Dodge.

179.28 Mastery Rating = 1 Mastery

Armor:

Armor decreases the amount of physical damage taken from attacks. It is directly tied to iLvL and quality of the item. You may see some items with a "green" value for their armor. If you see one of these, remember that the bonus portion of the armor does not get multiplied by the Bear armor modifier. The "regular" portion (which is directly tied to iLvL/quality) still does.

1 Armor = 3.2186 Armor (Bear + Thick Hide)
1 Armor = 3.282972 Armor (Bear + Thick Hide + Meta Gem)
Armor cap (75% DR) for Lvl88 Boss mobs = 97717.5 Armor

Your secondary stat priorities: Dodge > Mastery > Expertise(until softcap) > Crit > Hit = Expertise(after softcap) >>>>>>>>>> Haste.

This ends part 1.

2010-11-30T17:24:00.000-08:00

So I've been really wrapped up with this whole "Swipe is now useless" problem which is currently plaguing Bear tanks. I've done a lot of math on the problem (which has been linked everywhere from Ri to MMO Champion - go me!), and apparently people just don't understand how Base Damage + AP Coeff abilities work. It's very frustrating.

Regardless, I should be updating this more often.

Anyways, latest info in the Bear world.

1) Swipe iz broke.

As previously mentioned, Swipe is broken. It doesn't do what its supposed to do. Worse than that, it does less damage (at least according to current info) than Thrash. This means that once you hit 81, you take Swipe off of your actionbar. Period.

WTF?!?!

Granted I won't know for sure what will be happening until I hit 85 myself, but that just sounds absurdly dumb. More info will follow after Dec 7.

Additionally the tooltip for Swipe doesn't account for the recent 17% nerf. So if you're attacking an unarmored target and wondering why the numbers don't match, multiply your TT damage by 0.83 to get the actual damage. The TT also includes any damage modifiers to Swipe (2pct10), so don't remove things that shouldn't be.

2) Fasc made a spreadsheet!

Link: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/1083360391

This is Fasc's Bear Mitigation spreadsheet. It breaks down the various stats into different weights to give you an idea of what stats are valuable, and what aren't. As expected Haste has the lowest value of all (by a factor of 4 - lol). So if you find Haste, change it to Dodge ASAP.

In that thread I asked him about the possibility of making a "Bearpoints" mod. If you have (or still do) tank as a Plate tank, you'll know of a mod called "Tankpoints" which breaks down the various stats on an item to tell you how valuable it is with a common value. It'd be pretty cool if Bears finally got something similar.

3) Ri made a levelling guide to 85

Ri (Reesi, @Reesify on Twitter) made a levelling guide from 80-85. I'm a big fan of her work, it's all really good stuff. Go check it out.

Additionally we're trading back and forth on a pre-raid gear guide. I'll hopefully have my selected choices up this weekend. Maybe. We'll see.

If you're interested in following her stuff, go to http://www.theincbear.com - I definitely recommend you check it out.

4) Thick Hide iz broke.

It's granting far more bonus armor than it should be. Don't know why it hasn't been fixed yet, but it sure is amusing.

5) I'm going to be making a Bear damage / coeff spreadsheet from 10-85.

That's right. I'm gonna be doing a spreadsheet.

To be fair I will likely only do this once. I don't fancy re-levelling a Druid every time Blizzard introduces some changes to Bear abilities. That said it is definitely something I'm interested in doing, if only to give myself a better understanding of how the abilities all work. I'm scared I might find out things that I don't really want to know.

That's all for now. Hope to do another post this weekend.

Fail.

2010-11-23T08:49:00.000-08:00

So I promised a post last night. However my procrastinating nature got the better of me, and I decided that since nobody actually reads this thing, I can just do it later.

I may or may not end up doing a post tonight. League of Legends and TV tend to take up most of my free time. And trolling the WoW forums.

List of things I need to cover:

Patch 4.0.3a.
Fasc's Amazing Bear Spreadsheet
Lissanna's Levelling Guide
Reesi's Waffle game.

So you want to be a Bero....

2010-11-15T23:48:00.001-08:00

DeathKitty Tanking Guide Part 1: "So you want to be a Bero..."

I hope at least one person gets that reference.

In order for me to impart my knowledge and experience unto others, it's important to start from the basics - From the most basic functions and actions which make a tank what he/she is. With that in mind, what exactly is a "tank"? What do they do? What do they not do? How do they know when to do what?

Those are the sorts of questions that a lot of people and/or tanks out there don't really understand or know the answers to. If you don't know these simple things you can perform the task of being a tank, but you'll never have the awareness to be exceptional at your role. However if you do, there's nothing you won't be able to beat.

What is a "tank"?

A tank is someone beefy. That likes getting beat up. Like an actual tank.

In all seriousness though. A tank has 3 main responsibilities:

1) Make sure the right big baddies are hitting him/her and not the squishies.
2) Make sure said baddies keep hitting him/her until they die or circumstances change.
3) Do their best to not die.

#3 tends to disqualify pretty much everybody that isn't built to tank in the first place. It's fairly easy to make people hit you as any class, and still fairly easy to make them keep hitting you. It's hard to stay alive while doing so. Thus you end up with specific talent trees in specific classes that with the correct items, are designed to survive a long time in that situation.

What does a "tank" do?

To examine this, lets simply elaborate on the previous three responsibilities.

Make sure the right big baddies hit you.

If you've been playing any sort of MMO for any length of time, you'll know that certain fights can have many different monsters in them. As a tank, it's important to know which ones you are supposed to have beating on you, and which ones you're not. A simple example to illustrate this would be the Blood Prince Council encounter in Icecrown Citadel. The tank that is responsible for tanking Valanar and/or Taldaram never wants to have Keleseth turn around and start casting Shadowbolts at him. This will usually constitute an instant death.

Make sure the baddies keep hitting you.

It's one thing to get something to start hitting you, it's another to make it keep hitting you. You need to know the best way to use your abilities to maximize the amount of burning hatred the baddie has for you. This is a term called "threat". The more of it you have, the more damage or healing someone has to do to make the guy angry at them. Remember the goal is to have the baddies hit you, and not the squishy ones in the dresses.

Don't die.

Most big bad boss monsters have an ultimate abilitiy that they use to inflict severe pain on whoever they are hitting. In some cases the healers will not be able to keep up with the level of incoming damage. In these cases a tank would burn a "cooldown". That is they would use an ability that reduces the amount of damage they receive for a short period of time. Doing so allows the healer(s) to catch up with the incoming damage and prevent you from dying. This is a good thing, because if a tank dies everyone else usually quickly follows suit.

Which brings us to....

How do you know when to do what?

Honestly, this is more practice more than anything. I've tanked for about 3.5 years across 3 different sets of raid content. I've done 40 person raids, 25 person raids, 20 person raids and 10 person raids. They're all different and they all require you to adapt. Even 5 person dungeons are different from each other. The way you learn how to properly tank an encounter is simply through repetition. However there are certain skillsets and knowledge you can learn without repeating an encounter over and over again until its drilled into your skull.

That will bring us to Part 2...

OMG MORE SKY FALLING QQQQ

2010-11-05T20:35:00.000-07:00

Seriously guys, this is really getting old.

This week we had two epic batches of "QQQQQQQQQQQQ", and one justified concern from the Feral community. One of them was vaguely justified, however it was based on false and/or incomplete information. The other epic one was completely unjustified and makes me /facepalm. The third is definitely justified and just confuses the hell out of me why it would even happen.

Change #1: Abilities based off of weapon damage (like "% weapon damage") now scale. Everyone thought that the abilities were being uber nerfed. However within 10-15 minutes it was clarified to be scaling (like spells) from 1 - 85. I saw at least 6 Feral rage threads within 15 minutes when this showed up on MMO-Champion. All of them made me /facepalm

Change #2: Leader Of the Pack Self Heal changed from 8% heal to 4% heal. This is in line with other self-healing ability nerfs to DKs and Warriors. At most it hurts soloing. Oh noes. At the root of it it's a scaling issue with huge health pools. Self healing for 12k every 6 seconds is kind of an absurd proposition, even if your max health is 150k.

Change #3: Leader Of the Pack mana return reduced from 8% to 4%. This is ridiculous. This basically kills Feral PvP outright. Unless mana pools somehow double without increasing spell costs (which is impossible) this makes any sort of competitive Feral PvP impossible. I think this was either a typo, or an over zealous coder hitting both numbers without intending to. I fully expect it to be reversed.

That's your Feral changes for this week.

ZOMG THE SKY IS FALLING QQQQQQ

2010-11-01T23:00:00.001-07:00

Or at least that's what a lot of the ignorant Feral Druids out there think.

Here's the relevant changes:

Savage Defense reduced to 35% of Attack Power from 65%. No longer procs from Lacerate tick crits.

Bear form Stamina bonus lowered to +10% from +20%. Stamina bonus from Heart of the Wild lowered to +6% from +10%.

Survival Instincts lowered to 50% reduction from 60%. Cooldown reduced to 3 minutes from 5 minutes

The first two are merely balance changes. However they also happen to be the ones people are most upset about. Why? Because people don't know how to lern2math before crying "OMGWORLDISENDINGBBQ!!!!11oneone"

Bears were massively overpowered in Cataclysm before these changes were made. I mean really, how could 20k absorbs triggered on crit not be overpowered? What about health pools 20-30k larger than other tanks? How is that not overpowered? It was actually so bad that tanks other than Bears were getting 2-3 shot by bosses. I mean if what you want is to be overpowered then fine, cry nerf. But if you want a game worth playing you'll know that's a really stupid idea.

The main opposition to the 3rd change comes from people that dislike "homogenization". Homogenization is necesarry for adequate tank balance. You can't design encounters to be equal for all tanks if some of them lack the necesarry abilities to tank the encounter correctly.

Lern2mathb4qq.

Blizzcon: Question Reactions

2010-10-25T20:02:00.000-07:00

So I watched the Blizzcon live stream over the weekend. And since I really, really, really haven't been playing for a long time, I thought that I would throw down my reactions to some of the WoW related questions and announcements that are Feral and/or Druid related.

Credit to MMO-Champion for making it convenient for me to see the Q&A so I don't have to re-watch all of the panels.

- I'm really excited about 5mans actually requiring skill. I'm also excited that the CC changes made in Wrath will make it so that most classes will be able to CC effectively.

- In-Game AtlasLoot continues the vein of Blizzard adopting community mods into the stock UI.

- "Cutting out the suck" of Classic Dungeons earned massive approval, mine too. So much of the suck of Classic Dungeons makes me aggro.

"Are we going to see another caster legendary weapon that isn't a mace?"

I think it is actually the caster's turn to see a Legendary, and you can even make it cross-class if you make it a Dagger or Staff. Granted I would rather see a Feral weapon, but I think I can survive without one.

"That said [Vengeance] shouldn't feel mandatory."

This made me very, very, very, very, very, very, very angry. I actually made an absurdly vulgar tweet about it. Vengeance is extremely mandatory for raiding, especially at 80. When you have Mages that can pull 15k dps without even trying too hard, Vengeance is most definitely required.

At best on a spank-n-tank fight Mages end with around 75% of my threat. If I didn't have Vengeance, they would pull every 5 seconds. To be fair I suspect that DPS and TPS are balanced around 85, but still. That's a blatantly false statement with the information I have available right now.

Wild Mushrooms, currently it does a lot of damage if you stack 3 on top of each other. It has a small range though, and the targeting makes it a bit hard to stack on them. Are there any plans to change it at all?

They completely dodged this question. It was asked by a Balance Druid that wanted to know if there were any plans to make the spell easier to use. Granted the answer of "Ferals use it to pull adds" was kinda interesting. However, when a Moonkin asks you directly "This spell is terrible to use for DPS, can we make it easier?" It's generally a good idea to answer it.

[NomNomNom's] an internet meme that will be less funny in a year, and will embarrass us in 3 years.

Ok, now at least I understand. Granted I was in love with the name "NomNomNom" when it was first announced as a talent name. However I understand their reasoning.\

Hunters are the only class in the game with a minimum range. This hurts us a lot in raids. They can stand directly in front of you, they can repeatedly stand in front of you and use a ranged attack, why can't Hunters do the same thing and stack near the boss?

This guy was an idiot. You would've have to have heard his voice to understand why, but he's stupid. You can't shoot a bow at something that's right in front of you. Deal with it. Scrub.

I love what you guys have done with WoW, I love that there's a lot of strong female chars, though I wonder if we can have some that didnt look like they came out of a Victoria's Secrets catalogue?

Which catalogue would you like them step out of then? We feel ya, we want to vary our female chars more in the future. So yeah we'll pick different catalogues.

I had mixed feelings about this. While on one level I agree with the person who posed the question, and I felt the response from the devs was a bit chauvanistic, I then sat down to think about it. The only really "badly" dressed women are the badguys. All of the PCs are basically fully clothed in armor, and Jaina is pretty darn conservatively dressed. Granted characters like Alexstraza are pretty revealing, but they're dragons. They're allowed.

That said, I wouldn't really mind if things changed.

That's all for now. You can expect kill videos and fun stuff once Cata launches and I get to 85.

Marrowgar Video

2010-01-18T22:28:00.000-08:00

So I got myself a copy of Fraps and I've taken to recording our boss kills.

Why?

Because it's fun. Because sometimes other strategy videos miss things. And perhaps because it amuses me.

Below you will find our Marrowgar kill video.

Yes that is really what I sound like. Next up should be Lady Deathwhisper if I remember to record it tomorrow. I think I will.

ICC 10m - First Impressions

2009-12-18T10:45:00.000-08:00

So we've had 3 nights in ICC so far - which comes out to about 6 hours give or take.

Night 1 we killed Lord Marrowgar after about 5 or 6 attempts. Mostly to get the group composition right and getting the tanks to wake up after the comatose zone that was ToC.

Tanks actually have to pay attention during this fight, which is a welcome change. I'd recommend starting with 3 healers on this fight - if one gets impaled it can get quite messy if you only have 2.

Other than that it's a classic "Don't stand in the fire" fight.

Lady Deathwhisper is easily the hardest of the first four:

We barely squeaked by on the 10 minute enrage timer. This is a careful balance between killing adds and DPSing the boss. If you lose anyone in this fight (especially early) things can get out of control really fast. I'd recommend having a Feral Druid or DK for your offtank so they can provide additional DPS (Kitty / Blood) during P1 as you only need 1 tank. If you have 2 DPS with your tanks on the adds you should be okay.

Target switching is essential. Ranged has to switch to certain types of adds to kill them quickly to prevent a wipe.

I'd reccommend having 3 healers for this fight as well.

Gunship is absurdly easy.

You only need 2 healers for this fight - but it's still a lot of fun.

Kill guys that come on your ship, jump over and kill the mage, jump back, repeat.

Sounds simple but it's still REALLY COOL.

We had a couple of attempts at Saurfang before our night ended and got him down to ~25%. Once we learn how to manage his power generation and focus fire beasts down quick we should be fine.

But for now we are adjourned until January 5th.

How do you start a guild?

2009-11-30T16:38:00.000-08:00

So I've seen this sort of question bouncing around on the R&D forums a lot: "How do you start a raiding guild? How do you lead raids?"

So I figured I'd give my take on that whole concept.

"How do you start a raiding guild?"

There's one thing you need to know. It will be a lot, and I mean A FUCKING TON of work. I'm not going to lie or sugar coat it. And I only run a 10 person crew. I have run 25s in the past, and they suck. Balls.

My group started over 2 years ago, in the fall os 2007. I had just been /gkicked from my 25m guild without so much as a reason, or even a face to face discussion. I went back to one of my old guilds which was run by the same people that I intially levelled to 60 with (we're talking back in 2005 here) while I figured out what I was going to do.

I got very bored very quickly. I realized that I hated the 25m format with a passion, yet loved running 10s. There were also a few friends that I had made in the pevious guild that were utterly confused and astounded that I had been kicked, let alone treated the way I was, but for the time being they remained there.

So I found that the raiding times for the guild I was in didn't mesh with my schedule. So I asked if it would be ok if I started my own 10m group outside the guild framework. Some people from the guild may join, but it wouldn't be guild exclusive. I was told that was fine.

So I hook up with my brother, and met a rogue by the name of Antic. We messed around and did some heroics trying to find more people to fill out our group. Turns out Antic knew a Druid / Priest combo that he usually ran heroics with (Veritykindle / Scheenstra). I checked them out and played with them a little. Very good players, just hadn't had the opportunity to raid.

Then we found a random pug with a Warlock / Mage combo that turned out to be really good. We /friended them and they signed on.

The Druid / Priest combo knew another Mage that was really good, and he came along.

Got a druid from our own guild to come as he couldn't really make their raids either.

Our 10th actually ended up being a DPS warrior from the 25m guild that kicked me initially.

And off we went. Unfortunately I was /gkicked from the guild I was in for starting the group (even though I had already asked for permission, go figure). Everyone that was in my group and also in the guild quit shortly afterwards. My brother was absolutely furious. Wow. So Veritykindle / Scheenstra had this little guild all to themselves and their family/friends.

I asked if we could use it, seeing as how we'd be running together anyway. She retains GM and I just lead the raids.

We even managed to pull off Bear runs in ZA without having any 25m gear past T4. That still is the thing that I am most proud of with that group - to this day.

So my long winded answer to that question is: Pug. Seriously. If you want to make your own raiding group, go pugging. Find people that are sort of in the same boat as you are. They do exist, and they are out there.

I never would have found my group if I didn't pug. Now one of the highlights of my week is sitting down for a ocuple hours to hang out with my friends and kill shit.

I'll give some advice on how to lead raids in my next post.

Turn the lights on

2009-11-20T15:42:00.000-08:00

So there we are, making attempts on Yogg-Saron. We've gotten through P1 pretty good with only 1 extra add up.

We then start trying to get P2 down. We're having probems with people going insane, so I look around trying to point out the green beams to go stand in.

Only to realize they aren't there.

I figure "That's kinda wierd" and we do a few more attempts.

Then on our last run back, I realize that you actually have to talk to the Keepers up above before they will actually help you. Man did I feel like an idiot.

So I tell the raid that I've been a dumbass, and that we've been attempting Alone in the Darkness the entire time. They start laughing. "Really? That's funny because this seems doable."

So I activate all the keepers, and P1 turns into a complete joke. I'm getting 7k Maul crits on the adds, and I have like 60k health in Bear form.

We even went through a few portal phases in P2 without anyone dying above. I found that even more hilarious. This fight is going to be easy with enough Melee in the mix.

And here people were saying that it's actually hard. Wow. It's not, really, it's not at all. Mimiron is harder than Yogg + 4.

Just means Yogg + 2 will be our "bare minimum" once we know how to kill him.

Climbing up the ladder...

2009-11-18T09:35:00.000-08:00

So last night we got Upper Back Pain and Twilight Duo. Thus continuing our slow climb up the ladder of "Progression" and "Achievements".

What is odd is that we seem to be the only 10m strict guild actually doing anything on Suramar. There are only 2 other guilds that have made any new "progression" kills in the last month, and neither of those are anywhere near close to threatening us in any form.

There are a few more guilds getting new "Achievements", but again they are so far behind us it's kind of silly. And at the rate we're getting points we'll be reeling in #2 pretty quick. So this brings me to my next question: Why?

Is it because everyone is just farming ToC? Well lets take a look.

Out of the other top 10 10m strict guilds on my server, NONE of them have killed a single hardmode in ToC. Granted we haven't either, but then again we haven't actually tried very hard as we have been more focussed on Ulduar hard modes (since they are massively more fun). Even so these guilds have mostly killed quite a few of those hardmodes, already - so I doubt that is it.

It does seem that everyone has become quite complacent with Tier 9. They can log in for an hour a week, collect badges / loot, and log off again.

I guess we'll see if the fun starts up again when ICC drops.

Will ICC actually be a Challenge?

2009-11-17T09:53:00.000-08:00

With the release of ICC coming up, one has to wonder whether or not Blizzard will realize the gigantic mistake they made with ToC. Fromm all indications it does seem like they are returning to the Ulduar style of raid: Epic, Huge, and Hard.

You know there is something wrong when you can clear an entire tier of a raid instance in one night, without ever having been there before. That's what happened with ToC. We waltzed right in and destroyed it without hardly even trying. It actually made me depressed.

At this point I don't even log in that much except to raid. That's how bored I am. I like WoW. I definitely don't plan on leaving it anytime soon. But for all that is holy, MAKE IT FUN AGAIN.

That also probably explains why I haven't bothered to upload any kill pictures from ToC. It's just not worth the time. It doesn't feel epic, at all. It feels like a grind - and grinding isn't fun.

That being said, I will definitely post a Yogg kill picture when we finally manage to do it.

Oh and I thought I'd also let you all know that we're now #2 on the server for 10m strict achievements. Go Wyrd Sisters!

Onyxia

2009-09-27T22:47:00.001-07:00

So I managed to get in to a PUG of Onyxia last night.

Man was I dissapointed.

Sure she hits pretty hard, and it's in your best interest to bring 3 healers, but the fight hasn't changed at all.

Ok, so they added one additional add that spawns. Woo.

Other than that, it's the usual:

Phase 1: Spank and tank.

Phase 2: Kill things and stay out of DB.

Phase 3: Spank and tank.

And for all of that effort you get 232 loot. Like really? I was expecting more. Oh well, guess I'll just collect my Thunderstrike and move on.

So I went to ToC....

2009-09-26T08:01:00.000-07:00

Well ToC 10 anyway. In a PuG.

Holy crap it was easy.

So easy that it made me feel dumber for being there.

All of the fights only had 1 or 2 mechanics that you had to worry about. All for 15 triumph badges. I'll post more details and screens when my guild does it next week.

IWANTIWANTIWANT

2009-09-25T17:52:00.001-07:00

This: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=49302

Stupid Server

2009-09-25T08:51:00.000-07:00

We were all set to finish our 8m Naxx run last night - except our server was down.

For most of the night.

Well yay for extended lockouts. At least we can finish it some other time.

On Tuesday we will take our first foray into Onyxia's lair. I've been hearing that it's actually stupid easy. That makes me feel sad. I liked the original Ony encounter. I guess we'll see just how easy it is on Tuesday.

Also, we'll be heading into ToC finally as well. After we've got those down every week, we can start working on Ulduar hard-er modes.

General Died.

2009-09-19T11:57:00.000-07:00

And all it took was for our Rogue to log on. Seriously. First try with him in the raid (he was a little late) and we downed him.

And our healers were out of mana for almost the entire last minute of the fight.

I pulled ~3500 dps, including a 20% haste debuff. With crappy trinkets. I was happy :)

We're taking a week off as a couple of our group are taking trips. We're gonna work on 8man Naxx (yay extended lockouts!).

Dead General screen below:

Mimiron is Dead.

2009-09-16T18:08:00.001-07:00

So we downed Mimiron last night.

Here's a picture!

We cruised right through Phases 1 and 2 for the most part. Dealing with the Bombs in Phase 3 turned out to be the most annoying part. I just taunted and ate as many as I could.

P4 can also get very hectic - just recognizing the Rockets, Shock Blast, and Laser Barrage can be a bit much to keep track of sometimes.

The best part? He dropped loot we didn't need! Go Holy Paladin Belt! /sigh

We're on to General on Thursday. Very doable, just need to manage the Saronite Vapors better, and make sure he doesn't get healed. General's trash was actually a LOT of fun strangely - we were required to use CC for the first time in 1.5 years (and no I'm not kidding). We hadn't used it since ZA Bear runs.

I'm really looking forward to killing that guy. Then we can let the instance reset and do it all again. We will probably kill Yogg next reset - then it's on to ToC before starting hard modes.

Raiding again...

2009-09-14T16:49:00.001-07:00

So, 2 weeks (for a total of just over 8 hours) of raiding, and my team has cleared the following:

Naxx, Sarth 1d, Maly, and up to Mimi.

In 8 hours.

I also forgot to mention that about 30% of our team had not seen Ulduar before. Oh, and we got the Razorscale achievement too.

The raid lockout extension feature is positively amazing. We took our sweet time making it through Ulduar, knowing that we would have as much time as we want/need to actually finish it. It makes raiding a lot less stressful, and you hardly ever get burnt out. Going twice a week for 2 hours a night is really a lot of fun.

Our group consists of:

Prot Paladin MT
Feral Druid OT/DPS (Me)
Resto Shaman Healer
Holy Priest Healer
Moonkin/Shadowpriest Offheal/DPS (they share a spot)
Fury Warrior DPS
Rogue DPS
Warlock DPS
Hunter DPS
Mage DPS

It's a lot more spread out than our last group. A lot less congestion on some of the tokens as well. It's working great.

I'm looking forward to Mimiron tomorrow. Should be a lot of fun.

I'm back now.

2009-09-04T12:27:00.000-07:00

I took quite a break from WoW during the summer - and famously told all of my friends that Blizzard had until Blizzcon (yes I did attend) to get me back.

Well they got me. Although you can mostly blame Darwog and Bingo (Suramar-US) for it.

I've also shelved my Death Knight indefinitely. Playing my Feral Druid is just infinitely more fun. Not to mention her gear is equal to or better than my DK's.

I haven't had any experience with the new ToC raid yet. However I have done the new 5 man, and I'm a bit dissapointed.

For 1, there's no way to skip the heinously long dialogue. Sure it's cool the first few times, but after that you just want to go afk for 5 minutes while the opening scene finishes.

Second it's absurdly easy. Seriously. Like so easy it's insulting. Granted my druid is decked in 213 gear or above, but it's still easy. I was hoping for something that provided something that looked like a challenge.

Third - for something so easy the rewards are wayyyyyyy too good. The tanking trinket is amazing, and the gear you can get from Heroic surpasses a lot of the Ulduar 10 gear.

Finally, you don't get badges in heroic mode. That's just dissapointing. Wth kind of use do I have for Champion's seals? Really?

Arg. I want Cataclysm!

Ulduar 3/14 - Razorscale

2009-05-10T10:38:00.000-07:00

Razorscale is also now absurdly easy. You could probably do this fight with just one person tanking all of the adds and the other one switching to DPS. After the first phase you will need 2 tanks again. We normally run 2 tanks though as our gear hasn't evolved to the point where I trust doing stuff like that. I would definitely not want to go with less than 3 healers until your raid knows how to "STAY OUT OF THE FIRE!"

Composition: 2 Tanks, 2-3 Healers, 5-6 DPS.

The Razorscale encounter consists of 2 phases.

Phase 1 - Dwarves and Chains

Your goal in phase 1 is to hold the little adds off until the Harpoon Guns are repaired. This is astonishingly simple. Adds will generally appear in only 1 area at a time, and should be reasonbly easy to be picked up by a tank. The tank will then drag the adds back to the raid to be killed.

The reason you do this is most of the blue "Flame Puddles" will appear inside the big inscribed circle on the ground. This way you simply avoid most or all of them and greatly reduce the stress on your healers. If you have fail tanks that can't move you CAN tank the adds where they spawn, but that's more trouble than it is worth.

Eventually a message will appear stating "Harpoon Gun Ready!". At this point you need to use said gun. Once 2 have been used in 10man, Razorscale will be held down for a short period of time. During this time ALL DPS needs to switch to Razorscale. You will have a total of 3 of these phases to deal ~1.8mil damage. We usually get it done in 2 if we have the Tanks DPSing her as well. Once she is reduced to 50% she will go into phase 2.

Add #1: Guardians: Guardians are just your standard melee add. They have a moderate amount of health and can be AoEd down.

Add #2: Caster: The caster adds will cast a lot of Chain Lightning. You shouldn't have problems with this as long as people stay out of the blue fire. Can be AoEd with Guardians.

Add #3: Sentinel: Sentinels are bigger adds with a lot more health and a whirlwind attack. Melee will typically want to stay away from these and let the ranged DPS kill them.

Phase 2 - On the Ground

Once on the ground Razorscale essentially becomes a tank and spank. Make sure you burn down any remaining adds quickly before switching to Razorscale. Razorscale will put a stacking debuff on current tank that reduces armor and move speed by 20% per application. For this reason you need 2 tanks to prevent them from getting 5 stacks and being 1 shotted by a breath. All you need to do is just swap tanks and move out of the "Flame Puddles" and then collect your loots!

Note that Razorscale has no Tail Swipe, Fear, or Cleave.

Abilities:

Fireball - Hits a person for ~8000 unmitigated fire damage. Hits one person every 2-3 seconds during Phase 1.

Blue Fire - Spits a blue fireball at a person. Does no damage on impact but does ~6000 fire damage / second to whoever is in it once it hits the ground. These are very easy to see and there is no reason they can't be avoided. Happens during Phase 1.

Flame Breath - Breathes fire that destroys Harpoon Guns. Only happens during Phase 1 after she breaks free.

Wing Buffet - Knocks back anyone around her when she breaks free of chains. Phase 1 only.

Flame Buffet - Increases fire damage taken, stacks multiple times. Raid wide during Phase 2.

Flame Breath - Breathes for ~15000 in a cone and leaves the aforementioned Blue Puddle on the ground. Phase 2 only.

Melt Armor (or something) - Reduces Armor and Movement Speed of her main aggro target by 20%. Stacks 5 times. Lasts for ~20 seconds. Phase 2 only.

Ulduar 2/14 - Ignis

2009-05-04T14:10:00.000-07:00

#2 - Ignis

This is actually an amusing encounter, as the trash before Ignis is actually arguably harder than he is. If you don't know how to handle the trash you will wipe. If you do know how you will fair just fine. Thankfully I'm here to help with that.

Pull 1: 2 Giants - These need to be tanked so that the tank is in LoS of the healer, but the Giant isn't (eg. Chromaggus / Firemaw / Flamegor style). This will prevent your healer from getting silenced - the tanks dying - and the raid wiping. The giants will also put a stacking fire damage debuff on the raid, as well as an "Unquenchable Flames" debuff that hops from person to person, dealing about 9000 unmitigated fire damage per target. This will last until removed by a wipe, or the target is in the pool.

Pull 2: Flame Revenants - Pull and tank these separately. Try and get as much distance as you can between each one. They don't hit that hard but they do have one ability you need to very careful of: A Flaming Tornado. They will generate an animation around them and have a casting bar before it starts. During the cast all Melee except the tank should start running away from their current target. The tornadoes (they usually come one at a time but can overlap) will follow someone around the room (ala Zul'Jin). If they hit anyone they will take ~6000 damage and fly up in the air, causing extra fall damage. Stay away from the tornadoes and you'll be fine.

Pull 3: Golems - Tank and spank. Face them away from the raid so their Flame Jets only hit the tank. They can charge and knock things down, but this isn't really a concern.

You will have a few more of pull types 2 and 3 to clear before you get to Ignis.

Ignis -

Composition: 2 Tanks, 2-3 Healers, 5-6 DPS.

This encounter has been nerfed so hard that I doubt 2 healers would have an issue doing it anymore.

You will have the tank that is responsible for Ignis pull him and essentially drag him around in a rectangle-like path between the two pools, dropping Scorches at each of the 4 corners. Ignis hits fairly hard, and it's easy for the tank to lose a fair chunck of their health fairly quickly.

Your "add tank" (which can be anything that has the ability to taunt - event a DPS specced OT) will be responsible for taunting the adds and keeping them in the Scorches (giant pillars of flame) until they get 10 stacked debuffs on them (they get 1/second) which causes them to go molten. After which this tank will have to smack the add a couple times and drag it off to one of the pools to be shattered. The Scorches do basically no damage and can be easily healed if this tank has to stand in it.

You will need to have 1 DPS capable of high crits (Typically a caster) available to break the golem adds once they are frozen. They need to be hit with a 5000 damage crit to explode. If you can't pull this off things will get messy very quickly.

There are several abilities you need to be aware of for Ignis:

Flame Jets - Flame Jets appear under most of the raid (it might be a radius thing, as I hardly ever got hit with them being the add tank) which will interrupt casting and lock casters out of that school for 8 seconds. There will be a warning on the screen so just don't cast when it's up there. Victims will also take around 7-8k fire damage plus a little bit from falling.

Slag Pot - Grabs a random person that is not being attacked by an add or MT and throws them in the pot chained to his belly. They will take a high amount of fire damage while they are in there for 10 seconds. However abilities to mitigate this damage can be used and healers can heal themselves if they are in the pot.

Scorch - Shoots flames from his fists to make a giant pillar of flame. Goes away after a while (you will never have more than 3 up at once). Stay out of the fire.

After the latest round of nerfs this fight is stupid easy. We got so bored our MT was trying to correct the angles on his kite path to 90 degrees. There is no enrage timer but with 5.5 mil health it shouldn't be longer than 6-7 minutes.

Ulduar 1/14 - Flame Leviathan

2009-05-03T11:40:00.000-07:00

Ulduar Part 1 - The Siege

The Siege of Ulduar consists of 4 different bosses that guard the outside of Ulduar against the advancing forces of the Dwarves, Earthen, and you.

Overall the 10 man (or "Normal") version of these encounters are actually stupifyingly easy. They have gone through several rounds of nerfs - the latest of which was totally un-called for. Regardless each of the encounters is very simple considering the loot you can get.

#1 - Flame Leviathan

Makeup: 2 Siege Engines, 2 Demolishers, 2 Choppers

You will split your raid into the 6 vehicles. The Siege Engines and the Demolishers both have a pilot and a gunner, while the Choppers just have a pilot.

You will now proceed down a giant hall of trash and towers. You need to knock out the little towers so the trash stops spawning. Also, there will be 4 large towers you need to destroy - as these will weaken FL. If you leave any of them up - you will unlock a "hard mode" and FL will be tougher to kill. As of yet we haven't attempted an FL hard mode yet - so I can't give any tips on that.

Once the trash is all dead FL will automatically enter the zone and the encounter will begin. Make sure your vehicles are all as healthy as they can be because once the encounter starts you will not be able to repair them.

FL will pick a random Siege Engine or Demolisher and start chasing after them. If you are being followed you have to run away from FL for 30 seconds - after which he picks a new target.

Choppers should be dumping oil in FL's path to slow him down, and Siege Engine gunners should be lighting this on fire as it does an incredible amount of damage.

FL begins the encounter with 2 turrets. When these turrets are killed he becomes stunned and takes an additional 50% damage for a short period of time. To kill these turrets the Demolisher gunners will have to be launched ontop of him - so make sure you either pick 2 melee or 2 casters. Hunters don't work very well unless you use 2 of them as they can only attack the turret across from them. Once the turrets are dead the people ontop of FL will drop off and have to be picked up by a Chopper or face certain death.

You will want your vehicles to stay out of melee range of FL at all times - as he has a very devastating "Ram" ability that hits for north of 100k on a vehicle and has a short CD. The only other ability you need to worry about on the normal mode is "Flame Jets". This needs to be interrupted ASAP by the Siege Engines or the turret-killers will die almost instantly when they fall off the side.

Despite appearances this encounter is very very easy and you should have no trouble beating it at all.

Minor Vacation

2009-04-28T18:56:00.000-07:00

Been a while but hey, what are you gonna do about it?

A lot of new information to cover, and I'll start with what is probably most dear to my heart - Feral PvP.

This is the build I use.

Note that for starters it's a Mangle build. You don't get *that* much additional benefit by using Shred over Mangle, yet you manage to lose 8 talent points. I don't like that.

I'm currently in 2 Hateful, 2 Deadly, and still holding on to a few Eviscerator pieces (which I will be replacing soon enough).

I stayed out of Season 5 completely after finding out how broken it was. It was nigh impossible to improve to get any better gear to make yourself improve more. On top of that, Pally + DK was pretty much an autowin.

Now I'm doing 2s with a DK, and 3s with a Rogue and DPriest. We didn't actually manage to make any time for 3s this week, but we did get in ~17 games in with our 2s team. Most of it was spent with my partner figuring out how / when to use all his buttons (the same reason I stopped PvPing on my DK). However once we got it down we did fairly well - even against DK/Pally.

In BGs I can pretty much 1v1 anything. The only things I can't reliably kill are DPriests, RShamans, and RDruids. That is mostly because I haven't gotten my rotation down quite well enough against those particuarly opponents. Against any DPS class I can pretty much tear them to shreds, unless a Mage pops every single cooldown in existence to kill me.

Melee DPS are especially yummy to kill. And getting sweet revenge on Warlocks is sweet.

I'll have more on Ulduar in the coming days.

Prmal Joke

2009-04-05T14:01:00.000-07:00

I was really excited about the new talent "Primal Gore" that is going to allow Lacerate and Rip the chance to crit. Then I learned it has a pre-requisite of "Rend and Tear". That ended the thrill for me.

From what I can tell Primal Gore is being designed as a PvE only DPS boost. Now the question you will have in response to this is "Why the heck do you think that?" The answer is fairly simple: Shred.

As it currently stands, in order to take Rend and Tear, you have to sacrifice either utility or survivability. On top of that, if you do that 5 points into Rend and Tear you might as well sink an extra 2 into Shred (-18 Energy cost) so you can actually use that ability. So we're essentially talking a whopping 8 talent points for Lacerate and Rip crits in PvP. 8! Here's a summary of what you have to lose in order to get that one talent:

1) Master Shapeshifter (2 Points): -4% Crit in Cat form and -4% Damage in Bear. I like it for the crit and extra combo point generation - allows for easier Savage Roar upkeep (which is infinitely more important than any other finisher).

2) Natural Shapeshifting (3 Points): +30% Shift Cost. This might not be a such a big deal - except with this and Primal Tenacity you will be down to a 224 mana cost Cat or Bear form. 224. That's it. I don't know about you, but I like having mana available to Cyclone, Roots, Heal, etc.

3) Thick Hide (3 Points): -10% Armor. This is probably the first one I would lose if I had a choice - although I would really rather not at all. I like the survivability.

4) Natural Instincts (2 Points): -20% Healing in Cat, -70% Agi as Healing Power. No. This is such a huge survivability talent I would never give it up under any circumstances.

So I'm forced to pick 8 of those 10 points and throw them away for a talent I would never use anyway if I had Rend and Tear (if you have R&T you better be using FB and not Rip)? You have got to be kidding me.

Make the pre-requisite Imp. Mangle like it should be.

I love eating things.

2009-04-04T00:00:00.001-07:00

Really. I love eating things.

Or to be more accurate, my Druid loves eating things. I never could get a handle on PvP on my Death Knight (my brother managed to, heh) but I've always loved playing as a Feral Druid. Initially I was skeptical because of the massive changes to Feral Druids. However after Blizzard finally realized that tiny mana pools were actually a HUGE problem for Ferals, and gave us epic reduced shifting costs, we got our utility back.

Now we actually can shift in and out as necesarry, heal ourselves, etc.

I've also come to realize that Feral Druids do incredibly powerful DPS in a PvP setting. Once I had Savage Roar up I was getting 3k crit Mangles on a Shaman. A Shaman. 6.5k Ferocious Bites were also very common on clothies. Not to mention the fact that we have a 3min cd "I Win" button against Warlocks. Not like I ever needed one before but ever since it was released in Pre-BC it was just amusing.

Oh and this is all in 187 Blues or worse except my weapon (Titansteel Destroyer) and Hateful Bracers.

It scares me to think what will happen once I actually have some gear.

Tanking as a Death Knight - Part 2a: Speccing - Blood

2009-03-31T08:43:00.000-07:00

So how do you spec for tanking as a Death Knight? Other tanking classes just have one tree for tanking, Death Knights have 3. Each has their own niche, and each can perform equally well given ideal circumstances. Obviously some will be better in one area than another, but the idea is you pick whichever one suits your playstyle.

Personally I have used all 3 of the trees. I started out as Blood for 5 mans, and then switched to Unholy pre-Bone Shield nerf. After the nerf I stayed as Unholy for a little bit, and then went back to Blood for a long time. Now that we are working on Sarth + 2, I've gone back to Frost for Whelp tanking.

Any Death Knight tanking spec will start out with the 3 base tanking talents at the bottom of each tree - Blade Barrier, Toughness, and Anticipation. After you have those 3 you build up your points to your "36 point" tanking talent in your chosen tree. You will want a minimum of 50 points in 1 tree to pick up your "Expertise Talent".

Blood:

Your base spec will look something like this. There are a bunch of filler talents you have to take to get down to the 50 point level, and are completely optional. These include Bloodworms, Hysteria, and Bloody Vengeance. Some people like to pick up Rune Tap instead - I have never been a big fan of it personally, but it all comes down to taste and personal choice. From there you should have ~9 or so points leftover that you have to decide what to do with. Most people currently stick them in Frost to pick up Lichborne.

My old spec used to look like this. Some people liked to use the last 3 points to pick up Morbidity to strengthen what is arguably Blood's biggest weakness in AoE threat.

In 3.1 Blood will change somewhat. The base spec will change to something like this. Note the filler talents again of Bloody Vengeance, Sudden Doom, Hysteria and Mark of Blood. Those points can be placed in other talents as you so choose. The end spec might look something like this as Blood is being encouraged to put more points into Unholy than Frost. Again, a lot of these talents are optional and highly dependent upon your playstyle.

Tanking as a Death Knight - Part 1: What's a Death Knight?

2009-03-30T23:30:00.000-07:00

What is a Death Knight?

A Death Knight is a plate wearing class that can tank and DPS with any of its 3 trees with varying degrees of success depending on the situation. Each tree has its own specialization and style of tanking. There is no "best" tree (although some would argue otherwise) - you just need to pick the one you like the most.

Blood:

The current focus of Blood is physical damage combined with the ability to self heal through talents. This is mostly staying the same in 3.1. In its current incarnation Blood has great single target threat, but rather lackluster AoE threat. This will change with 3.1 and the removal of Lichborne as a tanking cooldown - together with the changes to Unholy will greatly improve the AoE threat of Blood. On top of that, Blood receives a huge single target increase from the changes to Sudden Doom, and the bonus disease damage changes to Heart Strike and Obliterate.

Frost:

Frost is focussed on mitigation and Frost damage (duh!). It has the best overall physical mitigation of the 3 trees, together with great single and AoE threat. In 3.1 this largely stays the same. Some talents are getting changed, but the overall focus and threat abilities are staying the same.

Unholy:

Unholy has the best magic mitigation of the three, but the poorest ability to deal with physical damage. On Live right now, Unholy also suffers from horrible single target threat compared to the other trees, but extreme AoE threat from Unholy Blight, reduced CD on Death and Decay, and long disease duration. All of this is largely staying the same in 3.1 - however Scourge Strike is being buffed to take care of the single target threat problem.

All in all, you have to try each of the 3 trees and decide which one you like the most.

It's Alliiivvvveee!

2009-03-30T19:29:00.000-07:00

Or something.

Obligatory "Welcome to Death Kitty" post.

This will actually be an on-going World of Warcraft blog focussing on Death Knight PvE (mostly tanking) and Feral Druid PvP.

I got the idea from Lissanna to do a blog. Because lets face it, Lissanna is cool people. That, and there are hardly any *real* Death Knight or Feral PvP blogs in existence.

Overview of Death Knight tanking to follow.